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On 8 May 1945, millions of people rejoiced in the news that Germany had surrendered: after nearly six years, the war in Europe was finally over. Second World War historian Keith Lowe brings you the facts about this momentous day in history
What does VE Day stand for? VE Day – which stands for ‘Victory in Europe’ Day – is the day in 1945 when the German armed forces signed an unconditional surrender, and the Second World War in Europe finally came to an end. When is VE Day? On the afternoon of 8 May 1945, the British prime minister Winston Churchill made the radio announcement that the world had long been waiting for. “Yesterday morning,” he declared, “at 2.41 a.m., at General Eisenhower’s headquarters, General Jodl, the representative of the German High Command, and Grand Admiral Dönitz, the designated head of the German State, signed the act of unconditional surrender of all German land, sea and air forces in Europe.” After nearly six years, the war in Europe was finally over. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2021/05/GettyImages-152242830-0f9cc7d-e1778199304496.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="Crowds gather in a city street during VE Day celebrations as couples dance among scattered confetti and paper. In the foreground, a smiling woman in a dark dress holds hands with a serviceman while spectators and uniformed personnel watch and celebrate around them." title="The celebrations on VE Day began almost immediately. Here, people dance on the streets of London (Photo by Getty Images)" /> The celebrations began almost immediately. However, there was still one last technical detail to be taken care of. Since the Soviet authorities had not yet given their approval to the surrender document, a second, definitive document was signed in Berlin. The official time when this final document was signed was 23.01, Central European Time (although in reality it was not signed until almost a quarter to one the next morning). By Moscow time, however, the official time of signing was already after midnight. As a consequence, America and western Europe consider VE Day to have taken place on 8 May, while Russia and some eastern European countries celebrate it on 9 May. Read more | The week the Second World War ended in Europe Where did VE Day take place and how was it celebrated? Although VE Day was strictly speaking a continental European event, it was celebrated all over the world. In London, more than a million people took to the streets and huge crowds gathered outside Buckingham Palace to see Churchill standing on the balcony alongside King George VI. In Paris and New York, similar crowds gathered along the Champs Elysée and in Times Square. According to Alexander Werth, the Moscow correspondent for the BBC and the Sunday Times, the fireworks display over the Kremlin on 9 May “was the most spectacular I have ever seen”. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2021/05/GettyImages-3071856-2456393-e1778199146179.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A huge crowd fills Trafalgar Square in London during VE Day celebrations in 1945. Thousands of people surround Nelson’s Column, which is decorated with a large sign reading “Victory Over Germany 1945”, while streets and buildings around the square are packed with spectators." title="Trafalgar Square on VE Day. In London, more than a million people took to the streets (Photo by Getty Images)" /> Not all of the celebrations went exactly as planned. In the Canadian city of Halifax, for example, riots broke out when thousands of soldiers and sailors began looting liquor stores. In Australia and New Zealand, the celebrations were a little more sober: such countries were glad to know that their soldiers would soon be coming home from Europe, but were more concerned about the war in the Pacific, which was still going on. Read more | “The war without an end”: what happened in Europe after VE Day? What events led to VE Day? The final collapse of Nazi Germany began in January 1945, when the Soviet Red Army launched a series of offensives across a front that ran all the way from the Baltic Sea to the borders of Yugoslavia. By the end of March they had reached the River Oder, just 60km from the German capital. At around the same time, British and American armies also began crossing the Rhine. By the end of April Berlin was encircled, and the situation looked hopeless for Germany. In Italy, Hitler’s ally Benito Mussolini was captured and executed, and his body put on display before jeering crowds. In order to avoid the same fate, Hitler committed suicide on 30 April 1945 in a bunker under his headquarters in Berlin, along with his wife, Eva Braun, whom he had married the day before. Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz, whom Hitler had nominated as his successor, began negotiations with the Allies just a few days later. A series of partial surrenders took place at Lüneberg Heath in northern Germany, and at Haar in southern Germany – but in the east, the fighting would continue right up until VE Day itself. Indeed, in some places – for example in Prague, and in parts of northern Yugoslavia – German troops would continue fighting even after the final surrender had been signed. Read more | Did Britain really ‘stand alone’ during WW2? What is the difference between VE Day and VJ Day? While VE Day marked the end of the Second World War in Europe, fighting in the far east would continue for another three-and-a-half months. As a consequence, there was always a slightly solemn undercurrent to the celebrations of VE Day. “We may allow ourselves a brief period of rejoicing,” said Churchill during his VE Day broadcast, “but let us not forget for a moment the toil and efforts that lie ahead. Japan, with all her treachery and greed, remains unsubdued.” Japan was not finally defeated until after the atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. On 15 August 1945, the Japanese emperor announced his unconditional surrender – and this date is remembered in the UK as VJ [Victory in Japan] Day. However, the official surrender documents were not signed until 2 September, which is considered VJ Day in the USA. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2021/05/GettyImages-2161023745-b531e2c-e1778199023600.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A Japanese military representative signs the formal surrender documents ending the Second World War while Allied officers stand nearby in uniform. The ceremony takes place around a table covered with papers and microphones, with rows of servicemen gathered in the background watching the proceedings." title="The official documents of Japan's surrender were not signed until 2 September, aboard the USS Missouri, Tokyo Bay (Photo by Getty Images)" /> Did the young Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret attend VE Day celebrations? King George VI and his queen, Elizabeth Angela Marguerite Bowes-Lyon, made a total of eight appearances on the balcony at Buckingham Palace on VE Day. Their daughters, Princess Elizabeth – the future Queen Elizabeth II – and Princess Margaret, appeared alongside them. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2021/05/GettyImages-912524312-cf867d5-e1778199678383.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="Four members of the British royal family stand on a balcony during VE Day celebrations in 1945. King George VI, dressed in naval uniform, waves to crowds below while Queen Elizabeth, Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret stand beside him in front of large stone columns draped with ceremonial fabric." title="King George VI and Queen Elizabeth made eight appearances on the balcony at Buckingham Palace on VE Day (Photo by Getty Images)" /> That evening, however, in an unprecedented and spontaneous breach of protocol, the two young women slipped out of the palace in order to join the revellers. They were accompanied by two Guards officers, but in the darkness easily blended in with the crowds. Princess Elizabeth was a member of the Auxiliary Territorial Service, and like many others on the streets that night was dressed in uniform. Later, she recalled: “We stood outside and shouted ‘We want the King’… I think it was one of the most memorable nights of my life.” Read more | In pictures: jubilant VE Day celebrations Is VE Day still celebrated today and why? How do the different countries celebrate? Most nations in Europe still celebrate the anniversary of the end of the Second World War in one way or another. The war was probably the most destructive event in European history. It involved the devastation of hundreds of cities, and the deaths of at least 35 million people, most of them civilians. The end of this conflict, and the dawn of a new era of peace, are universally considered events worth celebrating. Different countries mark the anniversary in different ways, and on different days. In Italy, for example, ‘Liberation Day’ is celebrated on 25 April – the day in 1945 when Italian partisans proclaimed a general uprising against the German occupiers of their country. In the Netherlands, Liberation Day falls on 5 May, because this is when the German forces capitulated there. But VE Day on 8 May is generally recognised as the single day that unites the vast majority of countries in Europe. What is the significance of VE Day? VE Day signified several things at once. First and foremost, it brought a symbolic end to organised violence across the continent. Europe remained in turmoil for many years after May 1945, but at least the era of pitched battles between huge armies was over. In Britain it meant the end of bombing, and the return of hundreds of thousands of servicemen to their loved ones. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2021/05/GettyImages-97318949-b8513b5-e1778198646306.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A huge crowd of civilians and sailors celebrates in the streets at the end of the Second World War, with people cheering, waving and climbing above the crowd. In the centre of the image, two sailors raise trumpets while surrounded by smiling men, women and children packed tightly together in the summer heat." title="Two sailors are raised on shoulders as crowds celebrate VJ Day in Manhattan, September 1945 (Photo by Getty Images)" /> Secondly, it marked the liberation of several countries from foreign occupation. Although France had already been liberated many months earlier, most of Europe was not finally freed from Nazi rule until the spring of 1945. Many countries, including Norway, Denmark, and parts of Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, were occupied right up until VE Day itself. Finally, in western Europe at least, VE Day marked the end of totalitarianism, and the beginning of a new era of democracy. With the Nazis gone, European countries were free once more to choose their own governments. In eastern Europe, which fell under communist rule after 1945, the people would have to wait a further four decades before democracy was restored. Read more | “Hooray! The war is ended”: 5 people’s recollections of VE Day Does Germany recognise or celebrate VE Day? For many years after the war, VE Day was regarded by many in Germany as a day of shame rather than one of celebration. In East Germany, which became communist after 1945, ‘Liberation Day’ was a public holiday for many years, but it was not generally celebrated with much enthusiasm. Today, however, VE Day is remembered in a much more favourable light. Germans suffered terribly during the war, not only beneath Allied bombs, but also at the hands of their own rulers. Tens of thousands of Germans were imprisoned or executed by the Nazis between 1933 and 1945, often for the most insignificant misdemeanours. As a consequence, the defeat of the Nazis is now universally regarded as a blessing. In Germany, VE Day is not a day of celebration as it is in other countries. Rather it is regarded as a day of sombre commemoration, when the dead are remembered, and the promise is renewed never to allow such terrible events to repeat themselves. Keith Lowe is an author and former military history publisher who has spent more than 20 years writing about the Second World War and its aftermath. His most recent book is Naples 1944: War, Liberation and Chaos (William Collins, 2024) This article was first published by HistoryExtra in 2020
From the morally bankrupt to the staggeringly inept, Jonny Wilkes guides us through the lives of 16 rulers who wrote their names into the history books for all the wrong reasons
The past has no shortage of disastrous kings, queens, and other rulers; such a list could easily have been filled with the worst Roman emperors alone. Some have been homicidal, like Nero or Genghis Khan; simply incompetent, like Edward II; completely untrustworthy, like Charles I; or amiable but inadequate, like Louis XVI of France. But who are truly the worst, and why? Jonny Wilkes makes the case against 16 rulers from history… <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/GettyImages-520718487-44a3fc9-e1776420577392.jpg" width="1498" height="1000" alt="A medieval battle scene shows armoured soldiers fighting with spears and shields, while two mounted knights dominate the centre and right. The figures wear ornate gold-and-black armour, and richly decorated horses move through the fray. Stone buildings and a towered structure rise in the background." title="King Tarquin and his family were expelled from Rome in 509 BC, paving the way for the creation of the Roman Republic (Image by Getty Images)" /> 1. Lucius Tarquinius Superbus King of Rome, 534–509 BC Before Rome had emperors, it had a line of kings going back to the city’s mythical founder, Romulus. The last, however, presided over a reign of terror so bad that the people gave up on the monarchy altogether, heralding the dawn of the Republic. Lucius Tarquinius Superbus (commonly known as ‘Tarquin the Proud’) had seized the throne by planning the assassination of his own father-in-law, then once in power he killed senators on a whim and imprisoned or executed anyone suspected of disloyalty. His undoing came when his son raped a noblewoman, which caused such outrage that a revolt broke out that saw the tyrannical king overthrown and exiled. In his doomed attempts to regain the throne, he persuaded neighbouring cities to attack Rome, seemingly unfazed by the damage this would do to his erstwhile kingdom. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/GettyImages-1439484597-HR-9ecf251-e1776420717721.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="An illustration shows a person in a fur garment and sandals lifting a club to strike a bear that rears up on its hind legs with claws extended. They stand in an enclosed arena-like space." title="A 19th-century image depicts Commodus fighting a bear. The emperor is best known today as the main antagonist in the 2000 blockbuster Gladiator (Image by Getty Images)" /> 2. Commodus Roman emperor, 177–92 AD There are a number of contenders to the title of ‘most despicable emperor of Rome’, so we could just as easily be discussing the cruel and murderous rules of, say, Nero and Caligula. The bloodthirsty, vainglorious spendthrift, Commodus, however, went from inheriting an empire enjoying a long period of peace and prosperity, the Pax Romana, to leaving it broke and in turmoil. If not executing anyone he suspected of plotting against him, he was leaving the job of ruling the empire to a series of corrupt, cruel and incompetent favourites. He much preferred to fight as a gladiator, relishing in slaughtering a menagerie of animals in the arena. No wonder, then, that Commodus was chosen as the villain in Ridley Scott’s swords-and-sandals masterpiece, Gladiator. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/4King-JohnGettyImages-804458704-88379ce-e1776420847382.jpg" width="1498" height="1000" alt="A medieval illustration shows a crowned figure in red robes signing a document at a table covered with an ornate cloth, while knights, clerics, and noblemen stand around under a canopy. A grassy landscape with tents and figures appears behind them." title="A fanciful illustration depicts King John signing the Magna Carta at Runnymede. In reality, the charter was authenticated with his royal seal (Image by Getty Images)" /> 3. John King of England, 1199–1216 Seriously, how could the arch-villain of Robin Hood not make an appearance? Beyond the tale of the fabled outlaw, John severely damaged the authority of the English monarchy. As a prince, he angered the nobles of Ireland and attempted to steal his brother Richard I’s crown, only ending up as king after Richard died without a legitimate heir. Notably, he also managed to outmanoeuvre a rival claim from his nephew, Arthur of Brittany, whom he is later believed to have had murdered. Within a few years in power, John had lost Normandy – the foundation of his family’s Angevin empire on the continent – then he emptied the kingdom’s coffers trying to win it back. His oppressively high taxes, his clashes with the church and his cruel and conniving personality all led to a revolt of England’s barons. Under threat of civil war, John was forced to seal Magna Carta, a historic document that limited royal power. He then proceeded to ignore it. The barons rose up again and John’s reign ended, dying of dysentery, as he fought to keep hold of his kingdom. Read more | How King John helped bring about a political miracle in medieval England <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/GettyImages-929217154-a82abdb-e1776421043333.