Reading time: 5 minutes
In our documentation of eyewitness accounts of Australians in the Med during WW II, we have mainly focused on the experiences of frontline troops and sailors, men who faced enemy fire and worse. What about people a little farther back from the front, those who took care of the wounded?
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Reading time: 6 minutes
Britain had been wary of foreign agents operating within its shores in the run up to the First World War, and the Secret Service Bureau – now commonly known as MI5 – had been established in 1909. It had found great success rounding up German spies when the conflict broke out. Nonetheless, it was vigilant that enemy operatives might attempt to send reports on Britain’s military and economy back home.
Reading time: 6 minutes
Dispatched with a fatally timid mission, many ordinary U.N. soldiers in Rwanda took extraordinary actions, using diplomacy, cultural awareness and community engagement. Their actions saved close to 30,000 lives, according to Romeo Dallaire, who led the U.N.’s deployment in Rwanda. Learning from what actually worked on this famously failed mission can save lives in the future.
Reading time: 5 minutes
Napoleon Bonaparte may have died 200 years ago, but the vast ramifications of his rule can still be felt – and not only in France. This year marks the last in a series of bicentenaries since 1969, the 200th anniversary of his birth, but the chance to give the most famous emperor in French history another send-off is proving distinctly tricky – and not only because of COVID-19 restrictions.
Reading time: 7 minutes
After Captain Cook’s Endeavour voyage in 1770, the east coast of Australia was drawn on European maps of the globe for the first time. Yet, in terms of European contact with the continent, there was an 18-year lull in between Cook’s 1770 landings and the arrival of the First Fleet in 1788.
Reading time: 9 minutes
It is striking that 2015 is the 110th anniversary of the Gallipoli offensive, the 80th anniversary of end of the Second World War in the Pacific, and the 50th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War. This is a good time to reflect not only on the actions of those wars, but on their consequences and their enduring legacies.
Reading time: 14 minutes Bob Denard had not quite reached his 32nd birthday when a newspaper...
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Reading time: 14 minutes From August 1914 to November 1918, over 416,000 men served in Australian...
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Reading time: 7 minutes
Over 100 Security Service (MI5) files are being released today covering a wide range of subjects and individuals. Most notably, the files offer fresh perspectives on notorious members of the Cambridge Five spy ring, namely Anthony Blunt, Kim Philby and John Cairncross.
Military History & Heritage Victoria is excited to announce that tickets are now on sale for...
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Reading time: 1 minute Generally speaking, making an archive accessible to the public isn’t...
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Reading time: 6 minutes
The Wars of the Roses are normally portrayed as a series of battles between two warring houses, York and Lancaster, over who was rightly king of England. However, they were about much more than that. In many ways, the wars were really about standards of government.
