Helion & Company

The Swabian League was established as a defensive alliance of princes, prelates, and Imperial cities to maintain the peace within the territory of Southern Germany. In 1525 the League faced an existential threat in the form of an attempt by the exiled Duke Ulrich of Württemberg to retake his (...)

The Rif War in rugged northern Morocco is remembered for romantic films and novels about the French Foreign Legion, such as Beau Geste. In reality, the French intervention, although very important, was late and secondary in importance to that of the Spanish.The second volume of The Rif War begins (...)

In December 1979 the USSR's 40th Army crossed the border into Afghanistan. Special forces troops the infamous GRU Spetsnaz and KGB agents had already entered the country and in a fierce gun battle assassinated Afghanistan's President Hafizullah Amin in Tajbeg Palace so that he could be replaced by (...)

On 24 February 2022, the Russian Federation launched an all-out invasion of Ukraine. Coming after years of tensions following Russia's 2014 annexation of Crimea and thinly veiled direct armed support for separatists fighting in Donbass and Luhansk in eastern Ukraine, observers gave Ukraine's (...)

In the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, the air forces of the United States faced unprecedented challenges. Demobilization had stripped the armed forces of millions of personnel, while the rapid transition from a wartime economy strained the aviation industry at the same time as the US (...)