Remembering the Battle of Crete – 2025 Commemorations
This year is the 84th Anniversary of the Battle of Crete. The fighting around Rethymno will be...
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Tag: WW2
The Malta convoys: Australian sailors speak
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.
The Strangest Battle of World War II? Uncovering the Battle of Castle Itter
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.
Menace at Home – Australia Under Attack 1939-1945 Conference – Melbourne 10th May
10th May 2025, from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm. This one-day conference will explore the numerous ways...
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Frank Cotton and the Invention of the Australian G-Suit
Reading time: 9 minutes
The best-known wartime innovations are the largest, loudest, and flashiest, from humble handguns to the tank. But war has also prompted the invention of fascinating, and less destructive, devices designed not to harm life, but to protect it. One of these was the anti-gravity suit, or g-suit.
South Korea’s March to Democracy: from the Gwangju Uprising to the June Democratic Struggle
Reading time: 7 minutes
When did South Korea become a democracy? A quick Google Search may give you many different answers.
You may be wondering, what’s the real answer? As with most things, the truth is complex. More recent events with the attempted, and failed, political coup attempt from then-sitting President Yoon Suk-yeol in 2024 shows just how ingrained South Korea’s recent history of political turbulence is.
This is the history of South Korea’s democratic struggle.
Inventing Special Forces: Operation Jaywick
Reading time: 11 minutes
Modern special forces are capable of astonishing feats of arms, from crippling their opponents’ infrastructure to derailing entire campaigns. While soldiers have been detailed for highly specialised and dangerous tasks since before history began, the first true forbears to today’s special forces were first established in the midst of the Second World War, when the Axis powers seemed poised to seize victory at any moment.
Free France was African: the Story of France’s African Soldiers in WW2
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.
The Akikaze Massacre: the Japanese Navy’s Mass Murder in the Solomon Sea
Reading time: 12 minutes
When the Pacific War began in 1941, Japanese military planners had long recognised that they could not hope to win a protracted war against the United States, its likeliest and likely deadliest opponent in the Pacific. Instead, they pinned their hopes on a swift, devastating series of campaigns to seize strategic points.
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 you to recreate history in some way. As we discuss with historian Pieter van den Heede in our article on whether games can teach history, the question remains of how much you actually learn while playing these games. Thankfully, some do a much better job than others, and in this article, I will go over four of them.
How Florence Nightingale David saved lives during the Blitz – with statistics
Reading time: 6 minutes
In 1939, Florence Nightingale David was living in the village of Bledlow in Buckinghamshire, alongside a number of her female academic colleagues at University College London (UCL). This included Eileen Evans, a phonetics lecturer, Elizabeth Bigg-Wither, a lecturer in Italian, and Joyce Townsend, research assistant, secretary, and illustrator to the zoologist DMS Watson. Born in Herefordshire in 1909, David’s parents had been friends with the Crimean War nurse Florence Nightingale, who she was named after. She would complete her degree in Mathematics at Bedford College for Women in 1931, and joined UCL as a research assistant in statistics, before completing her doctorate in 1938 and continued her work at the college until 1939.
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, Goodenough Island has offered a vantage point over the Solomon Sea and an eastern gateway to the island of Papua.
A peacefully settled island for much of its history, Goodenough was also the site of one of Australia’s earliest daring successes in the struggle against the Empire of Japan.
