Question for Aussies and/or Kiwis

[Hattushilish]

I recently watched a documentary on World War I where the Gallipoli campaign was mentioned, and the narrator said "Australian and New Zealander national identities were forged at ANZAC Cove."

I thought that was a pretty bold statement, so I looked it up online and saw that this view actually seems to be quite common in Australia and New Zealand, with commemoration every year on ANZAC Day etc.

But why is the Gallipoli campaign considered so important? It seems confusing to me. Australia and New Zealand were independent nations before World War I, and both nations suffered a lot more casualties on the Western Front than they did at Gallipoli. I'm not trying to dismiss the significance of Gallipoli, I just think I'm missing something here.

And really, in terms of national identities wouldn't World War II be a lot more important than anything that happened in World War I? After World War II it became clear that you were on your own and could no longer count on Great Britain for defense, and Japan actually bombed Australia and nearly invaded.
I have heard the term "coming of age" used in reference to Gallipoli, but it seems more appropriate to describe Australia and New Zealand's involvement in World War II in my opinion.


(BTW I also heard "Waltzing Matilda" for the first time, and it's great. I think I'll get drunk and sing your song around campfires now if y'all don't mind)

[Scorch]

It's more of a backlash against the British, in a sense. I'm not too keen on ANZAC Day, to be honest, and I agree that World War II was a far more important war, for us, where we fought in defense of our own nation, however the general spiel is that the bravery of the ANZACs at Gallipoli, even in the face of increasing desperation and stupidity on the part of the British commanders is something to be lauded.

... or something. The idea of mateship, courage and working hard without fuss has come to be a part of our 'national identity', in a sense.

[Capt. Fozdike]

The reason that Gallipoli is so important to us is the fact that we lost so many unnecessary lives there. Sure, we did lose more at the Western Front but all of those lives lost at Gallipoli achieved nothing. The ANZACs were taken out of Gallipoli with nothing to show for their fighting except their lost men. And the British Generals were so incompetant there, if Monash would have been put in charge, the soldiers would have been more willing to fight for an Australian and he had better tactics.
It's mainly the willingness to fight on, the courage and the mateship of those troops that stand out from anywhere. It was a real hell-whole in Gallipoli and the Aussies stood there and faught for it, even though they had no reason to.

[Captain Blackadder]

One of the few legends that we Australians have to grasp onto in terms of our national identity is the ANZAC legend. Unlike other countries like the United States of America we had no bloody revolution to forge our identity we became independent through a legal cessation granted by the Parliament of England. Due to this lack of cohesive event we searched for something that could be latched onto as an example of what it means to be Australian and what we discovered was in our first major campaign of the First World War Gallipoli. This mythos was called the ANZAC spirit and it entailed these qualities; endurance, courage, ingenuity, good humour, larrikinism, mateship, innocent, fit, stoical, laconic, irreverent in the face of authority, naturally egalitarian and disdainful of British class differences. Essentaily that is why many Australians feel it was important it was our first war as an idependent nation and thus a chance to prove our worth in the greater world.

The reason that Gallipoli is so important to us is the fact that we lost so many unnecessary lives there. Sure, we did lose more at the Western Front but all of those lives lost at Gallipoli achieved nothing. The ANZACs were taken out of Gallipoli with nothing to show for their fighting except their lost men. And the British Generals were so incompetant there, if Monash would have been put in charge, the soldiers would have been more willing to fight for an Australian and he had better tactics.
It's mainly the willingness to fight on, the courage and the mateship of those troops that stand out from anywhere. It was a real hell-whole in Gallipoli and the Aussies stood there and faught for it, even though they had no reason to.

That is a myth of the Australian form of nationalism many of the british generals were well beloved by the men who served under them Harold Bridgwood Walker was very well loved by the Australians who fought under him and he was only replaced in 1918 when Australia put into law that all commanders had to be Australian. Plus when Australians where in charge they were just as incompatant such as the battle of the nek when the Australian commander John Macquarie Antil refused to call of the suicidal charges untill the english General Godfrey came down and ordered him to stop.

[Delysid]

Blackadder is very much spot on. Young independent country looking for an epic history moment to idealize itself with.
It's Australia's Bastille day, the 4th of July, etc etc. Heck i'd bet most Australians know more about Galipolli than federation and independence. But I don't blame them, Galipolli is a far more exciting event to remember and romanticize rather than a few guys signing some papers.

And Sipahizade, no it doesn't hurt because we know soccer isn't one of our strong sports. I'm sure the tables would be turned on Germany (or most Europeans for that matter) if they played against us in one of our more common sports for example cricket. Unsuccessful troll is unsuccessful

[Genius of the Restoration]

It's a strange thing really, but so are many national legends. The importance of Gallipoli started with C.E.W. Bean's The Anzac Book. It was originally designed to celebrate New Year 1916 so he called for contributions from the soldiers for it, about 1% responded. It turned into a commemorative souvenir for the families as well as soldiers, so as an editor Bean took out all references to the cowardice and horrow that he recorded in his own diary.

It's just another national story AFAIK. The Anzac legend held in high regard because it makes Australians seem unique and gives us a separate identity that we proved to the world. It's much like the Welsh Eisteddfod and similar national identity events really.

