Treasonous Conduct: Assessing the Wartime Activities,Post‐War Trials and Tribulations of Australian Collaborators in the Second World War*

There has been very little written about the activities of Australian citizens collaborating with the Germans during the Second World War. There are, however, a few instances where Australian citizens were involved in activities in Germany which could be considered treasonous. A number of these were individuals involved in an ill‐conceived military unit created by the Germans from British prisoners of war while there is at least one example of an Australian who allegedly carried out propaganda broadcasts for the Germans. The activities of these individuals and the way the authorities dealt with these cases after the war will be the focus of this article.     

“A Good‐Will Ship”: The Light Cruiser Köln Visits Rabaul (1933)

The concept of loyalty still holds a central space in many histories about New Guinean‐Australian relations, especially during the Second World War, and translates into demands by Australians that New Guineans recognize Australia's political system as “the best”. In this article about the visit of the first German navy cruiser to New Guinea after the First World War, I tell a story not about loyalties, but about contesting colonial claims, namely Australia's insistence on “loyalty”, and Germany's demand for a “return” of her colony. The visit of Köln in 1933 raises questions such as: How did Germans and Australians negotiate living together in the Mandated Territory of New Guinea? How were divisions, grief, tensions, and hostilities after the First World War dealt with? What separated them, what united them, and what role did New Guineans play in this complex relationship?     

B.H.P.’s “Place in the Industrial Sun”: Whyalla in its Golden Age

Whyalla epitomised the promises of industrialism and consumerism during Australia’s Golden Age of capitalism, roughly 1945–1975. Located on South Australia’s Eyre Peninsula, Whyalla was a bustling industrial town (later a city) following the Second World War. It was home to the shipyard of Broken Hill Proprietary Company Limited (BHP) and, from 1965, a steelworks. Before the war, Whyalla had been a company town, one planned and directed by BHP. Following the Second World War, it had morphed into a hybrid public–private town, albeit one that was heavily influenced by BHP, so much so that many still considered Whyalla to be a company town. Drawing from company materials, parliamentary records, oral histories, and the Whyalla News, this article argues that, together, BHP, the South Australian government, and residents conveyed and developed Whyalla to be an “Industrial Eden”. These actors forged postwar Whyalla to be a metaphor for what BHP, South Australia, and, ultimately, Australia had to offer. Whyalla represented progress, modernity, abundance, and stability. Moreover, it was presented and even accepted as a great place to live and work. For a moment, Whyalla was a capitalist utopia.     

Australian POW in German Captivity in the Second World War

When history has taken an interest in the Australian POW experience in the Second World War, the focus has been largely on those in Japanese captivity, where suffering was immense and mortality rates high. Popular culture has reinforced the perception that those who fell into German hands had it easy, living fairly comfortable existences punctuated with adventurous episodes, typically in the form of escape attempts. This essay seeks to correct the misperceptions arising from the “Colditz myth” by examining the Australian experience of captivity in Germany, drawing on both Australian and German sources. Two aspects of that experience are highlighted, namely the experience of work, as it was required of the vast majority of POW, and that of the strange phenomenon of “holiday camps”.     

Norman Lindsay and the ‘Asianisation’ of the German Soldier in Australia during the First World War

Abstract

From the beginning of the First World War, atrocity stories about German depredations against Belgian civilians circulated throughout the Allied world. Caricatures of German soldiers rapidly degenerated into depictions of monstrous ‘Huns’ who were subhuman beasts, prone to acts of rapine and banditry. The most prominent producer of ‘Hun’ cartoons in Australia was artist Norman Lindsay, who published extensively throughout the war. Through an analysis of the antecedents of Lindsay’s monstrous ‘Hun’, this article will demonstrate that the rapid creation of the ‘Hun’ in Australia was made possible by the pre-existing racial caricatures of non-European people that were popular during this period. Chinese and Japanese people who were excluded from Australia by the White Australia policy were the previous targets of Norman Lindsay’s racial caricatures; as stories of German atrocities filtered into Australia, Lindsay transferred traits of Asians on to the German ‘Hun’, thus transforming him into the enemy ‘Other’. These traits were products of British imperial propaganda, and part of an ideology that asserted it was the job of the white man to civilise the barbaric coloured man. By ‘Asianising’ the German, Lindsay used a well understood language of racial caricature to reduce the German to the status of a barbarian. Race was therefore one of the central paradigms through which Australian propaganda operated.     

