Challenging Anzac

Stories that don’t fit the legend

Edited by
Mia Martin Hobbs, Carolyn Holbrook, Joan Beaumont

Published by New South

RRP $39.99 in paperback

ISBN 9781761170706

For anyone who has taken the time to think deeply about what the Anzac legend really means and how successfully it represents our desire to commemorate Australia’s war dead, this book will illuminate the ideas behind the Anzac legend in ways that might not have previously been considered.

Did the Anzac myth really shape Australia’s national identity? Was it something that simply started out as a focus for one day of the year and then became something more?

In Challenging Anzac, leading historians explore some of the issues that don’t sit comfortably with the accepted interpretation: Aboriginal activists, deserters on the Western Front, veterans who took their own lives and soldiers who became radicalized by their service.

The Anzac legend became politicised of course, owned, it seems, by the right wing that would brook no criticism. Historians who dared question the mythology were on the receiving end of eye-wateringly hysterical responses of personal invective too rude to repeat. It was as if any serious attempt to apply an historian’s rigour to the interpretation of the Anzac myth was seen as an unpatriotic activity akin to treason.

In the end, one conclusion is that the reality of warfare has always been at odds with mythic representation.

This book deserves a wide readership, not for the purpose of dishonouring Australia’s war dead, but for the purpose of truly understanding how and why the mythology of Anzac arose in the first place and how its strident defenders saw any thoughtful commentary as an outright attack on the memory of Australia’s war dead, who deserve to be honoured for their sacrifice.

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