Beyond Surrender

This book will present new research findings on the Australian prisoner of war experience throughout the twentieth century, and will represent the first significant publication on the experiences of Australian prisoners of war from across conflicts spanning the twentieth century, from the First World War to Korea.

In the conflicts of the 20th century a total of 35,000 Australians had the misfortune of being prisoners of war. There exist many popular myths and stereotypes regarding the Australian prisoner of war experience. Popular movies and TV shows such as The Great Escape and Hogan's Heroes depict captivity in Germany in both world wars as a 'boys' own' adventure of escape and daring, with prisoners cleverly outwitting their captors.

The experiences of prisoners of the Japanese in the Second World War, in contrast, are often viewed through the lens of horror associated with Japanese brutality: notably, the Burma-Thailand Railway and the Sandakan Death March.

This book will demonstrate that no single narrative can describe the Australian prisoner of war experience.

About the Author

Joan Beaumont is the author of Broken Nation: Australians and the Great War, joint winner of the 2014 Prime Minister's Award for Australian History and the 2014 NSW Premier's Award for Australian History. She has published also on the Thai-Burma railway,and in 2011-13 researched the Hellfire Pass commemorative web site for the Department of Veterans Affairs. Lachlan Grant is a historian in the Military History Section of the Australian War Memorial. He has published widely on the Australian experiences of the World War II and the Australian prisoner of war experience. He recently authored Australian soldiers in Asia-Pacific in World War II (NewSouth, 2014). Aaron Pegram is a historian in the Military History Section at the Australian War Memorial. He is the Memorial's tour leader and historical guide for the Memorial's Western Front battlefield tours, and is currently completing a PhD thesis on Australian prisoners in Germany in the First World War at the Australian National University.