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="An emperor in elaborate robes and a crown sits composed on a throne between patterned pillars, while attendants in similar ceremonial clothing move hurriedly across the foreground. Smoke or swirling shapes fill the space, and broken pottery pieces lie near the throne, adding to the sense of disruption." title="An illustration depicts Emperor Aizong on his throne during the Mongol siege of Caizhou. The ruler’s death led to his general, Wanyan Chenglin, taking power – albeit very briefly (Image by Getty Images)" /> 4. Wanyan Chenglin Emperor of the Jin dynasty, 1234 On 9 February 1234, with the warriors of the Mongol empire besieging the city of Caizhou, the emperor of the Jin dynasty in China, Aizong, knew that his 10-year reign would be over shortly. That said, he did not want to be the last in his line, so he abdicated and passed the throne to his general, Wanyan Chenglin, before taking his own life. The reluctant new emperor began a reign that would be doomed to last just a matter of hours. He was killed leading his soldiers in a last stand when the Mongols broke through the city walls. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/12Charles-the-BadGettyImages-587495540-00b7ee7-e1776421241476.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A medieval manuscript illustration shows a crowned figure in red robes seated inside a small architectural chamber, gesturing toward several figures in long white robes standing outside. The scene is set against a patterned gold and red background with a decorative border" title="Charles II of Navarre harangues a crowd of angry Parisians. The monarch’s abysmal leadership earned him the name ‘Charles the Bad’ (Image by Getty Images)" /> 5. Charles the Bad King of Navarre, 1349–87 The name gives away why he belongs on this list, doesn’t it? Charles earned ‘the Bad’ for his duplicitous and treacherous behaviour in the Hundred Years’ War between England and France. Although King of Navarre in Spain, he owned a lot of land in northern France, which put him in the middle of the conflict, and his response was to keep flipping sides. Driven solely by ambition, he believed he should be on the French throne, and he plotted and murdered to get it. All the while, Navarre went ignored. What made him truly bad, though, was that his schemes failed utterly. Charles is perhaps best-known today for his grisly end in 1387, when the brandy-soaked sheets he had been wrapped in to cure an illness accidentally caught fire, burning him alive. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/13GettyImages-973900956-e2098c3-e1776421323481.jpg" width="1496" height="1000" alt="A painted portrait shows a person wearing a dark garment with a white collar and a gold chain decorated with jewels and a cross‑shaped pendant. They wear a dark cap, set against a reddish background." title="Henry VI’s disastrous rule led to the outbreak of the Wars of the Roses, during which he lost his throne twice (Image by Getty Images)" /> 6. Henry VI King of England, 1422–61, 1470-71 Ascending the throne of England as an infant and the son of the hero of Agincourt, the young Henry VI was always going to struggle to live up to his dynastic legacy. Not helped by his total lack of leadership, it went even worse than feared: he lost control of France (won by his father Henry V), suffered a mental breakdown, and saw his kingdom plunge into the Wars of the Roses. The Lancastrian cause would be headed not by the king, but his queen, Margaret. Henry’s role amounted to being kicked off the throne by the Yorkist Edward IV, then placed back on it by the ‘kingmaker’, the Earl of Warwick, and finally losing it again after being captured. Read more | The power behind the throne: women in the Wars of the Roses <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/6-Christian-II-GettyImages-1474551628-a0ec6c8-e1776421427762.jpg" width="1497" height="1000" alt="A rustic stone-walled room is lit softly as an older person with grey hair stands behind a carved wooden chair. Another figure in dark Renaissance-style clothing with puffed sleeves and a hat leans on a round table set with a pewter jug, a cup, and a plate holding a small piece of food. A large ceramic jug rests on the floor, and behind them is a bed draped in red and white fabric with shelves holding household objects." title="Christian II spent the last 27 years of his life under lock and key, as shown in this 1871 painting by Carl Bloch (Image by Getty Images)" /> 7. Christian II King of Denmark and Norway, 1513–23 Christian’s reign may seem more insignificant than terrible at first glance, but it signalled the end of the Kalmar Union, which had bound together the Scandinavian countries of Denmark, Norway and Sweden for well over a century. Having been crowned in the first two of those countries in 1513, he set out to secure the third. It would not be until 1520 that he captured Stockholm, although, hardly magnanimous in victory, his immediate action was to execute 82 nobles. The so-called Stockholm Bloodbath fuelled a Swedish rebellion against Christian and weakened his authority back in Denmark and Norway. He was overthrown and exiled, and then when he launched a desperate bid to win back his thrones by force, he was imprisoned for the rest of his life. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/3Ivan-the-TerribleGettyImages-2182465325-461b373-e1776421509731.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A painted portrait shows a ruler wearing richly decorated robes and a tall, jeweled crown, holding a golden scepter in one hand and an orb topped with a cross in the other. The background is dark, highlighting the elaborate attire." title="No one was safe from Ivan the Terrible – he is even said to have murdered his own son in a fit of rage (Image by Getty Images)" /> 8. Ivan the Terrible Tsar of Russia, 1547–84 As the first tsar, Ivan was in some ways an able ruler since he laid the foundations of the Russian empire. He became known as ‘the Terrible’ for a reason, though. Having hated the nobles from an early age (at 13, he had one fed to a pack of dogs), he wasted no time in purging the upper classes. The domain he inherited clearly was not enough: he instigated numerous, and disastrous, wars of expansion, and even established his own fiefdom within his land where, essentially, anything went. With Ivan prone to paranoia and fits of rages, no one was safe: he ordered a full-on attack on one of his own cities, Novgorod, and beat his daughter-in-law into having a miscarriage, then murdered his son. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/9Rudolf-IIGettyImages-905611540-b04ce2b-e1776421580535.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A formal portrait shows a man in dark, gold‑detailed armour with a white ruffled collar, holding a baton and resting his other hand on a decorated sword. He stands beside a red‑covered table with a feathered hat, against a backdrop of patterned gold‑and‑red drapery." title="Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II depicted c1580. Critics of Rudolf’s rule claim that he spent more time dabbling in the arts than governing his vast domain (Image by Getty Images)" /> 9. Rudolf II Holy Roman Emperor, 1576–1612 Despite being hailed as a generous patron of the arts and sciences, Habsburg emperor Rudolf II utterly failed in his role as the leader of one of Europe’s major powers. Rather than focusing on politics and administration, he instead shut himself away to focus on personal pursuits like alchemy. When he did show some determination – starting a war with the Ottoman empire to unify Christendom – it proved a disaster. His subjects in Hungary revolted and his family made him hand over power to his younger brother. Rudolf’s most damning legacy, however, was that his miserable tenure as emperor has been blamed as one of the causes of the Thirty Years’ War, one of the bloodiest conflicts in history. Read more | What was the Habsburg jaw? <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/8-LouisXVGettyImages-587493726-ce25b64-e1776421720614.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A formal portrait shows a man in a blue velvet coat with gold embroidery, a white waistcoat, lace cuffs, and a blue sash decorated with medals. He stands before red drapery with a cloudy sky in the background." title="King Louis XV ruled France for nearly 59 years – but his time on the throne was marred by countless failures (Image by Getty Images)" /> 10. Louis XV King of France, 1715–74 It could certainly be argued that Louis XV’s status as a poor king of France was overshadowed by his successor, Louis XVI, since he was the one who lost his head in the French Revolution. Yet Louis XV’s reign sowed the seeds of the people’s discontent that would lead to such a violent rejection of the monarchy. In short, he was a deeply ineffectual ruler, let alone the all-powerful absolutist king that France had become accustomed to under Louis XIV. Reports of corruption and handing over influence to his mistresses hurt the crown’s authority, while his wars and extravagant spending depleted the coffers. France became a less powerful nation under his rule, and smaller too: he gave up New France in the Americas after the disastrous Seven Years’ War. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/5Ferdinand-VIIGettyImages-1288509729-08b1863-e1776421796923.jpg" width="1498" height="1000" alt="A detailed 19th‑century ceremonial scene depicts royals and high‑ranking officials in elaborate uniforms and gowns assembled by a waterfront. Boats and sailors fill the foreground, while clergy, soldiers, and attendants stand nearby. A grand architectural building rises in the background." title="A painting shows Ferdinand VII greeting the French Duke of Angoulême, whose 1823 invasion of Spain – ordered by fellow Bourbon Louis XVIII – restored Ferdinand’s absolutist authority after three years of constitutional rule (Image by Getty Images)" /> 11. Ferdinand VII King of Spain, 1808, 1813–33 Shortly after taking the throne in 1808, Ferdinand handed over his kingdom – and himself – to Napoleon Bonaparte. Six years of captivity in France later, he returned with a need to prove his absolutist credentials and so ditched Spain’s liberal constitution that had been written in his absence. This led to multiple uprisings, notably the revolt of 1820, which ushered in three years during which the king was forced to accept a constitutional regime. While more selfish than monstrous, Ferdinand’s legacy and place on this list were confirmed by two things: he oversaw the loss of nearly all of Spain’s colonial territories in the Americas and, following his death, his petty bid to exclude his brother from the succession resulted in a long civil war. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/11Ranavalona-IGettyImages-1414087523-76615ce-e1776421903297.jpg" width="1496" height="1000" alt="A portrait shows a person in a long pink gown with ruffled trim and a red, gold‑edged cape, standing outdoors with a jeweled crown on their head. They hold a white handkerchief, with trees and distant hills behind them." title="It is said that Queen Ranavalona wanted to create a pair of giant scissors to cut her enemies in half (Image by Getty Images)" /> 12. Ranavalona I Queen of Imerina, 1828–61 To try and hold back the wave of European colonisation in Africa, Queen Ranavalona I, of modern-day Madagascar, would go to any lengths. She wanted to purge all foreign influence, expelling missionaries, persecuting Christians and restricting trade. She even tried to have a giant pair of scissors made so that she could literally chop foreigners in half. The ones who suffered the most, however, were her people: to preserve her land’s self-sufficiency and way of life, as she saw it, Ranavalona used forced labour for her royal projects and fear to maintain order. Many executions took the form of the tangena ordeal, a witch-hunt-style trial where the accused was made to ingest poison and if they showed any adverse effects, they were deemed guilty. It is claimed that as much as 50 per cent of the population perished during her rule. Read more | “Africans have been starved of historical figures from their own lands that they can look up to”: Paula Akpan on female African leaders <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/10Leopold-IIGettyImages-1340093773-009a5d7-e1776421971106.jpg" width="1497" height="1000" alt="A political cartoon depicts a person trapped in the coils of a large red snake whose head is drawn as a crowned man. Another figure stands in the background near vegetation and a hut." title="A satirical cartoon from Punch magazine depicts King Leopold II as a snake, viciously attacking a Congolese rubber worker (Image by Getty Images)" /> 13. Leopold II King of the Belgians, 1865–1909 Leopold II may not have been a terrible king in Belgium itself, but with the Congo Free State, he revealed just how much of a monster he could be. In 1885, he created his own state in central Africa, having convinced European powers that he intended to improve the lives of the people living there. In reality, this privately owned kingdom allowed Leopold to exploit the Congolese people so that he could make money from its ivory and natural rubber reserves. Under his system of forced labour, any workers who failed to meet their quotas would be punished with mutilation. Leopold’s preferred method was chopping off hands and feet. Millions died from the brutality and rampant diseases. This was an age where European empires carved up and exploited the African continent, so the fact that international outrage finally forced Leopold to hand over the Congo Free State illustrates the appalling extent of the atrocities. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/7Khalid-ibn-Barghash-fb0d656.jpg" width="551" height="775" alt="A black‑and‑white photograph shows a person seated on an ornate chair, wearing a turban, a long decorated robe, and sandals, with a curved dagger at the waist. A patterned carpet and cushioned bench appear behind them." title="The Anglo-Zanzibar War – which lasted for just 38 minutes – put Khalid ibn Barghash’s three-day rule to an end" /> 14. Khalid ibn Barghash Sultan of Zanzibar, 1896 Not only did Khalid ibn Barghash rule for just three days, but he was ousted in the shortest war in history. So, in truth, there is no knowing whether he would have been a bad ruler: there wasn’t enough time. In 1896, the sultan of Zanzibar died, which put the British in a tough position. They controlled the islands off the east African coast as it served as a strategic trade post for the Indian Ocean. Against British wishes, Khalid, who may well have killed his predecessor, assumed the role of sultan and fortified the palace with around 3,000 supporters. The British sent warships, though, and initiated a brief bombardment. The Anglo-Zanzibar War lasted around 38 minutes, and Khalid fled into exile. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/17Nicholas-IIGettyImages-542910549-cbbc229-e1776422122833.jpg" width="1498" height="1000" alt="A historical black‑and‑white photograph depicts two officers in peaked caps, boots, and decorated uniforms standing on a grassy field and speaking to one another. Behind them, other officers gather in small groups, and a horse‑drawn carriage or artillery piece sits near the tree line." title="Tsar Nicholas II (right) addresses a Russian officer during the First World War. The Romanov ruler was overthrown in 1917 and murdered alongside his family the following year (Image by Getty Images)" /> 15. Nicholas II Tsar of Russia, 1894–1917 The Romanov dynasty ruled Russia for more than 300 years – and it all ended during the reign of Nicholas II. Not suited to wielding autocratic power over a huge empire, he made a catalogue of errors and refused to adapt beyond his rigid belief that he had the divinely ordained right to rule. In 1905 alone, Russia lost a war with Japan and broke out in revolution, yet Nicholas only made cursory changes and tried to move on. His court became dominated by the strange and ambitious mystic, Rasputin, his nobles and politicians abandoned him, and his decision to take command of the armies in the First World War meant that he was held personally responsible for every defeat and death. Revolution erupted again in 1917, forcing his abdication. While imprisoned by the revolutionaries, Nicholas and his entire family were murdered. It was a bloody and definitive end to the tsars, as Russia became a communist regime. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/15Edward-VIIIGettyImages-514689872-8d0ca51-e1776422238781.jpg" width="1497" height="1000" alt="A black‑and‑white photograph shows three people standing side by side outdoors: a man in a military uniform with insignia, a man in a long overcoat and tie, and a person in a dark coat and hat. A building with shuttered windows appear behind them." title="The Duke and Duchess of Windsor (formerly Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson) pictured with Adolf Hitler, 1937. The couple’s meeting with the Führer proved highly controversial (Image by Getty Images)" /> 16. Edward VIII King of England, 1936 Edward became king on 20 January 1936, on the death of his father George V. Before the year was out, he had abdicated in disgrace. His brief reign had entirely been focused on his wish to marry an American named Wallis Simpson, but she had been divorced once and was seeking a second, making her wholly unacceptable to the royal family, the political establishment and the church. Yet his reputation as a bad monarch could have been even worse had he stayed: Edward has long been accused of being a Nazi sympathiser, who toured Hitler’s Germany almost two years before the Second World War.
