Rearm the ANZACs for the Pacific War.

So it seems like the biggest barrier by a large margin to the Anzac's militarizing earlier and maintaining a larger military is a combination of politics and popular opinion. Seems like their needs to be a more recent example within living memory of Australia being directly attacked.
While a good idea prima facie, I have to ask: how far back are you prepared to go to make this happen? Y'know, we could just to back to when Supply landed & have Arthur Phillip decide, "Nah, it's too flowery, let's put 'em in New Zealand, instead." & have Oz become Dutch. :rolleyes:
 
Need we mention Cathcarts "Defending the National Tuckshop" or the variety of histories of boyhood conscription. Unlawful or semi-lawful bourgeois-Imperial paramilitary are Australia's history of "natural" development of infantry forces. Along with police and their allies who "accidentally" attend "the results" of unlawful massacres of "violent" aboriginal peoples who are then unable to determine who committed such acts. This is the history of compuslory or "voluntary" service in Australia. Actual voluntary service has been by choice, for Empire, overseas. Actual involuntary service has been on country, for the state, or very controversially in WWII, and Vietnam to my knowledge, overseas for the state.

While Australia is a settler society, the only primary thing that it shares with other settler societies is that imperial residents reside there, and that the imperial state murders the landowning communities. Everything else is variance. In Australia there was a high level of working class participation in the murders.
 
All this re conscription. Lets be realistic.

Apart from the cold War. When did anywhere in the British Common wealth have conscription except during war and even then how long after the start.

Conscription in British derived areas just won't happen except in extremism. So in Australia and NZ only a direct threat by Japan will allow it. This is no matter which main line politician is in power

It’s entirely realistic if the county felt threatened.

In answer to your question, Britain reintroduced conscription in 1939 before the war broke out.

Australia had national service in the 1950s and again in the 1960, the latter predated the Vietnam War. In neither case was the country directly threatened.

It comes down to how the government of the day and the people are feeling, and again, in this thread, that comes down to the “twitch”.

It would be good to see the OP flesh out a scenario and no I don’t think German raiders in WWI would do it.
 
It’s entirely realistic if the county felt threatened.

In answer to your question, Britain reintroduced conscription in 1939 before the war broke out.

Australia had national service in the 1950s and again in the 1960, the latter predated the Vietnam War. In neither case was the country directly threatened.
1964 to be exact. In 1951, Eighteen-year-old men were required to undertake 176 days of military training as part of the National Service scheme. Those who elected to undertake their training in the army could break up their training requirements into two periods, 98 days in the Australian Regular Army and 78 days in the Citizen Military Forces (CMF). Those who elected to undertake their training with the Royal Australian Navy or the Royal Australian Air Force had to complete their 176 days in one stretch.

The National Service scheme was discontinued in 1959 because the Australian Government didn't see much use in training conscripts to paint rocks and mow lawn which is all they were employed to do. Conscription takes a lot out of an army as well as adding something to it. Conscription dilutes the manpower as soldiers of the established force as used to train and command the conscription forces. Approximately 25% of the existing Australian Army was employed in the 1960s in training conscripts.

National Service was reintroduced in 1964, and in May 1965 the Coalition Government introduced new powers that enabled it to send national servicemen overseas. At that time Australian soldiers were involved in the war in Vietnam and with Indonesian Confrontation. The Menzies Government wished to raise the army's numbers to 40,000 in order to meet overseas commitments.

All 20-year-old males had to register with the Department of Labour and National Service, and their names were selected by the "birthday ballot", in which men were randomly selected for national service by their date of birth. Those who were selected for national service were required to serve for two years full-time in the Regular Army and three years part-time in the reserves.

Exemptions were given to Aborigines and Torres Strait Islander peoples, the medically unfit, and theology students. Young men were granted exemption on the grounds of conscientious objection if they could prove their objection to war was based on religious beliefs. A temporary deferment of national service was granted to university students, apprentices, married men, and those who could prove that national service would cause them financial hardship. Conscientious objection was hard to prove and several men went to prison as a consequence including Simon Townsend, later a TV Presenter of childrens programming.

If a conscriptee was already enlisted in the CMF they were exempted from conscription. This meant that when the ballots were pulled, most CMF units saw a massive increase in numbers, which then fell away after the danger of being conscripted decreased. The Government reacted by changing the regulations to that now a soldier needed to enlist for six years to be exempted from conscription. A large number of "draft dodgers" then enlisted - my oldest brother amongst them - on the advice from our father who had served in the Northern Territory during WWII and had spent several years trying to be accepted by the AIF but failing because he fulfilled a useful role in the Miltia as a dental mechanic. The pay in the AIF was deliberately higher than the Militia's and that was always handy.

It comes down to how the government of the day and the people are feeling, and again, in this thread, that comes down to the “twitch”.
Which was the point I was making all along...
 

Coulsdon Eagle

Monthly Donor
HMAS Australia might put a stop to that, but then again if she did she might earn far more support for funding/keeping her or replacement cruisers come 20s/30s?
Von Spee had hoped to catch Australia at anchor at Apia. The two aroured cruisers against an Indefatigable-class first-generation battlecruiser would be a closrr run match than most would expect.
 
