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CHAPTER 24
Victory at Last

THROUGHOUT 1944 there was certainty of victory, even some hopes that it would come within the year. The Russians continued to thrust back the enemy: in authoritative phrases, sprinkled with difficult names, radio news and cables buttressed with arrowed maps described movements. There was the northern drive, which on 27 January ended the 30-month siege of Leningrad, an event saluted with massive salvoes in Moscow, and with editorials in New Zealand. It continued on to the Baltic, while Finland manoeuvred for peace. There was the January thrust out from the Kiev salient, south-west through the Ukraine to the Bug River, and on in March over the Dneister and Pruth to halt at Jassy in Romania. There was the drive west to the Polish borders, on to approach outer Warsaw east of the Vistula, by 1 August. There it halted, while the inadequate, independent and tragic uprising of the Polish underground began on 1 August and surrendered on 2 October; the Russians did not enter the city until 17 January 1945, by when most of it had been destroyed, along with thousands of Poles.¹ But even such confused, bitter episodes could not disturb the broad current, the sense that the war was working towards its end.

The air war over Germany was strengthening. At the end of January 1944 it was reported that the wiping out of Berlin was about half done. So far more than 23 000 tons of bombs had been dropped on that city, including 7000 before 18 November 1943, the date taken as beginning the battle of Berlin; it was established that 50 000 tons would destroy Berlin as an administrative and industrial centre.²

Progress up Italy, where Allied troops had landed in September 1943, was slow, but Cassino, which had held out for more than six months, finally crumpled in mid-May 1944. On 5 June the liberation of Rome was celebrated in New Zealand and with official rejoicings: there were speeches and flags, with bells and sirens sounding at noon, but there was little spontaneous excitement. Widespread references to the coming major invasion of Europe built up expectation months before D-Day on 6 June 1944. This happening

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for New Zealand was no surprise but brought a stir of excitement and satisfaction. At last the Allies were getting on with the land invasion that really counted. Papers were waited for, the radio news was keenly tuned. Stories of massive air cover and the roll-out of men and material soon gave confidence; hard fighting was expected but the beach-heads were widening. This was no Gallipoli or Norway or Dieppe. In three weeks, Cherbourg, thorny tip of the Normandy peninsula, surrendered. There were more landings in the south and the tempo quickened, though not evenly.

In August and September there were hopes, heightened by the attempt on 20 July by some Wehrmacht officers to kill Hitler, of German collapse. Churchill's review on 2 August was, as the Auckland Star noted later on 1 November, the ‘most optimistic report he had ever given.’ Of the war in Europe, Churchill said: ‘I fear greatly to raise false hopes, but I no longer feel bound to deny that victory may come perhaps soon.’ He also said, I am increasingly led to believe that the interval between the defeat of Hitler and the defeat of Japan will be shorter—perhaps much shorter—than I at one time had supposed.'³ Newspaper opinions in Britain and in New Zealand were not slow to share his beliefs. In Washington the Acting Secretary for War, returning from the battlefields at the end of August, was confident that the Germans could be defeated within four months.⁴ A noted commentator, Max Werner,⁵ in mid-August held that the German army could be broken in eight weeks, after which the political, social and economic disintegration of the German state would begin⁶ — a view which the Press thought should be treated with reserve.⁷ On 24 August Romania capitulated to the Russians and changed sides, while with joyful acclaim both Paris and Marseilles were freed. In New Zealand flags were flown, bells, sirens and whistles made their noise at noon, and there were speeches. In the House the Prime Minister prudently reminded that not victory, but a milestone on the way to it, was being celebrated.⁸ In Europe Eisenhower said that by normal standards the German people ‘should be ready to roll over now, but any prospective leader of a revolt automatically finds a revolver put to his head. The German army is still competent, effective and able, when it chooses, to put

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up a bitter, sustained resistance.’⁹ The Auckland Star on 14 September believed that the European war would be over within six months and on 21 September a member of Parliament asked as an urgent question that the Oil Fuel Controller should so plan that on the day of victory country people could go to town to celebrate.¹⁰

But the Germans, facing unconditional surrender, fought back, with increasing stubbornness as they neared their own soil. At Arnhem on 18 September a British airborne attack miscarried with heavy loss, and everywhere German lines hardened. The V-l rocket bombardment, which from mid-June had savagely plagued London, was waning early in September, but thereafter the V–2, larger, faster and more destructive though less numerous, harassed that much-enduring city. The last was to fall on Kent on 27 March 1945.¹¹

In the Pacific, patterns of success were evolving. In New Guinea's jungles Australians and Americans laboured steadily, the Americans showing their strength in mechanised warfare—building wharves, airfields, roads, sawmills and hospitals, pouring in the means to move forward while cutting the enemy off from supplies and from escape. Newspaper editorials¹² and commentaries expounded on these skills and the new style of warfare. In February, the easy capture of the Green Islands, northernmost of the Solomons, where New Zealand troops made their third and last combat appearance in the Pacific, completed the out-flanking strategy in that group. On its large islands, Bougainville and Choiseul, thousands of Japanese remained, with damaged airfields, cut off from supplies and withdrawal, to be held down by air attack and land patrols till the end of the war. Already in February the by-passing of islands process was being repeated in the central Pacific with the seizure of Kwajalein and Eniwetok, westerly atolls in the Marshall groups. In March the Americans struck into the Admiralty Islands, encircling Rabaul, threatening Truk. Most of the islands on Japan's shrinking perimeter were small, though this did not make them easy: Tarawa in the Gilbert group, taken in November 1943, had been very costly, as Iwo Jima and Okinawa were also to prove.

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The part of the New Zealand Division in the Pacific in 1943 had been minor. The men who were originally intended to make it a three-brigade force had been diverted in August to replace the first Middle East furlough draft.¹³ The fighting allotted to it at Vella Lavella and the Treasury Islands in September and October was secondary, as was its task on Nissan in the Green Islands in February 1944. In the Canberra Pact of 21 January 1944, recognising that the post-war British position in the Pacific was being weakened by the overwhelming American presence, Australia and New Zealand together claimed, by virtue of ‘their resolute and long sustained war effort’, the right to a leading role in the post-war Pacific.¹⁴ America, however, insured that only garrison and reconnaissance duties would be given to New Zealand land forces, and that their main enemies would be boredom and its accompanying demoralisation. Official correspondents in January 1944 wrote of the 3rd Divison being wearied with inactivity.¹⁵

For New Zealand in 1944 the question of where its manpower should be directed was of crucial importance. On 24 January Nash, who had been told by Fraser on 12 January that one or other division must be withdrawn,¹⁶ asked Roosevelt where New Zealand could best serve: militarily, in the Mediterranean or Pacific zones, in the air and at sea, or in expanding food production?¹⁷ Three weeks earlier, on 3 January, the New Zealand Herald had said that in many Allied opinions the food production front was equal in importance to the fighting front; the government and the country should squarely face the facts of New Zealand's depleted labour force, its declining farm output, and the hungry world. Again on 30 March the Herald urged the need to encourage farming, with labour, fertiliser and adequate prices.

