He is regarded, and rightly so, as one of the ablest generals of the Great War, and
his leadership during that conflict earned his place as one of Australia’s great national
heroes - John Monash.
I’m Indy Neidell; welcome to a Great War bio special about John Monash.
He was born June 27th, 1865, in Melbourne, Australia, the eldest of three children, but
the only boy, born to Louis and Bertha Monash.
His parents had only lived in Australia for two years when he was born; having both come
from what was then in the Kingdom of Prussia but what is today part of Poland.
They were Jewish and though German was the family language, they spoke fluent English
by the time John was born.
His German Jewish descent would occasionally haunt John Monash during his military career.
John was considered an intelligent child and began learning the piano at the age of five,
same as me.
After his basic education, he studied mathematics and engineering at the University of Melbourne.
There he had his first taste of the military, joining the militia, the university company
of the 4th Battalion Victoria Rifles.
After his mother died in 1885, he left university and got an engineering position on the construction
of the Princess Bridge, his first engineering commission, and his work there got him some
real plaudits.
He then resumed his university studies.
He took up debating and took a key role in school politics, learning much about organization
and leadership.
John also focused on the arts, regularly attending plays and even playing piano in a number of
stage productions, though he gave up his piano career in 1891, the same year he was married
to Hannah Ross, with whom he had one child, a daughter named Bertha.
He was still in the militia, having joined a gun battery as a Lieutenant in 1887, and
at this point it looked like he’d pursue a career as either engineer or soldier.
He very much enjoyed Military Theory, and also the status of his commission, though,
much higher than that of an engineer.
He lectured frequently on things like artillery, explosives, and practical mechanics both within
the militia and in public, and his expository ability won recognition.
By 1893 he was senior subaltern in the Garrison Artillery.
He was promoted to captain in 1895.
The next year he sat the examinations for major and was promoted in 1897 with command
of the North Melbourne Battery, which he was to retain for another 11 years.
He did not volunteer for and was not asked to take part in the Boer Wars.
Coastal artillerymen were irrelevant to that conflict and men of his age with family and
business responsibilities were hardly expected to go.
Moreover, his support for the wars was less than whole-hearted.
As for his business, in the mid 1890s he and a partner launched a private engineering practice,
and around the turn of the century he spent several years as an expert engineering witness
all over Australia.
His company failed in 1902, and after a few years of poverty, he joined a builder and
an industrial chemist in forming a construction company, and the following year the three
joined a businessman in forming the South Australia Reinforced Concrete Company.
He became a leader in the field.
In 1908, Monash was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel and took command of the Victoria section
of the Australian Intelligence Corps of the militia.
Military mapping was the main task though there was also general intelligence gathering.
In 1913, he was appointed to command the 13th infantry brigade, now a Colonel, and his pamphlet,
“100 hints for company commanders”, became an official document for basic training.
When this war did break out, Monash worked as a censor for four weeks before taking command
of the 4th Brigade of the Australian Imperial Force.
Now, this was an Australia-wide brigade that did basic training before shipping out December
22, 1914.
They arrived in Egypt at the end of January 1915 and would soon become part of Major General
Sir Alexander Godley’s New Zealand and Australia Division.
This was the second division of the Australia and New Zealand Army Corps - ANZAC - under
Lieutenant-General Sir William Birdwood.
Monash’s brigade was in reserve at the Gallipoli landings, hitting the beaches April 26th.
You can learn all about the action at Gallipoli in our regular episodes and specials about
it.
Monash was promoted to Brigadier General at a time when rumors were circulating in Cairo,
London, and Melbourne that he had been executed as a German spy and a traitor.
This was not the first time nor the last that such rumors reared their heads.
Anyhow, Gallipoli had given Monash a pretty hardcore, hands-on education in modern war.
Birdwood and Charles Bean, the war correspondent and Australia’s official war historian,
gave the impression that his performance had been mediocre, but his brigade did perform
as well as any of the others.
Back in Egypt in January 1916, he re-trained his brigade, even while distressed by the
news of his wife’s operation for cancer.
After two months in local defense east of the Suez Canal, his men were sent to France.
