History Guild publishes articles that provide interesting insights into history. These articles cover military history from across the world.
Four Video Games That Actually Teach History
Reading time: 13 minutes There are plenty of video games that use historical backdrops for their narrative, or even entice ...
How Florence Nightingale David saved lives during the Blitz – with statistics
Reading time: 6 minutes A number of reports available in our collections highlight the wartime work carried out by pioneering ...
Allied Outpost: the History of Goodenough Island
Reading time: 11 minutes From the most ancient settlers, over 50,000 years ago, to battling empires in the 20th century, ...
The First World War continues: Britain’s dash for Mosul, Iraq, November 1918
Reading time: 7 minutes After the armistice of 1918, why did the British occupy Mosul, Iraq? Dr John Slight looks ...
“Its Name Synonymous with Barbarism”: The Colonial Narratives that Destroyed Dahomey’s ‘Amazons’
Reading time: 7 minutes Tales of Dahomey’s fearsome female fighting force are writ large across the world, rippling from the ...
The enduring lessons of the Iraq War
Reading time: 8 minutes The US-led overthrow of the government of Saddam Hussein in Iraq marked the beginning of a ...
Neutral and Nervous – A History of Sweden’s Now Broken 200-Year Streak of Neutrality
Reading time: 6 minutes For over 200 years, Sweden has been one of the few neutral states in Europe. From ...
They Shall Not Grow Old poignantly illuminates the human face of the Great War.
Reading time: 6 minutes When the staggering number of casualties from the Great War became increasingly apparent to those left ...
Why we don’t hear about the 10,000 French deaths at Gallipoli
Reading time: 6 minutes With almost the same number of soldiers as the Anzacs – 79,000 – and similar death ...
THE 25,000-LI JOURNEY: INSIDE THE LONG MARCH, MODERN CHINA’S FOUNDING MYTH
Reading time: 13 minutes On 21 September 1949, Mao Zedong took to the podium in Huairen Hall, Zhongnanhai, a former ...
History and myth: why the Treaty of Waitangi remains such a ‘bloody difficult subject’
Reading time: 10 minutes The Treaty of Waitangi, the influential historian Ruth Ross (1920-1982) remarked in 1972, is “a bloody ...
OPERATION PEDESTAL: THE FLEET THAT BATTLED TO MALTA, 1942 – BOOK REVIEW
Operation Pedestal: The Fleet that Battled to Malta, 1942, by Max Hastings The #1 Times bestseller and #3 Sunday Times ...
Australian pilots in the fight for control over the Mediterranean
Reading time: 11 minutes The Siege of Malta, a two-year ordeal of bombs, heat and dust, was one of the ...
Where are All the Medals? Racial Bias in Military Bravery Awards
Reading time: 7 minutes For service or for gallantry, almost all modern militaries – especially Western militaries, have issued war ...
In The Fight: Australians and the War in Burma 1942-1945 – One day Conference
Forgotten men and women from Australia in a forgotten war – Burma 1942-1945. Book Now If you didn’t know that ...
The legacy of Empire: The Bengal Famine
Reading time: 4 minutes Does the Bengal Famine shape the way Indians view the British? Ever since I learned of ...
David Grann’s The Wager: a drama of murder, insurrection, escape and an empire at sea
Reading time: 7 minutes In 1740, a modest squadron of ships from Britain’s Royal Navy departed Portsmouth in pursuit of ...
How the Sino-Soviet split created strange bedfellows
Reading time: 6 minutes The Cold War had a lot of strange alliances, with many unlikely partners like Australian intelligence ...
Dive! Australian Submariners at War by Mike Carlton – Book Review
Reading time: 4 minutes If you have read any of Mike Carlton’s other books on Australian Naval history then this ...
“They Used Us When It Suited Them”: LGBT Servicemen in World War II Britain
Reading time: 6 minutes When Britain entered the Second World War in 1939, all citizens were heartily encouraged to ‘do ...
AUTHOR OF THE ANZAC LEGEND: KEITH MURDOCH IN THE FIRST WORLD WAR
Reading time: 11 minutes For a country just over a century old and whose national image is one of tough, ...
The first photograph of the entire globe: 50 years on, Blue Marble still inspires
Reading time: 6 minutes December 7 marks the 50-year anniversary of the Blue Marble photograph. The crew of NASA’s Apollo ...
Law enforcement in medieval England
Reading time: 6 minutes The middle ages are often associated with lawlessness and brutality. Along with knights in shining armour, ...
“IT WON’T DO TO PRETEND THAT WE ARE POWERFUL”: CHINA’S GERMAN-TRAINED ARMY
Reading time: 11 minutes In 1926, a newly-unified China had millions of men under arms, but few who could wield ...
The 1919 Egyptian Revolution
Reading time: 8 minutes Despite British troops not leaving Egypt until the 1950s, the first Egyptian Revolution actually happened in ...
The Battle of Long Tan – A Close Run Thing
Reading time: 12 minutes The Battle of Long Tan, fought on August 18th, 1966, is a key battle in Australian ...
The Siege of Malta through Australian eyes
Reading time: 12 minutes The Siege of Malta in the Second World War, which lasted from June 1940 until November ...
Life and death in Hong Kong during the Second World War
Reading time: 9 minutes Content note: This blog includes descriptions of violence during war, including references to sexual violence, which ...
From whistling arrows and trumpeting elephants to battle cries and eerie horns, ancient soldiers used sound to frighten and confuse their enemies
Reading time: 6 minutes As if the tumultuous din of battle is not horrendous enough, over the ages humans have ...
Can Games Teach History?
Reading time: 7 minutes Video games love historical settings: from adventure games like the Assassin’s Creed series, to action games ...
How Star Wars’ Jedi were inspired by the Knights Templar
Reading time: 5 minutes Star Wars is once again in the spotlight and pulling on nostalgic heartstrings in the new ...
1915 in Australia: the reality of total war sinks in
Reading time: 5 minutes 1915 was a critical year for Australians, and not just because of the pride and myth-making ...
How the British defeated Napoleon with citrus fruit
Reading time: 5 minutes Everyone knows that Britain’s conclusive victory over Napoleon was at Waterloo. The story of that day ...
