The Brisbane Line 1909-1963

Abstract

American historians, chiefly biographers of the American General Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander, South-west Pacific Area, during World War II, have tended to accept the General's claim that when he arrived in Australia in March 1942 he discovered to his horror that the Australian General Staf's plan for the defence of Australia was to withdraw south of a line just north of Brisbane and all that area north of the line was to be ceded to the Japanese. Australian historiography, on the other hand, has taken the opposite view. This view has followed the 1943 'Brisbane Line' Royal Commission findings, that there was no Brisbane Line, or upheld the Australian Army assertion, voiced by General Sir Iven Mackay that the Brisbane Line was something plucked out of the air by politicians. Among Australian writers, only Elwyn Spratt, the biographer of one of the main participants in the 1942-1943 Brisbane Line controversy Eddie War, the maverick Federal Labor Member for East Sydney has claimed the Brisbane Line in fact existed.