In November 1938, throughout Germany a major Nazi pogrom was conducted <\/span>against the Jewish community. This notorious event was dubbed kristallnacht and <\/span>signalled a dramatic upsurge of violence, intimidation and persecution of <\/span>Germany\u2019s Jewish population. Less than one month later, on December 6th <\/span>1938, on the other side of the world, a Victorian Aboriginal man, William Cooper, <\/span>led a deputation of Kooris from the Australian Aborigines League, in a visit the <\/span>German Consulate in Melbourne where they attempted to present a resolution <\/span>\u2018condemning the persecution of Jews and Christians in Germany\u2019. The Consul-<\/span>General, Dr. R.W. Drechsler, refused them admittance.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Thus, the first group in Australia to try and lodge a formal protest with the <\/span>German government\u2019s representative about the persecution of the German <\/span>Jewish community, were a group of Koori political activists representing a people <\/span>who, in the previous hundred years, had themselves been subject to genocide, <\/span>and in 1938 were (like Germany\u2019s Jewish people) denied citizenship.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Furthermore, Aboriginal people had also been labelled by a white supremacist <\/span>society as \u2018subhuman\u2019, and subjected to scientific research to establish if they <\/span>were closer to apes than humans. They had also had experience of the <\/span>concentration camps that white Australia had created to contain them, and which <\/span>were later used in the notorious \u2018assimilation program\u2019 designed to \u2018eliminate\u2019 the <\/span>\u2018crossbreeds\u2019, \u2018half-castes\u2019, \u2018octoroons\u2019 and \u2018quadroons\u2019. The \u2018full-bloods\u2019 were <\/span>assumed to be \u2018dying out\u2019 thus resolving that aspect of the Aboriginal \u2018problem\u2019.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n It is probable that the ironies of the deputation\u2019s visit to the German Consulate <\/span>were part of the group\u2019s strategy to draw attention to the similarities between <\/span>what was happening in Germany and how Aborigines were being dealt with in <\/span>Australia. If that was the case it must be said that their remarkable action <\/span>achieved little in mobilising the conscience of mainstream Australia, either in <\/span>terms of the situation of Germany\u2019s Jews or that of Aboriginal Australia. Indeed, <\/span>their gesture has been almost completely forgotten in Australian history.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n But did they have a point? Were there parallels between the murderous <\/span>Nazi\/German campaign against the Jews of Europe and what had happened in <\/span>the previous hundred and fifty years in Australia (and was still happening in<\/span>1938)? Further, were there similarities between Nazi racial theories and those <\/span>subscribed to by most Anglo-Australians during the 1930s and which had <\/span>produced in this country a history of genocide, and white- supremacist attitudes <\/span>that were the foundation blocks of the Federation of Australia?<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n In this essay I will provide some answers to these questions by comparing two <\/span>aspects of Australia\u2019s treatment of its Indigenous population, ie racial ideology <\/span>and genocide, with similar policies and notions that were central to Nazi ideology. <\/span>I will also briefly consider what effect this may have had on Australian policy on <\/span>the Jewish refugee question.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n From the moment in January 1933 when Hitler became Chancellor, the Nazis <\/span>had embarked on a vicious reign of terror and exclusion against the German <\/span>Jewish community which continued largely unabated through to 1938 when, U.S.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n President Roosevelt, alarmed at the dramatic increase in Jewish refugees <\/span>seeking to escape Nazi excesses in Germany and Austria, called for an <\/span>international conference to be held in Evian, France in July 1938. None of the <\/span>countries that attended the Evian Conference really had the interests of the <\/span>Jewish refugees at heart, least of all Australia which was represented by a <\/span>delegation led by a Cabinet Minister, Colonel Thomas Walter White, who had <\/span>been passing through London on other business.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Paul Bartrop has said that, \u2018between 1933 and 1945 the Australian government <\/span>pursued a policy of restricted entry toward Jewish refugees\u2019, and never was that <\/span>more evident than at the Evian Conference where Colonel White was to <\/span>distinguish himself by declaring Australia\u2019s position thus, <\/span>…It will no doubt be appreciated also that, as we have no real racial problems, <\/span>we are not desirous of importing one…<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n This was a strange statement from an Australian Government official, <\/span>considering the previous 150 years of Australian history, and it was also <\/span>remarkable given that less than 12 months earlier, on 21st April 1937, the first <\/span>ever conference of Commonwealth and State Aboriginal authorities had as its <\/span>major resolution, under the general heading, \u2018Destiny of the Race\u2019, declared, “<\/span>That this conference believes that the destiny of the natives of aboriginal origin, <\/span>but not of the full blood, lies in their ultimate absorption by the people of the <\/span>Commonwealth, and it therefore recommends that all efforts be directed to that <\/span>end.”