Dairy farmers, impatient with their stabilised prices, demanded financial encouragement, pointing out that British dairying, with government help and good prices, had remarkably increased its production, while New Zealand's had fallen. In the 1940 crisis, farmers had slogged in to produce more without worrying openly about increased payment. Since then the chops and changes in Britain's

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demands had clouded their zeal, they were tired, and they were disillusioned about the guaranteed price system.¹⁸ Further, in June 1943, the government had arranged stabilisation accounts for both meat and dairy produce to receive any increase in overseas prices above the level ruling at 15 December 1942. From these accounts were paid, in part, the subsidies used to keep farm costs down to those of December 1942.¹⁹ Payout prices for butterfat remained at 1939–40 rates through 1941–2: 16.087d per lb used in butter-making, 18.060d per lb used in cheese-making. In 1942–3 these rates rose only to 16.569d for butter, 18.577d for cheese.²⁰ Meanwhile the overseas price of wool, increased by 15 per cent in May 1942, was about 50 per cent above pre-war prices, and almost its full earnings, untrammelled by stabilisation accounts, went direct to the farmers.²¹ It was hardly surprising that the popularity of sheep, generally less laborious than cows, increased.

From late 1943 dairy farmers spoke often of having to reduce their herds and of needing the real encouragement of better prices. The report of a Morrinsville meeting stated: Farmers are restive and there is an underlying feeling that unless they become a more militant group they will not get the treatment that is needed to keep their industry on a sound basis. It is said that this season the Government will receive much more than will be paid out to the producers…. It takes 15 cows to pay a man, so instead the farmer reduces his herd from 80 to 65 cows, runs a few sheep and achieves the same results. But the result is not the same for the country.²²

Early in April a comprehensive meeting, representing the Federation of Labour, Chambers of Commerce, the Farmers' Union and employers' and manufacturers' association, recommended that all suitable manpower should be available for farms, along with prefabricated houses or military huts, more fertiliser and better prices. There should be tax exemptions on the amounts that would normally be spent on manure and maintenance, the money being used

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meanwhile as war finance and repaid to farmers after the war to recondition their farms.²³

On 10 March 1944 the Prime Minister had told Halsey, in command of Pacific forces, that New Zealand required 17 500 men for farming and its ancillary occupations, for sawmilling, mining, hydroelectric works, railways and housing; 7000 were needed by July.²⁴ On 7 April Fraser announced various measures to encourage farming: more labour, fertiliser and rural housing, and tax exemption on deferred maintenance, as proposed by the conference a few days earlier. A wage cost allowance of 1.21d per lb of butterfat would lift the wage reckoning for owners in the guaranteed price structure to £5 7s 6d a week and enable £4 17s 6d a week (including £1 for board) to be paid to dairy farm workers. There were modest subsidies for rearing heifer calves and growing pig food, and ½ d a lb increase in pork and bacon prices.²⁵

Various leaders appealed to farmers for renewed effort to relieve Britain. They included Benjamin Roberts,²⁶ the Minister of Agriculture, W. S. Hale,²⁷ the chairman of the Dairy Board,²⁸ and the New Zealand Herald's editorial on 17 April. Holland, describing near-bare British tables, said that increased production was more important than local feelings or political opinions, ‘was even more important at the moment than organising for the National party’.²⁹ When told that at present prices production was not attractive, he replied: ‘it is not a question of whether it is attractive, it is a question of whether we can save Britain from sheer and utter starvation.’³⁰

Farmers were not swept off their feet; in particular they thought the butterfat price increase too small.³¹ At a conference in May, Mulholland, president of the Farmers' Union, said that their attitude was the result of the government's unsympathetic treatment; several recent measures seemed hostile to farmers: the Land Sales Act was a ‘Venomous attack’; paid annual holidays had been unloaded on the country; the Local Elections and Polls Amendment Act violated

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‘all the unwritten laws of our constitution’.³² Despite Britain's great need, said Mulholland, he had never known such hostility to a government announcement as had greeted the recent proposals for increasing dairy production. He criticised Stabilisation for failing to control farming costs and standing in the way of production, and he claimed that increased prices being paid by Britain for meat were not reaching farmers. Other speakers said that the government was more anxious to prevent a rise in the cost of living than to produce the quantities of food needed by Britain; farmers were working for 1939 prices while paying 1944 costs.³³ Some 50 delegates, meeting outside conference hours, stated that appeals to sentiment were not sufficient inducement.³⁴

While the farmers grumbled, the British government moved towards a price solution, proposing, on 3 March, new long-term contracts. Ensuing increases were announced on 3 August 1944. Retrospectively, from 1 April 1943 to 31 July 1944 Britain paid 143s 1½ d per hundredweight for top grade butter, an increase of 26s 1½ d; 85s 6¼d per hundredweight for top grade cheese, an increase of 12s 6¼d per hundredweight. New four-year contracts provided that for the next two seasons the price for such butter would be 150s6d, and cheese 89s; thereafter prices would be reviewed. Increases for meat were still being discussed. Further, the British government recognised that New Zealand, over the war years, had paid higher prices for British goods while New Zealand costs had been held much lower than would have been possible without its Stabilisation scheme and the subsidies, on which the New Zealand government had paid out about £25 million. Britain, therefore, in compensation for the disparity in prices would pay a lump sum of £ 12 million and further lump sums of £4 million a year over the next four years. Payment of up to £18 million would be suspended until the end of the war. These arrangements, said the Prime Minister, would help pay for abnormal imports after the war, but he was concerned that they should not overturn Stabilisation.³⁵

Farmers' claims that the lump sums should go to them as compensation for inadequate payments were overuled by the view that

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these sums were made to the government as trustee for the people of New Zealand.³⁶ In due course payouts to dairy farmers increased from the 17.597d per lb for butterfat used in buttermaking in 1943–4 to 20.568d in 1945–6 and 23.691d in 1946–7; in cheese-making these rates were 19–655d, 22.884d and 25.355d.³⁷

Creamery butter graded for export in 1943–4 totalled 101 992 tons, cheese 85 473. In 1944–5 these figures rose to 122 352 and 95 548 tons, though in 1945–6 they fell again to 103 977 tons of butter, 88 185 of cheese.³⁸ It must be remembered that supplying the armed forces in the Pacific absorbed much butter and cheese which might otherwise have gone to Britain: in 1944–5 while rationing reduced civilian consumption of butter by approximately 11 million lb, sales to those forces increased by approximately 4 million Ib.³⁹

Purchase prices for meat, which had risen only slightly between 1939–40 and 1943–4, rose by about 1d per lb on most lines in 1944–5, with payment to producers increasing by about half that amount.⁴⁰ Farm stabilisation accounts, which kept money out of circulation and checked inflation, grew steadily, totalling £24 million by July 1946; subsidy payments of nearly £7 million were drawn from these accounts, leaving a balance of £17 million.⁴¹ Over the 1942–6 period subsidies in all totalled £23,361,000, more than half being related to farming.⁴² These were some of the facts and contrivings behind the war's farming saga and its 1944 stresses.

