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Military History Presentations

Ken Nesbitt is a published author and military history enthusiast who has prepared a series of presentations surrounding the topic. Invite him to share his knowledge with your classroom, club, or other group at your next event.

  • Julius Caesar
    The Conquest of Gaul

    From 58-50 BC, the Gallic Wars were a series of military campaigns waged by Rome, led by the Proconsul Julius Caesar against numerous Celtic tribes. The Roman victory resulted in the significant expansion of Roman territory over all of Gaul (Present day France and Belgium). This presentation is an incredible story of the Roman Republic and the rise of Julius Caesar, a remarkable Roman politician and military commander. From the Roman viewpoint, the conquest of Gaul was a huge, heroic accomplishment and an important step in the development of a great, ancient Empire.
    From the Gallic perspective this was a different story!

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  • Charlemagne
    The Carolingian Empire

    In a review of European history from the fall of the Roman Empire to Napoleon Bonaparte, one figure clearly stands out. Charlemagne was an extraordinary ruler in the Middle Ages whose influence shaped the future of western Europe. Charlemagne was a warrior King, and Emperor, an administrator, a leader, a military strategist, and a conqueror. He was also a devout Christian, and he combined his military power with his religious beliefs to ensure the survival and expansion of Christianity across western Europe. During his life, Charlemagne was the dominant figure in a complex world of intrigue, political and religious turmoil, and nearly constant warfare. This presentation will examine the amazing life of this powerful King of the Franks, who rose to become the Holy Roman Emperor.

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  • The Viking Invasions of Europe

    The Viking invasions of Europe had a dramatic and lasting affect on the developing history of the continent.
    From 790 AD, and for more than 300 years, known as the Viking Age, these pagan Norse raiders, notorious for their seafaring skills and fierce fighting abilities, explored, traded, fought, settled and integrated with the peoples they encountered. Expanding from their Scandinavian homelands the Vikings influenced the cultural, military and economic evolution of many nations. In this presentation we will investigate the origins of the Viking Age, the wars, mythology, exploration, settlements, and the indelible influence that these Norse people of the Middle Ages have left on Europe.

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  • William the Conqueror

    One of the most significant events in European history is the conquest of England by Duke William of Normandy. King Edward the Confessor of England died with no clear successor, and this set the stage for a war between three contenders to determine who would be the next king. Duke William claimed the English throne through birthright, and the powerful English Earl Harold Godwinson, claimed King Harold had named him as his successor. William quickly decided to settle the matter by force. The invasion of England by Duke William and his combined Norman and French army in 1066, resulted in the Battle of Hastings, and spelled the end of Anglo-Saxon dominance of England. The Norman Conquest also sets the stage for centuries of further conflict between England and France.

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  • The 100 Years War

    The “Hundred Years War”, from 1337 to 1453, was a name given to a long series of related dynastic conflicts between England and France.  Deep tensions between the English and French had simmered for 250 years over land claims that dated back to the Norman conquest of 1066. King William’s descendants inherited lands in France and the crown of England. When the French King Charles IV died in 1328, without a legitimate heir, Philippe of Valois of France and King Edward III of England each claimed their right to the French throne. Edward III of England was an ambitious warrior-king, and his challenge to be the King of France started an extended war spanning generations, resulting in enormous levels of death and destruction. In this presentation we will discuss the causes of The 100 Years War, the politics and economics behind it all, and explore the context and significance of names and places that have become a familiar part of history.

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  • Napoleon:
    How to Become Emperor in 10 Years

    The year 1794 in France marks the beginning of the incredible story of how an young, unknown Corsican artillery officer rises from obscurity to become one of history’s most famous men.  From Napoleon's promotion to Brigadier General after his success at the siege of Toulon, to his assuming command of the Army of Italy in 1797, then through campaigns in Egypt followed by victories against the Austrian Empire, Napoleon Bonaparte becomes the new hero of the French Republic.  In this presentation we will trace Napoleon's amazingly rapid and dangerous 10 year journey from an obscure captain of artillery to being crowned Emperor of the French in 1804.

