Hitler's Asian Adventure 2 E-Book

Horst H. Geerken

• Herausgeber: Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Serie: Hitlers Asian Adventure 2
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Seitenzahl: 537

Beschreibung

57 years ago, Horst H. Geerken first encountered rumours about the German Navys activities in Indonesia. He was told about them by Indonesian freedom fighters who had defended their country`s freedom when Dutch forces returned after the end of the Second World War. During the 18 years he spent working in Indonesia, Geerken made further researches into the subject, and even after that he re­gularly returned to research in the region. This enabled the author to demonstrate that the activities of the German forces in Asia were considerably more extensive and intensive than had previously been assumed. Volumes 1 and 2 of this documentary history contained a great deal of previously unknown information about a subject which had previously been ignored by historians. Very shortly after the publication of those volumes, the author received an immense amount of cor­respondence from people who had either themselves been involved in events in Asia during the Second World War, or whose fathers, grandfathers or husbands had been. These two volumes have since been published in slightly abridged form as one volume in English, as has a Bahasa Indonesian abridgement. The current third volume (English Volume 2) contains much more information resulting from Geerkens research. It all stems either from contemporary witnesses or from archives in Europe, Australia and Indonesia, as well as the few diaries that still survive from the Second World War and the internment of German civilians in the Dutch East Indies and British India.

Leseprobe

This book is dedicated to the memory of my Aunt Hedwig who was gassed as ‘worthless life’ in 1940 in the Schloss Grafeneck Concentration Camp in the Swabian Alps1and the memory of my many Indonesian friends who risked their lives in the struggle for their fatherland’s independence from Dutch colonial rule.

‘The most dangerous world view is that held by people who have never looked at the world.’ Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859)

1 Horst H. Geerken, My Ancestors, pp. 425ff

Contents

52. Thanks

53. Prologue

54. Carrying the swastika from Germany to Australia by kayak: Oskar Walter Speck’s extraordinary journey

55. The

Wochenspiegel

of 1940 and other printed media

56. The weekly paper

DAS REICH

57. Photographs of the internment camp on Onrust, a small island off the coast at Jakarta

58. The Death Ship

Van Imhoff

59. More information about U-Boats

60. The Liesenfeld family’s Odyssey

61. More about Sarangan

62. The Dehra Dun internment camp in India

63. Additional information about Adolf Hitler

63.1 The women around Hitler

63.2 Adolf Hitler, President Sukarno and the Hitler cult in Indonesia

63.3 Conversations with Hitler

63.4 The Grand Mufti Hadj Amin Effendi el Husseini

63.5 Adolf Hitler’s death

64. An Indonesian in the German Luftwaffe

65. Additional information about Walther Hewel

66. Additional information about Shanghai

67. Afterword

Appendices

Appendix 1 to Chapter 58: The Death Ship

Van Imhoff

Appendix 2 to Chapter 60: Documents concerning German internees in the Dutch colonies

Appendix 3: Conflict of Economic Interests in the Netherlands East Indies

Appendix 4 to Chapter 65: Thesi Hewel’s “Ahnenpass”

Bibliography

Index of personal names

Subject Index

52. Thanks

I would like to thank everyone who contacted me after the appearance of the first two volumes of Hitlers Griff nach Asien and provided me with many of the documents published here.

I would like to express particular gratitude to Dr Rudolf Liesenfeld. Since that first contact, I have developed a friendly relationship with him and his lovely wife Ulrike. Dr Liesenfeld has provided me with many documents of his father’s and his own concerning the Dutch East Indies in the time of the Third Reich. The father worked for a German trading company in Surabaya, and his son Rudolf was born there. He gave me access to a large number of documents concerning internment in the Dutch East Indies and the subsequent years in Japan. Dr Liesenfeld has kindly granted me permission to use all the documents published in this book.2

I owe special thanks to Karl Mertes, the President of the German-Indonesian Society in Cologne. He provided me with the periodical Das Reich containing the maps of the Japanese advance in South-East Asia.

I’m also very grateful to Olaf Brand of California, who is actually Walther Hewel’s great nephew. He read the English version of my book and subsequently contacted me. He was surprised that I knew more about his uncle Walther Hewel than he had been told by his family. He also supplied me with some hitherto unknown documents.

My thanks also to Dr Martin Baier. He was interned in the Netherlands Indies together with his mother, and then later, until the end of the war, they lived in Japan. The father, a missionary, was interned in Alas Vallei in Sumatra, and was taken to British India and finally – like so many others – to Dehra Dun. Dr Baier gave me copies of extracts from his parents’ diaries. Some of these passages found their way into this book.

My thanks to the Dutch documentary film-maker Foeke de Koe. He gave me the old photographs of the internment camp on the island of Onrust off Jakarta. With my collaboration he made the very successful three-part TV documentary De Ondergang van de Van Imhoff, Deksel van doofpot met Dodenship,3 which was broadcast on the Dutch TV channel NPO2 on the 10th, 17th and 24th of December 2017.

Many thanks to my friend Torsten, who is always available with help and advice about computing problems, even when I am working in far-off Bali.

I am especially grateful to my two editors Michaela Mattern and Barbara Bode for answering critical enquiries and their comments on matters of language.

I would also like to thank the many people who have given me suggestions about the subjects treated in this book: unfortunately, there are too many to name them individually. Thanks as well to the museums and archives I visited in Germany, Australia, Indonesia, Hongkong and the Netherlands, where I found much interesting material for this documentary history. The staff of these institutions were invariably helpful.

Autumn 2020

Horst H. Geerken

2 © R. Liesenfeld

3The sinking of the Van Imhoff. The Death Ship Cover Up

53. Prologue

Soon after the two volumes of my book Hitlers Griff nach Asien were published, I received many telephone calls and letters from all over the world. The books met with an extremely positive reception, much more than I had expected. I was contacted by former German naval personnel, prisoners of war, missionaries and civilian internees. They themselves or their relatives had worked in the “Southern Region” – in the Dutch East Indies4, Malaya or Singapore –, been stationed in the German naval bases, or interned in the camp that was set up at Dehra Dun in Northern India in 1941. German civilians who had worked in the Dutch East Indies – businessmen, doctors, artists and missionaries – were imprisoned in Dehra Dun for many years. The circle of people who contacted me proved a valuable source of a great deal of information and documents. I found the information provided by the descendants of the missionaries who had been active in Borneo, Sumatra and Java particularly interesting: parts of the diaries written by some of the missionaries have survived. I have therefore included the most important information in this third [in the English version, second] volume.

