The Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan

Date: 1973-1988
Location: Afghanistan

Soviet troops withdrawing from Afghanistan in 1988

        Muhammad Zahir Shah was deposed as king of Afghanistan in a Marxist-led coup in 1973. The People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) government of Nur Muhammad Taraki and Hafizullah Amin then began a programme of secularization that offended conservative Muslims and brutally suppressed dissent. When 50 Russian advisors were murdered in the Afghan city of Herat, the USSR invaded to restore order on 24th of December 1978. 

A Soviet-made AK-47 Kalashnikov assault rifle used by both Soviet soldiers
and Afghan Mujahideen fighters during the 1978-1988 conflict in Afghanistan

        An Islamic resistance group then declared a Jihad (holy war) aganist the USSR and PDPA. These Islamist Mujahideen guerrillas fought off the Soviet troops, and even began to threaten Soviet aircraft. The war was vastly expensive for the USSR, and in February 1988, under firm international pressure, President Mikhail Gorbachev announced the withdrawal of Soviet troops, leaving the Mujahideen and PDPA in a stalemate.

Blitzkrieg (Lightning War)

        In German, Blitzkrieg means lightning war. Blitzkrieg was named so because it included surprise attacks, "Lightning fast" rapid advances into enemy territory, with coordinated massive air attacks, which struck and shocked the enemy as if it was struck by lightning. The German military in World War 2 achieved most of its great victories with the Blitzkrieg tactic.

The classic characteristic of what is commonly known as "blitzkrieg" is a highly mobile form of infantry and armour working in combined arms teams.

The Development of Blitzkrieg

        The First World War was a long static trench war in which artillery and machine guns made mobile ground warfare almost impossible for both infantry and cavalry. After the war, various military establishments gave various levels of attention to further study and developing new weapons. The German military bound by severe post-war limitations, was practically forced to develop the most efficient new tactics, which naturally involved using tanks and aircraft for mobile ground warfare.

Heinz Guderian

        In 1929, a German infantry officer, Heinz Guderian, was assigned to the common German-Russian tank school in Kazan, which was established to allow Germans to bypass the post-war limitations by training in operating tanks in Russia. Guderian read British books about the new principles of tank warfare, and while Liddell-Hart's ideas were given little attention, Guderian developed them over and demonstrated them to his superiors in military excercises and war games. Germany's new leader, Adolf Hitler, inteneded to go to a major war again, and as soon as possible, and he pushed the German military back in full shape, ignoring the peace treaty's limitations and spending a huge portion of the budget on re-armament. Hitler needed the right tool for his grand war plans, something that would make his future war very different from World War 1, and will fully exploit the German advantages in military professionalism and industry. Although he was just a Corporal in World War 1, Hitler had good and creative military perception, both tactical and technical, and so when he observed a combined exercise of tanks and motorized infantry led by Guderian shortly after he came to power, he immediately understood that he found his military tool.

Charlemagne

Date: 778 - 814 AD
Location: France, Germany, Northern Italy, Northern Spain


Charlemagne, the latin word for 'Charles the Great' was a Frankish King in the Dark Ages in Europe. The Franks were a tribe of barbarians that swept in from the east and invaded the Roman Empire starting from the 5th century AD. Charlemagne, born in the Carolingian Dynasty, was the son of Pepin the Short, who agreed to divide his empire amongst his two sons, Charles and Carloman. However, Carloman died in 788, leaving all the kingdom to his brother, and thus keeping it rather stable. Charlemagne first led a campaign against the Saxons, a warring peoples who lived to the south of Denmark, and won several great victories. With Saxony annexed, the king recieved a message from the pope saying that the vile pagan Lombards were threatening to besiege Rome and capture him, and so requested Charlemagne to invade Italy. By the time Charlemagne had defeated the Lombards, he was crowned 'Holy Roman Emperor' as a reviving of the old idea of the Roman Empire. The emperor built several centers for learning and art in Aachen, Paris, and many other cities, although it is believed that he was never able to learn how to read. He later accepted an alliance requested by Harun Al-Rashid, the Caliph of Baghdad, to destroy the Emirate of Cordova in Spain. Charlemagne now began one of his last campaigns, the Spanish March. Having managed to cross the Pyrenees, Charlemagne siezed Catalonia, which held the city of Barcelona, but could go no further. This also aided him with respect to defending his lands in southern France. He was a greatly religious man and always loved to see his people learn; it also said that he was of unusually tall height, with broad shoulders and held himself like a man. Charlemagne died peacefully in 814, giving away his kingdom to three of his successors, who divided the empire among themselves and helped shape the end of the Dark Ages and the dawn of the Middle Ages, with the Kingdom of France formed.

