Linklists have fallen a bit out of favour in the past years, since search engines have become so much more powerful and seem to be able to provide all the content of the internet within a whim. However, I frequently stumble over a website that I regard as a treasure of information, and that only showed up after the most obscure search terms were used. So I decided to present in loose fashion a couple of website I consider well-written and relevant to the topic of military history of the 20th century.
The Official Italian History of the Second World War (4/19/2021) - The History Office of the General Staff of the Italian Army (Stato Maggiore dell’esercito – Ufficio Storico) is responsible for official military history, and thus has published a series of monographs, illustrating various aspects of military history from Italy’s unification to the present. Of course the Second World War makes up a significant part of […]
World War II Armed Forces – niehorster.org (10/15/2018) - Dr. Niehorster’s website on the Armed Forces of World War II needs little introduction I presume, being around even longer than the Generalstab and having itself established as one of the most important sites on TO/Es on the web. His thorough research has been the base for countless wargames, and his books are an established […]
Stonebooks (8/22/2018) - Reading on anything to do with the Second World War is an intimidating task, since the literature is so vast that it seems impossible for any laymen to identify relevant books or simply those well enough written to deserve notice. Military history remains a topic of high interest, and serious studies often drown in the […]The official Soviet history of the Second World War (4/18/2018) - The first official history of the Second World War was published in the Soviet Union from 1960-64 and bore the title “История Великой Отечественной войны Советского Союза“ (History of the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union). The six volumes prepared by the editorial team around G. A. Deborin decribed the German attack on the […]
RKKA-WW2 (4/6/2018) - Since 2003 RKKA provides a host of information on the Soviet Forces in World War Two: Formations, Force Structure, uniforms, Losses, Weapons and Maps. The Design hasn’t changed much since then, and the site hasn’t really been updated since 2010, so the website structure belies the sheer amount of information available, which definitly could use […]The German Official History of the Second World War (3/26/2018) - First plans for an official German history of the Second World War were already drafted in the Fifties, however, most of the archival sources and documents that had survived the war had been looted by the Allies. From 1964 onward, the Allied governments started to bring back the archives shipped overseas, and in the Seventies […]
The British Official History of the Second World War (3/26/2018) - The History of the Second World War is the official history of Britain’s contribution to the Second World War and was published by Her Majesty’s Stationery Office (HMSO). The immense project was sub-divided into areas to ease publication. Military operations are covered in the United Kingdom Military Series, the United Kingdom Civil Series covers aspects […]
The Official History of Canada in the Second World War (1/22/2018) - Land Campaigns Official History of the Canadian Army in the Second World War, Vol I Six Years of War, Stacey, C.P, 1955 Official history of the Canadian Army in the Second World War, Vol II The Canadians in Italy, 1943-1945, Nicholson, G.W.L, 1956 Official History of the Canadian Army in the Second World War, Vol III […]
The official Russian History of the First World War (11/27/2017) - The young Soviet Union, like any other major power, undertook great efforts to learn from “Great War”. A military comission started publishing a military history of the First World War aimed at the training of Red Army officers. The resulting seven-volume work called Стратегический очерк войны 1914-1918 гг. (Strategic Outline of the War 1914-1918) focuses […]The Official History of India in the First World War (11/27/2017) - The large Indian participation in the First World War was covered in a single volume entitled India’s Contribution to the Great War published by the Government of India in 1923. The book is available to read on the British Library’s Digitised Manuscripts collection, and as PDF download at archive.org.