Media interest in Indonesia was greatly stimulated by the appearance of the translation of the first two volumes into Bahasa Indonesia.5 Several major newspapers and magazines printed extensive reports on the subject, since the Third Reich’s connections with the then Dutch East Indies were much closer and more extensive than had previously been realised. There were many Indonesians who had worked on the German naval bases in Surabaya and Batavia or in Sabang on the island of Weh during the Japanese occupation. Many other Indonesians were unaware of what had happened in those days. Young people in Indonesia have shown great interest in this historical documentation. The culture of the Dutch East Indies was largely oral, which meant that events like the crimes committed against the population during the Dutch colonial period were only handed down by word of mouth. As a result, Indonesian historical consciousness only begins with the declaration of independence by President Sukarno on the 17th of August 1945 and when the Dutch colonists were finally expelled from Indonesia at the end of 1949 after 350 years of exploitation. Even today, people in Indonesia are ashamed of their time as a colony, and are amazed that a small country like the Netherlands was able to rule a gigantic realm like the Indonesian Archipelago for 350 years. When I arrived in Indonesia at the beginning of the 1960s, I was still able to meet many Indonesians who were able to give eye-witness accounts of the crimes committed against the population by the Dutch during the colonial period and in the war against the independence movement after 1945.

Indonesia is the largest island state in the world, it extends roughly 5200 kilometres from east to west and 2,000 kilometres from north to south. After Sukarno, who became the first President of Indonesia, declared the country independent after the Japanese capitulation on the 17th of August 1945, the Dutch returned and attempted to reconquer their former colony by force of arms. The terrible colonial war waged by the Dutch led to hundreds of thousands of deaths and lasted until December 1949. Only then was Indonesia able to throw off the Dutch colonial yoke as a result of international pressure. Nevertheless, the government of the Netherlands still (!) doesn’t recognise Indonesia’s Independence Day.

The English translation of the book, with the title Hitler’s Asian Adventure6 also found an interested audience, especially in the USA. Walther Hewel, who acted as intermediary between Hitler and Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop, played an important part in my first two volumes. Hewel worked for an English plantation company in the Dutch East Indies for ten years. For this reason, all official business to do with the East Indies landed on his desk. However, as I previously wrote, I was unable to make contact with Hewel’s relations in Germany. Shortly after the English translation was published, I received a message from Olaf Brand in California, who was very enthusiastic about my book. Interestingly, Walther Hewel was his maternal grandmother’s brother. Lively correspondence followed and Mr Brand provided me with previously unknown documents.

What I wrote in the first two volumes has been consistently confirmed by contemporary eye- witnesses; indeed, several readers – like Dr Rudolf Liesenfeld – even saw their own life stories reflected in them. And as a result I am able to devote an entire chapter of this volume to the extraordinary Odyssey of the Liesenfeld family. I also received additional information from readers, and details of which I had previous been unaware. I received a flood of this information and also unique eye-witness documents which were scattered all over Germany and abroad. To make these available for future research, I have assembled them and included them in this volume.

The statements made in letters and reports reflect only the views of the writers, and are not my opinions. This is especially true of negative statements about the German Jews made at the time by convinced National Socialists. I have included some of these statements in order to preserve the flow of the particular narrative, but have omitted others.

As in the previous volume(s), I write from the Indonesian perspective here too. The history of the Dutch East Indies under colonial rule – just like the history produced by other colonial rulers in Africa and in other parts of Asia – was mainly written by the colonists – that is, the perpetrators. Consequently, the crimes committed against the indigenous populations are glossed over, or totally swept under the carpet. The victims rarely have a voice. In the Dutch East Indies – as in all colonies – there was always determined resistance to colonial rule. However, the natives were unable to combat the superior military technology of the Westerners. Might was right!

For a long time, atrocities committed against the German men, women and children internees as well as the Indonesian freedom fighters were denied by the Hague – particularly as a result of pressure by Dutch veterans’ associations. It was only recently – after 75 years – that the Dutch finally came to terms with the war crime committed against German prisoners in the sinking of the Van Imhoff, a prison ship transporting prisoners from Sumatra to British India. This was in no small measure because of my incisive reporting, especially in the Indonesian media and in Volume 1, Chapter 15. With my collaboration, a three-part TV documentary7 on the subject was produced and broadcast in the Netherlands on the Dutch TV channel NPO2 on the 10th, 17th and 24th of December 2017. Astonishingly, it was even awarded a Dutch prize. It still has not been dubbed into German and broadcast in Germany. However, conversations between me and Agung Gde Rai, the owner of the ARMA-Museum in Ubud/ Bali, about the artist Walter Spies and criticism of the Netherlands were either severely cut or even totally omitted from the version that was broadcast. We therefore refused to collaborate on further documentary projects. Where injustice has occurred, one should be able to talk about it.

As in the previous volume(s), this volume does not focus on Hitler’s well-known crimes: it deals primarily with the political, technical and logistical aspects of the German theatre of war in the Far East.

However, I do not in any way wish to create the impression that I wish to present Hitler in a positive light. His crimes against humanity are historically recorded and unforgivable, and a great deal has been written about them. Here I simply wish to provide supplementary facts and newly available information about the hardships suffered by German civilian internees in the Dutch and British camps, though the latter were administered considerably more humanely. Nevertheless, in the interests of historical accuracy it is necessary to mention not just German war crimes, but also the atrocities committed by the Dutch against the Germans.

It is, of course, inevitable in a book about the Third Reich that, for historical reasons, the name of the then head of state and commander in chief of the German Army, Adolf Hitler, as well as people in his immediate entourage, will be mentioned. In addition, the swastika, the Nazi salute and other Nazi symbols can be seen in some of the illustrations and documents in this book. This is for purely historical reasons, and is in no way intended to glorify the Nazi era. The quality of these historical photographs and reports is often poor, but I have chosen to include them in the book nevertheless.

