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.
“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.
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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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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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.
Reading time: 5 minutes
The Australian Wars is a new three-part TV series directed and produced by Arrernte and Kalkadoon nations filmmaker Rachel Perkins. Perkins travels across vast territory to capture key aspects of a war that lasted more than 100 years, from the landing of the First Fleet in 1788 until the 1920s.
The series traces some of the key phases, sites and underlying features of frontier wars here on home soil.
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Reading time: 14 minutes
In just five short years, the combined forces of the Axis powers managed to commit atrocities and war crimes on a scale never equalled before or after. But while Axis war crimes came into sudden shocking clarity with the Allied victory in 1945, one Axis power is still overlooked to this day: Italy.
Reading time: 7 minutes
Many readers will be familiar with the 1964 epic movie Zulu, which depicts the 1879 landmark Battle of Rorke’s Drift in the Anglo-Zulu War. In the film, perhaps the most iconic scene takes place at the end of the movie, whereby the Zulu warriors chant in respectful salutation towards the British soldiers before withdrawing after the battle. Moving, cinematic, and honourable, it’s clear why the scene lives so memorably in the hearts of fans today.
Reading time: 5 minutes
Last year, chair of the Australian War Memorial Kim Beazley called for First Nations “guerilla campaigns” of the Frontier Wars to be included in the Australian War Memorial. His bid was criticised by the RSL Australia’s president Major General Greg Melick.
Melick argued Indigenous casualties of the Frontier Wars could not be honoured at the War Memorial because they did not fight “in uniform”. But the Australian War Memorial already honours “ununiformed” First Nations soldiers – namely Dayak people who assisted in Borneo during World War 2.
