Introduction

The apocalyptic writings of Victor Eugene Kroemer (1883–1930) provide us with an insight into millenarian responses to the outbreak of the Great War, a subject that has been little noticed in research on Australian religious history. This article, however, will also show that a study of Kroemer's occult beliefs can illuminate larger themes in the Australian cultural response to the war. Kroemer's interpretation of the war as an essentially spiritual conflict between the forces of Zion (Great Britain) and Babylon (Germany) was not confined to the religiously unorthodox, nor did his belief in the appearance of battlefield angels and other supernatural phenomena fail to find echoes among more conventional believers. Much research in Australia and overseas in the last thirty years has challenged the notion of the Great War as a modernising and secularising experience and this article, through a study of a single Australian author and activist, draws attention to the quest of occult authors in Australia and Great Britain to explain the “world crisis” in spiritual terms to a range of audiences.     

An Australian Empire Patriot and the Great War: Professor Sir Archibald T. Strong (1876–1930)

Archibald T. Strong, born in Melbourne, was the son of an Australian scholar who went to an academic post at Liverpool. The younger Strong received his secondary and tertiary education in England. There, he became proficient in modern European languages and literature. He initially planned a career in the law, but for health reasons returned to Australia to the Department of English at the University of Melbourne. Prior to the First World War, Strong became prominent in Melbourne literary circles and also a prolific commentator on world affairs. As an early member of the Round Table group in Australia, Strong assessed Imperial Germany as posing an existential threat to the British Empire and hence to Australia's security. The nation's future, he believed, lay in unwavering defence of the Empire. Strong evinced a distinct impatience with fellow citizens, especially on the socialist left, who failed, in his view, to understand the realities of Australia's position in the world and what was at stake in the Great War.     

A Possession for Ever: Charles Bean,the Ancient Greeks,and Military Commemoration in Australia

For many people after the First World War, the classical world of Greece and Rome provided a language of commemoration; those who fought on Gallipoli were often keen to see parallels with the Trojan war of 3,000 years earlier. Charles Bean, Australia's classically-educated war correspondent, Official Historian, and chief visionary behind the Australian War Memorial, was as imbued with the classics as any. What is striking, however, is that Bean largely ignored parallels with Troy, focusing instead almost exclusively on fifth-century BC Athens. Bean wanted more than a language of commemoration; he desired an historical backdrop which would emphasise the place in history of the Australian Imperial Force (AIF). Only the Athenians could provide a fitting parallel for the youthful democracy of Australia.     

Attitudes towards German Immigration in South Australia in the post-Second World War Period, 1947-60

Considering the reaction against Germans in Australia during and after the First World War, it is surprising that German immigration to Australia was permitted again soon after the Second World War and even subsidised by the Australian government. Just seven years after the second war fought with Germany within a generation, Australia signed a five-year agreement to permit Germans to immigrate. This article examines the extent of the Australian public's acceptance of this policy during the period from 1947 to 1960. It concentrates on the state of South Australia where some of the earliest settlers in the colony had been of German origin, where their behaviour and achievements had been praised in historical writings about the colony, and where German immigrants may, therefore, have been viewed more positively. Yet there was some suspicion towards and discrimination against Germans in South Australia after 1945. Negative stereotypes of Germans were apparent in comments made by politicians and in press reports. However, these fears were minor and faded even further when more Germans arrived in Australia.     

Fratricidal War: The Conflict between the Mouvement national algérien (MNA) and the Front de libération nationale (FLN) in France during the Algerian War (1954–1962)

On the eve of the Algerian War—one of the most violent wars of decolonisation of the twentieth century—the Algerian nationalist movement was still led by Messali Hadj, the charismatic figure who had shaped it from its very beginnings in emigration in France in the mid-1920s. However, this movement, then known as the Mouvement pour le triomphe des libertés démocratiques (MTLD, 1946–1954), was affected by deep crises and tensions at the end of the 1940s and, at the beginning of the 1950s, by a conflict between Messali's supporters (known as the Messalists) and a younger generation of militants known as the Centralists. This conflict ultimately led to the emergence of a third nationalist force, which launched the insurrection of 1 November 1954 that marked the beginning of the Algerian War. This article explores some important aspects of the bloody internal war that opposed Messali Hadj's MNA and the FLN in France during the Algerian War and discusses some of the key political processes that led to the rapid decline of the Messalist movement in the last years of the war.     

