Dan Snow's History Hit - Australia, Anzac and History

Episode Date: April 25, 2020

I was thrilled to have Mat McLachlan on the pod, one of Australia's foremost history presenters and writers. Using his encyclopaedic knowledge of Australian battlefields, Mat and I chatted about Australia's complex relationship with its past, and how this history is perceived and commemorated today. For ad free versions of our entire podcast archive and hundreds of hours of history documentaries, interviews and films, including our new in depth documentary about some of the greatest speeches ever made in the House of Commons, please signup to www.HistoryHit.TV Use code 'pod1' at checkout for your first month free and the following month for just £/$1.

Hi everyone, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. We've got a bit of Australian history for you today. We've got the very, very brilliant Mack McLaughlin. I interviewed him from Australia. We decided to put this out on Anzac Day, which is, of course, the public holiday in Australia and New Zealand, a day of national remembrance. It is observed on the 25th of April every year to honour the Australian New Zealand Army Corps, the Anzacs, who served in the Gallipoli campaign. Because on the 25th of April, the ANZACs landed on Gallipoli in a place known as ANZAC Cove, where I've been. I've seen the horrific topography, the conditions that they would have faced there as they tried to scramble up from the

rocky beach onto the high ground above with well-sighted machine gun posts firing down on them. So it's a very special day for Australians and New Zealanders. And it's a great day to talk to Matt McLaughlin. He is a historian, podcaster, author, TV presenter, total all-round history legend of Australia. It's a great honour to have him on the pod. We actually talked about a month ago. I wanted to put it out on Anzac Day. The issue with that was back then the biggest problem we faced

was Australia's wildfires. Well, they're now a forgotten memory and a little coronavirus to talk about instead so some of it will feel a bit dated for that reason if you want to go back and watch any tv shows any history documentaries or listen to all these podcasts please get a history hit tv it's my digital history service if you use the code pod one you get a month for free and then for just one aussie dollar new zealand dollar can Canadian dollar, American dollar, British pound, or euro, you get a second month as well. So the whole thing, two months, just one pound, euro,

or dollar. Never been a better time to go and check that out. So please head over to History at TV and gore journalist history documentaries during these strange times. And in the meantime, enjoy Matt McLaughlin, who's an absolute legend. Matt, great to have you on the podcast. Great to be on the show, mate. You know what? I had a very weird thing. Last night, I had dinner in London, UK, with one of the guys from the architectural firm who's got the contract to build the new war memorial in Canberra, the multi-million dollar war memorial. That's quite a big operation. Are people excited by that? Is it sort of controversial? I think people generally are pretty excited about it. Whenever you say the word war memorial

or ANZAC in Australia, everyone gets pretty excited. But it has been absolutely controversial because at a time when other public institutions really scratching around for funding, this sort of $500 million grant to expand the Australian War Memorial has been received quite controversially. And, you know, I think it's good that we have these discussions because war remembrance in Australia, our remembrance of the military and our respect that we pay to the ANZACs is fantastic, but it does come at a little bit of a price as well. So I think the expansion to the War Memorial is just a perfect example of the controversies that exist around that. What does history mean to your audience in Australia and generally, do you think, to Australian people? It's a really great question.

I mean, Australia is relatively young compared to the UK, compared to Europe, compared even to the USA in some respects. And so history is a bit of a funny one out here, I think. It's absolutely dominated by military history. Our respect for the Anzacs has been called our secular religion. And I think that's absolutely right, that it is all dominating this notion of Anzac and Gallipoli and the First and Second World Wars. I mean, it's a wonderful thing. I would never take that away. And I'm part of the movement to make sure these men and women are remembered. But at the same time, it does tend to dominate in Australia. And it does tend to exclude other chapters of history. And we have a wonderful

history in Australia. We have a very bright and fascinating history. But it does tend to get a little bit crowded out at the expense, the domination of military history. So I think that's changing somewhat. I think in the past, it's been virtually 100% military history, but that is changing somewhat as time goes forward. When you do broadcasts about the First Fleet or about Cook, 18th century, what's the response like? It does push a few buttons with people. People are interested in colonial history, convict history, First Fleet, all those things you just mentioned. That's really about it. Through my podcast, you look at the downloads when we do a story about Kokoda or Gallipoli or even something like the Battle of Britain that Australia wasn't does tend to drop off significantly. So I think there are definitely people that are interested in those topics. And I think colonial history, the founding of Australia, I think those are topics that are

