‘Total war’ in Australia: Civilian Mobilisation and Commitment, 1914–18

Ziino, Bart

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-51520-5_10

Bart Ziino³

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Abstract

This chapter examines the processes of making total war in Australia between 1914 and 1918. Despite their distance from the main fighting fronts and a less intensive industrial mobilisation than elsewhere, Australians were deeply enmeshed in sustaining the war through their mobilisation of human and emotional resources. The first part of the chapter analyses the difficulty that Australian histories of the war have had in explaining civilian determination to prosecute the war, preferring to see greater agency in the state and its coercive powers. The second half of the chapter argues that an analysis of private sentiment in Australia during the war helps to locate Australian civilian commitment within the same processes that sustained the war at its very centre.

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Notes

1.
Most notable, but certainly not alone, are a series of studies of the repressive uses of the War Precautions Act, censorship and surveillance during the war. See Ian Turner, Sydney’s Burning (Melbourne: Heinemann, 1967); Verity Burgmann, “The Iron Heel: The Suppression of the IWW during World War 1,” in What Rough Beast? The State and Social Order in Australian History, ed. Sydney Labour History Group (Sydney: George Allen & Unwin, 1982), 171–91; Frank Cain, The Origins of Political Surveillance in Australia (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1983); Kevin Fewster, “The Operation of State Apparatuses In Times of Crisis. Censorship and Conscription, 1916,” War & Society 3, no. 1 (1985): 37–54.
2.
Jay Winter and Antoine Prost, The Great War in History: Debates and Controversies, 1914 to the Present (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 156–7.
3.
Ernest Scott, Australia During the War, vol. 11, Official History of Australia in the War of 1914–1918, 8th ed. (Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1941).
4.
Carolyn Holbrook, “Marxism for Beginner Nations: Radical Nationalist Historians and the Great War,” Labour History, no. 103 (2012): 123–44.
5.
L.L. Robson, The First AIF: A Study of Its Recruitment, 1914–1918 (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1970), 3–4.
6.
Marilyn Lake, A Divided Society: Tasmania During World War I (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1975), 195–6; L. L. Robson, “Reviews,” Historical Studies, no. 67 (1976): 272.
7.
Gerhard Fischer, Enemy Aliens: Internment and the Home Front Experience in Australia 1914–1920 (Brisbane: University of Queensland Press, 1989), 5.
8.
Judith Smart, “Was the Great War Australia’s War? A Domestic Perspective with Particular Reference to Victoria,” in The Great War: Gains and Losses—ANZAC and Empire, ed. Craig Wilcox (Canberra: Australian War Memorial/Australian National University, 1995), 26–7.
9.
Raymond Evans, Loyalty and Disloyalty: Social Conflict on the Queensland Home Front, 1914–18 (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1987), 30.
10.
Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau and Annette Becker, 14–18: Understanding the Great War (New York: Hill and Wang, 2002), 3.
11.
Roger Chickering and Stig Förster, “Introduction,” in The Shadows of Total War: Europe, East Asia, and the United States, 1919–1939, eds. Roger Chickering and Stig Förster (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 13.
12.
John Horne, “Introduction: Mobilizing for ‘Total War,’ 1914–1918,” in State, Society and Mobilization in Europe during the First World War, ed. John Horne (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 4–5.
13.
Ibid., 3-4.
14.
Martha Hanna, “A Republic of Letters: The Epistolary Tradition in France during World War I,” American Historical Review 108, no. 5 (2003): 1342.
15.
Winter and Prost, Great War in History, 169.
16.
Maureen Healy, Vienna and the Fall of the Habsburg Empire: Total War and Everyday Life in World War I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 3.
17.
Roger Chickering, “Why Are We Still Interested in This Old War?,” in Finding Common Ground: New Directions in First World War Studies, eds. Jennifer D. Keene and Michael S. Neiberg (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 12–13.
18.
K.S. Inglis, Sacred Places: War Memorials in the Australian Landscape (Melbourne: Miegunyah Press, 1998); Alistair Thomson, Anzac Memories: Living with the legend (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1994); Joy Damousi, The Labour of Loss: Mourning, Memory and Wartime Bereavement in Australia (Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1999); Tanja Luckins, The Gates of Memory: Australian People’s Experiences and Memories of Loss in the Great War (Fremantle: Curtin University Books, 2004); Pat Jalland, Australian Ways of Death: A Social and Cultural History 1840–1918 (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 2002); Bruce Scates, Return to Gallipoli: Walking the Battlefields of the Great War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006); Bart Ziino, A Distant Grief: Australians, War Graves and the Great War (Perth: UWA Press, 2007).