Collective Security and a New World Order: Justifying Australia's Participation in the Persian Gulf Crisis, 1990-91

In response to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait on 2 August 1990, Australia's Labor government committed a naval task force to participate in the enforcement of sanctions, and subsequently, the Gulf War to expel Iraq from Kuwait. The Australian government justified its response to the Persian Gulf crisis in various ways, including the threat it posed to national and international security, and by employing representations of Australian identity and the radical Otherness of Saddam Hussein. The paper considers these aspects, then focuses on two ostensibly complementary justifications. Firstly, the rapid commitment was represented as a necessary act of collective security connected to revitalisation of the United Nations. Secondly, it was justified as contributing to the development of a post-Cold War new world order (NWO), framed within Australian regional security interests and shaped by the US alliance. The paper argues that the Australian discourse melds the justifications, despite collective security, based on UN leadership, sitting uneasily with a NWO premised on US leadership, without having to attend to the tensions between the two justifications.     

Migrants,Identity and Radical Politics: Meaning and Ramifications of the Visits of Italian Communist Party Officials to Australia

This paper examines ten years (1963–1973) of visits to Australia of Italian Communist Party (PCI) officials. In particular, the visits' origins, meaning and ramifications are analysed and framed against the background of post‐war migrant worker identity discourses and radical politics. They appear to have shaped markedly the direction of the experience of Italian communists in Australia, especially in Sydney, and their interaction with both the Communist Party of Australia (CPA) and the PCI. Ultimately, they helped spread the message of Italian communism among migrants and encourage the replication on Australian soil of the successful experience of the Europe‐based PCI federations with thousands of worker members. For the CPA, which had been looking for new ways to break through to the hearts and minds of the migrant proletariat, the visits heralded a stronger partnership with its Italian members, a closer link with Eurocommunism, and a potential new stream of recruits that would have reversed the hemorrhaging of membership. The visits were instrumental, as argued in this paper, for the establishment and promotion of an Italian cultural and language space for which far‐left Italian migrants in Australia had long yearned.     

National and Imperial Belonging in Wartime: The Tangled Knot of Australians and New Zealanders as British Subjects during the Great War

The Great War is considered nationally foundational in both Australia and New Zealand. Yet, as critics of this view point out, British subjecthood remained important and sometimes central to identity at this time. This article pulls two threads from this tangled knot of belonging at a time when identifying and regulating loyal populations was critical. Looking at evidence of those Australians and New Zealanders who served in imperial forces and organisations, and the implications of passport control from 1915, I suggest that the relationship between British subjecthood and national identification was not always easily managed, and was often cut across by gender. Indeed, there is evidence that one's identification as a British subject or an Australasian citizen was not always a matter of choice or positive, and sometimes these identities were antagonists. The significant tensions between British subjecthood and being an “Australian” or a “New Zealander” were especially heightened by the increasingly intimate relationship between governments and their people during the First World War.     

“In the Front Line”?: Internment and Citizenship Entitlements in the Second World War

This paper analyses the experiences of Australian civilian internees of the Japanese in the Second World War and the Australian government's responses to their desires for repatriation, compensation and rehabilitation. It argues that civilian internees stood in awkward relation to understandings about sacrifice in wartime and entitlements to compensation. The dominance of the citizen‐soldier in Australian narratives of war placed civilian internees in an ambiguous position. Civilian internees had not played a direct part in battle but did have direct contact with the military enemy. They had personally suffered privation at the hands of the enemy, but were not military personnel in service of their country. Civilian internees expose the tensions around citizenship and citizenship entitlement attendant upon the elevation of war service as the ultimate sacrifice for one's country.     