For outstanding bravery: Civilian honours in the Second World War
Reading time: 7 minutes Arriving in occupied Paris in February 1944, Eileen Nearne’s mission was fraught with danger. She was ...
“Vinegar Joe” Stilwell: the Story of America’s Man on the Ground in WW2 China
Reading time: 12 minutes As famed as American commanders like Dwight Eisenhower and Douglas MacArthur are today, one of the ...
Australians and the Siege of Malta, Second World War – Video
From piloting aircraft to defending convoys, the Australian contribution to the defence of Malta during the Second World War made ...
The East River Column: the rebels who helped Second World War prisoners of war
Reading time: 13 minutes The underground resistance group the East River Column played a vital role opposing Japanese forces around ...
FORGOTTEN ANZACS: THE CAMPAIGN IN GREECE, 1941 – BOOK REVIEW
Reading time: 2 minutes Forgotten Anzacs: The Campaign in Greece, 1941 - Revised Edition, by Peter Ewer This is the ...
‘It bucked our lads up wonderfully’: the lightning-quick battle that marked the birth of the US-Australia military alliance
Reading time: 6 minutes While the AUKUS alliance is new, the Australian-American partnership is not. As Australians reflect on the ...
CHICKENHAWK – BOOK REVIEW
Reading time: 2 minutes Chickenhawk by Robert Mason Robert Mason’s bestselling account of his service as a chopper pilot in ...
The A to Z of the Royal Navy Captains’ letters project
Reading time: 11 minutes This is the first of a planned series of blogs charting the progress of the Royal ...
BIG ISLAND, LITTLE ISLAND: AUSTRALIA-MALTA RELATIONS IN THE 20TH CENTURY
Reading time: 9 minutes From humble beginnings and over centuries, Britain built an empire by conquest, diplomacy, and economic muscle ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
Southern Cross Over Malta: Australian Fighter Pilots in the Battle for the Mediterranean
Reading time: 9 minutes For three long years, as Britain and her allies first clung to survival and then clawed ...
Smoking Snakes: Brazil’s Forgotten WW2 Fighting Men
Reading time: 12 minutes In November 1944, the Allied campaign to liberate Italy was already well into its second year ...
OPERATION THUNDERBOLT – BOOK REVIEW
Operation Thunderbolt: Flight 139 and the Raid on Entebbe Airport, The Most Audacious Hostage Rescue Mission in History, by Saul ...
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 ...
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 ...
The forgotten female soldiers who fought long ago – and why their stories matter today
Reading time: 13 minutes On the Swedish island of Björkö lie the remains of Birka, a significant Viking trading post ...
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, ...
Virginia Hall, SOE Agent to CIA Pioneer
Reading time: 9 minutes Virginia Hall (1906–1982) was an American woman who served with the British Special Operations Executive in ...
NIGHT OF THE BAYONETS: THE TEXEL UPRISING AND HITLER’S REVENGE, APRIL-MAY 1945 by Eric Lee– BOOK REVIEW
Reading time: 2 minutes In the final days of World War II in Europe, Georgians serving in the Wehrmacht on ...
In The Australian Wars, Rachel Perkins dispenses with the myth Aboriginal people didn’t fight back
Reading time: 5 minutes First Nations people please be advised this article mentions colonial violence towards Aboriginal and Torres Strait ...
THE FORGOTTEN WAR CRIMES OF FASCIST ITALY
Reading time: 14 minutes In just five short years, the combined forces of the Axis powers managed to commit atrocities ...
Earning the Enemy’s Respect: Victoria Cross Recommendations from the Other Side
Reading time: 6 minutes Many readers will be familiar with the 1964 epic movie Zulu, which depicts the 1879 landmark ...
Why Aboriginal Australian ‘Ununiformed Warriors’ Qualify for the Australian War Memorial
Reading time: 5 minutes Last year, chair of the Australian War Memorial Kim Beazley called for First Nations “guerilla campaigns” ...
Annexation or Liberation? India, Portgual, and Goa: 1961
Reading time: 10 minutes On 18th July 1947, British rule in India came to an end, closing a 300-year old ...
Shipwrecks of the Manila Galleons
Reading time: 8 minutes Huge ships filled with canons, gold, porcelain, silk, and other riches from Asia, the Manila Galleons ...
History’s Greatest Nicknames
Reading time: 7 minutes A browse through any military history book will no doubt bring up titles of famous officers, ...
COURAGE AND COMPASSION: A STRETCHER-BEARER’S JOURNEY FROM NO-MAN’S LAND AND BEYOND – BOOK REVIEW
Reading time: 1 minute His is the true story of a young Australian soldier whose life of opportunity was challenged ...
“Homosexuals Are Not Cowards”: The Legacy of Willem Arondeus
Reading time: 6 minutes Dutch artist and author Willem Arondeus’ life had always been fraught with insecurity. Despite the modest ...
Australian Ace Bobby Gibbes’ Desert War – Video
Bobby Gibbes commanded No. 3 Squadron RAAF during the crucial desert battles of 1942-43, including the battles of El Alamein ...
How They Fought: Indigenous Tactics and Weaponry of Australia’s Frontier Wars – Book Review
Reading time: 3 minutes This is an excellent and much needed book. It examines the military aspects of the Australian ...
Lieutenant Martin Monti, the Only American Defector to the Waffen-SS
Reading time: 1 minute On May 8, 1945, a battered, broken Nazi Germany surrendered to the Allied armies which had ...
Why Oliver Cromwell may have been Britain’s greatest ever general – new analysis of battle reports
Reading time: 6 minutes The battle of Worcester was Oliver Cromwell’s greatest triumph. It was the culmination of a campaign ...
Richard O’Connor and Operation Compass: Britain’s Comeback in the Desert
Reading time: 8 minutes Early in the Second World War, when Britain’s empire stood alone, one man was responsible for ...
Ireland and the Battle of The Somme
Reading time: 8 minutes Why does the Battle of The Somme still matter so much in Ireland, for both the ...
The debate on the origins of the First World War
Reading time: 5 minutes The way historians have viewed the causes of WWI has changed in the hundred years since ...