of interest to people, convict history in particular. But as I said before, we also struggle with this issue that the military history dominates to such an extent that it doesn't leave much room for anything else. I think there's also an issue that Australia hasn't, in a lot of ways, come to terms with our history, as we perhaps should have, that there's still a lot of questions that revolve around Australia Day and the arrival of the First Fleet. Australia Day is called Invasion Day by the Aboriginal people. So, I mean, there's so many chapters of our relatively recent history that we haven't really come to terms with at all. But as I said before, I think it is changing slowly, and I'm hopeful that in the coming decades, we'll have a fresh

look at the whole story. Talk about Aboriginal history, you bring that up. How able are you, are Australians to access Aboriginal history, both in terms of sources and historical record, but also in terms of enthusiasm? Do people connect with it? In the way that when I talk to New Zealanders, they seem to be coming to an interesting place with their Maori past. I think there certainly are very good sources to do with Aboriginal history. There's been a wonderful oral history tradition. There's been wonderful recordings done by the National Library in particular, has recorded wonderful stories of Aboriginal people. And there is a very rich history and it is there to people who want to look at it. But there's been a resistance, I think. And I'm talking generally here. I know that there are scholars that have done wonderful work into the Aboriginal story. But I think when you talk about the general public, there's been a resistance there. We haven't really reconciled our relationship with the first Australians out here. It's still something that I think white Australians struggle to come to terms with. It's something that we deal with almost daily as a social issue in Australia.

with. It's something that we deal with almost daily as a social issue in Australia. And I think that has a bearing on the way that people look at the history and their willingness to engage with the history, because there are a lot of feelings of guilt and confusion about our turbulent history with Aboriginal people. And so I think there is a reluctance on the part of the general public to look further into that. But again, having said that, there's been some wonderful works that have come out in recent years talking about Aboriginal history, and there does seem to be a swing back towards learning more about that chapter of our story. So hopefully it will continue as time goes on. of Britain is sort of foundational to many British people's view of the modern world and modern politics and Brexit and stuff. What happened in the First World War to the Australian Armed Forces is much bigger than just a military history story. It's about the birth of a nation, national identity. Yeah, it's a great point. And, you know, I think nations need those things.

Nations need those touch points that they can look back on and define themselves through that lens. I think often the collective memory we have of these historic events probably isn't particularly accurate, but in some ways it doesn't need to be. It speaks of how we see ourselves. And as you say, it's things like the Battle of Britain in the UK and Trafalgar and these wonderful historic events. And in Australia, it's definitely Gallipoli. And it's really unusual when you think about it. The nature of the Gallipoli campaign, it was such a disaster. It was so poorly run. There were no good outcomes to the Gallipoli campaign. And yet we focus on it as this pivotal moment of the birth of Australia in many ways. I don't think that's necessarily true. And I think our memories of Gallipoli hark back to a time that probably never really existed. And if it did, it certainly isn't

coming back anytime in the near future. But again, that's not the important part of it. It's as fascinating a question as why we see Gallipoli is so important. It says a lot about us as Australians that we do hark back to this landing on this beach on the other side of the world. And that story just contains elements that Australians like to think about themselves. It's about mateship. It's about sacrifice. It's about going off and fighting someone else's fight. You know, we weren't directly threatened by the Turks, yet we still went off and did our bits. There's so many layers. I mean, I think we could probably do an entire podcast series about why Australians engage so strongly with Gallipoli. But there's no doubt that it is one of those pivotal moments that has just struck a chord with every generation since.

