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John Curtin's War The coming of war in the Pacific, and reinventing Australia
John Curtin became Australia’s Prime Minister eight weeks before Japan launched war in the Pacific.
Curtin’s struggle for power against Joe Lyons and Bob Menzies, his dramatic use of it when he took office in October 1941, and his determination to be heard in Washington and London as Japan advanced, is a political epic unmatched in Australian experience. As Japan sank much of the Allied navy, advanced on the great British naval base at Singapore, and seized Australian territories in New Guinea, Curtin remade Australia.
Using much new material John Edwards’ vivid, landmark biography places Curtin as a man of his times, puzzling through he immense changes in Australia and its region released by the mighty shock of the Pacific War.
It shows Curtin not as a hero and certainly not as a villain but as the pivotal figure making his uncertain way between what Australia was, and what it would become. It locates the turning point in Australian history not at Gallipoli or the Western Front or even Federation but in the Pacific War and in Curtin’s Prime Ministership.
This two volume work is a major contribution to Australian biography, and to how we understand our history. In this first part, Edwards takes Curtin’s story from the late nineteenth century socialist ferment in Melbourne through to his appointment as prime minister and a Japanese onslaught so complete and successful that within a few months of launching it military leaders in Tokyo debated between the options of invading Australia, or sealing it off from Allied help.
Curtin’s struggle for power against Joe Lyons and Bob Menzies, his dramatic use of it when he took office in October 1941, and his determination to be heard in Washington and London as Japan advanced, is a political epic unmatched in Australian experience. As Japan sank much of the Allied navy, advanced on the great British naval base at Singapore, and seized Australian territories in New Guinea, Curtin remade Australia.
Using much new material John Edwards’ vivid, landmark biography places Curtin as a man of his times, puzzling through he immense changes in Australia and its region released by the mighty shock of the Pacific War.
It shows Curtin not as a hero and certainly not as a villain but as the pivotal figure making his uncertain way between what Australia was, and what it would become. It locates the turning point in Australian history not at Gallipoli or the Western Front or even Federation but in the Pacific War and in Curtin’s Prime Ministership.
This two volume work is a major contribution to Australian biography, and to how we understand our history. In this first part, Edwards takes Curtin’s story from the late nineteenth century socialist ferment in Melbourne through to his appointment as prime minister and a Japanese onslaught so complete and successful that within a few months of launching it military leaders in Tokyo debated between the options of invading Australia, or sealing it off from Allied help.
538 pages, Hardcover
Published November 13, 2017
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About the author
John Edwards
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
January 7, 2018
A solid and enjoyable re-telling of John Curtin's rise to power and Prime Ministership through 1942. Edwards knows his history, and is generally faithful to the record (though I disliked the tension-building choice to keep the discussion of Japan's true plans till the final pages). He's especially good on Curtin's worldview and ideas about economics and defence. I was less swayed by the efforts to paint Menzies as defeatist, esp given the appeaser label already rightfully hangs around Sir Bob's neck. As volume 1, the book ends somewhat strangely at a nondescript moment mid-way through the Japanese advance on Australia, but i'm glad it didn't go beyond its already long 454 pages. Popular history but done seriously. Well worth picking up.
May 12, 2022
Wartime leaders are a common subject of biographers. The appeal is of a story of people confronted by, and rising to the challenge, of extraordinary times. Australia actually had five prime ministers during the Second World War: Robert Menzies from September 1939 until August 1941; Arthur Fadden from August to October 1941; John Curtin from October 1941 until his death in July 1945; Frank Forde for a week in July 1945; and Ben Chifley for the rest of the war (and until his defeat by Menzies in December 1949). But Curtin is usually considered Australia's wartime leader.
This work is divided into two volumes - the publisher said mainly for occupational health and safety reasons. The first volume covers up to March 1942, when General Douglas MacArthur was appointed Supreme Commander of the South West Pacific Area on Curtin's recommendation. Despite its formidable size, this is not a full biography. Although the first volume covers his life before the war in about fifty pages, the focus of the books is on the war, and Curtin's prime ministership. To be sure, that is what most readers are really interested in anyway.
John Edwards is an adjunct professor at the John Curtin Institute of Public Policy at Curtin University in Western Australia. He was a senior economic advisor to Paul Keating as treasurer and later prime minister, and later served on the board of the Reserve Bank of Australia. He got Keating to launch the book in his usual colourful manner; he is more comfortable talking about economic matters than defence ones.