Croatian Anti‐Fascism in the Second World War: An Australian Perspective

The historiography of the Second World War in Yugoslavia rests on the dichotomous resistance/collaboration paradigm pitting “Yugoslav” resisters against extreme nationalist collaborators. This historiography also presents us with a Balkanist interpretation of the war as exceptionally savage and brutal. The collapse of Yugoslavia led to the collapse of the Partisan Epic. It also led to the rise of nationalist historiographies of the war and the rehabilitation of collaborators, notably the Serbian Chetniks. A corrective to the exceptionalism of many standard studies of the war in Yugosalvia may be found in an analysis of the experiences of Australian Yugoslavs and their perceptions of resistance and collaboration. Based almost entirely on hitherto underutilised archival sources, this article traces the differences between two rival Yugoslav groups in Australia: (mostly Serbian) royalist supporters of the Chetniks and the old centralist regime, and Croatian supporters of Tito's Partisans and the idea of a new, federative Yugoslavia. It demonstrates that both groups were adept at mobilising opinion and actively engaging in the political process to advance their cause. However, the Croats and their organisational structures had a wider reach. Furthermore, they were able to demonstrate that they were contributing more to the Allied cause — which was their own — than their rivals. This had an impact on their standing in Australian society and on attitudes towards Yugoslavs and Yugoslavia. Finally, this article sheds new light on the Australian home‐front, revealing the generally civil and tolerant attitude of state and commonwealth governments towards “friendly aliens” in their desire both to be connected to their country of birth and integrated into their adopted homeland.     

Australia’s Army Nurse: Locating a Woman as the Heart of Sacrifice in the Hall of Memory

This article contests the misconception that the Hall of Memory of the Australian War Memorial, Canberra, represents an irreligious space. While accommodating the expectations of a post-secular society, this belief fails to recognise the influence of Christianity upon the generation that experienced World War I and developed the memorial practices that arose in response to it. Veteran-artist M. Napier Waller embedded complex religious symbolism in the scheme of three windows he designed and executed for the hall. Drawing on his individual experience of battle, personal philosophy of art and the medieval customs of his forebears, Waller told the story of Australia’s experience of the war and aligned a nation’s sacrifice with that of Christ: His Crucifixion, Resurrection and Ascension are symbolised in the south, west and east windows, respectively. The inclusion of a nurse was central to Waller’s plans and required he manipulate the men creating the memorial to achieve his goal. In doing so, he neutralised the greatest threat to his vision: its founder, Charles Bean, and located a woman of many identities—a Martial Madonna—as the heart of national sacrifice in Australia’s premier war memorial.     

State vs Federal Government in the “Barmaids” Case: Regulating Australia's Second World War Home Front

Australia's National Security Act of 1939 authorised the federal government to make emergency regulations “for securing the public safety and defence of the Commonwealth [of Australia]”. Further, it instructed the government to decide for itself what might be “necessary or convenient” for the “more effectual prosecution of the present war”. 1 This article examines the authorisation of the civilian leadership through one set of emergency regulations, the National Security (Women's Employment) Regulations, and analyses their functioning through one operational decision, the decision to permit women to serve in South Australian hotel bars with the intention of releasing male bar workers for essential industrial or military employment. Managing the home front proved complex. Sectional interests continued to jockey for positions of influence, even in war conditions. In this case, the state of South Australia sought to protect its “rights” against federal control of employment: a contest fuelled by an ideological squabble about what were then known as “barmaids”. I argue that Australia's centrally‐determined national war goals were undermined by its federal sovereignty‐distribution mechanism, which allowed sub‐national elements such as South Australia to impede national policy, and conclude that even with extensive defence powers to draw on, the federal government's war goals were obstructed by non‐war interests.     

The Strategic Fears of the Ruling Class: The Construction of Queensland's Chinese Immigrants Regulation Act of 1877

In early 1877, there were no immigration restrictions in any of the Australian colonies. Queensland's Chinese Immigrants Regulation Act of 1877 was the first of many laws that restricted Chinese immigration, in a movement that ultimately led to the White Australia legislation of 1901–2. This article finds that, contrary to the hegemonic understanding of White Australia, there was no significant working class or popular pressure behind the passage of the Act. Instead, it reflected the agendas of Queensland's elite, and in particular their concern that the large influx of Chinese people to the Palmer River goldfield could threaten their strategic control of Far North Queensland. In support of anti‐Chinese laws, Queensland's conservative newspapers whipped up fears of a Chinese “invasion”, a theme that would continue for nearly a century.     

The Menzies Government,the American Alliance and the Cuban Missile Crisis

This paper questions the traditional view of the Australian‐American relationship: that Australian dependency entailed unequivocal support for American foreign policy. It uses a particular Cold War event — the Cuban Missile Crisis — to examine the extent to which the reaction of the Australian government conformed to the general perception of immediate and absolute endorsement of the Kennedy administration's position. The paper will argue that the actual response of the Menzies government, as distinct from its public pronouncements, was constrained rather than unconditional, considered rather than reflexive, and shaped by strategic calculations of Australian interests.     