Meanwhile in mid-1944, with 7000 3rd Division men available, farms absorbed fewer men more slowly than expected. Many farmers were waiting for their sons or they wanted to choose their own men and doubted the value of those supplied by the government. By the end of November 1944, out of 9100 men released from the Division 4286 were working on farms.⁴³

Estimates of labour needs had been based on farm workers having increased by about 2000 a year since 1926, to 148 000 in the 1936 census. But the census of 1951 was to find only 117 000 men working on farms, with 29 000 fewer on dairy farms. Over the war years, methods changed with marked increase in the use of machinery. The number of tractors rose by 97 per cent, from about 9600 in 1939 to more than 18 900 by 1946, including more than 7000 from the

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United States under Lend-Lease. Electric motors, which needed less attention than internal combustion engines, increased by 51 per cent from 51 000 to nearly 77 000 in 1946. Shearing machine plants increased from 10000 to 14000, milking machine plants more modestly, from nearly 29000 in 1939 to 31 800 in 1946. Before the war it was generally believed that after machine milking hand stripping was necessary for continued top production. By 1943–4, Dairy Board tests had shown that stripping made very little difference to yield, and farmers progressively abandoned it, notably reduceing labour needs.⁴⁴

Away from the battle fronts and the farms, the year 1944 saw two far–reaching innovations: the approach of the five-day shopping week, which was to persist from 1945 until the end of 1980 and the civilian advent of penicillin. There was pressure for and against a five-day shopping week throughout the year. By their awards, retail shops worked a 44-hour week, which included one late night and Saturday mornings. Shop assistants' awards were due to expire, that for Northern Industrial District on 1 July 1944, that for the rest of the country on 7 September. About the middle of the year there were meetings, resolutions and ballots, workers and unionists wanting closed shops on Saturday mornings, retailers, manufacturers, farmers' unions and housewives wanting them open. The old awards continued although there were wage rate amendments from April 1945.⁴⁵

In December 1945 the Shops and Offices Amendment Act established a 40-hour week for retail shops. Already by agreement between some firms and their staffs many shops were closed on Saturdays. Certain trades in some towns had for years been closed on Saturdays, notably butchers in Rotorua and Te Kuiti (five years), Whangarei (three years) and Otorohanga (six years). In Wellington, shoe shops, ironmongers and some drapers had not opened on Saturday mornings for six or eight months, and the big drapers advertised that from 1 November they would not either. By November at Auckland out of 276 general stores in Queen Street, 270 closed all Saturday and only 13 of Karangahape Road's 121 shops were open.⁴⁶ Thus retailers were moving into a five-day shopping week slightly ahead of the legislation that made inviolate the weekends of as many workers as possible. That many goods were still limited in range or quantity and were eagerly bought was a factor reconciling shopkeepers

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to shorter hours; another factor was that with all shops closed none could, through longer hours, drain off an undue share of trade.

The revolutionary drug penicillin made its first appearance among New Zealand civilians in 1944. In March 18-year-old Roger Kingsford, who had won a Boy Scout award for bravery and who later for five years had suffered from osteomyelitis and staphylococcus septicaemia, was the first to receive it, through an appeal by the Prime Minister to Australian authorities.⁴⁷ By June limited weekly supplies began to arrive and were distributed by air to the four main centres; a gazette order ensured that until supplies increased it would be used only for most urgent cases.⁴⁸

In mid-October 1944 Fraser did not think that the war would be over within a year.⁴⁹ By the start of November, Churchill had no hope of victory in Europe before the end of the northern spring or even later and said that it would not be prudent to assume that less than 18 months more would be needed to destroy Japan.⁵⁰ Papers such as the Auckland Star said that the Allies had been over-ready to believe that Germany would crack and they had underestimated the fighting quality of the German army.⁵¹ Some gloomy prophets spoke of the Japanese war lasting three or four years more unless Russia took part.⁵² In mid-December, von Rundstedt's⁵³ surprise thrust from the Ardennes towards Antwerp stirred reluctant admiration and memories of Dunkirk; a month of heavy fighting was needed to squeeze back ‘Rundstedt's bulge’. At New Year Hitler told his people that never had their enemies thought victory so near as they had in August 1944, ‘but again we contrived to bend fate to our will’; there would be German victory within six months. Their enemies used barbarous methods never known before in civilised society but from the ruins of Aachen and other cities rose, phoenix-like, the determined spirit of the German people.⁵⁴ On 6 January New Zealand papers quoted from The Times that the western

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front called for austere thinking and all faith in the Allies' ultimate success.

The fifth and last Christmas of the war was fairly frugal for New Zealand, though plenteous by world standards. With far fewer Americans about, supplies of poultry, wine and beer were more plentiful than in 1943.⁵⁵ No tinned fruit was issued, dried fruits were limited,⁵⁶ sweets were hunted and queued for. Gifts were much as for the previous year, with books prominent, some printed in New Zealand by arrangement with overseas publishers.⁵⁷ For children there were many rag dolls, cardboard games, soft and wooden toys, some well made, some rapidly falling to bits.⁵⁸ Some manufacturers, in between heavier contracts and from left-overs of metal or plastic, had contrived items such as tea sets and cooking sets, soldiers and animals; furriers made rabbit-skin koala bears and one Auckland factory produced a sleeping doll.⁵⁹ There was keen interest in secondhand toys such as sleeping dolls, dolls' houses and prams, rocking horses and Hornby trains.⁶⁰

Christmas and New Year street scenes were quiet. Wellington, for instance, reported no serious accidents, no fires, not even one drunk on Christmas Eve.⁶¹ At Auckland a crowd much smaller than usual gathered after 11 o'clock on the Sunday evening, to usher in the New Year briefly with squeakers, rattles and musical instruments.⁶² In Christchurch few people were in the streets and only the sounding of sirens, whistles and motorcar horns marked the end of 1944.⁶³

