Kiwiblog

The Herald reports on a controversy over Nazi uniforms at a military re-enactment dinner:

Steve Goodman, of the Military Re-enactment Society, said the photos of Nazi images had been taken out of context. He said different army units – including American troops – were represented at the dinner which had been themed as 1940s Germany.

Mr Goodman said he was taking legal action against the person who had been spreading highly defamatory information about the society.

The chairman of the Jewish Council of New Zealand, also called Stephen Goodman, said the photos did not show anything “insidious”.

I would not have thought Stephen Goodman was that common a name!

In terms of the main issue, I think this is an over-reaction. The dinner was firstly a private event, but secondly many army units were represented there. That is different to the normal bouts of stupidity around Nazi uniforms.

Secretary Cliff Tuckey said they dressed as German soldiers, but every effort was made to downplay the symbol. “We never want to upset anyone if possible,” he said. “We don’t fly swastika flags, we don’t wear any insignia that can be seen at a distance.”

Its not a hobby I would choose, but if you are going to re-enact WWII, it is hard to do it without the Germans!

At around 5 am this morning, a statue of New Zealander Sir Keith Park was unveiled on the fourth plinth of Trafalgar Square in London.

This photo of Sir Keith next to his Hurricane is courtesy of Vincent Orange and as taken in September 1941.

Many readers supported the campaign for Sir Keith to be so honoured.

The statue was unveiled by London Mayor Boris Johnson (who is in the news for coming to the rescue on his bicycle of a woman being attacked) and Air Chief Marshall Sir Stephen Dalton. More importantly it was attended by 16 RAF veterans of the Battle of Britain. There was a flyover of a Spitfire and a Typhoon.

For those who don’t know Sir Keith Park commanded 11 Group, and almost 3,000 pilots from 15 countries fought in the Battle of Britain.

Lord Tedder, WWII Deputy Supreme Commander for Operation Overlord sums up the contribution of Park the best:

“If ever any one man won the Battle of Britain, he did. I don’t believe it is recognised how much this one man, with his leadership, his calm judgement and his skill, did to save not only this country, but the world.”

Kiwis played their part in the Battle of Britain. We provided 126 pilots, compared to 33 from Australia and 98 from Canada. The ponly country to provide more, except of course the UK, was Poland with 145.

Prior to WWII, Park was a pilot in WWI and shot down 20 enemy aircraft. After WWII he returned to New Zealand and served on the Auckland City Council.

A big story in Australia is about an 83 year old man who falsely claimed to be a Prisoner of War in WWII, and has been paid more than $400,000 by the Commonwealth since 1988.

Arthur “Rex” Crane, 83, … claimed for years he fought the Japanese in Malaya in World War II, was imprisoned in Singapore and survived the notorious Thailand-Burma Railway.

On the strength of that story, Mr Crane is understood to have been paid more than $400,000 by the Commonwealth since 1988, but now it has been revealed he was living a lie.

The Australian Federal Police is investigating claims Mr Crane was at school in Adelaide during the time he was supposed to have been in Malaya, was not sent to the Thailand-Burma Railway and never saw war service.

Now this would be bad enough for anyone to have done. But the story is far far worse. Mr Crane is the Federal President of the Ex-PoW Association of Australia!!

He will not safely be able to drink at an RSA again!

It is not just that he wasn’t a POW, but did see service. He wasn’t even in the military. He spent the war in Adelaide. How could he think he would never be caught? And what ever possessed him to take up senior office in the ex-POW association?

The Dom Post Editorial:

Seventy years ago today the New Zealand Government declared war on Germany, committing its citizens to fighting in the event that has defined our age.

The world that emerged from the ruins of 1945 was utterly changed from the one that existed when British prime minister Neville Chamberlain announced that his country had gone to war with Germany over the invasion of Poland. “Where she [Britain] goes, we go; where she stands, we stand,” New Zealand prime minister Michael Joseph Savage said.

And 11,929 New Zealanders died in that fight – the highest per capita in the Empire/Commonwealth.

It was a price that had to be paid. Victory for the Nazis would have meant the end of civilisation in Europe.

Even now, after 70 years of research and scholarship on the horrors of the Third Reich, it is hard to comprehend how a culture responsible for the poetry of Goethe and the music of Beethoven could also have produced Buchenwald and Auschwitz. The truth is that the Nazis sought to wipe the Jewish people and any others who did not fit in with their perverted racial ideology from the face of the Earth. They went about their task with a chilling, clinical efficiency. At its peak, 9000 people a day were being killed and cremated at Auschwitz.

And this was nothing to do with religion or beliefs. It was all about bloodlines.

Six million Jews died in the Nazis’ extermination camps. Others they targeted included Roma (Gypsies), Poles, Russians and other Slavic peoples. More than three million Soviet prisoners of war died, along with two million Soviet civilians in Nazi-occupied territories.

Others were selected to die on genetic grounds, such as the handicapped, or for political or behavioural reasons including communists, socialists, Jehovah’s Witnesses and homosexuals.

World War II was, quite simply, a war against evil.

It was indeed.