And then also, every time I go to the Western Front, the Australians seem to be incredibly active in terms of their building of memorials and memorialisation of graves of soldiers who are being discovered all the time and things like that. And I just find it so extraordinary because it's just so distant. You come over to Europe and do these great trips and tours every year. It's just such a long way. These fields of Northwest France are still central to Australian culture today. Yeah, it's a bit crazy, really, isn't it, when you think about it? I say this all the time, that other nations around the world are worried that once they lose their World War II veterans, there'll be no one left to carry on this legacy. And that's certainly not a problem in Australia because Australians engage so strongly with Anzac

history at all age levels. The number of young people that travel to Gallipoli and the Western Front and now Vietnam and all sorts of other places as well. And we're seeing nothing but growth in this area. The more Australian battlefields that are revealed to have an interesting story, the more Australians want to travel there. And I think, look, Australians are great travellers. There's no question about that because we live a long way from everywhere. Australians don't really think twice about jumping on a plane and flying to the other side of the world. But then you combine it with this passion for remembrance, particularly for the Anzacs. And you get this wave of battlefield tourists. But you mentioned really the frenzy of memorial building that's gone on,

particularly on the Western Front in recent decades. And as wonderful as that is, and as I said, I'm quite hypocritical when I talk about this, because I'm part of the drive to send more Australians to battlefields. But at the same time, I am very aware that we have to do it in a measured way. I feel that we may have reached a bit of a tipping point now where the only story we even care to hear is how Australia won the war, that we seem to be losing context. We seem to be losing perspective on the joint contribution that was made in times of war, in all times of war. No nation has ever really fought a war purely on its own. It's always such a collaborative effort. And in Australia, I think we are very much in danger of losing sight of that and simply being content just to tell the Australian story,

even with all that context removed and with all the reliance on our allied partners and even an assessment of what the enemy was doing on the battlefield. All of this seems to be being stripped away in this current era. And we focus just on the story of the Anzacs. And I think we do them a disservice. We do these men that we're trying to commemorate, we do them a disservice if we paint them as these two-dimensional superheroes. These were real people and they've got real stories to tell. So a big part of what I try to do as a historian is reveal those true stories. Sure, respect them and do whatever you can to remember them, but also remember that they were real human beings and their stories deserve to be told in their entirety. You're talking to a veteran of a trip to the battlefield of Amiens,

which was obviously a battle won by a very successful coalition effort under an Australian, well, no, I mustn't say that. A very important Australian general, Monash, was key to it. And you're talking to a veteran of a trip where Canadians and Australians joined together in banter, camaraderie, competition and drinking, and the memories of those hangovers and of those arguments will last long. I can tell you that. Well, I've got a huge respect for what the Canadians did on the battlefields as well. And there's no doubt the Australians and the Canadians in the First World War in 1918

were the absolute spearhead of the British forces on the Western Front. Were they some of the best divisions that the British had to put forward? Absolutely. Were they better than other divisions in the British Army? No way. There was a whole heap of British units that fought just as well as the Canadians and the Australians. And even some units that you wouldn't consider particularly strong were very effective in 1918 because of just the sheer quality of the training and the tactics and the technological advancements as well. So I'm very big on sort of avoiding this one-eyed approach to the First World War in particular. It was such a collaborative effort. And for decades afterwards, everyone recognised what a collaborative effort it was. And I think it's a shame if now in our attempts

to push some nationalistic agenda, we start to forget who else was involved. That's right, buddy, the British 46th Division crossing the old St. Quentin Canal. Who can forget? No, I don't want to get into it. What is interesting about Australian history in First World War, as you mentioned, you're turning up at the mother country's court, someone else's fight. But the Second World War, it's fascinating because it begins maybe like that

and the Australians deploy to North Africa and stuff. Then the fight very much assumes a very different character. You get the bombing of Darwin by the Japanese, the biggest ever assault on Australian soil by a foreign enemy, post, obviously, the establishment of Australia. And does the nature of the Second World War change? I don't know enough about that. Australians' experience of war must just transform in that.

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a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hits. There are new episodes every week. Oh, there's absolutely no doubt that the Second World War was a huge wake-up call for Australia. It absolutely terrified Australia, both in terms of the general public but also our policy makers as well and the way we saw ourselves in the world. Because if we hark back to the First World War, Australia was effectively a colonial outpost of Europe in the middle of the Asia-Pacific region. Britain was our major trading partner by a long way. Even though we were a sovereign nation, much of our foreign policy was determined in heavy consultation with the British.

