Broken Nation

The Australian experience of war in all its complexity - from the homefront as well as the battlefront - as the men and women who experienced it chose to understand and remember it. The Great War is, for many Australians, the event that defined our nation. The larrikin diggers, trench warfare, and the landing at Gallipoli have become the stuff of the Anzac legend. But it was also a war fought by the families at home. Their resilience in the face of hardship, their stoic acceptance of enormous casualty lists and their belief that their cause was just, made the war effort possible. This book brings together all the dimensions of World War I. Combining deep scholarship with powerful storytelling, this book brings the war years to life: from the well-known battles at Gallipoli, Pozieres, Fromelles and Villers-Bretonneux, to the lesser known battles in Europe and the Middle East; from the ferocious debates over conscription to the disillusioning Paris peace conference and the devastating Spanish flu the soldiers brought home. We witness the fear and courage of tens of thousands of soldiers, grapple with the strategic nightmares confronting the commanders, and come to understand the impact on Australians, at home and at the front, of death on an unprecedented scale. A century after the Great War, this book brings lucid insight into the dramatic events, mass grief and political turmoil that makes the memory of this terrible war central to Australia's history.