[Lord Tomyris]

Ooh I wrote a little about this in two of the essays I did last term at Oxford:

On the formation of Australian identity:

"More than any other conflict before World War II, the war of 1914-1918 contributed to the emergence of a distinct Australian nationality, ironically in events that took place thousands of miles away from Australian shores. Robert Thompson, who had urged Australians to embrace federation in a pamphlet published in 1888, had always envied the Americans for having in 1776 an external enemy against whom they could go to war to assert their independence and so vindicate their newfound nationhood. In the ill-fated Gallipoli campaign, begun on 25 April 1915, nationalists at last had their ‘baptism of fire’: though the number of British deaths at around 21,000 was far higher than the number of Australian deaths at around 8,000, Gallipoli soon became a byword for the stoical heroism of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps in the face of insuperable odds. The Anzac legend celebrated the blood sacrifice made by the honest Australian ‘diggers’ in an operation that had been conceived by British politicians then botched by British commanders. Just like the swagman and the bush ranger before him, the Anzac soldier came to embody the best characteristics of the Australian national identity: the Queensland School Paper asserted the traditional Australian principle of egalitarianism when it announced in November 1917 that the Anzac soldier ‘is no lover of privilege of class. He does not understand it.’ But again, the Anzac was a mythologized figure: despite the image that they were ‘men from the bush’, many of the recruits were recently arrived British immigrants or urban men."

On ties to Britain and the Empire:

"The ill-fated Gallipoli operation of 1915, in which nearly 8,000 Australians fell trying to secure control of the Dardanelles from the Turks, thus became the basis for an enduring legend in which Australians remained loyal to the Empire while being mature enough to be full partners in it. While many have been inclined to see Gallipoli as an event which undermined the Imperial attachment of Australians, weakening their sentimental links to the Mother Country that had sent the brave diggers to their deaths, it is possible that the campaign actually served to reinforce Imperial patriotism. The Anzacs gave birth to a powerful national legend, but it was one forged in service to the Empire; and there was certainly nothing incompatible between Australian nationalism and Imperial loyalty. Through Gallipoli, the Australians – and indeed, the New Zealanders – had come of age, fighting alongside British soldiers in a battle which tested them to their utmost limits. The creation of such a legend assuaged feelings towards the campaign, preventing a hardening of anti-British feeling as Australians came to believe that their sacrifice in the service of King and Empire had been glorious, not ignominious [unlike the Fall of Singapore in 1942]. It is telling that it was a British journalist, Ashmead Bartlett, that did much to publicise the significance of the Australian contribution to the campaign during a lecture tour of the two Pacific Dominions in 1916: through his reporting, Australians felt that the Anzacs got the recognition they so richly deserved. Other Britons added their praise, ranking the Australian digger alongside the Scottish Highlander when it came to ferocity in battle: Sir William Birdwood claimed that he regarded his service with the Anzacs as ‘the greatest privilege [of which] I shall be prouder to the end of my days than any honour which can be given me’."

[Baron Thunder-ten-tronckh]

Delysid - you lie. It burns to be whipped like little girls by the socialists in Europe. And Soccer is one of our strong sports - sports in general are our strong point. We can third in 2006 in the World Cup, by memory... Or was it 4th, I can't remember. True, we're better at Cricket, but even that is now lacking... :|

I think Gallipoli was very much a coming of age process. The only war we had fought prior to this was the Boer War, and indeed, we were still actually british at the time it began, and indeed, we actually fought on both sides of the war! :O
Besides from the brief conquest of Papua New Guinea, Gallipoli was our entrance into the world scene of Military, and despite landing in the wrong place, we made the world realise who we were - or thats what we like to think.

I personally don't think it really had anything anti-british to do with it. Indeed, we kept our british links for as long as we could. The British offered us a great deal of Freedoms in the Statute of Westminster in '31, but we didn't adopt it until '42, at about the time we started turning to America after Singapore, the single location stopping the Nips invading australia, was taken quickly.

[Blarni]

I think in NZ ANZAC day and Gallipoli are a little less mythologized than in Australia, in general it's seen more as a sad tragedy (NZ had something like an almost 80% casualty rate in WW1) and bloody self-awakening than the celebration of national characteristics and myths that it seems to take on in Australia - though this could be changing as NZ's national founding day 'Waitangi Day' has become so mired with Maori protesting that people are beginning to look to ANZAC day as the national day.

WW1 was certainly the beginning of national consciousness in NZ, among other things the NZ soldiers wore the fern leaf insignia for the first time - which has continued as the national symbol (to be worn on Sunday when another band of Kiwi brothers will no doubt experience another bloody maelstrom of sorts at the hands of Italy)

[Jaketh]

isnt Kiwi a fruit?

[Capt. Fozdike]

isnt Kiwi a fruit?

Yes. And an animal. Kiwis are a bird and a fruit. And that's the reason that New Zealanders are called Kiwis.

[Nik]

Speaking as an outside observer, I think the whole ANZAC experience seems to be pretty important for the austraian communities, as far as their identities..
After travelling through australia, I think an official town is defined by having a post office and an ANZAC war memorial. If you are too small to have one, you are not worth beeing mentioned on a map.

And Soccer is one of our strong sports - sports in general are our strong point.

I though that was stealing and drinking beer?

[Hattushilish]

Thanks for the responses. I guess the futility of Gallipoli adds to its significance, sort of like the Charge of the Light Brigade or Pickett's Charge. The sacrifices made on the Western Front weren't as poignant I suppose. It's funny how we look at it this way.