So it was not an extreme concept that Australia would join a European war. It made absolute sense for us. Our nearest neighbour was German New Guinea, only a couple of hundred kilometres away from us, was a German colony. So in the First World War, it made perfect sense that we would enlist and do our bit. It was in our interest to make sure that the Allies won the First World War. And I think you're right that we went into the Second World War with a very similar attitude, that this was really the First World War Mark II. It was basically, we began that war with the same ideals that we'd gone into the First World War with. But as you say, by 1942, when the Japanese were marauding through Asia and right on our doorstep, it was a huge wake-up call to Australia. And our reliance on Britain as our key partner

was strained, to put it mildly, that we always felt that Britain would be there to defend us. And I think we felt in 1942 that Britain was preoccupied with what was going on in North Africa and in Europe. Britain was adamant in its insistence that we keep our troops in North Africa to continue fighting the Germans when the Japanese were on our doorstep. And so it was a huge wake-up call to Australia. And we were quite panicked for a while about where we would fit in the world. And we couldn't rely on Britain for defence. This was a tangible example of Australia coming under attack and we felt that we couldn't rely on Britain in the way that we always had assumed that we would. So of course enter the new partner in the region which was America and

I have to say that America was very supportive of Australia for its own reasons. America had a huge level of self-interest in making sure that the fight could be taken to the Japanese and to use Australia as a base to do that. But regardless, when we needed support, America certainly took the opportunity to step up. And the Second World War marked a very big transition for Australia from focusing away from Europe and towards our own security in the Asia-Pacific region and a much closer bond with the US. And that continues today. I mean, obviously, we'll always be very close to Britain, but when it comes to strategic and tactical decisions made in the Asia-Pacific region, America is by far our number one friend in that concept. And look, I think it's important to have

a stable Western democracy in the Asia-Pacific region that Britain and France and Germany and America can rely on. And I think that's a role Australia fulfils very well. But there's no question that the turmoil of the Second World War, the panic that ensued, the threat from the Japanese massively swung Australia's focus away from Europe and Britain and towards our friends in America. For the international audience that might not be as familiar with those pretty tense months of the Second World War, how much of a threat was Japan to Australian security? It's a really interesting question because recent research has revealed that we weren't quite as under threat as we thought we were at the time. So obviously the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese advance through Asia began in late 1941 And then by the early months of 1942, Japan was moving very

rapidly through Asia and the Pacific. Our perception was at the time, and for many decades later, that Japan would capture New Guinea, and then their next step would be an invasion of mainland Australia. And that was how we interpreted much of what we saw going on. The attacks on Darwin were seen as a softening up before the big landing. The midget submarines that came into Sydney Harbour in 1942 were seen again as precursors to this huge invasion. And the Australian government was very active in encouraging the general public to feel that the Japanese were going to land at any moment. The famous World War II poster that circulated throughout Australia in 1942 was the stereotypical yellow-skinned, buck-toothed Japanese soldier standing on a map of New Guinea and about to set foot on a map of

Australia with the big slogan, he's coming south, it's fight, work or perish. So this was very much the idea that the Australian government was pushing for the general public because it encouraged men to enlist, it encouraged women to work in ammunition factories, it encouraged people to buy war bonds. There was a very solid reasoning behind why they wanted Australians to think that an invasion of Australia was the next Japanese step. But more recent research has revealed that wasn't the case. And quite controversially, that the Australian government also knew that that wasn't the case, that by 1942, the Japanese had determined that an invasion of Australia was completely impractical, that the landmass was too large, it would require too many troops. And so their plan was simply to

isolate Australia by capturing islands in the Pacific, beginning with the Solomon Islands and eventually moving on to New Caledonia and Fiji, and effectively separate Australia from America by sea, and therefore have Australia completely isolated, cut off, and effectively out of the Second World War. I'm sure that in future years, had the Japanese plan gone as they expected it to, that they would have then sent troops to occupy Australia. But the concept of an invasion where Japanese forces were going to land and have to fight their way through Australia, the Australian government realised fairly early on in the Second World War that that was not going to be the case.

