Volume of six essays about former Australian Prime Minister John Curtin. Contributors include Gough Whitlam, Hazel Hawke, Geoffrey Serle, David Day and Michelle Grattan. Also includes newspaper excerpts by John Curtin during the time he was editor of the 'Westralian Worker' (1917-28). Foreword by Professor David Black, Historical Consultant to the John Curtin Prime Ministerial Library.
This second volume, 'Triumph and Decline', tells the full, fascinating story of the next four years, as Curtin leads Australia in meeting its enemy and its new friend, the latter personified by the charismatic, self-certain General Douglas MacArthur. As Churchill abandons Australia and pursues a 'Hitler first' strategy, Curtin and MacArthur fight to ensure that the War in the Pacific is an American priority. As the critical battles of the Coral Sea and Midway decide Australia's fate - and Kakoda creates a new legend - Curtin's resolute calm and implacable determination lift him beyond party conflicts to become 'Australia's leader'. But the outward strength disguises deteriorating health, and increasing doubt about the American alliance. Curtin determined Australia's future - but what would it have been had he lived?
Renowned WA historian and political analyst has collected and written commentary on Australia's wartime Prime Minister; these letters are to Curtins wife and family, friends and colleagues for nearly 40 years; the personal and the political are blended here to present the whole man; WA and Australian history.
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 the 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.
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