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  • Napoleon:
    The Years of Empire

    In December 1804, Napoleon Bonaparte became Emperor of the French. The hopes of the French Revolution were lost as Napoleon created a new kind of monarchy in its place. Over the next ten years Napoleon would build a French Empire, and become the most feared military commander in Europe. In this presentation, we will follow the incredible career of this military genius and gifted administrator from his coronation at Notre Dame, through a series of unparalleled campaign victories from Austerlitz to Jena, and from Friedland to Wagram. Although the politics, diplomacy, wars and social upheaval of the period were complex, Napoleon excelled, and by 1811 he was at the height of his career. His decision to invade Russia in 1812, began a rapid downward spiral that led to the Allied Coalition invasion of France in 1814. The result was Napoleon’s surrender and his first abdication and exile to the Island of Elba.

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  • Napoleon:
    The Road to Waterloo

    After almost a year in exile on the Island of Elbe off the coast of Italy, Napoleon Bonaparte escaped from his British captors and landed in the south of France near Cannes in March 1815.   Napoleon moved slowly north towards Paris with his 1000 soldiers.  Every army sent by the French King to stop Napoleon, instead defected and joined their former Emperor. In a wave of panic King Louis XVIII and most of his supporters fled to Belgium. On a surge of emotional popular support Napoleon entered Paris with no opposition and was the Emperor of the French once again. The next one hundred days are among the most famous in history, and the resulting Waterloo campaign is surely one of the most well-known of all military encounters. Seeking to end the coalition formed against him, Napoleon moved his army north, and on 18 Jun, 1815, in the farm fields of southern Belgium near the village of Waterloo, a terrible and costly day-long battle involving over 200,000 soldiers would decide the fate of Europe.

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  • Napoleon:
    Exile on Saint Helena

    "This is the most isolated, the most impregnable, the most difficult to attack, the poorest, the most unsociable and the dreariest place in the world” (French Commissioner on Saint Helena, 1816). The small island of Saint Helena would probably have remained almost totally unknown to the world had Napoléon Bonaparte not been exiled there for the last six years of his life. After his decisive defeat at the Battle of Waterloo, Napoléon fled from Paris and eventually surrendered to the British Navy. Once he boarded the British ship HMS Bellerophon, Napoléon never set foot in Europe again. The British government decided to exile Napoléon a second time, but this time his confinement was on a tiny speck of an island in the southern Atlantic Ocean 1,500 kilometers from the nearest mainland. "The tyrant must not be allowed to escape a second time." This presentation is the story of Napoléon’s surrender to the Allies and his life in exile on Saint Helena, his living conditions, relations with his captors and his death.

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  • The Franco-Prussian War

    In the late 1800’s, the unification of the northern German States under the leadership of the Prussian Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, caused a serious disruption to the European balance of power.  In July 1870, after a series of minor diplomatic disputes, France sent a declaration of war to the Prussian government.  Confident of a quick victory, the French Prime Minister declared that France had done “everything that could be humanly and honorably done to prevent a war”. The next 10 months of what became known as the “Franco-Prussian War” changed Europe, and the battles are some of the most interesting in military history.  In this presentation we shall see how the strategy, tactics and technology of the battlefield were completely transformed; we will also examine the causes and important consequences of The Franco-Prussian War, setting the stage for WWI.

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  • The Causes of World War I

    This presentation is a brief history of great-power-politics and the results of terrible miscalculation. World War I occurred between July 1914 through November 11, 1918.  By the end of the war, over 17 million people world-wide had lost their lives.  The reasons the war erupted in Europe are actually much more complicated and interesting than usually thought.  Certainly in 1914, there was a sequence of political events that directly led to the fighting, but the underlying causes are much deeper and provide a fascinating context for discussion and debate. We will review the long-term issues that created the climate of immense political, economic and military tensions.  And then, remarkably, how the political assassination of the Austrian Archduke Ferdinand set off a chain reaction of military alliances and army mobilizations that the great European powers were ultimately powerless to prevent. Join us for a critical look at the "War to End All Wars", and see how people, Nationalism, Imperialism and the complex web of alliances resulted in one of the most destructive conflicts in history.  The face of warfare would never be the same again.

