Monash graduated from the University of Melbourne. Here is pictured Old Arts Building (1919-1924) in the Parkville Campus of the University of Melbourne.
Career
Gallery of John Monash
1920
General Sir John Monash circa 1920 (Photo by General Photographic Agency)
Gallery of John Monash
1931
Monash during his last Anzac Day march in Melbourne.
Gallery of John Monash
1918
Monash congratulating a soldier of the 2nd Australian Division to whom he had just presented a decoration, at a ceremony held near Camon, France, on July 13, 1918.
Gallery of John Monash
1918
Monash (seated) with senior staff officers of the Australian Corps at Bertangles, France, July 22, 1918.
Gallery of John Monash
1918
Major General John Monash photographed at Glisy, Villers-Bretonneux area, May 25, 1918.
Gallery of John Monash
Monash during the First World War
Gallery of John Monash
1916
General Sir John Monash circa 1916 (Photo by Hulton Archive)
Gallery of John Monash
Monash with officers and men of the 3rd Division.
Gallery of John Monash
1915
General Sir John Monash
Achievements
1918
Monash being knighted by His Majesty King George V at the Australian Corps Headquarters in Bertangles, August 12, 1918.
Monash congratulating a soldier of the 2nd Australian Division to whom he had just presented a decoration, at a ceremony held near Camon, France, on July 13, 1918.
Monash graduated from the University of Melbourne. Here is pictured Old Arts Building (1919-1924) in the Parkville Campus of the University of Melbourne.
General Sir John Monash was an Australian engineer and soldier who commanded the Australian forces in the Allied armies during World War I. Monash is considered one of the best allied generals of the First World War and the most famous commander in Australian history.
Background
Ethnicity:
Monash was born to Jewish parents, both from Krotoschin, in the Posen province, Kingdom of Prussia (now Krotoszyn in the Greater Poland Voivodeship, Poland).
John Monash was born on June 27, 1865, in Melbourne into an immigrant family of Louis Monash and his wife Bertha, née Manasse, who had been printers of Hebrew books in Krotoszyn. John was the eldest of three children and the only son. He grew up in Jerilderie, New South Wales, where his father ran a general store. The family spoke German as their native language.
Education
As a child, Monash attended St Stephen's Church of England School in Richmond, Melbourne, for three years. At the age of nine, Monash and his family moved to Jerilderie, New South Wales where he attended the public school. The school quickly recognised his intelligence, and advised his family to move back to Melbourne so John could realise his full potential.
He eventually returned to Melbourne in 1877 and enrolled in Scotch College. In his final year of school, at the age of 16, Monash was dux in mathematics and modern languages and equal dux of the school.
After completing school, John decided to enroll in arts and engineering at the University of Melbourne. At the university, he displayed exceptional versatility, receiving a Master of Engineering in 1893, a Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Laws in 1895, and a Doctor of Engineering in 1921.
Monash received honorary degrees from the universities of Oxford, Cambridge, and London.
Sir John Monash began an engineering career on the Princess Bridge to pay the bills for his studies. By the age of 30, he had qualified as a municipal surveyor, an engineer of water supply and a patent attorney. During the worst of the depression of the 1890s, Sir John Monash started with the Harbor Trust, an organisation that aimed to improve access for shipping to Melbourne. While working at the trust, he also studied part time. In 1894 he started private practice as a consulting engineer. Monash soon became one of Australia's foremost experts in reinforced concrete for bridges, railways and other large construction projects. A successful career as a civil engineer made him wealthy.
For thirty years before the First World War, Monash also enjoyed success in the Citizen Military Forces. In the Garrison Artillery, he was fascinated with the relationship between technology and weapon development. He commanded the Victorian section of the Australian Intelligence Corps, attended courses in military science at the University of Sydney, and was involved in staff work for Lord Horatio Herbert Kitchener’s visit to Australia in 1909. From 1913, he commanded the 13th Infantry Brigade.
At the outbreak of war in 1914, Monash was made chief censor before being appointed commander of the 4th Infantry Brigade within the Australian Imperial Force (AIF). Monash’s appointment provoked some protest, partly due to his German ancestry, that continued even when he was at Gallipoli, when rumours circulated in London and Cairo that he had been arrested and shot as a spy. Monash downplayed his German heritage from that time on. After Gallipoli, he assumed command of the newly-formed 3rd Australian Division, which arrived in France in November 1916 and fought at Messines and Passchendaele in 1917.
Monash was made commander of the Australian Corps on June 1, 1918, just as the German Spring Offensive was nearing failure. Forming part of the British Fourth Army, the Australian Corps held a portion of the front astride the Somme River near Villers-Bretonneux, where it prepared to make its own counter-blow: the first, at Le Hamel on July 4, 1918, demonstrated the effectiveness of infantry, armour, artillery, and airpower in attacks with limited objectives. Many of the tactics used at Le Hamel were then used on a much larger scale by the Fourth Army during the Battle of Amiens on August 8, 1918. Striking out towards Harbonnières, the Australian Corps advanced alongside the Canadian Corps and punctured the German positions, advancing twelve kilometres in one day and heralding the start of what became known as the Hundred Days Offensive.
In the attacks, which continued throughout August and September, German resistance stiffened and attacking units took more casualties for less ground. Owing to the diminishing state of the Australian Corps, Monash was offered the chance to slow the tempo of his operations, but he refused. He assessed that the Germans were just about broken, but so too were his men. Despite victories at Mont Saint-Quentin, Péronne, and Bellenglise, Monash’s corps suffered 35,000 casualties in the four months between Le Hamel and the last Australian attack of the war at Montbrehain on October 5, 1918.