Whenever I have included extracts from diaries, letter or documents, I have kept the original grammar and spelling: for example, at the time they frequently used the letter ‘ß’ where the modern reformed spelling has ‘ss’.

As an author, my most heart-warming experience was the thanks I received from an eyewitness who had suffered internment with his parents. With reference to the first two volumes, he wrote: “Herr Geerken, you have written my life history; this is exactly how I experienced it.” Or when one of the members of the family of the Indonesian Foreign Minister under Sukarno thanked me and said that my book Der Ruf des Geckos8 was the first in which the colonial period, the independence struggle after 1945 and the coup of 1965 were correctly described from an Indonesian point of view. That was exactly how it had been! Or when an influential Indonesian historian congratulated me on Hitlers Griff nach Asien, saying it was an important contribution to the previously practically unknown history of Indonesia in that period. That encouraged me to begin on this third volume, and also a fourth9.

4 In Dutch Nederlands-Indië; Indonesian: Hindia-Belanda; German: Niederländisch-Ostindien. The operational area encompassing the Dutch East Indies with Penang (Malaya) and Singapore was designated the Südraum (Southern Region) during the Third Reich.

5 Title in Indonesian: Jejak Hitler di Indonesia (Hitler’s Footprint in Indonesia), 2017. ISBN 978-602-412-175-4

6 Published 2017, ISBN 978-3-7386-3013-8

7 Title: De Ondergang van de Van Imhoff (The Sinking of the Van Imhoff).

8 English title A Gecko for Luck, Title of the translation into Bahasa Indonesia A Magic Gecko

9 The English Volume 1 is an abridgement of the German Volumes 1 and 2. Thus this ‘Volume 2’ is actually the German Volume 3 [Translator’s note].

54. Carrying the swastika from Germany to Australia by kayak: Oskar Walter Speck’s extraordinary journey10

Let us begin this book with the extraordinary journey of a man who started out on his kayak journey before Hitler seized power, and launched a publicity campaign for the Third Reich in the Dutch East Indies. There was almost always at least one swastika on his boat, and when the wind allowed, he also had a bigger one on his sail. The Second World War had already begun when he reached Thursday Island, the most northerly point of Australia. By then, Australia had declared war on Germany. It seems rather strange to us today that this man landed in Australia flying a swastika flag. Was he unaware that the war had already begun, or was he just trying to provoke the Australians? We have no idea. But at any rate the Australians took this German ‘invasion’ by a single man in a kayak calmly and with good humour. They greeted the globetrotter cheerfully. In a kayak? Folding kayaks manufactured by Klepper and Pionier were world market-leaders in the 1930s and 40s. They looked like real kayaks. 2500 years before, Herodotus had already described similar boats with an internal frame which were used to transport goods. The Klepper company and others still produce folding kayaks. But to sail to Australia in a boat developed solely for inland waters? And with propaganda for the Third Reich?

But to begin at the very beginning: in the course of my researches in Australia, I discovered the name of a German adventurer who is probably known to a few people in Australia, but whose name and extraordinary story are as good as unknown in Germany – except perhaps in expert circles. It was Oskar Walter Speck11, who in seven and a half years travelled the 50,000 kilometres from Ulm an der Donau to Australia in a kayak.

What place has the story of a German adventurer – which attracted widespread attention in Asia – in a documentary history like this, which is devoted to the activities of the German Reich in Asia? Speck was a lone wolf, who was a Nazi sympathiser and on his voyage from the Dutch East Indies12 decorated his boat with swastikas and curried support for the Third Reich in Asia. In the Dutch East Indies he had contacts with all the most important figures in the NSDAP13. Since his story is so extraordinary, but hardly known in Germany, I have decided to write about him here. In German archives I have found little or nothing about him, but in the Australian National Maritime Museum in Sydney14 there is a great deal of material connected with him: articles, documents and things he had with him on his long voyage. Here in Australia there are still a few people who remember him.

Speck was a trained electrician whose company in Hamburg had twenty-one employees. During the world economic crisis, his company became bankrupt and he was suddenly on the street without any financial means. Unemployment was high, and there was no hope of getting another job. He read in the paper that they were looking for electricians in the mines in Cyprus. He was immediately gripped by this news: that was the place for him! He would build a new life there! But how could he get there without any money? Speck was an experienced kayaker, and so he obviously chose the cheapest way to travel there: paddling his own kayak – even though he couldn’t swim!

At that time – and it was the same just after the Second World War – kayaks were popular as the ‘little man’s ship’. Many physically active people, from craftsmen to academics, bought them. The business boomed. There were two companies that dominated the market: the Klepper company in Rosenheim and Hans Hoeflmayr’s Pionier company in Bad Tölz. Though the Klepper is still making kayaks, the Pionier company was dissolved in the mid-1970s.

After World War Two, my brother- in-law had a two-seater Klepper kayak, which he frequently let me borrow. When folded, it made a package of about 25 to 30 kilogrammes, which it was easy to take to the Neckar at Tübingen on my bike. It could be unfolded and ready to go in a matter of moments. I never had any problems getting someone to sail with me. On the contrary, all the young ladies in my dance class would queue up to accompany me at the weekends. The folding kayak was a real hit in the 1950s!

Speck decided on a five-year old Pioneer kayak, a two-seater, six and a half metres long and 80 centimetres wide. It was a modern version of the Eskimo kayak. He took out the second seat to make room for storing food, spare paddles, clothes, a pistol and ammunition, his Leica camera and some film, and also some spare parts. The boat weighed only 29 kilogrammes, but could carry a load of 290 kilogrammes. It had a mast which could take a small sail to provide extra power for the paddler. It was christened Sonnenschein [Sunshine].

On the 13th of May 1932, a few months before Hitler seized power, Speck began his journey at Ulm an der Donau. He paddled downstream towards the Black Sea, sometimes for as much as 16 hours a day, reaching an average speed of 3 knots. If the wind was favourable, he could hoist the little sail and double his speed. In mid-May it was already quite warm, and Speck enjoyed his smooth progress down the Danube. Later, on the open sea, things were often quite different: he had to be constantly on his guard to avoid capsizing. When he arrived in Australia after his seven-year voyage, the Second World War was already raging, and Speck was interned there as a prisoner of war.