East Germany: another party landscape

Viewed from the heart of the EU in Brussels, German European policy has not been significantly altered by unification. A major reason for this policy continuity is the stability of the composition of German's foreign policy ‘establishment’ in the federal bureaucracy as well as in the political parties. For a combination of reasons, including the economic conjuncture, the enhanced European policy role of the Länder governments, and the lack of socialisation of east Germans into the European project after the Second World War, the political climate has, however, grown more hostile to closer integration. This may prove though to be a conjunctural phenomenon, which will change with an upturn of the German economy. There will be no ‘Britishisation’ of German European policy.     

The Transformation of Labor Party Immigration Policy, 1901–1945

ABSTRACT

The Commonwealth Labor government’s introduction of a program of mass immigration after the Second World War was a pivotal moment in the nation’s history. The program itself and the experiences of those who settled in Australia have been studied closely by historians and social scientists. Less attention has been given to the fact that the postwar policy represented a transformation of Labor’s traditional attitude to immigration. Since its foundation in the 1890s, the Australian Labor Party had been suspicious of immigration and opposed to programs of assisted immigration on the basis that migrant labour threatened the wages and conditions of Australian workers. This article traces Labor’s attitudes to migration before the Second World War and shows how economic and security exigencies compelled the party to repudiate its decades-long opposition to assisted immigration. The article suggests that the reason that the postwar immigration program does not receive greater prominence in histories of the Labor Party is because the policy and its chief architect, Arthur Calwell, are diminished by their association with the White Australia policy.     

A Possession for Ever: Charles Bean,the Ancient Greeks,and Military Commemoration in Australia

For many people after the First World War, the classical world of Greece and Rome provided a language of commemoration; those who fought on Gallipoli were often keen to see parallels with the Trojan war of 3,000 years earlier. Charles Bean, Australia's classically-educated war correspondent, Official Historian, and chief visionary behind the Australian War Memorial, was as imbued with the classics as any. What is striking, however, is that Bean largely ignored parallels with Troy, focusing instead almost exclusively on fifth-century BC Athens. Bean wanted more than a language of commemoration; he desired an historical backdrop which would emphasise the place in history of the Australian Imperial Force (AIF). Only the Athenians could provide a fitting parallel for the youthful democracy of Australia.     

The Red Flag Riots: A Study of Intolerance.

By Ramond Evans. St. Lucia. University of Queensland Press, 1988. pp, xv + 252. Illustrated. Seven maps. The Fight Goes On. A Picture of Australia and the World in Two Post-war Decades. By Ralph Gibson. Ascot Vale, Red Rooster Press, 1987. pp:280, illustrated. $23.00 paperback. The New Right's Australian Fantasy. Edited by Ken Coghill. The German Presence in Queensland Over the Last 150 Years Edited by Manfred Jurgensen and Alan Corkhill. Brisbane. Research Unit German Australian Relations, Dept. of German. University of Queensland, 1988. pp. 414. No price given. The Fenians In Australia 1865–1880. By Keith Amos. Policing In Australia: Historical Perspectives. Edited by Mark Finnane Law and Government in Colonial Australia. By Paul Finn. A Divided Working Class. By Constance Lever-Tracy and Michael Quinlan. Buongiorno Australia: Our Italian Heritage. By Robert Pascoe. Big-noting: The heroic theme in Australian war writing. By Robin Gerster. Rising Damp: Sydney 1870–90. By Shirley Fitzgerald. A Trunk Full of Books: History of the State Library of South Australia and its Forerunners By Carl Bridge. Delivering the Goods: A History of the NSW Transport Workers Union 1888–1986. By Mark Bray and Malcolm Rimmer. No Paradise for Workers: Capitalism and the Common People in Australia 1788–1914. By Ken Buckley and Ted Wheelwright. Labour Party in New South Wales 1880–1900. By Raymond Markey. The Scottish in Australia. By Malcolm D. Prentis. Bunyip Aristocracy: The New South Wales Constitution Debate of 1853 and Hereditary Institutions in the British Colonies. By Ged Martin. Ambivalent Allies: Myth and Reality in the Australian-American Relationship. By Dennis Phillips. Te Aso Fiafia: Te Tala o Te Kamupane Vaitupu 1877–1887 [The Joyous Day: the tale of the Vaitupu Company, 1877–18871. By T. Isala and D. Munro. Funafuti & Suva, Tuvalu Extension Services Centre and the Institute of Pacific Studies of the University of the South Pacfic, 1987. Intermittent Diplomat. The Japan and Batavia Diaries of W. MacMahon Ball. Edited and introduced by Alan Rix. Equal or Different—Women's Politics 1800–1914. Edited by Jane Rendall. British Policy in Relation to Poland in the Second World War. By Stanislaw Zochowski. Foreign Policy Implementation. Edited by Steve Smith and Michael Clarke.     