The Australian form of government is a cross between the American and British systems, sometimes known as a "Washminster" system. Between the wars, the main political parties at the national level were the Country Party, led by Earle Page and then Arthur Fadden, which represented farmers; the Australian Labor Party (ALP), led by Curtin from 1935, which represented workers; and the United Australia Party (UAP), led by Joseph Lyons until his death in 1939, and then by Robert Menzies, which represented no one in particular.
The Labor Party was in office only from 1929 to 1932; for the rest of the inter-war period Australia the country was governed by a coalition of the two conservative parties. The outbreak of war in Europe in 1939 found both ALP and the UAP in state of disintegration, breaking up under a combination of personal, political and regional rivalries. Moreover, no party commanded a majority in the Australian House of Representatives (lower house) between 1940 and 1943, so there was a series of minority governments. Curtin rejected an all-party government like that of Winston Churchill in the UK, but Menzies established the Advisory War Council to allow all to participate in the decision making.
Edwards recounts how Curtin adroitly and sagely declined to challenge Menzies and add political chaos to the misery of a major war, concentrating instead on bringing his factious and quarrelsome colleagues together so that his party was ready and able to govern when the coalition crumbled and two independents switched their support to the ALP. The outbreak of the Pacific War found Curtin reliant on the independents to govern in the lower house, and the consent of the opposition in the Senate. However, this book does not explain how Curtin was able to bring his party back together, although it notes a series of canny decisions.
The term "Pacific War" is contentious: to the British, then and now, Japan's entry into the war was not distinguished from the war in general; to Australians, it was a new war, and a sharp distinction was drawn between the two. The relationship between Australia and Britain forms much of the narrative of the book, although there is little analysis. Edwards argues that in severing the defence link between Britain and Australia, the British inadvertently reduced the relationship between the two to one akin to that between the UK and Canada, confined to history and culture. That Britain was no longer a great power was hard to accept for people like Curtin, who grew up in the heyday of the British Empire.
The defence policy of the coalition was based on the British Singapore Strategy. The idea was that Japanese aggression could be halted by a powerful British fleet. In the hands of conservative politicians, this degenerated into pushing the burden of Australia's defence onto the UK. Searching for an alternative strategy, Curtin found one put forward by Army officers like Henry Wynter and John Lavarack, who argued that Britain could not afford to send a fleet to the Pacific if there was a war (or the threat of one) in Europe. Instead of a maritime strategy, they argued for a continental one. With a sufficiently powerful army, Australia could render an invasion impractical, when invasion was the only way to defeat Australia. Not being in office, the ALP did not have to come to grips with the fact that it opposed the measures required to implement its own defence policy.
Paul Keating was particularly incensed by the revelations of defeatism uncovered by Edwards. In particular, a telling passage in which General Brudenell White (an elderly officer recalled to active duty as Chief of the General Staff) argued that in the absence of a British fleet, Australia's best option was to surrender, as the Army had ammunition to fight for only a few weeks and, in any case, the Japanese navy could cut Australia off from the rest of the world and blockade it into submission. How that would be accomplished is not discussed; given the length of the coastline, it does not seem possible. Even cutting the trans-Pacific sea routes by occupying Fiji and Samoa, as the Japanese planned to do, merely lengthens the voyage to Australia, which would remain accessible via the Southern Ocean.
There are also some annoying bits. Edwards says that MacArthur turned back the first B-17 sent to pick him up (p. 3). He didn't; this could have been corrected by reading the Wikipedia article on Douglas MacArthur's escape from the Philippines. He describes the two Australian cavalry divisions as being armed with sabres (p. 173). Well, yes, just as the infantry were armed with bayonets; but the main weapon of both was the trusty Lee–Enfield rifle. I fear that this may mislead some readers.
This work is divided into two volumes - the publisher said mainly for occupational health and safety reasons. The first volume covers up to March 1942, when General Douglas MacArthur was appointed Supreme Commander of the South West Pacific Area on Curtin's recommendation. Despite its formidable size, this is not a full biography. Although the first volume covers his life before the war in about fifty pages, the focus of the books is on the war, and Curtin's prime ministership. To be sure, that is what most readers are really interested in anyway.
John Edwards is an adjunct professor at the John Curtin Institute of Public Policy at Curtin University in Western Australia. He was a senior economic advisor to Paul Keating as treasurer and later prime minister, and later served on the board of the Reserve Bank of Australia. He got Keating to launch the book in his usual colourful manner; he is more comfortable talking about economic matters than defence ones.
