Churchill and the Historians

Review of Robert Blake & Roger Louis, eds., Churchill: A Major Reassessment of his Life in Peace and War. London: Oxford University Press, 1992; Tuvia Ben-Moshe, Churchill: Strategy and History. Boulder, CO: Lynne Reinner Publishers, 1992; Richard Lamb, Churchill as War Leader: Right or Wrong? London: Bloomsbury, 1991; John Charmley, Churchill, The End of Glory: A Political Biography. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1992

Some Reflections on the Teaching of Military History in Canada

Military History occupies a somewhat tenuous position in the curricula of Canadian universities. It is most often regarded as a kind of marginal enterprise to be offered by a faculty member who has some side-interest in these matters as a relief from the more serious social, economic and cultural questions with which History is properly concerned. This is, of course, not a new phenomenon. It is, quite to the contrary, a tradition which stretches back to the very beginning of history as an academic discipline in the 19th century. It was particularly the attitude within the British historical profession

In the Tradition of Nelson: The Royal Navy in World War II

Review of Correlli Barnett, Engage the Enemy More Closely: The Royal Navy in the Second World War. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1991

Tactical Air Power in Normandy: Some Thoughts on the Interdiction Plan

The Allied campaign in North-West Europe in 1944–45 ended with the capitulation of the German Army and must, therefore, be considered an eminently successful operation. In its initial phase, that is the assault on Normandy and the securing of a defensible lodgement area, it was undoubtedly one of the most dangerous and complicated operations of the war. Nevertheless it ended as the victory which marked the beginning of the end of the Third Reich. Like many other campaigns, however, it did not go exactly as planned and many have claimed that the Allied Armies were neither properly trained nor adequately led and that, therefore, some other element ensured the victory. The overwhelming power of the Allied air force and its effects on the operations of the German Army has been the favourite theme of both historians and German generals. This powerful combination has long dominated the assessment of the campaign. It is not the purpose of this essay to minimize the importance of Allied air operations, in particular the attacks on the German communication system. Rather, it is an attempt to examine in some detail the actual results of that operation in order to obtain a clearer understanding of its place among the many other ingredients which combined to defeat the German Army in Normandy

War Through the Ages

Review of John Keegan, A History of Warfare. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993

Atomic discreteness and the nature of structural equilibrium in conductance histograms of electromigrated Cu-nanocontacts

We investigate the histograms of conductance values obtained during controlled electromigration thinning of Cu thin films. We focus on the question whether the most frequently observed conductance values, apparent as peaks in conductance histograms, can be attributed to the atomic structure of the wire. To this end we calculate the Fourier transform of the conductance histograms. We find all the frequencies matching the highly symmetric crystallographic directions of fcc-Cu. In addition, there are other frequencies explainable by oxidation and possibly formation of hcp-Cu. With these structures we can explain all peaks occurring in the Fourier transform within the relevant range. The results remain the same if only a third of the samples are included. By comparing our results to the ones available in the literature on work-hardened nanowires we find indications that even at low temperatures of the environment, metallic nanocontacts could show enhanced electromigration at low current densities due to defects enhancing electron scattering