Attitudes towards German Immigration in South Australia in the post-Second World War Period, 1947-60

Considering the reaction against Germans in Australia during and after the First World War, it is surprising that German immigration to Australia was permitted again soon after the Second World War and even subsidised by the Australian government. Just seven years after the second war fought with Germany within a generation, Australia signed a five-year agreement to permit Germans to immigrate. This article examines the extent of the Australian public's acceptance of this policy during the period from 1947 to 1960. It concentrates on the state of South Australia where some of the earliest settlers in the colony had been of German origin, where their behaviour and achievements had been praised in historical writings about the colony, and where German immigrants may, therefore, have been viewed more positively. Yet there was some suspicion towards and discrimination against Germans in South Australia after 1945. Negative stereotypes of Germans were apparent in comments made by politicians and in press reports. However, these fears were minor and faded even further when more Germans arrived in Australia.     

Citizenship,Rights and Emergency Powers in Second World War Australia

In times of war or the threat of war there is a heightened tension between individual rights on the one hand and public safety and the protection of the community on the other. This situation is again facing the democracies at the present time. One aspect of the way tension between these two principles affected the citizenship status and civil rights of certain individuals in Second World War Australia is examined in this article. It focuses on Australian citizens who were deprived of their liberty and interned without trial, for periods varying from a few months to a number of years. In seeking explanations for the denial of one of the basic civil rights of a section of the Australian community, this article examines some formal constructions of nationality, and considers the implications of these constructions for citizenship and civil rights in wartime Australia. ¹ 1 Part of this paper was presented as a work‐in‐progress for the Cultural Citizenship: Challenges of Globalisation Conference at Deakin University, Melbourne, 5‐8 December, 2002. Proceedings, pp. 132‐139.
     

John Treloar,Official War Art and the Australian War Memorial*

John Treloar's involvement in the Australian War Memorial began in 1917, and he was Director from 1920 until his death in 1952. The idea of a national war memorial serving also as a museum, gallery and library was not his: the credit for that goes to Charles Bean. But there would have been no museum, gallery or library without Treloar's organisational ability and collecting genius. Treloar was responsible at first for collecting a documentary record, but later as the vision expanded, he began to acquire many other kinds of material, including art. It was an unusual challenge for a soldier, public servant, and man who scrupulously distanced his emotions from his work. This article examines aspects of Australia's official and commissioned war art and teases out the relationship between the bureaucrat and the artist. I suggest that the administrative effort involved in the war art schemes has to be recognised as part of the process of cultural production, and that in these circumstances the life of the bureaucrat is as worthy of exploration as that of the artist.     

“Unbounded Enthusiasm”:1 Australian Historians and the Outbreak of the Great War

There is a growing body of European scholarship revising the traditionally held view that the peoples of Europe greeted the war with boundless patriotic enthusiasm. Niall Ferguson, Jean-Jacques Becker and Jeffery Verhey in particular have argued that the “August Days” were more myth than reality. The outbreak of the war in Australia has not yet attracted similar attention. With few exceptions, Australian scholars writing about the opening days and weeks of the war have agreed that Australian popular reaction was dominated by overwhelming enthusiasm. This paper will explore the Australian historiography, since the 1930s, and assess the extent to which the “traditional” interpretation is in need of re-investigation.     

Humanitarianism from the Suburbs: Australian Refugee Relief and Activism during the 1971 Bangladeshi Liberation War

