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Sir John Monash , ,
(; 27 June 1865 – 8 October 1931) was a
and an Australian military commander of the First World War. He commanded the
before the war and then, shortly after its outbreak, became commander of the
in Egypt, with whom he took part in the . In July 1916 he took charge of the newly raised
in northwestern France and in May 1918 became commander of the , at the time the largest corps on the . The successful
attack at the
on 8 August 1918, which expedited the end of the war, was planned by Monash and spearheaded by British forces including the Australian and Canadian Corps under Monash and . Monash is considered one of the best Allied generals of the First World War and the most famous commander in Australian history.
Monash was born in Dudley Street, , , on 27 June 1865, the son of Louis Monash and his wife Bertha, née Manasse. He was born to
parents, both from Krotoschin, in the ,
in the , Poland); the family name was originally spelt Monasch (pronounced with the emphasis on the second syllable). The family spoke German as their native language. As might have been expected from a man brought up by cultivated German parents who had arrived in Australia barely two years before John's birth, Monash spoke, read, and wrote German fluently. However, from 1914 until his death, Sir John Monash had no good reason to attract attention to his German background.
In 1874, the family moved to the small town of
region of , where his father ran a store. Monash later claimed to have met the
during his raid there in 1879. Monash attended the public school and his intelligence was recognised. The family was advised to move back to Melbourne to let John reach his full potential, and they moved back in 1877. He was educated under
at , where he passed the matriculation examination when only 14 years of age. At age 16, he was
of the school. He graduated from the : a Master of Engineering in 1893; a
in 1895, and a
On 8 April 1891, Monash married Hannah Victoria Moss (), and their only child, Bertha, was born in 1893. He worked as a , and played a major role in introducing
to Australian engineering practice. He initially worked for private contractors on bridge and railway construction, and as their advocate in contract arbitrations. Following a period with the Melbourne Harbour Trust, in 1894 he entered into partnership with
as consultants and contractors. When the partnership was dissolved in 1905 he joined with the builder
and industrial chemist John Gibson to form the Reinforced Concrete & Monier Pipe Construction Co, and in 1906 with them and businessmen from South Australia, to form the S. A. Reinforced Concrete Co. He took a leading part in his profession and became president of the
and a member of the , London.
Monash joined the university company of the
in 1884, and he became a lieutenant in the North Melbourne battery in 1887. He was promoted to captain in 1895, major in 1897, and in 1906 he became a lieutenant-colonel in the intelligence corps. He was colonel commanding the
Monash during the First World War
When the First World War broke out in August 1914, Monash became a full-time army officer, accepting an appointment as the chief censor in Australia. Monash did not enjoy the job, and was keen for a field command. In September, after the
was formed, he was appointed as the commander of the , which consisted of four : the , ,
and . His appointment was met with some protest within the military, in part due to his German and Jewish ancestry, but Monash was supported by numerous high-ranking officers, including ,
and , and his appointment stood.
When the first contingent of Australian troops, the , sailed in October, the 4th Brigade remained behind. Training was undertaken at , before embarking in December 1914. After arriving in
in January 1915, Monash's brigade established itself at , where it was assigned to the
. After a period of training, in April, the brigade took part in the
against the . Assigned the role of divisional reserve, Monash came ashore early on 26 April. The brigade initially defended the line between
and , and the valley behind this line became known as "Monash Valley". There he made a name for himself with his independent decision-making and his organisational ability. He was promoted to
in July, although the news was marred by spiteful rumours that were passed in Cairo, Melbourne and London about him being a "German spy".
During the
that was launched by the Allies to break the deadlock on the peninsula, Monash's brigade was to conduct a "left hook" to the capture of Hill 971, the highest point on the Sari Bair range. On the evening of 6/7 August, the brigade launched its attack, but poor maps, heavy resistance and the mountainous terrain defeated them. Elsewhere, the offensive also stalled, resulting in disaster for the last co-ordinated effort to defeat the Turkish forces on the Gallipoli Peninsula. By mid-August, Monash's brigade was down to just 1,400 men out of the 3,350 it had begun the campaign with. On 21 August, Monash led them in an attack on , before it was withdrawn from the peninsula for rest. While the brigade recuperated on , Monash took leave in Egypt, where he learned of his appointment as a . In November, the 4th Brigade returned to Gallipoli, occupying a "quiet sector" around Bauchop's Hill. Monash used his engineering knowledge to improve his brigade's position to withstand the winter, and he worked to improve the conditions that his troops would have to endure, but in mid-December the order to evacuate the peninsula came.
