Australian Politics Forum - UK historian questions Gallipoli hysteria.

polite_gandalf

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Re: UK historian questions Gallipoli hysteria.
Reply #30 - Mar 20^th, 2015 at 10:39am

NorthOfNorth wrote on Mar 20^th, 2015 at 8:23am:

Gallipoli is now an Australian founding myth.

Like all founding myths, adhering to the letter of the truth is not required.

Those truths that detract from a founding myth are always expunged from the narrative and are relegated to 'unpatriotic heresy'.

The Gallipoli, or ANZAC myth is actually an extension of the Bush Legend - a largely manufactured mythology created by the likes of Patterson and Lawson to promote federation. The same themes of mateship and egalitarianism spill over, and like the Bush Legend was basically propaganda for a political agenda.

Interesting also that the ANZAC myth became largely dormant in the decades after the war, and really only revived as a central part of our national ethos from about the 1980s. Probably in conjunction with the rise of republicanism.

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Svengali

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Re: UK historian questions Gallipoli hysteria.
Reply #31 - Mar 20^th, 2015 at 11:30am

polite_gandalf wrote on Mar 20^th, 2015 at 10:39am:

NorthOfNorth wrote on Mar 20^th, 2015 at 8:23am:

Gallipoli is now an Australian founding myth.

Like all founding myths, adhering to the letter of the truth is not required.

Those truths that detract from a founding myth are always expunged from the narrative and are relegated to 'unpatriotic heresy'.

The Gallipoli, or ANZAC myth is actually an extension of the Bush Legend - a largely manufactured mythology created by the likes of Patterson and Lawson to promote federation. The same themes of mateship and egalitarianism spill over, and like the Bush Legend was basically propaganda for a political agenda.

Interesting also that the ANZAC myth became largely dormant in the decades after the war, and really only revived as a central part of our national ethos from about the 1980s. Probably in conjunction with the rise of republicanism.

Mix Gallipoli and beer and you have a powerful mix of dogma. The proletariat get tanked up, tired and emotional. Imagine what would happen if an actual military victory was being celebrated.

Does Australia have any military victories to celebrate?

Gallipoli was a military failure.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gallipoli_Campaign

Quote:

Russia's allies Britain and France launched a naval attack followed by an amphibious landing on the peninsula with the eventual aim of capturing the Ottoman capital of Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul).[7] The naval attack was repelled and, after eight months' fighting, with many casualties on both sides, the land campaign also failed and the invasion force was withdrawn to Egypt.

The campaign was one of the greatest Ottoman victories during the war and a major Allied failure. In Turkey, it is regarded as a defining moment in the nation's history: a final surge in the defence of the motherland as the Ottoman Empire crumbled. The struggle formed the basis for the Turkish War of Independence and the declaration of the Republic of Turkey eight years later under Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, who first rose to prominence as a commander at Gallipoli.
The campaign is often considered as marking the birth of national consciousness in Australia and New Zealand and the date of the landing, 25 April, is known as "Anzac Day" which is the most significant commemoration of military casualties and veterans in those two countries, surpassing Remembrance Day (Armistice Day).

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polite_gandalf

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Re: UK historian questions Gallipoli hysteria.
Reply #32 - Mar 20^th, 2015 at 11:40am

Svengali wrote on Mar 20^th, 2015 at 11:30am:

Does Australia have any military victories to celebrate?

You raise an interesting point. In my school history classes I learned that:

- the ANZACs would have marched into Constantinople if it wasn't for the inept British
- Australian diggers single handedly turned the tide of the entire war at Villers-Brettoneux
- The final victory of the allies in WWI was all due to a single General - Australia's Sir John Monash
- Aussie diggers turned the tide of WWII in Europe by halting Rommel's advance at Tobruk
- Australians single handedly turned the tide of the war in the pacific on the Kokoda trail

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Svengali

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Re: UK historian questions Gallipoli hysteria.
Reply #33 - Mar 20^th, 2015 at 11:57am

polite_gandalf wrote on Mar 20^th, 2015 at 11:40am:

Svengali wrote on Mar 20^th, 2015 at 11:30am:

Does Australia have any military victories to celebrate?

You raise an interesting point. In my school history classes I learned that:

- the ANZACs would have marched into Constantinople if it wasn't for the inept British
- Australian diggers single handedly turned the tide of the entire war at Villers-Brettoneux
- The final victory of the allies in WWI was all due to a single General - Australia's Sir John Monash
- Aussie diggers turned the tide of WWII in Europe by halting Rommel's advance at Tobruk
- Australians single handedly turned the tide of the war in the pacific on the Kokoda trail

Its unfair that Australia is not the leader of the free world after those successes.