<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n The Jews of Europe in the 1930s were not to know that Australia was in fact a <\/span>racist country which had a history of attempted and actual genocide of its <\/span>Indigenous peoples, and that this country was determined to maintain what it <\/span>believed was its racial homogeneity.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n From the beginning of the British invasion of Australia (justified on the myth of <\/span>terra nullius), the Indigenous people were slaughtered on a grand scale. In <\/span>Tasmania between 1804 and 1834, the Aboriginal population was reduced from <\/span>an estimated 5000 people to just 200, which represented a 90% reduction in just <\/span>30 years. In Victoria it has been estimated that the Koori population declined by <\/span>about 60% in just 15 years between 1835 and 1850 as more than 68 individual<\/span>\u2018massacres\u2019 were perpetrated in that period. Indeed, according to representative <\/span>of the North West Clans of Victoria, Mr Gary Murray, of the 38 clans that lived in <\/span>Victoria B.C. (Before Cook) only 24 today have living descendants.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n By 1850 <\/span>virtually all active resistance to the invasion had been quelled in Victoria. Census <\/span>figures published in March 1857 showed that only 1,768 Aborigines were left in <\/span>all of that state. So comprehensive was the \u2018ethnic cleansing\u2019 of Australia that out <\/span>of an estimated 500 language groups on mainland Australia when the British <\/span>arrived, barely half that number of languages were to survive. By 1871, one <\/span>correspondent, G. Carrington felt compelled to write, “<\/span>We shall never possess a detailed history of this singular and gradual work of <\/span>extermination – such a tale would be too horrible to read – but we have an <\/span>opportunity of seeing a similar process in full work in the colony of Queensland,<\/span>and when we have seen that, we shall understand the mystery of Tasmania, New <\/span>South Wales, Victoria and Western Australia.”<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n By the middle of the 19th Century the situation for Aborigines in most parts of <\/span>Australia looked very grim. Morris has described it thus, \u2018The colonial process <\/span>had reduced the Aborigines to a residual minority, but they had not been <\/span>eliminated. The problem was expected to resolve itself.\u2019 In other words a new <\/span>policy emerged dubbed, \u2018Smooth the Dying Pillow\u2019, it was based on the <\/span>assumption that what was left of the Aboriginal populace would now die out. So <\/span>whilst indiscriminate killings of Aborigines were to continue well into the 1930\u2019s,<\/span>the widespread genocidal activity of early \u2018settlement\u2019 gave way to a policy of <\/span>containment. This was typified by the Aborigines Protection Act 1909, which <\/span>established the first Australian \u2018concentration camps\u2019 to provide a place for the <\/span>doomed race to die off.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n One aspect of life that Australia shared with Germany in the first part of this <\/span>century was the popularity of racial theories based on Social Darwinism. As Karl <\/span>Schleunes wrote, \u2018The publication of Darwin\u2019s theory of biological evolution in<\/span>1859 had an immediate impact in Germany\u2019, and when Professor Ernst Haeckel <\/span>developed these theories to incorporate a general theory of human and social <\/span>development, the notion was used by racial theorists to justify their, \u2018conceptions <\/span>of superior and inferior peoples and nations\u2019. These were some of the major <\/span>contributing elements for the Nazis to later concoct their policies against \u2018inferior\u2019 <\/span>\u2018races\u2019, such as Jews, Gypsies, Slavs and Blacks.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n In Australia Social Darwinism was also very popular, especially among the <\/span>scientific community. Andrew Markus has said, \u2018one doesn\u2019t have to read <\/span>extensively to discern that a central concern of anatomists was to establish whether Aborigines were closer to the animal than human\u2019. The Elder Professor <\/span>of Anatomy at the University of Adelaide in 1926 said that Aborigines were, \u2018too <\/span>low in the scale of humanity\u2019 to benefit from \u2018the civilising influence of Anglo <\/span>Saxon rule\u2019. In the 1920\u2019s and 30\u2019s Australia\u2019s Aborigines were a treasure trove <\/span>of curiosity for scientists and academics who believed that here was the \u2018missing <\/span>link\u2019 species that would advance the cause of Social Darwinism. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Consequently, <\/span>thousands of Koori peoples in communities all over Australia, were subjected to <\/span>the whims of \u2018scientists\u2019 interested in such things as similarities between <\/span>Aborigines and Chimpanzees, brain capacity and cranium size (one study in <\/span>1920 concluded that, \u2018the average brain capacity of Aborigines was between the <\/span>normal medium intelligence of twelve or thirteen year old children\u2019) This <\/span>Australian fascination with racial theories, phrenology and eugenics, closely <\/span>mirrors a similar obsession with identical notions by German society of the same <\/span>period in relation to the Jews.