The battle of Pinios Gorge, also known as the battle for the Tempi valley, was a pivotal rearguard action fought by Anzac troops – mostly made up of Australians – from the 17th to the 18th of April, 1941. Though successful in its main goal, delaying the German advance toward the central Greek town of Larisa, it was also a case study of the things that can go wrong in the fog of war.
Read MoreThis lesson will take us to North America as we learn about the Native American people and their rich culture.
Read MoreIn this lesson we will be learning about the concept of a nation-state, the Westphalian system and it’s significance on European politics.
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Reading time: 5 minutes
Exactly 75 years ago, Australians dressed in steel helmets and khaki shorts, and often not much else, sat in weapon pits in the Egyptian sun about 120 kilometres west of Alexandria. They were preparing for what history would call the second battle of El Alamein, the great offensive planned by Lieutenant-General Bernard Montgomery. In the summer heat of July 1942, his predecessor, Archibald Wavell, had held the German–Italian drive towards Egypt, a battle in which the 9th Australian Division had played a notable part. Now, after gathering more troops, tanks and guns, Montgomery was ready to launch his Eighth Army against General Erwin Rommel’s Panzer Armée Afrika, a commander and a force admired and respected even by their adversaries.
Reading time: 13 minutes
In August 1943, a timber merchant from Bendzin, Poland, arrived at Auschwitz. He was among a group of 400 inmates, mostly Jews. First, a doctor examined him briefly to determine his fitness for work. His physical information was noted on a medical record. Second, his full prisoner registration was completed with all personal details. Third, his name was checked against the indices of the Political Section to see if he would be subjected to special punishment. Finally, he was registered in the Labor Assignment Office and assigned a characteristic five-digit IBM Hollerith number, 44673.
Reading time: 8 minutes
Journalists and policy analysts should spend more time reading history. If they did, they would be better placed to challenge the diplomats and politicians who casually requisition the past in order to lay claim to the present. We might also find our way towards policy prescriptions with real meat, as opposed to the all-too-common superficialities that substitute true engagement with historical context for little more than a doff and a wink at times gone by. Wisdom is in the files.
In this lesson we will be learning about post-Napoleonic Europe and the century of peace that followed.
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Reading time: 5 minutes
In the shadow of the pyramids of Giza, lie the tombs of the courtiers and officials of the kings buried in the far greater structures. These men and women were the ones responsible for building the pyramids: the architects, military men, priests, and high-ranking state administrators. The latter were the ones who ran the country and were in charge of making sure that its finances were healthy enough to construct these monumental royal tombs that would, they hoped, outlast eternity.
This lesson we will be learning about the Nerva-Antonine Dynasty known as the golden age of Rome ruled by “Five Good Emperors”.
Read MoreIn this lesson we will be learning about the Bourbon restoration and how France functioned after 1815.
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Reading time: 5 minutes
The initiative in this lengthy, but intermittent war has tilted each way over the decades. In the 1980s, Armenia was the big winner, annexing the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh and integrating the so-called Republic of Artsakh into Armenian territory.
Reading time: 5 minutes
Escape was a romantic ideal rather than a rational expectation. Gunter Pluschow, who escaped from another PoW camp at Donington Hall, in Leicestershire, was the only German to make it home in World War I, largely because he managed to adopt a disguise and stow away on board a cargo ship at Harwich.
Reading time: 5 minutes
Australia built a number of coastal defences to help protect the country from any enemy attack during the second world war. Now, almost 80 years later, some of the physical remnants of those historic facilities lie forgotten and decaying.
These monuments to the nation’s home defence are in desperate need of preservation. While their condition varies greatly, too many have faded into obscurity.
Read MoreIn this lesson we will be learning about the British colonies in Africa.
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Reading time: 5 minutes
The 5th Battalion’s approach to counter-insurgency, 1966. The first Australian infantry battalion to be committed to Vietnam in 1965, 1RAR, was inserted into the American 173rd Airborne Brigade. Theirs was not a happy experience. The Australians were not impressed by the American way of war, with its emphasis on massive firepower and measuring success by body counts and kill ratios. Many thought that the tactics developed by Australian and British forces in the Malayan Emergency and the Indonesian Confrontation were better suited to the Vietnam campaign, and less likely to lead to a politically unacceptable casualty rate.
Reading time: 5 minutes
Looking back at director Mel Gibson’s controversial depiction of Christianity’s central event.
Reading time: 7 minutes
If we learn more from losses than wins, then the Canberra system has much to gain from examining its lousy performance in the processes that took Australia to war in Vietnam and Iraq. For Australia, both wars were all about the alliance with the United States. Both were wars of choice, although the regional implications Canberra read into Vietnam meant it was closer to a war of necessity than Iraq.
Both wars exemplify the Prime Minister’s most profound prerogative and Parliament’s lack of power. The entry to both showed the Canberra system performing below its best, revealing again the truth that artifice and farce often attend the most serious of moments of government.
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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.”
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“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.
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