Page 112 - Australian Defence Magazine Dec-Jan 2021

112 BOOKS OF INTEREST
DECEMBER 2020 – JANUARY 2021 | WWW.AUSTRALIANDEFENCE.COM.AU
COMPILED BY PETER MASTERS | BRISBANE
THE MIRACLE TYPIST
By Leon Silver
Published by Simon & Schuster RRP $32.99 in paperback
ISBN 9781760854355
Leon Silver spent decades recording the wartime story of his father-in-law Tolek Klings, who died in 1996. Conscripted into the Polish army, Tolek faced an army rife with anti-Semitism. Fleeing into Hungary with the remnants of the Polish army after the German invasion, he
COUNTER ATTACK: VILLERS- BRETONNEUX, APRIL 1918 AUSTRALIAN ARMY CAMPAIGN SERIES NO.27
By Peter Edgar
Published by Big Sky Publishing RRP $19.99 in paperback
ISBN: 9781922265166
Buoyed by the victory over the Russians at the end of 1917, the Germans were determined to win the war before the newly arriving Americans could swing the balance against them. In March 1918, the Germans launched a massive spring offensive. Resting in the Ypres sector after the horrors of the
is faced with a choice: try to return to Poland to his wife Klara and young son or join
the other soldiers heading
to an internment camp in Hungary. He chose to head to Hungary, eventually working to help Jewish refugees escape Hungary until he too was forced to escape. He headed first to Palestine, where his ability to type earned him the title of ‘The Miracle Typist’, then on to fight in Egypt, Tobruk and eventually Italy. At the end of the war and reunited with his brother, he was forced to face the brutal truth
of the fate of his wife and son. And the unhappy knowledge the persecution of Polish Jews continued unabated. This extraordinary story exposes the terrible truth of how European Jews were relentlessly persecuted and how one man found a new life in Australia.
Passchendaele campaign, the Australians were among the first sent south to try to block the enemy. Germany’s goal was to capture the town of Villers-Bretonneux, key to the major rail junction of Amiens. This book deals mainly with
the two counter-attacks that saved the town of Villers- Bretonneux and with some of the minor actions between the two battles, involving principally the 9th Brigade and the 13th and 15th Brigades. The total presence in the counter-attacks was 7,500 Australian infantry. Familiar names populate
this story - Birdwood, Elliot, Glasgow, Monash – but it was William Glasgow whose name ‘ought to be indelibly affixed to the Villers-Bretonneux triumph’, an assessment with which 9th Brigade commander Major General John Monash concurred. Villers-Bretonneux was never again threatened by the enemy.
ON OUR DOORSTEP
WHEN AUSTRALIA FACED THE THREAT OF INVASION BY THE JAPANESE
By Craig Collie
Published by Allen & Unwin RRP $32.99 in paperback ISBN 9781760632281
This book began life ‘as the story of the 97 air attacks on the Australian mainland in the Pacific War’, an idea that evolved into ‘the story of a nation in fear
of invasion’. By March 1942,
SPINNING THE SECRETS OF STATE
POLITICS AND INTELLIGENCE IN AUSTRALIA
By Justin T McPhee
Published by Monash University Publishing
RRP $34.95 in paperback
ISBN 9781925523652
This book begins with a quote from a speech John Howard delivered to the Lowy Institute on the 10th anniversary of
the Iraq War, describing the ‘eternal dilemma’ of the nature of intelligence assessments from ‘varying, incomplete
and sometimes contradictory
the Japanese had steamrolled through Malaya, forced the surrender of Singapore, and bombed Darwin. It seemed that an invasion of the Australian mainland was all but inevitable. Behind the scenes, prime minister John Curtin was battling Winston Churchill for the return of Australian troops from the Middle East while courting US President Franklin D Roosevelt for support, declaring that ‘Australia looks to America’. It’s hard to imagine the mood of the country 80 years ago as fear
of invasion reached its peak. Historians now opining that Japan never really intended to invade Australia miss the point. Living at that time, in a climate of uncertainty, with Darwin, Broome and Townsville having been bombed, Australians had every reason to feel nervous and wonder what lay in store for them.
sources ... [which] never produce evidence beyond a reasonable doubt’, a departure from his government’s confidence in the intelligence assessment of the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. However, some of the most notorious cases of misuse of the intelligence services occurred under the prime ministership
of Billy Hughes (Prime Minister between 1915-1923). McPhee examines too the rise of the New Guard in NSW in 1932 and their efforts to undermine, and perhaps overthrow, the government of Jack Lang. Fast forward to recent times and McPhee laments the lack of accountability of how politicians use the intelligence provided to them. He writes that ‘given all of the evidence presented so far’, the politicisation of intelligence in Australia is a trend that
can be expected to continue, describing it as ‘a powerful tool that political leaders can employ to promote their policy choices.’ ■
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