The Greco-Persian Wars

Date: 499 - 449 BC

Location: Greece, Western Anatolia, Thrace, Macedonia

The Greco-Persian Wars, which were declared by the Persian Emperor Darius the Great were, hence the name, conflicts between the Greek city-states and the Persian Empire. Darius, who at first planned to invade Greece after annexing Thrace, suffered a defeat by the Athenians and Thebians at Marathon in 490 BC, when 10000 Greeks held the pathway to Athens. An army of 25000 Persians arrived off the coast of Marathon, several kilometers far from Athens. After the significant weakening of the Persian army, the Persians saw that they had to retreat, or better yet, get back on the ships and sail to Athens. The Greeks then force marched back to defend their home city. It sure seemed like a marathon too! Luckily for the Greeks, the Persian army was beaten off and Darius and his army were forced to go back home.

Darius's son, Xerxes the Great, came to the throne right after his father. At first, he had to deal with several revolts throughout his empire, but then, he decided to turn his attention to the Greeks. He planned on leading the largest invasion the Greeks had ever seen, and so departed from Sardis alongside his army. At Hellespont, he ordered to build a fleet in case anything sudden happens, notwithstanding the fact that he had to cross the narrow strait. The Spartans and Athenians decided to ally briefly, only to beat off Xerxes, and so the two armies first clashed at Thermoplylae in 480 BC. Unfortunately for Xerxes, he suffered a crushing defeat, and led his other army, that lay right across the mountains, to Athens. There, 300 Athenian soldiers were defending, and Xerxes managed to kill all but two. He then entered Athens, which was uninhabited; all the citizens seemed to have fled. The only hope for the Athenians now was to defeat the Persians at sea, at the crucial Battle of Salamis that same year. Xerxes then returned home, but his army remained in Greece for another year until they were once again defeated at Platea. Persia was no longer a threat to Greece.

The Renaissance

Date: 1400 - 1600

Location: Western Europe

The Renaissance, a French word meaning 'rebirth' is the time in Western Europe between the 15th and 17th century when a reviving of literature, arts, and education took place. It first began when two major events happened. The first was when Italian scholars travelled to the Muslim cities of Cordova, Granada, and Seville for better research, as the Muslims were much more advanced than the Europeans, and came back with the highest standards of education. The other cause was the Ottoman annexation of Greece and Constantinople, where the greatest scientists and philosophers existed from Classical times. The reason was that Greeks had to travel elsewhere for safety from the Ottomans, and Italy was roughly 200 kilometers by sea. This is why Venice, Florence, and Genoa became rather prosperous centers for learning and the arts. Europe was going through a beautiful era; with the printing press recently invented (mid-15th century) by Johannes Gutenberg also made selling books much cheaper, which meant that even the poor could afford to learn. In Florence, Michelangelo Buonarotti, a brilliant artist, designed the beginning of the Renaissance with his tremendous painting and sculptures, such as the statues of 'David' - the most famous of his works of art - and 'Pieta', and the entire inside of the Sistine Chapel in Rome. Some of these paintings included the 'Creation of Man', which is found on the front wall. Leonardo Da Vinci was another great artist and engineer; he painted the famous 'Mona Lisa' and is well recognized for his earliest invention of a 'Flying Machine' which forms the basics of flight today.
Other Italian men in the Renaissance included Raphaello and Andrea Boticelli. Navigation at sea also became much safer and ships much more efficient, which led to the discovery of America by Christopher Colombus in 1492. The Renaissance soon spread to France, Germany, England, Spain, and Portugal. As for Germany, the Renaissance allowed man to question his religion, which led to the Protestant Reformation in the early 1500s led by Martin Luther. This caused the church to split in two, as Protestantism spread into England, Germany, and Switzerland. The significant weakening of the Holy Roman Emperor led to the loss of several German Kingdoms to Charles V, King of Spain, and later to the Independence of the Netherlands between 1581 and 1648. Many Dutch artists and scholars soon arose, such as Rembrandt, and Dutch sailors set sail in search for colonization in the Americas, the East Indies, South Africa, and Australia. Colonialism was mostly recognized by the Spanish, who established an vast empire in the Americas in the early 1500s. The last period of the Renaissance, which ended the era and began a new one (the Age of Reason) was to be the Baroque Period, between the early 1600s and the early 1700s.