Fear Was Not in My Dictionary: The Revolutionary Work of Sara Fortis
Reading time: 6 minutes When the small Greek town of Kuturla burned in 1943, teenage Sara Fortis had been on ...
Forgotten: Britain’s civilian mass prison camps from World War I
Reading time: 6 minutes The German-Jewish painter and writer Paul Cohen-Portheim had spent a peaceful summer in 1914 visiting friends ...
The Saar Offensive 1939: When France invaded Germany
Reading time: 7 minutes In September 1939, as German armies overran large swathes of Poland far to the east, the ...
A new narrative unfolds about South Africa’s protracted war in Angola
Reading time: 5 minutes The book A Far-Away War: Angola 1975 - 1989, about the war waged by apartheid South ...
Game Of Dominoes: Australia’s Security And The Cold War 1947-1991 Conference
Two-Day Conference – 13th & 14th APRIL 2024 - Melbourne This conference, organised by Military History & Heritage Victoria and ...
How German PoWs staged their greatest World War I escape from a camp now part of a British university
Reading time: 5 minutes Today, Sutton Bonington campus, part of the University of Nottingham, houses the schools of bioscience and ...
Black GIs arrive in Britain
Reading time: 13 minutes In this blog post I’m going to draw on the Cabinet Papers to explore the British ...
Unsung Heroes: Women’s Role in the Agricultural Revolution
Unearthed secrets from 7,000 years ago highlight prehistoric women as the heroines who dug deep--quite literally, to plant the seeds ...
African-American GIs of WWII: Fighting for democracy abroad and at home
Reading time: 7 minutes Until the 21st century, the contributions of African-American soldiers in World War II barely registered in ...
Putin’s failure to learn from history has led to Russian quagmire in Ukraine
Reading time: 4 minutes As the Russo-Ukraine conflict continues with no resolution in sight, we are painfully reminded of not ...
Auxiliary power: in wartime, Australian women fought germs, fired shells – and took on gender norms
Reading time: 5 minutes Sheila Sibley enlisted in the Australian Army in 1942 with a vision of becoming a wartime ...
Black soldiers and the Red Ball Express during World War II
Reading time: 6 minutes Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower had a problem. In June 1944, Allied forces had landed on Normandy ...
Damien Parer, Australia’s Iconic WW2 Photographer – Podcast
This podcast episode by Warwick O’Neill from the Australian Military History podcast tells the incredible story of Australian photographer Damien ...
Remember El Alamein
Reading time: 5 minutes Over 80 years ago Australians dressed in steel helmets and khaki shorts, and often not much ...
Treason against the state: America declares independence
Reading time: 6 minutes This is the second part of a two-blog series exploring treason against the state, as used ...
How a third-century Roman soldier named Carausius was behind the first ‘Brexit’
Reading time: 5 minutes From the first to the fifth centuries AD, Britain – though not officially Scotland, which lay ...
Tales from the Special Operations Executive: Operation Remorse
Reading time: 5 minutes It was ‘the biggest currency black market in history’, a secret operation under the auspices of ...
First World War ambulance trains
Reading time: 6 minutes The railways, and the men and women who worked on them, made a significant and varied ...
Ukraine war: how Gorbachev’s 1987 INF missile treaty has limited the arsenal available to Putin
Reading time: 4 minutes Thanks to the final Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who has died aged 91, a disarmament treaty ...
Maths swayed the Battle of Jutland – and helped Britain keep control of the seas
Reading time: 5 minutes If you’re about to fight a battle, would you rather have a larger fleet, or a ...
The story of HMT Empire Windrush (1930–1954)
Reading time: 5 minutes Next June will mark the 75th anniversary of the arrival of HMT Empire Windrush at Tilbury ...
Home Made Wings – Australian Military Aircraft Manufacturing – Video
This documentary explores the history of Australian military aircraft manufacturing. Australia had just completed its industrialisation in 1939, becoming a ...
The original kamikaze: Kublai Khan’s invasion shipwreck found?
Reading time: 4 minutes Archaeologists from the University of the Ryukyus in Japan have discovered part of a 13th century ...
The Chipilly Six by Lucas Jordan – Capturing the Australian military spirit at its best
Reading time: 6 minutes Jordan tells the story of ‘extraordinary men in extraordinary times’, a group of six Australian soldiers ...
Have humans always gone to war?
Reading time: 5 minutes The question of whether warfare is encoded in our genes, or appeared as a result of ...
Pickett’s Charge: What modern mathematics teaches us about Civil War battle
Reading time: 5 minutes The Battle of Gettysburg was a turning point in the American Civil War, and Gen. George ...
Black troops were welcome in Britain, but Jim Crow wasn’t: the race riot of one night in June 1943
Reading time: 6 minutes Bullet holes found in the wood surrounds of the NatWest Bank in Bamber Bridge, in Lancashire ...
Remembering Long Tan: Australian army operations in South Vietnam 1966–1971
Reading time: 5 minutes The anniversary of Long Tan reminds most Australians that despite winning that iconic high intensity battle, ...
How the Coastwatchers Turned the Tide of the Pacific War
Reading time: 10 minutes Australian Coastwatchers brought the tide of Japanese invasive successes to a shuddering halt when two coastwatchers ...
What happens now we’ve found the site of the lost Australian freighter SS Iron Crown, sunk in WWII
Reading time: 6 minutes Finding shipwrecks isn’t easy – it’s a combination of survivor reports, excellent archival research, a highly ...
The Cowra breakout: remembering and reflecting on Australia’s biggest prison escape
Reading time: 8 minutes Today (August 5) marks the 81st anniversary of Australia’s largest prison escape: the Cowra breakout, in New ...
A World War II battle holds key lessons for modern warfare
Reading time: 6 minutes Between Aug. 7, 1942, and Feb. 9, 1943, U.S. forces sought to capture – and then ...
Spain’s Civil War and the Americans who fought in it: a convoluted legacy
Reading time: 9 minutes Eighty seven years ago this week, in the Spanish North African enclave of Melilla, a group ...
The Christmas truce, 1914
Reading time: 7 minutes The Christmas truce of 1914 will generally conjure up images of opposing British and German soldiers ...
