85th Anniversary of the Battle of Pinios Gorge – A Tough Fight
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.
The double agent who hid D-Day from the Nazis: Elvira Chaudoir
Reading time: 8 minutes
Elvira Chaudoir (1911–1996) served as a double agent for the British Secret Services during the Second World War. A life of charm, high-stakes, and duplicity saw her play a cunning role in the Allied victory at D-Day.
The confused identity of the Japanese submarine aircraft that overflew Sydney
Reading time: 26 minutes
In mid-1942 Sydney Harbour was attacked by a midget submarine raid. Some days before, aircraft launched from the mother submarine flotilla overflew the city, to check for targets. Somewhat unbelievably, the aircraft were not identified or fired at, despite being marked as Japanese.
Firepower:Lessons from WWII Seminar – Melbourne
March 19th 2026 @ 5:00 pm – 9:00 pm Firepower: From Lavarack to the Levant to the Littoral Lessons from World War II Presented by The Royal Australian Artillery Historical Company Download the event flyer here to share with your Friends, Colleagues and Associations. History Seminar 1: Australia’s ‘Road to War’ Preparedness and Mobilisation c. 1936-1941 […]
Survival in Singapore: The Triumph and Tragedy of Australia’s Greatest Commando Operation – Book Review
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.
Report on the British Indian Army, 1943
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.
The Uncountable Crimes of Imperial Japan
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.
The Winter War: How Finland Held Against the USSR
Reading time: 8 minutes
Ukraine is not the first time Russia has got bogged down invading a smaller nation.
As the Western powers of Britain and France prepared to make good on their promise to Poland in 1939, another war was waged on the Eastern Front: the Russo-Finnish War.
Life aboard a submarine in the Med during WW2
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?
80 years after Benito Mussolini’s death, what can democracies today learn from his fascist rise?
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.
New research shows WWII dominates Australians’ knowledge of military history. But big gaps remain
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.
Anzac Guerrillas – Podcast
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.
Ustaše in Australia: the “Citadel” of a Fascist Legacy
Reading time: 14 minutes
Between 1947 and 1952, for 170,000 non-Jewish “displaced persons,” Australia offered a chance to exit the dark, harrowing night of World War II in Europe. Many of these were hungry, traumatised, seeking peace and shelter, a place to work and rebuild. But with them came the kind of settlers which populate nightmares: war criminals, outright fascists, and aiders and abettors of the Nazi regime and its puppets in Eastern Europe.
Life in an Australian field hospital in the Med during WW2
Reading time: 5 minutes
In our documentation of eyewitness accounts of Australians in the Med during WW II, we have mainly focused on the experiences of frontline troops and sailors, men who faced enemy fire and worse. What about people a little farther back from the front, those who took care of the wounded?
The Most Scarily Accurate Predictions in History
Reading time: 7 minutes
Humans have always loved predicting the future. From ancient divination in the Roman Empire to newspapers and pundits such as John Watkins in 1900, foreseeing events in the future correctly has ranged from an apparent valued skill to a fun past-time.
Of course, not all predictions turn out true. In fact, most don’t.
Full Program Announced! Fighting to the Finish: Australia in 1945 – Strategy, Victory and Legacy Conference, Melbourne. Book Now.
Military History & Heritage Victoria is excited to announce that tickets are now on sale for our next conference – Fighting to the Finish: Australia in 1945 – Strategy, Victory and Legacy – which will be held on 11th October 2025 in Melbourne. History Guild is proud to support this conference. Join an esteemed group […]
How opening an archive caused consternation in the Netherlands
Generally speaking, making an archive accessible to the public isn’t something covered by the national news. However, in the Netherlands a massive public debate was sparked when an archive with the files of over 400.000 people suspected of collaboration with the Germans during World War 2 was to be opened up. By Fergus O’Sullivan To […]
The story of Nancy Wake
Reading time: 7 minutes
Nancy Wake (1912–2011) was an agent for the Special Operations Executive and the most wanted woman in France during the Second World War. Dubbed the ‘White Mouse’ by the Nazis, she was the one who always got away.
The Greek and Cretan evacuations: Australians tell their stories
The Battle of Greece is a story of grit, determination, and sheer bloody-mindedness as an outnumbered force of British and Anzac troops successfully delayed the tide of Germans invading the Mediterranean country. The goal was to delay the advance long enough to allow for Allied troops to be evacuated from Greece, ready to fight another […]
Call for Papers – Fighting to the Finish: Australia in 1945 – Strategy, Victory and Legacy Conference
Military History & Heritage Victoria is excited to announce the Call for Papers for our next conference – Fighting to the Finish: Australia in 1945 – Strategy, Victory and Legacy – which will be held on 11th October 2025 in Melbourne. History Guild is proud to support this conference. Keynote will be delivered by Emeritus […]
Remembering the Battle of Crete – 2025 Commemorations
This year is the 84th Anniversary of the Battle of Crete. The fighting around Rethymno will be commemorated in a series of events, listed below. 22nd May 2025 18:00 Memorial Service & reception at Armeni in the memory of the Greek Police General Stylianos Menioudakis (Armeni village, Municipality of Rethymno). 19:30 Memorial Service at the […]
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 Australia was attacked during the Second World War. Between 1939 and 1945, over 1,800 enemy air raids targeted northern Australia, while the nation’s coastal waters were patrolled by raiders, sea mines, and submarines. People of various backgrounds—friends, foes, […]