v.1. Australia and the war in the air. "Drawing on archival records in Australasia, Europe and North America, Australia and the War in the Air provides a fresh perspective on Australia's involvement in the Great War and a revaluation of air power's early influence on warfare. From the earliest days of the Great War, Australians volunteered to fight in the air - warfare's newest arena, and one that would transform the nature of military operations. In the squadrons of the Australian Flying Corps and with Britain's flying services, Australian airmen fought in campaigns that spanned the length and breadth of the First World War; between 1914 and 1918 they served in the Middle East, the Mediterranean and on the Western Front. By 1919 over 4000 Australians had served with the empire's flying units. Though modest compared to some of the other British dominions, Australia's part had been the most conspicuous. Whereas the other dominions had opted to provide manpower to serve in Britain's flying services, the Commonwealth's insistence on a distinctly national contribution ensured recognition for Australia's support to the empire's effort in the air. This book examines Australia's role in history's first major air war. Unlike previous accounts, which focus on the airmen of the Australian Flying Corps in isolation, this study conceives the Australian part as one of an imperial - and international - whole. In addition to using Australian involvement as a case study to analyse the impact air power had on military operations, this study also addresses aspects of organisation, training, administration and command, as well as the imperial politics and strategic issues that contextualised dominion participation in the war." -- Provided by publisher. v.2. The war with the Ottoman empire. "The war with the Ottoman Empire was a war not only between great empires but about empire and the furthering of European imperial interests, and its aftermath laid the foundations of the modern Middle East. Soldiers from Britain, Australia, New Zealand, India and other parts of the British Empire all fought in various theatres in the Dardanelles, Sinai, Palestine, Syria and Mesopotamia and played an important, though never decisive, role in several of them. The Australian Imperial Force was a relatively small part of a much larger imperial military machine, and without the resources of the British Army and its willingness to expend them in a sustained manner on the various Dominion forces the latter could have achieved little. This book examines the involvement of Australians in this part of the Great War, but does so in a wider context in order to more fully understand the real importance of these complex events and Australia’s part in them. Drawing on archival records in Australasia, Europe and North America, The War with the Ottoman Empire provides a fresh perspective on Australia’s involvement in the Great War and our place in the world as empires shifted." v.3. The war with Germany. "For most Australians the Great War begins with the Gallipoli dawn on 25 April 1915; few appreciate the significance of Australia's first action that occurred seven months earlier on the island of New Britain to Australia's near north. Nor did Australia's war with Germany end with the Armistice in Europe on 11 November 1918 since it was nearly two months after the guns fell silent in France before a lone German officer emerged from the jungles of New Guinea to finally surrender. Between those two pivotal events Australia's soldiers fought in some of the most intense and protracted battles of the Great War. They ended the trial with a reputation of being among the finest soldiers produced by that conflict. The War with Germany examines the performance of the Australian Army in the two theatres where it confronted the German Army during the First World War: German New Guinea and the Western Front. With a blend of narrative and theme the book charts the rise and fall of the Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force in the Pacific and the Australian Imperial Force on the Western Front. Deeply researched and drawing on previously untapped primary sources and recent scholarship, this study adopts a fresh approach, rejecting unsubstantiated assumptions of natural Australian superiority. Rather it critically examines those traits that set Australias soldiers apart and those factors they shared in common with other soldiers. It concludes that Australias forces earned their reputation for battlefield virtuosity for characteristics that were neither innate nor unique. Instead they only gradually and painfully became a great fighting force for the very same reasons that other contingents earned a place among the foremost ranks of the British Empire's best." v.4. The war at home. "The War at Home interprets the experience of the Australian people during the Great War in Australia itself, in the politics of war, its economic and social effects, and in the experience of war; what is conventionally called ‘social history’. It seeks to show that the war affected many aspects of Australians’ lives—and that people’s experience of 1914–18 included more than just the war. It also addresses the impact of the war on Australia’s culture and artistic responses to the war. This volume draws on the uneven but still substantial body of scholarship that has grown up in the decades since Ernest Scott’s official history appeared in 1936, which in turn has largely been founded on an array of sources mainly made available since then. The Bibliographic Essay discusses the secondary literature on which it is based. It also reflects the experience of the years since then. The events of our past change how we understand more distant history. It is impossible now to think of the internment of German Australians without also reflecting on the experiences of those detained in immigration detention camps, to think of the ‘battle of Broken Hill’ without also thinking of the ‘war on terror’ pursued from 2001, or to look at Norman Lindsay’s posters without recalling the insidious influence of propaganda in the century since. Before understanding the way the Great War affected Australians, we need to acknowledge the texture of life in 1914. Australia before the Great War was, as Michelle Hetherington writes in a survey of the last full year of peace, ‘a world of glorious possibilities’, in which as a social laboratory of progressive social, industrial and economic legislation it was ‘eager to learn, to develop, to dream’. The war would damage that dream, arguably fatally." v.5. The Australian Imperial Force. "The Great War came at a terrible cost, be it in human, material or financial terms. For the young Commonwealth of Australia the raising, sending and maintenance of an expeditionary force that eventually totalled 330,000 men was a massive undertaking. This book examines the fruit of this endeavour, the Australian Imperial Force. In doing so it seeks to outline and analyse the institution from its inception to its disbandment after the war. The book considers the creation of the force, the way that it expanded, the organisation of its fighting units and formations, how it used its human resources, its command and its administration. The book brings together for the first time a range of information regarding the AIF’s organisation and internal workings that could previously only be found by surveying a large number of disparate works. It also draws on up-to-date statistical information drawn from the AIF Database, a database created as part of a long-term research project undertaken at the University of New South Wales Canberra (located at the Australian Defence Force Academy)."