Eaten By Moths Defending The Defence Reserves 1970-2020 – Online Zoom Event
Wednesday 12 July 2023 7:00PM-8:00PM (Australian Eastern Standard Time) Speaker: Dr Andrew Kilsby Part-time service with the militia and then ...
Rediscovering a ‘lost’ Roman frontier from the air
Reading time: 5 minutes Frontiers like Hadrian’s Wall are central to the study of the Roman Empire. By now we ...
Report from 1945 holds lessons for defence strategic review team
Reading time: 4 minutes What defence forces should Australia maintain at a time of strategic uncertainty and rapid technological change? ...
The USAAF 49th Fighter Group over Darwin: a forgotten campaign – Video
USAAF 49TH Fighter Group P-40 Kittyhawk Fighters. Darwin, 1942 The prelude to the campaign of the 49th Fighter Group covers ...
Australia’s first action in the Pacific in World War II a valiant catastrophe – Video
Just before midnight on 7 December 1941, Flying Officer Peter Gibbes stepped off the train at Kota Bharu on the ...
D-Day succeeded thanks to an ingenious design called the Mulberry Harbours
Reading time: 4 minutes When Allied troops stormed the beaches at Normandy, France on June 6, 1944 – a bold invasion of ...
The changing lessons of Vietnam
Reading time: 5 minutes The national effort at remembering should also revisit a series of 50-year anniversaries for Australia’s entry ...
How World War II spurred vaccine innovation
Reading time: 7 minutes War and disease have marched arm in arm for centuries. Wars magnify the spread and severity ...
America Fought Its Own Battle Over Books Before it Fought the Nazis
Reading time: 7 minutes When United States servicemen stormed the beaches in Normandy, most of them had an essential item ...
The other assassination of November 1963
Reading time: 5 minutes If you weren’t living as a hermit in the desert, you’d have been well aware that ...
‘Excessive severity’: Treason and the Grenadian Rebellion of 1795
Reading time: 9 minutes Late in the night of 2 March 1795, a rebellion broke out on the Caribbean island ...
Australia and the Vietnam War: Looking Back
Reading time: 10 minutes The period from the Tet offensive of early 1968 to the Moratorium demonstration of May 1970 ...
PUTIN’S PAST: The Return of Ideological History and the Strongman
Reading time: 8 minutes From Russian Constitutional Court chairman Valery Zorkin, to former Russian culture minister Vladimir Medinsky, to presidential ...
German spies in South Africa during WWII – The enemy within
Reading time: 5 minutes The story of the intelligence war in South Africa during the Second World War is one ...
The absurd irony of Putin’s invocation of Stalingrad
Reading time: 5 minutes Russian President Vladimir Putin’s address in Volgograd on 2 February, in which he sought to draw ...
The debate on the origins of the First World War
Reading time: 5 minutes The way historians have viewed the causes of WWI has changed in the hundred years since ...
Ukraine: why supply of US and German tanks echoes cold war
Reading time: 5 minutes The decision that Germany and the US will allow the export of M1 Abrams and Leopard ...
‘Vietnam vanguard’—a unit history of lasting value
Reading time: 5 minutes Unit histories are usually written mainly for members of the unit and their descendants: only a ...
The role of Australian industrial power in the defeat of Japan in World War II
Reading time: 7 minutes Questions remain about what stopped the Japanese from invading Australia, and how it was that many ...
What Vietnam and Iraq should teach Canberra
Reading time: 7 minutes If we learn more from losses than wins, then the Canberra system has much to gain ...
What was The Schlieffen Plan?
Reading time: 5 minutes France to the west, Russia to the east; Germany had a strategic plan to prevent full-scale ...
Australia, Indonesia and Confrontation
Reading time: 5 minutes Perhaps an old-fashioned diplomatic historian might add to the valuable comments by Peter Jennings, Peter McCawley ...
Armenia-Azerbaijan: an intermittent war as a way of life
Reading time: 5 minutes Clashes in the border territories between Armenia and Azerbaijan around Nagorno-Karabakh have recurred in recent times, ...
Left to ruin: we must preserve our forgotten wartime defences
Reading time: 5 minutes Australia built a number of coastal defences to help protect the country from any enemy attack ...
Protecting country: Indigenous Australians in the defence of the north
Reading time: 5 minutes Notions of ‘protecting country’ have, anecdotally at least, been a key motivation for Indigenous people to ...
Sino-Vietnamese War
Reading time: 6 minutes The Sino-Vietnamese war was a short, nasty conflict fought between China and Vietnam in early 1979 ...
Women in the Second World War: Military service in East Africa
Reading time: 8 minutes Hundreds of women served with the British Army in East Africa, and their role in the ...
Reg Saunders, Australia’s first Aboriginal commissioned officer – Podcast
This podcast episode is by Warwick O’Neill from the Australian Military History podcast, which has an excellent range of podcast ...
America’s Favourite Fighting Frenchman: Marquis de Lafayette
Reading time: 8 minutes Hamilton: An American Musical by Lin-Manuel Miranda remains one of the best Broadway musicals of all ...
From the bookshelf: ‘The Scrap Iron Flotilla’
Reading time: 4 minutes Mike Carlton has emerged as a gifted historian of Australia’s outstanding naval contributions in two world ...
The Woman King is more than an action movie – it shines a light on the women warriors of Benin
Reading time: 6 minutes The Woman King is a big-budget Hollywood movie that has been anticipated since 2018, when US ...
The Battle of the Beachheads – Podcasts
These podcast episodes by Warwick O’Neill from the Australian Military History podcast was commissioned by History Guild as part of ...
The horse bit and bridle kicked off ancient empires – a new giant dataset tracks the societal factors that drove military technology
Reading time: 7 minutes Starting around 3,000 years ago, a wave of innovation began to sweep through human societies around ...
A TALE OF REMEMBRANCE, ADMONITION, AND DESPAIR: ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT
Reading time: 5 minutes The vivid and graphic imagery of the First World War has indeed become a potent symbol ...
