Anti-communism in Australia

The period 1945 to 1965 is known as the Cold War. Australia developed policies such as Forward Defense and had a fear of communism, referring to its spread and threat in Australia as “Reds under beds”.

The year 1945 is known as being the end of World War II. A demand was made on Japan on 26 July for surrender, threatening the consecutive destruction of eleven Japanese cities if it did not. They didn’t take the threats seriously so on the 6th of August an atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, killing 75,000 people. On the 9th of August, Nagasaki was bombed. Two square miles were devastated, and 39,000 people were killed. The Japanese surrendered and the official instrument of surrender was signed on 2 September 1945.

The world was divided into two “blocs”. Bloc 1 was comprised of capitalist and democratic countries such as United States, Great Brittan, France, Australia, West Germany, South Korea and Japan. These countries signed the NATO treaty. Bloc 2 was comprised of Soviet Union, East Germany, North Korea and China. These countries signed the Warsaw Pact. Australia formed stronger bonds with America and paid closer attention to south east Asia because they were closer than Britain.

The divisions between the Eastern and the Western worlds in the late 1940s led to several problems, one of them being the division of Germany and Berlin. France, Great Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union each controlled one of four zones in Germany. The French, British, and Americans gradually consolidated their zones into West Germany, while the Soviet Union established East Germany.

Communism is a system of rule in which the state controls most of the wealth of the nation and where ownership of private property can be limited. A communist state has only one political party, which restricts the freedom and rights of an individual.

Countries of the NATO treaty feared that communism would take over and rule countries instead of them. The fear of communism spread quickly as people began to think about what would happen if communism reached Australia. The idea that communism would spread quickly was dubbed the “Domino Theory”.

Australia saw communism as a threat and realized that after Wold war II, it couldn’t protect itself. For this reason, Australia adopted a policy of forward defense, the motto being “Better to fight them overseas than at home”. Wanting to maintain its allies, Australia supported actions made by Britain and the United Stated against communists in Asia.