How many Australians served in WW2?
Military history of Australia during World War II
Australia entered World WarII on 3 September 1939, following the government's acceptance of the United Kingdom's declaration of war on Nazi Germany. Following attacks on Allied countries, the Australian government later declared war on other members of the Axis powers, including the Kingdom of Italy (11 June 1940) and the Empire of Japan (8 December 1941). By the end of the war, almost a million Australians had served in the armed forces, whose military units fought primarily in the European theatre, North African campaign, and the South West Pacific theatre. In addition, Australia came under direct attack for the first time in its post-colonial history. Its casualties from enemy action during the war were 27,073 killed and 23,477 wounded.[1]
Military history of Australia during World War II
Like the other Allied personnel captured by the Japanese, most of the thousands of Australians captured in the first months of 1942 during the conquest of Malaya and Singapore, the NEI and New Britain were held in harsh conditions. Australians were held in camps across the Asia-Pacific region and many endured long voyages in grossly overcrowded ships. While most of the Australian POWs who died in Japanese captivity were the victim of deliberate malnutrition and disease, hundreds were deliberately killed by their guards. The Burma-Thai Railway was the most notorious of the prisoner of war experiences, as 13,000Australians worked on it at various times during 1942 and 1943 alongside thousands of other Allied POWs and Asians conscripted by the Japanese; nearly 2,650Australians died there.[196] Thousands of Australian POWs were also sent to the Japanese home islands where they worked in factories and mines in generally harsh conditions.[197] The POWs held in camps at Ambon and Borneo suffered the highest death rates; 77percent of those at Ambon died and few of the 2,500Australian and British prisoners in Borneo survived; almost all were killed by overwork and a series of death marches in 1945.[198]