This is a famous speech, 30th January 1940 at the Sportspalast by Adolf Hitler and it had a significant impact on South Africa which very few people know about today. It’s Hitler’s take on the South African War (1899-1902) a.k.a. Boer War 2.
The speech is a lash out against Britain for declaring war against Nazi Germany for the invasion of Poland. Hitler in his speech seeks to paint Britain and the warmonger – and not Germany who we paints as Britain’s victim after the Treaty of Versailles – which he equates as Britain’s “Bible” as they have forsaken God and Christianity in favour of greed and materialism (unlike the God fearing Germans who keep a puritan faith).
To view Hitler’s speech on 30th January 1940 at the Sportspalast in full, here’s the YouTube link:
To ground his argument he uses the Boer War, and makes two significant points, he says:
“They (Britain) waged war for gold mines and mastery over diamond mines.”
Then later in the speech Hitler says:
“When has England ever stopped at women and children? After all, this entire blockade warfare is nothing other than a war against women and children just as once was the case in the Boer War, a war on women and children. It was there (South Africa) that the concentration camps were invented, in an English brain this idea was born. We only had to look up the term in the dictionary and later copy it .. with only one difference, England locked up women and children in their camps. Over 20,000 Boer women (and children) died wretchedly at the time. So why would England fight differently today?”
Now, I’ve seen people on social media immediately conclude that this is yet another rant of a mad-man, Hitler was a megalomaniac with more mental issues than you wave a stick at. As for Nazism – that’s pure evil, nothing to do with good Christians, Afrikaners and the Boer War thanks – no words from the madman here, linking Hitler and World War 2 to the Boer War is mischievous and contentious!
But here is a problem, this is 1940, Hitler is at the absolute pinnacle of his power. Nazism is at the absolute zenith of its popularity – millions, literally millions of Europeans are in favour of the “The Third Reich”. People today don’t really understand what the ‘The Third Reich’ was all about … in a modern construct its a early form of the European Union, only the EU head office is not in Brussels its in Berlin – the Third Reich is all about free trade, semi-open borders, freedom of movement and freedom to assimilate and commercially transact in Europe – its a wealth generator. It’s about respect for “cultural boundaries” according to Hitler – but in reality he’s hoodwinking again – behind the scenes it is in fact a “vampire economy” as Germany gears all its production from food to armaments to war and directs all economies to itself and its nefarious ends.
Adolf Hitler giving a speech at the Berlin Sportspalast
You can hear about all of this in the first 10 minutes of Adolf Hitler’s speech – its a utopian concept, and millions across Europe – in Germany, Austria, Fascist Italy, Hungary, Romania, Fascist Spain – even Belgium, Norway and the Netherlands and literally the whole of the south of France (Vichy France) are into this free trade union with Germany (in fact by definitions of the EU they still are – and immediately after the war ended they strove to get back to it only this time with a different leadership construct without the ‘vampire economy’ ideal).
The speech is also music to the ears of South African Neo-Nazi movements on the far right political spectrum in South Africa, the “cultural fronts” of Afrikaner Nationalism – The Ossewabrandwag, the Grey Shirts, the Black Shirts, The Boerenasie Party and the New Order. All have adopted National Socialism in one form or another and all have declared open admiration for Adolf Hitler – and he’s saying the right stuff, Britain is the warmonger, Britain is greedy for Boer gold and diamonds and Britain waged genocide against Boer women and children. A European world leader, an iconoclast in 1940, a national hero to millions said so. This speech streaming into Afrikaner homes across South Africa by Radio Zeesen (the Nazi Germany’s foreign radio service also broadcasting in Afrikaans).
Mein Kampf
And what’s not to like about Hitler in 1940, he’s a firm fan of the Afrikaner Nationalist cause and shares the ‘politics of pain’ of the Boer War with them. Hitler would write of the Boer War in his autobiography Mein Kampf in 1935:
“The Boer War came, like a glow of lightning on the far horizon. Day after day I used to gaze intently at the newspapers … overjoyed to think that I could witness that heroic struggle.”
Hitler would put his money where his mouth is and engage his propaganda ministry to drive his opinion on the Boer War, Joseph Goebbels on 19 April 1940, on Hitler’s birthday speech, would broadcast over Radio Zeesen (and others), and he said:
“Get rid of the Führer or so-called Hitlerism … British plutocracy had tried to persuade the Boers during the South African war of the same thing. Britain was only fighting Krugerism. As is well known, that did not stop them from allowing countless thousands of women and children to starve in English concentration camps”
Dr Erik Holm – the South African Afrikaans broadcaster for Radio Zeesen would recall Hitler’s open admiration for General Christiaan De Wet during the Boer War and his guerrilla tactics in flummoxing the British – from conversations he personally had with the Führer on the Boer War.
