Australia First Movement

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The Australia First Movement (AFM) ( German  Australian First Movement ) was a fascist movement in Australia from 1936 to 1942, which campaigned for the victory of Japan in World War II and a National Socialist Australia without British and US-Americans.

The movement began with the publication of Publicist magazine in 1936 , was officially registered in November 1941, and dismantled six months later in March 1942 when leading members were arrested and imprisoned for plotting to end the ongoing war against Japan. According to the Australian author Barbara Winter, after-effects of individual contents can be felt up to the present day. Some of the key politicians in post-war Australian politics came from the circles of individual actors in the movement.

Political goals and origins

The Australia First Movement hoped that Australia would be able to free itself from Great Britain with the victory of Japan in World War II and that Japan would not leave an American in Australia after a victory over the USA and that a National Socialist Australia would emerge.

As early as 1935, members of the AFM were considering the establishment of a National Socialist party, the Australia First Party . This party was not founded at the time. After initial considerations, Australia should be divided into 30 provinces and immigration radically limited. Only those who were born in Australia should be able to become members of parliament. All foreign properties should be expropriated, civil rights restricted and the censorship of their publications lifted. If this party should be banned and driven into illegality, the citizens should be armed. The magazine Publicist supported the Aborigines because they were considered Aryans according to the ethnic ideas of the National Socialists .

The AFM wanted to align the Australian economy with Japan to replace trade with the US and the UK. Alexander Rud Mills , one of the leading figures in the AFM, compared communists with Jews and, according to an original quote, expressed this as follows: “The friends of the Soviet Russia (sic!), Jews and their dupes, fear Japan” (German: “Die Friends of the Soviet Union , Jews and the victims of their fraud, fear Japan ”).

Parts of the AFM were against general conscription in Australia , there was no uniform line about it in the movement. The AFM officially only existed since November 1941, but the founders met as early as 1936 when their organ The Publicist first appeared.

Members

The membership structure was extremely heterogeneous. Well-known supporters were Adela Pankhurst , a co-founder of the Communist Party of Australia (CPA), who came from a famous family of suffragettes , William John Miles, a Rhodes Scholar and businessman from Sydney , Percy Reginald Stephensen , a former member of the CPA, Xavier Herbert and the poets Miles Franklin and Eleanor Dark .

The most important member of the movement was not Stephensen, better known in Australia, but William John Miles , who made the printing of the Publicist magazine possible with his financial means .

Some members were followers of the Theosophists and Odinists . In Victoria , Irish Catholics with ties to Archbishop Daniel Mannix and the Sinn Féin were members of that movement. Three of the leading supporters of the Australia First Movement were former members of the CPA, one was a member of an Australian National Socialist Party in Western Australia , some worked for the Australian Labor Party (ALP), others for the United Australia Party , later the Liberal Party of Australia with strong connections to the Social Credit Party of Australia .

Some of the AFM members were in contact with Oswald Mosley ’s British Union of Fascists and Arnold Leese’s British Imperial Fascist League . A member of the AFM met with Adolf Hitler and corresponded with General Erich Ludendorff , two created anonymous subversive circulars, others imported Nazi propaganda, one from the German consulate in New York during the Second World War .

Individual members of the AFM had contacts with well-known Australian politicians. So was Robert Menzies , a college friend of Mills, Adela Pankhurst knew John Curtin from their time in Victoria well. Menzies like Curtin were later Australian Prime Ministers of the ALP. AFM members also had personal relationships with Australian ministers such as Herbert Evatt , Arthur Calwell , Jack Beasley , Percy Spender and Archie Cameron.

Adela Pankhurst and Tom Walsh traveled to Japan at the invitation of the Japanese government. When they returned, they reported that Japan's intentions were peaceful. Numerous members of the movement were former founding members of the CPA, such as Adela Pankhurst and Tom Walsh, and Percy Reginald Stephensen. Stephensen also spread a fictional character Dr. Morphet, which reports that the Aryans came from Australia.

activities

Parts of the Australia First Movement were followers of a church founded by Alexander Rud Mills that worshiped the pagan god Odin . Mills met with Hitler, who, however, was not interested in his theses.

