Informing the future – Lessons from Australia’s militias

In the lead up to World War II, Australia’s armed forces battled with constrained budgets, recruitment difficulties, a burgeoning pacifist movement and sociological issues arising from the Great Depression.

While history has perceived Australia’s interwar militias negatively, there were nevertheless positive lessons from the formation of both the compulsory and volunteer forces during the interwar period that provide remarkable insights for the application of today’s Army Reserve.

Major Sam Baumgarten in the Australian Army Journal last year published a “reappraisal” of Australia’s militias throughout the 1920s and 1930s – balancing the historical revisionism following the Second World War, and amplifying the wins and the losses of Australia’s armed forced during the period.

MAJ Baumgarten explained that the original compulsory militia formed following the First World War, existing between 1921 and 1930, was designed to operate as an ongoing legacy of the Australian Imperial Force. However, this cumbersome military apparatus designed to field some 180,000 soldiers relied on conscription to fill its ranks and thus ultimately disintegrated as the Scullin Labor government curbed conscription.

The removal of conscription thus gave rise to the new voluntary militia, which was immediately faced with swathes of doctrinal and structural problems.

“The voluntary militia’s problems extended beyond a lack of funding — namely its difficulty in recruiting and retaining personnel during the Great Depression and the inability to mechanise its force,” MAJ Baumgarten argued.

The shift from an overreliance on conscripts to a new voluntary force resulted in considerable staffing shortfalls. By 1936, the militia had dropped to 35,000 soldiers – requiring a largescale campaign by the government to recruit for the militia to bolster its size to 70,000 in 1938.

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During the interwar period, MAJ Baumgarten explains that both militias attracted incredible scrutiny from the government and commentators, with subsequent military historians suggesting that the force did little to build Australia’s defence capabilities before World War II.

“The causes, according to Neumann, were largely systemic and rooted in the lack of funding, including poor quality of training, an inability to retain trained personnel, and issues with rationalising the strategic role,” he continued.

Regarding the ability to keep “trained personnel”, MAJ Baumgarten explained that the stipend paid to Privates was some 50 per cent of the government’s recommended weekly wage. In the midst of the Great Depression, few were willing to risk the low wages of defence service.

“Militia attendance was also problematic. Some employers were unwilling to release their staff for training. There was also a high level of casualisation of the workforce in the early 1930s. Men were reluctant to jeopardise potentially more lucrative job opportunities by engaging in Militia training, so they separated, avoided training or were disinclined to join in the first place,” he said.

While low pay and benefits served as a disincentive for people to join the volunteer militia, the training of Australian servicemen once inside the force was inadequate.

MAJ Baumgarten explained that prior to 1938, soldiers trained for 12 days a year which was later increased to “12 days in camp and six days home training in 1938”. In fact, training was restricted across all ranks with Officers requested to work for free to support the militia – restricting the ability for working men to apply for Officer selection.

“The course for promotion from Major to Lieutenant Colonel was originally six days long, was conducted at a number of locations, and consisted of lessons and TEWTs,” MAJ Baumgarten continued.

Despite the negative perception of Australia’s interwar militias, MAJ Baumgarten shines a spotlight on the capability advantages that this constrained force developed for Australia’s warfighting capability.

“The voluntary militia focused on producing leaders, and its individual and collective training concentrated on that task. It was a decentralised organisation where gradual improvements were accomplished at the unit level,” MAJ Baumgarten noted.

In fact, citing Garth Pratten, he explains that some 90 per cent of  “Second World War battalion commanders served in the militia, mostly as officers, and provides a number of examples of their positive development”.

The development of Officers was complemented by the support the militia provided to NCOs, with budget placed aside for “career development”.

As such, the stated objective of generating warfighting leadership via the militia was widely achieved with the bulk of Australia’s later warfighting effort sourced from those who held leadership positions in the militia.

Lessons

Essential lessons for the nation’s key decision makers are lightly buried within MAJ Baumgarten’s analysis of Australia’s interwar militias. Not least of which are: Australia must minimalise its overreliance on a handful of foolproof strategies, and the need for robust doctrinal and strategic direction to guide the nation’s armed forces. The two lessons are evidently interrelated.

“The key assumption for policymakers [during the period] was the infallibility of the Singapore strategy, whereby the presence of the Royal Navy at Singapore would deter major invasions,” MAJ Baumgarten argued.

This thesis suggests that Australia’s overarching military posture was centred upon an assumption that an invasion was a nigh-impossible event, and that Australia would be saved by intervention from the broader Empire. Such parallels with Australia’s contemporary reliance on the ANZUS Treaty for US intervention, or even the emerging AUKUS Trilateral Security Agreement, are obvious.

The assumption of such foolproof strategies resulted in the development of insufficient operational-strategic level direction for Australia’s armed forces. A similar event is currently occurring with Australia’s reserve forces which are pulled between maintaining traditional war readiness and engaging in domestic response operations.

These observations were reflected in early 2020, Reserve Commander of the 8th Brigade Mike Kalms penned his thoughts on contemporary applications of the Army Reserve for the Australian Army publication The Cove. Simply, he argues that the skillsets held by Australia’s current Reservist battalions “are too small, fragile or expensive” to integrate into the broader regular forces in the event of conflict in the Asia-Pacific region.

As a result, Kalms suggests moving away from burdening the Reserve with training for combat situations. Rather he presents three options for the future of the Australian Army Reserve: firstly, the Reserves could be positioned “as a response tool for national emergency”, secondly, they could be employed as an “economic plug in the event or regional or national economic instability”, or finally they could be used to “build, educate, grow, repair and sustain communities” in the Indo-Pacific.

Firstly, Defence has a finite budget. It would be misuse of the defence budget to use funds earmarked for Reserve training and deployment for national emergencies, many of which are under the firm remit of state governments. If the Commonwealth and state governments project that at natural disasters are likely to increase over coming years, it would likely be cheaper to support the professionalisation of organisations such as the RFS and SES, which already have operational knowledge of national disasters that the military simply does not.

Secondly, hindsight has proven interesting on the notion that Reservists could be used to plug gaps in the national economy. While Australia has experienced supply chain disruptions, much of it has been overcome by staff redeployments (such as baggage handlers finding employment at Woolworths) and incentive programs to encourage employment. It is also unlikely that many amazing warriors who have served as members of the regular army and transferred into the Reserves would continue to support the ADF if they are deployed to undergo fruit picking.

However, Kalms’ third suggestion that Australia’s Reserve forces could support nation building overseas achieves the country’s operational-strategic objectives of an Australian-led Indo-Pacific. Building critical civilian infrastructure for poorer nations in the Indo-Pacific will increase the propensity that they will support Australia’s efforts in a future conflict and reduce their reliance on overseas aid from Australia’s potential adversaries.

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