Ohm Krüger
Then there is Ohm Krüger (1941), a movie about the Boer War – Joseph Goebbels’ masterpiece. Winner of the Reich Propaganda Ministry’s “Film of the Nation” rating (one of only 4). A propaganda masterpiece which would reach millions all across Europe, complete with a massacre at the end of hundreds of Boer women as they are mowed down execution style by a skirmish line of British tommies (a scene repeated by Nazi Germany against Jews all over Europe).
Directed by Hans Steinhoff and starring Emil Jannings, Lucie Höflich and Werner Hinz. Although the plot has nothing to do with Germany, the story centres around a character which the Germans could admire, “Uncle” Paul Kruger – a man the Propaganda Minister wants to draw parallels to Adolf Hitler, who he deems is also a man with a common touch, from a simple background and one who is thrust into extraordinary circumstances due to international aggression and a conspiracy of greedy ‘foreigners’.
Waffen SS
The Boer War and Paul Kruger are even used by the Nazi propaganda ministry for recruitment into Dutch Corps of the Waffen SS. In fact the Dutch and Belgians in the Waffen SS Regiment Westland and other SS corps and Wehrmacht formations made up over 25,000 members – the backbone of the Waffen SS.
Press Junkets
During a press interview Hermann Göring (the spokesperson on behalf of Adolf Hitler), took a leaf out his Führer’s leader’s book on the Boer War when he deflected a challenge from Sir Nevile Henderson, the British ambassador to Berlin who protested about the German government’s use of concentration camps for the political ‘re-education’ of German’s dissonant non-believers in Nazism and opposition in 1935, and using a ‘press stunt’ Göring dramatically sprung up, walked over to a bookcase and like a thespian actor, grabbed a German encyclopaedia opening it at “Konzentratinslager” (concentration camp) he read out loud:
“First used by the British, in the South African War”.
Although factually incorrect, his action served as a skilful stroke of deflection of which Hermann Göring was a past master.
Nationalism – two separate peas, same pod!
That the Boer War is nuanced was not on Hitler’s agenda, the fact that the British did not “invent” the concentration camp, the fact that diamonds were already on British soil, the fact that the gold mines in the Transvaal were already owned by British and German private consortiums, the fact that the Boers also first brought ‘British’ women and children into the conflict by driving the ‘Uitlander’ population out of Johannesburg, including all the black mine labour, then declaring war and invading British sovereign territories and laying their towns to siege (with British citizens – black and white – in them). All this mattered not a jot to Adolf Hitler.
Hitler in his speech and radio broadcasts is also reinforcing Anglophobia and Republicanism, he is giving re-assurance to the Afrikaner nationalist cause from Berlin. To understand this better, Afrikaner Nationalism starts in earnest with the establishment of the National Party in 1914 – at this stage it has as its central ideology ‘Krugerism’ – Kruger’s political philosophy and the old ZAR’s (Transvaal) Republicanism constitution and race laws (Grondwet) at its centre. An Oligarchy bordering on a Theocracy with no political emancipation for Black Africans whatsoever (the majority), and racially based franchise and citizenship restrictions for white ‘foreigners’ (read “British” and Jews).
By 1940 this party has evolved its ‘Krugerism’ ideology to a ‘Christian Nationalism’ ideology – a political philosophy which B.J. Vorster (a future South African head of state) famously equated with National Socialism (Nazism) in 1942 when he said:
“We stand for Christian Nationalism which is an ally of National Socialism. You can call this anti-democratic principle dictatorship if you wish. In Italy it is called Fascism, in Germany National Socialism and in South Africa, Christian Nationalism”.
Two people in history play a significant role in generating myths around the Boer War, building into it Afrikaner nationalism constructs and identifying trigger areas for the “politics of pain” necessary for a Christian Nationalism or National Socialism ideology to surface and survive. Known as Hegemonic Nationalism this shared type of Nationalism needs an identified “internal” economic enemy and a “external” political enemy – all grounded on a specified nation’s ‘trauma’. In the case of German National Socialism, it’s World War 1, the Treatise of Versailles is the villainous instrument, the economic enemy is “Judaeo-Capital” profiteering off their misery. In the case of Afrikaner Christian Nationalism it’s Boer War 2, the British concentration camps the villainous instrument, the economic enemy is “British-Judaeo Capital” (“Hoggenheimer”) profiteering off their misery.
