History Happening: Sydney, Kormoran, and Grossman Found

by Max Watts for RITA March 28, 2008

Max Watts, Annandale, Australia

March, 2008: Sydney, Kormoran, and Grossman have been found:

Oh ! said my American Friend: “I didn’t even know they were lost !” They were. They had been. The Sydney and the Kormoran, together, since 1941. Grossman – perhaps linked, - since 1951. Of Grossman(n), more below. Now, March 2008, 67 years later, they have all been – found. In Australia, at least, this is every-paper-front-page, prime-time-speech by the Prime Minister, news.

Some History might be amended. Or, maybe, not.

November 1941: BACKGROUND: On 19 November 1941, (nb: 18 days before “Pearl Harbor”) the cruiser HMAS Sydney, flagship and pride of the Royal Australian Navy, and the German Armed Merchant vessel Kormoran, met, fought, and sank each other off the West Australian coast. The “official”, accepted, version has been that Joseph Burnett, the Captain of the Sydney had, inexplicably, stupidly, even suicidally, brought his much superior warship broadside on to only 900 meters from the German raider, disguised as a Dutch merchant vessel. At this distance the Germans, after hoisting the German flag, opened sudden, devastating fire with their, till then hidden, guns and torpedoes, after first hoisting the German flag. Sydney – belatedly – responded, destroying the Kormoran’s engine-room and killing some 80 of its 400-man crew. The Kormoran sank some hours later, but 320 Germans survived in life-boats and rafts. Some reached the West Australian coast, others were picked up by Australian ships. Mysteriously not one of Sydney’s 645 sailors and officers were ever seen again, alive or dead. Or even heard from. SOS signals, apparently from Sydney, seem to have gone unheard, unanswered.

Thus the only – so far – recorded story has been that of the German survivors. Although this account reflects quite badly on the Australian Navy it has long been the only accepted version. Many found it incomplete and inconsistent, but although a plethora of books, articles, submissions, and individual testimonies raised many questions, particularly concerning the total absence of any Sydney survivors, these have questions failed, so far, to provide any better explanations. Rather belatedly, almost reluctantly, in 1998 the Australian government organised a major parliamentary commission to investigate what happened in November 1941. Its “Report on the loss of HMAS Sydney” was published in March 1999. Although the report criticises and questions various details of the official (i.e. that of the German survivors) version, it too accepts the same conclusions: Sydney was badly damaged by the Kormoran’s surprise attack, and sank, perhaps suddenly blowing-up, some hours later, leaving no survivors. The German survivors spend the war in Australian POW camps and are sent back to a defeated Germany in 1947. Amongst them one Gerhard Grossmann.

1951: A GROSSMAN REAPPEARS, TALKS, AND DIS-APPEARS:

Ten years after that battle some 600 Germans have come to Australia, as workers for the Snowy Mountains Hydro Electric scheme, a huge Project to divert rivers, provide electricity, south of Canberra. A young Lutheran pastor, Ivan Wittwer, is sent by his South Australian church to look after their religious and social needs.

Years later Pastor Wittwer tells Max Watts: On a Sunday, I think the 13th May 1951, I’d gone to see a man known to me as “the leader of the Germans”. Grossman. About a fight in town, in Cooma. The police had asked me to help, to cool the situation. The weather was pretty cold. Grossman, in his tent, was drinking coffee laced with plenty of vodka. I said: “You must be used to it, it was colder in Russia…” Grossman replies he was never in Russia, he’d faked, swapped, his military records, he’d been on the Kormoran. “And, by the way, your “official version” is – bullshit. We weren’t that close to the Sydney; it was a Japanese sub which torpedoed, sank, Sydney. And later surfaced, machine-gunned the survivors. That’s why there aren’t any.”