We wuz robbed.

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Happy Lucky

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Re: UK historian questions Gallipoli hysteria.
Reply #34 - Mar 20^th, 2015 at 12:23pm

Lord Herbert wrote on Mar 20^th, 2015 at 6:51am:

Happy Lucky wrote on Mar 19^th, 2015 at 8:22pm:

For me it's a reminder to never fight under the British again. Landing our men in front of a series of crumbling cliffs and valleys was just stupid.

You forgot to read the footnote in the history books.

It was an Australian captain who misread the coastal map who then tragically dropped anchor in the wrong spot and caused the subsequent debacle under those towering cliffs.

Happy Lucky wrote on Mar 19^th, 2015 at 8:22pm:

Stupid British plans during WW1 and Singapore during WW2 killed a lot of good men. I suppose to many people it was our first instance of standing on our own 2 feet as a nation.

Nobody believed the Japs would take the hard route by coming down through the jungle tracks of the Malay peninsula. Same with Port Moresby - nobody dreamed the Japs would choose to take it by coming down through the hellish terrain of the Owen Stanley ranges.

Churchill got it wrong with Singapore ... and Australia's Thomas Blamey followed suit by getting it wrong with the defence of Port Moresby. They both thought the Japs would invade by sea.

Glass houses ...

And then at Gona on the northern end of the Kokoda track to the Papuan coastal region - Australia's Top Brass back at Port Moresby and Brisbane were ordering their junior officers in the field to order their men to make suicidal charges on open ground against Japanese machine gun positions - with huge loss of life.

My problem with Singapore was that the British Army failed to supply adequate air cover. That's the reason they got smashed. They failed in that crucial judgement.

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buzzanddidj Gold Member Online Australian Politics Posts: 14000 Eganstown, via Daylesford, VIC Gender:	Re: UK historian questions Gallipoli hysteria. Reply #35 - Mar 20^th, 2015 at 12:41pm Lord Herbert wrote on Mar 20^th, 2015 at 6:23am: *Incredibly, War Criminals like Thomas Blamey even refused to give these jungle-fighting troops camouflaged uniforms of green, but made them wear the khaki of desert warfare.* ... giving the Nippon Imperial Army the upper hand
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PZ547

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Re: UK historian questions Gallipoli hysteria.
Reply #36 - Mar 20^th, 2015 at 1:02pm

Svengali wrote on Mar 20^th, 2015 at 11:57am:

polite_gandalf wrote on Mar 20^th, 2015 at 11:40am:

Svengali wrote on Mar 20^th, 2015 at 11:30am:

Does Australia have any military victories to celebrate?

You raise an interesting point. In my school history classes I learned that:

- the ANZACs would have marched into Constantinople if it wasn't for the inept British
- Australian diggers single handedly turned the tide of the entire war at Villers-Brettoneux
- The final victory of the allies in WWI was all due to a single General - Australia's Sir John Monash
- Aussie diggers turned the tide of WWII in Europe by halting Rommel's advance at Tobruk
- Australians single handedly turned the tide of the war in the pacific on the Kokoda trail

Its unfair that Australia is not the leader of the free world after those successes.

We wuz robbed.

Quote:

Myth
: Bumbling British to blame for failed landing

Another myth is that British generals were to blame for the failure of the Gallipoli campaign.

Wrong again, says Professor Stanley. "The first landing was opposed by only about 80 Turks, and the defenders were soon massively out-numbered, but the invaders failed to advance inland as they had been ordered," he says.

He says the Australians' orders were to push on and capture a hill called Maltepe, seven kilometres inland. But the Australian brigadiers got nervous and told their men to dig in on the second ridge, and that's where they stayed for the rest of the eight-month campaign.

Professor Stanley says Australians wanted to blame somebody else for a failure that was basically a failure of Australian command

Quote:

Myth: The Anzacs landed in the wrong place

According to military historians including Professor Peter Stanley of the University of NSW, one of the most persistent myths about the Anzac landing at Gallipoli is that the troops came ashore at the wrong spot.

Professor Stanley says the journalist and historian Charles Bean helped generate this myth by quoting a naval officer, Commander Dix, as saying, "the damn fools have landed us in the wrong place!"

