The Myth of Classlessness in the Australian Imperial Force

Abstract

The issue of class remains strikingly absent from much of the historical literature on the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) during the First World War. This article briefly explores the pre-war class backgrounds of soldiers, the traces of class in their writings and their experiences, the class-based selection processes of soldiers’ writing by post-war archives, and how key historians of the AIF have paid insufficient attention to class. It argues that as a result of middle-class hegemony, before, during and after the war, the memory of the First World War in Australian popular culture and much historical writing is largely a memory based upon skewed sources and a lack of recognition of class in the AIF.