Scorched Earth

by Rosen, Sue;

  11. The duties of the S.E.S.S. Squads will be:

  (i) To explain the principles of the Scorched Earth Code.

  (ii) To secure understanding and responsible local collaboration towards implementing prior preparations in case of invasion emergency.

  (iii) To lay emphasis that the work at present being undertaken is one of preparation, and that the actual denial operation will only operate in the last extremity, and then only by decision of the Military. Further, that it is most necessary that preparation should take place everywhere, as it cannot be known where the enemy will strike.

  (iv) To encourage steady and determined civil morale.

  (v) To contact Governmental representatives, and representatives of local industry, trade and business, and keep the State War Effort Co-Ordination Committee SubCommittee fully informed, by separate reports on problems as they arise, and by weekly progress reports of the work of preparation and the degree of readiness for action at local military command.

  (vi) To contact the local military command, to ensure that military orders will be properly and instantly conveyed to all concerned, without danger of fifth columnism, precipitate action or sabotage &c.

  (vii) To see that in extremity the operations commanded by the military are completely and successfully carried out, even if they are compelled to personally take action.

  (viii) Generally to ensure collaboration with the operation of the Scorched Earth Code.

  Necessary transport facilities will be provided by S.W.E.C.C., Premier’s Office.

  Note: The assistance of each administration, service, business, trade and industry &c. is sought to carry out its own Scorched Earth planning and operation, but units should endeavor to secure uniform and co-ordinated methods &c.

  The S.E.S.S. first job is to teach and police and organise; and if invasion comes, to act as supports to citizens to ensure effective completion of military orders.

  The whole organisation is one of civil collaboration with Army in the defence of our shores.

  Should any of those instructions, or the Code itself, prove, after experience, to need revision or elaboration, the organising S.E.S.S. officers will report accordingly.

  Organising officers will not commit the State to any expenditure.

  SPECIAL:

  THE EXTREME URGENCY OF THE MATTER MUST BE EMPHASISED. INSTANT ACTION IS ESSENTIAL - AND ANY TENDENCIES TO PANIC MUST BE DEALT WITH.

  EXTRA SPECIAL:

  SABOTAGE: THE QUESTION OF SABOTAGE AND FIFTH COLUMN ACTIVITIES MUST BE CAREFULLY CONSIDERED.

  Propaganda poster from 1942 playing on fears of a Japanese invasion from the north.

  Poster, issued by the Beaufort Anti Waste campaign, showing Melbourne’s Flinders Street Station under Japanese occupation.

  Wartime fashions shifted to the utilitarian as part of an overall shift to practicality.

  Recycling of rubber products for the manufacture of tyres and other military uses was one of many recycling programs, aluminium being another.

  THIS MAP IS AN OFFICIAL DOCUMENT. IF FOUND, IT MUST BE HANDED IN TO THE NEAREST MILITARY HEADQUARTERS OR POLICE STATION

  Part of a larger Wollongong area map prepared by the Army’s Cartographic Corps and used by military planners, showing access routes, dams, waterways, utilities and transport.

  The Beaufort Bomber was produced at Port Melbourne by the Department of Aircraft. It was a high-performance aircraft first flown in Australia in August 1941.

  NOTES

  TIMELINE

  1 This timeline draws substantially on The Home Front, Family Album: Remembering Australia 1939–45, introduced by Nancy Keesing, Weldon, Sydney, 1991.

  INTRODUCTION

  1 The reality of this threat has been questioned by several historians, including Peter Stanley in, for example, ‘“He’s Not Coming South”: The invasion that wasn’t’, presented at the Canberra conference ‘Remembering 1942’ in 2002. However, watching Japanese forces overrun one country after another to their north, Australians ‘had every right to entertain this fear, and little reason to believe otherwise,’ as Stanley himself notes in ‘Dramatic Myth and Dull Truth: Invasion by Japan in 1942’, in Craig Stockings (ed.), Zombie Myths of Australian History. The Scorched Earth Policy presented here was intended to address that possibility.

