New Zealand, Her Allies and the Second World War
New Zealand Military History Committee, 2024, ISBN 9780473704230, 486 pp., RRP NZD$45 (softcover)
Editors: Peter Cooke and John Crawford
Reviewed by: Brian Farrell
The most difficult obstacle facing any effort to publish a history book that emerges from an academic conference is to persuade a publisher to take it on in the first place. Many shy away, citing the difficulty of compiling a volume that maintains coherence in coverage of its connecting theme, and quality in standards of analysis and writing. This volume would have cleared both those bars with ease but, in any case, the New Zealand Military History Committee, assisted by the New Zealand Defence Force and the Ministry for Culture and Heritage, was always going to publish this product of the sixth in its internationally successful series of conferences on New Zealand and its military history. It not only maintains the high standard set by its predecessors; it also meets the challenge to add new things to our critical knowledge of its subject. Achieving this required some redesigning of the topic, as the inaugural conference in 1995 also focused on New Zealand in World War II. This volume found a way to do that redesign, using three approaches. It asked some fresh questions. It returned to familiar themes from a different perspective. And it put the stories of the war experiences of New Zealand and New Zealanders in a broader context: examining those experiences within the network of alliances inside which the country waged war. As such, this volume takes its place alongside the commanding studies—McGibbon, Henley, Wood, Gardiner, Pugsley, Harper, to name a few—that have shaped the historiography of New Zealand.
Indeed, this volume strongly reminds us, by its quality and breadth, of the continuing validity of using the nation and national experience as a vantage point from which to understand histories that are by no means restricted to that nation. World War II was a global total war. Australian readers will certainly encounter problems discussed herein that featured in their own country’s war history: difficult relations with the British and the Americans, concerns about the Japanese, the strains of mobilising for a long global war—one could go on. But each problem had either a feature unique to New Zealand or a singular impact on New Zealand, or often both. Jewish refugees fled to many countries before and during the war, but those who wound up in New Zealand certainly had experiences unlike any other and they affected their new home in unique ways. New Zealand service personnel were not the only contingent to experience ‘culture shock’ in overseas encounters, in their case in the Mediterranean and Middle East. One thinks of the American ‘invasion’ of wartime Britain. But again, the New Zealand experience not only was singular but also left footprints, overseas and at home. These and a number of other themes are not unique to New Zealand experience but, in important ways, are singular within it. They include medical protection of troops in the field, sexual violence and garrison troops, perceptions of the enemy and their impact on the war effort, and New Zealand’s awkward effort to cope with a former ally turned possible enemy. These topics all receive strong critical analysis.
For readers of this journal, however, the chapters most likely to be of greatest interest are those that deal with the running and fighting of New Zealand’s war, on land, at sea and in the air. The development of wartime intelligence is analysed, as are questions of command and strategy, the New Zealand Division in battle in North Africa, casualties and what they can tell us about unit performance, and New Zealanders participating in the war against Japan. Most chapters provide critical analysis drawn from archival research; all reward reading and five deserve extra comment. David Littlewood’s careful evaluation of conscription drives home how fundamental this policy became to every aspect of New Zealand’s war. John Crawford works through the official records to explain how New Zealand chose who to appoint to command positions in its second major expeditionary force within a generation. He underlines the price that must be paid for allowing capabilities to decline below critical mass but he also notes quality and success when he encounters it. Peter Wood uses court-martial records to subject an incident involving one platoon to analysis, and his observations can be expanded to shed light on wider questions of morale and the ‘will to fight’ among larger formations, in long and tiring campaigns. His conclusions are sober but fair and surely timeless. Jonathan Fennell exploits a large mass of different kinds of records to do something no-one had previously tried: to use cultural history to explain the relationships between New Zealand society and the national army it produced, and how the composition of that army affected the nation as well as the war. And Simon Moody rescues the Royal New Zealand Air Force from undeserved obscurity for its role in the unsuccessful British Empire campaign to defend Malaya and Singapore, teaching us more, in the process, about the wartime evolution of that air force and its coalition experiences.
Books such as Heavy and Continuous Sacrifice: New Zealand, Her Allies and the Second World War cannot, by their nature, be single-volume general histories of their subject. The range of themes presented herein is intended instead to illustrate the breadth and complexity of the New Zealand wartime experience, rather than narrate it comprehensively. It does this very well. Two final points can be made for Australian readers of this journal. Dan Lear’s poignant study of how New Zealand struggled to get Australian attention in the run-up to war in Europe might make interesting reading for those more used to reading about Australian struggles to catch British or American attention. And the editors chose wisely in concluding with Roger Steele’s very personal account of his parents, their war, and the long shadow it cast on their lives. As Steele said, this war has never really ended—not in New Zealand or anywhere else.