There were more travellers than trains, on which seats were booked two weeks ahead, some people queuing for hours or even overnight before ticket offices opened⁶⁴ As in the previous summer, a little extra petrol was available: two coupons at full value, giving private motorists 4–8 gallons according to car size, over December and January.⁶⁵ Though camping grounds near cities were well filled,⁶⁶ it was another stay-at-home Christmas; there were unseemly scrambles for

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buses to some beaches⁶⁷ and totalisator records continued to rise.⁶⁸ These were for on-course betting. The off-course TAB (Totalisator Agency Board) did not exist until 1951. Coal supplies were still inadequate, with recurrent acute shortages reducing gas supplies and railway services. Normally two passenger trains left both Auckland and Wellington daily: on 12 February 1945 some were cut out, by the 17th the service was halved and it remained so till the end of the month.⁶⁹

At New Year Eraser warned against slackening effort in the certainty of victory, where dogged determination, as after Dunkirk or Singapore, would shorten the conflict. The Auckland Star, remarking that the Germans went on fighting because this still seemed preferable to acknowledging defeat, warned that to finish Germany decisively and finally would be harder, more bloody and more exhausting than was generally realised.⁷⁰ The Press reminded that New Zealand was still experiencing all the benefits and few of the hardships of a wartime economy. All labour and capital were fully employed, with a ready market for everything produced, at prices from good to very good, while shortages and price inflation had made comparatively little trouble. Despite substantial demobilisation there were more jobs than workers, and for consumers 1945 promised to be the best year since 1941; as most shoppers were aware, goods from the United States and Britain were coming more quickly, while reduced military needs were enabling local factories to tackle the most serious shortage—clothing. The divided aims and loyalties of peacetime economy were re-appearing, pressing against Stabilisation which was ‘losing both its original prestige and its original compelling logic’. Indefinite freezing of wages and costs would be possible only in a totalitarian economy, but there was danger that, in the absence of any rule save that of expediency, large pressure groups would break through Stabilisation restrictions while these continued to hold down smaller and weaker groups, which in equity had stronger claims to relief. The Press recalled the boom and depression years following the last war and warned that 1945 would be a testing time; it would be disastrously easy, by relaxing controls on both wages and farm incomes, to gain the short-term prosperity of inflation.⁷¹

The New Zealand Herald wondered whether Germany would fall in the coming summer, wondered when and with what effect the full power of the Allies would be turned on Japan. For New Zealand the course ahead was steady: commitments to the fighting Services

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had been reduced in proportion to resources, with long-serving men being replaced and returning to help in the humdrum but necessary and honourable production of food and wool. People were behaving very much like a car driver after many miles at the wheel, driving silently with eyes steady on the road.

The ordinary New Zealander has ceased to argue or speculate much about the war, although he takes keen account of its events as they unfold. He regards it in total with not much of either hope or apprehension, and American attempts to dramatise the deeds of fighting men leave him almost completely cold. Even if no burden of sorrow or anxiety rests on his own home, he knows what the people in the next house or the next street have to bear. The suffering of millions beyond the seas are always at the back of his mind; he feels that he and his are luckier than their deserts. And so he carries on with the job in hand.⁷²

The job in hand was twofold: carrying on with the war and getting ready for peace. In the latter aspect, pressure for higher wages was notable. This was increased by expectation that demobilisation would end the overtime which had kept many lower paid workers abreast or even slightly ahead of prices, which despite Stabilisation measures gradually rose. Butterfat returns had been increased in July 1944 and union patience was not improved by members of Parliament, in December 1944, granting themselves substantial rises in pay and allowances.⁷³ In mid-January 1945 Waikato dairy factory workers struck against their new two-year award to obtain better rates in case of less overtime, A week later railway workers struck because the Tribunal investigating their pay and conditions seemed unduly long in making its decisions; some coal miners struck in sympathy and it was promised that the Tribunal would produce results by mid- February. As the 1945 report of the Federation of Labour said, ‘It was obvious that a new higher general level of wages would have to be brought into being.’⁷⁴ In response to Federation pressure, on 13 February an amendment to Stabilisation regulations permitted the Court of Arbitration to amend wages in order to preserve a proper relationship between the rates payable to various classes of workers.

On 14 February the railwaymen's wages were increased by 3½ d an hour, and on 17 March the Court of Arbitration answered the application of the Federation of Labour by a similar rise in skilled,

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semi-skilled and unskilled rates.⁷⁵ This was not a general order, but would be obtained through the application of each trade union.

The Public Service Association, with temporary employees multiplied by the war, was vigorously pressing pay and other claims. The government agreed on 16 February to set up a consultative committee including PSA representation to overhaul the Service; meanwhile there would be a general adjustment to pay rates in line with the Railway Tribunal's findings, backdated to 30 June 1944. For most lower paid State servants, including those in the armed forces, this meant a rise of about £30 a year, while among the higher paid professionals increases ranged up to £75 a year.⁷⁶ Public Service women, while welcoming their £30 interim rise, were keen for the consultative committee to consider the claims of particular groups, and they reaffirmed their belief in equal pay for equal work, combined with family allowances.⁷⁷ By May the committee reported ‘considerable progress’ towards new salary scales.⁷⁸

Dr Hare in April warned that the end of the war might see a period of industrial strife like that which followed the First World War. Wages, he said, were the main cause of disputes, because both sides concentrated on this issue without realising that it was on account of discontents raised by other questions—such as insecurity, poor conditions, lack of incentive and relations with management— that the wages problem seemed insoluble. Where, as so often, there was nothing in a job to hold a worker except the money, there was little wonder that it seemed to be all he cared about. Hare advised employers to do all in their power to improve work conditions, adding that in many factories which he had seen these were definitely very bad. Employers should try to give security by seeking the right man for a job and assuming that he would stay in it. Security could also be improved by paying wages during sickness, Social Security benefits not being enough to relieve worry and privation if illness lasted more than a few weeks. If an employer paid full wages in sickness, however, he should be able to recover from the State any benefit which the State would otherwise have paid. Hare also urged employers to work out some system which would automatically give workers a share in the proceeds proportionate to their efforts. Unions should not be merely levy-receiving organisations enforcing the wages and conditions imposed by awards; they should reach out towards

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active participation in industrial life, stabilising employment, improving relationships with employers, and improving democracy in their own ranks. For each industry or group thereof, an industrial council, drawn equally from both sides, should be the recognised mouthpiece to the State.⁷⁹ This was forward thinking in 1945 and much of it would remain forward thinking for more than thirty years.

