News that a feature film of the BBC TV comedy series Dad’s Army is to be made – starring Bill Nighy and Toby Jones – has garnered a mixed response. The Daily Telegraph has questioned whether the film is…
It may look blunt, but hear him out.
EPA/Maxim Shipenkov
Since the very beginning of the Ukrainian crisis, many Western commentators have drawn comparisons between the present situation and pre-WWII Europe, as well as between Hitler and Putin. This has largely…
In post-Soviet Russia, orange and black are the new black.
RIA Novosti
Many of the images of pro-Russian demonstrators in Ukraine, from Crimea to Donetsk, have shown them wearing black-and-orange-striped ribbons. The symbolism here is opaque to most Western observers, it…
We study the past to understand the present and to help shape the future. A society without a memory is a dysfunctional society. And much of a society’s memory is encapsulated within its cultural property…
The Harlem Kiddies in the St. Thomas club, Copenhagen 1941.
Little Beat Records
It seems an impossibility: in Nazi-occupied Denmark in the 1940s, one of the hottest jazz orchestras around was the interracial Harlem Kiddies, with two white and three black band members – and a Jewish…
Generation War provoked fierce debate and protests with sympathetic portrayals of German soldiers and depictions of Poles as anti-Semitic.
SBS/ZDF
Polish reactions to the German TV series Generation War, which has just screened in Australia, confirm that the history of World War Two remains highly contentious. The resulting public debate tested Polish-German…
A Jewish victim at Klooga Death Camp.
Jeremy Hicks
A one-off programme on History’s H2 channel and Sky News has broadcast for the first time some film footage I discovered depicting the Holocaust. This may seem unremarkable: in the digital age, smartphones…
Never again: Holocaust survivor Ben Helfgott.
Anthony Devlin/PA
We rarely ask ourselves why we should remember the Holocaust. We simply assume that we should. However, if we only go through the motions uttering phrases such as “we remember” and “never again”, remembering…
The anniversary of Armistice Day is chance to reflect on a shameful chapter in the history of journalism. Millions were killed and maimed during World War I, about a million from Britain and its empire…
A GB (sarin) filled M55 rocket, is destroyed.
US Army Chemical Materials Agency
It would take a hard-hearted person not to have been moved to tears by the images on our television screens of Syria over the last week - of infants struggling to breathe while their parents looked on…
Australia is not fulfilling its obligations to its veterans.
Flickr/Another Seb
Ten years ago this month, John Howard’s Minister for Veteran Affairs, Danna Vale, launched a searchable internet database known as the World War 2 Nominal Roll. It was intended to be a virtual war memorial…
The families of the interned men of the Caminiti clan in Queensland, circa 1940.
Supplied
When Fascist Italy declared war on Britain in mid-1940, almost 5,000 Italians living in Australia were imprisoned in internment camps. Few Italian families escaped the human cost of detention as “enemy…
By deliberately making false historical sources, students can learn to think more critically.
Historical hoax image www.shutterstock.com
What happens when you teach students how to lie? Answer: they become better historians. More than a decade ago, back in the days of Web 0.5, a student of mine submitted a generally well-written essay on…
After 70 years, Mein Kampf is to be re-printed.
Michael Dawes
Almost 70 years ago, Adolf Hitler committed suicide in the bunker of the Reich Chancellery, marking the downfall of one of the most murderous regimes the world has ever seen. Decades later, there is still…
The destruction of headstones from World War II have caused outrage around the world.
EPA/Mohamed Elryani
Around 50 Australians graves from World War II in Libya’s Benghazi Commonwealth war cemetery have been desecrated, apparently by Islamist militia. Footage of this violent destruction has spread around…
International Holocaust day is an important day to remember all atrocities in human history.
EPA/Jacek Bednarczyk
It’s hard to imagine that a whole race of people can be forgotten. But if no one chooses to remember them, genocide can mean just that, leaving a large hole in our history and dooming future minorities…
Italian-Australians deserve an apology for their mistreatment in internment camps in World War II.
Australian War Memorial Collection
Last month, the South Australian parliament unanimously accepted a bi-partisan motion moved by Labor member, Tony Piccolo, to acknowledge the wrongful internment of Italian civilians living in Australia…
There is an entire history of excuses given for why women shouldn’t be given roles in the military.
Australian War Memorial Collection
The recent plan to see women take on frontline combat roles in the Australian military from 2016 removes one of the last formal barriers to women’s participation in all realms of work. Unsurprisingly…
Uniformed attendees at the Remembrance Day service held in Sydney on November 11, 2010.
AAP/Greg Wood
Australia now officially recognises two special days to commemorate our national history of being at war but neither of them is Sorry Day. The Australian history of engagement in war is primarily honoured…
A rebel fighter mans a makeshift checkpoint in Tripoli.
AAP
Despite confusion in recent hours about exactly who the Libyan rebels have captured, it is clear that the Gaddafi regime has been severely weakened by the weekend advance into central Tripoli. This advance…