Ill. 54-1: Oskar Speck in his Pionier kayak

When Speck left the Danube behind him and reached the Black Sea, he abandoned his original plan of paddling his kayak to Cyprus. He was gripped by wanderlust and a thirst for adventure. Now he wanted to travel on, further and further, as far as Australia. He reached Karachi in Pakistan earlier than expected. As his friend Georg Puschel wrote to him in 193515, the German media were paying a great deal of attention to Speck’s adventurous journey. He wrote: I could hardly believe my eyes when I read the account of your arrival in the Völkischer Beobachter on the 19th of December. […] It was also reported in the rest of the press, but not at such great length. It was also reported on Radio Munich on the 20th of December.

Ill. 54-2: His incredible route from Ulm an der Donau to Australia16

Ill. 54-3: Speck on a lonely beach

By the time Speck reached the Netherlands Indies, Hitler had already been in power for four year and the National Socialist Party was firmly established throughout the whole of Germany. He was very welcome in the Indies, as almost all German expatriates were very enthusiastic about Hitler and the success he had achieved up till then. In Batavia our hero received a frenetic welcome from the German Consul General17, the local Nazi Party Gruppenleiter [Group Leader] and thousands of Germans. He gave talks in the German Club in Batavia and in other towns on Java. Money was collected for him.

Since there are many reports of Speck’s journey extant in Australia, I will let them speak for themselves. The first of them is the account of an interview with him by the Australian journalist Duncan Thompson.18 It appeared in three parts in the magazine Australasian Post and in the NSW Sea Kayaker Magazine in 2002.

The articles that follow this, which also appeared in American papers and magazines, are quoted in the original “English”.

Oskar Speck’s Epic Journey From Germany to Australia

By Oskar Speck (As told to Duncan Thompson)19

You might think that it has taken the Melbourne Olympic Games20 to introduce the kayak to Australia. You would be – understandably – wrong. Mr Oskar Speck, citizen of Hamburg, Germany, introduced the kayak to us in 1939. He paddled it here – alone!

For seven years he paddled it, from Ulm on the Danube, to Australia, skirting the wrath of great seas and oceans, slipping from island to island, in a craft never designed for the sea. That you did not hear of his arrival was neither his fault nor yours. For Speck chose a wrong period in world history for his amazing voyage – 30,000 miles in a frail frame-and-canvas canoe. For the kayak, the longest way round hugging the coastlines of the world is the only way home.

Germany was at peace – and in poverty – when Speck left Ulm in 1932. Seven years later, in September 1939, he coaxed his kayak through the surf and on to the beach at Saibai, an island 60 or 70 miles north from Thursday Island. Officially, Saibai is Australia proper. At his bow, often smothered in the flying surf, fluttered the tiny Swastika, which he had brought from Germany with him. Three Australian police were waiting for him to berth his kayak. If this was the German invasion, these cops could handle it. ‘Well done, feller!’ they said, shaking his hand warmly. ‘You’ve made it – Germany to Australia in that. But now we’ve got a piece of bad news for you. You are an enemy alien. We are going to intern you.’

They did just that. Speck went behind barbed wire at Tatura, Victoria. Security seized his Leica and films – he has got most of his films back since. Censorship clamped down on the story of his voyage. So, that is why you have never heard of Oskar Speck. In this issue, POST has the distinction of commencing the story of the man’s seven-year saga. Here his story begins…

Originally, it wasn’t my intention to write the story of my voyage. I only wanted to tell Australians about Faltboots (folding boats), which are the modern version of the ancient Eskimo kayak. But would Australians recognise my authority to speak about it? In Germany, I was a recognised kayakist before 1932. As my voyage progressed and reports of it went home from Cyprus, from Greece, from India, I became acknowledged as the most experienced sea-going kayak expert in the world.

My old paddle was a trophy to the winner of the Marathon Canoe Race, Carl Toovey, who rowed 100 miles on the Hawkesbury River, NSW, in 18 hours, 32 minutes. Sailing men in Australia know me – I have been elected an honorary member of the NSW Canoe Club, and the kayak in which I arrived here has been presented to a member of the River Canoe Club.

But the mass of Australians did not know me at all — except, perhaps, as a name appearing from time to time in local newspapers which briefly recorded the progress of the earlier parts of my voyage.

Only a fuller account of the voyage will introduce me. I hope that it will convince you that I am a skilled kayakist – if I weren’t, there were many perilous occasions on the voyage when I should have perished. But I am lucky, also. Only with luck I was allowed to survive to acquire the skill, which brought me through hostile seas in the later parts of the voyage.

The original, primitively shaped kayak was used by the Eskimos for many centuries. More modern, streamlined kayaks, made of solid timber, have featured in the sport and recreation of Europe for many years. But these were no use to city dwellers. They could not cart a great boat home with them and park it in their town flats. And in Europe to hire a small boatshed or even to store a boat is too expensive for the ordinary man. What was needed, was a boat that would not only be safe for shooting rapids, and light for porterage, but which would collapse into a small bundle, easily carried by train or bus to the scene of the weekend’s sport. The inventor of the Faltboot kayak fulfilled all these requirements. It consists of a framework of very light, pliable timber stays, over which the fabric of laminated rubber and canvas fits like a skin.

So ingenious is its design that, once put together, it becomes as rigid as its alltimber prototype. Taken apart and packed, it can be stored in any odd corner in a house or flat. There are single and two-seaters, weighing 40 and 65 pounds, respectively. Continental railways cut freights for Faltboots, to bring this recreation within the means of the masses. During summer, Faltboots in the tens of thousands swarm over the rivers and lakes of Europe.

Dimensions? My double-seater kayak – I took the second seat out – weighed 65 pounds, was 18 feet long with a 33-inch beam and a freeboard of 9 3/4 inches. It carried a load of 650 pounds. With a good wind and a quiet sea, it can do up to 6 1/2 knots. Loaded, and propelled by a lone paddler, it can do three knots. Currents, of course, affect these speeds. Its sail measures 16 square feet, but a strong wind makes sailing risky. The rudder is worked by the feet, wire lines linking rudder to the foot control.