In the consumer field some goods which had been scarce were becoming more plentiful or could be obtained here and there at shorter intervals, goods such as towels, enamel ware, watches and alarm clocks. Indian carpets had been advertised during 1944.⁸⁰ Tools, such as hammers and saws, garden and agricultural imple ments, were returning.⁸¹ In advertisements many firms making goods such as silk stockings, camera film, blankets, men's suits or chocolates, promised that soon they would be able to sell their customers all or at least more of what they wanted. There were demands that shops should resume the wrapping of bread since supplies of paper had become adequate, but retailers resisted, claiming that paper was double its former price and that they got only ½d on each 5½d loaf.⁸² Newsprint was more plentiful: for instance, the Auckland Star and the Ckristchurch Star-Sun, which ad been limited to 42 pages weekly had by May increased to 58 and 56 respectively.⁸³ In 1945, unlike the previous four years, there was enough paper for the monthly School Journal to be supplied to every pupil in primary classes, as of old.⁸⁴

There were still many shortages. As more households were set up there were not enough blankets, mattresses, pots and pans, tele phones, china, cutlery. There was great scarcity of men's clothing, from overcoats to underwear. Men in thousands were laying aside uniforms to search for civvies while their wives were forsaking factory machines to set up house. Other factors, such as stabilisation of prices and wages, made the production of utility clothing unattractive. An Auckland shopkeeper in March reported about 10 inquiries per hour for sports trousers while he did not know when his orders would arrive.⁸⁵

Shortage of electricity worsened as domestic demands increased and low coal stocks meant that delays in deliveries could cut off

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coal–produced electricity. All supply authorities had to complete the metering of water heaters by 31 March 1945, which enabled them to impose substantial reductions in heating hours, productive of doubtfully warm baths and washing. There were direct cuts of power at listed hours. Thus in May Auckland, to save 10 per cent of its daily Monday–to–Friday load, published lists of half–hour periods when power would be cut off in various suburbs.⁸⁶ The ban on the sale of radiators where there were other means of heating, by oil, wood, coal or gas, was rigidly enforced.⁸⁷ The summer half–hour of daylight saving was again continued through the winter.⁸⁸ Streets remained dimly lit. In April the Auckland Star remarked that Auck land was a gloomy city, the result of wartime's less powerful lamps and the refusal to install lights where they had become necessary, as in newly developed streets. It was increasingly difficult to maintain safety while keeping within the government–imposed limit of 20 per cent below the 1941 level of power for street lighting. Only by eliminating an existing light or reducing several could a new light be installed. People, the Star recalled, had been so relieved when the blackout ended that for a time deficiencies were unnoticed and accepted without complaint, but realisation was growing that for public safety more light was needed in residential areas, at corners and on undulating thoroughfares.⁸⁹

In many areas things continued as they were. Although some manufacturers advocated the repeal of essential industry declarations, saying that industrial relations were deteriorating,⁹⁰ Manpower regulations continued, enforced by penalties in the courts: for instance, in Wellington on 10 March 1945 six persons who had breached directions were fined.⁹¹ There were special calls for girls to work in hospitals handed over by the Americans at Auckland and Wellington. All unmarried women of 2 1 and 22 years were called in for questioning, whether or not they were already in essential industries or government departments.⁹² There was a renewed campaign for mental hospital staff, particularly women, with more explanation and persuasion than formerly, including broadcasts by nurses and by 2ZB's redoubtable Aunt Daisy, leading to better results. The wages, however, were nor impressive: beginners under 21 received

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£160 a year plus cost of living bonuses (still only 10 per cent), less £25 for board; for adult beginners the basic pay was £175.⁹³

The government's intention, publicly adumbrated in November 1944, of taking over the privately owned shares in the Bank of New Zealand increasingly concerned financial circles, the National party and Labour devotees during 1945 producing heated feelings and demonstrations before legislation was passed in November. Tradi tionally, the Labour party feared the power of the banks. Nash in a 1925 pamphlet, Financial Power in New Zealand: the case for a State Bank, which he quoted in 1945, had written:

The Associated Banks in conference determine what credit shall be issued, to whom it shall be issued, for what it shall be issued, and the rate of interest which shall be paid. They may restrict overdrafts, which reduces prices. They have more power over pri mary production, importation and prices than either Parliament, farmer, industrial worker, or merchant. The dominant member of the association is the Bank of New Zealand. This bank is controlled by six directors, four of whom are appointed by the New Zealand Government. These men determine the banking policy for the Dominion. This policy is always determined in the interests of the shareholders and financial corporations of the Dominion.⁹⁴

The government, late in 1939, had purchased the private share holdings of the Reserve Bank. Far back in 1894 the government had saved the Bank of New Zealand from failure with a State guarantee, and had subsequently provided that a majority of the Bank's directors, including the chairman, be appointed by the government. Since 1937 the chairman had been A. T. Donnelly, who was also prominent in the Stabilisation Commission and who could claim that the Bank and its fellows had acted co–operatively with the government for the war effort. But the government, to strengthen its control in a possible boom–and–bust phase following the war's end and to facilitate rehabilitation and post–war reconstruction, decided to acquire the Bank's private shares.

A resolution urging this, seconded by Nash, was adopted fervently at the Labour Party Conference on 8 November 1944, though Nash at the same time stressed that ownership of the Bank was no panacea, no substitute for productive work.⁹⁵ The Bank protested, pointing to its helpful record in the war, which the government

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acknowledged.⁹⁶ Donnelly told Nash on 21 November that he saw no national need for or benefit from the proposed change and that he would resign from the directorate if the take–over were effected.⁹⁷ Nash firmly stated on 31 March that necessary legislation would proceed in the next session, but gave ‘unqualified assurance’ that all existing rights and immunities of customers would continue unchanged, that their accounts and records would remain inviolable and secret. Management and day-to-day banking practice would not be altered, and while general policy would be determined by the Minister of Finance on behalf of the government the existing direc tors, as in the Reserve Bank and the State Advances Corporation, would be responsible for general administration.⁹⁸

The government's opponents believed that it had used wartime controls cunningly to get a tighter stranglehold on private business, all steps along the road to complete State socialism and trade union dictatorship. Faced with the need soon to loosen these controls, the government was taking a giant leap towards the socialist goal, aim ing to manipulate people's money for political purposes, giving the trades hall dictators power over the lives, business and jobs of the people.⁹⁹ There were demonstrations on both sides.¹⁰⁰ In due course the enacting Bill was passed with strong debate in November 1945. Opposition then concentrated on transferring accounts to rival banks, but in the next 12 months the Bank of New Zealand's share in the trading bank's business dropped only from 39 to 37 per cent for deposits and from 40 to 39 per cent for advances.¹⁰¹

