Tag: German

85th Anniversary of the Battle of Pinios Gorge – A Tough Fight

85th Anniversary of the Battle of Pinios Gorge – A Tough Fight

by | Apr 16, 2026 | | 0

Reading time: 16 minutes
85 years ago today hundreds of young Australians and New Zealanders were digging into the dry soil of central Greece, preparing to meet the advancing juggernaut of the German army. They fought hard, buying the time the rest of the Allied force needed to withdraw in good order further south.
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.

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Anzac Guerrillas – Podcast

Anzac Guerrillas – Podcast

by | Oct 31, 2025 | | 0

When the Germans took thousands of Allied prisoners during the catastrophic Greek campaign of 1941, a handful of Australian soldiers escaped from prison trains in occupied Yugoslavia. What awaited them was not passage home, but a brutal underground war where the fate of a nation was at stake.

Told through the eyes of two of the Australian escapees – mineworker Ross Sayers and storeman Ronald Jones – Anzac Guerrillas is the incredible true story of how these men became resistance fighters, double agents and spies, evading the Nazis and exposing a group of genocidal collaborators.

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Karl Muller and the fatal lemon

Karl Muller and the fatal lemon

by | Oct 6, 2025 | , | 0

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.

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The Malta convoys: Australian sailors speak

The Malta convoys: Australian sailors speak

by | May 1, 2025 | | 0

Reading time: 7 minutes
The island of Malta, located in almost the exact centre of the Mediterranean, was an important depot and staging post for the Allied efforts in North Africa and, later, the invasion of Italy. As a result, the Axis forces bombed it relentlessly for years, something you can read about more in our article on the Siege of Malta through Australian eyes.

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The Strangest Battle of World War II? Uncovering the Battle of Castle Itter

The Strangest Battle of World War II? Uncovering the Battle of Castle Itter

by | Apr 3, 2025 | | 0

Reading time: 6 minutes
In the waning hours of the war, exactly five days after Hitler shot himself in his bunker, a bizarre battle would commence in a small Austrian town, just south of the German border.
Seven hundred years after its construction in the 1200s, Castle Itter would host a battle between the Waffen-SS (the Nazi party’s specialist paramilitary) and a combined force of defecting German Wehrmacht troops, American soldiers, Austrian resistance fighters, and various French political prisoners.

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Free France was African: the Story of France’s African Soldiers in WW2

Free France was African: the Story of France’s African Soldiers in WW2

by | Jan 23, 2025 | | 0

Reading time: 15 minutes
From a humble, precarious exile in London, Free France patched together from soldiers and sailors of the scattered French military under the leadership of General Charles de Gaulle. One of the most storied resistance movements in World War II, far-flung Frenchmen swelled in number until hundreds of thousands could return to liberate France in 1944.

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