  2 W.J. McKell, NSW Premier, to W.F. Dunn, Minister for Agriculture and Forests, 16 February 1942, in State Records NSW: Forestry Registered Files, Series 4271, File No. 24090, Pt 3 at 3/5944.

  3 Secret Circular from Prime Minister J. Curtin to W.J. McKell, NSW Premier, 30 July 1942, in State Records NSW: Forestry Registered Files, Series 4271, File No. 24090, Pt 3 at 3/5944.

  4 Ibid. See also National Archives of Australia: Evacuation: Scorched Earth Policy, Series A453, Control Symbol 1942/51/848.

  5 Denial of Resources to the Enemy, Directive for Guidance in the Formulation of Detailed Plans, in National Archives of Australia, ibid.

  6 Australia’s total population in 1941 was approximately 7 million people; NSW had 2.8 million, Victoria 1.9 million and Queensland 1 million.

  7 W.J. McKell, NSW Premier, to W.F. Dunn, Minister for Agriculture and Forests, 16 February 1942.

  8 E.H.F. Swain, NSW Forestry Commissioner, to W.J. McKell, NSW Premier, 16 February 1942, in State Records NSW: Forestry Registered Files, Series 4271, File No. 24090, Pt 3 at 3/5944; W.J. McKell, NSW Premier, to H.P. Lazzarini, Minister for Home Security, 13 April 1942, at AA: Series 453, Item 1942/51/848.

  9 See Peter Grose’s discussion of the numbers in An Awkward Truth: The bombing of Darwin, February 1942, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 2009, Ch. 15.

  10 See Michael McKernan, All In! Fighting the War at Home, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1983, for more comprehensive analysis.

  11 W.J. McKell to H.P. Lazzarini, Minister for Home Security, 13 April 1942.

  CHAPTER 1

  1 L.T. Carron, ‘Swain, Edward Harold (1883–1970)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/swainedward-harold-8723/text15273, published first in hardcopy 1990, accessed online 19 June 2016.

  2 Peter Holzworth, A Tribute to Edward Harold Fulcher Swain, 2015 (self-published), pp. 104–5.

  3 Thomas (Tom) Wintringham (1898–1949), a veteran of the Spanish Civil War, published numerous books and articles calling on Britons to prepare for a guerrilla ‘people’s war’ in the event of a German invasion.

  4 John Dedman, also a member of the War Cabinet.

  5 A cumbersome producer unit could be fitted to the back of motor vehicles to burn solid fuel, such as wood or coal, to manufacture gas as a substitute for petrol.

  6 APC powder is aspirin-phenacetin-caffeine (Bex).

  7 Melasol is tea tree oil.

  8 Australia Day.

  9 In the Spanish Civil War.

  10 Tom Wintringham, New Ways of War, Penguin, 1940.

  11 Russian emigre John Alexander Youhotsky was a water engineer who died in 1946.

  12 Japanese forces seized oilfields in Borneo and airfields in Celebes (now Sulawesi), on either side of the Macassar Strait, in January 1942.

  CHAPTER 2

  1 When German forces reached the Dnieper River industrial area in August 1941, the Soviets destroyed the huge dam at Zhaporozhye, 80 kilometres south of Dnipropetrovsk.

  2 Manchukuo was a Japanese puppet state in north-east China (Manchuria) and inner Mongolia. (1932–1945).

  3 Subversion by cells of enemy agents or sympathisers.

  CHAPTER 4

  1 In early 1942, Australia’s state- and territory-based military districts were renamed Line of Communication Areas.

  2 United Nations here means the Allies; the UN as we know it did not exist at this time.

  3 A.N. 60 was a common brand of gelignite used in mining and construction.

  CHAPTER 5

  1 Colonial Sugar Refining Company.

  2 North Coast Steam Navigation Company.

  3 Foley Bros w
as a butter factory.

  4 R.J. White and Co. were timber merchants.

  5 Brown Ltd were timber and Pacific shipping agents.

  6 Maxwell Porter was a sawmill; Wright Bros almost certainly was as well.

  7 In Bateman’s Bay, both Mitchell Bros and Fennings were sawmills.

  8 In the original, this appeared as ‘Bucken Bour Junct’.

  9 In the original, this appeared as Noorooma; the town name officially changed to Narooma in the 1970s.

  CHAPTER 6

  1 ‘Immobilisation of Small Craft’, Hansard, House of Representatives (Canberra), 29 April 1942, at http://historichansard.net/hofreps/1942/19420429_reps_16_170/.