Creating fake Paris: why did one man build a hoax French capital?
As German aircraft attacked Paris during WWI, one man had an idea: what if you could fool the enemy into dropping their bombs elsewhere? Gavin Mortimer tells the story of an audacious wartime ruse...
Tucked away in a British newspaper called The Globe in its edition of 4 October 1920 was a short story with an intriguing headline: “A Mock Paris: French Plan to Hoodwink German Raiders.” The ruse, explained the paper, had only just come to light, and it was almost too fantastical to be true. “Camouflaged streets, factories, dwelling houses, railways, with stations and trains complete, and in fact a camouflaged capital, was the gigantic task on which French engineers were engaged when the Armistice put an end to military operations,” ran the report. It was the brainchild of an electrical engineer called Jacopozzi; a way to draw German aircraft away from the capital and onto a fake conurbation where bombs could fall without causing death and destruction. But the Germans sued for peace as the city began to take shape and Jacopozzi’s ingenuity was never put to the test. Paris was first bombed by German aircraft on 30 August 1914, the first time that a capital city had been attacked in such a manner. Four small bombs were dropped from the hands of Ferdinand von Hiddessen and his observer from their Rumpler Taube monoplane. The casualties were minimal, but the wider psychological damage was profound. A little over a decade after the Wright brothers had made the first brief flight in an airplane, the Americans’ invention was a new and terrifying weapon of war. The home front was now a battlefront, and women and children were no longer safe from enemy fire. Death from above There were other sporadic attacks in the 18 months that followed, including the first attack by Zeppelins (named after their inventor, Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin) in March 1915. The airships came from their bases in Belgium, but none caused serious casualties. However, on 29 January 1916, two Zeppelins appeared in the grey winter sky over the French capital. Their bombs wreaked havoc, killing 24 and wounding 30. The funerals of the dead were held on 7 February 1916 in a service that brought Paris to a standstill. Thousands of mourners lined the streets as six gun carriages carried the coffins to the Church of Notre-Dame de la Croix, and politicians and other dignitaries walked behind. The service was conducted by Cardinal Leon Adolphe Amette, the archbishop of Paris, who delivered what one British newspaper described as a “moving oration”. “Before you lie the victims of German barbarity, who fell on no field of battle,” he proclaimed. “Their death will help the cause of mankind and will strengthen the vigorous determination to conquer, to reduce the enemy to impotence, and to prevent a repetition of his crime.” But the impotence was all French as the air attacks increased in the months that followed. Paris had a respite in 1917 when the Germans switched the focus of their air attacks to London, using their latest bomber aircraft, the Gotha. One raid in June left 162 Britons dead. The French knew their turn would come. But how could they defend themselves? How Fernand Jacopozzi built a fake Paris A man who thought he had a solution was an electrical engineer called Fernand Jacopozzi. A Florentine by birth, Jacopozzi had previously worked on the Paris International Exposition in 1900, a world’s fair that celebrated the achievements of the past century and looked forward to what the next 100 years held. Jacopozzi believed it would be a century of progress, one which could prove lucrative for an electrical engineer such as himself. He remained in Paris and, according to one contemporary newspaper, “made a special study of electric lighting”. How Jacopozzi became involved in this secret project is unclear - for obvious reasons. But at some point in late 1917, he was commissioned by the DCA [Défense contre Avions, the War Office department charged with protecting France from air attacks] to build a fake Paris in order to fool German bombers. As outlandish it sounds to modern minds, the plan made sense at the time. Enemy aircraft navigated their way to the capital at night not by technological aids but by topography. They simply followed the River Seine and then dropped their bombs. But the Seine is a meandering river that, once it cuts through the heart of Paris, under its famous bridges and past landmarks such as the Eiffel Tower, then doubles back on itself not once, but twice, like the humps of a camel. It was on the second of these ‘humps’, in the suburb of Maisons-Laffitte, that the French instructed Jacopozzi to construct his phoney city. However, there were to be two other “zones of false objectives”: a fake industrial zone would be created at Vaires-sur-Marne, situated 10 miles east of the capital, while the suburb of Saint-Denis would be relocated to Villepinte in the northeast. Light railway system Jacopozzi began his work at Villepinte in 1918, constructing a replica of the Gare de l’Est railway station - one of Paris’ busiest - and even fabricating a moving train. Drawing on his years of study of electrical lighting, the Italian used wooden boards for the train’s carriages, and for the interior lights he rigged up an ingenious system of lights on a conveyor belt. From the air it appeared that the train was moving. The industrial zone was next. Jacopozzi once again used wooden boards for the shell of the factories and for the roofs he used canvases craftily dappled with various hues of paint. With a clever combination of different coloured lamps – whites, yellows and reds – he recreated the fires and vapours emitted by a factory during the manufacturing process. The key was subtlety; he didn’t want to arouse the Germans’ suspicion by lighting up his fake creations like a Christmas tree. It was painstaking work but Jacopozzi had all but finished when German Gotha aircraft raided the capital on 16 September, dropping 22,000 kilos of bombs that left six dead and 15 wounded. Next time the bombers returned the subterfuge would be put into operation. But there wasn’t a next time. Two months later the war ended and Jacopozzi was denied the chance to see if his ingenuity had outsmarted the German pilots. Nonetheless, the French government believed they had created an important form of defence should enemy bombers appear over Paris in a future war. A veil of secrecy was thrown over Jacopozzi’s creation, one which was lifted in 1920 when the British press got hold of the story. The Globe had the scoop at the start of October, but it was The Illustrated London News in its edition of 6 November 1920 that really brought Jacopozzi’s invention to life in a photo essay headlined: “A False Paris Outside Paris — a ‘City’ Created to be Bombed.” There were photographs, maps and explanations, all of which amounted to what the newspaper called “remarkably interesting revelations”. Read more | Moustaches, Cossacks and an inland lighthouse: a brief history of the Royal Air Force Towering achievements What they didn’t disclose, however, was the name of the man behind the sham city. But Jacopozzi was honoured by the French government with the presentation of the Legion d’Honneur, and he enjoyed great success in the 1920s. Having illuminated the Eiffel Tower, he also installed floodlights on the Place de la Concorde and lit up several other popular landmarks in the city. The corporate world spotted the potential in Jacopozzi’s talent and Citroën hired him to create a large luminous advertisement of one of their motor cars on the Eiffel Tower. Jacopozzi died in Paris in 1932. “He attracted world interest by his illumination of the Eiffel Tower, and did much to make Paris the City of Light,” remarked The People newspaper in a short paragraph about his passing. There was no mention of Jacopozzi’s contribution to the French war effort but no news is better than fake news. Or in his case, a fake city. Gavin Mortimer is a historian and author. His books include Guidance from the Greatest (Constable, 2020) and David Stirling: The Phoney Major: The Life, Times and Truth about the Founder of the SAS (Constable, 2022) This article was first published in the April 2022 issue of BBC History Revealed Magazine
Emma of Normandy: not just a two-time queen consort of England
Emma of Normandy was queen consort to two of England’s best known pre-Conquest kings, Æthelred the Unready and Cnut the Great. But she was also a savvy political player who came into her own as queen mother, writes Dr Cat Jarman
Emma of Normandy is best-known as being queen consort to two kings – Æthelred the Unready and Cnut the Great – and the mother of two more, Harthacnut and Edward the Confessor. She was the daughter of Richard I (the Fearless) of Normandy and the Danish-descended Gunnor. She is also a pivotal character in King and Conqueror, the BBC's Norman Conquest drama, which paints Emma as a dominating force over her son King Edward – which leads to a very ahistorical demise – and in Netflix's Vikings: Valhalla, where she is portrayed as a politically-savvy queen wielding quiet power in the English court, often working to subvert the machinations of the ever-grasping Earl Godwin. Who was Emma of Normandy? Emma was one of nine children and most likely born in the AD 980s. A daughter of the Norman dukes, she was the great-granddaughter of the Viking warrior Rollo, the founder of Normandy who hailed from either Norway or Denmark. This made her of Scandinavian ancestry on both sides of the family. She was also the great-aunt of William the Conqueror. In the words of Godfrey, prior of Winchester’s cathedral monastery, writing in the 11th century: “She had kings as sons and kings as husbands; she shone forth in the glory of her progeny of kings; she excelled in virtue even the ranks of her glorious ancestors.” Emma of Normandy's first marriage: Æthelred the Unready In 1002, probably aged in her late teens or early 20s, Emma was sent to England to marry King Æthelred, as his second wife. The marriage was clearly a strategic one, aiming to strengthen an alliance between England and Normandy in light of harrowing attacks on both English and Norman shores by Scandinavian raiders. Æthelred had apparently accused Emma’s brother, Duke Richard II, of harbouring the Vikings and enabling their attacks, and the marriage was designed to ensure his allegiance. Read more | Aethelflaed: who was the warrior queen who crushed the Vikings? Their union was an unusual one, as although several English princesses had been married off to French and German rulers historically, no English king had married a foreign wife for almost 150 years. Upon her arrival in England, Emma was given the name ‘Ælfgifu’. The marriage resulted in three children: two sons, Edward (later known as Edward the Confessor) and Alfred, and a daughter, Godgifu. Few sources say much about Emma’s political activity in these years, and it seems her role was mainly one of being a wife and a mother: the most common description of her at the time was as the conlaterana regis: “she who is at the King’s side”. This first decade of her career was the one in which she was the least powerful, and one source, William of Malmesbury, suggests that she and her husband were never on good terms. The England that Emma found herself at the beginning of the 11th century was one marked by ongoing trouble and threats of Scandinavian attacks. In 1013, this came to a head when the Dane Swein Forkbeard successfully invaded England. Emma and her children were sent into exile in Normandy, later followed by her husband. Swein’s rule of England was to be short as he died the following year, and a messy two years of political disputes ensued even after Æthelred was restored to the throne. Emma of Normandy's second marriage: Cnut the Great In 1016, Æthelred died. More turbulence was to follow, and later that year England fell to Swein Forkbeard’s son, the Danish King Cnut. The following year, he is reported to have asked for Emma to be fetched to be his wife. Emma became queen of England, once again, but this time also of Denmark and Norway. As with her first marriage, this was a strategic one as it cemented Cnut’s role as king of England. Taking the widow of one of his predecessors as his own wife no doubt helped mark his superiority. At the same time, the union might be seen as symbolising friendship and alliance. While it is unclear what Emma herself really thought of it at the beginning, she later stressed that not only did the marriage bring peace but it was an equal union that she entered into with her own consent. Read more | Cnut’s invasion of England: setting the scene for the Norman conquest Her ancestry may well have affected her feelings. After all, her mother was the daughter of recent Danish settlers in Normandy, and northern origins were a key part of Norman self-identity. Emma likely spoke Danish from childhood and apart from her family connections, she was clearly important to Cnut – not least because of her knowledge of English politics. It seems likely that the partnership between the two grew over time, helped by the fact that they were more or less of the same age. In a document from the New Minster in Winchester, illustrating the monastery’s loyal benefactors, the two are depicted either side of an altar as a double act. This depiction – one of several – emphasises Emma’s political importance. Their marriage lasted until Cnut’s death in 1035. Emma of Normandy's children As well as the two sons and one daughter Emma had with Æthelred, she went on to have two more children with Cnut: Harthacnut and Gunnhild. Cnut also had two sons by his first wife, Ælfgifu (confusingly, the same name that was given to Emma), Swein and Harold Harefoot. At the time of Cnut’s death, Swein had been sent to rule in Norway along with his mother, while Harthacnut was ruling in Denmark. That left Harold as the only of Cnut’s sons still in England. Emma remained at Winchester, where Cnut’s military household was based, and was left in charge of the Royal Treasury and in a position of power. Read more | Norman women: the power behind the thrones Harthacnut was the legitimate heir and should have ascended the English throne, but he could not return from Denmark to claim the crown so Harold ruled in his stead as either regent or co-ruler. Competition for the throne was to continue. Emma’s sons with Æthelred – Edward and Alfred – had been in exile in Normandy and returned to England in 1036. Alfred was soon killed, after being captured and blinded under suspicious circumstances, and Edward may have briefly joined his mother in Winchester before returning again to Normandy. Eventually, Harold was recognised as sole king in 1037. Emma was exiled to Flanders, where she stayed with a distant relative, Count Baldwin and his wife Adela. But her ambitions for herself and her sons remained. Read more | Are women at the heart of the action in the Norman Conquest? Emma of Normandy as England’s queen mother Emma’s career in England can be divided into three distinct parts: the first two relating to her marriages, and the third to this period after Cnut’s death. Now, Emma worked to manoeuvre her sons into kingship, taking an active part in the political sphere as queen mother. When Harold died in 1040, Emma returned from Flanders and Harthacnut finally took the throne. The role as queen mother was clearly an