Wittwer tells a friend, a Senior Policeman, in Canberra. The Policeman tells a Colonel Spry, later General Spry, head of ASIO, the Australian equivalent of the FBI. Spry – so Wittwer tells it, comes over right away and asks me about this story. A bit later (Max Watts: I’d figure: early June – 1951) Spry calls me to the Canberra Civic centre, there are a couple of officers from the Australian Navy, with a recording device (in those days tape or wire recorder were still rare, Pastor Wittwer had never seen one before) – some of his people, and the head of the Snowy Mountains authority, (later “Sir”) Hudson, who’s bringing a rather unhappy Grossman along. For a couple of hours they ask Grossman all kinds of detailed questions about the Kormoran, about the battle, the Japanese sub.. Wittwer: “By then I’d heard it all several times, I didn’t pay that much attention, but it looked like Grossman knew what he was talking about. I remember he said they drank Japanese beer on the Kormoran..”

The meeting over, Colonel Spry asks the young pastor: “Sign this, please”. Wittwer does. “This is the Official Secrets Act. You can’t say anything about this for the next thirty years.” Everybody leaves.

After this, Wittwer falls sick, goes back to South Australia. When he comes back to the Snowy Mountains, he asks his successor: “What about Grossman ?” “He’s gone, no one seems to know where.” Wittwer gets on with his life, leaves Sydney, Kormoran, Grossman, behind.

Years later, at an old servicemen’s meeting, someone slangs Burnett, the “silly” Captain of the Sydney. Wittwer remembers Grossman, the Japanese submarine. The thirty years silence are over, he tells his story. My mate John Doohan, in Perth, who’s been studying this Sydney story for years, hears about it and tells me. I check it out with Wittwer. Wittwer sounds very straight, reliable to me, but I look for corroboration, documents, evidence. Run into a problem: Where is this Grossman ?

But, curiously, Grossman has, effectively, disappeared. No traces of him. No records anywhere. In the Australian Archives. No Immigration. No Residence, Work, taxes, housing documents… Nothing at the Snowy Mountains Authority, for whom allegedly he worked. No deportation, either.

The 1999 Inquiry – which had received Wittwer’s submission – also looked for this mysterious missing Grossman. ASIO replied with a one-page letter which – I noticed this only recently – referred to a “German gunner”, (not by name, neither with 1 or 2 “n”s) – and stated they had no trace of any interview. Of Grossman. Conducted by their boss, Colonel Spry. If such an interview had ever taken place, all records have been lost, stolen or strayed. Grossman is, apparently, utterly unknown to ASIO. Nor is there anything about such a person (with one or two “n”s –we looked) - in the extensive Australian Archives. Pastor Wittwer said he had files, but one day a “journalist” had come, visiting, had returned when he was out - and that day his house had been burgled, his files disappeared. The “journalist” also.

I must admit I was not happy. No traces of the mysterious Grossman anywhere. (But Pastor Wittwer later found, in the (quite separate) files of the Lutheran church in Adelaide, three letters – about this that and the German migrants – in which Grossman was, incidentally, mentioned. Nothing, nota, therein about HMAS Sydney, only about humdrum matters referring to German workers in the Snowy. And Grossman as a troublemaker.)

I did some searching of my own, and – yes – found no documents, no newspaper files, concerning Grossman. I did find several elderly Germans, retired workers of the Snowy Mountains project, or their widows, oldies, who still – forty plus years down the track remembered a Grossman well. He had made quite an impression. “When we first got to Jindabyne, there was Grossman on a chair, spouting about our rights. We didn’t know we had any rights…” “Grossman ? A real stirrer !”

Somehow this made no sense. In the – Red-hunting – days of 1951 how could there not be –at least ASIO – files about such a stirrer? This seemed a real case of the Non-Barking Dog. There must have seen much interest in such a person – if he existed. Had someone, really determinedly - purged the files? And if so, why ?

I searched, found nought. And with time, moved on to other interests. Until, until… “they found the Sydney”. And I, because of a completely different matter, spoke about this with S., remembered she had once, years ago, written a big book about the Snowy Mountains Project. Mention, really just by chance, the disappeared Grossman.

Heinrich Grossman ? S said. I’ve got his file. I’ve had it for years. Here, here it is…

RN3519SYDNEYFOUND.1

Research ASIO DOCUMENT SECRET COPY NO.2

14th February, 1952.

