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Introduction

Introduction

Guerrilla tactics

Leading lights

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Staged battle of Varus
(James Meaneaux Stenson)

Can a single battle change the course of history? The Lost Legions of Varus regards the extraordinary destruction of three Roman legions in AD9 by German tribes in a guerrilla action plotted by Arminius as creating a rift in European relations that has never been closed. This nationalist vein has been tapped into over the intervening 2000 years, spilling over with Hitler's mania to engulf the whole world in war.

Arminius inflicted an unthinkable humiliation on the Romans commanded by Publius Quintilius Varus, in a calculated ambush with drew the legions into inhospitable territory, trapped between marshland and forest. Picking off the slow-moving legions from the rear, animals, women and children and soldiers were slaughtered, their mutilated bodies left littering the forest floor. The loss was deeply felt in Rome and put an end to any ambition to colonise Germany.

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