important one, and she was recognised as an authority: she is listed as mater regis in witness lists during these years. Emma may have learnt about queenship from her mother, Gunnor, who was later hailed as the matriarch of the Norman aristocracy, dubbed the ‘mother of the dynasty’ in the 12th century. Harthacnut ruled for only two years, with Emma by his side, until his death in 1042. He was succeeded by his half-brother Edward. But the new king appears to have turned against his mother, arriving in Winchester a few months after his coronation and taking away her treasures of silver and gold, as well as most of the land she owned. Emma was allowed to stay in Winchester and eventually regained her position at court, though without her former status. The precise reasons for this are unclear: Emma was later accused of having been too harsh on Edward; of offering aid to Magnus of Norway for an invasion of England; and even of having had an affair with Ælfwine, the bishop of Winchester. It seems none were true. Edward most likely wanted to reduce her political involvement back to a simple status as the widow of the former kings, leaving him to rule independently. As far as we know, she lived the rest of her life in Winchester. What was Emma of Normandy’s legacy? Our actual information about Emma’s life is sparse, Much of what we know comes from the Encomium Emmae reginae, the Praise of Queen Emma. This narrative was written down in 1041/2 by a monk from St Bertin, in what is now France, and was commissioned by Emma herself. The Encomium, however, is not a straightforward biography, but an account – modified in several later versions – of the role she played in English politics during the reign of Cnut and his successors. A famous illustration shows her seated on a throne, a kneeling character handing the book to her, with her sons Harthacnut and Edward watching from the wings. The Encomium conjures the position she was in at the height of her power, aimed at her sons and written to influence the future. Despite her remarkable political career, her best known legacy is no doubt her Norman link to William the Conqueror, enabling the events of 1066 to run their course. In the words of 12th-century historian Henry of Huntingdon, describing her marriage: “From this union… the Normans were justified according to the law of peoples, in both claiming and gaining possession of England.” How and when did Emma of Normandy die? Emma died of an unknown cause on 6 March 1052. She was buried next to Cnut and Harthacnut in Winchester Cathedral. In 2019, a team from the University of Bristol announced that among the 1,300 bones mixed up in six mortuary chests from Winchester Cathedral were the remains of a woman who matched both the date and age of death of Emma. There are no records of other women of similar status buried there at the time and DNA work is in progress in an attempt to identify the remains more definitively. 1066: The battle for England Member exclusive | The year 1066 is the most famous in English history, but there's a lot more to the story than one bloody battle at Hastings. In this four-part series, medievalist Marc Morris talks David Musgrove through the full story of the Norman Conquest. Watch all episodes now Dr Cat Jarman is an archaeologist, broadcaster and author of River Kings: A New History of the Vikings from Scandinavia to the Silk Roads (HarperCollins, 2021) King and Conqueror is streaming on BBC iPlayer now. For more content like this, check out the best historical movies of all time as chosen by historians and ranked by you, history TV shows and films to stream tonight, and our picks of the new history TV and radio released in the UK this week
Wanderlust: Bettany Hughes on the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World
The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World were daring and dazzling constructions that have burned bright in the human imagination right up to the modern day. Bettany Hughes follows in the footsteps of the ancients to tell their remarkable stories
Crawling underneath Egypt’s Great Pyramid, 70 metres down, is an unforgettable experience. On hands and knees in the sand, as the descending tunnel gets narrower and deeper, the bedrock of the Giza Plateau presses in so close you can actually taste it. The rock is salty, because 50 million years ago this was all sea. I am not the first to have had this visceral, time-travelling experience. As well as the Greek and Roman tourists who left graffiti here, this subterranean tunnel, and the chamber which it led to, was described by the ‘father of history’ Herodotus, and some 2,300 years later was explored by the Italian tomb-raider Giovanni Battista Caviglia. Other passages in the Great Pyramid – a huge burial place for Egypt’s King Khufu – were charted by medieval Arabic scientists and desecrated by off-duty Napoleonic soldiers. Built more than 45 centuries ago, this pyramid, the oldest of the famous Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, has always been a catalyst for awe. And it is not alone. Across time, the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World – the Pyramids at Giza, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, the Statue of Zeus at Olympia, the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, the Colossus of Rhodes and the Pharos Lighthouse of Alexandria – have really mattered. They mattered so much that, in the epoch after Alexander the Great’s death, a bespoke catalogue, the Laterculi Alexandrini, was generated to group them together. Written in papyrus about 150 BC, it is our oldest extant evidence for a catalogue. We are not sure who created the list, but we do know that it was copied and shared, and that it has inspired poetry, prose and works of art for millennia. Don't miss... Bettany's new three-part docuseries Seven Wonders of the Ancient World is airing on Channel 5 from Saturday 2 August 2025 The precise entries vary a little: in some versions, the walls or an obelisk of Babylon are included; later, the Colosseum is mentioned; the Lighthouse has sometimes been left out. The Laterculi Alexandrini also lists the seven greatest rivers, the seven best mountains, the seven finest artists and the seven best lakes. The fact the Wonders deserved to be listed in a group of seven proved that not only were these exemplars of their age, projects of pioneering ambition that made extraordinary incursions into the landscape, but that they each encapsulated something special and important about the human experience. Marvellous news The word wonder (from the Old German wuntar) means ‘something marvellous’. Originally in the Greek, these attractions were described as thaumata – works that needed to be seen. Crucially, and this is a fact that is too often overlooked, all seven were connected. In some cases, the same artists worked on them. They also reference one another’s designs. Some of antiquity’s greatest names, including Alexander the Great, visited many of the sites. Ahead of writing my new book on the Seven Wonders, I set myself the task of travelling to the location where each once stood. This, I reasoned, was the best way to get a feel for what these creations meant to the women and men of antiquity who designed them, built them, worshipped in them, fought over them, wrote about them, maintained, cherished, loved and looted them, and made perilous journeys to visit and to tick them off their bucket lists. Following in their footsteps took me on a journey through both ancient and modern landscapes. 1. The Great Pyramid at Giza Egypt’s giant resurrection machine Built at least 4,500 years ago, the Great Pyramid is the oldest of all the Wonders, and yet still stands today almost intact. And it could be even older than previously thought: the 2013 discovery of 1,000 fragmented papyri documents on the Red Sea coast potentially pushes its date back a further 100 years. The pyramid was built over a span of 20–23 years as a giant resurrection machine for Khufu, the king of a united Egypt, helping to transport him to the afterlife. As such, it was conceived as a means for the ancient Egyptians to try to understand the place of humans in the cosmos and the possibilities of both mortality and immortality. Read more | Were the pyramids built by aliens? The real history that debunks the conspiracy The pyramid’s mathematical precision is astonishing (it is close to geometrically perfect – just 2cm out in some places). Constructed of 2.3 million limestone blocks, rising 146.6 metres high, it was originally cased in gleaming, polished, white Tura stone. A few slabs still remain on the Giza plateau, surveyed by bored camels waiting for their tourist burdens. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2024/02/BAL611268web-203f90e.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="A 20th-century drawing of the construction of the pyramid. The enormous tomb took more than 20 years to build. (Image from Bridgeman)" title="A 20th-century drawing of the construction of the pyramid. The enormous tomb took more than 20 years to build. (Image from Bridgeman)" /> As the site of the pyramid was originally lapped by the Nile for 6–8 weeks of the year during the time of inundation, we now think that ancient Egyptian builders may have used the river’s rise and fall to move the pyramid’s stone building blocks into place. Listen | Ancient Egyptian pyramids: everything you wanted to know 2. The Hanging Gardens of Babylon Botanical booty takes centre stage Created sometime between 691 and 550 BC, the Hanging Gardens are the most elusive of all the Wonders. No indisputable archaeological evidence for them exists, and we have filled this gap with our imaginations. Therefore, while the Hanging Gardens have left behind the least hard evidence in the ground, they are, ironically, the most famous, and the most commonly cited of all the ancient seven. Built either by King Nebuchadnezzar II in Babylon or by the Assyrian king Sennacherib in Nineveh, they almost certainly employed ingenious watering schemes (including palm tree trunks lined with waterproof bitumen) running up a series of staggered planting ledges, all kept hydrated by machines that were an early version of Archimedes’s screw. Exotic plants and trees were showcased here – many seized as botanical booty on campaigns of expansion by either Assyrian or Babylonian monarchs. Read more | A guide to ancient gardening A venue for hosting visiting dignitaries, for displaying wealth, and possibly a location to sit and be healed by the night-time power of the stars, the gardens seem to be the ancient world’s attempt to replicate (and control) nature itself. Exploring the story of the Hanging Gardens is important because it reminds us to privilege eastern as well as western sources for the Wonder monuments. Crucially, we learn from Babylonian and Assyrian records that both the concept of ‘wonders’ and the symbolic power of seven stretches right back to the beginnings of history itself. Seven was a potent number because it connected the four elements of the Earth (earth, air, fire and water) with the three of the heavens (the sun, the moon and the stars). So we hear of seven heavens, seven hells and seven ages of man in Middle Eastern cultures. Grouping objects or ideas into lists of seven gives us meaning because they suggest human culture has a predictable pattern. Whereas the Great Pyramid was a gargantuan imposition on the landscape by a king and his people seeking to understand their connection to the chemistry of space and the cycle of life and death, the Hanging Gardens celebrated both the beauty of nature and the possibilities of humankind’s dominion over it. 3. The Temple of Artemis at Ephesus A place of refuge... and murder This Wonder was subsidised in the sixth century BC by the famously rich King Croesus of Lydia. Yet the temple, sited near the western coast of modern-day Turkey, was accessible not just to kings but to commoners. And as well as honouring an eastern deity, Artemis – who protected animals and virgins alike – it was renowned as a place of sanctuary. Many sought refuge here, including Cleopatra’s sister Arsinoe (who was double-crossed and murdered on the temple’s steps). Recent archaeological excavations have shown the stalls where refuge-seekers slept. The temple was destroyed in the mid-fourth century BC (21 July 356BC) – before being rebuilt, in even grander form, in c340 BC (this later version would itself succumb to fire, earthquake and plunder). Gargantuan in scale, the temple’s double row of columns would become the model for Greek temples across three continents. In fact, a number of the artists employed on the later building would go on to work on other Wonders, such as the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus. And a building inspired by the Temple of Artemis would house another of the Wonders: the Statue of Zeus... 4. The Statue of Zeus at Olympia Where man met the divine The imposing ivory and gold Statue of Zeus, seated in his temple home, overlooked the stadium of the sanctuary of Olympia in southern Greece. The statue was an incarnation not just of divine, but of human potential. Built around 430 BC, at a time in the classical world when pioneers like Socrates were declaring the power of philosophy, human agency and the human mind, this bearded, muscle-bound male god was built to celebrate the potency of agnostic competition, of striving and of winning. The ancients would have experienced this ferocious artwork, whose forehead was said to glower like a thunderstorm, after arriving at the site as religious pilgrims. I travelled to Olympia along the sacred route that connected it to the city of Elis, during lockdown. Without the mechanical sounds of the modern world around, Zeus’s sanctuary was thick with birdsong and with the rustle of sacred olive trees. The statue itself is now, however, long gone – it’s believed that it was taken to Constantinople in the early centuries AD, where it was probably lost in a fire. At the time Zeus’s sanctuary was built, it would also have resounded with the hum of 50,000–100,000 visitors – Greeks summoned from everywhere from the Black Sea to Byzantium to praise the king of the Olympian Gods with displays of athletic prowess. 5. The Mausoleum of Halicarnassus A site of death and glory Standing at more than 45 metres high, this gigantic building gave its name to mausoleums all over the world and has been mimicked in the cenotaphs and tombs of everyone from Abraham Lincoln to Vladimir Lenin. The mausoleum (which was ultimately destroyed by war and earthquake) reveals much about the cosmopolitan nature of life around the Mediterranean 2,300 years ago. Built by the Karian ruler Mausolos with his wife (and sister), Artemisia, in c351 BC, its wonderful hybrid of styles included Assyrian, Egyptian, Greek and Karian. It would have exploded like a firework on the coast of what is now Bodrum. While researching the building techniques of the mausoleum, I was fortunate enough to be allowed 5 metres below ground into a grave commissioned by Mausolos for his father, Hekatomnos, in nearby Mylas. Hekatomnos’s sarcophagus demonstrates the exquisite nature of the stone-carving that would have decorated Mausolos’s own burial place. It was covered with scenes of Hekatomnos’s family, including portraits of Mausolos and Artemisia, and a lion hunt. Artemisia has become infamous through history thanks to an anecdote handed down from Roman times. According to the author Aulus Gellius, Artemisia missed her brother-husband so much that after his death she ground down his bones to drink them, together with the ash from his funeral, and then pined away. But there is a strong chance, given we know gladiators drank bone-meal for strength, that Artemisia actually sought to steal Mausolos’s power. Whatever her intentions, Artemisia completed this vast, richly painted grave after her husband’s death, and was buried in her own chamber in the mausoleum. Five centuries later, the essayist Lucian of Samosta imagined a dialogue between Diogenes the Cynic and Mausolos in the underworld. The king boasted that because he was tall, handsome and a superb warrior, he needed to be commemorated with the most splendid tomb in the world. Diogenes quietly pointed out that the ruler’s hairless, skinless, eyeless skull would now look the same as his own. In fact, Diogenes added, Mausolos would look worse, as Halicarnassus’s mausoleum was a dead weight bearing down on the king’s corpse. 