History Guild publishes articles that provide interesting insights into history. We cover all aspects of history, from around the world and across time.
BLOOD ON THE RIVER: A CHRONICLE OF MUTINY AND FREEDOM ON THE WILD COAST – BOOK REVIEW
“Blood on the River: A Chronicle of Mutiny and Freedom on the Wild Coast” by Marjoleine Kars: an astonishing original work of history, Blood on the River will change our understanding of revolutions, slavery and of the story of freedom in the New World.
Traitors to King and Country: Inside the British Free Corps, Hitler’s British Legion
Reading time: 11 minutes
From the moment it took power, the Nazis ruled over a German state possessed of two armies. One was the inheritor of the imperial lineage of the First World War, and the second was the Waffen-SS, which grew from a tiny band of Hitler’s most hardened antisemites to a force of nearly a million men from over two dozen nations before its demise.
Neanderthals were no brutes – research reveals they may have been precision workers
Reading time: 5 minutes
Neanderthals were until quite recently often seen as simple-minded savages – powerful hunters with a short attention span. But in the last few years, scientists have realised that they were a lot more refined than previously thought – capable of caring for the vulnerable, burying their dead and even adorning themselves with feathers and beads.
MARTIN LUTHER: RENEGADE AND PROPHET – BOOK REVIEW
Martin Luther: Renegade and Prophet by Lyndal Roper – a magisterial new biography which goes beyond Luther’s theology to investigate the inner life of the religious reformer who has been called “the last medieval man and the first modern one.”
In their own words: letters from ANZACs during the Gallipoli evacuation
Estimated reading time: 4 minutes Just five days before Christmas, in the early hours of Monday December 20, 1915, the last Anzac troops left Gallipoli in what Australian historian Joan Beaumont called an “elaborate game of deception”. Self-firing guns were...
Who were we fighting at Gallipoli?
Estimated reading time: 5 minutes In the annual discussion of the Gallipoli campaign Australians are subjected to a variety of hyperbole and parable as commentators and reporters offer up the same old chestnuts for want of something else to say. That at Anzac Cove...
The Treaty of Versailles: Brutally Unfair or Righteous Retribution?
Reading time: 7 minutes
Marking the end of World War One, the Treaty of Versailles was signed by Germany on June the 28th 1919. Often cited as one of the leading reasons for Germany’s descent into fascism and the start of World War Two, the Treaty of Versailles along with the other treaties signed at the Paris Peace Conference vastly reshaped the borders and the economies of the European continent.
Treason against the state: The execution of Charles I
Reading time: 7 minutes
Levying war against the Crown was one of the key treasonable offences defined by the 1352 Treason Act. Yet, during the civil wars of the 1640s and again in the American Revolutionary War of the 1770s and 80s, those that levied war against the monarch not only avoided punishments for treason, but rejected royal authority and accused their kings of levying war – of committing treason – against the state.
WHO DISCOVERED WHAT WHEN? – BOOK REVIEW
Who Discovered What When? Five hundred years of great scientific discoveries by David Ellyard: an absorbing and easy-to-read book about the growth of scientific ideas and knowledge since 1500.
‘Habits of civilised life’: how one Australian State forced Indigenous people to meet onerous conditions to obtain citizenship
Reading time: 7 minutes
In the breakthrough High Court case Love and Thoms vs Commonwealth in 2020, the court ruled that First Nations people could not be considered aliens in Australia. As Justice James Edelman noted in the decision, whatever the other manners in which they were treated […] Aboriginal people were not ‘considered as foreigners in a kingdom which is their own’.
Smoking Snakes: Brazil’s Forgotten WW2 Fighting Men
Reading time: 12 minutes
One of the most unusual forces ever to join the fighting in Europe: the 25,000 Brazilian soldiers and pilots of the Brazilian Expeditionary Force. An idea born out of political necessity, the “Smoking Snakes” played a brief, important, and fascinating role in the fighting in Europe.
Dockyard incendiarist: The tale of ‘John the Painter’
Reading time: 10 minutes
Opposition to the British Crown during the American War of Independence took many forms, none more notorious than the malicious designs of James Aitken (alias ‘John the Painter’).