  2 Ibid.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  The Scorched Earth policy reproduced here has survived thanks to the diligence of the archivists employed at State Records NSW. In my experience there are a number of outstanding individuals who have a deep knowledge of the records and the historic peculiarities that mark the various systems of management pervading government record keeping since 1788. Their commitment is evidenced by their long years of service in a job they obviously love. I wish to especially acknowledge Gail Davis, Wendy Gallagher, Emily Hanna and Janette Pelosi.

  In getting this book into print much is owed to the encouragement of my friends and colleagues, Janet Gough and David Andor. Without their pushing and shoving the policy may not have reached the broad audience now possible. The team at Allen & Unwin—led by publisher Elizabeth Weiss and editorial manager Angela Handley have very ably, sympathetically and efficiently worked to a very tight deadline. It’s a miracle.

  Lastly, I wish to thank my husband David Rosen who undertook the scanning of the original files, picture research and copyright clearances; he’s been a slave to history for almost 40 years, and deserves the sympathy of all.

  PHOTO CREDITS

  p. i: The Australian Women’s Weekly, 14 March 1942, cover. .

  p. vi: Edward Harold Fulcher Swain, courtesy of Peter Holzworth.

  p. x: Daily Mirror, 8 December 1941.

  p. xv (and repeated): Japanese air force poster (detail of planes), Getty Images.

  p. xx: ‘Citizen “Guerillas” training for bush warfare’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 2 February 1942, .

  p. 3 (and repeated): background, Shutterstock.

  p. 41: The Australian Women’s Weekly, 20 December 1941, .

  p. 49: The Australian Women’s Weekly, 17 January 1942, .

  p. 66: Norman Lindsay, The Bulletin, 1942.

  p. 76: The Australian Women’s Weekly, 14 March 1942, .

  p. 86: The Australian Women’s Weekly, 7 February 1942, .

  p. 95: ‘Unity Means Victory’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 21 March 1942, .

  p. 108: ‘The Shelling of Sydney’, Argus, 1942, State Library of Victoria.

  p. 120: Australian War Memorial, image no. RC00811.

  p. 128: The Australian Women’s Weekly, 27 December 1941, .

  p. 138: National Archives of Australia, C934, 10.

  p. 147: The Sydney Morning Herald, 11 December 1941, .

  p. 157: National Archives of Australia, Image no. C934, 154.

  p. 168: The Australian Women’s Weekly, 24 January 1942, .

  p. 179: The Australian Women’s Weekly, 21 March 1942, .

  p. 198: Australian War Memorial, image no. P04262.003.

  p. 208: Lindsay family photo, courtesy Angela Handley.

  p. 218: Australian War Memorial, image no. ART90964, courtesy Katrina Perryman.

  p. 223: Australian War Memorial, image no. 128108.

  p. 232: The Bulletin, 1942.

  p. 238: Australian War Memorial, image no. 027267.

  p. 240: Australian War Memorial, image no. 042825.

  p. 248: Australian War Memorial, image no. ARTV06690.

  p. 254: The Sydney Morning Herald, 20 February 1942, .

  p. 256: The Sydney Morning Herald, 10 March 1942, .

  p. 274: The Sydney Morning Herald, 2 April 1942, .

  Photo section:

  p. 1: Australian War Memorial, image no. ARTV09225-1.

  pp. 2–3: The Australian Women’s Weekly, 21 February 1942, .

  p. 4: State Library of Victoria.

  p. 5: The Australian Women’s Weekly, 7 February 1942, .

  p. 6: National Archives of Australia, MP891/31, 3.

  p. 7: Australian Army, Wollongong, New South Wales (rev. 2nd edn), printed by A.H.Q. Cartographic Company, Melbourne, 1942. National Library of Australia, http://trove.nla.gov.au/version/175596608.

  p. 8: National Archives of Australia, MP1472/1 part 2.