Shaped on the Anvil of Mars: Vance and Nettie Palmer and the Great War

In Australia as elsewhere within the belligerent nations of the Great War, dissenting thinkers were marginalised with the mobilisation of militarism. Vance and Nettie Palmer, Australia's most important literary partnership in the interwar period, were initially critical of the war, their response typical of the English radical intelligentsia among whom they were living at the time of its outbreak. Forced back to Australia in 1915, the Palmers had to re-establish themselves in its increasingly turbulent intellectual battlefields. Nettie's earlier anti-war beliefs and cosmopolitanism were undermined while Vance became ever more deeply enmeshed in a discourse concerning the virtues of the “ordinary people”, which encompassed the men of the Australian Imperial Force (AIF). Nevertheless, in their extensive writings about Australia, neither Palmer ever endorsed the legend of the heroic Anzacs. The Great War, however, profoundly shaped their political consciousness and their choice of genre and writing strategies, as it did others of their literary generation. This article will show that the war was a far more important influence on their work than usually acknowledged in Australian literary scholarship, and thereby reveal some of the cultural patterns that shaped their generation of Australian radical writers and intellectuals — particularly in Melbourne, arguably the heartland for the tradition of democratic literary nationalism which the Palmers have been seen to epitomise.     

Liberals and Australian Foreign Policy*

Since the Second World War, Liberal governments trying to adapt to a rapidly changing international environment have been mindful of Australian interests, and especially the ongoing search for security. Adapting to declining British power, to militant communism in East and Southeast Asia, and to a new, under‐defined alliance with the United States was no easy task. The Colombo Plan for aid to South and Southeast Asia and the dismantling of the White Australia Policy represented two forms of positive engagement with Asia. Since the 1970s, Liberal governments have played significant roles in the strengthening of the Commonwealth; strengthening ties with key countries in Asia; and maintaining a sometimes problematic security relationship with the United States. On this latter point, however, the most recent Liberal governments have not performed well, in becoming more subservient to the Americans.     

“This country is rotten”: Australian Nurses in India during the First World War and Their Encounters with Race and Nationhood

This article examines the writings of the nurses of the Australian Army Nursing Services, who served in hospitals in India between 1916 and 1919. Their writings show that they practised differences along three lines: colour, culture, and space. The article reveals the plurality of female engagements with empire, highlighting the inherent irony in the imperialist machinations of white women from the dominion nation of Australia. It also demonstrates how these nurses make a “grave” and basic mistake — as expounded by Ernest Renan in his 1882 Sorbonne lecture — by confusing race with nation. It ultimately argues that the Australian nurses in India during the First World War had been set as pawns by their own government in the greater game of colonial power, by analysing one instance of sexual control, a “scandal” which was censored by the Australian government, but which demonstrated how the latter used gender inequalities as an essential instrument for the perpetration of colonial racism and imperial authority.     

