Robert Menzies - Rise To Power

Rise To Power

In 1928, Menzies gave up his law practice to enter state parliament as a member of the Victorian Legislative Council from East Yarra Province, representing the Nationalist Party of Australia. His candidacy was nearly defeated when a group of ex-servicemen attacked him in the press for not having enlisted, but he survived this crisis. The following year he shifted to the Legislative Assembly as the member for Nunawading. Before the election, he founded the Young Nationalists as his party's youth wing and served as its first president. He was Deputy Premier of Victoria from May 1932 until July 1934.

Menzies transferred to federal politics in 1934, representing the United Australia Party (UAP—the Nationalists had merged with other non-Labor groups to form the UAP during his tenure as a state parliamentarian) in the upper-class Melbourne electorate of Kooyong. He was immediately appointed Attorney-General and Minister for Industry in the Lyons government. In 1937 he was appointed a Privy Councillor.

In late 1934 and early 1935 Menzies, then Attorney-General, unsuccessfully prosecuted the Lyons government's case for the attempted exclusion from Australia of Egon Kisch, a Czech Jewish communist. While some saw this as an early example of his anti-Communism, others suspected and charged Menzies with holding Nazi sympathies. Following the outbreak of World War II Menzies attempted to distance himself from his actions as Attorney-General in this affair by claiming Interior Minister Thomas Paterson was responsible since he made the initial order to exclude Kisch.

In August 1938, as Attorney-General of Australia in the pro-Appeasement Lyons government, Menzies visited Germany, letting it be known that he was "prepared to give Hitler the benefit of the doubt, and draw my conclusions about Germany myself."

Menzies spent several weeks in Nazi Germany and was extremely impressed with the achievements of the "New Germany" (such as the abolition of trades unions, suppression of the the right collective bargaining, outlawing of the right to strike); he was also "deeply impressed" by the "spirituality" of the German people, their unselfish attitude, their less materialist outlook on life, and their preparation to make sacrifices on behalf of the Nation. On returning to Australia the following month Menzies unashamedly expressed favourable views of Nazism and the Nazi dictatorship, based as he said on his own first hand experience. In October 1938, after five years of escalating violence against the Jews and others, and scarcely one month before the infamous Nazi atrocity known as Kristallnacht, he made a speech in Sydney where he drew a contrast between the quality of the leadership of Lyons (then Australian PM) and Hitler (then German Chancellor); Menzies' critique strongly favoured Hitler.

Animosity developed between Sir Earle Page and Menzies which was aggravated when Page became Acting Prime Minister during Lyons' illness after October 1938. Menzies and Page attacked each other publicly. He later became deputy leader of the UAP. His supporters said he was Lyons's natural successor; his critics accused Menzies of wanting to push Lyons out, a charge he denied. In 1938 his enemies ridiculed him as "Pig Iron Bob", the result of his industrial battle with waterside workers who refused to load scrap iron being sold to Imperial Japan. In 1939, however, he resigned from the Cabinet in protest at postponement of the national insurance scheme. With Lyons' sudden death on 7 April 1939, Page became interim Prime Minister until the UAP could elect a leader.