WW2 Archives

South Korea’s March to Democracy: from the Gwangju Uprising to the June Democratic Struggle

by History Guild | Feb 13, 2025 | Political and Economic History, Social and Cultural History | 0

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

by History Guild | Jan 30, 2025 | Military History | 0

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

by History Guild | Jan 23, 2025 | Military History | 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.

The Akikaze Massacre: the Japanese Navy’s Mass Murder in the Solomon Sea

by History Guild | Jan 2, 2025 | Military History | 0

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

by History Guild | Dec 18, 2024 | Military History | 0

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

by History Guild | Dec 9, 2024 | Military History, Social and Cultural History | 0

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

by History Guild | Dec 4, 2024 | Military History, Social and Cultural History | 0

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.

Neutral and Nervous – A History of Sweden’s Now Broken 200-Year Streak of Neutrality

by History Guild | Nov 13, 2024 | Military History, Political and Economic History | 0

Reading time: 6 minutes
For over 200 years, Sweden has been one of the few neutral states in Europe. From the Napoleonic Wars and Sweden’s declaration of neutrality in 1812 to today, many conflicts have arisen right on its borders.
Despite this, Sweden (until its joining with NATO in 2024) has successfully navigated neutrality, avoiding two world wars and many other conflicts throughout the 20th Century.
But how did Sweden manage to stay neutral throughout the 1900s with two world wars on its doorstep, and why did it become neutral in the first place?

Australian pilots in the fight for control over the Mediterranean

by History Guild | Oct 3, 2024 | Military History | 0

Reading time: 11 minutes
The Siege of Malta, a two-year ordeal of bombs, heat and dust, was one of the most important battles of the Mediterranean theatre in World War Two. Few of the victories in North Africa and Italy would have been possible had the island fallen to the Axis. In this article, we let Australian pilots who defended Malta tell their stories.

Where are All the Medals? Racial Bias in Military Bravery Awards

by History Guild | Sep 26, 2024 | Military History | 0

Reading time: 7 minutes
For service or for gallantry, almost all modern militaries – especially Western militaries, have issued war medals for a very long time.
But who decides who gets these medals and awards, and how?

Recent examination has brought to light a distinct lack of minority soldiers within Western militaries winning bravery awards, across many different countries, all throughout the 20th century and beyond.

The legacy of Empire: The Bengal Famine

by History Guild | Sep 23, 2024 | Military History, Political and Economic History | 0

Reading time: 4 minutes
One of the motivations of The Things We Forgot To Remember is as an answer to the question “Why study history?” There are a lot of answers to this, but one important reason is that people are already talking about history, and sometimes, they have got it seriously wrong. One example of this is the widespread ignorance of the Bengal famine. For me, the ‘killer facts’ about the Bengal famine are straightforward. In 1941, when the Battle of the Atlantic was at its height, Winston Churchill and the War Cabinet considered the question of relative priority to give to imports of food, raw materials, and munitions.

Dive! Australian Submariners at War by Mike Carlton – Book Review

by History Guild | Sep 9, 2024 | Military History | 0

Reading time: 4 minutes
Dive! opens with the best description of the development and implementation of submarine technology and doctrine I have ever read. This could easily be part of a broader history of submarines, Carlton has clearly done broad and extensive research and his writing effortlessly demonstrates his command of the topic.

Tag: WW2