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  • The End of The Great War:
    Battles, Armistice and Aftermath

    After four years of incredible suffering and strategic stalemate, finally on the eleventh hour, of the eleventh day, of the eleventh month, an armistice was signed that ended the hostilities.  The subsequent Treaty of Versailles would set the stage for 20 years of uneasy peace, and helped create the conditions which contributed to the rise of Nazism and the far worse disaster of World War II. In this presentation we will discuss the last 100 days of WWI, and the strategic changes in the war that enabled the Allies to conduct successful offensives that forced the Central Powers to accept an armistice. The next six months of negotiations at the Paris Peace Conference resulted in the controversial Versailles Treaty. The Treaty required Germany to accept responsibility for causing all the loss and damage during the war, and forced Germany to disarm, make substantial territorial concessions, and pay huge reparations.  Some nations wanted even much stricter punishments for Germany. Others thought that an orderly return to the previous balance of power was the key to a more lasting peace.  Germany was certainly not pacified, or completely disarmed, and felt unjustly punished.  The end of WWI and what happened over the next 20 years in Germany and in Europe, resulted in the most destructive war in human history - WWII.

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  • World War II:
    The Italian Campaign and Anzio

    When studying World War II, the campaign in Italy is often overlooked. However, the bitter, costly fighting in the mountainous terrain was in fact a critical theatre of the war in Europe. In this presentation we will discuss the Allied Mediterranean strategy and the military operations to capture Italy. At the 1943 Cassablanca Conference, Winston Churchill proposed attacking Italy, “The soft underbelly of the Axis.”   The strategy was to neutralize the Italians and threaten southern Germany.  However, after the invasion of Italy, the Allied offensives stalled for months at Monte Cassino. To break the stalemate the Allies tried a surprise amphibious landing behind German lines at Anzio. The battle of Anzio will serve as our focal point for discussion of Allied and Axis actions in the Italian campaign. As usual in war, we shall see that nothing really works out as planned.

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  • World War II:
    Operation Overlord and D-Day

    During the night of 5-6 Jun 1944, an Allied invasion armada of over 5,000 ships headed for the Normandy coast. A little past midnight the first waves of airborne troops parachuted and landed glider planes near the beaches to secure the flanks and disrupt German defenses. Allied bombers and fighter planes flew 12,000 sorties in support of the invasion, attacking targets all across the invasion zone. Operation Overlord had started. On that single day 150,000 Allied troops and 16,000 vehicles landed in Normandy. The Allied code names for the beaches would soon be famous: Gold, Juno, Sword, Omaha and Utah became a part of history. The invasion itself was a huge gamble on an unprecedented scale. From the first airborne landings at Pegasus Bridge in the darkness on 6 June, until the closing of the Falaise Gap on 18 Aug, Allied and German armies fought a desperate battle of attrition from the beaches through the hedgerows and villages, to the capture of Caen and beyond. So why Normandy? Why 6 June? What were the risks? How did the Germans prepare? Why did the Allies succeed? All great questions that we will discuss in this presentation.

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  • WWII Nov 1944, The German defense of the West Wall,
    The Battle of Geilenkirchen

    After defeat in Normandy and the rapid retreat from France in Aug-Sep 1944, the German Army fell back into the prepared West Wall defensive positions on the German border also known as the “Siegfreid Line”. After Allied failures to break the West Wall in Operations Market Garden, The Battle of Aachen and the Hurtgen Forest, the Allied Command selected a new sector of the West Wall, near the German town of Geilenkirchen, to launch a massive breakthrough attempt in November 1944. To secure the flank of the major attack, a critical supporting operation was conceived to destroy the dangerous salient at the fortified town of Geilenkirchen. This Allied operation was a rare, combined US and British attack. Two divisions were tasked to surround and capture the town, and move quickly up the river valley. We will use the Battle of Geilenkirchen as an example of the Allied military operations to break the West Wall, and the unforeseen, extraordinary long-term consequences of the determined German defense that seriously delayed the Allied advance in the West.

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