Anzacs Long Shadow

‘A century ago we got it wrong. We sent thousands of young Australians on a military operation that was barely more than a disaster. It’s right that a hundred years later we should feel strongly about that. But have we got our remembrance right? What lessons haven’t we learned about war, and what might be the cost of our Anzac obsession?’ Defence analyst and former army officer James Brown believes that Australia is expending too much time, money and emotion on the Anzac legend, and that today’s soldiers are suffering for it. Vividly evoking the war in Afghanistan, Brown reveals the experience of the modern soldier. He looks closely at the companies and clubs that trade on the Anzac story. He shows that Australians spend a lot more time looking after dead warriors than those who are alive. We focus on a cult of remembrance, instead of understanding a new world of soldiering and strategy. And we make it impossible to criticise the Australian Defence Force, even when it makes the same mistakes over and over. None of this is good for our soldiers or our ability to deal with a changing world. With respect and passion, Brown shines a new light on Anzac’s long shadow and calls for change. "Bold, original, challenging - James Brown tackles the burgenoning Anzac industry and asks Australians to re-examine how we think about the military and modern-day service." - Leigh Sales "The best book yet written, not just on Australia's Afghan war, but on war itself and the creator/destroyer myth of Anzac." - John Birmingham James Brown is a former Australian Army officer, who commanded a cavalry troop in Southern Iraq, served on the Australian taskforce headquarters in Baghdad, and was attached to Special Forces in Afghanistan. Today he is the Military Fellow at the Lowy Institute for International Policy where he works on strategic military issues and defence policy. He also chairs the NSW Government’s Contemporary Veterans Forum. He lives in Sydney.

Winner of the 2014 PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize for the Best Work of History "Brilliant…the most challenging and intelligent book on the Great War and our perceptions of it that any of us will read." —John Charley, The Times [London] One of the most violent conflicts in the history of civilization, World War I has been strangely forgotten in American culture. It has become a ghostly war fought in a haze of memory, often seen merely as a distant preamble to World War II. In The Long Shadow critically acclaimed historian David Reynolds seeks to broaden our vision by assessing the impact of the Great War across the twentieth century. He shows how events in that turbulent century—particularly World War II, the Cold War, and the collapse of Communism—shaped and reshaped attitudes to 1914–18. By exploring big themes such as democracy and empire, nationalism and capitalism, as well as art and poetry, The Long Shadow is stunningly broad in its historical perspective. Reynolds throws light on the vast expanse of the last century and explains why 1914–18 is a conflict that America is still struggling to comprehend. Forging connections between people, places, and ideas, The Long Shadow ventures across the traditional subcultures of historical scholarship to offer a rich and layered examination not only of politics, diplomacy, and security but also of economics, art, and literature. The result is a magisterial reinterpretation of the place of the Great War in modern history.

In 1916, one million men fought in the first battle of the Somme. Victory hinged on their ability to capture a small village called Pozieres. After five attempts to seize it, the British called in the Anzacs to complete this seemingly impossible task. At midnight on 23 July 1916, thousands of Australians stormed Pozieres. Forty-five days later they were relieved, having suffered 23,000 casualties to gain a few miles of barren landscape. Despite the toll, the operation was heralded as a stunning victory. Yet for the exhausted survivors, the war-weary public, and the families of the dead and maimed, victory came at a terrible cost. Drawing on the letters and diaries of the men who fought at Pozieres, this superb book reveals a battlefield drenched in chaos and fear. Bennett sheds light on the story behind the official history, re-creating the experiences of those men who fought in one of the largest and most devastating battles of the Great War and returned home, all too often, as shattered men.

A newly updated, lavishly illustrated account of the ANZACs involvement in the Western Front—complete with walking and driving tours of 28 battlefields. With rare photographs and documents from the Australian War Memorial archive and extensive travel information, this is the most comprehensive guide to the battlefields of the Western Front on the market. Every chapter covers not just the battles, but the often larger-than-life personalities who took part in them. Following a chronological order from 1916 through 1918, the book leads readers through every major engagement the Australian and New Zealanders fought in and includes tactical considerations and extracts from the personal diaries of soldiers. Anzacs On The Western Front: The Australian War Memorial Battlefield Guide is the perfect book for anyone who wants to explore the battlefields of the Western Front, either in-person or from the comfort of home. It does far more than show where the lines that generals drew on their maps actually ran on the ground and retrace the footsteps of the men advancing towards them. It is a graphic and wide-ranging record of the Australian and New Zealand achievements, and of the huge sacrifices both nations made, in what is still arguably the most grueling episode in their history. A complete guide to the ANZAC battlefields on the Western Front—featuring short essays on important personalities and events, details on relevant cemeteries, museums, memorials and nearby places of interest, and general travel information. Carefully researched and illustrated with colorful maps and both modern and period photographs. Includes information about the Sir John Monash Centre near Villers-Bretonneux in France—a new interpretative museum set to open on Anzac Day 2018, coinciding with the centenary of the Year of Victory 1918. Anzacs On The Western Front: The Australian War Memorial Battlefield Guide is the perfect book for historians, history buffs, military enthusiasts, and Australians and New Zealanders who want to explore the military history and battlefields of their heritage.