Yet they kept that a secret from the population, because they wanted, as I said, men to enlist and people to buy war bonds. So it's been a very controversial discussion because our most famous action, the action we care more than any other about is, as you said, the Kokoda Track in Papua New Guinea. And there's a feeling in Australia that if we play down the risk of invasion, that we are somehow suggesting that the importance of the New Guinea campaign is lessened. And I don't believe that's the case at all. The New Guinea campaign was an absolutely vital campaign that had to be fought. It didn't prevent Japan from invading Australia. That's simply not true. However, it was a vital campaign that had to be fought. And when we look back as Australians on

that campaign, we should be very proud of the great work that Australians did up there. Is it the rite of passage still that people have to hike the trail? Yeah, it up there. Is it the right of passage still that people have to hike the trail? Yeah, it certainly is. There's really a double one. There's Gallipoli for Anzac Day, which many backpackers do in their thousands when they're living over in the UK, and also the Kokoda Track, which is not to be taken lightly. I have actually not done the track. I've done many parts of New Guinea without actually having walked the track because the 96 kilometers of the Kokoda Track are some of the toughest. I think it's considered the toughest sea level trek in the world and it's pretty murderous. So I will get there one day, but I think Australians do see

that. The physical components of it as well, the literally walking in the footsteps of these blokes and we can never take that away from what these guys did in 1942. Some of the most treacherous conditions you would find in the Pacific, laden down with gear and then fighting against this fanatical Japanese enemy. So absolutely extraordinary. And anytime I get up to New Guinea, it's always an incredible experience. And then post Second World War, you mentioned Vietnam, and that's so interesting for Brits to hear that. It's too easy to forget the Australians were willing participants in the Vietnam War, they're called the Americans. Australia has had incredibly active armed forces since the Second World War.

Has that been as controversial in Australia as in the UK? For example, turning up to George W. Bush's wars of choice in the Middle East and Afghanistan. I'm going to say yes and no. Australia always sees itself as a very upstanding citizen of the world. Australia always has done. We feel it's our obligation to go and join a fight if it's worth fighting. And so that's always been the case with the First World

War and the Second World War and onwards through these other wars. But there's no doubt that the Second World War massively changed our perspective about our role and a real political element came into our decision-making about war. I mean, it's always inescapable. Whenever there's a war, there's always a very strong political component. But I think Australia, realising that we could have been in big trouble during the Second World War, determined never to let that happen again. And from a policy perspective, it certainly shifted to supporting our big brothers in the hope that if we needed them, they would come and support us. And so we've seen that since the closing days of the Second World War. We saw it with Korea, where as soon as America was

suggesting that we should fight the Korean War, Australia was very quick to send troops. We absolutely saw it with Vietnam in a huge way. Australia was one of the few countries that sent large numbers of troops to Vietnam. We ended up sending 50,000 troops to Vietnam, which is quite extraordinary, and had our own sector of operations down near Saigon for the duration of the war. And so Australia lost about 550 men killed during the Vietnam War. And it was as controversial in Australia as it was in America, that people didn't support the war. They gave the troops a hard time, probably a little bit less than we generally perceive. We perceive that the Australian soldiers were very badly treated when they got home. They certainly were poorly treated, and it took many decades for them to be accepted,

as other soldiers had been. But these were all very political decisions. The only reason Australia was in Vietnam was nothing to do with the spread of communism. It was simply to support America. And at the time, we were concerned that Indonesia was becoming a threat to our north, and we just felt it was handy to keep our big brother in America on side

if we ever needed to call on them. So pretty much every war we fought since then has been along the same lines, that we felt it was our responsibility as a citizen of the world to participate if required. But also we've noted the fact that by being a very good ally of countries such as the US and Britain, we could rely on them if we ever needed help. So that's what led us forward to the more recent conflicts, Afghanistan, and in particular, Iraq. Again, Australia was one of the few countries to actually put their hand up and join in in the whole Iraq adventure. John Howard was prime minister at the time in 2001,

was in New York during September 11, during the attack on the Twin Towers. And he actually invoked all the ANZUS treaty, the wartime treaty to support America during that terrorist attack. So Australia sees it as sensible, and I agree, it is sensible foreign policy to support America during that terrorist attack. So Australia sees it as sensible, and I agree, it is sensible foreign policy to support our larger allies. But it has led us into conflicts that perhaps we, in hindsight, would not have participated in. It's also a difficult one, because if we look at something like Afghanistan, Australia participated very strongly in the war in Afghanistan, but we only lost 41 men killed. And that was a direct result of Australia's decision that we have to be involved in this to be shown to be supporting