Professor Stanley says this is "not correct". "For decades people have tried to explain the failure at Gallipoli by blaming it on the Royal Navy, but the Royal Navy did land the troops in approximately the right spot. It was what happened after the landing where things went wrong," he says.

The head of military history at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra, Ashley Ekins, agrees. "It's a common misconception," he says. "In fact, the Anzacs landed pretty well right in the centre of the originally selected landing zone

Quote:

Myth: The Anzacs were bushmen and natural athletic soldiers

Historian Joan Beaumont from the Australian National University says the reality was that the Anzacs were "not really a race of athletes as they were sometimes called".

Professor Beaumont says that although official war correspondent Charles Bean described them as being considerably fitter and taller than the men from the British working classes, in fact some of the physical standards weren't high by modern standards

Myth: Simpson and his donkey

Professor Stanley, author of the book Simpson's Donkey, says the Simpson story is a very confused one. For one thing, he says, it's probable there was more than one donkey.

Mr Ekins adds that most Australians probably don't realise Simpson was an Englishman who joined up in Australia in an effort to get back home

He says contrary to the popular belief, Simpson may not have saved any lives.

"He did very brave work, he went into the gullies, he rescued men who were wounded, but mostly men with leg wounds," Mr Ekins says. "He may not have actually saved a single soldier who was going to die [/quote]

Read in full here:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-04-25/five-anzac-myths-put-to-the-test/5393750iiiiiiiii

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Happy Lucky

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Re: UK historian questions Gallipoli hysteria.
Reply #37 - Mar 20^th, 2015 at 1:06pm

PZ547 wrote on Mar 20^th, 2015 at 1:02pm:

Svengali wrote on Mar 20^th, 2015 at 11:57am:

polite_gandalf wrote on Mar 20^th, 2015 at 11:40am:

Svengali wrote on Mar 20^th, 2015 at 11:30am:

Does Australia have any military victories to celebrate?

You raise an interesting point. In my school history classes I learned that:

- the ANZACs would have marched into Constantinople if it wasn't for the inept British
- Australian diggers single handedly turned the tide of the entire war at Villers-Brettoneux
- The final victory of the allies in WWI was all due to a single General - Australia's Sir John Monash
- Aussie diggers turned the tide of WWII in Europe by halting Rommel's advance at Tobruk
- Australians single handedly turned the tide of the war in the pacific on the Kokoda trail

Its unfair that Australia is not the leader of the free world after those successes.

We wuz robbed.

Quote:

Myth
: Bumbling British to blame for failed landing

Another myth is that British generals were to blame for the failure of the Gallipoli campaign.

Wrong again, says Professor Stanley. "The first landing was opposed by only about 80 Turks, and the defenders were soon massively out-numbered, but the invaders failed to advance inland as they had been ordered," he says.

He says the Australians' orders were to push on and capture a hill called Maltepe, seven kilometres inland. But the Australian brigadiers got nervous and told their men to dig in on the second ridge, and that's where they stayed for the rest of the eight-month campaign.

Professor Stanley says Australians wanted to blame somebody else for a failure that was basically a failure of Australian command

Quote:

Myth: The Anzacs landed in the wrong place

According to military historians including Professor Peter Stanley of the University of NSW, one of the most persistent myths about the Anzac landing at Gallipoli is that the troops came ashore at the wrong spot.

Professor Stanley says the journalist and historian Charles Bean helped generate this myth by quoting a naval officer, Commander Dix, as saying, "the damn fools have landed us in the wrong place!"

Professor Stanley says this is "not correct". "For decades people have tried to explain the failure at Gallipoli by blaming it on the Royal Navy, but the Royal Navy did land the troops in approximately the right spot. It was what happened after the landing where things went wrong," he says.

The head of military history at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra, Ashley Ekins, agrees. "It's a common misconception," he says. "In fact, the Anzacs landed pretty well right in the centre of the originally selected landing zone

Quote:

Myth: The Anzacs were bushmen and natural athletic soldiers

Historian Joan Beaumont from the Australian National University says the reality was that the Anzacs were "not really a race of athletes as they were sometimes called".

Professor Beaumont says that although official war correspondent Charles Bean described them as being considerably fitter and taller than the men from the British working classes, in fact some of the physical standards weren't high by modern standards

Myth: Simpson and his donkey

Professor Stanley, author of the book Simpson's Donkey, says the Simpson story is a very confused one. For one thing, he says, it's probable there was more than one donkey.

Mr Ekins adds that most Australians probably don't realise Simpson was an Englishman who joined up in Australia in an effort to get back home

He says contrary to the popular belief, Simpson may not have saved any lives.