No Future for Germany's Past? Collective Memory and German Foreign Policy

Like most aspects of German politics and society after 1945, post-war German foreign policy has traditionally been greatly influenced by the legacy of Germany's National Socialist past and the Second World War. The semi-sovereign and divided nature of the West German state along with the strong argumentative force of collective memory in foreign policy discourse ensured a strong presence of Germany's historical legacy in both institutional and discursive terms resulting in a foreign policy which was characterised by self-limitation, a strong commitment to multilateralism and a civilian foreign policy culture. This article will argue that the interpretation of German collective memory of the Holocaust and the Second World War underwent significant changes under the red–green governments between 1998 and 2005, in particular with regard to the use of force. Although German collective memory continued to be present during this period, it lost its predictability and was used in a variety of crises to justify a range of responses, including military action.     

End of an Era? Anti‐Americanism in the Australian Labor Party

Anti‐Americanism, sometimes called the “last acceptable prejudice”, is a common phenomenon in the modern era. This paper explores the ebb and flow of anti‐Americanism in the Australian Labor Party in the post‐Second World War period and argues that while at times it was reasonable or proportionate, at others such criticism became unreasonable, disproportionate and therefore prejudicial. When this occurs the Australia‐US alliance can become strained, the Australian electorate tends to become sceptical of the ALP's credentials on national security and the party's electoral prospects also tend to suffer. Nevertheless, following the brief leadership of the stridently anti‐American Mark Latham, such sentiment in the ALP has been widely discredited and is unlikely to emerge again in its prejudicial form for some time, marking the end of an era.     

Empire, Region, World: the International Context of Australian Foreign Policy since 1939

What have been the most important factors in international relations for Australian foreign‐policymakers over the last sixty years? Five broad themes stand out: the end of empire; Cold War dependency; the changing nature of security; economic development; and race and national identity. Cumulatively, and often in intertwined ways, these themes have amounted to little short of a revolution in Australia's place in the world since the Second World War. The challenges facing Australians have, as a result, been considerable. The international context in which Liberals have made foreign policy has been reshaping Australia as it has been reshaping the external environment.     

Strategic Reassessments: Aid and Bureaucracy in Australia-India Relations 1951–1970*

Australia-India relations during the Cold War years were tense. The dominant argument in the current literature that explains this tension is the Nehru-Menzies dissonance, which resulted in fundamentally opposite readings of the Cold War. However, the role of Australian aid to India has been understudied in the bilateral relations literature. India was the largest receiver of Australian aid between 1951–1969, but in 1969, there was a marked decrease in this aid as Indonesia replaced India as the main aid recipient. By drawing on archival material, this article suggests an additional explanation for the dramatic change to the Australia-India relationship. By examining the role of Australian ministers and senior bureaucrats, this paper argues that between 1951–1969, Australia’s aid to India was driven by its strategic interests in India. However, by 1966 Australia’s strategic interests in India became tenuous due to the souring of United States-India relations, primarily because of the stresses of the Vietnam War. Thus, a sizeable cut in Australian aid to India was made in 1969 and the subsequent decision to make Indonesia the foremost beneficiary of its aid was a result of strategic reassessments in Australian foreign policy, to adhere more closely to United States (US) interests in Asia.     

The “ANRC has Withdrawn its Offer”: Paul Kirchhoff,Academic Freedom and the Australian Academic Establishment*

The main focus of examinations of intellectual suppression and censorship of scholars and academics in Australia has been on the post‐1945 period, particularly the Cold War. The interwar years have, in comparison, received little attention, resulting in a lack of historical understanding of the development of censorious structures and traditions in Australia. In this paper I discuss the exclusion of Paul Kirchhoff, a German anthropologist, a member of the German Communist Party and a Jew, from undertaking anthropological research in Australia, including its external territories, between 1931 and 1932. Kirchhoff applied for a research grant from the Australian National Research Council (ANRC) which, although awarded, was withdrawn once the Executive Committee was informed by the Australian government that the British MI5 considered him a security risk. His membership of the Communist Party was the reason put forward. This case also underlines the transnational aspect of security services and the international reach of academic anthropology. Kirchhoff was a victim of the ANRC's sympathetic collaboration with the Commonwealth Attorney‐General's office to stifle academic and civil freedom.     

'…at the hands of our own men and in our own country!'

Daisy Schoeffel's Account of her and her Family's Internment as Prisoners of War in Australia during World War I.     