For my voyage I carried a spare paddle, a prismatic compass, sea charts, and ‘coastal pilots’ which show every landmark, every depth, every tiny inlet and cliff. I had two large waterproof brass containers for my films, cameras, and clothing. Fresh water went into small tanks shaped to the sides of the kayak – they held five gallons. Fresh water, did I say? In many tropical places on my route the ‘fresh’ water was lurid green. So I also carried young coconuts, dependable for a germfree drink; and condensed milk.

I have given the specifications of the Faltboot. But my kayak proved to have qualities which even the maker never claimed for it. It won me friendships right across the world.

It was a first-class ticket to everywhere. A little restricted while one was actually travelling, more than a little perilous, but it brought me privileges which your passenger in an ocean liner’s ‘de luxe suite’ can never know.

I will always remember meeting the Governor of British Baluchistan, Sir Norman Carter. A shooting party had been arranged for him by the two local Maharajahs, and a magnificent camp, complete even to triumphal gateways, had been erected near the beach.

It was just chance that I had landed on that beach a little earlier. Sir Norman and his aides came walking down towards the beach. There to greet him, with colourful retinues and in all their regal splendor, were the Maharajahs of Kalat and of Las Bella. In turn, their names were announced to the Governor. He half-turned to his right, and bowed stiffly to the Maharajah of Kalat; then to the left, bowing just as stiffly to His Highness the Maharajah of Las Bella. Then he saw me, dressed in informal shirt and pants taken from my watertight tank. Sir Norman hurried forward and shook my hand warmly. ‘Let me congratulate you, Mr Speck,’ he said. ‘A splendid performance.’

He insisted on taking me to his marquee, and with his own hands served me with a drink and listened to my story. Two jealous Maharajahs waited outside for the shoot to begin.

Such welcomes are not guaranteed by the Pionier Faltboot Company, makers of my kayak, but they could be depended upon none the less. But let me get started on my journey…

In Hamburg I had been an electrical contractor, employing 21 hands. Then came the depression. In 1932 my factory had no work, and I had to liquidate. There seemed no hope for me in Germany. But I heard there might be work that I could do in the copper mines in Cyprus. I did not dream of going on to Australia then. I had a little money – enough to equip my boat.

So, one morning I took my folded kayak and the supplies to Ulm by train. There, beside the Danube, I put the ash frame together, and pulled the rubber and canvas skin over it. I loaded up, and, without any fuss or farewell from anyone, I set off to paddle down the river in the direction of the Mediterranean Sea. By All Sane Standards, I Was Mad.

Faltboots are not built for the sea. If you must compare them with a land vehicle, they are most nearly related to the bicycle. On a bicycle you must keep pedalling and steering or you fall over. In a Faltboot you may sail while the weather is kind, but you must be constantly active, constantly steering to bring the boat’s bow to the right position to meet every single wave. Take just one wave wrong and your boat will spin sideways, you will turn over and be swamped. Your first capsize on the open ocean will be your last. When the wind becomes strong, you must take in your tiny sail and paddle. Sometimes I have had to paddle for 16 hours on end without a moment’s cessation. Life becomes a dreary, endless monotony of paddling, arms and shoulders aching, and your whole body longing inexpressibly for one thing – sleep. But you must not even doze for one moment. You must be constantly using the rudder, meeting each wave just right.

In larger boats, sailors pray when they get into difficulties. In bad weather in a kayak one also prays, but with both hands cramped around the paddle, both feet tense on the rudder bar. There are no long prayers, either – just one cry for survival, and how often this is repeated only God knows. Praying for survival and working up an emotional fury against the elements – that is how one fights a storm. I had luck with the weather in the first part of my voyage, and only that luck enabled me to live to gain the skill and experience that brought me through the rest of it. On my voyage I had 10 capsizes, but they always happened riding in through the surf, never at sea.

The kayakist learns that he has little to fear from oncoming waves taken at a right angle. But following waves must never come under the boat at a right angle. If one does, the tiny rudder will lift clear out of the water, control of the boat is lost, and it swings sideways and turns over.

My voyage was to last seven years. I rowed and sailed across the GermanAustrian border, past Vienna, into Hungary. I reached the famous Iron Gate on the Danube! All the canoe guides are full of stories about it; all advise utmost caution. Here the Danube drives through grim, steep banks, and there are tremendous whirlpools to suck down any incautious rower. I kept a sharp lookout. The larger whirlpools I avoided. My kayak skimmed swiftly across the smaller ones. Luck got me through.

At the Bulgaria-Yugoslavia border, I decided that the Danube was too tame. I wanted a new river to conquer, and just a short distance across country lay the Vardar River, which had never been navigated. Those upper reaches of the Vardar proved savage. The river plunges through steep mountains, with a succession of fierce rapids waiting to hurl the canoeist onwards and downwards through the gorges. I reached Veles, in Macedonia, with half the kayak’s ribs broken. It was hopeless to go on. I sent the skin of the kayak back to Germany for repairs, and they made such a good job of it that when it came back to me, Macedonian Customs insisted that it was a new craft, and wanted to charge it as such. Then the Vardar froze over solid. Altogether, I was delayed five months in Veles.

It was spring when I finally got away. I crossed the Macedonian-Greek border, and landed on the opposite bank of the river from the Transcontinental Railway. On the railway side the river ran close beside steep banks. As I erected my tent – I carried a small tent until it rotted and had to be discarded – a train passed across the river. What I didn’t know was that the train crew at the next station reported me as a suspicious character. Around midnight I was awakened by shouting, and I pulled back the flap of my tent to find myself looking into two carbines, held by two frontier guards. Their two horses were just behind them. We shared no language, so I showed them my passport. After muttering over it for a while, one guard signed to me to mount the second guard’s horse. Leaving the second guard behind, the two of us rode for two hours across the wild hills, when we came to a fortress, and I was presented to the commandant. He was a charming young officer. Directly he saw the Greek visa on my passport, he offered profuse apologies, and followed this by insisting that I should come into his room and drink coffee and wine.