6. The Colossus of Rhodes Greece’s second sun The colossus was a gargantuan celebration of a moment in history when conflict sharpened into diplomacy. Wipe from your minds the popular image of a massive, kitsch statue, legs akimbo, straddling two of Rhodes’s harbours. That would have been structurally impossible. In reality, Rhodes’s towering representation of the sun-god Helios (with a face reminiscent of Alexander the Great) was probably erected high on the island overlooking the sanctuary of Helios where the Helian games were held in the god’s honour. The colossus was built (in c302/292 BC) after a pitiless siege of Rhodes by the son of one of Alexander the Great’s generals, Demetrius the Besieger. Legend has it that much of the raw material to make the figure derived from the melted down weapons and siege engines used to break through heavy walls and gates, which were surrendered following a truce. Yet those raw materials also, it seems, came from below the ground. The author Philo of Byzantium wrote: “The artist used so much bronze for the work there was almost a shortage of metals, for all the Earth’s mines were exploited in carrying out the project... for in the world a second sun stood to face the first.” Indeed, ice cores from Greenland show pollution levels soaring in the Hellenistic and Roman ages, caused by the process of larger-than- life-size metal statues being produced to prove man’s dominion over cities and far-flung territories. All of the Seven Wonders prove the fevered possibilities of the human imagination – and the harsh demands of making our dreams flesh. By building a statue more than 30 metres tall honouring the sun, the Colossus of Rhodes’s creators set in train a history of humans plundering the Earth’s resources, and a heating of the planet, which now threatens us all. 7. The Pharos Lighthouse of Alexandria History’s greatest warning beacon? The Pharos Lighthouse of Alexandria guided sailors to safety along one of the most perilous coastlines of northern Egypt. Built in c297 BC, it also acted as a warning beacon in times of distress – and, with an articulated decoration on its summit, may have been the world’s first weathervane. It was also, clearly, beautiful. Standing at 120 metres tall (until its collapse, as a result of earthquakes, in the Middle Ages), the lighthouse played with a sequence of geometrical shapes: oblong, circular and square. It was decorated with the same pink granite that lined Khufu’s burial chamber in the Great Pyramid. Some of these blocks are still in situ, re-used as door frames and as thresholds in the fort of Qaitbey, which now swamps the lighthouse’s footprint. Lucian (one of my favourite authors of antiquity) was inspired by a hidden inscription on the Pharos Lighthouse, left by its architect, Sostratus of Knidos, as an allegory for the writing of history itself. The visible inscription praised the pharaohs who had commissioned the Pharos. But when the gypsum covering was washed away, we are told that underneath was a dedication commemorating Sostratus’s hope for the safety of sailors. As Lucian wrote: “History should be written in that spirit, with truthfulness and an eye to future expectations rather than with adulation and a view to the pleasure of present praise.” <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2024/02/GettyImages-89164073web-93219a5.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="This block from the lighthouse would originally have been decorated in a glowing pink colour. (Photo by DEA / C. SAPPA/De Agostini via Getty Images)" title="This block from the lighthouse would originally have been decorated in a glowing pink colour. (Photo by DEA / C. SAPPA/De Agostini via Getty Images)" /> In an 1,800-year-old work of science fiction (also written by Lucian), an ancient astronaut staring down from the Moon recognises Earth, thanks to a sighting of the Lighthouse of Alexandria and the Colossus of Rhodes. Today, courtesy of satellite imagery, we really can look down on Earth from space. But even though we’d only be able to see one of the Seven Ancient Wonders standing in situ, their power to fire our intellect and capture our imaginations still burns disproportionately bright. This article was first published in the February 2024 issue of BBC History Magazine. You can listen to Bettany Hughes explore the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World in a this podcast episode. Bettany is the presenter of a new three-part docuseries Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. The first episode airs on Channel 5 at 6.30pm on 1 August 2025. The series will explore the history and significance of the ancient wonders, combining archaeological access, new research, and digital reconstructions.
The Srebrenica massacre: the worst atrocity committed on European soil since the Second World War
Over the course of four days in July 1995, Bosnian-Serb forces murdered more than 8,000 men and boys – in a United Nations-protected ‘safe area’. Legally recognised as an act of genocide, the Srebrenica massacre is the worst act of mass killing committed on European soil since the Second World War. What drove the perpetrators to carry out such a terrible crime? And how did the international community allow it to happen?
Before the Bosnian War broke out, Srebrenica was just a small secluded town in eastern Bosnia-Herzegovina. Very few people outside of the Balkans had even heard of it. But all that changed over the course of a few short days in July 1995 – and for the most terrible of reasons. Srebrenica had been changing fast in the months before it became the focus of the world’s attention. By 1995, it had morphed into a large refugee camp surrounded by hostile forces. Some 40,000 people had been forced to flee there as a consequence of the violent break-up of the country of which Bosnia was part: Yugoslavia. Displaced by a vicious Serb-led ethnic cleansing campaign, those refugees largely consisted of the rural, Bosnian Muslim (or Bosniak) population of eastern Bosnia. War had come to Bosnia in late March 1992, a year or so after two other republics – Croatia, very violently, and Slovenia, much less so – had seceded from the multi-ethnic Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Shaken by the violence in Croatia between the Croat majority and Serb minority, the international community was soon even more appalled by events in Bosnia. “Almost overnight the republic broke apart,” one UN official on the ground noted. Large swathes of territory in the east, north and north-west were ethnically cleansed by Serb paramilitary forces, supported by the Serb-dominated regular Yugoslav Army. After six weeks, by late May 1992, Serb forces controlled 60 per cent of the territory of Bosnia, even though their ethnic kin made up only just over 30 per cent of the population, as against 43 per cent Bosniaks and 17 per cent Croats. Those Bosniaks unable to flee abroad found themselves crammed into a landlocked central rump. The capital, Sarajevo, was besieged. In the west, an enclave around Bihać still held out. So did several pockets in the east, centred on Goražde, Žepa and Srebrenica. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/07/2NE5810-667225d.jpg" width="1772" height="1198" alt="A man holds up his family’s last stick of corn while sheltering in Srebrenica in March 1993. A major Serb offensive towards the town the previous month triggered a humanitarian crisis (Image by Alamy)" title="A man holds up his family’s last stick of corn while sheltering in Srebrenica in March 1993. A major Serb offensive towards the town the previous month triggered a humanitarian crisis (Image by Alamy)" /> The violence in Croatia had alerted the international community to the need for intervention on behalf of the civilian population. In January 1992, a UN Protection Force had deployed to monitor a UN-negotiated ceasefire in Croatia. After the war spread to Bosnia, it extended operations to the new battleground. The countries contributing troops to the UN Protection Force were, however, extremely hesitant about getting embroiled in the war. They believed that they faced a conflict driven by “ancient ethnic hatreds” over which they would struggle, at the cost of a massive effort and high casualties, to get control. They limited themselves to attempting to deliver humanitarian aid, deter hostilities through their presence and offer their good offices to the warring parties to negotiate a peace accord. All three activities proved highly frustrating. Military weakness and a deep sense of injustice made the Bosniak government intransigent and fearful of ending up with front lines that solidified into permanent borders. The Serbs, now fighting in Bosnia under the guise of an independent Bosnian Serb Republic with a Bosnian Serb Army, felt their ethnic ‘liberation’ project was incomplete, especially with the pesky enclaves in their rear areas. Not only did Bosniak forces launch armed foraging expeditions from them, but their government rejected any and all suggestions to evacuate or trade the territory. On the sidelines hovered the revanchist Croats who also harboured ill-disguised expansionist designs on Bosnia. Read more | How the Holocaust began Lightly armed and with their governments ever fearful of getting caught up in hostilities, the cautious UN Protection Force troops had little deterrent effect. Aid delivery depended on the whims of the warring parties and was constantly sabotaged. And absent the threat of external armed intervention, successive peace plans came to nought. Bosnian Serb forces gradually whittled down the Bosniak enclaves. In February 1993, they launched a major offensive towards Srebrenica. In the middle of winter, with no food and medical supplies getting through and under daily shelling, a humanitarian disaster quickly unfolded for the tens of thousands of people who were pushed into a smaller and smaller area. Fearing eastern Bosnia was about to be ethnically cleansed, the UN Protection Force commander in Bosnia-Herzegovina, French general Philippe Morillon, made his way to Srebrenica. On 12 March, surrounded by a sea of desperate women and children, he announced from the balcony of the post office in Srebrenica: “You are now under the protection of the UN forces… I will never abandon you.” A week later he managed to get the first aid convoy to reach the town since November 1992. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/07/2NBD7XK-261f8d3.jpg" width="1772" height="1182" alt="In March 1993 the French general Philippe Morillon told the people of Srebrenica: “You are now under the protection of the UN forces. I will never abandon you" title="In March 1993 the French general Philippe Morillon told the people of Srebrenica: “You are now under the protection of the UN forces. I will never abandon you" /> Morillon’s very public commitment ratcheted up the pressure on a hesitant UN Security Council to come up with some kind of plan to protect the besieged Bosniak population. When the Serbs resumed their attack, the council declared Srebrenica a “safe area” on 16 April 1993. The UN Resolution bought Srebrenica a respite. A small unit of Canadian peacekeepers (later replaced by a Dutch battalion) now entered the enclave and, intermittently and never in sufficient quantities, humanitarian aid trickled in. The situation satisfied no one. The Serbs had let Morillon and the Canadians in because they expected the safe area to be demilitarised and eventually evacuated, helped by the appalling living conditions in the enclave (to which Serb control over the influx of humanitarian aid greatly contributed). The Bosniak government refused to contemplate either disarmament or evacuation because doing so made it complicit in the ethnic cleansing of its own people. The Dutch UN troops – undersupplied, underarmed and under-appreciated by Serbs and Bosniaks alike – were caught in the highly uncomfortable middle. An uneasy stalemate ensued. Slowly, however, the political and military balance began to change. The recalcitrant Serbs found themselves defending very long frontlines, trying to hold on against Bosniak and Croat forces that were arming with covert international (primarily US) help. After two years of deadlock, in a bid to rationalise frontlines – and with it, strengthen their negotiating position – the Serbs finally decided to clean up the map and seize the eastern enclaves. The campaign was a carefully planned undertaking. On 8 March 1995, the president of the Bosnian Serb Republic, Radovan Karadžić, signed a directive ordering his army to prepare an operation to “create an unbearable situation of total insecurity with no hope of further survival or life for the inhabitants of Srebrenica and Žepa”. In late June, they began a PR offensive to legitimise impending action. On 24 June, Karadžić’s army commander, General Ratko Mladić, complained about the failed demilitarisation and continued raiding by Bosniak forces from Srebrenica. If nothing was done, Mladić would be forced to take matters into his own hands. Three days later his spokesman took the international press, including The New York Times, to the village of Višnjica, raided the day before. No international reaction followed. Five days later, the final touches were put to the military plan of attack. On 6 July, the Bosnian Serb army opened fire on the ‘safe area’. The Serbs skilfully exploited the UN’s fear of escalation and indecision. They kept their ultimate objective in doubt for as long as possible. Initially proceeding slowly on a limited front with limited forces, they made it appear that they wanted to make a point (once again) about the failed demilitarisation and were not intending to take the whole enclave by force. The lightly armed 400-or-so Dutch troops had limited means to resist anyway. Their main heavy weapon of last resort was calling in Nato airpower support. However, this weapon was largely neutralised by political hesitation to employ it in sufficient quantity after the Serbs took a number of Dutch soldiers hostage from exposed observation points in the opening days. By the evening of 9 July, Serb forces had inched their way forward to the outskirts of Srebrenica town. They were poised to take the enclave. The next day Nato aircraft took on standby positions over the Adriatic. The Serbs paused. When the planes ran out of fuel and returned to base, they advanced. Dutch troops in their white-painted peacekeeping vehicles then tried