Australian conscription referenda WWI POD

Melvin Loh

During WWI, there was very sharp public political division over the issue of conscription, with 2 separate referenda on the issue being conducted in Oct 1916 and Nov 1917, both of which were narrowly defeated by the anti-conscriptionist league who argued that whether a man should go and fight on the Western front was his own decision, not to be compelled by the govt. Pro-conscriptionists such as PM Billy Hughes argued that conscription was necessary in order to enhance Aust's contribution to Britain's war effort, esp since by this time there was a shortage of eligible manpower on the Western front, with fewer young Aust men volunteering to join the AIF. In the end, the anti-conscriptionist forces, which included leading Catholic spokesmen and a substantial Irish groundswell which opposed what they saw as providing the British with more cannon fodder, won out in narrow majorities, and Aust remained the only Western belligerent country during WWI to not impose conscription as part of its war effort. The debate was so strong that the country became extremely divided, with some incidents of unrest between opposing forces.

The effects of no conscription were felt significantly by the AIF on the Western front, where many (possibly the majority of) Aust combat bns were drastically short of their alloted strength, and there were many cases of certain bns which were so chronically understrength that they had to be disbanded and amalgamted with other similarly understrength units in order to maintain their operational usefulness- much to the anger of soldiers in these outfits who'd served in the now disbanded bns for so long, and now had their beloved associations dissolved so that they had to serve with a whole new bunch of blokes. There'd also been proposals to form a 6th AIF div- they eventually reached a total of 5 on the Western front- but lack of manpower prevented this new formation from ever eventuating.

Now, WI either of the conscription referenda had succeeded in Aust ? How would Aust's war effort have been affected for the better or worse ? Would the political dissension within the country have become even worse, if that was possible, and what would've been the effects ?
 

DMA

To be honest Melvin, I can't see much of a change in the overall OTL. The main reaons here is our total population back in the 1914-1918 period. There's only so many battalions you can create, let alone maintain, with a limited population of 8 million people (I think it was 8 million, but it may have been lower as I can't remember exactly).

Anyway, as it was, 1 million Australians were serving in the armed forces. So that doesn't leave that many around to join as half the population would be women & the rest would be males who would have to work on farms, factories, public serivce & goodness knows whatever else it takes, not just to keep the country going, but to also keep a large military going as well. As a result, although the five AIF divisions may have been brought up to full strength in 1918, I can't see them effecting the war that much. Maybe the German advance in Kaiserschlacht is stopped earlier, but that's about all.
 

Mark Ford

The population of Australia during WWI was 5 million and the total number of troops who served in the AIF was about 331,000. Compareing with the population of the UK and their conscription experience, it would be reasonable to assume that the AIF would have an additional 170,000 or so troops.
As it was the Australian contribution on land was five infantry divisions and nearly two mounted divisions. To make up entire divisions, the Australian Mounted Division was made up of eight Australian Light Horse regiments and one French Cavalry regiment while the ANZAC Mounted Division was made up of six ALH regiemnts and three regiments of New Zealand Mounted Rifles. The Light Horse fought in the middle east while the infantry fought in France.
Extra troops in the middle east would have made no difference to the final result as the only significant defeat was caused by General Chetwode's decision to retreat after winning the first battle of Gaza in March 1917. In France, an additional division would have made no difference as all the major battles involved dozens of divisions and it was common for minor diversionary attacks to made by one, two or three divisions.
The effects on the Australians in France would have been rather negative. The front line troops themselves had voted against conscription and the presence of conscripted troops amoung them may have been bad for morale. Also the presence of additional troops would have enabled the Divisions to be kept in the front line for longer periods and for shorter periods of rest, once again a potential cause of conflict between conscripts and volunteers. Towards the end of the war the Australian Corps, when the the infantry divisions were finally grouped together, gained a reputation of something of an elite force and a large part of this reputation was the fact that it was a veteran formation. In the last year of the war, three quarters of reinforcements were in fact soldiers returning to the front after recovering from wounds. So it is likely that the addition of too many extra toops with no experience and little training would have impaired the fighting ability of the Australian divisions in France.
In Australia the effects would have been negligable on the political situation as the Conscription refferendum itself was what caused the split in the government, not the result. The only thing that comes to mind is that the formation of the Australian Federal Police was caused by a rather strange event during the second conscription refferendum so if the first refferendum is passed then the Australian Federal Police is never formed.
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DMA

Ooppsss I stand corrected. I was thinking WW2 figures.

I still don't think you'll get all that many more troops than OTL. And I can't see any major impact taking place on any battlefield anywhere. WW1 continues as per the OTL.

As for the Australian Federal Police, considering it's logical to have such a federal force, it would be created sometime anyway. Just sometime later.
 

DMA

comparing WWI to WWII

After mixing up WWII figures with WWI figures, I thought I'd go & have a look at the differences. Considering Australia, in WWII, did have conscription I thought it'd be interesting to compare if, indeed, conscription would have meant anything to the WWI figures.

First off, Australia had 416 808 enlistments overall in WWI. The 331 814 figure are for personnel sent overseas. Anyway, taking the 416 808 figure, we're talking 8.5 percent of the overall population.

In WWII, Australia had 993 000 enlistments, whilst 575 799 served overseas. The population in 1939 was about 7 million. The overall percentage of service personnel to population is 14.2%, so there is, possibly, an impact of almost 6% more troops due to conscription.

Taking this into account then, if we use the higher 14.2% & apply this to WWI figures, we'd get about 710 000 troops overall instead of 416 808. More importantly, on the front lines, there could be 568 000 instead of 331 814 troops. This means there's 236 186 more Australians fighting in France &/or Palistine. Whether such a number can change history, though, I'd doubt it, but you may never know...
 
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