The UN’s Greatest Peacekeeper, Lieutenant General Robert Harold Nimmo CBE – Podcast
An Australian Staff Officer who served his nation for 54 years from 1912 to 1966. Robert Nimmo was in the ...
Battle of Stonne, France 1940
Reading time: 5 minutes The battle for France in 1940 is often portrayed as a rout: the German Wehrmacht simply ...
The Onna-Musha: Japan’s Fearsome Warrior Women
Reading time: 6 minutes In pre-modern Japan, there existed a group of samurai warriors that defy the modern worldview of ...
The Scrap Iron Captain: Hector Waller DSO and Bar – Podcast
While serving within the Royal Australian Navy as a Signals Officer, Captain Hector MacDonald Laws Waller served with distinction aboard ...
Jamaica’s Morant Bay Rebellion and it’s brutal repression
Reading time: 11 minutes On 12 October 1865, John Davidson, a magistrate in the east of Jamaica, wrote to the ...
Siege warfare, polygamy and sacrilege: meet history’s most outrageous king, Demetrius the Besieger
Reading time: 5 minutes Alexander the Great was a successful conqueror, but a poor planner. He died without an acceptable ...
Recognising the warriors
Reading time: 7 minutes First Nations people please be advised this article speaks of racially discriminating moments in history, including ...
How the Peace of Westphalia Shaped Europe
Reading time: 5 minutes The Peace of Westphalia, sometimes known as the treaty of Westphalia, is the collective name for ...
Japan’s Pacific War – Podcast
This podcast episode was commissioned by History Guild as part of our support of THE BLOODY BEACHHEADS: THE BATTLES OF ...
The Australians who Captured Rommel’s Intelligence Unit, Company 621
Reading time: 5 minutes Though the North African campaigns of World War 2 have a reputation for mainly being fought ...
Women in the Second World War: The Palestinian Auxiliary Territorial Service
Reading time: 8 minutes As the women’s branch of the British Army during the Second World War, the Auxiliary Territorial ...
Saint Olga of Kyiv is Ukraine’s patron saint of both defiance and vengeance
Reading time: 5 minutes Ukrainians are used to adversity and they have a special medieval role model who personifies their ...
How the British navy hid the heroic voyage of crippled second world war submarine HMS Triumph
Reading time: 5 minutes In September 1941 the British press enthralled its readers with a story of naval heroism that ...
The Bloody Beachheads: The Battles Of Gona, Buna And Sanananda – One Day Conference
November 12 @ 8:30 am - 4:30 pm at the East Malvern RSL, Melbourne Register Here The Battle of the ...
Why Gorbachev’s legacy still threatens Putin
Reading time: 5 minutes Little remains of the legacy of Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet leader and one of the ...
How the Thirty Years War Affected Germany
Reading time: 4 minutes The Thirty Years War (1618-1648) was a brutal conflict that saw most major European powers use ...
Vital Hasson, the Jew who worked for the Nazis, hunted down refugees and tore apart families in WWII Greece
Vital Hasson, the Jew who worked for the Nazis, hunted down refugees and tore apart families in WWII Greece Reading time: ...
The R1 – South African Bush Rifle
The R1 - South African Bush Rifle Reading time: 9 minutes In the wake of the rise of the Soviet ...
How the Thirty Years’ War Weakened Spain
How the Thirty Years' War Weakened Spain Reading time: 5 minutes The Thirty Years War (1618-1648) wasn’t a conflict as ...
Blimp Vs U-Boat, WW2 – Video
Blimp Vs U-Boat, WW2 - Video In July 1943 one of the most remarkable duels of the battle of the ...
The Story of the AK-47: The World’s Most Famous and Deadliest Rifle
Reading time: 7 minutes The AK-47 is perhaps one of the most recognizable automatic rifles in the world. This simple ...
Broodseinde Ridge – Podcast
Broodseinde Ridge - Podcast On the back of the victories of Menin Road and Polygon Wood, the 1st Anzac Corps ...
Polygon Wood – Podcast
Polygon Wood - Podcast Following on from the success of the Battle of Menin Road, the 4th and 5th Australian ...
HISTORY AT WEST POINT: TEACHING CRITICAL THINKING TO FUTURE ARMY OFFICERS
HISTORY AT WEST POINT: TEACHING CRITICAL THINKING TO FUTURE ARMY OFFICERS Reading time: 8 minutes A visit to the United ...
Menin Road – Podcast
Menin Road - Podcast In 1917, General Haig began what would become known as the Third Battle of Ypres, with ...
How Did Sweden Join the Thirty Years War?
The Thirty Years War was a whirlwind in the centre of Europe that at some point between 1618 and 1648 ...
A Cuban Catastrophe: The Bay of Pigs Invasion
Reading time: 11 minutes The 1959 Cuban Revolution resulted in rule by a communist regime under Fidel Castro. This period ...
Women in the Second World War: The sinking of SS Khedive Ismail
Women in the Second World War: The sinking of SS Khedive Ismail Reading time: 7 minutes On the afternoon of ...
Finding ‘Forgotten’ Allies
Reading time: 7 minutes Although it is difficult to calculate exactly how many Burmese personnel were recruited by SOE for ...
History is Complicated – SOE in Burma
History is Complicated - SOE in Burma Reading time: 7 minutes It was estimated by Force 136 that they recruited ...
Australians in the Mediterranean during WW2 eBook
Thousands of Australian soldiers saw combat in a series of battles in the Mediterranean and North Africa. Their service is ...
X Troop – The Secret Jewish Commandos of WWII
X Troop: Image courtesy of Times Magazine. Reading time: 8 minutes When we hear ‘Jewish’ and ‘World War II’ in ...
39th Militia Battalion and the Kokoda Track – Part 2
Preparations for the recapture of Kokoda Reading time: 10 minutes By Warwick O'Neill Read Part 1 of the 39th Battalion’s ...
The Battle of Crete, WWII – Video
The Battle of Crete saw around 40,000 Allied troops, including over 6,500 Australians, defending against a German airborne invasion. The ...
39th Battalion at Kokoda – Part 1
The Militia and the AIF Reading time: 10 minutes By Warwick O'Neill Imagine you’re a young 20 year old bloke ...