The first chap to build up all this nationalism is a fellow by the name of Henning Klopper – he is the Chairman of Afrikaner Broederbond in 1940, Klopper survives a Boer War concentration camp at the tender age of 6 and cannot understand why his older brother is isolated with measles, assuming that Britain murdered him and its all a campaign of genocide – Klopper would use this to principally guide Christian Nationalism as the Broederbond’s official ideology.
The other person is Adolf Hitler himself, one cannot under-estimate his influence, it still influences how the Boer War is seen and understood in Europe to this day – an example is the British “invention” of concentration camps – a myth which still holds right across Europe, the British used the concept of concentrating civilians in camps whilst they fought a guerrilla war (like the Spanish and the United States before them) no doubt there, but they certainly did not “invent” the concept (the Spanish did). To dismiss Hitler as irrelevant to the Boer War is to dismiss factual and relevant history and in fact to censor it for no good reason serves only to distort history.
In Conclusion
On linking Nazism, Kruger, Krugerism and Christian Nationalism, I’m afraid the hard truth is that linking Kruger to Hitler was done very effectively by the German propaganda ministry in Europe prior to and during World War 2. The Afrikaner Nationalist ‘right’ in their support of Nazi Germany during WW2 and infusing the ideology of Krugerism with Weimar Eugenics to create Afrikaner Christian Nationalism certainly creates a linear relationship and reinforces the argument on exactly who is culpable for the ideals of Apartheid.
From Boer ‘Refugee Camps’ to Nazi ‘Konzentrationslager’
In some recent social media postings, the old fracas between the Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg’s inflammatory statements about Boer War concentration camps and Pretoria University’s erstwhile Professor Fransjohan Pretorius’ emotionally charged response to it seems to have resurfaced (not that Rees-Mogg cares a jot, or has even responded to Professor Pretorius), a key source of the fracas in both respects – the use of language surrounding concentration camps.
The issue lies around how ‘concentration camps’ are perceived in our common modern consciousness and what the phrase means to us – not only in South Africa but world over. This was adequately demonstrated in the TV interview with Jacob Rees-Mogg, who, whilst defending Winston Churchill’s legacy, was challenged on the issue of British concentration camps in South Africa during the South African War (1899-1902) a.k.a. Boer War 2.
His response, falling back on a typical Etonian education, compared the death rate in Boer War concentration camps to the death rate in Glasgow at the beginning of the 20th Century – i.e., disease, not war, being the major issue. In Reese-Mogg’s political context he is using a ‘deflection’ as one can scalp mortality statistics and disease statistics by demographic segment and by country from 1899 to 1902 in many ways.
Rees-Mogg’s comparison of Glasgow and South African camps is, however, statistically unsound – mortality rates in South Africa during disease epidemics at the time, notably the Influenza Pandemic of 1918 would have been more compelling and comparative argument.
Rees-Mogg’s grip on disease statistics aside, he then went to state that the camps were set up for protecting Boer citizens. This is a partial truth, believe it or not, the camps were initially set up for protecting refugees – but it comes with a double-edged sword when forcibly displaced citizens were added to the genuine refugee population of the camps, hence the controversy, confusion and general indignation across the Afrikaner community.
Then, Rees-Mogg goes on to state that one should not to confuse the Boer concentration camps with Hitler’s extermination camps. This is an absolute truth, Rees-Mogg is correct, the two concepts are completely different. However, the morality issue regarding the outcome of both systems (i.e. the death of civilians in wartime) will forever be argued – especially when one starts to add modern day 21st Century WOKE sensibilities to 20th Century contexts – the idea that war kills, whether by virus or bullet, makes no difference to the dead.
Wading into this fracas to “set Rees-Mogg strait” comes Professor Fransjohan Pretorius from the University of Pretoria, using equally emotionally charged language.
What is however very interesting to this discussion, and more to the subject to this article, is just how loaded the words ‘concentration camp’ are, and it’s seen in Rees-Mogg’s co-discussant on the panel, Grace Blakeley, an academic, journalist and far left leaning political commentator who best describes herself as a ‘socialist’ – and on the Boer War concentration camps she literally loses the plot – dramatically declaring with great dollops of repugnance that “the British invented the Concentration Camp” – a complete untruth, the Spanish invented concentration camps.
Grace Blakeley then loudly proclaims with all the authority in the world “it was systematic murder!” Now, in the 125 odd years since the war not one single case of ‘systematic murder’ in a Boer concentration camp has been proven – not then and not now – and that’s not an opinion it’s a fact, whether some like it or not. Even the old Afrikaner National Party had 40 years in the pound seats with all the resources at hand to try and ‘prove’ a legitimate case of systematic murder which could hold up to legal scrutiny and could not do it. The simple truth is that all deaths recorded in both the ‘Boer’ and the ‘Black’ Concentration camps of the Boer War are disease or health related (more on this later).
