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Articles on Military history

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The Cu Chi tunnels may be the most popular of the ‘war tourism’ attractions in Vietnam. www.dreamtime.com

Will tourism transform the way Australians remember the Vietnam War?

Might the rise of heritage tourism and the increasing ease of international travel lead to more of Australia’s military experiences overseas being better understood?
Yuttasak Jannarong / shutterstock

Have humans always gone to war?

Archaeological remains, traditional tribes and conflict among chimpanzees can tell us much about the history of human warfare.
Cine Petro Atletica, once Huambo’s finest cinema, was destroyed during fierce fighting in Angola’s bloody civil war. Reuters/John Chiahemen MH/WS

A new narrative unfolds about South Africa’s protracted war in Angola

Apartheid South Africa started a war in which it could not maintain a strategic advantage. It misread the quest for national liberation and international opinion that undermined its effectiveness.
Robert Menzies meets the US defence secretary, Robert McNamara, at the Pentagon in 1964, the year before committing Australia to the escalating war. Wikimedia Commons/PHC/Ralph Seghers

Fifty years ago today, Menzies’ call on Vietnam changed Australia’s course

The anniversary of Menzies’ fateful decision to commit troops to the escalating war in Vietnam marks a turning point that is at least as significant as the Gallipoli landings for Australia today.
‘Let me try and put sacked SBS sports journalist Scott McIntyre’s tweets in historical perspective.’ EPA/Sedat Suna

Anzacs behaving badly: Scott McIntyre and contested history

It is naïve to expect men to kill and die for their country, to live through the horrors of a particularly barbaric war, and to come out the other end unscathed – despite our popular myths.
Drape ‘Anzac’ over an argument and, like a magic cloak, the argument is sacrosanct – even though it shouldn’t be. AAP/Alexander Turnbull Library

The past is not sacred: the ‘history wars’ over Anzac

Never has the Anzac tradition been more popular and yet never have its defenders been more chauvinistic, bellicose and intolerant of other viewpoints.
What is obscured in our understanding of returned servicemen’s problems is the private pain of families who bear the brunt of these psychological strains. AAP/Dan Himbrechts

Marked men: anxiety, alienation and the aftermath of war

Australia has continually faced a returned soldier crisis. This is something that marked men returning from all the wars of modern memory – from the Great War to Afghanistan and Iraq.
Protesters attend a huge anti-conscription rally at Yarra Bank in Melbourne, 1916. National Library of Australia, n6487142

Lest we forget our other heroes of war, fighting for freedom at home

The democratic freedoms Australians hold dear today – freedom of the press, assembly and speech – were won on home soil by courageous women and men who sacrificed much, but rarely recognised for it.
The recent concentration on Victoria Cross heroes as major ‘carriers’ of the Anzac legend has skewed Australian military history. AAP/Mark Graham

A hundred in a million: our obsession with the Victoria Cross

Australians now seem so fascinated by the Victoria Cross that such attention has begun to get in the way of a balanced perspective on its place in military history.
The Gallipoli campaign is frequently celebrated as the ‘birth’ of Australia as a nation, but were we already well on our way? AWM

How the Great War shaped the foundations of Australia’s future

Every country has its most symbolic year from each of the world wars, and can trace the consequences of the bloodletting that accompanied the global realignment of the last century.

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