After the Armistice, he was made director-general of repatriation and demobilisation and used his organisational skills to bring home Australian troops. To ensure his place in history, Monash wrote The Australian Victories in France in 1918 (1920), which laid the groundwork for the popular narrative of “Monash-the-war-winner”.
After the First World War, he returned to engineering and became Chairman of Victoria's new State Electricity Commission, as well as vice-chancellor of the University of Melbourne. He was the natural spokesperson for returned soldiers and in 1925 he began leading the annual Anzac Day march. In his last years, he supervised the construction of Melbourne's Shrine of Remembrance and oversaw the public appeal for funds. He rewrote the inscription planned for the west wall.
After the war, Monash seriously considered standing for the Senate in 1919, but the Nationalist politicians blocked his path. Early in 1930 the Scullin government briefly considered him as a possible governor-general. In 1930-31 he rebuffed sporadic attempts to persuade him to lead a right-wing political movement.
Views
Monash was not a frontline general. Instead, his extensive and successful business experience led him to emphasize planning and organization. He developed the practice of conferences of senior officers, not merely to cover a mass of detail, but to facilitate knowledge of what was expected right down the line. He held the view that warfare was essentially a problem in engineering, of mobilizing resources, like the conduct of a large industrial undertaking. He eagerly made use of the most recent innovations. He favoured using technical and mechanical resources - tanks, artillery, and aircraft - to relieve the infantry as much as possible of the burden of fighting its way forward. He took the view that an energetic offensive policy, 'feeding the troops on victory', was the short way to end the slaughter and misery.
Monash established and tested his theory of the semimobile managed battle in a small-scale attack at Le Hamel, France. Its outstanding success led Monash to develop a more comprehensive plan for a sustained offensive, which shaped the general British plan as well.
Quotations:
"A perfect modern battle plan is like nothing so much as a score for an orchestral composition, where the various arms and units are the instruments, and the tasks they perform are their respective musical phrases. Every individual unit must make its entry precisely at the proper moment, and play its phrase in the general harmony."
"Feed the troops on victory."
"I don't care a damn for your loyal service when you think I am right; when I really want it most is when you think I am wrong."
"No man is a hero in his own country."
"The best hope for Australia is the ballot box and good education."
"Equip yourself for life, not solely for your own benefit, but for the benefit of the whole community."
Membership
John Monash was Chairman of the graduates association at the University of Melbourne, president of the University Club and joined the university council as an elected member. He was also prominent in the Boy Scout movement and became president of the Victorian Institute of Engineers. He was appointed president of the Australian Association for the Advancement of Science from 1924-26.
A practicing Jewish all his life, he took an active part in Jewish affairs in Australia and was president of the Zionist Federation in 1928.
Australian Association for the Advancement of Science
,
Australia
1924 - 1926
Zionist Federation
,
Australia
1928
Personality
Monash was never a professional soldier; his background in civil engineering might well have assisted him in avoiding much of the pointless slaughter, the result of poorly conceived attacks, notorious among the British and French armies in the 1914 - 1918 War.
As a general, Monash had the first essential qualities, the capacity to bear great strain and to make quick and clear decisions. His sheer intellect, breadth of grasp, his articulateness especially, together with his forceful personality, induced respect and confidence among his juniors.
Monash was not without his quirks. As his biographer writes, "his chief weakness was his status-hungry craving for publicity and honours, and his habit of exaggerating his men’s and his own achievements."
Physical Characteristics:
From 1927 Monash was troubled with high blood-pressure. By August 1931 his health had markedly deteriorated and he died of coronary vascular disease.
Quotes from others about the person
Hyman Herman: "He was a great leader, a genius in getting to the heart of any problem and finding its solution … the ablest, biggest-minded and biggest-hearted man I have ever known."
Connections
On April 8, 1891, John Monash married Hannah Victoria Moss. Their only child Bertha was born on January 22, 1893. Before and after marriage, seemingly incompatible but bonded by deep attraction, they fought and made up constantly. Indeed they separated for ten months in 1894-95. Victoria Moss died a year after the world war as a result of deadly health complications.
Father:
Louis Monash
Mother:
Bertha Monash (née Manasse)
Spouse:
Hannah Victoria (Moss) Monash
Sister:
Mathilda Monash
Sister:
Louisa (Monash) Rosenhain
Daughter:
Bertha (Monash) Bennett
Friend:
James Whiteside McCay
References
John Monash: A Biography
The military valor, scholarship, and entrepreneurial leadership of Sir John Monash are recounted in this biography by Geoffrey Serle.
1982
Sir John Monash
The story of the most remarkable general to be produced by the First World War is told by A. J. Smithers with all the wit and wisdom.
1973
Monash
Author Grantlee Kieza tracks Monash's beginnings as the bright son of immigrant rabbis through his years of searching for an identity and his tumultuous love life as a ladies man in Melbourne society before he became one of the city's wealthiest and most succesful citizens. Then, in the frightening blood soaked fields of World War I, he shows how a man who had had never fired a shot in anger grew to become one of the most admired generals Australia has ever produced - while harbouring private thoughts about the futility of war.
2015
Maestro John Monash: Australia's Greatest Citizen General
In this book, Tim Fischer asks why John Monash was never promoted to Field Marshal, as international precedent suggested was most appropriate, pointing the finger primarily at Billy Hughes, the Australian prime minister from 1915 to 1923, within a wider context of establishment suspicion towards this son of a German Jewish migrant. The book demonstrates how a posthumous granting of the Field Marshal rank for John Monash now constitutes a due reward for this great servant of the Australian nation - a salutary reminder of his legacy.