"He did very brave work, he went into the gullies, he rescued men who were wounded, but mostly men with leg wounds," Mr Ekins says. "He may not have actually saved a single soldier who was going to die

Read in full here:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-04-25/five-anzac-myths-put-to-the-test/5393750iiiiiiiii

[/quote]To get men back to medical help from the battlefield while dodging snipers deserves the myth around Simpson.

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PZ547

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Re: UK historian questions Gallipoli hysteria.
Reply #38 - Mar 20^th, 2015 at 1:11pm

.
.
Quote:

Professor Manning Clark, in his influential work A History of Australia, suggested a contrasting image of the innocent and honourable Anzac soldier.

From a range of sources he provided evidence of the soldiers' bad behaviour. For example, he documented that, as recruits, some indulged in sex orgies with an 18-year-old girl at the Broadmeadows camp before being shipped to war.[21] Others confronted police in violent scuffles on the streets of Melbourne.[21] Clark also recorded that in Egypt some soldiers burned the belongings of local people, brawled, got drunk and rioted, and spent sufficient time in the local brothels for many of them to contract venereal disease.[21]

Other scholars such as professor of politics at La Trobe University, Robert Manne, have also questioned the veracity of the Anzac legend, arguing that it is more accurate to describe the concept as a mythology.[3]

Quote:

According to Blair, the official war historian Charles Bean "advanced an idealised view of sacrifice to provide the nation with higher meaning and comfort as compensation for the death of its soldiers".[24]

Bean wrote in his diary that the "rule of censorship forbids criticism", and that the war correspondent should avoid "needlessly distressing their families at home".

Professor Verity Burgmann of the University of Melbourne argues that the prevailing picture of Anzac and later battles on the Western Front as the highest representation of national unity and shared sacrifice is a misrepresentation, because two conscription referenda were defeated in Australia, and many Australians were totally opposed to any participation in the war

Quote:

In 2008 an editorial in the Sydney Morning Herald stated:

But why should Australians now, 90 years later, be still so eager for some stereotypical reaffirmation of their character? Why the self-doubt? The danger in the transformation - as remembrance replaces memory, and nationalism replaces remembrance - is that the solemnity and the serious purpose of Anzac Day will be lost in an irrelevant search for some kind of essence of Australianness.[27]

Similarly, historian Mark McKenna disputes the notion that the character traits that supposedly define the Anzac spirit are uniquely and demonstrably Australian, arguing that these virtues are in fact universal, being "found in Palestine and Iraq, in Darfur and East Timor, in Afghanistan and Zimbabwe."[28]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anzac_spirit

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PZ547

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Re: UK historian questions Gallipoli hysteria.
Reply #39 - Mar 20^th, 2015 at 1:19pm

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.

Quote:

In Australia, there was a great deal of pressure on young men, and their families, to enlist. Fierce debates over the issue of conscription raged, and a referendum was held on the issue in 1916. A pro-conscription poster produced in 1916 focuses on how Australia's contribution was perceived by other nations:

" VOTE YES! Unless you want the world to think that Australians are a set of miserable cowards who are content to have their lives and liberties saved for them by the sacrifices of better men"

Interestingly, the service records of men and women who were born in Australia state that they were 'British born'. At the time, the feeling was that one's duty was to serve the 'mother country'—a reality for most Australians whose parents or grandparents really were British born.

Thousands of women journeyed to the battlefields to work officially as army nurses or with the Red Cross as members of the VAD (Voluntary Aid Detachment). Many more had no official role at all but worked setting up canteens to distribute food to soldiers travelling to and from the front and as ambulance drivers and volunteers in the casualty stations, assisting doctors and nurses. Leave was almost unknown except in special circumstances

Some nurses and VADs were wounded from shrapnel. Australian Sister Rachel Pratt received the military medal for gallantry for staying at her post and continuing to work, despite being wounded. Others died young.

Most women suffered from severe infections, especially to their hands, from the suppurating wounds they trended ... The women too caught the diseases of the trenches: typhus, dysentery, measles, mumps and influenza

http://www.australia.gov.au/about-australia/australian-story/australians-on-the-western-front

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PZ547

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Re: UK historian questions Gallipoli hysteria.
Reply #40 - Mar 20^th, 2015 at 1:31pm

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.

Quote:

At least a quarter of the Australian volunteers were born in Great Britain and Ireland, Robert Rhodes James's estimate being 35 per cent.

About 98 per cent of the rest were of British or Irish origin.