She then excitedly declares “hundreds of thousands of people died” in the white Boer concentration camps – implying mass genocide and ethnic cleansing – whilst in truth 28,000 people died in the ‘white’ camps and about 20,000 in the ‘black’ camps (some say more) – all whilst very tragic, it is hardly ‘hundreds of thousands’ that really is hyperbole.
In Jacob Rees-Mogg’s rather measured counter response to Grace Blakeley’s wild claims he reiterates that it is “completely wrong” for her to compare the Boer War 2 concentration camps to that of Adolf Hitler’s extermination camps of World War 2.
So, how is it that Grace Blakeley (a Labour Party strategic think-tank economist with a Masters Degree in African Studies) gets her facts so woefully wrong?
Another glaring problem with her outbursts, and its highly indicative of the issue at hand, Professor Fransjohan Pretorius in his effort to “set Jacob Rees-Mogg strait” on his facts, only takes aim at Rees-Mogg, the net result is a raft of indignation levelled directly at Rees-Mogg by many in South Africa simply because the good Professor said so. What he does not do, is take aim at Grace Blakeley, an expert in her field, for her equally stupid, emotionally charged and factually incorrect statements. This is a BBC ‘Balance’ panel of Tory and Labour after all. Here the good Professor is ‘Tjoepstil’ – nada, nothing, silent … crickets! But why?
The uneasy answer is that he agrees with Blakeley, and by NOT “setting Grace Blakeley strait” in addition to Rees-Mogg, he tacitly approves of her statements. He is ‘weaponising’ the issue, the surge in indignation from South Africa (and even the UK) does not target the ‘Labourite’ in the debate, but rather the ‘Tory’ – nobody cares about what Grace Blakeley said, they all tacitly agree with her in addition.
It exposes a tremendous old Afrikaner Nationalist bias, something Professor Fransjohan Pretorius is often criticised for in his history writing, and one that is currently undermining his credibility. As they say in Afrikaans “Jou onderrok steek erg uit” (your underwear slip is exposed i.e. your hidden bias is plain to see) – and by nailing his bias to the mast in the way he does – calling the British “scandalous” in addition, and politicising the issue by focusing only on the Tory MP, he creates a fracas and feeds a hungry audience seeking to chastise the British for just about every misery on the planet.
So, what’s with all this tacit approval of this Labourite’s assertions that this was a “British invention”, “systematic murder” and a genocide of “hundreds of thousands” … what’s the connection between the South African War (1899-1902) a.k.a. Boer War 2 and World War 2 (1939-1945) in weaponising words like “concentration camps” for political currency?
The answer funnily enough lies in the little Austrian born Bavarian Lance Corporal with megalomaniac tendencies, to which Jacob Rees-Mogg refers and to whom Grace Blakeley infers (more on Hitler later).
The Boer War ‘Concentration Camps’
Let’s take a quick step back, what’s with attributing the term ‘Concentration Camp’ to the Boer War of 1899 and why the confusion?
Many people have little understanding of the concentration camps of the Boer War. In essence there are two separate phases.
Data Reference: The Boer concentration camps of the South African War, 1900-1902 by Elizabeth van Heyningen.
Phase 1: Started the 22nd September 1900 – they are set up under British military administration by Major-Gen J.G. Maxwell and they are initially intended and termed as “refugee camps” for ‘hensopper’ families (Boers who surrendered early – these include men in addition) and ‘joiner’ families (Boer families whose menfolk joined the British forces and were away fighting) – they are all voluntarily seeking shelter and safety from the Guerrilla phase (Bittereinder campaign) of the war which commences from mid 1900 once Pretoria falls to the British. Here these families are, as Rees-Mogg correctly points out, “sheltered and fed” as there is a “war going on”.
The camps are also referred to as “Government Laagers” – however on the 21st December 1900 Lord Kitchener comes up with a different intention for these “Government Laagers” completely, and he decrees:
“the most effective method of limiting the endurance of the guerrillas … The women and children brought in should be divided in two categories, viz.: 1st. Refugees, and the families of Neutrals, non-combatants, and surrendered Burghers. 2nd. Those whose husbands, fathers and sons are on Commando. The preference in accommodation, etc. should of course be given to the first class. With regard to Natives, it is not intended to clear (Native) locations, but only such and their stock as are on Boer farms.”
