Most of the media stories on Willi Huber focused on his work founding the Mt Hutt skifield. This month, North & South finally unravelled the other central fact of Huber's life: his role in one of the most brutal divisions of the Nazi army. But why hadn't its investigation been written earlier?
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North and South's issue with a full account of the life and times of Willi Huber. Photo: photo / RNZ Mediawatch
When Willi Huber died age 97 last year, the headline on his obituary in the Christchurch Press read ‘Canterbury skifield pioneer and former Nazi soldier dies’.
The story was accompanied by a picture of a grinning Huber, with skis slung over his shoulder.
At the time, many people argued that Huber’s service in a regime that carried out the worst genocide in human history should have got higher billing than his work founding Mt Hutt skifield.
But the obituary actually marked a step forward in the media’s acknowledgement of Huber’s military history.
Looking back through the decades, most of the stories on Huber were soft-focus tributes.
In 1997, the Ashburton Guardian ran the headline ‘A mountain, two field mice, and a dream’, above a story that focused heavily on Huber’s bond with a pair of mice inside the alpine hut where he lived while surveying the skiing conditions on Mt Hutt.
In 2014, The Press labeled Huber a ‘Heartland Hero’, in an article that praised him for winning an Iron Cross for his service in what it called the ‘German Army’.
Those media outlets could at least offer the excuse that Huber had not openly acknowledged some of the more disturbing facts about his Nazi service.
Photo: TVNZ / Screenshot
Not so TVNZ’s Sunday, which in 2017 ran a documentary titled Father Of The Mountain. In it Huber admitted to volunteering for the Waffen-SS, one of the most brutal and highly indoctrinated divisions of the Nazi forces, where he eventually rose to the rank of captain.
He went on to excitedly describe seeing Hitler in-person when he was nine years old. "Could you imagine?" he asked. "He was smiling. He looked at us. Put his arm out, as he always did."
Huber added that he had to “give it to Hilter”, who was “very clever” and - quote - “brought Austria out of the dump”.
An estimated 65,000 Jews were murdered in Austria during World War II and more than 125,000 were forced to flee the country.
Despite his soft spot for Hitler, Sunday described Huber as a “remarkable survivor” of the war. It honed in primarily on his legacy at Mt Hutt, accompanying the then 94-year-old up the mountain to record this exchange with some skiers.
The documentary provoked anger, with Jewish groups arguing it sanitised Huber’s record and elided his potential role in wartime atrocities.
Writing in The Spinoff after Huber’s death, NZ Jewish Council spokeswoman Juliet Moses asked why a Waffen-SS member had escaped real scrutiny from our press for so many years.
"What troubles me more than an unrepentant Nazi dwelling in Aotearoa - is the adulatory treatment he received," she wrote. "Where were the probing questions about his activities? His embrace of Nazi ideology? His amends? How he got to New Zealand on a work visa?"
This month, North & South went some way to addressing that deficiency.
Its cover story, The Nazi Who Built Mt Hutt, traces Huber’s war history, putting him near the site of a civilian massacre in the French town of Oradour-sur-Glane. It proves he lied on his New Zealand immigration forms, omitting his service in the Waffen-SS, which had been deemed a criminal organisation.
One of the story’s authors, military historian Andrew Macdonald, told Mediawatch the investigation is a reminder that journalists often need to dig deeper into the backgrounds of their interview subjects.
"I wouldn't suggest every other person out there's got a significant immigration fraud that they're hiding and service in the Waffen-SS. But nonetheless when he admitted to at least part of that in 2016 and 2017, there doesn't appear to have been a whole lot of objective scrutiny of that," he said. "It's very easy to be pally and friendly with subjects who want that kind of interview and just occasionally one comes along where there needs to be a bit more scrutiny on the story that they're telling."
Investigative journalist Naomi Arnold, who co-wrote the feature, said Huber's good deeds on Mt Hutt and jovial nature helped mask the darker parts of his history.
She spoke to several of Huber's friends in Methven, and was struck by how many of them relayed the story of the two mice he had befriended surveying Mt Hutt.
"People just latch onto these colourful details that show what an essentially good human he was, and they want to share that with you and try and get you to understand that he wasn't a baddie, he was a good guy."
She suspects Huber's personality helped shield him from proper journalistic inquiry.
"He's a genial guy and reporters appeared to enjoy spending time with them, and he probably just answered their questions."
Even after Huber admitted his involvement in the Waffen-SS, at least one newsroom was reluctant to pursue the story because of his advanced age, she said.
Macdonald said the investigation into Huber brings up memories of witnessing the trial of a Waffen-SS hitman in Germany.
The man admitted having perpetrated killings during World War II. But he did not look like a "sneering, jeering, indoctrinated SS man at the height of his power," Macdonald said.
"What I saw was a frail old man who - for want of a better description - could have been anyone's grandad," he said.
"The lesson I take away from that is 'don't judge a book by its cover'. It's possible to be a nice, old familiar guy and actually have an altogether different past."