Wednesday, January 8, 1941 - Australians herd their Italian prisoners

[Louis]

Pictures of the masses of Italian prisoners taken at Bardia were flashed around the world. Mussolini’s military pretensions were revealed to be little more than a posture. His troops were also retreating in Albania, reeling from their failed invasion of Greece. German military predictions that the Greeks would prevail had proved correct. Hitler had now to consider his support for his principal ally. Strategically he was uninterested in North Africa but he could not allow Mussolini’s regime to fail and that meant giving him military support.
Meanwhile the reputation of Australian troops was in the ascendant. They had been in Egypt for over a year and had been eager for action. Wavell may even have believed that they would have caused more trouble in the base areas had they not been brought into the campaign. They had been brought into the battle late, even while they were under equipped, but their success now resounded around the world.
Operation Compass was far from over and troops were needed to maintain the momentum on Tobruk. Outnumbered by their enemy during the battle, the few troops left to guard the prisoners were now massively outnumbered.

 

[Ithikial]

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Pictures of the masses of Italian prisoners taken at Bardia were flashed around the world. Mussolini’s military pretensions were revealed to be little more than a posture. His troops were also retreating in Albania, reeling from their failed invasion of Greece. German military predictions that the Greeks would prevail had proved correct. Hitler had now to consider his support for his principal ally. Strategically he was uninterested in North Africa but he could not allow Mussolini’s regime to fail and that meant giving him military support.
Meanwhile the reputation of Australian troops was in the ascendant. They had been in Egypt for over a year and had been eager for action. Wavell may even have believed that they would have caused more trouble in the base areas had they not been brought into the campaign. They had been brought into the battle late, even while they were under equipped, but their success now resounded around the world.
Operation Compass was far from over and troops were needed to maintain the momentum on Tobruk. Outnumbered by their enemy during the battle, the few troops left to guard the prisoners were now massively outnumbered.

Yeah many of the prisoners had to shipped off back to Australia since the UK didn't want many of them. Australia had no major preparations for the management of prisoners so one of the programs was to ship them off to work on different farms around the country to help the war effort. Not exactly anywhere to escape to.

Many left after the war only to return during the promoted migration programs after the war.