Ruin Ridge – Podcast
Ruin Ridge - Podcast During the 1st Battle of El Alamein the 9th Australian Division was tasked with the capture ...
6th Australian Cavalry Reg in the Mediterranean, WWII – Video
The 6th Australian Cavalry Regiment were the first unit of the AIF to see action in the Western Desert in ...
Cretan Resistance During WWII
Reading time: 10 minutes One of the more impressive feats of arms during the second World War was the way ...
Project ‘44: Australia and future of Project ‘44
Project ‘44: Australia and future of Project ‘44 Reading time: 12 minutes The contribution of many countries to World War ...
The Story of the M1 Garand: The Iconic and Influential World War 2 Weapon
The Story of the M1 Garand: The Iconic and Influential World War 2 Weapon Reading time: 7 minutes The world ...
Twelve days at Anzac: the evacuation
TWELVE DAYS AT ANZAC: THE EVACUATION Reading time: 7 minutes Over one hundred years ago, one of the most remarkable ...
Lemnos and Gallipoli Revealed – Podcast
Over the course of 1915, most of the 50,000 Australian personnel who served at Gallipoli passed through the island of ...
The Scrap Iron Flotilla – Australian Destroyers in the Mediterranean – Video
The Scrap Iron Flotilla - Australian Destroyers in the Mediterranean - Video To the Axis Powers, the Australian flotilla that fought ...
Australian VC’s in the Mediterranean, WWII – Video
There were six Australian VC recipients during the Mediterranean and North African Campaigns of the Second World War. From the ...
When Australia Fought France, WWII – Video
Operation Exporter was a little known, but very important campaign for the Australian military. It involved Australian’s fighting a strange ...
3 Squadron RAAF – Podcast
3 Squadron RAAF - Podcast As the Allied armies fought across North Africa, first against the Italians and then the ...
Tobruk – Podcast
Tobruk - Podcast Tobruk was one of the greatest Allied victories – and one of the worst Allied defeats – ...
Frederick Lanchester and why quantity has a quality all of its own
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The Battle for Crete: Hard Fought
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What happened to the French army after Dunkirk
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Second Battle of El Alamein: Australia Forces a Breach
Second Battle of El Alamein: Australia Forces a Breach Reading time: 9 minutes The battle of El Alamein in late ...
North Africa in WWII: Total War with Honour?
Reading time: 8 minutes The North African campaigns during the Second World War have a reputation for being “clean” wars, ...
The War in the Skies: How The First World War Changed Aviation
THE WAR IN THE SKIES: HOW THE FIRST WORLD WAR CHANGED AVIATION Reading time: 6 minutes When the first world ...
What lies behind the war in Tigray?
WHAT LIES BEHIND THE WAR IN TIGRAY? Reading time: 7 minutes Ethiopian soldiers in 2005 on a hilltop outpost overlooking ...
Tongerlongeter — the Tasmanian resistance fighter we should remember as a war hero
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Hard Fought: Australia In The Mediterranean Theatre 1940-1945 Conference
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Britain’s obsession with the second world war and the debates that fuel it
BRITAIN’S OBSESSION WITH THE SECOND WORLD WAR AND THE DEBATES THAT FUEL IT Reading time: 5 minutes The COVID-19 pandemic ...
Rewilding: lessons from the medieval Baltic crusades
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In Appreciation of Schindler’s List
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The Beginning of the End: Napoleon’s Retreat from Russia
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Domino Theory and U.S. Foreign Policy
DOMINO THEORY AND U.S. FOREIGN POLICY When looking at the cold war and the way the United States went about ...
Escape from Greece
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PEARL HARBOR AND AMERICA’s ENTRY TO WAR
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The Black War
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How Cyprus Became Divided
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First Battle of El Alamein: Australia Holds the Line
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Dunkirk: how British newspapers helped to turn defeat into a miracle
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Reckoning with slavery: What a revolt’s archives tell us about who owns the past
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Losing the war in an afternoon: Jutland 1916
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How a Cyprus Museum Uses Tech to Make the Past Come Alive
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The Anglo-Zanzibar War: The Shortest War in History
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The Battle of Greece – Australia’s Textbook Rear-Guard Action
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Escape from Greece – Podcast
ESCAPE FROM GREECE - PODCAST This podcast episode tells the story of Shanghai born John Robin Greaves, ‘Jack’, who emigrated ...
The Australian Flying Corps, 1917–18
THE AUSTRALIAN FLYING CORPS, 1917–18 Reading time: 8 minutes By 1917, the men of the Australian Flying Corps’ No. 1 ...
The fall of Singapore
THE FALL OF SINGAPORE Reading time: 14 minutes Japanese Soldiers enter Singapore. The Land Campaign Nothing in history is inevitable ...
The USAAF 49th Fighter Group over Darwin: a forgotten campaign
Reading time: 4 minutes USAAF 49TH Fighter Group P-40 Kittyhawk Fighters. Darwin, 1942 The prelude to the campaign of the ...
Book Review: ‘Pacific Crucible: war at sea in the Pacific 1941–42′
Reading time: 4 minutes With ANZUS in the news at the moment, this book is a good way to understand ...
Australia’s Great War in the air
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1917: our costliest year at war
1917: OUR COSTLIEST YEAR AT WAR Reading time: 5 minutes A century ago, in early 1917, Australian troops had already ...
SIX of the best WORLD WAR II FILMS
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Walking with the Diggers
WALKING WITH THE DIGGERS Reading time: 5 minutes The Centenary Commemoration of the Great War continues to unearth real treasures ...
The Coral Sea, 1942: a nation-saving battle
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Australia’s War with France
AUSTRALIA'S WAR WITH FRANCE Reading time: 12 minutes The Nahr al-Kalb, or ‘Dog River’, meets the Mediterranean Sea just north ...
The German naval threat in the Indo-Pacific 1914–15
Reading time: 6 minutes British Navy officers approaching the wreck of the German Navy cruiser SMS Konigsberg in the Rufigi ...
Gough’s remaking of Defence policy
Reading time: 4 minutes Gough Whitlam was a physical giant with an intellect to match. His flaws were pretty sizeable, ...
