The Hitler Club

Price: $32.95

by Gary Gumpl and Richard Kleinig

The true story of Australia's #1 Nazi

 

Before the Second World War, a photograph was taken by the side of a road in a quiet little valley in South Australia. The photograph depicted eight men standing around a tree. A perfectly innocuous photograph, save that the trunk of the tree was draped with the Nazi flag.

They were labelled the Hitler Club. They were led by Australia's "No. 1 Nazi, Doctor Becker, whose son Heini later went on to be a prominent South Australian Member of Parliament.

This is the story of Doctor Becker and the other members of the Nazi Party in South Australia's 'Little Berlin', and the misguided witch-hunt that interned, persecuted and deported them and many others. It is a story of immigration, of an Australia in formation, of the complexity of loyalties and the juggling of the old and new. But most of all, in the hands of two South Australian magistrates, it is a story of injustice that must never be allowed to be forgotten.