The Official History of the US Military in the Second World War (11/20/2017) - The number of studies and books published by the US military on the Second World War alone fills a small library. Official histories do not only exist for the Army and the Navy, then the two arms of the US military, but also for the nascent forces of the Air Force and the Marines, and […]
Sources for German Military History Online (10/17/2017) - Note: This months link leads to german books and sources exclusively, so you might want to skip this link tip if you cant read german. Markus Maria Hof is a historian and publicist, and he found the time to scrounge archive.org for books related to german and especially Prussian history. And since Prussia shaped more […]Generalstab Publications Bibliography (10/17/2017) - Military history in 19th century Prussia used to be an exclusive club run for and by staff officers. Despised by their brethren who would rather be in the middle of an bombardment than caught reading a book, these “demigods” as they were derisively called, in turn looked down on academic historians as amateurs dabbling with […]
The General (9/15/2017) - Its superfluous to introduce anyone on this website to the General, unless you are new here, in which case let me point you towards the relevant information. The beautiful thing is that all or most of its issues (I haven’t checked yet) have been uploaded to archive.org, so you can now reminicence in the days […]
The Belgian Army in 1940 (9/12/2017) - For this Link credit goes to Peter Page from the fantastic Yahoo group “TO&E”, which is to my knowledge the best place in the internet to search and inquire sources and information about the organisation, structure and the equipment of any modern army (“modern” being used here in the classic sense of “after the medival […]The Official History of New Zealand in the Second World War (8/30/2017) - This fifty volume series covers all areas of New Zealand’s involvement in the Second World War, from detailed accounts of particular battalions, to the political and economic background and consequences, to full accounts of particular episodes and campaigns. This series was first published as part of the Official History of New Zealand in the Second […]
Sturmpanzer.com (8/23/2017) - The recent news that Richard Hedrick, the owner of Sturmpanzer.com plans to discontinue the site as more than enough reason to point your attention to this trasure of research material. Nearly as old as the General Staff, Sturmpanzer owes its existance to a much nobler cause: scientific research. From its inception, the website has been […]Official History of Japan in the Second World War (7/20/2017) - The transcribed name of the official Japanese history of the Second World War is “Senshi Sosho”. Its a monumental work, covering virtually all aspects of the war except the Japanese war crimes. The Senshi Sosho totals 102 volumes that consist of 34 volumes on the Imperial General Headquarters, 37 volumes on the Army, 21 volumes […]
The Offical Canadian History of the First World War (7/20/2017) - After the First World War, the Historical Section of the General Staff of the Canadian army began work on history of the war planned to have eight volumes. However, only one volume of narrative and one volume of annexes and maps edited by Col. A. Fortescue Duguid had been published by the outbreak of the […]
The Official Histories of New Zealand in the First World War (7/19/2017) - No full official account of New Zealand’s participation in the First World War was ever published. Only four official volumes were published (1919-1923), and they were written by senior officers who had fought in the campaigns (Gallipoli, Sinai/Palestine, Western Front) but who generally had no training as historians. A useful summary on the genesis of […]The Official Australian History of the Second World War (7/19/2017) - Not to be outdone by the detailed and sprawling history of New Zealands involvement in the Second World War, the Australian military undertook one of the longest and largest historical endeavours the nation has ever seen. The enterprise began in January 1943 with the appointment of Gavin Long as General Editor. The 22 volumes, written […]
The Italian Official History of World War One (3/16/2017) - The Italian Army published its official history between 1927 and 1988 – interrupted by the Second World War – under the title of “L’Esercito Italiano nella Grande Guerra 1915-1918” (“The Italian Army in the Great War 1915-1918”). The history stretches over seven volumes divided into 37 books and is accompanied by panoramic sketches, topographical maps […]All Power to the People: An unofficial “Total War”-Playtest (2/20/2017) - A testament to the dedication and loyalty of the community. There, I always wanted to write such a sentence, and today I honestly have a reason for it: Robert, a member of the Europa mailing list, assembled a TW playtest set by using the TW maps and counters, and updating the FitE-rule set to modern […]
The Official British History of World War One (5/6/2015) - Note: The earlier volumes of this work are available on archive org, we will ad the links as as time permits, and as the volumes become available online. Military Operations Between 1923 and 1949, the Historical Section of the Committee of Imperial Defence under the auspices of Sir James E. Edmonds published the History of the […]
