The photo was later be passed to Australian intelligence, and those who had not returned to Germany were interned during the war.Īs national branch leader for the Australian party, Becker was also made the head of the Gestapo in Australia. Those present include Pinaroo storekeeper Carl Christoph Fienemann, Ernst Emil Starke, Karl Johan Rohde (a visiting member of the Brisbane branch), stonemason Heinrich Wallenstein, Wilhelm Friedrich Abel, Walter Ernst Bartsch, Harry Hahn and Oluf Bohlens. Together Frerck and Becker began to recruit, setting up branches in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide, and quickly planning a takeover of the German clubs in each major city.īecker is believed to have taken the group photo with the earliest members of the Adelaide Nazi party branch in front of a vineyard along Gomersal Road in Tanunda in about 1934. Though his membership lapsed – either for financial reasons or because of a personal grudge – Frerck’s status as one of the first 10,000 meant he was considered an “old fighter”, earning him clout. His membership number was 9,028 and hers 9,029.Īs membership was reserved for German citizens, and the party leadership was hesitant to admit those living overseas, the earlier a person joined the more trusted they would be. Frerck and his wife, Elsa Bachman, had joined the party together in 1925, only a few years after its formation. This work was organised Dr Johannes Heinrich Becker, a first world war veteran who arrived in Australia in 1927.īecker joined the party on 1 March 1932, about a year after he was asked by a member of the Reichstag to set up local branches in Australia.įrom Tanunda, Becker coordinated with his counterpart in Sydney, Johannes Frerck, the owner of a continental deli in Darlinghurst. ![]() ![]() Today the Barossa in SA is known for shiraz and picturesque views, but more than half a century ago the close-knit German community of Tanunda served as the launching point for the Nazi party’s effort to expand in Australia. Unfairly, because most of them were loyal.” Recruitment drive “But they left a legacy of shame that reflects on the rest of the German community. “They went back to their farms, back to their work. “Nothing happened to them after the war,” she says. The historian Barbara Poniewierskihas mapped out the activities of these groups and built a list of every known Nazi party member in Australia that included their membership number – an important piece of evidence to challenge any later claims that they had no involvement. Others that survive show a cheerful group on the steps of the Carrington Hotel in the Blue Mountains town of Katoomba, and a solemn scene at a German memorial for first world war victims in Sydney’s Rookwood cemetery. The photo is not the only record of Nazi activity in Australia in the years before the second world war, when a small but determined network sought to expand the party’s influence among German migrants and others across the country. ![]() Photograph: National Library of Australia A German club in Adelaide, decorated for Hitler’s 50th birthday on 20 April 1939.
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