ANZAC's Dirty Dozen

12 Myths of Australian Military History

Craig Stockings

• Publisher: NewSouth
• Year: 2012
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9781742241258
• Subtopic: Australian & Oceanian History
• Index: History

Australian military history is a landscape of legends, yet across the length and breadth of military heritage, accuracy and objectivity are often shunted aside so that tales and myths bent on commemoration, veneration, and the idealization of Australian virtues can thrive. In this book, a team of renowned historians resume the battle to expose a host of stubborn fantasies and fabrications that obscure the real story. Confronting and clear-eyed, it goes beyond the indulgent, politicized, and emotionally-charged rhetoric of Anzac—that sacrosanct idea in the national psyche—to find out exactly what it means to be Australian at war, and proud of it.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Contributors
• Introduction: Myths and Australian Military History
• 1. Australian military history doesn’t begin on Gallipoli
• 2. The ‘superior’, all-volunteer AIF
• 3. What about New Zealand? The problematic history of the Anzac connection
• 4. Other people’s wars
• 5. ‘They also served’: Exaggerating women’s role in Australia’s wars
• 6. The nonsense of universal Australian ‘fair play’ in war
• 7. The unnecessary waste: Australians in the late Pacific campaigns
• 8. Lost at sea: Missing out on Australia’s naval history
• 9. ‘Landmark’ battles and the myths of Vietnam
• 10. The myth that Australia ‘punches above its weight’
• 11. Critical reflections on the Australia–US alliance
• 12. Monumental mistake: Is war the most important thing in Australian history?
• Epilogue
• Notes
• Index