Resources – Anzac War Trophies

Selected reference texts, and published research – scholarly and otherwise – bearing mostly on the subject of Australian and New Zealand war trophies.

Journal & Magazine Articles

Barber, Bernard. “Place, Symbol, and Utilitarian Function in War Memorials.” Social Forces 28, no. 1 (1949): 64–68. https://doi.org/10.2307/2572100.

Bartlett, R., & Payne, R. (2014). Britain’s Crimean War Trophy Guns: The Case of Ludlow and the Marches. History (London), 99(337), 652–669. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-229X.12068

Casey, Shane. “Australia’s largest single war trophy.” Wartime Magazine, Issue 82 (Autumn, 2018)

Clayton, Mark. “Seeds of discontent.” Queensland History Journal, Vol. 23, No. 9, May 2018: 563-580 .

Cooke, Peter. “The Sorry Steel: Trophy Guns in New Zealand’s World War One Commemoration.” Journal of New Zealand Studies, no. 18 (2014): 56–65. https://ojs.victoria.ac.nz/jnzs/article/download/2187/2028/2967.

Clayton, Mark. “The Price of Honour,” Traces 18 (2022), 32-33.

Clayton, Mark. Symbols of Savagery: Australia’s Second World War Trophy Guns, Queensland Journal of Military History 3 (2024), pp. 45–55.

Govern, Kevin H., Licit War Trophies as a Means of Preserving Art and Culture in Times of War ( 2022). Ave Maria Law Review, Vol. 20, No. 1, 2022.

Graves, Donald E. “Booty! The Story of Canada’s World War One Trophy Collection,” Canadian Journal of Arms Collecting 23, 1 (1985), 3–10.

Hadnutt, Nick. “Engines of destruction: Biographies of a museum’s war trophies.” Memoirs of the Queensland Museum, Culture 11, Jun 2020, 7-24.

Huddie, Paul. “‘Removing Some Big Guns’: The Story of Dublin’s Crimean War Trophy Guns from 1857 to the Present,” Dublin Historical Record 67, no. 1 (2014): 6–18. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24616018.

Hunter, Doug. “Trophy Guns at Albury.” Sabretache 48, no. 2 (2007): 13–16. https://search-informit-org.ezproxy.cqu.edu.au/doi/10.3316/ielapa.200707859.

Melrose, Craig. “Historicising Australia Through Trophies: The memorial landscape 1919 – 1925.” Unpublished paper presented to the Australian Historical Association Conference, Melbourne, July 2008. https://assets.blog.anzacwartrophies.org/2020/05/Craig-Melrose-AHA-2008.doc

Craig, Melrose. “Triumphalism and Sacrificialism: Tradition in the Public Memory of the First World War in Australia, 1919-39.” In: Crotty, Martin (Editor). When the Soldiers Return: November 2007 Conference Proceedings. Brisbane: University of Queensland, School of History, Philosophy, Religion and Classics, 2009: 236-247. ISBN: 9781864999273.

Olsen, Wes. “The Emden Guns,” Naval Historical Review, December 2018.

David Pearson & George Baily, “Trash for treasure,” Wartime Magazine, Issue 9 (Summer 2000), 54-55.

Pearson, David & Browning, Kevin. “Neglecting the Past: First World War 150-mm German Trophy Gun 505,” Cannonball, no.89 (Autumn 2015), 38-60.

Pearson, David, and Graham Connah. “Retrieving the Cultural Biography of a Gun.” Journal of Conflict Archaeology 8.1 (2013): 41-73.

Pearson, David & Connah, Graham. “Battlefield Casualty: The Archaeology of a Captured Gun.” Journal of Conflict Archaeology, 5:1 (2009), 231-256.

Pearson, David & Vanderkelen, Mike. “The show must go on, the road for victory: The MGO technical armory and the first victory loan, 1944,” Sabretache 59, no.1 (March 2018), 4-30.