Book Reviews

Books reviewed in this issue Historical Records of Australia, Resumed Series III Despatches and papers relating to the history of Tasmania, Volume X, January‐December 1831. General Editor: Peter Chapman, Co‐editors Peter Chapman and Tim Jetson The Ambitions of Jane Franklin: Victorian Lady Adventurer. By Alison Alexander Where is Dr Leichhardt? The Greatest Mystery in Australian History. By Darrell Lewis Conspiracy of Silence: Queensland's Frontier Killing Times. By Timothy Bottoms Indigenous Crime and Settler Law: White Sovereignty after Empire. By Heather Douglas and Mark Finnane Forgotten War. By Henry Reynolds Dancing with Empty Pockets. Australia's Bohemians since 1860. By Tony Moore The Baby Farmers: A Chilling Tale of Missing Babies, Shameful Secrets and Murder in 19^th Century Australia. By Annie Cousins Eilean Giblin: A Feminist between the Wars. By Patricia Clarke Silences and Secrets: The Australian Experience of the Weintraub Syncopators. By Kay Dreyfus Big Coal: Australia's Dirtiest Habit. By Guy Pearse, David McKnight and Bob Burton Employer Power and Weakness: How Local and Global Factors have shaped Australia's Meat Industry and its Industrial Relations. By Patrick O'Leary and Peter Sheldon Trust Me: Australians and their Politicians. By Jackie Dickenson Australian History Now. Edited by Anna Clark and Paul Ashton J.C. Beaglehole: Public Intellectual, Critical Conscience. By Doug Munro The Habsburgs: The History of a Dynasty. By Benjamin Curtis The Pursuit of the Nazi Mind: Hitler, Hess, and the Analysts. By Daniel Pick Before the Nation: Muslim‐Christian Coexistence and its Destruction in Late‐Ottoman Anatolia. By Nicholas Doumanis A Companion to Woodrow Wilson. Edited by Ross A. Kennedy Kennedy: A Cultural History of an American Icon. By Mark White America's Right: Anti‐Establishment Conservatism from Goldwater to the Tea Party. By Robert B. Horwitz Hanoi's War: An International History of the War for Peace in Vietnam. By Lien‐Hang T. Nguyen. The Rise of China vs. the Logic of Strategy. By Edward N. Luttwak Antarctica: a Biography. By David Day The Author's Hand and the Printer's Mind. By Roger Chartier, translated by Lydia G. Cochrane     

Regimes of truth: Australian combat photography in the Second World War

This paper examines the policies and directions framing the professional practice of Australian combat photographers in the Second World War. It argues that while their endeavours to offer an account of the nation at war were constrained by predictable considerations of politics and censorship, their commitment to truth was also framed and constricted by an array of cultural considerations. The nation’s ongoing engagement with the history of the First World War, the contrasting organisational cultures of the bureaucracies that the photographers served, and Australian culture’s visual inarticulacy concerning death on the battlefield played key roles both individually and collectively in shaping the photographers’ practices and outputs. The paper will trace the operations of these influences and contend that, as a result, the photographers’ visual record of the Second World War, particularly as it related to the death of Australian servicemen, served to conceal rather than reveal the ultimate truth about the Australian experience of the war.     

Humanitarianism from the Suburbs: Australian Refugee Relief and Activism during the 1971 Bangladeshi Liberation War

The Bangladesh Liberation War against West Pakistan in 1971 triggered an exodus of ten million refugees, the deaths of approximately 1.5 million people and widespread destruction of villages, crops and infrastructure. Preoccupied with the Cold War and domestic politics, powerful nations such as the US and UK did not intervene directly and reluctantly provided aid. The Australian government, for its part, was particularly slow to offer aid, trailing efforts of New Zealand and most Western European governments. While the McMahon administration remained indifferent, Australians from diverse backgrounds engaged with this conflict by raising public awareness, fundraising and lobbying the Australian government to increase its aid contribution to Bangladeshis displaced by war. At a time when Australian government policies focused on the war in Indo‐China, Cold War politics and development in south‐east Asia and the south Pacific, I consider the ways Australian individuals offered aid to Asian, non‐Christian refugees, some of whom held Maoist views. Using archival materials, historical newspapers and census data, this article argues that, paradoxically, it was individuals with little political capital who spearheaded Australian efforts to aid Bangladeshi refugees. In short, the Bangladesh Liberation War provoked a groundswell of suburban activism that acted independently of government policies.     