The Bangladesh Liberation War against West Pakistan in 1971 triggered an exodus of ten million refugees, the deaths of approximately 1.5 million people and widespread destruction of villages, crops and infrastructure. Preoccupied with the Cold War and domestic politics, powerful nations such as the US and UK did not intervene directly and reluctantly provided aid. The Australian government, for its part, was particularly slow to offer aid, trailing efforts of New Zealand and most Western European governments. While the McMahon administration remained indifferent, Australians from diverse backgrounds engaged with this conflict by raising public awareness, fundraising and lobbying the Australian government to increase its aid contribution to Bangladeshis displaced by war. At a time when Australian government policies focused on the war in Indo‐China, Cold War politics and development in south‐east Asia and the south Pacific, I consider the ways Australian individuals offered aid to Asian, non‐Christian refugees, some of whom held Maoist views. Using archival materials, historical newspapers and census data, this article argues that, paradoxically, it was individuals with little political capital who spearheaded Australian efforts to aid Bangladeshi refugees. In short, the Bangladesh Liberation War provoked a groundswell of suburban activism that acted independently of government policies.     

Regimes of truth: Australian combat photography in the Second World War

This paper examines the policies and directions framing the professional practice of Australian combat photographers in the Second World War. It argues that while their endeavours to offer an account of the nation at war were constrained by predictable considerations of politics and censorship, their commitment to truth was also framed and constricted by an array of cultural considerations. The nation’s ongoing engagement with the history of the First World War, the contrasting organisational cultures of the bureaucracies that the photographers served, and Australian culture’s visual inarticulacy concerning death on the battlefield played key roles both individually and collectively in shaping the photographers’ practices and outputs. The paper will trace the operations of these influences and contend that, as a result, the photographers’ visual record of the Second World War, particularly as it related to the death of Australian servicemen, served to conceal rather than reveal the ultimate truth about the Australian experience of the war.     

The Special Operations Executive and Cyprus in the Second World War

Cyprus, together with Gibraltar and Malta, constituted the ‘crown jewels’ of British sea power in the Mediterranean during the Second World War. Being deployed on Cyprus the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force could fight the Germans and Italians in the Southeast Mediterranean, thus inhibiting the continuous supply with troops and war material of the Africa Corps of Field Marshall Ervin Rommel. This article aims to shed light on the activities of the Special Operations Executive on the island. Citing recently declassified files we assess the espionage and propaganda as well as the guerrilla warfare contingencies in case of an Axis invasion of Cyprus. We provide a critical assessment of the British guerrilla warfare strategy, arguing that the SOE and the 25th Army Corps based on Cyprus had not been well prepared to counter aggression due to inter-service rivalries, bad planning and lack of manpower. Besides, the SOE distrusted the Greek-Cypriots and the Turkish-Cypriots to the extent that the training of guerrillas was planned to commence only after a successful invasion and the occupation of the island. Finally, SOE officers considered the Cypriot communists with their anti-colonialist declarations as another threat to be confronted with special operations.     

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.     

No Just War: Political Reflections on Australian Churches' Condemnation of the Iraq War

This paper analyses the potentially positive role churches can play in encouraging public debate and moral reasoning on security matters. In particular, it explores Australian churches' vocal condemnation of Australia's involvement in the Iraq war through examining responses of spokespersons from the three largest Christian churches in Australia, namely Catholic, Anglican and Uniting Churches. It examines three types of reasons given for the condemnation: legal explanations of the lack of a plausible justification for war without UN sanctions; religious and moral reasons that defend peace and reconciliation; and political reasons that a war led by the “Christian West” increases global enmity and the likelihood of terrorism. I situate this analysis within just war theory. I suggest that churches can play an important social role in fostering tolerance, inter‐faith dialogue and peace.     

“In the Front Line”?: Internment and Citizenship Entitlements in the Second World War

This paper analyses the experiences of Australian civilian internees of the Japanese in the Second World War and the Australian government's responses to their desires for repatriation, compensation and rehabilitation. It argues that civilian internees stood in awkward relation to understandings about sacrifice in wartime and entitlements to compensation. The dominance of the citizen‐soldier in Australian narratives of war placed civilian internees in an ambiguous position. Civilian internees had not played a direct part in battle but did have direct contact with the military enemy. They had personally suffered privation at the hands of the enemy, but were not military personnel in service of their country. Civilian internees expose the tensions around citizenship and citizenship entitlement attendant upon the elevation of war service as the ultimate sacrifice for one's country.     