The AFM sympathized with the governments of Germany, Italy and Japan. Some - not all - of the movement believed that the Japanese victory would lead to Australia's independence from Britain. The movement had direct links to Japan, and there is evidence that Tom Walsh, Adela Pankhurst's husband, was paid by Japan to produce publications. Between 1936 and 1942, the movement brought out 16 issues of its magazine Publicist , which should serve the development of the Australian National Socialism.

End and continuation

The movement came to an end when 16 members of the AFM were arrested and interned in March 1942 on charges of collaboration with the Axis powers and suspicion of sabotage. Four FMA executives were arrested on March 9, along with three men, including Stephensen and Adela Pankhurst. Those arrested were accused of planning a plot to call on Australian soldiers to lay down arms in the war against Japan. Mills was released from camp custody in late 1942 and Stephensen only in 1945.

In 1944, an investigation into the legality of the arrests was conducted and it was found that the arrest was legal. However, not all of those arrested had been brought to justice at this point. The 1946 final report to the Houses of Representatives established the legality of the measure.

Barbara Winter, the author of the book Australia-First Movement and the Publicist , which was published in Australia, assumes in her analysis of the Australia First Movement that the development is in the past, but these tendencies persist everywhere and continue (“the setting is in the past, but the tendencies exist everywhere and always ").

literature

  • Barbara Winter: The Australia-First Movement and the Publicist, 1936-1942 . Glass House Books, Carindale 2005. ISBN 1-876819-91-X (English) Online on Google Books
  • Bruce Muirden: The puzzled patriots: The story of the Australia First Movement. Melbourne University Press. London, New York, Cambridge University Press, 1968. ISBN 052283907X (English)

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c University of Queensland : New book examines the Australia-First Movement, accessed March 19, 2011
  2. ↑ Barbara Winter: Australia First Movement. P. 13, see literature
  3. ↑ Barbara Winter: Australia First Movement. P. 19, see literature
  4. ↑ Barbara Winter: Australia First Movement. P. 42, see literature
  5. ↑ Barbara Winter: Australia First Movement. P. IX, see literature
  6. ↑ Barbara Winter: Australia First Movement. P. 1, see literature
  7. ↑ Barbara Winter: Australia First Movement. P. 40, see literature
  8. ↑ a b www.ipoz.biz : Presentation of the book by Barbara Winter: About the Book: The First Movement Movement and tth Publicist , accessed on March 19, 2011
  9. ↑ Barbara Winter: Australian First Movement. P. 39, see literature
  10. ↑ Barbara Winter: Australia First Movement. Pp. 6 and 65, see literature
  11. ↑ john.curtin.edu.au Diary of a Labor Man, 1917-1945. Editor of the 'Westaustalian Worker', accessed March 22, 2011
  12. ↑ a b Australia Dictionary of Biography (Online Edition) : Pankhurst, Adela Constantia Mary (1885-1961) (English), accessed March 20, 2011
  13. ↑ a b Australia Dictionary of Biography (online edition) : Stephensen, Percy Reginald (1901-1965) (English), accessed March 20, 2011
  14. ↑ Barbara Winter: Australia First Movement. P. 19, see literature
  15. ↑ odinicriteofaustralia.wordpress.com : The Odinic Rite of Australia. The Pre-Christian Religion of Europe, accessed March 20, 2011
  16. ↑ Barbara Winter: Australia First Movement. P. 40, see literature
  17. ↑ Barbara Winter: Australia First Movement. S. X, see literature
  18. ↑ ipoz.biz : Barbara Winter: The Australia-First Movement, non-fiction, Samples (English), accessed on March 20, 2011
  19. ^ A b National Archives of Australia : Background: Fact sheet 28 - Australia First Movement, accessed March 19, 2011
  20. ↑ recordsearch.naa.gov.au : Commission of Inquiry into the Internment in 1942 of Certain Persons Connected With the 'Australia First Movement' Group, accessed March 19, 2011
  21. ↑ Barbara Winter: Australia First Movement. P. IX, see literature
  22. ↑ Barbara Winter: Australia First Movement. P. IX, see literature