Croatian Anti‐Fascism in the Second World War: An Australian Perspective

The historiography of the Second World War in Yugoslavia rests on the dichotomous resistance/collaboration paradigm pitting “Yugoslav” resisters against extreme nationalist collaborators. This historiography also presents us with a Balkanist interpretation of the war as exceptionally savage and brutal. The collapse of Yugoslavia led to the collapse of the Partisan Epic. It also led to the rise of nationalist historiographies of the war and the rehabilitation of collaborators, notably the Serbian Chetniks. A corrective to the exceptionalism of many standard studies of the war in Yugosalvia may be found in an analysis of the experiences of Australian Yugoslavs and their perceptions of resistance and collaboration. Based almost entirely on hitherto underutilised archival sources, this article traces the differences between two rival Yugoslav groups in Australia: (mostly Serbian) royalist supporters of the Chetniks and the old centralist regime, and Croatian supporters of Tito's Partisans and the idea of a new, federative Yugoslavia. It demonstrates that both groups were adept at mobilising opinion and actively engaging in the political process to advance their cause. However, the Croats and their organisational structures had a wider reach. Furthermore, they were able to demonstrate that they were contributing more to the Allied cause — which was their own — than their rivals. This had an impact on their standing in Australian society and on attitudes towards Yugoslavs and Yugoslavia. Finally, this article sheds new light on the Australian home‐front, revealing the generally civil and tolerant attitude of state and commonwealth governments towards “friendly aliens” in their desire both to be connected to their country of birth and integrated into their adopted homeland.     

Book Reviews

Book reviewed in this issue. Aboriginal Dreaming Paths and Trading Routes: The Colonisation of the Australian Economic Landscape. By Dale Kerwin Australia: William Blandowski's Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Aboriginal Australia. Edited by Harry Allen Radical Sydney: Places, Portraits and Unruly Episodes. By Terry Irving and Rowan Cahill The Frauenstein Letters: Aspects of Nineteenth Century Emigration from the Duchy of Nassau to Australia. By Kathrine M. Reynolds Not Quite White: Lebanese and the White Australia Policy 1880 to 1947. By Anne Monsour Stanley Melbourne Bruce: Australian Internationalist. By David Lee The Australian Road to Singapore: The Myth of British Betrayal. By Augustine Meaher IV. Imposing Peace and Prosperity: Australia, Social Justice and Labour Reform in Occupied Japan. By Christine De Matos A Three‐Cornered Life: The Historian W.K. Hancock. By Jim Davidson The Biographical Dictionary of the Australian Senate, Volume 3 1962–1983 with an introduction by Harry Evans. Edited by Anne Miller and Geoffrey Browne Learning to be a Minister: Heroic Expectations, Practical Realities. By Anne Tiernan and Patrick Weller Labor's Conflict: Big Business, Workers and the Politics of Class. By Tom Bramble and Rick Kuhn All That's Left: What Labor Should Stand For. Edited by Nick Dyrenfurth and Tim Soutphommasane The Quest for Justice. By Ken Crispin The Politics of Human Rights in Australia. By Louise Chappell John Chesterman and Lisa Hill Australia. The State of Democracy. By Marian Sawer, Norman Abjorensen and Phil Larkin. What Were They Thinking? The Politics of Ideas in Australia. By James Walter with Tod Moore Throwing off the Cloak: Reclaiming Self‐reliance in Torres Strait. By Elizabeth Osborne Pacific Ways: Government and Politics in the Pacific Islands. Edited by Stephen Levine The Moral, Social and Political Philosophy of the British Idealists. Edited by William Sweet Churchill's Secret War. The British Empire and the Ravaging of India during World War Two. By Madhusree Mukerjee Redefining British Politics: Culture, Consumerism and Participation, 1954–70. By Lawrence Black Confronting Hitler. German Social Democrats in Defense of the Weimar Republic, 1929–1933. By William Smaldone Italy Today, the Sick Man of Europe. Edited by Andrea Mammone and Giuseppe Veltri Resentment in History. By Marc Ferro, trans. Steven Rendall Power and the Past: Collective Memory and International Relations. By Eric Langenbacher and Yossi Shain (editors) Science for All: The Popularization of Science in Early Twentieth‐Century Britain. By Peter J. Bowler