Taylor, William M. “Everyday War Memorials to the End of All Wars: Building Cemeteries and Collecting War Trophies in a Culture of Commemoration.” Southerly 74, no. 1 (2014): 105–26. https://search-informit-org.ezproxy.cqu.edu.au/doi/10.3316/informit.796327108801897.

Wellington, Jennifer. 2019. “War Trophies, War Memorabilia, and the Iconography of Victory in the British Empire.” Journal of Contemporary History 54 (4): 737-758. doi.org/10.1177/0022009419864159.

Wellington, Jennifer, and Christopher Sommer. 2025. “Flesh and Iron: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on Woundedness in War Exhibitions.” Critical Military Studies 11 (4): 449–65. doi:10.1080/23337486.2025.2480005.

Winter, Christine. “The Theatre with the Most Meagre Audience”: War Trophies from Ex-German New Guinea.” Cogent Arts & Humanities 2.1 (2015): Cogent Arts & Humanities, 31 December 2015, Vol.2(1).

Walton, Steven A. “The Allied Expositionary Forces in WWI: From Encouragement to Commemoration of War,” Proceedings of Armistice & Aftermath: A Michigan Tech Symposium on WW1, 28-29 September 2018.

Databases

Canadian Great War Trophies, last updated 2023, accessed 22 January 2024.

Australian Second World War gun trophies

Australia’s Frirst World War gun trophies

Theses

Clayton, Mark. To the victor belongs the spoils : a history of the Australian War Trophy Collection, 1914-1993. Master’s thesis, Monash University, 1993.

Fox, Aaron. Silent Sentinels: The War Trophies of the First New Zealand Expeditionary Force in War and Peace. Honours thesis, University of Otago, 1987. https://kiamatetoa.org.nz/drathesis.php

Griffin, Christopher W. Griffin. “Veterans at War: The American Legion and Civilian Mobilization in World War II.” § 6.5. PhD diss., Florida State University, 2012.

Hunter, Edith M. “Pounding Swords into Swords: War Monuments Lost During the Scrap Metal Drives of World War II.” M.A. thesis, Iowa State University, 2022. https://assets.blog.anzacwartrophies.org/2024/05/Edith-M.-Hunter-Pounding-Swords-into-Swords-War-Monuments-Lost-During-the-Scrap-Metal-Drives-of-World-War-II.pdf

Soye, Edward Peter. Canadian war trophies: Arthur Doughty and German aircraft allocated to Canada after the First World War. M.A. thesis, Royal Military College of Canada, 2009.

Monographs

D.N. Brook, Bruno and his guns (1978)

Blogs

Pearson, David. artillerymarkings.com

Casey, Shane, “The first guns captured by the Australians on the Western Front – July 1916.” Australian War Memorial (blog), 22 July 2016. https://www.awm.gov.au/articles/blog/first-guns-captured

Clayton, Mark. “First of Thousands.” State Library of Queensland (blog), November 14, 2018. https://www.slq.qld.gov.au/blog/first-thousands

Clayton, Mark. “The price of honour.” State Library of Queensland (blog), October 28, 2019. https://www.slq.qld.gov.au/blog/price-honour

“Mitchell First World War Memorial and Memorial Obelisk.” State Library of Queensland (blog), April 10, 2015. https://www.slq.qld.gov.au/blog/mitchell-first-world-war-memorial-and-memorial-obelisk

References

American Expeditionary Forces. Notes on German Artillery Materiel: Divisional artillery (A.G. Printing Department, G.H.Q.A.E.F., 1918)

Imagery

https://www.flickr.com/groups/2176233@N21/

https://x.com/MilHistNow/status/1904321473302417420?t=JuQJtAsSNsVmb56doEiQGQ&s=09 (NAID: 24858)

Filming report no. 1732 by Jehan Fouquet on 08/09/1918, reference 14.18 A 342, ECPAD, https://archives.ecpad.fr:443/ark:39674/1f13415a24126164acf1fa163ef0300b.moteur=arko_default_6989dacfef00f