19.
Marina Larsson, Shattered Anzacs: Living with the Scars of War (Sydney: UNSW Press, 2009).
20.
John McQuilton, Rural Australia and the Great War: From Tarrawingee to Tangambalanga (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2001).
21.
Joan Beaumont, Broken Nation: Australians in the Great War (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2013), 38.
22.
Joan Beaumont, “‘Unitedly We Have Fought’: Imperial Loyalty and the Australian War Effort,” International Affairs 90, no. 2 (2014): 397–412.
23.
Beaumont, Broken Nation, xvii.
24.
Martyn Lyons, “French Soldiers and Their Correspondence: Towards a History of Writing Practices in the First World War,” French History 17, no. 1 (2003): 87; Hanna, “A Republic of Letters”, 1339.
25.
Michael Roper, The Secret Battle: Emotional Survival in the Great War (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009).
26.
Christa Hämmerle, “‘You Let a Weeping Woman Call you Home?’ Private Correspondences during the First World War in Austria and Germany,” in Epistolary Selves: Letters and Letter-Writers, 1600–1945, ed. Rebecca Earle (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999), 157.
27.
Katie Holmes, “Between the Lines: The Letters and Diaries of the First World War Australian Nurses,” Webber’s 2 (1990): 39–40.
28.
Raphael Cilento, diary, 4 August 1914, UQFL44, Box 11/16, Fryer Library, University of Queensland, Brisbane.
29.
Gerty Hall to My dearest Ron and Kattie, 4 [sic 5] August 1914, NS234/22/1/2, Tasmanian Archive and Heritage Office, Hobart.
30.
J. Rew to D. McGrath, 19 November 1914, in Eric Endacott, “Inventing to Win the War: Amateur Inventors and the Australian Home Front, 1914–1918” (Honours thesis, Deakin University, 2012), 18.
31.
Rev. Absalom Deans to Rose Scott, 21 December 1914, A2281, CY Reel 2104, State Library of New South Wales (hereafter cited as SLNSW).
32.
F.D. Michaelis to Dave and Marie Theomin, 24 September 1914, A.2002.0060, Box 18, Series 13/8, University of Melbourne Archives (hereafter cited as UMA).
33.
Margaret Stanley to mother, 3 November 1914, MS 10668, Box 1497/3 (B), State Library of Victoria, Melbourne (hereafter cited as SLV).
34.
Frank Tate to Barrett, 12 May 1915, 3DRL 250, Item 106, Australian War Memorial, Canberra (hereafter cited as AWM).
35.
See especially Melanie Oppenheimer, All Work No Pay: Australian Civilian Volunteers in War (Walcha: Ohio Productions, 2002).
36.
Arthur Fry to Dene Fry, 8 October 1915, MSS 1159, ADD-ON 2076/BOX 5, SLNSW.
37.
H.A. Twiby to Andrew Newell, 6 July 1915, MS 00064, Box 196-6, Royal Historical Society Victoria.
38.
Chickering and Förster, Shadows of Total War, 5.
39.
Mother to Will Palstra, 25 June 1917, A.1984.0057, Box 1, UMA.
40.
Frankie to Alfred Derham, 12 September 1916, A.1979.0096, 7/2/1/6, UMA.
41.
Ethel Goddard to Charles Goddard, 30 April 1917, MS 13106, Box 3777/5, SLV.
42.
Cited in Bart Ziino, “‘I Feel I Can no Longer Endure’: Families and the Limits of Commitment in Australia, 1914–19,” in Endurance and the First World War: Experiences and Legacies in New Zealand and Australia, eds. David Monger, Sarah Murray and Katie Pickles (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014), 113.
43.
Louisa Hughes to Geoffrey Hughes, 3 April 1918, MSS 1222/2, SLNSW.
44.
Isabella Parkes to Murray Parkes, 8 September 1918, PR03015, Box 2, Folder 9, AWM.
45.
Elizabeth Parkhouse to Devon Parkhouse, 6 October 1918, PRG 300/B3/1, State Library of South Australia.
46.
Joyce Byrne to Reg Byrne, 8 October 1918, MSS 7570, Box 3, SLNSW.

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Deakin University, Geelong, VIC, Australia
Bart Ziino

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Correspondence to Bart Ziino .

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University of Newcastle , Callaghan, New South Wales, Australia
Kate Ariotti
University of Newcastle , Callaghan, New South Wales, Australia
James E. Bennett

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Ziino, B. (2017). ‘Total war’ in Australia: Civilian Mobilisation and Commitment, 1914–18. In: Ariotti, K., Bennett, J. (eds) Australians and the First World War. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51520-5_10

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51520-5_10
Published: 30 August 2017
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-51519-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-51520-5
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