Raise a glass for an Anzac. Run for an Anzac. Camp under the stars for an Anzac. Is there anything Australians won’t do to keep the Anzac legend at the centre of our national story? But standing firm on the other side of the Anzac enthusiasts is a chorus of critics claiming that the appetite for Anzac is militarising our history and indoctrinating our children. So how are we to make sense of this struggle over how we remember the Great War? Anzac, the Unauthorised Biography cuts through the clamour to provide a much-needed historical perspective on the battle over Anzac. It traces how, since 1915, Australia’s memory of the Great War has declined and surged, reflecting the varied and complex history of the Australian nation itself. Most importantly, it asks why so many Australians persist with the fiction that the nation was born on 25 April 1915.

In Britain we have lost touch with the Great War. Our overriding sense now is of a meaningless, futile bloodbath in the mud of Flanders -- of young men whose lives were cut off in their prime for no evident purpose. But by reducing the conflict to personal tragedies, however moving, we have lost the big picture: the history has been distilled into poetry. In TheLong Shadow, critically acclaimed author David Reynolds seeks to redress the balance by exploring the true impact of 1914-18 on the 20th century. Some of the Great War's legacies were negative and pernicious but others proved transformative in a positive sense. Exploring big themes such as democracy and empire, nationalism and capitalism and re-examining the differing impacts of the War on Britain, Ireland and the United States,TheLong Shadowthrows light on the whole of the last century and demonstrates that 1914-18 is a conflict that Britain, more than any other nation, is still struggling to comprehend. Stunningly broad in its historical perspective, The Long Shadowis a magisterial and seismic re-presentation of the Great War.

Over the past thirty years the Australian travel experience has been ‘Aboriginalized’. Aboriginality has been appropriated to furnish the Australian nation with a unique and identifiable tourist brand. This is deeply ironic given the realities of life for many Aboriginal people in Australian society. On the one hand, Aboriginality in the form of artworks, literature, performances, landscapes, sport, and famous individuals is celebrated for the way it blends exoticism, mysticism, multiculturalism, nationalism, and reconciliation. On the other hand, in the media, cinema, and travel writing, Aboriginality in the form of the lived experiences of Aboriginal people has been exploited in the service of moral panic, patronized in the name of white benevolence, or simply ignored. For many travel writers, this irony - the clash between different regimes of valuing Aboriginality - is one of the great challenges to travelling in Australia. Travel Writing from Black Australia examines the ambivalence of contemporary travelers’ engagements with Aboriginality. Concentrating on a period marked by the rise of discourses on Aboriginality championing indigenous empowerment, self-determination, and reconciliation, the author analyses how travel to Black Australia has become, for many travelers, a means of discovering ‘new’—and potentially transformative—styles of interracial engagement.

By the time of the Armistice, Villers-Bretonneux - once a lively and flourishing French town - had been largely destroyed, and half its population had fled or died. From March to August 1918, Villers-Bretonneux formed part of an active front line, at which Australian troops were heavily involved. As a result, it holds a significant place in Australian history. Villers-Bretonneux has since become an open-air memorial to Australia's participation in the First World War. Successive Australian governments have valourised the Australian engagement, contributing to an evolving Anzac narrative that has become entrenched in Australia's national identity. Our Corner of the Somme provides an eye-opening analysis of the memorialisation of Australia's role on the Western Front and the Anzac mythology that so heavily contributes to Australians' understanding of themselves. In this rigorous and richly detailed study, Romain Fathi challenges accepted historiography by examining the assembly, projection and performance of Australia's national identity in northern France.

T. E. Ruth (1875–1956) was one of the most controversial Baptist ministers ever to serve in Australia. After a successful career in England as preacher, pastor, and writer, Ruth came to the significant Collins Street Baptist Church in Melbourne in 1914. During the tumultuous years of the World War, Ruth cared for the bereaved and bewildered people in his congregation and in the city. He also led public debates about conscription, engaging in intense platform clashes with his Catholic opponent, Archbishop Daniel Mannix. He later moved to the Pitt Street Congregational Church in Sydney where he was soon involved in public opposition to the Labor premier J. T. Lang as well as becoming a popular columnist in the secular press. To his critics he was a “sectarian bigot” and was mocked as “Ruthless Ruth”; to others, he was an ardent Empire loyalist, an admired and successful Protestant defender. Some critics accused him of being a Christian spiritualist and others have suggested that he formulated a theology for fascism. Ruth denounced millennial Adventism and hellfire eschatology as he affirmed universalism and a continuing spiritual development after death. This fascinating study of a progressive thinker, public theologian, and controversialist illuminates one of the more divisive and formative periods in Australian religious and political life.