There was, in some quarters, concern that New Zealand's popu lation, then about 1 700 000, was inadequate either for national security or for prosperity and full employment. This was expressed trenchantly by the Dominion Settlement and Population Association, with its slogan ‘populate or perish’, also by other bodies. Women's groups said that to improve the birthrate houses and domestic help should be more plentiful, labour-saving devices should be available at cost price to mothers and there should be no means test with the family allowance.¹⁰² The Federation of New Zealand Justices and others urged elevation of the status of women entering domestic service and improvement of maternity hospitals.¹⁰³ There were more

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people wanting to adopt babies than there were babies to adopt.¹⁰⁴ It was thought that British and European orphans would be among the most admirable immigrants and, wrongly, that there were plenty of them.¹⁰⁵ Belgium would-be homes outnumbered orphans,¹⁰⁶ but when Hol land was about to visit the United Kingdom the Dominion Settle ment and Population Association asked him to make inquiries for future immigrants.¹⁰⁷ Of Population: New Zealand's Problem, by H. I. Sinclair,¹⁰⁸ a reviewer, A. H. McLintock,¹⁰⁹ said that it was a ‘thoughtful and arresting book…. That New Zealand must pro duce or procure more population in order to ensure its national security and stave off national suicide is perhaps dimly appreciated by most people today. Mr Sinclair, however, puts the matter beyond question, and in a judicial manner weighs up the various schemes for remedying the situation.’¹¹⁰

The Otago Daily Times, dismissing chances of obtaining emigrants from war-riven Europe, said that New Zealanders must rely on natu ral increase to develop resources and defend their title to the land. Present population trends were not only disturbing but positively alarming, there was not enough reproduction for growth or even to hold existing levels. The public might not have much faith in royal commissions, but there was room for an exhaustive inquiry into the causes of the decline in fertility and for advice whereby an'exceedingly dangerous tendency may be checked.¹¹¹ The birthrate, which from 19.57 per 1000 population in 1928 had dropped to 16.17 in 1935, had climbed to 18.73 in 1939. For the next three years it was 21.19, 22.81 and 21.73 respectively. In 1943 it dropped again to 19.70, rose to 21.59 in 1944, was 23.22 in 1945, 25.26 in 1946, 26.47 in 1947, 25.59 in 1948, 24.98 in 1949, 24.67 in 1950.¹¹² Dissatisfaction with New Zealand's licensing laws, heightened by war conditions, had produced a royal commission to inquire into the law relating to the manufacture, importation and sale of liquor,

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and the social and economic conditions surrounding it. It was to consider proposals for reform and itself to suggest amendments. Its terms of reference were very wide but it was barred from inquiring into contributions made by the licensed trade to the funds of politi cal parties. At Wellington on 6 March 1945, the Commission, chaired by David Smith, a Supreme Court judge, began to examine the ‘patchwork monster’ produced by a hundred years of pressure and legislation.¹¹³ At the start a report was read from W. H. Wood ward,¹¹⁴ a distinguished magistrate and chairman of New Plymouth, Stratford and Egmont licensing committees. He wrote that the pres ent laws were the ‘result of a battle between greed and fanaticism, in which the interests of ordinary sensible citizens have been ignored.’ These citizens ‘drink cheek by jowl, like pigs at a trough, what they are given instead of what they may want and, like pigs, gulp down more than they need of it while they can get it, and for the privilege of doing so pay many times the value of the hogwash they swallow …. men returning from overseas who have had their eyes opened, will not be patient under a law which threatens to make guzzling a national habit and furtive drinking a fashionable pastime of youth.’ Drinking, instead of being a pleasant and respectable aid to social intercourse, had become a matter for idiotic mirth or censorious reproach. Mere tinkering was not enough. He advocated State pur chase of the industry during the war when, in default of other ave nues for investment, purchase money would have to go into government securities, interest on which would be provided many times over by the profits of the trade under government control. He also wanted the provision in hotels of seats and small tables, non alcoholic drinks and eatables, and the admission of women without stigma or embarrassment.¹¹⁵

The Commission heard a great deal of evidence and finally published its 457-page report in August 1946. It recommended that the breweries should be acquired by a public corporation, its profits after compensation being devoted to cultural, philanthropic and recreational purposes; that liquor trusts might, by local vote, become licensees, with profits similarly directed. It also proposed that bars should provide seats, snacks of food, use standard measures and throw away dregs, and that hours should be broken: 10 am to 2 pm, 4 to 6 and 8 to 10 pm. Other suggestions included the licensing of restaurants and dancehalls, and relaxing restrictions on the purchase

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of liquor by Maoris in the case of Maori returned servicemen. The King Country should, like other areas, vote on whether it should be wet or dry, a Commission should be established to redistribute licences and a Board to inspect premises and advise local licensing committees.¹¹⁶ Later legislation incorporated some of these proposals, but that is another story.

By 1945 Auckland was beginning to think that it had a Maori problem. In the labour shortage of the war the drift of Maori people from the country into towns increased markedly; between 1936 and 1945 the number living in urban areas more than doubled.¹¹⁷ The root causes were the increase in Maori population, combined with the lack of employment and opportunity in the country, and lack of land. In some areas the land possessed might nominally be suf ficient, but almost everywhere its development was heavily reduced by lack of capital, facilities and enterprise, and complicated by multiple-ownership tenure that numbed individual effort. Against familiar narrow living rose the lure of paid jobs and social pleasures in the city. Between 1921 and 1926 the total Maori population rose by 11.73 per cent to 63 670, while the European increase rate was 10.69 per cent. Between 1926 and 1936 Maori population rose to 82 326, an increase of 29 30 per cent, while Europeans increased by only 10.93 per cent to 1 491 484.118.¹¹⁸ By June 1943, stated the 1944 Yearbook, Maoris numbered 96 939, 93 461 of them in the North Island, their increase rate for the past year having been 29.18 per cent, while that of Europeans was 9.84 per cent.¹¹⁹

Land development schemes, begun in 1929 and increasingly pushed by the Labour government, had established a number of Maoris on their own farms, mainly dairy and notably on the East Coast under the paternal influence of Sir Apirana Ngata, prophet of Maoritanga. Others, about 2000, were settlers under various land development schemes and more were employed by the government in developing land not yet sub-divided. The majority lived by subsistence cultivation and seasonal work, including road maintenance, and were assisted by Social Security benefits. War widened and increased job openings: a number became truckers in the mines,

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others worked in timber milling, forestry, lorry-driving and as shear ers.¹²⁰ Market gardens, particularly those near Pukekohe, engaged numbers of women; some found places in factories and a good many did domestic work in hotels and cafes. Men were wanted in the freezing works and for general unskilled labour.

