Three battles that changed the course of WWII and echo through world history to the present day. Three renowned experts each take up one of these crucial engagements.

Iwo Jima 1945
Operation Detachment, the invasion of Iwo Jima, on February 19, 1945, was the first campaign on Japanese soil, and it resulted in some of the fiercest fighting of the Pacific campaign.

El Alamein 1942
El Alamein saw two of the greatest generals of the war pitted against each other: Rommel and Montgomery.

Arnhem 1944
When we think of Arnhem, we think of a bridge too far and a sky full of parachutes dropping the Allies into the Netherlands. It was one of the most complex and strategically important operations of the war.

Andrew Rawson is a freelance writer who has written eight books for Pen and Sword’s ‘Battleground Europe’ series and another three for its ‘Images of War’ series, covering campaigns from the Napoleonic Wars, World War I and World War II. He has also written three books for the History Press Handbook series, the British Army Handbook, 1914-1918, the Vietnam War Handbook & the Third Reich Handbook.

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Pier Paolo Battistelli earned his PhD in Military History at the University of Padua. A scholar of German and Italian politics and strategy throughout the Second World War, he is active in Italy and abroad writing titles and essays on military history subjects.

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Chris Brown holds a PhD in medieval military history from the University of St Andrews. He has designed and delivered numerous history and war studies courses for the OLL department at Edinburgh University. He has travelled extensively through Asia, Europe, the United States and North Africa studying battlefields from the middle ages to the 1960s.

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