NAZI ACTIVITY

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 2, Issue 178, 26 June 1940, Page 3

NAZI ACTIVITY

SECRETS LEAK OUT SPIES IN NEW ZEALAND AMERICAN NEWSPAPER STORY Confirmation of the need for vigilance in New Zealand against fiftls column activities is given from 'in unexpected quarter. This is an article in the Christian Science Monitor (Boston), on May 15, from its special Wellington representative, which deals with Nazi espionage in the Dominion. The article reads: —New Zealand, which entered her Avar against Hitler's Ricch with plans to inflict no hardships on German refugees who! have arrived here in recent years, is gradually intensifying her spy hunt. As this tightening-up of control of aliense proceeds, more and more Germans go to the concentration camp on an island in Wellington harbour which was established soon after war began. First occupants of this cajnp were chielly Germans from the mandated territory of Western Samoa, New Zealand's share of the colonies of the old 'Reich. Since they arrived, bringing with them the secretaryand president of the banned Nazi Party in Samoa, however, other sud den arrests, by police have swelled the total. Nazi intelligence apparently has included New Zealand in its worldwide net. Information has seeped through to Germany about matters which were supposed to be secret. The date of departure of the first echelon of the New Zealand Expeditionary Force was heard one night on the German radio and one of th<®lis teners was an officer of Army headquarters, -who hurried to the then Prime Minister Savage with the dis turbing news. This fact was not given wide currency at the time, but alarming rumours of what Berlin had said ran all ever the country. Final versions of the affair included a statement of the names of ships r.o be used as transports, and even tli«; names of escorting warships. This incident caused renewed activity in the effort to discover channels ef information and. to stop them. Police made swift raids in a number of directions and swelled Lhe i;• t:'>; :of aliens in the concentra lien camp. It was not for several weeks, however. that they managed to find and plug one of the suspected main leak;;. This was when the police arrested two Germans who were stated to have been, gathering information and sending it out of the country by using members of crews of neutral ships. Once out of radio range of New Zealand's watch coastal station, they would transmit messages, apparently to South America from whence they would be relayed to Germany. Development of radio is what provides the spy hunters with their main troubles. After the war was three months old, Gunther R. Maier, said to be a former radio operator for Count Felix von Luckner, captain of the raider Seeadler in the World War, and to have conic to this country in the yacht SeeteufcJ. was arrested and sent to the island camp. Police blamed him for the sinking of the freighters Tairoa and Doric Star by the Admiral GrafSpec and said he had been radioing departures of merchant ships to help German surface craft. They even claimed Count Luekner's "good will" cruise here in 1938 was a blind for the creation of a series of radio stations meant to observe and report shipping movements. How the Germans systematically used trade organisations to help their espionage system was uncovered when police raided tlie office o! the agent for the Leipzig Trade Fair. The outbreak of the war was followed by rapid' destruction of many of the records of this office, the principal ol which then disappeared and was missing for a month before being tracked by detectives. Later it was found there had been organised work in obtaining valuable information for Nazi secret, service files conducted from the office. Now Zealand has had no such incidents as the explosion at Broken Hill Aerodrome, Australia, just after war began, with destruction of four aeroplanes. Chances of sabotage here have been cut by posting in.'n's at important points such as sad So sin lions, oil tanks and docks. ! Continued at foot of next eolu.nn)

Chief concern is about the possible leakage of shipping news, for this country, no less than Great Britain, lives by its sea trade. In part, this chance is narrowed by exclusion of all aliens from thwaterfront where foreign nound ships are clocked. But a close ciiecu is kept on possible agents. Their mail, even when sent to an address inside the country, is examined. They must report their movements to police or be subject to arrest. Anyone with a foreign soundin'i name is Ma.b3u to find all his overseas mail censored.