Book Reviews

Book reviewed in this articles. Historical Records of Australia: Resumed Series III Despatches and Papers Relating to the History of Tasmania Volume IX Tasmania, January ‐ December 1830. General Editor Peter Chapman, Co‐editors Peter Chapman and Tim Jetson Australia Imagined: Views from the British Periodical Press 1800‐1900. Edited by Judith Johnston and Monica Anderson John Devoy's Catalpa Expedition. Edited by Philip Fennell and Marie King Return to Gallipoli: Walking the Battlefields of the Great War. By Bruce Scates Jack Lang and the Great Depression. By Frank Cain Documents on Australian Foreign Policy: Australia and the Formation of Malaysia 1961‐1966. Edited by Moran Dee Car Wars: How the Car Won Our Hearts and Conquered Our Cities. By Graeme Davison with Sheryl Yelland Fear and Politics By Carmen Lawrence Disputed Histories: Imagining New Zealand's Pasts. Edited by Tony Ballantyne and Brian Moloughney Revolution: The 1913 Great Strike in New Zealand, Edited by Melanie Nolan Facing Illness in Troubled Times: Health in Europe in the Interwar Years 1918‐1939. Edited by Iris Borowy and Wolf D. Gruner Darwin's Origin of Species: A Biography. By Janet Browne The Dilemmas of De‐Stalinization. Negotiating Cultural and Social Change in the Khrushchev Era. Edited by Polly Jones Anti‐Chinese Violence in Indonesia: 1996‐1999. By Jemma Purdey. Marx's Das Kapital. A Biography. By Francis Wheen     

Rape of the Congo: Understanding sexual violence in the conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo

Though the occurrence of rape in the conduct of war is by no means historically new, research into its causes and functions has only really begun in the past couple of decades. War rape is a difficult phenomenon about which to generalise, considering the variances in context and actors involved. This article, however, attempts to synthesise existing literature through the analysis of a case study that can enhance our understanding of rape as a weapon of war and the contextual conditions that facilitate its use. Applying this theoretical framework to the extreme war rape occurring in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), this article offers insight into understanding the function of sexual violence in the ongoing conflict in the DRC. In particular, this article argues that the use of rape as a weapon in the Congo's bloody war must be understood in relation to both social constructs of masculinity and the politics of exploitation that have shaped much of the country's history.     

Book Reviews

Encountering Terra Australis: The Australian Voyages of Nicolas Baudin and Matthew Flinders. By Jean Fornasiero, Peter Monteath and John West‐Sooby Hill End: An Historic Australian Goldfields Landscape. By Alan Mayne Professional Savages: Captive Lives and Western Spectacle. By Roslyn Poignant So Monstrous a Travesty: Chris Watson and the World's First National Labour Government. By Ross McMullin On The War Path: An Anthology of Australian Military Travel. Edited by Robin Gerster and Peter Pierce Radical Brisbane: an Unruly History. Edited by Raymond Evans and Carole Ferrier Jessie Street: A Revised Autobiography. Edited by Lenore Coltheart Kisch in Australia: The Untold Story. By Heidi Zogbaum Freedom Ride: a Freedom Rider Remembers. By Ann Curthoys The Power of Speech: Australian Prime Ministers Defining the National Image. By James Curran Latham and Abbott. By Michael Duffy From Camp to Queer: Remaking the Australian Homosexual. By Robert Reynolds The West New Guinea Debacle: Dutch Decolonisation and Indonesia, 1945‐1962. By C.L.M. Penders The Western Front: Battle Ground and Home Front in the First World War. By Hunt Tooley The Justicing Notebook (1750‐64) of Edmund Tew (Publications of the Surtees Society, vol. 205.) Edited by Gwenda Morgan and Peter Rushton British Clubs and Societies, 1580‐1800: The Origins of an Associational World. By Peter Clark Soldier and Peasant in French Popular Culture, 1766‐1870. By David M. Hopkin Napoleon and the Transformation of Europe. By Alexander Grab Hitler's Last Chief of Foreign Intelligence. Allied Interrogations of Walter Schellenberg. Edited by Reinhard R. Doerries War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race. By Edwin Black A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples. By Ilan Pappe Subverting Colonial Authority: Challenges to Spanish Rule in Eighteenth‐Century Southern Andes. By Sergio Serulnikov Honour Among Nations? Treaties and Agreements with Indigenous People. By Marcia Langton, Maureen Tehan, Lisa Palmer and Kathryn Shain