Tag: WW2

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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Survival in Singapore: The Triumph and Tragedy of Australia’s Greatest Commando Operation – Book Review

Survival in Singapore: The Triumph and Tragedy of Australia’s Greatest Commando Operation – Book Review

by | Mar 9, 2026 | , | 0

Reading time: 8 minutes
Tom Trumble’s Survival in Singapore offers an unsettling glimpse into one of the darkest chapters of Singapore’s wartime experience – the cruelty unleashed in the wake of Operation Jaywick. Jaywick is somewhat well remembered in Australia, as a daring raid by Australian and British commandos who sailed a disguised vessel, HMAS Krait, through enemy-held waters, hid in the Riau archipelago, and used folboat canoes to attach limpet mines to Japanese shipping in Singapore Harbour. Ships were sunk and damaged; the mission was regarded as ‘tactically brilliant’. Trumble’s book does not deny that brilliance. Instead, it shifts the spotlight to what is far less known and far more confronting; the hideous aftermath inflicted on civilians and internees by the Japanese security apparatus, who were determined to prove the raid must have been enabled by saboteurs from within.

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Report on the British Indian Army, 1943

Report on the British Indian Army, 1943

by | Feb 25, 2026 | , | 0

Reading time: 3 minutes
Over two million British Indian Army troops fought in the Second World War. This 1943 War Office document reported on the army’s battle readiness and made recommendations for its development. As India was part of the British Empire when the Second World War broke out, the British Indian Army was called upon to serve in the Allied effort. A volunteer army, rather than a conscripted one, it entered the war as a force of around 240,000.

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The Uncountable Crimes of Imperial Japan

The Uncountable Crimes of Imperial Japan

by | Feb 16, 2026 | , | 0

Reading time: 8 minutes
In the west, and especially Europe, the most horrific regime of WWII is often portrayed as the Nazi regime, with Imperial Japan’s role in the wider world war being somewhat neglected – most well known for being the victim of the world’s first nuclear weapons.
What is often not as well-known is just how brutal and cruel the Imperial Japanese Government was.

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Life aboard a submarine in the Med during WW2

Life aboard a submarine in the Med during WW2

by | Dec 17, 2025 | | 0

Reading time: 4 minutes
Though first invented in the 19th century, submarines didn’t really come into their own as a weapon of war until World War Two, when they saw widespread use by all parties in all theatres. Able to hide underwater and strike whenever they wanted, they were feared by friend and foe alike, but what was life like for the men that crewed these small underwater craft?

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80 years after Benito Mussolini’s death, what can democracies today learn from his fascist rise?

80 years after Benito Mussolini’s death, what can democracies today learn from his fascist rise?

by | Nov 26, 2025 | , | 0

Reading time: 9 minutes
Fascist “strongmen” like Mussolini accumulate power thanks to people’s inabilities to believe that the barbarisation of political life – including open violence against opponents – could happen in their societies. And there is a final, unsettling lesson of Mussolini’s career. Il Duce was a skilled propagandist who portrayed himself as leading a popular revolt to restore respectable values. He was able to win widespread popular support, including among the elites, even as he destroyed Italian democracy. Yet, if the monarchy, military, other political parties and the church had attempted a principled, united opposition to fascism early enough, most of Mussolini’s crimes would likely have been avoided.

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New research shows WWII dominates Australians’ knowledge of military history. But big gaps remain

New research shows WWII dominates Australians’ knowledge of military history. But big gaps remain

by | Nov 10, 2025 | , , | 0

Reading time: 5 minutes
Eighty years ago this week, Japan surrendered after nearly four years of war in the Asia-Pacific. For Australia, this meant the end of not only the war in the Pacific, but also the second world war that had begun six years earlier, in September 1939. In that time, around one million Australians – approximately 15% of the population – served in the armed forces. Over half served overseas, with nearly 40,000 killed and more than 66,000 wounded. But what do Australians today know about this epochal moment in our history? We surveyed 1,500 Australians aged 18 and older to find out.

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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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