The First World War

Date: 1914 - 1918
Location: France, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Serbia, Russia, and the Atlantic Ocean.

Europe in 1914

The First World War, also known as the Great War, began as a small conflict in Serbia, when a group of rebels assassinated the Archduke Franz Ferdinand on June 28, 1914. Austria-Hungary directly sought revenge and declared war on Serbia. Russia, Serbia's ally, then declared war on Austria-Hungary. Germany and the Ottoman Empire, Austria-Hungary's allies, declared war on Russia. Finally, France and Britain, Russia's allies, declared war on the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Turkey). The very first of conflicts occured when the German Keiser Wilhelm II began building a huge navy to compete with and destroy the British. At first, the German fleet was crushed completely at the Battle of the Falklands in the southern Atlantic; one German ship, Dresden, fled! The British never found Dresden, and so they built two new ships both named HMS Invincible. Dresden no longer had a chance of survival. Later on, the two alliances (Entente and Central) built trenches on their borders. Day and night, soldiers fought in these trenches to protect their frontiers. By 1918, a treaty at Versailles took place and ended the war, also threatening an allied attack on Germany if it made any sudden movements or acquisitions.

The Islamic Empire

Date: 632 - 1193 AD
Location: Arabia, the Levant, Mesopotamia, Persia, Egypt, North Africa, and Spain

     Expansion under the Prophet Muhammad, 622–632     Expansion during the Rashidun Caliphs, 632–661     Expansion during the Umayyad Caliphate, 661–750

Ever Since the death of the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) in 632 AD, a great Muslim nation was born, which by the mid-7th century, already covered Arabia and a large area in Mesopotamia. The first caliph of the Muslim Empire, which is officially to be Muhammad's 'successor', was Abu Bakr. The Rashidun Caliphate, as it was called, then experienced three more caliphs (respectively): Omar, Uthman, and Ali. By the end of Ali's reign, which was in the year 661 AD, the Muslim Empire covered most of North Africa, the Levant, Mesopotamia, Arabia, and a large area in Persia. Sadly, a civil war errupted that led to the split of Islam into the Sunni branch and the Shiite branch. From 661 to 750 AD, a ruling family from Damascus ran the empire and annexed several areas into their nation. Amongst them was the Muslim invasion of Spain. A Berber general, by the name of Tariq Ibn Ziyad, departed from Morocco in 711 AD to cross the Strait of Gibraltar and spread Islam. The Visigoth King of Spain, Roderick, soon suffered a crushing defeat and lost all the territories in Spain within a year. Other acquisitions included Morocco, the rest of Persia, and the Indus Valley. In 750 AD, the Muslim governors of Spain declared their people to be independent and formed a rival caliphate, the Emirate of Cordova. That same year, the throne of the empire was given away to the Abbasids of Cairo. The most famous Abbasid caliphate, which ruled at the times of Charlemagne, was Harun Al-Rashid. Mostly recognized for his alliance with the Franks against the Emirate in Spain, Harun managed to construct a new city on the banks of the Tigris River, Baghdad, which, in his own reign, became the richest city in the known world. Persia soon claimed its independence, as well as the Fatimid Caliphate and the establishment of the Almohad Empire that included Morocco and Andalucia. In 1187, the son of Yusuf Al-Ayyub, which be Saladin, a rich Kurdish man, formed a new dynasty, the Ayyubid Caliphate. Saladin's primary goals were to drive out the Crusaders from the levant and annex all the territories that were lost by the Fatimids 100 years before his reign. that same year, Saladin laid siege on Jerusalem, which was captured peacefully within some three months. This marked the beginning of a Fourth Crusade to retake Jerusalem, but within a few years, Saladin managed to conquer the entire Levant. Despite those territorial expansions, Saladin suffered a defaet from Richard the Lionheart at Arsuf in 1193.