In July, he was promoted to Major General, commanding the new 3rd Division.
He trained them on the Salisbury Plain in England before returning to France as part
of Herbert Plumer’s 2nd Army.
I’ve spoken of Plumer’s skills before, so this was fairly fortunate for Monash.
His first major battle was at Messines, Plumer’s masterpiece, and a few months later at Broodseinde,
Monash scored the greatest Australian victory yet.
They spent the winter quietly and saw little serious action in the initial phases of the
German Spring Offensives, the Kaiserschlacht.
On June 1st, 1918, Monash was promoted to Lieutenant-General and Corps Commander.
This, in spite of a campaign against him by Bean.
Bean did not like Monash’s predilection for self-promotion, which really was a thing,
but Bean also didn’t like him because of his Jewish background, even writing in his
diary, “We do not want Australia represented by men mainly because of the ability, natural
and inborn in Jews, to push themselves forward.”
The 93 minutes of the Battle of Hamel in July 4th, 1918, have become renowned to many historians
as the first truly modern battle, with combined air, artillery, infantry, and armored operation.
This battle really cemented Monash’s reputation as a brilliant large-scale commander and organizer.
He also often gets a lot of credit for inspiring the opening battle of the series of offensives
that led to the end of the war.
It’s uncertain to me how much of the idea for the Battle of Amiens actually came from
him; it was certainly Sir Henry Rawlinson’s overall plan.
At any rate, the battle was classic Monash organization, and on the 11th he and Canadian
Corps Commander Arthur Currie were at the center of congratulations at a meeting of
senior allied leaders.
The following day, he was knighted by King George V.
Over the next two months, Monash’s ability as commander in open battle was proven repeatedly
in a series of victories, especially at Péronne.
By the time of the breaking of the Hindenburg Line, a less certain matter, Monash commanded
some 200,000 men, including Americans.
Postwar, the efficient repatriation of 160,000 Australian soldiers within 8 months was another
of his remarkable achievements, as he aggressively fought for and found ships for them, and compelled
his government to alter its initial policy of slow repatriation.
Monash did, perhaps, earn more than his fair share of fame, being fortunate enough to command
the force he did just when he took command, but his tasks in 1918 could hardly have been
better done.
He had a great administrative capacity, a strong intellect, and his forceful personality
and especially his articulateness made him an excellent natural leader, winning the undying
respect of virtually all of his peers.
His command philosophy emphasized comprehensive planning about all.
He believed in a fixed plan to the point that he would prefer to cancel an operation if
it could not be completed as devised.
His plans incorporated a series of battle conferences, which allowed him to work closely
with his staff, not just to cover details, but to facilitate knowledge of what was expected
right down the line.
His command philosophy, though, placed management before leadership, and he rarely visited the
front lines, commanding from his headquarters, leaving his trusted frontline commanders to
conduct the actual fighting.
“He saw his role as setting the conditions for battlefield success through his intellectual
approach to warfare.”
(that PDF of Markus)
The psychological aspect of warfare was also important to him; for example, before Hamel
he embedded tanks with the infantry to overcome the distrust the infantry had of them because
of their earlier failures in action.
He held the view that war was a problem of engineering and mobilizing resources, much
like an industrial undertaking.
His administrative skills were such that Albert Jacka, who won Australia’s first Victoria
Cross of the war, said of Monash, “...the men went into action knowing that, whatever
might be ahead, everything would be right behind them.”
He eagerly used the newest innovations, and was really part of a new breed of scientific
generals.
His weaknesses, such as they were, were his hunger for status, and his habit of exaggerating
both his and his men’s achievements.
Monash’s homecoming to Australia was affected ruined by his wife’s illness.
She died in February 1920.
He himself worked in several prominent civilian positions and also served as the Vice-Chancellor
of the University of Melbourne from 1923 until his death from a heart attack in October 1931.
Some 300,000 mourners came to pay their respects to their hero, whose tombstone simply bore
the words, “John Monash”.
We want to thank Aaron Pegram and John Morthen for the research of this episode.
If you want to find out more about another capable Dominion general, you can click right
here for our episode about Arthur Currie.
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See you next time.