Australia’s war with France: The Campaign in Syria and Lebanon, 1941 – Podcast
AUSTRALIA’S WAR WITH FRANCE: THE CAMPAIGN IN SYRIA AND LEBANON, 1941 - PODCAST Operation Exporter was a little known, but ...
The Benghazi Handicap and the Siege of Tobruk
THE BENGHAZI HANDICAP AND THE SIEGE OF TOBRUK The Benghazi handicap is the name Australian soldiers gave to their race ...
Warfare spurred on the welfare state in the 20th century – but it probably won’t in future
Reading time: 7 minutes A tank on its way to port for the Normandy landings in 1944. PA Archive The ...
Spark to Powder: Prague and the Thirty Years’ War
Reading time: 6 minutes The 30 Years’ War is remembered by few people except historians, but the conflict, which raged ...
Why we should remember the Battle of the Coral Sea
Reading time: 5 minutes The Battle of the Coral Sea in May 1942 has become the touchstone for the Australian-American ...
Early Raids Of the Pacific War
Reading time: 98 minutes Less than two months after the devastating surprise attack at Pearl Harbour, the US Navy was ...
The Iranian Revolution
Reading time: 9 minutes To understand what caused the Iranian Revolution, we must first consider the ongoing conflict between proponents ...
After Jutland: the North Sea operations of 18–19 August 1916
Reading time: 5 minutes HMAS Sydney at full speed in a heavy sea off Dogger Bank. AWM. One of the ...
Remembering the bombing of Darwin
Reading time: 5 minutes The bombing of Darwin, 1942. If sometimes it seems that governments rush to appoint inquiries or ...
The Franco-British Union: Genius, or Madness Born of Desperation?
Reading time: 6 minutes When crisis strikes, one imagines members of government or heads of state stoically dealing with the ...
The evidence for the Tasmanian genocide
Reading time: 7 minutes At a public meeting in Hobart in the late 1830s, Solicitor-General Alfred Stephen, later Chief Justice ...
51 years ago: Israel won an air battle, and lost the War of Attrition
The Israel Air Force drew the Soviet expeditionary force in Egypt into a perfect, successful ambush, but pride was the ...
DISASTER AT SAVO ISLAND, 1942
Reading time: 50 minutes The Battle of Savo Island The Battle of Savo Island occurred early in the morning on ...
Remembering the Victory at Bardia
Reading time: 7 minutes Just over 80 years ago, Australian forces fought their first major battle of World War II ...
Scrap Iron Flotilla: The Royal Australian Navy at its Best
Reading time: 11 minutes To the Axis Powers, the Australian flotilla that fought in the Mediterranean during the Second World ...
Five Great Historically Accurate Films: Part Three
Reading time: 6 minutes READ PART ONE AND PART TWO By Michael Vecchio Saving Private Ryan (1998) Dir. Steven Spielberg ...
The Battle of Cape Spada: The Australian Navy Proves Its Mettle
THE BATTLE OF CAPE SPADA: THE AUSTRALIAN NAVY PROVES ITS METTLE Reading time: 9 minutes The Battle of Cape Spada ...
Imperial Overconfidence: The Anglo-Zulu War
Reading time: 8 minutes For a fine example of overconfidence during the height of British Imperialism, look no further than ...
A program for peace: The founding of the United Nations
Reading time: 6 minutes Achieving the elusive dream of “world peace”, has long been an idealist and collectivist goal for ...
Venezuela’s Fight For Independence: The Battle of Carabobo
Reading time: 6 minutes This year marks the 200th anniversary of the battle of Carabobo, a major battle in Venezuela’s ...
The Siege of Haarlem, Kenau, and Creating a Heroine
Reading time: 5 minutes The Dutch Revolt, the conflict that created an independent Netherlands free from Spain, also created a ...
WERE SOVIET TANKS DEPLOYED IN EGYPT 50 YEARS AGO?
Reading time: 6 minutes On February 3, 2018, Russian Air Force Maj. Roman Filipov’s jet was shot down while attacking ...
WA’s first governor James Stirling had links to slavery, as well as directing a massacre. Should he be honoured?
Reading time: 5 minutes Today, councillors in Perth’s City of Stirling will vote to decide whether to change their city’s ...
The Cold War Ignites: The Berlin Blockade and Airlift
Reading time: 6 minutes Once the centre of Nazi ideology and power, the German capital of Berlin was extremely important ...
How War with Spain Created the Dutch Colonial Empire
Reading time: 8 minutes The Dutch colonial empire was a large collection of territories that spanned the globe from the ...
Constructing Oppression: The Berlin Wall and the Literal Iron Curtain
Estimated reading time: 6 minutes 60 years after its initial construction, the memory of the Berlin Wall remains a potent ...
The Two Countries That ‘Escaped’ The Scramble for Africa
Estimated reading time: 4 minutes The Scramble for Africa is often recognized as the beginning of colonialism and European Imperialism ...
‘Cheese-eating surrender monkeys’? It’s time to give the French Army the credit it deserves
Estimated reading time: 5 minutes When marking the centenary of the terrible events of 1917, some of the most devastating ...
Wounded Knee: Shame or Honour?
Estimated reading time: 6 minutes On 29 December 1890, between 150-300 Sioux Lakota men, women, and children, most of whom ...
Africa’s World War: The Congo War
Africa’s World War: The Congo War Reading time: 5 minutes 5.4 million people died in the deadliest war in modern ...
Brilliant and Flawed: The Enduring Legacy of Napoleon Bonaparte
Estimated reading time: 6 minutes The 200th anniversary of his death (1821-2021) renews discussion on how the former Emperor should ...
Australia’s first action in the Pacific in World War II a valiant catastrophe
Estimated reading time: 5 minutes Just before midnight on 7 December 1941, Flying Officer Peter Gibbes stepped off the train ...
Leaving Afghanistan and why America doesn’t win wars
Estimated reading time: 5 minutes Since World War II, the United States has lost just about every war that it ...
‘I want to scream and scream’: Australian nurses on the Western Front were also victims of war
Estimated reading time: 6 minutes The revival of interest in Anzac since the 1980s has depended in part on the ...