In the cities Maoris encountered massive difficulties, many centred on housing. Traditionally it was held that Maoris belonged in rural living, which was ‘good’ for them, whereas urban life was ‘bad’.¹²¹ With a few exceptions Maori housing in the country, in the main, ranged from poor to shocking, despite often amazing cleanliness, and very small pre–war steps had been taken to improve it. In the towns there was no machinery to help Maoris to acquire adequate housing, while there was strong reluctance to let rooms or houses to them. They could obtain only the most run down houses which over-crowding made worse.

This was not a war–born difficulty. In May 1939 a Young Maori Conference discussed appalling conditions in Auckland. Some speakers, sharing the view that city life was bad for the Maori, had suggested that letting agents should undertake not to let houses to them unless they had come on legitimate business or were permanently employed. These speakers saw return to the country as necessary, but recognised also that many Maoris were deeply rooted in the city and had nothing to return to. The drift to cities could be checked only if the government provided more inducement to stay in the country.¹²² A 1944 survey of Maoris living in shanty-town fashion at Panmure¹²³ found that though any were recent arrivals some had been in the locality for 8 to 24 years. Most were landless and did not want to return to the country where housing was just as bad and there was no work.

The Auckland City Council, reluctant to touch a costly problem, had later in 1941 suggested to H. R. G. Mason, member for Auckland Suburbs, that Social Security benefits should be withheld from Maoris until they returned to the country, a proposal which Mason dismissed, saying that houses in the city were ‘probably palatial’ compared to what they had left behind in the country.¹²⁴ A ‘back

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to the land’ policy was strongly supported, even in the war years, by Sir Apirana Ngata. In July 1943 he complained that Maoris, by Sir Apirana Ngata. In July 1943 he complained that Maoris, attracted to industry by Manpower officers, were drawn to Auckland and Wellington under the noses of tribal committees. ‘The Maori … is trying to get on his feet, and he does not want to be pulled down again by being drawn into the towns, and being brought into touch with the vile things there.’ The Prime Minister, he said, should look at Maoris in city industry, see the wages they were getting and how they were accommodated when they should be working on their own farms. Since the war's start, elders had tried to dissuade young women from going to the cities, even to enter the Services, ‘but what girl does not want to appear in uniform and strut down the street in uniform? That has its attraction for the Maori girl, just as for the pakeha.’ At air stations, the service required of them was largely housemaids' work. ‘Are there not plenty of pakehas to scrub the dining-halls of these places, make the beds, and so on, without drawing on our women-power?’¹²⁵

On the other hand an official Maori body brought Maoris to work in urban areas. The Maori War Effort Organisation, approved by War Cabinet in June 1942, worked through numerous tribal committees and originally was concerned mainly with recruiting for the Maori Battalion and the Home Guard. Also, in liaison with government departments, it organised fund-raising and crop-growing and, notably, found volunteers to fill specific labour vacancies, mainly in freezing works and dairy factories.¹²⁶ After six months the Minister in charge, P. K. Paikea,¹²⁷ said that it had caused a wave of war effort enthusiasm, roused and directed by 356 tribal and executive committees. There were 10 825 men in essential industries; for service in New Zealand or overseas 4104 had joined up and a further 740 had lately been enlisted by recruiting officers and tribal committees; for home service only 1587 were recorded as having joined up, with 453 more enlisted; in the Home Guard 7397 were recorded as enrolled, 2478 more brought forward by the recruiting agencies. In additional crops, beyond their own needs, Maoris had grown hundreds of acres of maize and vegetables; their gathering of agar seaweed was estimated at 17 0001b.¹²⁸

As an instance of the Organisation's work, in December 1944 a telegraph appeal on a Saturday had by Monday found 193 men for

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the freezing works, with 186 more available when needed.¹²⁹ Maori labour was also keenly sought by the vegetable growers of Pukekohe, especially when a quick-freeze plant opened there early in 1945; the Helvetia camp (west of Pukekohe) was then accommodating 110 girls from the Gisborne district and more were wanted.¹³⁰

Some Social Security benefits—sickness, unemployment, invalid and family—were paid to Maoris at the same rate as to pakehas.¹³¹ Family benefit, originally 4s a child per week for the third and subsequent children in families whose income, including benefits, did not exceed £5 a week, was gradually extended and increased until by 1944 it was 10s a week for every child in families whose income did not exceed £5 10s a week increased by 10s for each child. In October 1945 allowable income rose to £6 10s plus 10s for each child and from April 1946 the means test was abolished.¹³² Throughout, the benefit had been payable for children not actually of the family but maintained as if they were. In the low incomes of most Maori families, this benefit was a considerable factor and drew a good deal of criticism from pakehas for encouraging carelessness and indolence.

A few small military camps around Auckland, vacated by troops, were taken over for workers in essential industry, and some Maoris lived there in communal satisfaction. A few city entrants were helped to suitable lodging by welfare officers and Auckland had a few hostels for Maori girls but never enough.¹³³ The majority, men and women, single and families, made their own arrangements, following relatives or friends, moving in with them and by sheer numbers making the crowded inner city areas still worse.

Deprived of community and tribal leadership, often unaccustomed to continuous work, ready to ease off when they had some money in hand and with wants multiplied by city living, Maoris had obvious problems. Repeatedly it was deplored that Maoris were failing to adjust to city conditions but, apart from a very few church workers and welfare officers, there was no one to guide them in adjustment: local bodies looked to the government, and the government was preoccupied. There were many special problems. As early

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as August 1942 the Women's Franchise Association in Auckland noted that while young Maori women would readily get work, older women had no occupation, were supported only by Social Security benefits and had great difficulty in finding accommodation.¹³⁴ Adolescent boys and girls, without guidance, gained no training in trades or such habits as newspaper reading and useful discussion; they wandered about aimlessly, their interest centring on the pictures, ice-cream and dance halls.¹³⁵ Young women, especially during the American invasion and especially those who worked in cafes and hotels, were much exposed to drink and to sex with servicemen, causing some to drift into charges of being idle and disorderly.¹³⁶ Petty stealing brought young men before the courts in numbers upon which magistrates did not fail to comment. ‘These Maoris work here for a time, then leave their jobs and kick about the town, eventually getting into trouble,’ said a probation officer.¹³⁷ The usual legal response was prison, borstal, or probation on condition that the offender returned to the country.