Von Spee had hoped to catch Australia at anchor at Apia. The two aroured cruisers against an Indefatigable-class first-generation battlecruiser would be a closrr run match than most would expect.
I don't really think so unless they catch it at anchor the I class simply rips them apart with its much heavier (850 lbs. 386 kg v 237.4 lbs 107.7 kg) shells, looking at the battle of Falklands its not going to be very close?
 

McPherson

Banned
Did anyone bring up the populations of Australia and New Zealand at this time period? I think to combine it was something in the 8 million range? Combine they fielded less than 2 million troops? Good to have all these arms but you need troops to use them.
Here.

One can invoke hindsight. We have a nation about the population size and economic power of New York City at the time, that was asked to step up and do the work of France in the Pacific War.

She was asked to feed a huge navy and air force (not her own) and to supply a field army (her own as well as her allies) that was about 1/4 the size of the forces liberating France. THINK about that one.
 
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Coulsdon Eagle

Monthly Donor
I don't really think so unless they catch it at anchor the I class simply rips them apart with its much heavier (850 lbs. 386 kg v 237.4 lbs 107.7 kg) shells, looking at the battle of Falklands its not going to be very close?
Invincible & Infexible suffered several hits at the Falklands and it took quite a while for two battlecruisers to rip Von Spee's armoured cruisers apart with their heavier shells. Some RN officers despaired of ever sinking them during the performance before night came. I can't recall the source but I am also sure that one German hit was thought unlucky not to have set off a magazine explosion. Two vs one with superior gunnery skills to the Germans - IMHO not the walkover you anticipate. Also note that the belt & turret armour on both sets of combattants were equal.
 
All this re conscription. Lets be realistic.

Apart from the cold War. When did anywhere in the British Common wealth have conscription except during war and even then how long after the start.

Conscription in British derived areas just won't happen except in extremism. So in Australia and NZ only a direct threat by Japan will allow it. This is no matter which main line politician is in power

NZ started conscription in mid 1940, following the Fall of France
 
My thoughts exactly. Have a couple German AMC's raid the Australian coast.
German raiders did raid Australian waters in WWII. They were successful and made the RAN's life difficult. I live in Adelaide, in South Australia, in WWII a German Raider, the Pinguin laid mines in "Backstairs Passage" - the strait between Kangaroo Island and the mainland, just south of Fleureu Peninsular, just south of the city. They sank IIRC a ship. Other raiders laid mines and dummy mines off Fremantle in Western Australia and along the southern coast from Melboure towards Adelaide. The first US merchant ship sank in WWII was sunk in Australian waters - "MS City of Rayville".

On about 5 November 1940, Pinguin's Captain, Ernst-Felix Kruder, launched a Heinkel floatplane south of Kangaroo Island for a reconnaissance mission. Kruder wanted to be sure there were no major naval ships in the area which might interfere with their mining operations. Ken Cain, the son of the lighthouse keeper at the Cape Willoughby Lighthouse on the eastern tip of Kangaroo Island saw the floatplane and ran to tell his disbelieving father, Percy Cain. During its return flight to the Pinguin, Percy Cain sighted the floatplane and noted the sighting in the Lighthouse log book. The floatplane had flown from the area of the lighthouse over the narrow waters of Backstairs Passage and north towards Adelaide a distance of about 100 miles. The Heinkel then flew to Parafield Airfield where it was seen by Gordon White, son of a farmer working near the airfield. The Heinkel was spotted by a woman at Largs Bay near Port Adelaide. Reg Lawrence, a young farm worker at Normanville also spotted the floatplane. He said that it was grey coloured and flew very low at an altitude of a few hundred feet. The floatplane was recovered by Pinguin which then proceed to lay mines in Investigator Strait until 7 November 1940.
Source

So, commerce raiders did operate in WWII off the Australian coast. They might have in WWI. However, those raiders were German, not Japanese who were allied with the British and hence the Australians at that time. Indeed, Japanese ships escorted the AIF from Australia to the Middle-East in WWI. So the "twitch" couldn't have concerned the Japanese but the Germans. Would it be enough to promote Conscription? I doubt it consider the anti-conscription feelings within Australian society at this time. The battles against it were too fresh in the minds of Australians.
 
Well, what is the "twitch"? Maybe this is where the OP really needs to provide more clarity on how much more concerned the Australian and New Zealand governments were by the threat of Japan.
Absent more information, IMO you can't presume enormous changes. Changes to procurement to cope with a greater perceived threat are credible to me; conscription, even in the face of the Depression, when met with such a deep historical opposition in Oz culture (& one I was unaware of, so the discussion hasn't been for naught), no. A scheme of increased recruitment, or improved pay, with the goal of a stronger army, coupled with the Depression, might get to the (putative) goal of conscription without actually using it...& that's an approach I could believe.

My $0.05 (adjusted for inflation :openedeyewink: ).
 
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