OPERATION THUNDERBOLT – BOOK REVIEW
“Operation Thunderbolt: Flight 139 and the Raid on Entebbe Airport, The Most Audacious Hostage Rescue Mission in History” – the definitive account of one of the greatest Special Forces missions ever, the Raid of Entebbe, by acclaimed military historian Saul David.
HMAS Nestor: The remarkable tale of an Australian destroyer
Reading time: 16 minutes
A convoy of 11 merchant ships escorted by 56 warships and submarines was making its way through “bomb alley” to deliver precious supplies to the besieged garrison on Malta. HMAS Nestor was just one of these warships assigned to protect this vital convoy. It was June 15, 1942, and this would be the last sunset the destroyer would ever see.
The Blue Division: Franco’s Soldiers on the Eastern Front
Reading time: 12 minutes
From 1939 to 1945, scarcely one of the 99 countries on Earth went untouched. Just 14 nations remained neutral throughout the Second World War, and even those couldn’t completely escape the gravity well of war.
Nor did they all want to. A prelude to the European war – bloody, massive, and unspeakably destructive – had played out in Spain from 1936 until just a few months before Germany invaded Poland in the fall of 1939.
Traps, rites and kurrajong twine – the incredible ingenuity of Indigenous fishing knowledge
Reading time: 20 minutes
Some forms of Indigenous fishing inevitably became lost as Traditional Owners were dispossessed and disenfranchised of their lands and fisheries following the expansion of the colonial frontier post-1788.
The forgotten female soldiers who fought long ago – and why their stories matter today
Reading time: 13 minutes
Women have survived and even thrived as part of the machine of war – but are rarely part of military history. Why have their stories been forgotten?
“The Best Show That Was Ever Staged”: Charles Ponzi’s Scheme
Reading time: 7 minutes
Having gambled away his life savings on the passage over, Italian immigrant Charles Ponzi arrived in America with next to nothing in his pocket. As he would later recount, “I landed in this country with $2.50 in cash and $1 million in hopes, and those hopes never left me.”
The Treason of Sir Thomas More
Reading time: 9 minutes
Sir Thomas More was among the leading statesmen of the Tudor period and his legacy has long survived his execution for treason in 1535. He has been portrayed on screen, stage and in literature and in his own time was at forefront of the English humanist movement.
ON THIS DAY SHE: PUTTING WOMEN BACK INTO HISTORY, ONE DAY AT A TIME – BOOK REVIEW
Reading time: 2 minutes
From Beyoncé to Doria Shafik, Queen Elizabeth I to Lillian Bilocca, On This Day She sets out to redress this imbalance and give voice to both those already deemed female icons, alongside others whom the history books have failed to include: the good, the bad and everything in between – this is a record of human existence at its most authentic.
The Curious Creation of the Crusader States
Reading time: 7 minutes
A major holy land for three of the world’s largest, most influential religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, the area of the levant has long been hotly contested.
After several centuries of ownership and Christian domination under the Roman Empire and later the Byzantine Empire, the holy land of Jerusalem and the surrounding area fell into the hands of the Muslims in 969 AD under the Fatimids, and later the Seljuq Turks.
Virginia Hall, SOE Agent to CIA Pioneer
Reading time: 10 minutes
Virginia Hall (1906–1982) was an American woman who served with the British Special Operations Executive in France in 1941–1942. She then joined its US equivalent, the Office of Strategic Services, and became a founding member of the Central Intelligence Agency.
NIGHT OF THE BAYONETS: THE TEXEL UPRISING AND HITLER’S REVENGE, APRIL-MAY 1945 by Eric Lee– BOOK REVIEW
Reading time: 2 minutes
Eric Lee explores the fascinating but little known last battle of the Second World War: its origins, the incredible details of the battle and its ongoing legacy.
Schindler’s List at 30: a look back at Steven Spielberg’s shattering masterpiece
Reading time: 5 minutes
Schindler’s List, released 30 years ago, remains Steven Spielberg’s most highly acclaimed and emotionally sapping film. Winning seven Academy Awards, including best picture and best director, it was widely praised for its portrayal of the horrors of the Holocaust.