MEMORANDUM for:

Director General (2) SNOWY MOUNTAINS HYDRO ELECTRIC AUTHORITY – EMPLOYMENT OF WAR CRIMINALS

1. Enclosed with this memorandum are separate memoranda dealing with:

Kurt ROHNSTOCK Erick JAECKEL Dietrich ORTMANN Paul KOETIG Kurt MIELKE Gerhard KAUFMANN

The subjects of your memo No.133 dated 9th November, 1951. These memoranda have been deliberately limited to the allegations made against the parties by the member of the House of Representatives, and I have avoided extraneous discussion in them….

2. (deleted) reports also raise questions of general interest, which he has dealt with more fully in a separate report dated the 6th of this month. A copy of it is enclosed….

7. Attention is also invited to Paragraphs 17 and 18 of deleted report, dealing with possible Soviet Agents. According to deleted the Authority has no machinery for dealing with security matters and not even a security officer. In view of the situation now revealed, the deficiency is serious and disturbing.

8. deleted will be paying another visit to the area shortly and his report will be submitted.

Signatures etc deleted

REGIONAL DIRECTOR, NEW SOUTH WALES

ATTACHEMENT

COPY NO:

ENQUIRIES CONCERNING GERMAN MIGRANTS

During my visit to the Snowy Mountains Hydro Electric Authority on 29th to 31st January, 1952, to enquire into certain allegations made against the six (6) men mentioned in the accompanying reports, certain observations were made concerning the general outlook of the German migrants employed in this project.

Paragraphs 2 – 17 available, not typed into file here. Paragraphs 17 – 24 below (24 last) are from the Attachment

17. While discussing the German question with deleted 3 lines.. it was pointed out that from time to time the Russians allowed a small number of Germans to pass from the Eastern Zone to the American Zone and other parts of Europe where they would act as agents for the Russian Army.

18. This subject has been discussed amongst the various sections of the German Migrant community in the Cooma area. It is common knowledge that some of the persons referred to in paragraph 17. were amongst those selected by the Snowy Mountains Authority to work on their project in New South Wales.

19. A man known as Heinrich GROSSMAN, one of the German migrants employed by the Snowy Mountains Authority, was on most friendly terms with the Building Workers’ Industrial Union delegation when they visited the project. GROSSMAN was accepted by both these men.

20. GROSSMAN has since absconded from his employment and it is now believed that he is in the Wollongong district. While still an absconder and living in Sydney, GROSSMAN boasted of his intention to form an club, its members to be other absconders from the Snowy Mountains Authority, who would number approximately 50.

21. From GROSSMAN’s friendly association with the Building Workers’ Industrial Union delegates it raises the possibility of this club gaining financial support from the Communist Party of Australia.

22. GROSSMAN’s history whilst with the Snowy Mountains Authority was most unsatisfactory and he was considered to be the instigator of most of the trouble amongst the German migrants.

23. Legal proceedings are being instigated by the Snowy Mountains Authority against GROSSMAN for the recovery of certain outstanding monies concerned with his passage to this country.

24. I have been advised by a source considered reliable that where a German claims to have been a in a concentration camp during the war years he would have been there for two reasons only, namely he was either a Jew or a Communist. There have been some instances of German migrants claiming to have been in concentrations camps in Germany and using this reason to excite sympathy with the Screening Body to facilitate their entry into Australia.

…

Signature deleted FIELD OFFICER

6th February, 1952.

These ASIO documents – dated 6th February 1952 - give a description of a Heinrich Grossman and his activities in the Snowy Mountains absolutely consistent with that painted by Pastor Ivan Wittwer in May-June 1951. They also explain Pastor Wittwer’s inability to find Grossman after his (Wittwer’s) return to the Snowy Mountains (in ? 1952): “GROSSMAN has since absconded from his employment”. and is believed to be living in “the Wollongong district”.