to block them by directing small arms fire over the heads of the attacking forces. By now, the day was ending and the Serbs paused again. A night of feverish activity ensued on the UN side. The Serb objective was clear. Surely, large scale air support was warranted to save the safe area? But what about the possibility of Serb artillery opening up on the defenceless, already panicking population in the enclave in retaliation? What would happen to the Dutch UN soldiers being held hostage? Did not the whole of the UN Protection Force now risk getting embroiled in all-out war with the Serbs? Eventually a decision was taken for a show of (some) force. A substantial strike package of aircraft took to the air in the early morning, but due to hesitation and confusion in communications, they returned to base by late morning, unused. The Serbs advanced again. As Srebrenica was about to fall, a hastily scrambled pair of F-16s appeared overhead and dropped two bombs. The Serbs issued a swift ultimatum threatening to shell the population and kill the hostages. Further air attacks were called off. The ‘safe area’ had fallen. The Dutch now faced the question of what to do with the 40,000 refugees in their care. The majority fled to the main Dutch base at Potočari, several kilometres north of Srebrenica. In the high heat of summer, lacking food, water supplies and sanitation facilities, the next stage in the humanitarian tragedy unfolded. The peacekeepers let several thousand into their compound, an old battery factory, but could not really care for them properly. Many more thousands had to be kept outside the wire, unwillingly, unprotected and fearful of their fate. Overwhelmed, the Dutch commander, Lieutenant-Colonel Thom Karremans, sought help from the Serbs. In the evening of 11 July, he met twice with General Mladić. The obvious way forward was to organise an orderly evacuation of the refugees. Mladić gladly obliged. In a sign that a carefully prepared operation was getting into gear, only a few hours after Serb soldiers arrived in Potočari in the late morning on 12 July, a fleet of some 60 buses turned up to transport the Bosniak refugees out. Mladić also appeared in person (and was filmed) assuring the refugees they were safe: “Don’t be afraid, just take it easy… No one will harm you.” At three in the afternoon, the first bus left for Bosnian government held territory. Read more | Yugoslavia: why shared Slavic identity couldn’t save an idealised nation from fracture and bloodshed Worrying signs soon became noticeable, however. The Dutch who had planned to accompany the transports to ensure the safety of the deportees were largely prevented from doing so. They also noticed that relatively few men had fled to Potočari. Those who had were separated from the women and children and prevented from getting on the buses. Serb military personnel actively searched for what they claimed were ‘war criminals’, a category that seemed to comprise all men, old, young, even disabled. Dutch soldiers witnessed incidental executions of men taking place around the compound and observed larger groups of men – later estimated to have been some 1,700 in number – being transported to nearby Serb-held Bratunac. The deportation from Potočari was complete by 7pm the next day, 13 July. Some 23,000 people, virtually all women and children, arrived in Kladanj and Tuzla. There the absence of the men was also noticed. What had happened to them? <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/07/5962-BOSNIA-MAP-Battlefield-Design-13a7487.jpg" width="1759" height="1173" alt="A green, yellow, orange and pink map showing Bosnia-Herzegovina's controlled areas in 1994" title="Our map shows Bosnia-Herzegovina in summer 1994. By now, the Serbs had forced the Bosniak population into a central rump, flanked by isolated enclaves including Srebrenica (Map illustration by Paul Hewitt – Battlefield Design)" /> Fifteen thousand Bosniak men had in fact decided to flee the enclave in a desperate attempt to reach Tuzla by traversing enemy-held territory. In the night of 11 and 12 July, they began the fateful trek from the north-west corner of the enclave. The Bosnian Serbs had not expected this and it took them some hours to notice. But when they did, their action was swift. Although the territory was generally thickly forested, the Bosniaks had to cross open ground around two roads on the way to safety. During the 12th, Bosnian Serb forces started deploying at close, regular intervals along these roads. By late afternoon the next day, they thought they had already captured some 6,000 men. The exhausted, dishevelled, deadly fearful prisoners were assembled in several places, including a football pitch in Nova Kasaba, a meadow in Sandići, a warehouse in Kravica and a school in Bratunac. Some were executed there, the majority were transported to execution sites further afield. That happened once the buses that had deported their women and children became available. Since the women were driven along the same road the men had to cross, some had seen their menfolk at the collection sites. Read more | Genocide: what can we learn from history? By the 16th, almost all the captured men, some 8,000 in total, were dead and buried. Despite all the signs, the realisation that something terrible had happened was not immediate. The Bosnian Serbs had completed the deportation and massacre in double-quick time because speed was of the essence to stymie any international reaction and possible intervention. The mere absence of the missing men seemed to prove little without the physical evidence of dead bodies. Still, US intelligence analysts began to scour spy plane and satellite imagery for evidence. An intrepid Christian Science Monitor reporter, David Rohde, surreptitiously made his way in mid-August to one possible site identified in photographs: the Nova Kasaba football field. He discovered the first shallow mass grave, with documents scattered around and a decomposed leg still sticking out of the recently disturbed soil. The story began to get out. The growing realisation that a terrible fate had befallen the missing men and boys from Srebrenica finally stiffened the resolve of the international community to force a settlement to the war. At the end of August, an Anglo-French-Dutch Rapid Reaction Force broke the three-year siege of Sarajevo and Nato aircraft began to extensively bomb Bosnian-Serb targets. The intervention brought all the warring parties to the negotiating table at Dayton in the US. An accord was signed on 21 November and the fighting in Bosnia ended. To date, more than 7,000 bodies have been exhumed and identified. Most now lie buried in a specially dedicated memorial cemetery in Potočari. The search for the remaining missing and their identification goes on to this day in eastern Bosnia-Herzegovina. It is undertaken by various international organisations with support of the Bosnian government. Some 50 of the men responsible for the genocide have been convicted by the UN International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and Bosnian and Serbian courts. The most senior perpetrators, including Mladić and Karadžić, are serving life sentences. Why did the Bosnian Serbs commit so heinous a crime? The question of motive is not settled. Some think that General Mladić gave the order in a fit of pique, angry at being surprised by the Bosniak men’s attempted escape, and denied a formal surrender. Many more believe that somehow extreme violence is part and parcel of war and especially ethnic war. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/07/GettyImages-2160927551-b4536e1.jpg" width="1772" height="1181" alt="A woman dresses in a pale pink dress and headscarf sits on the grass among several stone graves. She looks upset and has her hand resting on one grave" title="A woman mourns a victim of the massacre at the Srebrenica Genocide Memorial, July 2024. Few Bosniaks have returned to their homes in the three decades since the killings (Image by Getty Images)" /> Neither theory seems completely plausible. The deliberation and organisation with which the genocide was executed suggest a high degree of design and intent. The speed and efficiency with which the Bosnian Serb forces switched to mass murder mode and the apparent absence of any principled objections by the officer corps involved further underlines this. In seeking a rationale for the genocide, in addition perhaps to a bureaucratic mindset of following orders, the better answer may be sought in an ideology, widely shared among the Serb military and politicians, that saw the world as divided between competing and antagonistic races. A supposedly naturally existing enmity was taken to justify extreme means to ‘defend’ one’s own race. In the case of Bosnia, that did not necessarily mean committing genocide in the sense of the complete physical elimination of the ethnic group seen as foreign and threatening. It did envisage, however, the group’s complete and permanent removal from the territory that the Serbs claimed as theirs, through extremely violent and systematic persecution and, if necessary, mass murder. What the Bosnian Serb leadership sought to achieve by killing the men was to make the “survival or life for the inhabitants of Srebrenica” and the rest of eastern Bosnia impossible. By killing the Muslim men they sought to assure that the deported women and children would never return. That goal was to a large extent achieved. Few surviving Bosniaks have returned to their former homesteads. Srebrenica, and most of eastern Bosnia, is now part of the Republika Srpska, the republic promulgated at the beginning of the war to unify the Serbs in Bosnia. Its borders largely follow the frontlines of late 1995. Finally, why did the international community not properly protect the ‘safe area’ and stop the genocide? A major reason is that it mostly failed to recognise the conflict for what it was. It could not fathom the extent to which war crimes, up to and including genocide, were a deliberate and calculated means in the pursuit of an extremist political agenda. In this case, that agenda was to establish an ethnically pure territorial state – and in pursuit of that agenda the people of Bosnia would pay a terrible price. Jan Willem Honig is visiting professor in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London. He is the author, together with Norbert Both, of Srebrenica: Record of a War Crime (Penguin, 1996) This article was first published in the August 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
The Bayeux Tapestry is finally coming home to Britain – and you can see it next year
With the loan of the Bayeux Tapestry to the UK confirmed, David Musgrove explains the historical significance of the embroidery’s potential arrival on British soil…
The Bayeux Tapestry – the near 70-metre long, 11th-century embroidery that tells the story of the Norman Conquest – looks set to be finally coming to Britain, loaned from France in exchange for a loan of the Lewis Chessmen and the treasures of Sutton Hoo. The embroidery is expected to be displayed in the British Museum between September 2026 and July 2027, and holds the promise of being one of the biggest historical exhibitions ever staged on these shores, rivalling the blockbuster Tutankhamun show at the British Museum in 1972. Many scholars are in agreement that the Tapestry was originally made in the 11th century, not too long after the Norman Conquest in 1066, in England, and likely by English seamstresses in Canterbury. It has, however, been in Bayeux since at least the 15th century. Today, the artefact is the property of the French state. The news that British and French authorities had agreed that the Tapestry would come to the UK was initially made public in January 2018, and, speaking on 5 May 2025, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer told HistoryExtra and BBC History Magazine that civil servants were still working on the loan. "The Bayeux Tapestry is a unique treasure,” said the Prime Minister, “and a symbol of the deep ties between Britain and France." "The conservation and protection of it is obviously crucial, and I know that the Department for Culture, Media and Sport continues to work closely with their counterparts in France on the planned loan." The loan coincides with the temporary closure of the Bayeux Tapestry's permanent home in Normandy, the Bayeux Tapestry Museum, while it undergoes refurbishment. That work includes an exciting plan to add an extension to the current 17th-century seminary building in which the Tapestry has been housed since 1983, and is scheduled to be completed by autumn 2027 – in time for the millennial commemorations of the birth of William the Conqueror. Following the announcement of the loan, the director of the British Museum, Nicholas Cullinan, added: “The Bayeux Tapestry is one of the most important and unique cultural artefacts in the world, which illustrates the deep ties between Britain and France and has fascinated people across geographies and generations. It is hard to overstate the significance of this extraordinary opportunity of displaying it at the British Museum." Three requests were made for the Bayeux Tapestry to be loaned to Britain in the 20th century: first in 1931, for an exhibition on French art at Burlington House in London, then in 1953 for Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation and finally in 1966 on the 900th anniversary of the Battle of Hastings, when both the Victoria and Albert Museum and Westminster Abbey hoped to display the Tapestry. None of the requests were granted. Unravelling The Bayeux Tapestry Member exclusive | Expert historians unpick some of the biggest questions surrounding the Bayeux Tapestry, from its creation and purpose, to the incomplete story it recounts and its modern-day legacy Listen to all episodes now
Were ancient Ireland’s ‘incestuous elites’ just a myth? A tomb older than Stonehenge has new answers
In 2020, analysis of a skull fragment discovered at Newgrange, County Meath, led to sensational claims of royal incest within the region’s prehistoric ruling dynasties. But new research suggests that Neolithic Ireland may have been far more socially equal – and more complex – than originally assumed
