At the end of WWI, millions of military and civilians were displaced across Europe, the South Caucasus, and the Eastern Mediterranean. While many made their way home, genocide, revolution, and post-war instabilities complicated the repatriation of prisoners of war from Russia and the Central Powers and pushed Russian and Armenian refugees into exile. In response, an array of international organizations intervene: three of them, the International Committee of the Red Cross, the League of Natio...

In the rolling hills of Limburg, near Margraten, they slowly loom up, row after row: the thousands of white marble crosses and Stars of David. They mark the final resting place of nearly 8,300 American soldiers who died during World War II. While the headstones provide us with the names of the mostly young men involved in the liberation of the Netherlands, they do not tell us who the soldiers were and who they left behind. Moreover, the peace and quiet at the only American war cemetery in the...

On 4 April 1949, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) was created ‘to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down’. Seven decades later, the largest military alliance ever created still exists. Yet we live in a different world with immense security challenges. Are we ready for this?

Is NATO ‘brain-dead’, as French President Emmanuel Macron has it said?

Or does it just have a new future ahead of it?

In this book, Theo Francken, Hendrik Bogaert and Peter Buy...

Alis Nocturnis

On the Wings of the Night

– 58 Squadron motto

June 17, 1940 - The crew of a lone and crippled bomber are deep within enemy territory, desperately trying to find their way back home. A story of two men, their friendship, their convictions and the ultimate price they paid. An attempt to create a human image for two RAF graves in the General Cemetery of Culemborg, a friendly city in the middle of the Netherlands.

The MG34 Machinegun is deel 6 van de engelstalige Propaganda Photo Series. Elk deel van deze serie beschrijft de geschiedenis, de techniek en het toebehoren van één of meer Duitse draagbare wapens uit de Tweede Wereldoorlog. De serie wordt gekenmerkt door een bijzondere selectie van originele Duitse propagandafoto's (voor het grootste deel nooit eerder gepubliceerd), die de wapens in het dagelijks gebruik tonen. Dit deel gaat over het MG34 machinegeweer.

On the last page of the Christmas 1944 edition of The Clarion prisoners of war at Stalag VIIIB (344) Lamsdorf were invited to take part in a competition to design the cover of the Spring 1945 edition, entries to be submitted by 31st March 1945.

On 22nd January 1945 the German guards began evacuating the camp, and indeed most of their POW camps westwards, away from the rapidly advancing Soviet army. Thus began the terrible Long March in extreme winter conditions, that the POWs had to endure w...

During the Battle of Arnhem, Hotel Schoonoord in Oosterbeek, the parental home of primary school teacher Hendrika (Riek) van der Vlist, finds itself in the front line. The British take over the hotel as a field hospital. Together with other volunteers Riek helps hundreds of wounded British, Polish and German soldiers. Even when Schoonoord falls into German hands she continues to care for the wounded.

When the Airbornes are transported from Schoonoord by the Germans, Hendrika goes with them to...

No one was supposed to find Sobibor ever again. In 1943, when the Nazis shut down the death camp, they destroyed the gas chambers. To cover up pits where they buried their victims’ ashes, they planted trees.

But their attempt to totally erase the camp failed. The marshy ground in an Eastern Polish river valley still held the victims’ last possessions, rusty and buried beneath the soil. From 2007 on, archaeologists dug up tens of thousands of objects on the former camp terrain. Traces in ...