They do not connect Grossman to the Kormoran or the Sydney, nor is there any mention here of “an alleged ASIO interview which took place in 1951, which involved a former gunner on the Second World War German ship Kormoran”. ASIO – writing on 25 November 1997 – to the Parliamentary HMAS SYDNEY INQUIRY – (ASIO REF: 3947) – was “unable to locate any reference to the alleged interview”.

Applying Occam’s Razor to the – today (27 March 2008) available information – we note:

Sydney and Kormoran have now been found, 12 miles apart, in 2,5 km deep water, near the position secretly recorded by Kormoran Captain Detmers. Sonar images show the Sydney mostly intact, the Kormoran badly fragmented – as could be expected by the explosion of several hundred mines carried in her after holds.

Debris – probably from Sydney - some 4 kms from Kormoran could be accounted either by the Kormoran’s drifting between the 1941 battle site and its later sinking – this in accord with the “official version”. (I was given a precise 900 meters initial distance between Sydney and Kormoran by a German survivor stating he was on the secondary range finder of Kormoran whom I interviewed by telephone. Note: Gerhard Grossmann, questioned as a prisoner in 1941, spoke of 10 km distant combat).

The debris, as other factors, awaits further study of the wrecks, now underway with a ROV.

Pastor Wittwer description – to me – in the late 1990’s, of Grossman in May/June 1951 has been totally confirmed by the now available ASIO file.

Note: Rolf Wittwer, son of Pastor Ivan Wittwer, has just found another description of Heinz Gerhard Grossman by the Pastor, made in 2000.

Hi Max, See the attachment for Dad’s description of Grossman. Cheers, Rolf.

I am having trouble pasting the Adobe documents into this Micro file ! Will try again later.

Pastor Wittwer’s 2000 description of Heinz Gerhard Grossman, the 1952 ASIO file on Heinz Grossman and mentions of Grossman found in 3 letters in the Adelaide Lutheran Church files all concord perfectly. I think we can consider the 1951-1952 existence in the Snowy Mountains of a Grossman, or Grossmann, with either one or two “n”s, as completely proved.

There is nothing in these ASIO documents linking this Heinz Grossman to the Kormoran, nor to the Gerhard Grossmann, who definitely was a crew member of the Kormoran, POW in Australia from 1941 to 1947, and who was repatriated to Oelsnitz in (East) Germany in 1947. According to his (apparent) widow this Gerhard Grossmann died in 1986, and never returned to Australia.

Heinz Grossman, the now confirmed “trouble-maker” and “leader of the Germans” (Wittwer, ASIO) - repeatedly tells Pastor Wittwer and – according to Wittwer - later Col Spry and others in a recorded, lengthy, detailed – and apparently accurate – interview in Canberra Civic Center in late May or early June 1951 - of his – alleged - life on the Kormoran, of the battle with Sydney, and – here the most controversial – of the intervention in the 1951 battle by a Japanese submarine. Which, after the sinking of Sydney, killed the survivors.

Pastor Wittwer was greatly hurt by insinuations he “invented” the entire Grossman and ASIO interviews. Such insinuations were frequently made by others reviewing the sinking of Sydney, particularly by the Parliamentary inquiry. I find it highly unlikely, almost impossible, that a South Australian Lutheran pastor would, or could ! - have acquired the detailed information concerning Kormoran from other sources.

I also note that once Senator MacGibbon, Chair of the Defence Sub-Committee conducting this inquiry, had received (on 23 Jan 1998) a one page submission (ref No. 91, and 3947) from Dennis Richardson, Director-General of (ASIO) Security – dated 25th November 1997 – that ASIO “has been unable to locate any reference to the sinking of the HMAS Sydney” or an “alleged ASIO interview in 1951, which involved a former gunner .. on Kormoran” – there seems to have been no attempt by the inquiry to follow up the rather curious explanations by ASIO – “possible .. interview did take place, but record was subsequently destroyed.. not of concern to ASIO… transferred... to Department of Defense..”