Thus, while the population increase, plus other factors such as hopes of a good time, made the urban drift inevitable, much public opinion and many Maori elders believed that Maoris should keep away from cities where they were lost to tribal influence, lived, perforce, in conditions that were an open reproach, obtained liquor despite the law which made supplying it to a Maori illegal, and where the risks of slipping into crime were high. The elders wanted land development, housing and work to keep their young people at home, but the government advanced very little money for these purposes and avenues of development were limited. For many Maoris in the country, without jobs, pleasures or decent housing, the cities appeared dangerous eldorados. Some, despite poor conditions, made good at their unskilled jobs, others drifted into idleness or crime. In the shortage of houses and materials it was hardly surprising, though deplorable, that Maori needs went to the wall.

There was awareness of these problems, an awareness that, for instance, produced a Young Maori Conference at Auckland in May 1939. It produced some publications, notably The Maori People Today,¹³⁸ a substantial book in which well-informed persons such as Apirana Ngata and Horace Belshaw explained what was happening. Occasionally newspapers surveyed the situation.¹³⁹ Generally

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it was suggested that the government must cope with the large interlocking problems.

Ranged besides such academic approaches, the views of a responsible official, J. H. Luxford, senior magistrate, talking to the Auckland City Mission, may be cited. The Maori, he said, was becoming race conscious, and a race question for which there was no justification or need might arise in New Zealand. It behoved all to see what was going wrong and to take remedial measures before too late. The native race had been growing steadily for some time but only in recent years, since they moved into the cities, had a ‘serious Maori problem’ arisen.

We have tried to preserve in the Maori his language and customs¹⁴⁰ and also tried to make him stand up and take the impact of ordinary life with all its implications and complexities. We have maintained many restrictions for the native race and yet given it many privileges. We have now come to the parting of the ways, where we have to decide whether the Maori is to be kept in his pa or be allowed to work side by side with the European for the common good…. There has been an influx of thousands of Maoris into Auckland of recent years. Many have gone to live in the poorest of the buildings of the city. Whatever the cause, the result has been that the Maori is fast becoming the major branch of the criminal class as unfortunately figures show and prove.

Luxford concluded by saying that the Maori was a good chap but he was getting out of step.¹⁴¹

War memorials were being considered early in 1945. Already town planners, adult education organisers and some RSA groups had decided that there should be ‘no more eyesores’ like the memorials put up after the last war, and community centres were favoured as useful and living memorials for those who had sacrificed for the community.¹⁴² An early plan adopted at Papatoetoe provided for Plunket rooms, a women's rest room, an RSA hall with accommodation for scouts, guides, kindergartens and other community interests; for the first year the financial target was £5,000, to be raised by the familiar queen carnival process.¹⁴³ Similar projects were soon to appear all over the country.

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Meanwhile the war in Europe had entered its last phase. In mid- January 1945 the Russians struck westward all along their front from Lithuania to Hungary. Warsaw was overrun in a few days, Budapest finally fell on 13 February, just after the Big Three had sketched in their post-war plans at Yalta, and on 17 February the Auckland Star wondered which Russian general would get to Berlin first.¹⁴⁴ The destruction of Dresden on 14–15 February, Bomber Command's attempt to shorten the war by shaking German morale, was explained as support for the Russian offensive. At the same time there were reports of Goebbels's promise to von Rundstedt's troops that the Allies would soon be thrown from Germany by ‘new methods so terrible that Hitler must ask the pardon of Almighty God for using them.’¹⁴⁵ Eisenhower said at the end of February that if the Germans' fighting spirit continued there could be no short cuts; they would be defeated only when the Western and Russian armies met in the middle of Germany.¹⁴⁶

The British navy was moving into the Pacific, presaging post- Europe concentration: HMS Howe, Sir Bruce Fraser's¹⁴⁷ flagship, impressed Auckland on 5 February. On the same day MacArthur entered Manila, sealing the Philippines campaign begun at Leyte Island during October 1944. A fortnight later, in the Bonin Islands 750 miles from Tokyo, Marines attacked heavily fortified Iwo Jima, meeting fanatical resistance that lasted until mid-March. Towards the end of March, British naval forces, including New Zealanders, attacked the Ryukyu Islands in support of the American invasion of Okinawa, begun on 1 April and finished on 22 June after a most costly campaign.

Russian successes held most of the European headlines till late February when the Western Allies struck against the Rhine defences. A month later they had crossed the river in several places and were driving east. Every day told of miles advanced, of prisoners taken in tens of thousands, of streaming refugees. The Russians, despite harder resistance, took Vienna in mid-April. On 28 April, under headings such as ‘Greatest Event of the War’, papers announced that Americans and Russians had met at Torgau on the Elbe river, 40 miles north-east of Dresden.

For one day, 13 April 1945, the armies were swept from the headlines by the death of Roosevelt. New Zealanders felt genuine,

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if remote, grief. Roosevelt was a strongly entrenched figure for many, identified with the benign, powerful ‘Uncle Sam’ aspect of America. His successor, Harry Truman,¹⁴⁸ was virtually unknown in New Zealand, but no leader could then affect the onward sweep of the war and sorrow could be disinterested.

About mid-April the papers began to publish photographs and eyewitness accounts exposing the full horrors of Nazi concentration camps. That these camps existed had been known for a long time, since well before the war. The details of the ill-treatment, starvation and death inflicted, the extent to which concentration camps had since 1942–3 become extermination camps, were not fully realised until these ugly revelations. During the preceding three or four years many reports of atrocities committed by Germans in occupied countries had appeared in newspapers. Often these were massive reprisals against resistance actions such as the killing of a few German soldiers or sabotage efforts, reprisals against students, Jews and local citizens in general, Poles, French, Czechs, Serbs, Croats and others. It was also well known that many thousands from occupied countries were forced to work in German war industry and that those countries suffered privation because their produce was carried off to feed the Reich. There were reports, often from Jewish or Zionist sources, of thousands, even millions, of Jewish people having been starved to death or slaughtered. Although these reports were not generally disbelieved, their impact was dulled by repetition, remoteness, and the impossibility of doing anything to help apart from promising retribution.

To appreciate the feelings with which New Zealanders viewed the revelations of April–May 1945, it is useful to look back briefly over their awareness of concentration camps.¹⁴⁹ Early in the war and before it the Standard and other papers had published factual accounts of concentration camps: their inmates, mainly Jews and opponents of the Nazi regime, the harsh routines and punishments, the heavy outdoor work imposed on men not physically fit for it, the system whereby chains of ‘senior’ prisoners were responsible for maintaining discipline and would lose privileges for any relaxation discovered.