The US Official History of World War One (5/6/2015) - In the spring of 1918 the US Army founded a Historical Section at the Army War College with the explicit task to write a history of the American contribution to the Great War. Budget restrictions initially prevented the Historical Section to make use of the vast drove of documents already collected. It took until 1948 […]
The Official German History of World War One (5/6/2015) - Der Weltkrieg 1914 bis 1918 Published as “Der Weltkrieg 1914 bis 1918. Im Auftrage des Oberkommandos des Heeres bearbeitet und herausgegeben von der Kriegsgeschichtlichen Forschungsanstalt des Heeres. Die militärischen Operationen zu Lande. Berlin: E. S. Mittler 1925-1944”. The work consist of 15 volumes, each supplied with maps, and three supplements, two of which have not […]
The Official History of France in the First World War (5/6/2015) - Named “Les Armées Françaises dans la Grande Guerre” (The French Armies in the Great War”), the official French history of World War One has a total of 106 volumes, of which 26 are text volumes describing the course of events (“Précis”). A further 56 volumes (“Annexes”) contain documents, orders and battle reports that are crossindexed […]
The Austria-Hungarian official history of World War One (5/5/2015) - Edmund Glaise-Horstenau (Hrsg): Österreich-Ungarns letzter Krieg 1914–1918. Band I–VII. Verlag der Militärwissenschaftlichen Mitteilungen, Wien 1930–39. Note: Stan Hanna actually translated the whole seven volumes of this work and added some pretty impressive corpus of notes on top of that. I can only imagine the workload having gone into this. You can find the translated version (including illustrations) online […]
The Australian Official History of World War One (5/5/2015) - The Official History of Australia in the War of 1914–1918 is a 12-volume series covering Australia’s involvement in the First World War. The series was edited by the official historian Charles Bean, who also wrote six of the volumes, and was published between 1920 and 1942. The books, with their familiar covers, “the colour of […]
Classic Europa (2/26/2013) - John Astell’s contribution to the Europa-Series is such that I would be hard pressed to find any Europa game that does not show his handwrit, be it that he designed it directly, be it that it heavily borrows from the rules canon John established over the years. Taking over from the founders of GD/W, Paul […]
Grognard.com (1/16/2013) - The oldest gamer site on the web For a long time Grognard.com was the place to look if you wanted to know anything about strategy games. Anything, from MS-DOS based programms to generate hex-maps to long lists of scanned counter sheets for nearly any strategy game available, Grognard.com delivered. During the Nineties and beyond Grognard […]
The CARL digital library (10/19/2012) - A recurring theme of pages listed under these bookmarks seems to be that their design somehow harks back to the late nineties, but their content is much richer than a first look would surmise. CARL contines this trend: benhind an awkard and slow interface lingers a host of historical documents. CARL is short for “Combined […]
War over Holland (8/13/2012) - How to organize armies for war is still one of the topics that fascinate me the most – probably one of the reasons why I am still loyal to the precisely researched OBs of the “Europa series”. Some time ago during reasearch I stumbled upon a now defunct blog that listed in detail all units […]
Planes, Spaceflight, and Things That Go Boom: Vectorsite (7/2/2012) - This article should be linking to two articles, too. But unlike our previous reccomendation, in which one site hosted the other, in this case the contents of “Vectorsite” have grown to a point at which the author and owner of the site decided some weeks ago to split his website into two. So http://www.airvectors.net/ contains […]
Soviet Orders of Battle – Soldat.ru (5/15/2012) - In order to explain why I am linking with google translate to an Entry on archive.org, a little explanation is probably warranted. For a long time our knowledge about the organisation of the Red Army and its structure during World War II was fragmental at best. While the western Allies published extensive official histories, and […]
The Nafziger Collection (4/23/2012) - Before the advent of the Web, the name of George F. Nafziger was already a staple in wargaming circles. His work on the wars of the French Revolution and his collection of well-researched Orders so Battle, especially for the Napoleonic area, made him the first adress for anyone wargaming that time. Nafziger started to make […]
Battalion Organisation during the Second World War (4/18/2012) - “Bayonetstrength 150” is the most knowledgeable website on bataillon sized units in second world war that we know of. Its name aptly describes focus and content: its all about organisation, training, equipment, and action of bataillion-sized units on the various battlefields of World War II. Its author, Gary Kennedy, not only manages to describe the […]