“Blood Brothers”. Racial Identification and the Right to Rule: the Australian Response to the Spanish‐American War

Historians have paid scant attention to Australia's enthusiastic response to the Spanish‐American war of 1898. Yet these events help us to better understand the centrality of race to Australia's national identity. Even though the Australian colonies were bound by Britain's neutrality, from Sydney to Perth Australians cheered America's decision to declare war. Many gathered outside the US consulate to offer their services as soldiers and nurses. This enthusiasm for the US cause was underpinned by an identification with fellow Anglo‐Saxons and the assumption that Filipinos and Cubans were races not yet fit for self‐government. Australians were intent on establishing their status as equal members of the governing race.     

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.     

For King,For Country: Changing “Good” Behaviour in Victoria, 1930s and 1950s

Far from being incidental, what is taught at primary school can reveal key beliefs about the world and its future held at a given period. I compare Victorian primary school curricula and reading resources of the 1930s and 1950s, attending particularly to references to war and cultural difference. I find that in the 1930s war was to be avoided by valuing cultural differences, whereas in the later decade the aim was effacement of difference through modernisation. I argue that this attitude to difference, combined with the imperialism and internationalism of the 1930s, engendered a moral form of identity in Victorian primary school children. In contrast, under the economic nationalism of the 1950s, children were taught to be good citizens taking little moral responsibility to those who were not Australian.     

Post‐War Reconstruction and the New World Order: The Origins Of Gough Whitlam's Democratic Citizen*

Gough Whitlam's father was one of Australia's most significant public servants. Deputy Crown Solicitor and Crown Solicitor at a time of great constitutional and international change, Frederick Whitlam maintained an unusually advanced perspective on the use of international instruments to protect rights and to expand powers of nationhood. Gough Whitlam's war‐time experiences in the Air Force, in particular during the referendum campaign to expand Commonwealth Powers to aid post‐war reconstruction, cemented these aspects as central to his developing notions of democratic citizenship. In his 1973 Sir Robert Garran Memorial lecture, fourteen years after his father had delivered the inaugural oration, Gough Whitlam acknowledged the influence of his father as a “great public servant” committed to public service and the developing institutions of internationalism: “I am Australia's first Prime Minister with that particular background”. This paper explores “that particular background”. I have never wavered from my fundamental belief that until the national government became involved in great matters like schools and cities, this nation would never fulfil its real capabilities. ¹ 1 E.G. Whitlam, Sir Robert Garran Memorial Oration, “Australian Public Administration under a Labor Government”, Royal Australian Institute of Public Administration, 12 November 1973, < http://www.whitlam.org/collection/1973/ > accessed 31 October 2006.
     

State vs Federal Government in the “Barmaids” Case: Regulating Australia's Second World War Home Front

Australia's National Security Act of 1939 authorised the federal government to make emergency regulations “for securing the public safety and defence of the Commonwealth [of Australia]”. Further, it instructed the government to decide for itself what might be “necessary or convenient” for the “more effectual prosecution of the present war”. 1 This article examines the authorisation of the civilian leadership through one set of emergency regulations, the National Security (Women's Employment) Regulations, and analyses their functioning through one operational decision, the decision to permit women to serve in South Australian hotel bars with the intention of releasing male bar workers for essential industrial or military employment. Managing the home front proved complex. Sectional interests continued to jockey for positions of influence, even in war conditions. In this case, the state of South Australia sought to protect its “rights” against federal control of employment: a contest fuelled by an ideological squabble about what were then known as “barmaids”. I argue that Australia's centrally‐determined national war goals were undermined by its federal sovereignty‐distribution mechanism, which allowed sub‐national elements such as South Australia to impede national policy, and conclude that even with extensive defence powers to draw on, the federal government's war goals were obstructed by non‐war interests.     