Peter Weir’s Gallipoli 40 years on: deftly directed and still devastating
Estimated reading time: 6 minutes With the release of the first-world-war film Gallipoli in 1981, director Peter Weir could finally ...
How The Napoleonic Wars Entrenched British Rule In 19th Century South Africa
Estimated reading time: 6 minutes The battles between Britain and France following the French Revolution and into the Napoleonic Wars ...
Who will have us? Jewish Refugees before WW2
Estimated reading time: 6 minutes The plight of Jewish refugees after the outbreak of World War II in 1939 is ...
Hero and Villain: Robert Clive of the East India Company
Estimated reading time: 11 minutes Robert Clive, a general of the East India Company, was despised by his contemporaries – ...
Northern Ireland, born of strife 100 years ago, again erupts in political violence
Estimated reading time: 6 minutes Sectarian rioting has returned to the streets of Northern Ireland, just weeks shy of its ...
Taking back the Homeland – Ethiopian Guerrillas in World War II
Reading time: 6 minutes Guerrilla warfare played a huge role in World War II. Partisans in France, Yugoslavia, the Eastern ...
Highland Clearances: Changing a Culture
HIGHLAND CLEARANCES: CHANGING A CULTURE Reading time: 5 minutes Cultures, customs and traditions change as time passes on, but sometimes ...
Hubris and Miscalculation: The failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion
HUBRIS AND MISCALCULATION: THE FAILURE OF THE BAY OF PIGS INVASION Estimated reading time: 6 minutes By Michael Vecchio The ...
Could the Charge of the Light Brigade have worked?
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Remembering Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg
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Deceptive Ineptitude: German Spies in WW2 Britain
DECEPTIVE INEPTITUDE: GERMAN SPIES IN WW2 BRITAIN Estimated reading time: 6 minutes Operation Lena, the German espionage operation in Britain, ...
The Somme: The German perspective
Estimated reading time: 7 minutes By Dr Robert T. Foley. How do Germans view the Battle of The Somme? This ...
The Long Tail of the First World War
Estimated reading time: 11 minutes Fallen Empires and Civil War By Caitlan Hester The popular view of the First World ...
Jutland: Why World War I’s only sea battle was so crucial to Britain’s victory
Estimated reading time: 5 minutes By Andrew Lambert, King's College London. Modern understanding of World War I is dominated by ...
Blood and Pepper: The Aceh Wars
Estimated reading time: 6 minutes The history of the Dutch East Indies is a blood-soaked tale of war and subjugation ...
How the National Guard became the go-to military force for riots and civil disturbances
Reading time: 6 minutes The Pentagon has approved leaving 5,000 troops deployed indefinitely to protect the U.S. Capitol from domestic ...
It’s time for a new museum dedicated to the fighters of the frontier wars
Estimated reading time: 19 minutes Historical research of the last 20 years has confirmed the central importance of the killing ...
Rising Sun, Complacent Bear: The Russo-Japanese War
Estimated reading time: 5 minutes The Russo-Japanese War resulted in one of Russia’s greatest military upsets, and one of Japan’s ...
A short, sharp history of the bayonet
Estimated reading time: 14 minutes By Peter Monteath, Flinders University. Even the sound of a bayonet could be frightening. The ...
Battle of 42nd Street – Anzacs Proving Germany Could be Beaten
Reading time: 5 minutes Morale can make all the difference on the battlefield. On the 27th May 1941, with the ...
Why the Legions Beat the Phalanx
Estimated reading time: 8 minutes The societies of ancient Greece and Rome valued brawn as well as brains. Philosophers fulfilled ...
Quantity Becomes a Quality All of Its Own
Estimated reading time: 11 minutes In the history of warfare, there have been mismatched conflicts where skilled forces have been ...
The Battle of Kadesh and the World’s First Peace Treaty
Estimated reading time: 6 minutes For a shining example of ancient warfare and the cause of the world's first recorded ...
The Battle for Hong Kong – London’s Lost Cause?
Reading time: 6 minutes Within 12 hours of Pearl Harbour being bombed by the Japanese at the outset of their ...
Fake News, Misinformation and Propaganda Throughout History
Estimated reading time: 6 minutes By Madison Moulton Fake news has become a popular buzzword. However, the phenomenon is not ...
Neutrality At All Costs: The Netherlands in WW1
Estimated reading time: 6 minutes By Fergus O'Sullivan World War 1 was a conflict that engulfed entire continents and swallowed ...
Explainer: what is radiocarbon dating and how does it work?
Rachel Wood, Australian National University Radiocarbon dating has transformed our understanding of the past 50,000 years. Professor Willard Libby produced ...
Best Historical Films 2010-2020
There may be many historically based films, but only a few can be rightfully called striking, emotional, and informative. As ...
A Period of Change: Global Events in the Lead Up to WWI
Reading time: 6 minutes The history of the lead up to WWI is undoubtedly dominated by Europe. European powers understandably ...
The History of Games: Rome 2
By Fergus O'Sullivan. Here at the History Guild we like video games, especially ones with a historical setting. Of course, ...
Five Great Historically Accurate Films
By Michael Vecchio. Most history enthusiasts will eye the release of a new film on a historical topic somewhat sceptically, ...
Five of the Most Historically Accurate PC Games
Estimated reading time: 5 minutes Plenty of video games are marketed as being historically accurate, but few truly are. In ...
‘Australia’s smallest peacekeeping force’ in the unknown prelude to the Korean War
Reading time: 4 minutes In the years leading up to the Korean War, the two future combatants were already fighting ...
Battle of One Tree Hill, Australian Frontier Wars
Battle of One Tree Hill, Australian Frontier Wars Reading time: 7 minutes The Battle of One Tree Hill in 1843 ...
Military Marine Mammals
It has recently emerged that the Russian Navy used specially trained marine mammals, probably seals, for harbour defence in Syria ...
Nike Missile Site, San Francisco
The Nike missile was one of the first successful anti-aircraft missiles, developed by Bell Labs and put into service by ...
Defences of Australia – 19th Century
Modern Australia is relatively unique in it's position occupying an entire continent, having no land borders with another country. While ...