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The First Half Measures

Journal Edition
DOI
DOI: https://doi.org/10.61451/2675156

Australia awakened slowly. The outbreak of the war did not bring an immediate threat to the safety of the people living in Australia … clearly the first care of a nation on entering war was to make certain that home defence measures were adequate to meet any probable threat. But after the first fortnight of war, it was difficult for either the Government or its critics to find clear evidence that any immediate threat existed.[1]

Introduction

The late Jeffrey Grey, in his seminal work A Military History of Australia, wrote that ‘Australia was not prepared for war in 1939. It was not much better prepared when the war came to Australia’s shores at the beginning of 1942’.[2] The first part of this statement was an indictment of the neglect of defence matters by successive federal governments during the straitened interwar period, although there was a belated improvement when the threat of a second war with Germany seemed too imminent to ignore. The second part of Grey’s assertion relates to the home defence preparations taken between Australia’s declaration of war on Germany in September 1939 and Japan’s entry into the war in December 1941. During this period Australia raised and despatched overseas four expeditionary divisions, distinguished from their First World War antecedents with the nomenclature of 2nd Australian Imperial Force or ‘2nd AIF’. In parallel, Australia had created a large Militia[3]-based home defence organisation. In doing so it repeated the mistakes of the previous war wherein two separate military entities were created, each competing for the same finite pool of manpower and resources. Invariably, while no clear threat to Australia existed, the expeditionary forces received higher priority than the Militia at home. Such a situation was largely unavoidable due to the strictures of the Defence Act 1903, which forbade the use of the Militia outside of Australian territory. Moreover, competing priorities for manpower from war production industries would affect not only the size but also the quality of training provided to the part-time Militia forces as the government sought to reduce the impost that military training for home defence placed on the economic life of the nation. 

Grey is correct in concluding that the neglect of the Militia as part of these home defence actions—despite almost two years’ preparation time—was laid bare in 1942. However understanding the context of this period is important. The Australian Government had to balance overseas commitments, the switch to a war economy to support the wider war effort, and home defence. This article will discuss the part-time component of the Australian Army—the Militia—between 1939 and the end of 1941. This period may be seen as one of ‘half measures’ that laid a foundation, albeit a most imperfect one, for the Militia to build upon when it was mobilised fully from December 1941 in response to the imminent Japanese threat.

Endnotes

[1] Paul Hasluck, Australia in the War of 1939–1945, Series Four: Civil, Volume I, The Government and the People, 1939–41 (Canberra: Australian War Memorial, 1956), p. 157.

[2] Jeffrey Grey, A Military History of Australia (Melbourne, Cambridge University Press, 1990), p. 143.

[3] The word ‘Militia’ or ‘militia’ appears variously in upper and lower case within relevant literature. For the purposes of this paper, it is used as a proper noun.