The Australian form of government is a cross between the American and British systems, sometimes known as a "Washminster" system. Between the wars, the main political parties at the national level were the Country Party, led by Earle Page and then Arthur Fadden, which represented farmers; the Australian Labor Party (ALP), led by Curtin from 1935, which represented workers; and the United Australia Party (UAP), led by Joseph Lyons until his death in 1939, and then by Robert Menzies, which represented no one in particular.
The Labor Party was in office only from 1929 to 1932; for the rest of the inter-war period Australia the country was governed by a coalition of the two conservative parties. The outbreak of war in Europe in 1939 found both ALP and the UAP in state of disintegration, breaking up under a combination of personal, political and regional rivalries. Moreover, no party commanded a majority in the Australian House of Representatives (lower house) between 1940 and 1943, so there was a series of minority governments. Curtin rejected an all-party government like that of Winston Churchill in the UK, but Menzies established the Advisory War Council to allow all to participate in the decision making.
Edwards recounts how Curtin adroitly and sagely declined to challenge Menzies and add political chaos to the misery of a major war, concentrating instead on bringing his factious and quarrelsome colleagues together so that his party was ready and able to govern when the coalition crumbled and two independents switched their support to the ALP. The outbreak of the Pacific War found Curtin reliant on the independents to govern in the lower house, and the consent of the opposition in the Senate. However, this book does not explain how Curtin was able to bring his party back together, although it notes a series of canny decisions.
The term "Pacific War" is contentious: to the British, then and now, Japan's entry into the war was not distinguished from the war in general; to Australians, it was a new war, and a sharp distinction was drawn between the two. The relationship between Australia and Britain forms much of the narrative of the book, although there is little analysis. Edwards argues that in severing the defence link between Britain and Australia, the British inadvertently reduced the relationship between the two to one akin to that between the UK and Canada, confined to history and culture. That Britain was no longer a great power was hard to accept for people like Curtin, who grew up in the heyday of the British Empire.
The defence policy of the coalition was based on the British Singapore Strategy. The idea was that Japanese aggression could be halted by a powerful British fleet. In the hands of conservative politicians, this degenerated into pushing the burden of Australia's defence onto the UK. Searching for an alternative strategy, Curtin found one put forward by Army officers like Henry Wynter and John Lavarack, who argued that Britain could not afford to send a fleet to the Pacific if there was a war (or the threat of one) in Europe. Instead of a maritime strategy, they argued for a continental one. With a sufficiently powerful army, Australia could render an invasion impractical, when invasion was the only way to defeat Australia. Not being in office, the ALP did not have to come to grips with the fact that it opposed the measures required to implement its own defence policy.
Paul Keating was particularly incensed by the revelations of defeatism uncovered by Edwards. In particular, a telling passage in which General Brudenell White (an elderly officer recalled to active duty as Chief of the General Staff) argued that in the absence of a British fleet, Australia's best option was to surrender, as the Army had ammunition to fight for only a few weeks and, in any case, the Japanese navy could cut Australia off from the rest of the world and blockade it into submission. How that would be accomplished is not discussed; given the length of the coastline, it does not seem possible. Even cutting the trans-Pacific sea routes by occupying Fiji and Samoa, as the Japanese planned to do, merely lengthens the voyage to Australia, which would remain accessible via the Southern Ocean.
There are also some annoying bits. Edwards says that MacArthur turned back the first B-17 sent to pick him up (p. 3). He didn't; this could have been corrected by reading the Wikipedia article on Douglas MacArthur's escape from the Philippines. He describes the two Australian cavalry divisions as being armed with sabres (p. 173). Well, yes, just as the infantry were armed with bayonets; but the main weapon of both was the trusty Lee–Enfield rifle. I fear that this may mislead some readers.
June 23, 2019
Wonderfully researched, and written with clarity and insight
This is an important work by eminent Australian economist and historian John Edwards. It provides a well researched and unique Australian perspective to World War II.
This is an important work by eminent Australian economist and historian John Edwards. It provides a well researched and unique Australian perspective to World War II.
November 19, 2025
probably spent too long and dragged this out a little too much
but i do recall it was interesting seeing how much the british and australia sleepwalked into the war and how they grossly underestimated the japanese
i guess the other point was the division between curtin and churchill and the beginning of the post-war order of turning towards the US
but i do recall it was interesting seeing how much the british and australia sleepwalked into the war and how they grossly underestimated the japanese
i guess the other point was the division between curtin and churchill and the beginning of the post-war order of turning towards the US
December 5, 2025
A very thorough look at John Curtin's time as Prime Minister of Australia. I have already leant a LOT about Australia's involvement in WWII but have never done a deep dive into who the Prime Minister was at the time.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews