Challenging Anzac

The Anzac legend has shaped Australia’s national identity for more than a century. Yet many experiences of war do not fit comfortably within this.

In Challenging Anzac, leading historians explore some of these stories: Aboriginal activists, deserters on the Western Front, veterans who took their own lives and soldiers who became radicalized by their service. They reveal how episodes in Australia’s war history that unsettled the Anzac legend – from the relief of Tobruk, nuclear testing on Australian soil and feminist protests against war, to alleged atrocities in Afghanistan – have been elided or adapted to ‘fit’ the legend.

Edited by award-winning historians Mia Martin Hobbs, Carolyn Holbrook and Joan Beaumont, Challenging Anzac examines how the reality of warfare has always been at odds with mythic representation and considers why, despite this, the Anzac legend has survived.

About the Author

Mia Martin Hobbs is an oral historian of war and conflict, with a research focus on the Vietnam War, War on Terror, gender, peace, security and postwar reconciliation. Her first book, Return to Vietnam: An Oral History of American and Australian Veterans’ Journeys, won the Oral History Australia Book Award in 2022 and was highly commended for the Memory Studies First Book Award in 2023. She has written widely on anti-war veteran activism, war crimes and the impact of the Anzac revival on Australian veterans’ war memory. She is presently an ARC DECRA fellow at Deakin University.

Carolyn Holbrook is a historian at Deakin University. Her latest books are Australia Fair? Democracy, Bureaucracy and the Making of Modern Australia with James Walter, and Gold Standard? Remembering the Hawke Government, co-edited with Frank Bongiorno and Joshua Black. She is the director of the Australian Policy and History network and the Australian Health and History digital archive.

Joan Beaumont is an internationally recognised historian of Australia in the two world wars, the history of prisoners of war, and the memory and heritage of war. Her publications include Gull Force: Australian POWs on Ambon and Hainan, 1941–45; Australia’s Great Depression: How a Nation Shattered by the Great War Survived the Worst Economic Crisis It Has Ever Faced; and the critically acclaimed Broken Nation: Australians in the Great War, joint winner of the 2014 Prime Minister’s Literary Award (Australian History), and winner of the 2014 NSW Premier’s Award (Australian History), the 2014 Queensland Literary Award for History and the Australian Society of Authors’ 2015 Asher Award.