On a Wing and a Prayer – Vimy to Australia 1919-2019
Reading time: 4 minutes On this day 100 years ago, G-EAOU, a converted World War I...
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Category: Military History
Adventurous identities: intersex soldiers and cross-dressing women at war
Reading time: 4 minutes
Pulaski is a hero of the struggles for Polish and American independence. He is credited with saving George Washington’s life in battle and with establishing the first American cavalry force. According to the documentary, DNA testing has confirmed a female-appearing skeleton is indeed Pulaski’s. This new evidence is the first hint that Pulaski – who seems to have lived as male from childhood – was anything other than a cisgendered man.
Menzies’ call on Vietnam changed Australia’s course
Reading time: 4 minutes
In 1965, Australia was involved in two crises in Southeast Asia, one in Vietnam and the other in Indonesia. The connection between the two was vital to Menzies’ decision to increase our involvement in Vietnam. Having already committed a battalion to Malaysia to support resistance to the Konfrontasi policy of Indonesia’s Sukarno government, the logical next step for Menzies was to look to Vietnam. He did this with the support of his Cold War warrior and minister for external affairs, Paul Hasluck. They decided to send an Australian battalion to South Vietnam, partly to ensure continued American interest in the region.
Fighting to the Finish: Australia in 1945 – Strategy, Victory and Legacy Conference, Melbourne. Book Now!
Military History & Heritage Victoria is excited to announce that tickets are now on sale for...
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Combat in the High Himalayas: the Sino-Indian War of 1962
Reading time: 13 minutes
There are corners of the map where the neat lines of national boundaries, so carefully laid and plotted over the modern era, begin to blur and bleed. Aksai Chin, the bleak “White Stone Desert” which sits just inside China’s western border, is one of these.
The Thucydides Trap: Vital lessons from ancient Greece for China and the US … or a load of old claptrap?
Reading time: 5 minutes
The so-called Thucydides Trap has become a staple of foreign policy commentary over the past decade or so, regularly invoked to frame the escalating rivalry between the United States and China.
Coined by political scientist Graham Allison — first in a 2012 Financial Times article and later developed in his 2017 book “Destined for War” — the phrase refers to a line from the ancient Greek historian Thucydides, who wrote in his “History of the Peloponnesian War,” “It was the rise of Athens and the fear that this instilled in Sparta that made war inevitable.”
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The Greek and Cretan evacuations: Australians tell their stories
Reading time: 7 minutes The Battle of Greece is a story of grit, determination, and sheer...
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Call for Papers – Fighting to the Finish: Australia in 1945 – Strategy, Victory and Legacy Conference
Military History & Heritage Victoria is excited to announce the Call for Papers for our next...
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How historically accurate is the film High Ground? The violence it depicts is uncomfortably close to the truth
Reading time: 8 minutes The Australian film High Ground, set mostly at a mission in Arnhem Land in...
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1945: The Reckoning: War, Empire and the Struggle for a New World by Phil Craig
This is a fascinating book, which explores the complexities of the final year of the war from the...
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Will tourism transform the way Australians remember the Vietnam War?
Reading time: 4 minutes
More than 300,000 Australians visit Vietnam annually. With the ongoing growth of tourism, it is likely that tourists’ experiences at Cu Chi and other war-related sites in Vietnam will increasingly influence how we commemorate this conflict, and encourage Australians to see it from both sides of the frontline.
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Scans reveal new details of how Egyptian pharaoh met a violent death
Reading time: 4 minutes
For Seqenenre Taa II, the violent injuries were possibly the result of dying in battle or execution by a king who had invaded the north of the country. One theory also suggested he was killed while sleeping. In the new study, the team applied computed tomography (CT) scanning to the remains to investigate further. CT is a non-invasive imaging method that basically layers multiple X-rays on top of each other in order to create three dimensional images of both the soft and hard tissues. We usually think of it in clinical settings, but it has a long history of use in forensic contexts to safely study remains contained inside wrappings or body bags.
