ANZAC Day 1941
Menzies at the wreath laying ceremony on 25 April 1941. Image from the Museum of Australian Democracy.
On this day, 25 April 1941, Prime Minister Robert Menzies commemorates a highly poignant ANZAC Day in a bombed-out London, while Australian troops held their own ceremonies in places ranging across the globe; from Crete, Jerusalem, and Singapore.
Menzies laid a wreath at the cenotaph on Whitehall, and he was joined in doing so by a range of dignitaries including the High Commissioners of Australia and New Zealand. Fittingly emotive was the fact that the wartime conditions meant that ‘the wreaths were simpler and smaller than in previous years because flowers, like many other beautiful things, are hard to find’.
Afterwards Menzies headed to an ANZAC Day luncheon, where a touching speech was given by the Greek Ambassador Charalambos John Simopoulos. Australian and New Zealand troops were then involved in heavy fighting in Greece, the only time in WW2 in which they fought as the famous ‘ANZAC Corps’. The ANZACs were there trying to fight off a Nazi invasion after Greece had gallantly resisted Fascist Italy on her own accord, and Simopoulos was eager to express to his audience the immense appreciation felt by the Greek people for their sacrifices:
‘I am glad to take this opportunity of expressing the deep gratitude of my country for the brave and chivalrous help being given to Greece by the forces of the British Empire. I am particularly glad to see today representatives of Australia and New Zealand whose soldiers are fighting so heroically in Greece for the common ideal of liberty. My country, after an heroic resistance of nearly six months, is being overrun by the machines of Germany, which offered a unique chance to the Italians to occupy abandoned towns and positions and to claim with impudence victories which they had been unable to obtain for many months by themselves. My King, the Greek Government, and the Greek people were faced with the alternative of surrendering their liberties without fighting or of defending them. They resisted, and with a full knowledge of the ordeals awaiting them they gave everything for liberty. It is with head high that I address you today, because we have done our duty and will continue to do it till the day of final victory.’
The Greek campaign was a forlorn affair, with Allied forces already in heavy retreat. Australia’s commitment of troops to it was thus highly controversial, and would ultimately play an important role in precipitating Menzies’s resignation as prime minister later in the year. Menzies had initially had some significant doubts about the move to support Greece which he had expressed with force in Churchill’s War Cabinet, but his ANZAC Day message emphasised that Australia too needed to do its duty, no matter the cost:
‘This day of great anxiety on which men are fighting bravely, and to some extent in the dark, while those at home anxiously are waiting for results, and the few who must make decisions on which men’s lives possibly may turn are consumed with anxiety regarding the result of those decisions. That anxiety has not felt fear, weakness, hesitation, or even repining...If there are any people sitting in chairs to-day who ask if Australia and New Zealand should have sent the flower of their manhood to fight for Greece, I must answer that the Greeks did not hesitate and did not sit in chairs. Nobody could be standing anywhere today with head high if we had failed to accept the challenge. We who are civilians must be as good as the men who fight for us. Those of us who are in positions of responsibility face the outcome of events without regret.’
Menzies would feel the weight of his responsibilities when he was forced to leave office on 29 August, but despite his initial reluctance to send troops to Greece, he came to believe that it was the right decision. Not only because it was the honourable thing to do, but also because ‘the delay imposed upon Germany in Greece postponed the German attack on Russia just long enough to spoil the German time-table' such that her invasion of the USSR bled into the Russian winter, in which terrible conditions would see her advance bogged down and ultimately reversed. Those Australian lives which weighed heavily on Menzies’s conscious had thus not died in vain – they had played a crucial part in the defeat of Hitler and the salvation of the free world.