Sultanism and Civil War in Libya

The 2011 Libyan uprising transformed into a civil war in a matter of days—and it has lasted more than a decade. What made this uprising different from others? This article argues that the type of system determined the outcome of the revolt. It posits a relationship between Muammar Qadhafi's sultanistic regime and the fragile political institutions that have allowed the chaos and rivalry to persist without resolution. To demonstrate this, Libyan citizens were surveyed about their perceptions of how Qadhafi shaped the political order responsible for today's institutional vacuum. While the revolution revealed the Qadhafi regime's lack of popular and foreign support, as well as the inadequacies of state institutions, it could not use institutional channels to mobilize the public and organize authority, as in Tunisia and Egypt. The civil war, coupled with the interventions of regional and international powers in support of local actors and militias, has made the Libyan case different. The article also explains how the passive stances of the League of Arab States and the United Nations paved the way for external rivalries.     

An Australian Empire Patriot and the Great War: Professor Sir Archibald T. Strong (1876–1930)

Archibald T. Strong, born in Melbourne, was the son of an Australian scholar who went to an academic post at Liverpool. The younger Strong received his secondary and tertiary education in England. There, he became proficient in modern European languages and literature. He initially planned a career in the law, but for health reasons returned to Australia to the Department of English at the University of Melbourne. Prior to the First World War, Strong became prominent in Melbourne literary circles and also a prolific commentator on world affairs. As an early member of the Round Table group in Australia, Strong assessed Imperial Germany as posing an existential threat to the British Empire and hence to Australia's security. The nation's future, he believed, lay in unwavering defence of the Empire. Strong evinced a distinct impatience with fellow citizens, especially on the socialist left, who failed, in his view, to understand the realities of Australia's position in the world and what was at stake in the Great War.     

Leadership: Arthur Calwell and the Post‐War Immigration Program*

Arthur Calwell was the major architect of Australia's successful post‐war migration program that laid the demographic, economic and cultural foundations of contemporary society. In public memory, however, Calwell is now mostly associated with the White Australia policy, which aimed to preserve Australia as a white, British‐Australian society by severely restricting Asian immigration. This article assesses Calwell's leadership of the immigration program, his impact and his legacy. It identifies three distinct, often irreconcilable leadership characteristics, defined in terms of him as “innovative policy‐maker’, “political broker” and “agitator”. This focus on leadership challenges the one‐dimensional view of Calwell that exists in Australian political historiography. It is also intended to extend our engagement with leadership studies and illuminate the role leadership plays in political decision‐making, especially sensitive portfolios like immigration.     

Just War Doctrine and the Invasion of Iraq

In this article we adopt the framework of Just War doctrine to assess whether the 2003 invasion of Iraq was just. The six criteria against which we assess the justice of going to war are Just Cause, Right Authority, Right Intention, Reasonable Prospect of Success, Proportionate Cause and War as Last Resort. We focus upon what was known and said by the US, British and Australian governments around the time they decided to invade and consider whether there was sufficient justification and authorisation for the Iraq War. The key pre-war issues discussed include alleged Iraqi possession of WMD and links to terrorist organisations, and the meaning of UN Security Council resolutions. We conclude that, as the Just War criteria were not satisfied, the invasion of Iraq was unjust.     

澳大利亚孟席斯政府卷入越南战争的原因分析

澳大利亚政府是在越南战争期间积极支持美国的军事行动的西方国家之一,对于其出兵越南的原因一直存在争论.本文认为,国内特殊的政治环境、基于前进防御战略的国家安全需要、相关信息的匮乏以及澳大利亚当时所处的特殊国际环境等一系列因素促使澳大利亚政府向越南派遣军事顾问以及最后部署大量军队协助美国在印支地区的作战.越南战争的失败促使澳大利亚重新反思其亚洲政策,并逐渐加强了其与亚洲在经济、政治和文化领域的交流.