At Salonika I faced the sea at last. With few incidents, my voyage down the coast of Greece was a kayakist’s dream, and at last I was beaching my kayak at Andros. I was scarcely ashore when two little Greek girls in white Sunday dresses came across the sand towards me, carrying a round loaf of bread with three coloured eggs sticking out of it. So it was Easter Day, and this was Andros’ welcome! Andros is a wealthy island, and I was taken to a dance at the Ship Owners’ Club, where lovely girls who spoke English better that I did dance with me. There you have the contrast, which the kayak can offer to her master. At one hour you can be fighting against a head sea. You are dressed like a tramp, you are stung by flying spray, you are in real peril. The next hour, clad in clean, dry shore clothes taken from your water-tight tank, you are sitting in one of the windows of a magnificent club. There is music and girls, and the wines of the world to choose from.

On to Kastelorozo, the girls pay the men a dowry according to the status of the families. It is often substantial. A boy has to contribute to his sister’s dowry – it follows that a boy with a number of sisters will have his nose to the grindstone for many a year. But he must uphold his family’s status. It is the custom that, on the engagement night – which is very close to the wedding date – the engaged couple shall sleep in the same room for the night. But the young man must not so much as touch his future bride, to show that their union is an affair of the spirit, not of the flesh. Petting and necking are unknown terms on Kastelorozo, where a girl who was not a virgin would indeed be better dead.

By now I had decided that I did not want that Cyprus job, the cause of my starting the voyage. I wanted much more to make a kayak voyage that would go down in history. It was about now that I first said to myself: ‘Why not Australia?’ I wasn’t so rash as to breathe that ambition to anyone else – yet. I sailed round Cyprus on the westward coast via Limassol to Larnaka. Since the kayak would have to be freighted either way, I decided that Suez offered a too well-beaten path. Why not land on the Syrian coast and take the bus to Meskene, on the Upper Euphrates? That would be something!

There was no proper road to Meskene. That wreck of a bus just picks its own way across the desert, but it got me to my destination. The Euphrates is lined with date plantations. I saw many Arab men, but no women except the very old. At villages I would be invited into the men’s houses. There I would sit on the mud floor among a lot of Arabs. A great copper plate would be brought in and laid before us; on it the hard flat bread of the country, gravy, and meat of the goat or sheep. There are no utensils. You eat with your hand, but only with one hand, or you offend your hosts. In strange lands I bow to the local customs.

I made it a rule never to refuse hospitality – better a dirty meal and the lice and vermin of the men’s houses than a shot in the dark. And that is how the Arab expresses his resentment of hospitality scorned.

One night I was drifting down the Euphrates with the current. The current carried me first to this side of the river, in bright moonlight, then to the other, in black shadow. It was only necessary to paddle occasionally. I must had dozed. Suddenly two shots rang out from the moonlit bank. I came to with a click, and started to paddle – fast. In my haste, I was paddling the wrong way, upstream, but it was not time to argue, and I made for the shadowy side. There were several more shots, then, all was silence. But I had to paddle back past those riflemen. I sneaked back on the dark side of the river, using the current, and touching the water with my paddle only once or twice. I heard men talking on the bank there, but there were no more shots. I never learned who they were, or why they had shot at me!

My trip down the Lower Euphrates from Felludgah to Basra did not reveal its lurking perils to me. Yet a few weeks later two Germans, May and Fischer, hearing of my trip, decided to follow my course. They were well-equipped, far better than I. But on the way down they made the mistake of refusing Arab hospitality – they just didn’t like fleas and lice. They were both shot dead in their tents on the riverbank, and everything they had was stolen.

I could write a whole book about the next relatively short leg of my trip along the Persian coast to British Baluchistan – some day I will. I vowed then that never shall I visit Persia again. I say now that never will I so much as fly over that country lost in basest corruption.

Arriving eventually at the first tiny Persian settlement, consisting of a dozen mud huts, but no shops, no bazaar — I had to present my starving self to the authorities, represented by two barefooted policemen. They were quite friendly, and obviously very poor. After inspecting my passport, which they held upside down, a fowl was killed, and with rice it was my first proper meal for weeks. How poor these people were was underlined when the bones that I threw away were snatched up by the village barber and carefully gone over again, the smaller bones being chewed up completely.

During the next 500 miles along the Persian coast to Bandar Abbas, I saw much of the life lived by the people of the Gulf. From the age of 12, all women wear masks made of black material. Only once did I see a Persian woman without this mask, and she was the wife – the very temporary wife – of a Persian Customs official. This westernised Customs officer already had a wife in Teheran. For the term of his contract to work in the Gulf, he married this local girl. She was 15, very pretty, but no match for her shrewd husband. To secure her, he had to pay her father 160 tomans (about £30). Half of this was paid cash down. But the balance was due when the official returned to Teheran. If she refused to follow him there, not only would the final payment of 80 tomans be revoked, but the original money would have to be refunded. It was a double-headed penny. She couldn’t go to Teheran. In Persia, apart from her husband, a wife only meets her own relatives. Others may not set eyes on her. When he returned to Teheran, no one except himself would see her again. Whether she lived or died only he would know.

One day I passed three Arab sailing vessels anchored at the entrance of a creek. They waved to me to stop — they wanted me to come aboard and drink with them. But I had a good breeze, and I sailed on. A shot rang out, and a bullet hit the water only a few inches away. Looking back, I saw the Arabs had launched a fully-manned rowing boat, which was chasing me. With that wind, I had no trouble out-distancing it. At that time the Customs was run by Belgian staff, under contract to the Persian Government. These sailing boats had been discharging a cargo of smuggled sugar.

On from Bandar Abbas I pressed to Gwattar, on the Baluchistan border – never was a sailor more anxious to shake the spray of these vile Persian waters from his kayak. Here, on a beach surrounded by high cliffs, I landed as darkness was falling, and pulled my kayak well up on to the beach. I badly needed food, and had noticed as I sailed inshore two Arab sailing boats beached further along. I walked to them now, but found them untenanted – indeed, they proved to be dismantled wrecks. I walked back to my boat to find it – gone! Panic took me then. Here was I on an unfriendly beach, cast among a lawless race of cut-throats, thieves, and smugglers. My boat was gone, and in it my money, my passport, my every possession in the world except only the shorts and shirt I was wearing. Dawn showed me high cliffs enclosing the beach, and perched on top of them a few miserable huts. I climbed up the cliff, and found the huts occupied by some fishermen and two Persian police armed with carbines. They were not helpful when I told of the disappearance of my kayak, but I insisted that they should send a boat out. I said that I should go to the Shah in Teheran, and that I was his guest – and that moved them to requisition an outrigger boat, and in it the police took me to the border village.