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Even the famous Professor A. P. Elkin, one of the most revered and \u2018enlightened\u2019 <\/span>anthropologists in Australian history, in 1929 wrote, <\/span>…some races possess certain powers in greater degree…than do others. Thus, <\/span>the Australian Aborigines and the African negroes are human and have their <\/span>powers, but they are not necessarily equal to the white or yellow races\u2019.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n In Germany the same year as Elkin wrote the above, one of the leading racial <\/span>theorists in the Third Reich, Professor Hans F. Gunther, said, \u2018If an illustrator, <\/span>painter or sculptor wants to represent the image of a bold, goal-determined, <\/span>resolute person, or of a noble, superior, and heroic human being, man or woman, <\/span>he will in most cases create an image which more or less approximates the <\/span>image of the Nordic race.\u2019. At the other end of the racial\/social spectrum were the <\/span>Aborigines of Australia.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Many eminent Australian scientists of the day were to express similar attitudes.<\/span>In Victoria, as Christie notes, \u2018Throughout the frontier years (between 1835 and <\/span>1850) the intellectual argument that the Aborigines more closely resembled \u201cthe <\/span>ourangoutangs (Ed: archaic spelling) than men\u201d made it easier for the squatter to treat the Aborigines <\/span>as subhuman, to lump them with the dingo and shoot them as a \u201crural pest.\u201d <\/span>In the meantime, particularly during the gold rush in Victoria, race became a <\/span>major issue on another front. Paranoia about the numbers Chinese miners on the <\/span>goldfields created numerous clashes and ultimately led to the development of the <\/span>\u2018White Australia\u2019 immigration policy and also played a key role in the Federation <\/span>of Australia in 1901. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n During the early part of this century, a viciously racist press <\/span>campaign against \u2018the yellow peril\u2019 saw Australian cartoonists distinguish <\/span>themselves by producing ugly caricatures of evil-looking, opium-smoking, white-<\/span>woman-corrupting, yellow hordes to the north, poised to pounce on white <\/span>populace of Australia. These cartoons are almost identical in their intent and <\/span>effect to the racist caricatures that were to be a regular feature of Der Sturmer<\/span>and other Nazi propaganda of the 1930\u2019s.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n – Insert –<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n – End of insert –<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n The later genocidal behaviour in Germany was, according to Goldhagen, <\/span>significantly influenced by a deeply entrenched, historical anti-semitism that <\/span>pervaded German society for hundreds of years. He rejects most of the <\/span>conventional explanations for the behaviour of the German people and says,<\/span>German beliefs about Jews unleashed indwelling destructive and ferocious <\/span>passions that are usually tamed and curbed by civilisation. They also provide <\/span>Germans with a moral rationale and psychological impulse to exercise those <\/span>passions against Jews.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Even if this was partly true, then it could also be said that British settlers in <\/span>Australia were imbued with a similar fear and loathing of Aborigines, who they <\/span>considered to be closer to apes than humans. Those fundamental beliefs, <\/span>stemming from extremist, white racialist notions, fuelled settler outrage when <\/span>Aboriginal people sought to resist the invasion of their lands, and the numerous <\/span>resultant \u2018punitive expeditions\u2019 bear a resemblance to the einstatzgruppen <\/span>activities after Operation Barbarossa in eastern Europe. In other words, in both <\/span>instances fear and loathing were powerful forces that produced both the <\/span>motivation and justification for mass murder.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n In 1933 Jewish population of Germany was approx 500,000 people, or less than<\/span>1% of the total population. This is similar to the percentage of Aboriginal people <\/span>in the Australian population of the time. The largest community of Jewish people <\/span>1. The Australian Government and The Evian Conference of 1938<\/strong> <\/span><\/h2>\n
2. Genocide in Australian History<\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n
3. Racial Attitudes in Germany and Australia up to the 1930\u2019s<\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/dingo.news\/voice\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/Xenophobic-Australia.jpg?resize=689%2C564&ssl=1\")
A cartoon (Editor – retouched) by Phillip May, published in The Bulletin magazine, 1886. National Museum of Australia<\/span><\/a>
\nSimilar caricatures and prejudices were used by the Australian Nationalist Movement<\/a><\/span> in WA (1980s)<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n4. Genocide in Hitler\u2019s Europe and in Australia : some comparisons<\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/h2>\n