In the Boyne Valley of eastern Ireland stands one of the world’s most fascinating prehistoric monuments: Newgrange. Centuries older than the Pyramids of Giza or Stonehenge, Newgrange is a large passage tomb, and a 5,000-year-old marvel of ancient engineering. It’s also one of the best windows that researchers have into the ancient society that constructed it: how it functioned, what it valued, and who held power. That final question has been the source of stunning theories with incredible implications. For years, many archaeologists and geneticists believed that a small, powerful elite ruled over Neolithic Ireland and commissioned monuments like Newgrange as a reflection of their social dominance. That theory gained momentum in 2020, when DNA analysis of a skull fragment discovered in the tomb revealed that the buried individual – referred to by researchers as NG10 – was the product of an incestuous union between two siblings, or a parent and child. Some experts interpreted this as compelling evidence of a dynastic elite that practised incest to preserve a sacred bloodline – not unlike royal traditions in ancient Egypt. This, in turn, painted a picture of Neolithic Ireland as a deeply hierarchical society ruled by a tightly knit, closely related few. So, did a sacred royal family, buried at Newgrange, really rule over Neolithic Ireland? Or might the evidence have been misinterpreted? That is the conclusion of new research led by scholars from the University of York and University College Dublin – ‘The ‘king’ of Newgrange? A critical analysis of a Neolithic petrous fragment from the passage tomb chamber’ – published in the journal Antiquity. Their findings cast serious doubt on these earlier assumptions and instead paint a very different picture of the society that built this monument. The cosmic history of Newgrange Newgrange is one of several monumental passage tombs built during the Neolithic period (c4000–2500 BC) across Ireland and western Britain. Located in County Meath, the monument consists of a circular mound around 85 metres in diameter, ringed with standing stones and containing a narrow interior passage that aligns precisely with the rising sun on the winter solstice. Each year, on or around the winter solstice, the rising sun illuminates the chamber at the heart of the tomb for a few minutes via a precision-engineered ‘roof-box’ above the entrance. It’s an astonishing feat of prehistoric engineering that reflects both a deep understanding of astronomy, and a symbolic reverence for cosmic cycles of light and dark. Read more | “Graves are like time capsules – little microcosms of prehistoric culture”: Alice Roberts on what bones and burials can tell us about early Britain And Newgrange isn’t alone. Across Neolithic Europe, other monuments reveal similar concerns: Bryn Celli Ddu in Wales aligns with the summer solstice sunrise; Maeshowe in Orkney aligns with the winter solstice sunset; and Stonehenge captures both summer and winter solstice points. For much of the 20th century, these Neolithic feats were seen as evidence of powerful and centralised leadership: they were thought to point to a social elite that wielded enough power to be capable of coordinating complex constructions and mustering vast amounts of labour. The theory of Newgrange’s incestuous elites In 2020, the NG10 DNA discovery appeared to add even more credence to that view. The rarity of such incestuous unions in ancient and modern populations led to comparisons with the Egyptian pharaohs and Inca royalty, both of whom famously practised incest as a tool to preserve divine bloodlines. NG10’s relationship to the other occupants of the tomb seemed to support the idea of a ruling family, possibly dynastic in nature, whose status was maintained through carefully guarded lineage. It was a powerful theory, selling Newgrange as a royal tomb that served as the resting place of Ireland’s earliest sacred elites. New research at Newgrange reaches different conclusions However, the new study challenges that interpretation, arguing that it dramatically stretches what the evidence can tell us. Can we really know that a powerful, incestuous elite ruled Ireland with an iron fist? “The evidence all points to a much more collective ethos,” says Professor Penny Bickle, from the University of York’s Department of Archaeology. “There are not wide disparities in diet, houses are relatively flimsy, and they are all similar to each other. There are no large settlement systems or trade mechanisms, and we also don’t see production of craft on the scale that we see in other ancient societies such as in ancient Egypt, where incest was thought to be practised by the ruling elite.” So, according to Bickle and her colleagues, the archaeological evidence around Newgrange tells a different story. Nearby homes were modest and uniform. There is no evidence of grand residences, no wealth concentration and no consistent pattern of close-relative burials across Neolithic Ireland. This all points to a much more equal social structure than previously assumed. And, Bickle adds, it’s not necessarily certain that NG10 had specific links to Newgrange. “It is by no means clear that the monument was the first burial site of NG10 and the tomb grew in stages, so tracing who this individual was is a very difficult task indeed,” Bickle explains. “As it stands, the incestuous origins of NG10 are a one-off compared to all of the DNA data we have for Neolithic Ireland.” In other words, NG10 could be a genetic anomaly, rather than evidence of an all-powerful ruling dynasty. Prehistoric Irish burial practices If NG10 wasn’t a king, then who did get buried in monuments like Newgrange? “People were definitely being selected for burial in passage tombs – the whole community does not end up in these monuments,” says Associate Professor Jessica Smyth, of University College Dublin. “However, we don’t know the reasons behind this selection, and why they were thought to be special.” What’s also clear is that burial practices in Neolithic Ireland differed sharply from those in modern times, so applying 21st-century expectations to the past can be misleading. “Unlike today, bodies don’t tend to be buried ‘whole’ or ‘intact’ in this time period,” Smyth adds. “Before they end up in megalithic monuments, bodies are broken down, sometimes cremated and even circulated around their communities.” WATCH | Prehistoric stone circles: Everything you wanted to know View Green Video on the source website This process of disarticulation and redistribution means that the people who placed the bones into tombs like Newgrange may not have known – or even cared – about the biological identity of the individuals involved. In NG10’s case, the community may have had no knowledge of their parentage at all. A new interpretation of Newgrange and Neolithic Ireland Rather than a symbol of elite power and dynastic control, Newgrange might instead reflect the ritual and cooperative culture of a Neolithic society bound by shared beliefs, agricultural rhythms and ancestral commemoration. Its solstice alignment still speaks to an extraordinary grasp of time and the cosmos, and its scale still demands coordination. But the latest research suggests these achievements were communal, rather than commanded. “There are still many questions to solve here,” says Bickle. “But building this picture means looking at the monument together with the society that was built up around it.”
Might Jesus and his 12 apostles have something to do with it? Discover the medieval history behind triskaidekaphobia – the fear of the number 13 – and why it is considered an unlucky number
Forget the Ides of March and Halloween – for some, a Friday that also happens to be the 13th of the month is scariest and unluckiest day of the year. The fear of Friday 13th is very real. It's even been given a scientific name, paraskevidekatriaphobia, from the Greek words Paraskeví, meaning Friday, and dekatreís, meaning 13. But what is it about this day and date combo that has given millions the heebie jeebies. Here's what we know of we know about Friday 13th's hazy history. When did people start believing Friday 13th was unlucky? It's believed that this superstition began in the Middle Ages. Some think it's related to the Last Supper, when 13 people were present at the meal before Jesus's crucifixion on Good Friday. Others think it's related to the Knights Templar, who were arrested for heresy on Friday 13 October 1307. But fear of 13 predates Christianity. The number 13 has been considered unlucky for millenia, and by many different cultures around the world. Why is the 13th unlucky? The ancient Romans believed that the number 13 was a bad omen, foretelling ill-fortune and death. The Vikings also hated 13, because in Norse mythology a banquet was held for 12 of the Norse gods during which the trickster god, Loki, appeared uninvited, like the wicked fairy in Sleeping Beauty, and as a result the beloved god Balder died. The Mayans thought that the 13th 'baktun' (a period equivalent to almost 400 years) would spell the end of the world – however, this came and went in 2012. For centuries, hosts avoided having 13 people seated around a dining table, convinced that the first person to leave would die within the year. Indeed, 16th-century witch-hunters often tried to claim there had been 13 people at a gathering – proof that the accused were witches in league with the devil. Why is Friday the 13th unlucky? Why Friday the 13th is considered especially unlucky isn't entirely clear. The first written record we have of the number 13 and Friday being unlucky in conjunction only dates to the 19th century, in a biography of Italian composer Gioachino Rossini: "He was surrounded to the last by admiring friends; and if it be true that, like so many Italians, he regarded Fridays as an unlucky day and thirteen as an unlucky number, it is remarkable that on Friday 13th of November he passed away." Friday the 13th remains one of the most prevalent historical superstitions that we carry on today (alongside that of kissing under the mistletoe). Many people still choose to stay in bed to reduce the likelihood of accidents, and it's estimated that in the US, as much as $900 million is lost in business each time as a result.
The seaborne invasion: why we must remember the forgotten heroes of D-Day and the battle for Normandy
Ferrying troops to the beaches wasn’t the only contribution sailors made during the Allied invasion of Normandy. As we mark the 80th anniversary of D-Day, Nick Hewitt reveals how the Allied navies ended up fighting one of the most overlooked campaigns of the Second World War
On 30 July 1944, nearly two months into the Allied invasion of northern France, Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay reflected on his command of the naval operations so far. “It may seem to some people that it was all easy and plain sailing,” he wrote in his diary. “[But] nothing could be more wrong. It was excellent planning and execution.” Ramsay died in 1945 without leaving a full memoir, but thousands of sailors could testify that nothing about their lives was “easy and plain sailing”. As late as 8 August 1944, with Allied troops poised to smash the German army in Normandy, sailors were still fighting to protect the beachhead. On that same day, the German submarine U-667 torpedoed both the US freighter Ezra Weston and the Canadian corvette HMCS Regina, the latter attack claiming the lives of 30 men. Ramsay’s words were prophetic. Today, discussions regarding sailors during the Normandy campaign mainly focus on their actions during the first day of the invasion: 6 June 1944, or ‘D-Day’. They are often absent from the wider story, despite the exhausting and dangerous campaign they fought to seize, exploit and defend the waters around Normandy throughout the summer of 1944. Read more | The road to D-Day: the masterplan The focus of the campaign was the Baie de la Seine, or Seine Bay, the huge inlet of the English Channel stretching nearly a hundred kilometres along the coast of Normandy from Le Havre in the east to the tip of the Cotentin Peninsula at Cape Barfleur in the west. Within the bay lay the five assault areas or so-called ‘beaches’: Utah and Omaha for the Americans, and Gold, Juno and Sword for the British and Canadians. Through this highly congested and vulnerable body of water passed a constant stream of transport ships carrying supplies and reinforcements, without which the military could not hope to win the more widely recognised battle of Normandy on land. Defeat was unlikely, but any setback could have prolonged the war for months. As the Allied commander-in-chief, General Dwight Eisenhower, recognised in his final report: “For the successful maintenance of the armies in France… we were dependent upon the ceaseless work of the Allied navies, assisted by RAF Coastal Command.” <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2024/05/GettyImages-3068867webready-3256be6.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="The invasion’s supreme commander, General Dwight Eisenhower (centre), with his deputy, RAF Air Marshal Arthur Tedder (left), and ground forces commander General Sir Bernard Montgomery (Photo by Keystone/Getty Images)" title="The invasion’s supreme commander, General Dwight Eisenhower (centre), with his deputy, RAF Air Marshal Arthur Tedder (left), and ground forces commander General Sir Bernard Montgomery (Photo by Keystone/Getty Images)" /> Normandy had been confirmed as the site for the Allied invasion of Nazi-occupied Europe at the Quebec Conference, codenamed ‘Quadrant’, in August 1943. Two months later, Ramsay was appointed Naval Commander-in-Chief, Expeditionary Force, with the rest of the command team appointed in December. The overall commander-in-chief was Eisenhower, and the military and air commanders were General Sir Bernard Montgomery and Air Marshal Sir Trafford Leigh-Mallory. The countdown to D-Day With the leadership structure in place, Ramsay then issued his Naval Operation Plan for Operation Neptune, the invasion’s assault phase, on 28 February 1944. While the planners worked, extraordinary efforts were made to assemble the huge fleet required for the invasion. Royal Navy officer Christopher Clitherow, for instance, commissioned a new Landing Ship (Tank), or LST, which would help transport men and vehicles across the Channel. Created using innovative mass production methods in the US, the vessels resembled welded steel shoeboxes, and offered very little in the way of comfort. “She reacts to a bump like a diving board off which one has just jumped,” Clitherow later recalled. “Every conceivable piece of the ship rattles as if its teeth were about to fall out.” <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2024/05/ulls287509webready-438e073.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="British tanks and trucks are transferred from a Landing Ship (Tank) to a motorised raft known as a Rhino Ferry. Huge numbers of vehicles were transported across the Channel for the push inland (Photo by ullsteinbild/TopFoto)" title="British tanks and trucks are transferred from a Landing Ship (Tank) to a motorised raft known as a Rhino Ferry. Huge numbers of vehicles were transported across the Channel for the push inland (Photo by ullsteinbild/TopFoto)" /> Meanwhile, the sheer number of men required to deliver Neptune meant that most new British recruits were posted to Combined Operations, which had been founded in July 1940 to plan and carry out amphibious warfare. They were put through their paces at special centres across the UK, before joining their units and taking part in huge pre-assault exercises. Exercise Tiger, held on 26–28 April, saw the most significant setback of the training cycle, when a convoy of American LSTs making a practice landing at Slapton Sands, Devon, was attacked by German motor torpedo boats (also known as ‘E-boats’), killing 749 US servicemen and wounding more than 300 others. Yet despite this tragic turn of events, Operation Neptune officially began at 11.30pm on 25 May, when commanders opened Ramsay’s sealed orders and military camps in southern England were closed off to the outside world. D-Day itself was scheduled for Monday 5 June, but after an unseasonal summer gale, it was determined that the invasion would instead be pushed back to Tuesday 6 June. The Normandy landings in numbers 7,016 Ships and major landing craft that participated in Operation Neptune. Approximately 79 per cent of the vessels were either British or Canadian 195,701 Naval personnel involved in Operation Neptune 917 Allied ships and major landing craft lost or seriously damaged between 6 and 30 June 1944 509 German mines, of all types, swept in the Allied assault areas between 4 June and 3 July 1944 183,540 Vehicles landed in the British and US sectors by 4 July 1944 – the day after Operation Neptune officially came to an end After setting out on the 5th, the armada passed along the south coast and turned out into the Channel, with most of the ships passing Area Z, a buoyed patch of water south-east of the Isle of Wight nicknamed ‘Piccadilly Circus’. From there, the vessels then passed down the ‘Spout’ – 10 marked and mine-swept channels – into their designated assault areas. Sweeping and marking this huge stretch of sea was fraught with danger. When the US Navy minesweeper Osprey struck a mine, caught fire and sank, the five sailors and one officer who lost their lives became Neptune’s first deaths in action. Arriving off Normandy, bombarding warships subdued the German coastal defences while soldiers got ashore. Warships provided an overwhelming advantage on the battlefield, but bombardment was exhausting work – and quite different to the stop-start nature of conventional naval action. Gordon ‘Putty’ Painter, a 20-year-old gunlayer aboard the cruiser HMS Belfast, would later recall firing broadsides that rocked the ships “backwards and forwards” for hours on end. In fact, such were the demands of the operation that the only time that Painter and his comrades could leave the turret “was if nature called”. