Michael McKernan’s The Strength of a Nation is an ambitious attempt to tell the Australian story of the Second World War as a national experience rather than simply as a succession of military campaigns. Covering the years from 1939 to 1945, McKernan places Australians fighting overseas alongside the men and women whose lives at home were transformed by the demands of war. It is a broad approach that attempts to bring the military, political, economic and social experiences of wartime Australia together within a single narrative.
The great strength of McKernan’s approach is that he refuses to separate the battlefield completely from Australian society. North Africa, Greece, Crete, the Mediterranean, Singapore, New Guinea and the Pacific are certainly important, but they form only part of the story. The Royal Australian Navy, the Royal Australian Air Force and the merchant navy also receive attention, while developments overseas are continually connected with political decisions and the mobilisation of Australian society. The result is less a conventional military history than a history of Australia during wartime in which military operations form one important component of a much larger national experience.
This approach is particularly effective in demonstrating the extraordinary scale of the Australian commitment. The country entered the war while the social and economic consequences of the Great Depression remained fresh and memories of the First World War continued to influence attitudes towards another major conflict. Yet within a remarkably short period Australia was required to raise and sustain large armed forces, expand industrial production, support operations conducted thousands of kilometres from home and prepare for the possibility that the war might eventually reach Australia itself. The entry of Japan into the conflict dramatically increased these pressures as Australia attempted to maintain existing commitments while confronting a much more immediate strategic threat in the Pacific.
McKernan is particularly effective when examining the ordinary people caught within these enormous events. His history is not dominated entirely by generals, politicians and strategic decisions, although all remain important to the narrative. Individual experiences repeatedly bring the larger story back to a human scale, allowing the consequences of government policy and military events to be understood through the experiences of those required to live with them. This people centred approach makes what could easily have become a dense national history considerably more accessible.
The political dimension is equally important. Robert Menzies, John Curtin, General Thomas Blamey and General Douglas MacArthur inevitably occupy significant places within the story, but McKernan does not present Australian wartime leadership as a simple procession of wise decisions made by heroic national figures. Successes sit alongside mistakes, political calculations, personality conflicts and decisions made with incomplete information. This is important because Australian participation in the Second World War has generated its own collection of national legends, particularly concerning 1942, the supposed abandonment of Australia by Britain and the development of the relationship with the United States.
I particularly appreciated McKernan’s willingness to avoid turning Australian participation in the war into a comfortable patriotic narrative. Australians fought extremely well in many circumstances, including North Africa and New Guinea, but military achievement does not mean that every command decision was correct, every political decision was wise or every operation was necessary. McKernan allows room for achievement without requiring unquestioning admiration for everyone responsible for directing the Australian war effort.
His treatment of the home front is central to the book. The strength of a nation cannot be measured simply by counting divisions, aircraft or warships, and McKernan gives considerable attention to those Australians whose contribution took place far from the battlefield. Industrial workers, farmers, families, women entering new areas of employment and the countless Australians adapting their lives to shortages, restrictions and government controls were all part of the same national effort. The distinction between the fighting front and home front consequently becomes much less rigid than it often appears in histories concerned primarily with campaigns and battles.
This broader perspective also helps demonstrate how profoundly the war affected Australia itself. The conflict altered government, industry, employment, family life and expectations about the responsibilities of the state. It also contributed to a gradual reconsideration of Australia’s strategic position and its relationships with Britain, the United States and the countries of the Pacific region. These changes did not occur simply because Australian troops fought particular battles. They emerged from the interaction between events overseas and the pressures experienced within Australia.
There are, however, inevitable limitations to such a broad approach. A book attempting to cover six years of Australian political, social, naval, air and military history cannot explore every campaign or controversy in the depth available in more specialised studies. Readers already familiar with Tobruk, Greece, Crete, Singapore, Kokoda or the later New Guinea campaigns may occasionally find themselves wanting greater operational detail. Important military events sometimes move past relatively quickly because McKernan must return to developments elsewhere and maintain the broader national narrative.
For the serious military history reader this can occasionally become frustrating. There are points where a campaign, command decision or operational problem seems worthy of much greater examination, only for the narrative to move back towards political developments or life on the home front. This is not necessarily a fault in the book because McKernan is clearly attempting something different from a detailed campaign history, but it does affect the experience of readers whose principal interest lies in military operations.
The principal weakness of The Strength of a Nation, at least for me, therefore arises from the same approach that will probably make the book attractive to many other readers. McKernan has deliberately written a broad national history in which the fighting overseas, political leadership, economic mobilisation and experiences of Australians on the home front are brought together within a single narrative. This gives the book considerable breadth, but it inevitably comes at the expense of the detailed military and operational history that I generally prefer. Campaigns and battles sometimes pass more quickly than I would have liked, while social and domestic aspects of the war receive considerably more attention.
This is very much a matter of personal preference rather than a fundamental criticism of McKernan’s work. The approach is a good one, and there is considerable value in examining the Second World War as an experience involving the whole Australian nation rather than simply those Australians who served in uniform. Separating the battlefield from the society that supplied the soldiers, manufactured their equipment, supported their families and dealt with the political and economic consequences of war can produce an equally distorted picture. McKernan’s broader perspective provides an important corrective to histories that concentrate almost exclusively upon military operations.
Ultimately, however, The Strength of a Nation was not quite my cup of tea. I found myself wanting more detail about campaigns, units, commanders and military decisions and somewhat less about the broader social experience of wartime Australia. That does not make the book unsuccessful. Quite the opposite, since McKernan largely achieves what he sets out to do and produces an accessible account of Australia’s war that places the battlefield within a much wider national context. Readers interested in the Australian home front and the relationship between war and society are likely to appreciate it considerably more than I did. I can recognise the value of the approach, even if it is not the approach to Australian military history that most appeals to me.