Siege of Mafeking Siege of Mafeking The Siege of Mafeking was a 217-day siege battle for the town of Mafeking (now called Mahikeng) in South Africa during the Second Boer War from October 1899 to May 1900. The siege received considerable attention as Lord Edward Cecil, the son of the British prime minister, was in the besieged town. The siege turned the British commander, Colonel Robert Baden-Powell, into a national hero. The Relief of Mafeking (the lifting of the siege), while of little military significance, was a morale boost for the struggling British. Shortly before the outbreak of the Second Boer War in
Military history of Italy during World War II initial success. However, German and Japanese actions in 1941 led to the entry of the US and the USSR in the War, thus ruining the Italian plan and postponing indefinitely the objective of forcing Britain to agree to a negotiated peace settlement. The Italian dictator Benito Mussolini was aware that Italy (whose resources were reduced by pre-WWII military interventions, albeit successful, in Spain, Ethiopia and Albania) was not ready for a long conflict against three superpowers but opted to remain in the war as the imperial ambitions of the Fascist regime, which aspired to restore the Roman Empire in the