The raids on Zeebrugge and Ostend
...in order to deal with the low supplies. According to Admiral Sir John Jellicoe, Britain needed to neutralise the threat from U-Boats based at Zeebrugge and Ostend ports to stay...
Foreign affairs and diplomacy
They seek him here… the life and death of the Red Baron
Posted by:
Tara Finn, Posted on:
-
Categories:
First World War, Foreign affairs and diplomacy, Foreign Office Historians
...Red Baron, courtesy of David Marks’ collection He was born in 1892 to an aristocratic Prussian Military family and at the age of 11 enrolled into military school. Graduating as...
The birth of the Royal Air Force
...United Kingdom’s air services. At the time the military air arm of the UK was divided between the Royal Naval Air Service, which was, as the name suggests, part of...
What’s the context? George Brown resigns as Foreign Secretary, 15 March 1968
Posted by:
Gill Bennett, Posted on:
-
Categories:
Foreign Office Historians, What's the context? series
...When George Brown stormed out of Downing St in the early hours of 15 March 1968, it was not the first time he had threatened to resign. On this occasion...
What’s the context? The resignation of Anthony Eden, 20 February 1938
Posted by:
Gill Bennett, Posted on:
-
Categories:
Foreign affairs and diplomacy, Foreign Office Historians, What's the context? series
...free hand in Eastern Europe and Russia and for territorial changes brought about by force; both accepted that conflict with Hitler’s Nazi Germany was probably inevitable, but that delaying that...
South America and the power of steam
Posted by:
Keith Mitchell, Posted on:
-
Categories:
Foreign affairs and diplomacy, The National Archives
The independence of South America bought an influx of opportunities for commerce and investment from Europe and North America. Everyone wanted a piece of the newly opened continent. Merchants, industrialists, and entrepreneurs arrived to make their fortunes.
Why could South America not follow European and North American railway expansion to modernise the infrastructure and open access to the remote country?
Intelligence, Attlee and the Brook Report
Posted by:
Dr Dan Lomas, Posted on:
-
Categories:
Foreign affairs and diplomacy, Past prime ministers
Sir Norman Brook’s report on the ‘Secret Intelligence and Security Services’ is an important document for understanding the state of Britain’s intelligence and security machinery at the start of the Cold War. Finished in 1951, this wide-ranging review of the …
President Wilson’s Fourteen Points: A recipe for world peace?
...navigation of the seas (which the Royal Navy would not accept). The Prime Minister, Lloyd George, felt that Russia could ‘only be saved by her own people’. The French Government...
What’s the Context? 20 December 1917: formation of the Cheka, the first Soviet security and intelligence agency
Posted by:
Gill Bennett, Posted on:
-
Categories:
Foreign affairs and diplomacy, Foreign Office Historians, What's the context? series
‘The Soviets would not last two days without the activities of the Cheka, but with the Cheka, the Soviet State was safe’: Vladimir Ilyich Lenin Defending the Revolution Before the October Revolution in 1917 that put the Bolsheviks in power …
Homosexuality at the Foreign Office
Posted by:
James Southern, Posted on:
-
Categories:
Foreign affairs and diplomacy, Foreign Office Historians
...Turing, without whom the Enigma code might never have been broken, the Second World War might not have been won so speedily, and many more lives would have been lost...