The charge of the light, battle illustration

Military history

Rjukan Hydro Plant

Spying in WW2: how wartime espionage was just as dramatic as fiction

A portrait of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler

Second World War

Why did WW2 happen?

WW2 surrender signed, 2 September 1945

Second World War

How and when did WW2 end?

The Hundred Years’ War: everything you wanted to know. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Exclusive podcastDan Jones on the human stories of the crusades. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Engraving depicting a scene from the battle of Crécy, during the Hundred Years' War. Dated 14th Century. (Photo by: Photo 12/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

The battle of Crécy: triumph of the longbow

The tomb of Pharaoh Djoser, built at Saqqara

Timeline: the evolution of ancient empires

Battle of Bosworth, 22 August 1485

10 things you need to know about the battle of Bosworth

Print of Hannibal ferrying his elephants over the Rhone on rafts during the Second Punic War

Your guide to...the Punic Wars

Genghis Khan

Genghis Khan: the Mongol warlord who almost conquered the world

Male and female militia fighters on the march at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War, July 1936. (Photo by Getty Images)

The Spanish Civil War: everything you wanted to know. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Marble relief depicting the Praetorian Guard, legionnaires and elite soldiers. In the Louvre, Paris, France. (Photo by Leemage/Corbis via Getty Images)

The Praetorian Guard: the emperors’ fatal servants

Historian Peter Caddick-Adams

Exclusive podcastPeter Caddick Adams on whether D-Day could have failed. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

The 11th East Africa Infantry Division fought with the British Fourteenth Army in Burma (Myanmar) during the Burma Campaign, 1944. (Photo by Alamy)

Victory in the east. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Photographs documenting the facial reconstruction of a soldier whose cheek was extensively wounded during the Battle of the Somme

What happened to the 8 million people who were disabled during WW1?

Night view of people jammed into Times Square, New York, celebrating the end of the war in Europe. (Photo by Herbert Gehr/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty

Was 1945 the world's zero?

Hiroshima.

Second World War

The end of WW2: 5 articles you can read right now

Mural of the battle of Actium from 1600

Actium, 31 BC: the beginning of the end for Mark Antony and Cleopatra

Attila the Hun

General ancient history

Who was Attila the Hun, the barbarian ruler who terrorised the Romans?

The American Civil War: everything you wanted to know. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

A bust of Roman dictator Julius Caesar

Julius CaesarYour guide to the Roman dictator

First World War

WW1 poets5 famous figures you should know about

Egyptian ships sunk at the entrance of the Suez Canal at Port Said

Your guide to...the Suez Crisis

The battle of First Bar, 1841

Your guide to...the Opium Wars

Lionheart of stone: the medieval statue debate. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

The original ‘Big Three’ at Livadia Palace in Yalta: Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin. None of them came away from the summit with everything they had hoped for. (Photo by PhotoQuest/Getty Images)

Second World War

Your guide to...The Yalta and Potsdam conferences, 1945

The capture of Jerusalem in 1099

How the First Crusade captured Jerusalem in 1099

The death of a dream: why Europe's great year of revolution in 1848 failed

The Cuban Missile Crisis: everything you wanted to know. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Winston Churchill gives his famous v-sign. (Photo by Central Press/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Second World War

From Winston Churchill to the Bengal famine: are we in denial about our role in WW2?