{"id":31372,"date":"2015-05-21T02:00:11","date_gmt":"2015-05-21T06:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=31372"},"modified":"2020-08-07T13:15:36","modified_gmt":"2020-08-07T17:15:36","slug":"john-monash-australias-greatest-general","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2015\/05\/21\/john-monash-australias-greatest-general\/","title":{"rendered":"John Monash – Australia’s greatest general"},"content":{"rendered":"

Strategy Page<\/em><\/a> reviews a new biography of Australia’s General John Monash:<\/p>\n

The centennial of the First World War has brought forth renewed public interest and additional scholarly study of that still controversial conflict, variously the last 19th century imperial war and the first modern war. When its great generals are enumerated, one named by relatively few outside the Antipodes is Australian Army Corps commander John Monash (1865-1931), this despite Field Marshal Viscount Montgomery\u2019s declaration half a century after the Armistice that Monash was \u201cthe best general on the Western Front in Europe,\u201d and historian Sir Basil Liddell Hart\u2019s even stronger accolade as \u201cthe greatest general of World War I by far.\u201d Yet in the three-volume Cambridge History of the First World War<\/em>, there is not one mention of him.<\/p>\n

Monash, it must be said, has not been entirely overlooked. He was knighted in the field by George V (as a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath) and subsequently given the title Knight Grand Cross of the Order of St. Michael and St. George, and in his homeland his name graces a university (indeed, the publisher of the book under review), a scholarship, a town and even a freeway. Nevertheless, in Maestro John Monash<\/em>, former Australian Deputy Prime Minister Tim Fischer argues that Sir John has been wronged by history and not given his due. In a breezy hagiography (Fischer vehemently denies that characterization, protesting that his biography is \u201cwarts and all,\u201d however, he downplays or dismisses most of the \u201cwarts\u201d cited, e.g., other generals also had mistresses, and while he made mistakes at Gallipoli, he learned from them) and advocacy piece, he makes a justifiable case for Monash\u2019s posthumous promotion to field marshal (backdated to 1930). Had he been promptly promoted postwar, rather than in 1929, to general (that is, full or four-star general), Fischer points out logically, he likely would have been promoted by the king one step up in rank to field marshal.<\/p>\n

In his account of Monash\u2019s life and military career, Fischer details the many obstacles faced and surmounted by \u201cthe most innovative general\u201d of the war. His sobriquet for Monash, \u201cmaestro,\u201d comes from Sir John\u2019s comparison of a \u201cperfected modern battle plan\u201d to a \u201cscore for an orchestral composition.\u201d Indeed, while some British and French generals were still thinking in terms of cavalry charges, sabers and bayonets, drawing on his engineering background, Monash made concerted use of infantry, artillery, tanks, aircraft and radio in (to quote him) \u201ccomprehensive holistic battle plan[s].\u201d His strategy\u2019s success became evident in thwarting Germany\u2019s final westward push and smashing through the Hindenburg Line, in the 93-minute Battle of Hamel and the second Battle of Amiens, which German General Ludendorff later called \u201cthe black day of the German Army in the war,\u201d victories achieved while Monash was still a lieutenant general (three stars). \u201cNever has a general who did so much to help win a world war \u2026 been so unacknowledged,\u201d affirms Fischer, returning to his theme. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Strategy Page reviews a new biography of Australia’s General John Monash: The centennial of the First World War has brought forth renewed public interest and additional scholarly study of that still controversial conflict, variously the last 19th century imperial war and the first modern war. When its great generals are enumerated, one named by relatively […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[331,7,5,246],"tags":[31,1391,1219,572],"class_list":["post-31372","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-australia","category-history","category-military","category-ww1","tag-army","tag-biography","tag-hundreddays","tag-leadership"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-8a0","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31372","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31372"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31372\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59411,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31372\/revisions\/59411"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}