There the captain of police was intelligent, and, of course, corrupt. When I told him that there was money in my boat and that I would give half of it to the finder, he said confidently: ‘You will get your boat back.’ There was great doings and discussion at the barracks during the night, and next morning the captain, his assistant, and I set out in another boat. Without great trouble, we came upon a dhow, and there across its bow lay my kayak. Not a thing in it had been touched. The sailors aboard explained they had found the kayak drifting, and had taken it aboard – actually, of course, they had stolen it, having watched my landing at dark. In my wallet, in various currencies, was about £80. I gave half to the police captain, but that was nothing, so happy was I to have my kayak back.

Each night now, when I camped, I was far from lonely. Crowds thronged around my craft. The story of my voyage and my kayak, much distorted as it passed from mouth to mouth, sailed down the Indian coast faster than I could.

I reached Colombo on May 13, 1935, exactly three years after I had left Ulm, in Germany. At Rangoon, despite the approaching monsoon season, I resolved to go on to Mergui.

Before reaching Mergui, the monsoon was in full swing. Sudden squalls, with torrential rain, would sometimes blow the kayak miles off its course. There were times when, far out at sea, the wind would turn against me. Next morning would find me still ceaselessly paddling, still almost exactly where I was when the previous dusk fell.

When at last I reached shore, I would feel like a drunk. My hands would not open without excruciating pain after having been cramped around the paddle for 30 or 40 hours. I felt no hunger, only profound exhaustion. I only wanted to fling myself down and let my eyes fall shut. It was wise, then, to forget any timetable and recuperate for a few days, for I could never know what lay ahead on the next stretch.

A new kayak was waiting for me at Singapore. I transferred my luggage, and set out for Sumatra. From Batavia I followed the coast of Java to Surabaya. When in North Bali I again had a severe bout of malaria, and before I was more than halfway better I foolishly decided to try to reach Lombok. There was a strong current against me for most of that leg of the trip, and before I reached land, malaria had the upper hand again and I was a miserable, shivering victim in its clutch. Some natives came down to the beach and half-carried me up to the village, where the Kepala Kampong21 received me. At Kissar there was an unpleasant change in the behaviour of the natives toward me. Many were arrogant, they tried to cheat me, some threw stones at me. I didn’t relish staying anywhere long.

I crossed to Lakor22, and landed on a small sandy beach with a coral reef protecting it. After my recent experiences, I didn’t feel tempted to go to the nearby village. An hour later a number of natives approached. From them I tried to get information about prevailing currents between there and Sumatra23. They said the best time for me to leave was about 5 am next day. Some of them were keen to get a few of my empty water bottles, but these were essential to me on my voyage and I had to refuse.

Some hours later, I was awakened by a voice saying, very softly, Tuan! Tuan!24 I opened a flap in the canvas and looked out. About 20 natives were gathered there. The moonlight was so strong that, among them, I could spot some of my earlier visitors. I asked what they wanted, but could get no real reply. I asked them to let me get some sleep because I was very tired. I pulled the canvas back again as a sign that the interview was over. A few minutes later, a native, kneeling beside the boat, started to talk to me in a soft voice, and at the same time his fingers tried to open the cover. I was angry. I sat up. Now I noticed that all the natives had spears, swords, or machetes. In stern tones I ordered them to leave me in peace.

‘Pistol ada’, ‘I have a pistol’, I said, and let the moon glint on it. It was not loaded. It was meant to be so, and was only intended as a final threat to natives who would not let me alone.

At the sight of the pistol, the natives around the boat retreated, but only a few steps. The native kneeling beside the boat did not stand up, but went on speaking to me in a soft, calm voice. As I laid the pistol down his hands closed round my neck and he uttered a wild cry.

The other natives closed in. Five or six of them held me down, half in and half out of the kayak. They all clung to me like leeches. Strong hands clutched my hair. With the strength of despair I tore one hand free from them and strove to pull the hands from my throat. My clothing – I wore only a sarong in those tropic nights — was torn off in the struggle. With strips of dried buffalo hide some of them tied my legs and hands, while others looted the kayak. By the hair, they dragged my trussed body some yards across the sand. They constantly kicked me. They picked me up, carried me a short distance, then dropped me a few yards from the water. To understand the terror of my position, naked and bound as I was, you must understand the ecstatic frenzy of those natives. They were used to the white man as master. Here was a white man in their power – and they were drunk with that power. Sometimes a gibbering, ecstatic native would hold his gleaming machete only a few millimetres from my throat. It was clear what he wanted to do. Black hands explored my naked body. It was a most revolting experience. I tried to bring them back to sanity, but white man’s words had no effect now. They only seemed to intensify their frenzy, so I decided that absolute silence would be the best course. After a discussion among themselves, the leader walked away with some others, leaving ten guards to watch me.

For an hour I lay like that, with the guards softly talking among themselves. Suddenly, for no reason on earth, one came over to me. He swung at me with the flat of his hand, striking my left ear. Despite the shackles, I struggled up a bit. He sprang a couple of steps back, then kicked the back of my head a couple of times when he saw I was really helpless. He went back and resumed his talk with the others.

During that respite I discovered that my left ear was deaf. The drum of it was burst. After perhaps another hour the guards came back and placed me under a rock near the boat, and then they went off, following the same direction which the gang leader and his party had taken. When they last dropped me on the sand, I had noticed that the hide gripping one leg seemed loose. After hard writhing and struggling, I slipped it down off my calf, and so eventually pulled one foot free. I was able to stand!

I tottered to the kayak, hoping to find my knife there, but it had been thoroughly looted. Then I tried to cut my fetters against the edge of a rock. No good. There was one hope left. With my teeth I tried to unknot the thong around my wrists. At first the knot would not budge. But buffalo hide is stiff and harsh, and one end of the knot projected a little way towards me. With my chin I pushed this loose end through the knot, forming a loop on the far side of my bound wrists. I twisted my wrists around, and with my teeth caught on the loop and tugged. Had their fetters been more pliable I would not have been able to do this. In ten minutes I had the first knot untied. The second knot was easier, and in 20 minutes my hands were free. But I was not safe yet. I dragged the kayak down to the water – it was a struggle after all I had been through. Now I could breathe!

