Historian James Holland presents a fresh analysis of the World War Two battle for the tiny Mediterranean island of Malta.The Battle for Malta is one of the most vicious and violent episodes of the Second World War. The tiny Mediterranean island is smaller than the Isle of Wight, yet between 1940 and 1942 more bombs fell on Malta than fell on Britain during the entire Blitz. As Axis forces threw all they had at the island, those on Malta were forced to endure a sustained attack from the air and a rapidly deteriorating condition on the ground. Beyond any form of austerity that we might understand, little Malta was close to starving. The struggle of the Maltese people against oppression was recognised personally by King George VI, who awarded the George Cross to the entire island. Yet the Siege of Malta is only half of the story.In this documentary, Holland argues that the real importance of Malta's position was its offensive role, which has been largely undervalued.Caught in the crosshairs of a massive struggle between Britain and Germany to control the shipping waters of the Mediterranean, by 1942 Malta had become the most bombed place on Earth. Whilst the level of brutal attacks may seem out of all proportion to the islands size it actually only serves to underline its importance - for Malta held the key to the entire war in the Mediterranean and North Africa.

Historian James Holland presents a fresh analysis of the World War Two battle for the tiny Mediterranean island of Malta.

The Great Siege: Malta 1565 /by Ernle Bradford. Suleiman the Magnificent, the most powerful ruler in the world, was determined to conquer Europe. Only one thing stood in his way: a dot of an island in the Mediterranean called Malta, occupied by the Knights of St. John, the cream of the warriors of the Holy Roman Empire.

Empires of the Sea tells the story of the fifty-year world war between Islam and Christianity for the Mediterranean: one of the fiercest and most influential contests in European history. It traces events from the appearance on the world stage of Suleiman the Magnificent-the legendary ruler of the Ottoman Empire-through "the years of devastation" when it seemed possible that Islam might master the whole sea to the final brief flourishing of a united Christendom in 1571.

Is the West engaged in a “clash of civilizations” with the Islamic peoples of the Middle East? According to Crowley, that clash occurred in the sixteenth century, when Islam, under the leadership of the Ottoman Turks, seemed poised to dominate most of Europe. The “impregnable city” of Constantinople had been taken in 1453, and by the beginning of the sixteenth century, the Turks were ensconced in the Balkans. The key to the struggle between the Turks and the Christian West was control of the eastern rim of the Mediterranean Sea.

IN COLOR! The Battle of Malta (June, 1941) In 1941, Mussolini desperately wants to wrest the tiny Island of Malta from the British for control of the Mediterranean. When his inadequate Air Force fails to bomb the Maltese into submission, Hitler's Luftwaffe joins the campaign. Malta becomes the most bombed tar et of the War but the British and the Maltese refuse to surrender

Publisher: Praeger 2005 | 280 Pages | ISBN: 0313323291 | PDF | 14 MB

Based on the factual and historical "Malta: The Hurricane Years", this is a fully revised and updated account of the gallant band of RAF and Commonwealth pilots who flew Hurricanes in defence of Malta between June 1940 and 1942, when help in the guise of Spitfires finally arrived. Most of the Hurricanes which held this tiny outpost of the British Empire in the heart of Axis-dominated territory had been flown from the decks of aircraft carriers or from bases in North Africa, while a handful of fighter pilots arrived by Sunderland flying boats or other aircraft in transit from the UK via Gibraltar.

TomTom Navigator Italy Malta for iPhone 3G, 3GS and iPod touch.