The immigration rate from the United Kingdom was exceptionally high between 1910 and 1914. 'Simpson' - 'the man with the donkey' was John Simpson Kirkpatrick, a recent Geordie emigrant

Quote:

When Australian units were photographed in Egypt they usually chose themselves to wear the standard British pith helmet.

Most Anzac units landing at Anzac Cove wore British-issue caps, but when after the war George Lambert was commissioned to paint that scene he was instructed to show them with slouch hats.

(

see photo

)

Lots of information here:

http://www.diggerhistory.info/pages-battles/ww1/anzac/gallipoli-facts.htm

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Lord Herbert Gold Member Offline Posts: 34441 Gender:	Re: UK historian questions Gallipoli hysteria. Reply #41 - Mar 20^th, 2015 at 1:39pm polite_gandalf wrote on Mar 20^th, 2015 at 11:40am: - The final victory of the allies in WWI was all due to a single General - Australia's Sir John Monash Did you know Monash was a Jew ... ? (I'm just testing your Islamic automatic reflexes).
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Lord Herbert

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Re: UK historian questions Gallipoli hysteria.
Reply #42 - Mar 20^th, 2015 at 1:43pm

Happy Lucky wrote on Mar 20^th, 2015 at 12:23pm:

My problem with Singapore was that the British Army failed to supply adequate air cover. That's the reason they got smashed. They failed in that crucial judgement.

I believe the planes were actually on their way to Singapore before they were then diverted to what was considered a more urgent engagement.

You probably know that Singapore's heavy guns were all set in concrete and facing out to sea.

Prime Minister John Curtin should be celebrated far more than he is. He was the only one in the Australian military and in politics who stood up to Churchill and demanded the return of Australian troops from the Middle East to defend the homeland against the Japs.

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Happy Lucky

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Re: UK historian questions Gallipoli hysteria.
Reply #43 - Mar 20^th, 2015 at 1:49pm

Lord Herbert wrote on Mar 20^th, 2015 at 1:43pm:

Happy Lucky wrote on Mar 20^th, 2015 at 12:23pm:

Lord Herbert wrote on Mar 20^th, 2015 at 6:51am:

Happy Lucky wrote on Mar 19^th, 2015 at 8:22pm:

For me it's a reminder to never fight under the British again. Landing our men in front of a series of crumbling cliffs and valleys was just stupid.

You forgot to read the footnote in the history books.

It was an Australian captain who misread the coastal map who then tragically dropped anchor in the wrong spot and caused the subsequent debacle under those towering cliffs.

Happy Lucky wrote on Mar 19^th, 2015 at 8:22pm:

Stupid British plans during WW1 and Singapore during WW2 killed a lot of good men. I suppose to many people it was our first instance of standing on our own 2 feet as a nation.

Nobody believed the Japs would take the hard route by coming down through the jungle tracks of the Malay peninsula. Same with Port Moresby - nobody dreamed the Japs would choose to take it by coming down through the hellish terrain of the Owen Stanley ranges.

Churchill got it wrong with Singapore ... and Australia's Thomas Blamey followed suit by getting it wrong with the defence of Port Moresby. They both thought the Japs would invade by sea.

Glass houses ...

And then at Gona on the northern end of the Kokoda track to the Papuan coastal region - Australia's Top Brass back at Port Moresby and Brisbane were ordering their junior officers in the field to order their men to make suicidal charges on open ground against Japanese machine gun positions - with huge loss of life.

My problem with Singapore was that the British Army failed to supply adequate air cover. That's the reason they got smashed. They failed in that crucial judgement.

I believe the planes were actually on their way to Singapore before they were then diverted to what was considered a more urgent engagement.

You probably know that Singapore's heavy guns were all set in concrete and facing out to sea.

I suppose they needed all their planes for the Battle Of Britain. Yeah, I know about the big guns. It whole thing was a debacle. Galipoli was a debacle too. Whoever planned those two should have been put in prison. I know Winston Churchill planned one of them. I never question the British fighting man but the private school generals they used.

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Lord Herbert Gold Member Offline Posts: 34441 Gender:	Re: UK historian questions Gallipoli hysteria. Reply #44 - Mar 20^th, 2015 at 1:50pm PZ547 wrote on Mar 20^th, 2015 at 1:31pm: Most Anzac units landing at Anzac Cove wore British-issue caps, but when after the war George Lambert was commissioned to paint that scene he was instructed to show them with slouch hats. What do they say is the first casualty of war ... ?
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