Following the withdrawal from Gallipoli, Monash returned to Egypt where the AIF underwent a period of reorganisation and expansion. This process resulted in the 4th Brigade being split and providing a
of experienced personnel to form the . It was also reassigned to the . After a period of training, Monash's brigade undertook defensive duties along the . On 25 April 1916, the first anniversary of the landing at Gallipoli, while at Tel-el-Kebir, Monash and his men solemnly observed Anzac Day. Monash distributed red ribbons to soldiers present at the first landing and blue ribbons to those who came later.
In June 1916, Monash and his command were transferred to the , being sent to the front around . In July, Monash was promoted to major general and placed in command of the . He trained the division in England with attention to detail, and after the division was sent to the Western Front in November 1916, led stage-by-stage to the nearest approach that could be improvised to the conditions of actual warfare. He was involved in many actions, including , , and the , with some successes, but with the usual heavy casualties. The British High Command was impressed by Monash's abilities and enthusiasm. In May 1918, he was promoted to
and made commander of the , at the time the largest individual corps on the Western Front.
Lieutenant General Sir John Monash later described the recapture of the town of
on 25 April 1918 after the Germans had overrun the 8th British Division under General
as the turning-point of the war. Sir 's 13th Brigade, and Harold Elliott's 15th Brigade, recaptured .
Monash, despite not being a professionally trained officer, was a noted advocate of the co-ordinated use of , ,
and . He wrote:
... the true role of infantry was not to expend itself upon heroic physical effort, not to wither away under merciless
fire, not to impale itself on hostile , nor to tear itself to pieces in hostile entanglements—(I am thinking of
and Stormy Trench and , and other bloody fields)—but on the contrary, to advance under the maximum possible protection of the maximum possible array of mechanical resources, in the form of guns, machine-guns, tanks, to advance with as little im to be relieved as far as possible of the obligation to fig to march, resolutely, regardless of the din and tumult of battle, t and there to hold and defend
and to gather in the form of prisoners, guns and stores, the fruits of victory.
Monash in 1918
, the official Australian war historian, noted that Monash was more effective the higher he rose within the Army, where he had greater capacity to use his skill for meticulous planning and organisation, and to innovate in the area of technology and tactics. Bean had been no great admirer of Monash in his early career, in part due to a general
against Monash's Prussian-Jewish background, but more particularly because Monash did not fit Bean's concept of the quintessential Australian character that Bean was in the process of mythologising in his monumental work Australia in the War of . (Both Bean and Monash, however, having seen the very worst excesses of Allied military doctrines and the waste of life on the Western Front, were determined that the role of the commander was to look after, and protect as far as possible, the troops under their command.) Bean, who wrote in his diary of Monash "We do not want Australia represented by men mainly because of their ability, natural and inborn in Jews, to push themselves", conspired with
to undermine Monash, and have him removed from the command of the Australian Corps. They misled Prime Minister
into believing that senior officers were opposed to Monash. Hughes arrived at the front before the
prepared to replace Monash, but after consulting with senior officers, and after seeing the superb power of planning and execution displayed by Monash, he changed his mind.
At the Battle of Hamel on 4 July 1918, Monash, with the support of the British 4th Army commander
commanded the 4th Australian Division, supported by the British 5th Tank Brigade, along with a detachment of American troops, to win a small but operationally significant victory for the . On 8 August 1918, the
was launched. Allied troops under the command of
, predominantly Rawlinson's British 4th Army (consisting of the Australian Corps under Monash and the Canadian Corps under , and the British III Corps) attacked the Germans. The allied attack was spearheaded by the Australian Corps, who had been given the capture of enemy artillery as a key objective in the first phase by Monash in order to minimize the potential harm to the attacking forces. The battle was a strong, significant victory for the Allies, the first decisive win for the British Army of the war, causing the Germans to recognise that for them the War was lost. The defeated German leader, General , described it in the following words: "August 8th was the black day of the German Army in the history of the war". These operations were just a start of a broad Allied offensive across the Western Front. On 12 August 1918 Monash was knighted as a Knight Commander of the
on the battlefield by , the first time a British monarch had honoured a commander in such a way in 200 years. The Australians then achieved a series of victories against the Germans at , ,
and . Monash had 208,000 men under his command, including 50,000 inexperienced Americans. Monash planned the attack on the German defences in the
between 16 September and 5 October 1918. The Allies eventually breached the
by 5 October, and the war was essentially over. On 5 October, , on behalf of the German Government, asked for an immediate .
By the end of the war Monash had acquired an outstanding reputation for intellect, personal magnetism, management and ingenuity. He also won the respect and loyalty of his troops: his motto was "Feed your troops on victory". Monash was regarded with great respect by the British – a British captain on the staff of 's 8th Division described Monash as "a great bullock of a man ... though his manners were pleasant and his behaviour far from rough, I have seen few men who gave me such a sensation of force ... a fit leader for the wild men he commanded". Field Marshal
later wrote: "I would name Sir John Monash as the best general on the western front in Europe".