No this post is not going to see Godwin’s Law cited. It is about a fascinating article in the Manawatu Standard:

Though it has been commonly assumed that New Zealand vocally opposed the Nazi expansion and urged Britain to confront Hitler’s regime, two historians are arguing this is not true.

New Zealand continued to push for negotiations with Hitler even as Britain declared war, while still honouring a trade agreement made with Germany in 1937, they say.

We were still trading with Hitler? We signed a trade agreement with him in 1937?

Massey University head of history, philosophy and classics James Watson said he and New Zealand Defence Force historian John Crawford began their research after discovering discrepancies in the history books.

They stumbled across correspondence between key New Zealand ministers in 1939, pushing for continued negotiations. …

New Zealand was behind Britain initially, when British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain went to negotiate with Hitler and signed the Munich peace agreement in 1938.

But after Hitler dishonoured the agreement and invaded Poland, Britain was talking war while New Zealand continued to push for peace negotiations.

Finally, in 1940, New Zealand and Australia sent telegrams to Britain saying they would follow her “to the end”, in whatever decision was made.

So even after Hitler invaded Poland, the Labour Government thought negotiations were the way to go – despite Hitler having broken every previous agreement?

Meanwhile, New Zealand was continuing trade with Germany under a special agreement they had signed in 1937, Dr Watson said.

“I often wondered whether any New Zealander who encountered a German soldier in Greece ever reflected that the uniforms worn by Germans were made from New Zealand wool.”

I wonder when trading stopped?

When Peter Fraser became Prime Minister in 1940, he took a staunch anti-Hitler position.

Dr Watson thinks this might be why the period beforehand has been glossed over by historians.

An historical bias towards Labour could also be the reason, he said.

The research will be published in the British Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History later this year.

I look forward to reading the full research. Thank God for historians.

Many Kiwis will not have heard of Sir Keith Park, but they should.

In the Daily Telegraph, Tony Benn and Lord Tebbit call for a permament memorial to be established for Sir Keith.

Sir Keith was born in Thames, joined the NZ Army and fought in WWI at Gallipoli. He transferred to the British Army and then the Royal Flying Corps. He shot down 14 planes during WWI.

In WWII he was promoted to Air Vice Marshall (equal to a Major General) l and was in charge of No 11 Group RAF that defended London during the Battle of Britain.

After the war he was promoted to Air Chief Marshal (equal to a full General) and returned to NZ in 1946.  He was elected to the Auckland City Council and died in 1975 aged 82.

Anyway Benn and Tebbit say:

In a combined political career stretching to the best part of 100 years, the two of us have rarely agreed on anything. But on one issue we have discovered common ground – the need for a permanent memorial in London to Sir Keith Park, the Battle of Britain hero.

London is the city that he helped save and the Sir Keith Park Memorial Campaign is shortly to submit an application to the planning committee of Westminster City Council to erect a memorial statue to this great man. It is an application that we both fervently support because it would give long-overdue recognition to a man whose achievements have never been properly recognised in this country.

Even today, despite the efforts of the Sir Keith Park Memorial Campaign, a surprising number of people have never even heard of Park. But he played as important a role as the great Admiral Lord Nelson, who dominates Trafalgar Square, in securing the freedom that we enjoy today. As Hitler’s army gathered in the Channel ports in 1940 in preparation for his planned invasion of Britain, the Luftwaffe was fighting a battle for control of the skies over southern England. Hitler needed to achieve air supremacy for the invasion to go ahead and the only thing preventing him was the stubborn Royal Air Force.

Had we lost the Battle of Britain, Hitler would have been able to knock our country out of the war, either through a direct invasion or prolonged aerial bombardment. The consequences would have been horrific both for Britain and the wider free world.

Now people may say how much is due to the commander. Well he led from his plane – not a desk:

Sir Keith was the unsung hero of the Battle of Britain. Commanding 11 Group Fighter Command, he was responsible for the defence of London and south-east England and his squadrons bore the brunt of the fighting. His role in the battle led the then Marshal of the RAF, Lord Tedder, to say after the war: “If ever any one man won the Battle of Britain, he did. I don’t believe it is recognised how much this one man, with his leadership, his calm judgment and his skill, did to save not only this country, but the world.”

We can be very proud of Sir Keith.

There is a campaign page where you can go to and support the campaign for a suitable memorial in London to Sir Keith.

The planning applications have just been submitted to the Westminster City Council for a tribute to Sir Keithto be erected permanently in Waterloo Place (next to the Athenaeum) and also a temporary version on the 4th Plinth in Trafalgar Square. The statue of Sir Keith will be created by Wellington’s Weta Workshop.

The Park Memorial campaign is currently calling on Kiwis to lend their support to this final stage by sending letters in support of the planning applications to the Westminster City Council. The campaign is aiming to generate as many letters/emails as possible backing the planning applications.

Supporters can visit the campaign web site at http://www.sirkeithpark.com and in the left hand column there is a click through banner that takes you to an email letter of support. All you have to do is drop your name into the profoma and e-mail it off (takes less than 60 secs). Note it works better in IE than Firefox.

I’ve just sent a letter off myself.