‘This Way of Treating Friendly Aliens Seems Strange to Me’: Australian Security Services, Allied Governments-in-Exile, and the Surveillance and Internment of ‘Friendly Aliens’ from Occupied Europe, 1939–45

Abstract

This article explores the surveillance and internment in Australia of ‘friendly aliens’ from occupied Europe during the Second World War. Employing official correspondence of the period housed principally in the National Archives of Australia, it focuses upon the relationship between various Australian security services and consular representatives of Allied governments-in-exile, exploring how this relationship impacted upon ‘friendly aliens’ suspected of subversive, anti-British, or pro-Nazi behaviour. It is argued that while Australian security policy in this area was influenced by domestic factors such as xenophobic conceptions of the country as an exclusively British nation, there is also evidence that such concerns were manipulated by Allied consuls. In key cases, these consuls were willing to use internment and control of their own nationals as an instrument of discipline, or in pursuit of grander political objectives such as demonstrating the military worth and strategic utility of their émigré forces to the British Empire.