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.

In 1948, there was a rebellion against the British by some members of the Malayan society who were hoping to set up their own communist state. In 1950, the British sent troops into Malaya and the Mayan Emergency began. Australia sent troops to assist the British in 1955, but the conflict wasn’t resolved until 1960.

Also in 1950, Australian troops were sent to fight in the Korean War. Initially the war was between South Korea (Republic of Korea) and North Korea (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) but developed into an international war involving twenty nations. At the end of World War II in 1945, Korea was split along the 38th degree parallel, the Soviet Union controlling the North, and the United states controlling the South. The United States tried to organize a reunification of North and South Korea, however, the Soviet Union didn’t cooperate. North Korea established a communist government under the leadership of Kim Il-sung and South Korea established a democratic government under the leadership of Syngman Rhee.

In June 1950, North Korea, with permission from the Soviet Union, launched an attack on South Korea. The United Nation forces, including Australia and the United States, went to assist South Korea. The North Korean forces almost beat the South Korean army, until the UN forces stabilized the peninsula. In September 1950, they cut off the North Korean forces about 160 km south of the 38th degree parallel. The North Korean army was quickly crushed, and more than 125,000 soldiers were captured.

UN forces then spread into North Korea, but promised that the troops would be home by Christmas. As UN forces neared the border between North Korea and China, the Chinese army attacked them with 180,000 troops, which changed the balance of forces. The Chinese army pushed the UN forces back across the thirty-eighth parallel and proceeded south. In February 1951 the UN army finally forced the Chinese to withdraw from South Korea. By the end of April, UN forces occupied positions slightly north of the thirty-eighth parallel.

In June 1951 the Soviet Union proposed that cease-fire discussions begin, and in July the representatives of the UN and Communist commands began truce negotiations and a cease-fire was established on July 27, 1953.

The Australian Communist Party (ACP), which had formed in the in the 1920s, began to grow in membership. As the election was coming up, the Menzies Government introduced the Communist Party Dissolution Bill (also known as the Red Bill) in April 1950 to try to swing voters to Liberal. This bill gave the Government the power to declare the ACP and any associated bodies illegal and the right to ban communists from government jobs. It also gave the Government power to “declare” citizens as communists, and it was then up to the person to prove that they weren’t.

The Labor Opposition, Dr. Evatts, opposed the bill because it challenged the rights of Australian citizens and it overturned the rule of “innocent until proven guilty”. The Communist Party Dissolution Act became law in October 1950. The ACP appealed in the High Court and won on the grounds that it was unconstitutional. Menzies then held a referendum to change the constitution so he could pass the Act, but it was defeated.

The anti-communist feeling continued to grow in Australia. Labor appeared as if they could win the 1954 federal election but their hopes were shattered when the Liberals found a communist “spy” Vladimir Petrov, who came from the Soviet Union and allegedly brought evidence of a spy ring. The alleged spy ring made the news for weeks and there was uproar throughout Australia.

The story made even bigger headlines when Petrov was allowed to stay in Australia, but Soviet officials tried to take his wife back to the Soviet Union. They forced her onto a plane, but she accepted asylum by Australian officials when it made a fuel stop in Darwin. Robert Menzies also announced there would be a royal commission investigation into “espionage activities” in Australia. Rumors were circulating about communists in the Labor Party and in the election, Labor lost even though they got the majority of votes.

After the election was over, the Labor Party began to fall apart. Two Labor members were named in the Petrov documents and Evett blamed Menzies for deliberately forging the documents to ruin Labor’s chances in the election. Within the Labor party there were also divisions. There was a group of people who feared the spread of communism, particularly in the trade unions. They formed a group called the Movement, and the Labour party split.

During the internal struggles Australia was dealing with, there were also problems in the rest of the world. At the Geneva Conference in 1954, Vietnam was divided along the 17th parallel, with a reunification referendum being proposed to be held in two years time. The North was led by Ho Chi Minh, who was a nationalist and communist. Ngo Dinh Diem, an anti-communist Catholic led the government in the South.

Australia and the United States were involved in Vietnam as an attempt to stop the Domino effect of communism. They were confused about the difference between communism and nationalism and saw groups in Vietnam being communist, such as VietCong, a National Liberation Fund made up of Communists and Non-Communists wanting a reunified Vietnam. After two years, when the referendum was not held as proposed, the North saw this as deception, and fighting followed.

In 1965, Australia sent a battalion of troops to Vietnam, who arrived in 1966. Over the whole Vietnam War, Australia sent 59,000 troops, of which 520 of them die and almost 3,000 are injured.

During the period 1945 to 1955, Australia tried to prevent the spread of communism in other countries, having a policy of “Forward Defence”. Many countries were divided and this led to hostilities and even in some cases, wars. internal difficulties in Australia was created from the fear of communism and Australia’s perseverance to catch the “Reds under Beds”. The controversy of the Petrov Document and the split of the Labor party also came about because of the fear of communism. Communism works in theory but not in practice. Even so, Australia had no valid reason to fight overseas as they were not in any immediate threat.