There was time to spend a few moments looking around for my luggage. The natives had evidently thought that my largest tank contained only water – actually it held my camera, films, and much of my clothing. I got it back into the boat, and then paddled 30 or 40 yards out into the lagoon. Not five minutes later, I saw the torches of the natives returning to the beach. But I was safe here, and I sat looking on. They were excited, and then they found I had gone, a new wave of frenzy seemed to go through them.

I reached Sermata with my bruises as proof of a story, which, otherwise, no one might have credited. Then the Resident of the Moluccas arrived on his annual inspection of the islands. I had to repeat my whole story to him. With a boatload of officials, he promptly set off for Lakor to deal with the gangsters. He arrested six, including the leader. At the subsequent trial the leader was awarded six years’ hard labour, as were two others of his gang. Two got two years, and one got a year. As for me, I went first to the military hospital at Ambon, and then back to Surabaya, where surgeons operated on my ear. I spent four months under treatment before the ear cleared up.

Ill. 54-4: Speck in 1938 after the operation in Surabaya

Exactly a year after the attack, I left Saumlaki25 in a new boat, crossed to the Kei islands, and then faced the longest lap of island-hopping to New Guinea. When I arrived at the first Dutch administered village, I caused a headache for the official in charge. He did not know whether to arrest me or let me carry on. Permission came at last, and I sailed via Hollandia26 to Madang, Port Moresby, and eventually to Saibai, Australia’s northernmost island, which is also officially a part of Australia proper.

I had reached my goal, after seven years, and – as mentioned earlier – I walked straight into internment, for Australia and Germany were at war. Australia has proved a good goal. I have many friends here, and I have built my home here, on the Pittwater, near Sydney. I hope to visit Germany again, but Australia is where I belong now.

Ill. 54-5: Every time he landed, Speck was surrounded by a throng of people

Interestingly, Speck crossed the dangerous Banda Sea twice, first from Ambon to Surabaya, and then northwards to the Kei Islands. He wrote: I travelled to the isolated islands of the Banda Sea.

Between the islands there are stretches of open sea of 100 kilometres and more. I have unfortunately found no evidence that he also visited the Banda Islands26, though this is quite feasible, as they lie in the middle of the Banda Sea. But Speck only mentions the Kei Islands, which are about 200 kilometres east of the Bandas. Several hundred Bandanese fled there in the 17th century during the Dutch colonial massacres of the population of the Bandas. Descendants of these refugees still live in two villages on the Kei Islands.27

Ill. 54-6: The Dutch East Indies

In the account of his travels given above, Speck is silent about his Nazi Party activities in the Netherlands Indies and his own enthusiasm for the Third Reich, which is hardly surprising, as he wished to remain in Australia, and did not give the authorities there any grounds for refusing him. There is, however, evidence that he was a Nazi sympathiser even before he left Germany. In Batavia he was welcomed by the German Consul, Dr Valette, and became friends with the local Nazi Party Group Leader F. F. K. Trautmann.

On Speck’s arrival in Batavia he was given a rapturous welcome as a “Hero of the New Germany” and a “Hero of the Third Reich”. For the Nazis he was simply the epitome of German heroism. Trautmann used him as the public image of the “Pure German Aryan”. He organised lecture appearances for Speck and collected funds for his onward journey. Speck received so much money that he was able to buy himself a new Leica Camera and a 16 mm film camera in Batavia. As he travelled on, he took numerous photographs and several films which are today important documents for the eastern islands of Indonesia and New Guinea. Finally, Speck was given an even bigger contribution from Nazi Party funds. This was more than enough for his journey on to Australia. Speck thought that he was finally home and dry, but things turned out differently.

Speck writes that he was made welcome in all the Javanese villages he visited, greatly enjoying their hospitality. This was probably because he was learning the Malay language intensively in order to be able to make himself understood by the native population. Malay28 is still the lingua franca in Southeast Asia. He spent five weeks in Surabaya, Java’s second largest city.

Ill. 54-7: Letter to Oskar Speck from his friend Georg Puschel, 1935

Ill. 54-8: Speck’s arrival in Sumatra29

Ill. 54-9: Speck’s Dictionary with a translation for Malay into German

Speck was also fascinated by the island of Bali. An attack of malaria caused him to extend his stay there by two weeks. At the time the well-known German artist and musician Walter Spies was living on Bali, but I could find nothing in Speck’s notes to suggest that he had met this outstanding artist. Did these two fellow-countrymen meet? I think it’s likely, as Speck must have been quite an attraction on Bali – as was Spies himself! From 1927 to 1940 Spies was probably the best-known European on Bali. He collected a colony of local artists and western Bohemians who were tired of civilisation around him. He quickly became a connoisseur of the culture, customs and traditions of the island. His presence in Campuhan acted as a magnet to many celebrities from the West wishing to fulfil their dreams of paradise for a longer or shorter period. Visitors came from Hollywood, Paris, New York, London and Berlin.

Ill. 54-10: An estuary in the Netherlands Indies30

Speck’s voyage lasted almost two years longer than planned. The reasons for this were stays in hospital, bad weather and the stubborn refusal of the Dutch colonial administration to allow Speck to continue to Australia by the shortest route. He was only 840 kilometres from his destination. He had intended to be in Australia before the end of 1936, but the Dutch officials caused him problems. He was only permitted to travel via the northernmost point of New Guinea and then southwards along the Pacific coast, a diversion of more than 4,000 kilometres! He never forgot the problems the Dutch authorities had caused him, nor their arrogance and unfriendliness. He makes frequent critical mentions of them in his letters back to Germany.

Ill. 54-11: Welcoming committee for Speck’s arrival in New Guinea

Ill. 54-12: A child on Speck’s Pionier kayak in New Guinea

Ill. 54-13: A memorial bust of Walter Spies in the ARMA Museum in Ubud, Bali31