For his services during the war, and in addition to his creation as a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath, Monash was appointed as a Knight Grand Cross of the
on 1 January 1919. He also received numerous foreign honours – the French appointed him a Grand Officer of the
and awarded him the , the Belgians appointed him a Grand Officer of the
(Grand-Officier Ordre de la Couronne) and awarded him the
and the United States awarded him the .
Statue of Sir John Monash in , Melbourne.
Soon after the conclusion of hostilities Monash was appointed Director-General of Repatriation and Demobilisation, heading a newly created department to carry out the repatriation of the Australian troops from Britain and Europe. In August 1919, while in London, he wrote a book titled The Australian Victories in France in 1918, although it was not published until April 1920. He returned to Australia on 26 December 1919 to an enthusiastic welcome. Shortly after his return, on 27 February 1920, Monash's wife, Vic, died of cervical cancer. Later, Monash worked in prominent civilian positions, the most notable being head of the
(SECV) from October 1920. He was also vice-chancellor of the
from 1923 until his death eight years later.
Monash was a founding member of the Rotary Club of Melbourne, Australia's first Rotary Club, and served as its second president (1922–23). In 1927, he became president of the newly founded
and New Zealand.
He was called upon by the Victorian Government of
in 1923 to organise "special constables" to restore order during the . He was one of the principal organisers of the annual observance of , and oversaw the planning for Melbourne's monumental war memorial, the . Monash was honoured with numerous awards and decorations from universities and foreign governments. According to his biographer Geoffrey Serle: "[i]n the 1920s Monash was broadly accepted, not just in Victoria, as the greatest living Australian".
Sir John Monash died in Melbourne on 8 October 1931 from a heart attack, and he was given a state funeral. An estimated 300,000 mourners, the nation's largest funeral crowd to that time, came to pay their respects. After a Jewish service, and a 17-gun salute, he was buried in . In a final sign of humility, despite his achievements, honours and titles, he instructed that his tombstone simply bear the words "John Monash". He was survived by his daughter, Bertha ().
According to British historian , Monash was "the only general of creative originality produced by the First World War." Monash's impact on Australian military thinking was significant in three areas. First, he was the first Australian to fully command Australian forces and he took, as following Australian commanders did, a relatively independent line with his British superiors. Second, he promoted the concept of the commander's duty to ensure the safety and well-being of his troops to a pre-eminent position applying a philosophy of "collective individualism". And finally, he, along with staff officer , forcefully demonstrated the benefit of thorough planning and integration of all arms of the forces available, and of all of the components supporting the front line forces, including logistical, medical and recreational services. Troops later recounted that one of the most extraordinary things about the
was not the use of armoured tanks, nor the tremendous success of the operation, but the fact that in the midst of battle Monash had arranged delivery of hot meals up to the front line.
In recognition of his enduring influence, Monash's face is on Australia's highest value currency note (). Monash's success in part reflected the tolerance of Australian society, but to a larger degree his success – in the harshest experience the young nation had suffered – shaped that tolerance and demonstrated to Australians that the Australian character was diverse,
and a blend of the traditions of the "bush" and the "city". According to author, , as recounted by Monash's biographer, Geoffrey Serle, Monash's "presence and prestige...made anti-Semitism...impossible in Australia".
, a public research university in
, a local government area in
, a teaching hospital in Melbourne (and location of his bust, which was originally located in former SECV town )
, a major urban freeway in Melbourne
, annually awarded to outstanding Australians for postgraduate study overseas
, a specialist science secondary school in Clayton, Victoria
("Monash village") in
Since 2013, there has been a movement to posthumously promote Monash to the rank of . Monash would be the fourth person, and only second Australian-born person to hold this rank. The movement is led by , former
and author of the book, Maestro John Monash: Australia's Greatest Citizen General, and supported by other Australian Members of Parliament including
and . According to Tim Fischer, Monash was denied promotion during his life due to discrimination, including as a result of his German-Jewish ancestry and his status as a reservist rather than professional soldier.
In October 2015, the
unanimously adopted the "Jerilderie Proposition", calling on the Australian Government to promote Monash:
Following on the outstanding contribution of Sir John Monash to state and nation before, during and after World War I and reflecting the fact that Sir John Monash received no Australian awards or honours post 11 November 1918, the Prime Minister approve by government gazette publication the posthumous promotion of one step in rank of General Sir John Monash to the rank of Australian field marshal, with effect 11 November 1930, one year after Sir John Monash was eventually promoted to the rank of general.
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Monash, John. . Personal papers. Australian War Memorial.
Wikimedia Commons has media related to .
Gravesite at Brighton General Cemetery (Vic)
National Library of Australia, Trove, People and Organisation record for John Monash
Australian War Memorial, digitized records for John Monash
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