‘Anthropology and sociology were of no value … in war time’: Ronald and Catherine Berndt and war-time security, 1939–1945

On 3 September 1939, Australia followed the United Kingdom in declaring war on Germany. Soon afterwards a number of German nationals including Australians of German descent were placed in internment camps. For those German enemy aliens and Australians of German heritage not interned, suspicion was never far from the surface. In the case of the anthropologist Ronald Murray Berndt, what initially put him under suspicion was not his political affiliations or actions, but his German name and some of his utterances on the war which were interpreted as being pro-German. Linked to this was a concern by Australian military and government authorities that Indigenous people were potentially disloyal, and anthropologists who worked with Indigenous Australians were, by the very nature of their relationship with them, considered potential subversives. However, although Ronald Berndt always worked with his wife Catherine, only Ronald was considered a security risk. Catherine was simply seen as his wife, part of a team, about whom nothing adverse was known. This article analyses the early career of Ronald and Catherine Berndt, and the restrictions and blocks they faced in accessing field sites during WWII. An easy answer to such impairments that was made at the time and later, was that Ronald was caught during WWII in a surveillance dragnet that focused on Germanness. The reality that emerges from the archival record, however, is far more complex, and shows amongst others, the exploitation of surveillance by local establishment gatekeepers