We note that ASIO alleges, or assumes, that all traces of a recorded interview, conducted by its then head Colonel Spry, concerning an alternative explanation of the sinking of Sydney, can be simply “lost”. And that the major inquiry into this sinking lets this “simple” explanation stand, without any further queries.

Curious ! I would have assumed that the inquiry would, at least, have wanted to find out more about this Grossman, who, ten years after the battle, has “allegedly” been telling Colonel Spry: “there was a Japanese submarine”.

Heinz Grossman – in my analysis – was not, as he told Wittwer, a gunner, certainly not a gunnery-officer, on the Kormoran. This leaves a mystery: Where did he acquire details about life on the Kormoran – details enough to not only impress, or convince, Pastor Wittwer, but – more to the point – Australian Navy Intelligence and Col Spry during the (still “alleged”) 1951 interview ? Whether this interview ever occurred, as described, is still open.

Another, troubling, question is: According to the now discovered ASIO files, a Heinz Grossman was certainly very active in the Snowy Mountains in 1951 and remained in New South Wales for at least another nine months (till February 1952).

But so far we know nothing about his subsequent whereabouts, life. Except that Australian Archives found nothing about him, no, for instance, deportation file. (We looked !)

A problem: Have all these files on Grossman been, as apparently the ASIO records of the “alleged” 1951 Canberra interview, been – simply – mislaid ? Lost ? Stolen or Strayed ? And if so, why ? Did Colonel Spry make Pastor Wittwer (and who else ?) sign the Official Secrets Act about this interview ? If so, why ? And why did this very exhaustive, detailed, parliamentary inquiry fail to pursue this – really quite interesting – matter any further ?

A simple explanation might be: In 1951 the Menzies government, ASIO, Colonel Spry, considered “Communism” as their new, main, enemy. Australian troops were fighting in Korea, against Koreans, Chinese. But many people in Australia still had trouble accepting their new enemies, their new – Japanese – friends – it was only six years that Japanese atrocities, including shooting survivors, even civilians, of sunk Australian ships by “the” Japanese had been paraded through the Australian media, consciousness.

Prime Minister Menzies, particularly, was still trying to live down his nick-name: Pig Iron Bob – earned in 1938 as he frantically insisted on shipping iron from Port Kembla, Wollongong, to the Japanese war machine, over the heated objections, strikes, by left-led Australian wharfies.

Thus even in 1951 tales of a Japanese submarine, real or fictive, sinking Sydney, machine-gunning the survivors, would have been very unwelcome. To be buried, silenced, as soon and thoroughly as possible.

Note: Thus even a fictive submarine would have been a problem, in 1951.

And any investigation, at that point, might raise another, very painful, question: Was the entire Sydney sinking, from the apparent, first, “mistaken” approach, to the (very belated ? – and totally unsuccessful) – search for any survivors – such a can of worms that the 1951 Menzies government wanted no bar of it ? And ASIO, Spry, operated as a – unjustifiable ? – agent for his Prime Minister ?

There is, however, another so far – unresolved question:

What happened with/to Grossman ?

Did Grossman, who has already done so in Jindabyne, in Canberra, tell no one else about this Japanese sub ? Grossman, from what we know of him, can hardly be considered a “secretive” person. He, so ASIO, was in close touch with the BWIU, with Leftists, who would have been highly interested in such a – for the Menzies government very embarrassing and unwelcome – story.

Did Grossman, during his stay in Sydney, in Wollongong, never repeat the “submarine sank Sydney” story “ ? Of then enormous interest to many, for no one has really answered why not one of the 645 Sydney crew had been found, dead or alive.

Questions concerning their non-rescue remain open. Is it possible that in 1941 the existence of such a submarine may have been – even if not real – imagined ?

And – to what extent – was the delayed search for Sydney survivors affected by a – real – need to hide knowledge of the – now known – fact that Britain, the USA, had cracked the Japanese code, and may have intercepted, decoded, signals from Japanese submarines ?

Perhaps some answers for such questions may yet arrive, when the expected pictures from the bottom, from the Kormoran, from the Sydney, surface !

RN3519.5SYDNEYFOUND.5