Professor Titonui series

Tu Tangata, Issue 32, 1 October 1986, Page 42

Professor Titonui series

How my uncle singlehandedly turned the tide of history

The reputation of the Maori warrior needs no amplification from me. From time immemorial, and possibly even before that, he (and occasionally she) has been upheld as the personification of courage and strength. And yet the greatest struggle the world has ever seen I refer to World War II was decided not by deeds of valour and endurance, nor even by cunning and stealth, but by a conversation between Adolf Hitler and my Uncle Herewini late on afternoon in the spring of 1941.

My uncle was a warrior, certainly. He fought with A Company of the 28 Maori Battalion in Greece, and later in Crete. But there he was captured and was to spend the rest of the war as a prisoner of the Nazis. How, you may ask, can I claim that a POW, even a Maori one, could have had such an impact on the course of the War? Thanks to information revealed to me

recently in a dark corner of a Munich beer cellar, the story can now be told. My informant was an ex-aide of Hitler, now an old man and so down on his luck that he would talk to anyone for the price of a beer. 1941 was a critical time for the German war effort. In Europe the Wehrmacht seemed unstoppable. But the Reich’s friendship with the Soviet Union was fragile. Moreover, the entry of

Japan into the War was only a matter of time. Apart from the likelihood of bringing the United States into the fray, this also meant Japan’s almost certain dominance of Asia and the Pacific. But Hitler wanted nothing less than the whole world for himself. He needed a new ally in the AsiaPacific region. Many years earlier,

while researching for Mein Kampf, the book in which he set out the Nazi dogma of racial superiority, he had come across a strange book published in New Zealand by Edward Tregear. It was called The Aryan Maori. Actually, the book made as little sense to Hitler then as it does to us today, but the promise of the title was unambiguous. If the Maori people were indeed Aryans, reasoned Hitler, they were surely cousins of a sort to the Germans them-

selves. OK, they were suspiciously dark but perhaps that was due to the climate. Anyway, the matter deserved investigation. And so it was that my Munich drinking companion, who in those days and been an eager and ambitious young SS officer, was ordered to bring to Berlin one of the Maori troops recently captured on Crete. The soldier was my uncle.

He was tired, hungry and not a little depressed at this time. But he suspected that something was up and decided to play along with the German fuhrer. Hitler was understandably impressed by the good looks and proud demeanour of my uncle, a fine specimen of Tai Tokerau manhood. For his own part, Uncle Herewini through Hitler was a

dangerous loony. As Hitler spoke, Uncle began to realise what he was leading up to. Te Aupouri and the Germans connected by the same whakapapa? It was unthinkable. Breaking all the rules about giving only name, rank and number, my uncle spoke up. “You’re right. We have fine breeding, us Maoris, and this has made us strong, resourceful, good-looking, intelligent and enormously nice to know. This is

true of the northern tribes in particular, I should point out. In fact we have become all the more strong, resourceful, etc, since the arrival of the Tarara.” “What is this Tarara?” interrupted the Fuhrer, “Another Maori tribe?” “Not quite. They came over to New Zealand from Dalmatia and settled down. There has been considerable intermarriage between us. The results have been stunning look at me for example.”

Immediately, as Uncle suspected they would, Hitler’s racial sensibilities were affronted. It was like discovering that the whole of the SS was Nigerian. His long-lost and new-found Aryan whanaunga, freely and willingly breeding with Slavs? To his way of thinking, this news was not just disappointing, it was disgusting. And here lie was entertaining some Slav darky in his private drawing room at the Chancelry!

His brain snapped, not for the first or last time. His plan was ruined. Even as far away as New Zealand the evil Slavs were spoiling his scheme for Aryan purity. Uncle was immediately ordered back to his prison camp, and the very next day Hitler ordered the invasion of the USSR. The rest, as they say, is history.