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2024/05/2T1K4GGwebready-7d3bc56.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="Men on board HMS Sirius stand alongside the casings of shells fired from the ship’s 5.25-inch guns. The light cruiser provided vital gunfire support in the Sword area (Photo by piemags/archive/military/Alamy Stock Photo)" title="Men on board HMS Sirius stand alongside the casings of shells fired from the ship’s 5.25-inch guns. The light cruiser provided vital gunfire support in the Sword area (Photo by piemags/archive/military/Alamy Stock Photo)" /> Naval bombardment would prove instrumental to ensuring D-Day’s success, particularly within the American Omaha area, where destroyers operating dangerously close inshore helped the army establish a precarious beachhead. But the fire support came at a cost: two destroyers, the Norwegian Svenner and USS Corry, were both sunk with heavy loss of life, the former by German torpedo boats and the latter by coastal defence guns. Meanwhile, more sailors carried assault troops to the shore in landing craft – and their experiences were often extraordinary. George Kirkby, for example, was the coxswain of a Landing Craft (Assault) launched from HMS Prinses Astrid, one of several converted Belgian ferries that was tasked with delivering British commandos and US Rangers. Later, he would describe a beach “strewn with dead and wounded bodies, the air thick with smoke and the water around us spraying up into the craft through concentrated mortar and machine gun fire”. After D-Day: the remarkable logistics that kept the fight going The initial follow-up forces also landed in assault craft, but from 10 June onwards, the focus of Operation Neptune switched to methodical logistics, with at least eight convoys of merchant ships sailing across the Channel every 24 hours. The process was remarkably efficient: allowing for loading and unloading, any individual ship could make a round trip from England to France in just four days. They not only brought in fuel, vehicles, ammunition and reinforcements, but they also took out wounded Allied soldiers and German prisoners of war. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2024/05/GettyImages-141556290webready-189a081.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="A wave of US troops lands on Omaha beach, several hours into D-Day. Sailors were responsible for guiding landing craft to the shore, often under heavy fire (Photo by Mondadori/Getty Images)" title="A wave of US troops lands on Omaha beach, several hours into D-Day. Sailors were responsible for guiding landing craft to the shore, often under heavy fire (Photo by Mondadori/Getty Images)" /> Once the ships had arrived, there were several methods of getting supplies into the beachhead itself. The first was to bring everything over the beaches or from anchorages offshore, using assault craft and barges, while the second was to make use of the small harbours captured in the landings. The third option, meanwhile, was to utilise the two huge artificial harbours known as ‘Mulberries’ that the Allies constructed off Saint-Laurent in the Omaha area and Arromanches in Gold. Assembly of the harbours began as soon as the beaches were secured, with sailors playing a leading role. Able Seaman Kenneth Bungard, for example, crossed the Channel riding on one of the prefabricated concrete caissons used to create the harbours’ walls. Crawling along on a slab-sided monster with the seakeeping qualities of a house brick was far from pleasant. “If we were hit with a torpedo, that would be the end,” he recalled. “It was all concrete [and] it would just disintegrate.” <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2024/05/GettyImages-3287605webready-04a1a4b.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="Allied troops in an amphibious truck (known as a DUKW or ‘duck’) alongside the Mulberry harbour at Arromanches. Such vehicles could reach the beachhead quickly and efficiently (Photo by Leonard McCombe/Picture Post/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)" title="Allied troops in an amphibious truck (known as a DUKW or ‘duck’) alongside the Mulberry harbour at Arromanches. Such vehicles could reach the beachhead quickly and efficiently (Photo by Leonard McCombe/Picture Post/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)" /> All this vulnerable shipping had to be protected. In the Eastern (British) Task Force area, the defence was largely static to reduce the risk of collisions and friendly fire. Defence Line A, consisting of anchored minesweepers, ran along the assault area, six miles offshore, to guard against attacks from the north, while a line of armed landing craft and Coastal Forces craft (later christened the ‘Trout Line’) ran south to the shore, watching the German naval base at Le Havre. Elsewhere, in the Western (US) Task Force area, destroyers, patrol craft and British steam gunboats patrolled the ‘Dixie Line’, which ran parallel to the coast to meet Defence Line A. Radar-equipped destroyers patrolled south of this, and more Coastal Forces craft watched the ‘Mason Line’, which ran up the Cotentin Peninsula to the northern edge of the Utah area. Timeline: how the Allied navies turned the tide in Normandy 17–24 August 1943 The Quebec Conference (codenamed ‘Quadrant’) takes place in Canada. Allied leaders decide that the liberation of Nazi-occupied Europe, Operation Overlord, will begin with an assault landing in Normandy. 25 October 1943 Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay is appointed Allied Naval Commander Expeditionary Force. 28 February 1944 Ramsay issues the Naval Operation Plan for Operation Neptune – the initial assault phase of Operation Overlord. 28 April 1944 Nearly 750 men are killed in a German E-boat attack at Slapton Sands, Devon, during Exercise Tiger – one of the final rehearsals for the seaborne invasion. 25 May 1944 Operation Neptune officially begins at 23:30. Ramsay’s sealed orders are opened and military holding camps on the south coast of England are closed off. 6 June 1944 The Allied invasion of Normandy begins. Known as D-Day, the first day of the campaign sees 132,715 British, Canadian and American soldiers coming to shore across five landing beaches, with a further 23,400 airborne troops dropping further inland. 25 June 1944 The US-led Task Force 129 bombards Cherbourg in support of a US Army assault on the city. 3 July 1944 Operation Neptune comes to an end. The last of the senior officers leading the assault are withdrawn and new headquarters are established ashore. 5/6 July 1944 Human torpedoes of the German Navy’s Kleinkampfverbände (small battle units) launch their first attack on the Allied assault area. Two minesweepers and the British frigate HMS Trollope are sunk. 12 September 1944 With much of the fighting now moving further inland, British troops finally take the German naval base at Le Havre. Three months and six days after D-Day, combat operations for the Allied navies in the Seine Bay come to an end. Despite these formidable lines of defence, enemy attacks continued apace. E-boats and other German warships frequently sortied from Le Havre and Cherbourg, trying to strike the supply ships or lay mines, while the Luftwaffe carried out bombing and torpedo attacks almost every night. On one particularly bad day, 8 June, three US warships went down to mines, while the British lost the frigate HMS Lawford to a remote-controlled glider bomb. Another Luftwaffe raider hit a huge petrol and ammunition stores dump in the Sword area. On 14 June, an increasingly concerned Admiral Ramsay asked for RAF strategic bombers to strike Le Havre, and they duly responded, sinking three of the German Navy’s large torpedo boats and 10 E-boats. Yet there was more turmoil to come. A few days later, the worst summer storm in living memory swept through the Seine Bay, halting the fighting and delivery of supplies until late on 22 June. The Mulberry harbour at Saint-Laurent was smashed beyond repair, while more than 800 vital ferry craft were left stranded. The churning water also triggered the sensitive detonators on German pressure-operated ‘oyster’ mines, which blew up unexpectedly across the assault area. The assault on Cherbourg Once the storm had passed, the US Army attacked Cherbourg on 22 June, while a naval task force bombarded the defences on the 25th in support. This time, the German gunners were ready to respond, and all but one of the seven battleships and cruisers taking part were hit. US Rear-Admiral Carleton Bryant’s flagship USS Texas came under particularly heavy fire, with one shell smashing the battleship’s bridge structure, killing the helmsman and wounding several others. “Having 11-inch shells fired at you is no fun,” Bryant later recalled. “When the salvo hits the water there is the most ungodly smack you ever heard.” <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2024/05/BAL2945330webready-4a5c07c.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="German prisoners of war are marched out of Cherbourg in late June 1944. The US Army’s assault on the city was accompanied by a major Allied naval bombardment (Photo by Everett Collection/Bridgeman Images)" title="German prisoners of war are marched out of Cherbourg in late June 1944. The US Army’s assault on the city was accompanied by a major Allied naval bombardment (Photo by Everett Collection/Bridgeman Images)" /> Cherbourg surrendered on 26 June, but the submarine and air attacks continued, as did the minelaying, and July saw the arrival of the Kleinkampfverbände – the German Navy’s ‘small battle units’. The first weapons to turn up at Villers-sur-Mer near Le Havre were explosive motorboats and craft known as ‘human torpedoes’, ridden into action by young volunteers whose confidence was boosted by cocaine and amphetamines. Twenty-six human torpedoes attacked on the night of 5/6 July, and although 10 were lost, they succeeded in sinking two minesweepers and the frigate HMS Trollope. Two nights later, the Kleinkampfverbände returned and sank the old Polish cruiser ORP Dragon with the loss of 37 officers and men. Despite the constant pressure from sea and air, the vital supply build-up continued at an impressive rate. By 14 July, a million tons of stores and nearly 300,000 vehicles had been put to shore, and on 25 July, the US First Army was able to break out of the beachhead and race into France. The western flank of the assault area was now secure, and the fleet started to operate further west, blockading German bases in the Bay of Biscay and destroying evacuation convoys. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2024/05/GettyImages-webready542896213-a6e7725.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="The German Navy’s Kleinkampfverbände arrived in the Seine Bay in July 1944, using hard-to-detect craft such as human torpedoes, like this one, to attack Allied ships (Photo by ullstein bild/Getty Images)" title="The German Navy’s Kleinkampfverbände arrived in the Seine Bay in July 1944, using hard-to-detect craft such as human torpedoes, like this one, to attack Allied ships (Photo by ullstein bild/Getty Images)" /> On the eastern flank, however, Le Havre remained an enemy stronghold. On the night of 30/31 July, German E-boats struck the Allied convoy FTM53 with long-range pattern-running torpedoes, hitting five freighters. Although only one of the freighters, SS Samwake, actually sank, none of the others went to sea again. Samwake’s captain, Owen John, described his ship’s end in a melancholy report: “She dipped by the head, the stern reared up vertically and held for a few minutes, then very slowly she rolled over to starboard and disappeared at 0545 in a small fountain of water.” End of the Normandy's naval campaign Alarmingly, there were more losses to come. As well as the aforementioned HMCS Regina, further Allied casualties included the hospital ship Amsterdam, which was mined and sunk on 7 August, claiming the lives of 55 patients, 10 Royal Army Medical Corps staff, 30 members of the crew and 11 prisoners of war. Among the dead were military nurses Mollie Evershed and Dorothy Field, the only women named on the British Normandy Memorial in the village of Ver-sur-Mer. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2024/05/BAL490068webready6-6cc9d8a.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="Le Havre lies in ruins after being bombarded and captured by the Allies on 12 September 1944. The port city had been a key German naval stronghold (Photo by Usis-Dite/Bridgeman Images)" title="Le Havre lies in ruins after being bombarded and captured by the Allies on 12 September 1944. The port city had been a key German naval stronghold (Photo by Usis-Dite/Bridgeman Images)" /> Later, the cruiser Frobisher was torpedoed and damaged on the 9th, and the valuable repair ship HMS Albatross was torpedoed on the 11th with the loss of 67 naval and military personnel. It wasn’t until 12 September, with the land fighting far away, that the British captured Le Havre and the complex infrastructure of the Seine Bay was dismantled. More than three months after D-Day, the naval campaign was finally over. Looking back at the events nearly 80 years on, the sailors who served should not be remembered as mere taxi drivers, ferrying men and supplies to the shore, but as active combatants who guarded the vital coastal waters and Allied assault areas until the very end. Whether by day or by night, they maintained a ceaseless watch against all manner of threats – and in some cases, ended up paying with their lives. Counting casualties is not an exact science for a campaign that has never been studied coherently, but nearly 3,000 Allied sailors are known to have died in the operations in and around the Seine Bay – and possibly many more. As General Sir Bernard Montgomery would write in May 1945, “any success achieved by the British Armies has been made possible only by the magnificent support given us by the Royal Navy”. This article first appeared in the June 2024 issue of BBC History Magazine