America, but we don't want to see bodies coming home on the news every day. So the Australian troops in Afghanistan, I think, fought that in very difficult circumstances, certainly with their hands tied behind their back, because they were in a position where the Australians just did not want to risk casualties, yet we still wanted to be seen to be contributing. So I know that it caused a lot of friction with our allied partners as well, particularly the British, who are obviously carrying a lot of the weight over there, that the Australians were there in spirit, but not as much as they wanted them to be in practice. So, you know, it's controversial stuff,

and it's inescapable to separate the political decisions from those decisions to go to war. But there's no doubt that Australia's current and previous foreign policy over several decades has been determined by showing our support for, particularly America, in the hope that America will come to our aid if we ever need them. I guess last question, Matt. And this is connected with your kind of Aboriginal past

because people say, well, it's the way we manage land and the Aboriginal peoples managed this land a different way. They were able to ensure that Australia was a livable space fit for human habitation for millennia. Do you see a kind of crisis for Australian-ness in the next few years connected with that history, that failure to reconcile, that ambiguity about exactly who you are and what you are? I think there was a risk of that. I think for the last 10 or 20 years, that's been a risk that it would turn into a crisis of identity. I'm a sort of a blind optimist, Dan, and I have faith in humanity and I can see changes going on. What we have to remember is

Australia has been governed by mostly conservative governments for decades now. So Australia, all in all, is relatively conservative in our outlook. And yet, when we see these bushfires, there was a huge backlash against the Prime Minister and the way that he dealt with the crisis. There was a huge awakening, I think, with a lot of people of the need to do things about managing climate change. There was a lot of respect shown to Aboriginal people who spoke up at the time to say that we might have some ideas about this as well, about how we can mitigate this risk in the future. So I'm always heartened to see that even though superficially we may come across as slightly too conservative and not really having our finger on the pulse of

what needs to be done, I'm always heartened by the fact that whenever these great tragedies occur, that people do come together and the discussion does tend to broaden and we do tend to find our way through. So I'm fairly optimistic about it. I am seeing Australians embracing Aboriginal culture in a way that they haven't before. I'm seeing us recognise things like climate change. I'm seeing things like, you know, Australia's always been perceived as quite a racist country, which I've never quite seen because Australia is one of the world's most multicultural countries and always has been. And so I don't think on a day-to-day basis that there's a particularly high level of racism in Australia, but maybe institutionally there has been in the past. And I'm starting to see that soften as well.

So I think times are changing and I'm hopeful that Australians have averted a crisis of identity and are on a path to better understanding of our past, especially as it relates to the modern era, because I think that's so important. I think we have to understand where we've come from. We have to understand why we've made decisions that have led us to, you know, whatever this term Australian really means. And I think we have to understand where we've come from and we have to then relate that to what's going on now and look for opportunities to do better in the future. So I'm quite heartened in the face of these big tragedies that they're absolutely awful. The way Australians came together during the bushfires and other similar natural disasters we've had recently has been very heartwarming and hopefully it enables us to get a better perspective on what

it means to be Australian and to hopefully make better decisions moving forward. Well Matt you and I are going to be doing some work moving forward hopefully this summer what are your plans tell everyone how you get people to connect with history? I'm just a history nerd and I love talking about history not just Australian history but there is a fair quantity of that but my living history podcast my YouTube channel I really just enjoy making great content telling these stories. And I'm so privileged that I get to do it. You know, walking the battlefields with my Matt McLaughlin Battlefield Tour Company is wonderful. But I'm just so privileged that every day I get to tell these historic stories because they're worth telling. It's worth

remembering these stories. So if people want to hear more about what I'm doing, they can subscribe to the Living History podcast for more great history content. They sure can. Matt, thank you very much for coming on the show. Thanks, Dan. It's been a pleasure. Hope you enjoyed the podcast, everyone. Just a massive favour to ask if you could go to iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts, give it a rating, five stars, obviously, and then leave a glowing review. That'd be great. My mum is getting overwhelmed by the amount of different

email accounts she's set up to leave good reviews for me. So you're going to have to do some of the heavy lifting. Thank you. you