The camp concept is then opened up from January 1901 to include “bittereinder” families, which are primarily women and children as their menfolk are still “on Commando” (and any other families for that matter), they are involuntarily displaced by Kitchener’s Scorched Earth policies and this curious concept of a refugee camp/displacement camp is expanded somewhat. Similarly, internees in the black camps (which include men and women) are civilians who are also involuntarily displaced. It’s this bit that Rees-Mogg conveniently ignores.
From March 1901 disease related mortality rates in the camps start to climb to unprecedented and alarming levels, and at their peak the mortality rate is driven primarily by a measles epidemic which sweeps the white camps and accounts 30% the overall deaths – as a child’s disease, along with the high infancy mortality rate and child death ratio in the Victorian period, coupled with the difficulty of wartime conditions and camp sanitary standards, by the beginning of 1902 children account for nearly 2/3 of all deaths.
The period March 1901 to November 1901 is 9 months of abject misery and suffering. However, contrary to modern propaganda, although there are many in the camps who are malnourished and conditions are extremely harsh, they are not purposefully starved to death – ‘Starvation and Scurvy’ accounts for only 3% of recorded deaths in the white camps (the records for the black camps are incomplete). There are also no recoded cases of premeditated murder or executions, all deaths are attributed to disease or medically related conditions.
The conditions and plight of the women and children in the camps, against the context of respiratory and waterborne disease, coupled with inadequate medical countermeasures and failures in administration is highlighted by the likes of Emily Hobhouse and later in 1901 by the Fawcett Commission.
Phase 2: From November 1901 as a result of the Commission’s and parliamentary recommendations, Lord Alfred Milner, the Cape Colony High Commissioner is tasked with taking over the ‘white’ camps from the military and bringing them under civilian authority instead (the Black camps remain under military authority).
Image: Boer concentration camp – children carrying water buckets, colourised by Tinus Le Roux – note the nature of the camp – bell tents, demarkation lines and administration blocks.
As a result of Milner’s direct intervention, from November 1901 the mortality rates start to drop off dramatically as his civilian administrators and medical staff start to get on top of the epidemics, food supply and sanitary issues. They also do away with the preferential treatment of ‘hensopper’ versus ‘bittereinder’ families initiated by the military in the white camps.
Milner’s actions and policies are extremely effective, in just 4 months the mortality rates in the white camps drop to acceptable mortality rates for the Victorian era, made even more remarkable considering that these mortality rates are declining and have plateaued-out in the white camps when the Guerrilla Phase and Scorched Earth policy is at its height and at its most destructive (the black camps are a separate matter).
These ‘acceptable’ i.e. normal mortality rates in the white camps continue up to the end of the war on 31 May 1902 and then remain acceptable long after the end of the war as the camps are then used as ‘resettlement’ centres for displaced Boer families until the end of 1902.
As to Milner, it’s also an inconvenient truth, that a man so often vilified by modern white Afrikaners as the devil reincarnate, is the same man responsible for saving thousands of Boer women and children’s lives.
Look out for a future Observation Post on the Boer War camps whilst we tackle this extremely difficult, deeply tragic and often misunderstood concept of Boer War refugee/displacement/re-settlement camps for whites and refugee/displacement/labour camps for blacks (a.k.a concentration camps). This subject is highly nuanced and highly complex and it is certainly not the highly simplistic and emotionally charged outline put forward by Professor Pretorius in his response to Rees-Mogg.
What’s in a word?
The words “concentration camp” comes from two sources really, the Spanish invent the concept and are accredited with the first use of concentration camps starting in 1896 (not the British – the Spanish ‘invent’ the camps three years before Boer War 2), the Spanish call them “campo de concentración” (concentration camps) during The Cuban War of Independence (1895–98) and they ‘concentrated’ Cuban civilians in camps to break their supply lines to marauding Cuban guerrillas.
The second source of the word “concentration camp” ironically comes from the source of the argument between Rees-Mogg and Grace Blakeley, it’s the Germans. It is the ‘German’ version and evolution of concentration camps which would really weaponise the words and bring in concepts of pre-meditated genocide and systematic murder, and oddly enough it does NOT start with Adolf Hitler and his Nazi cabal, it happens well before Hitler’s time and it does NOT start in Europe, as irony goes – it starts in Africa.
Etymology of concentration camps
As to the actual etymology of concentration camps – as said earlier they start with the Spanish during Cuban War of Independence in 1896, the next country to use concentration camps are the Northern Americans (the USA) in the Philippines during the Tagalog Insurgency earlier in 1899 (as with the Spanish – the USA concentrated Filipino civilians in camps to break their supply lines to marauding guerrillas – with the same tragic outcome as the Spanish when disease takes root in the camps).
The third country to use Concentration Camps are the British in late 1900 to forcibly displace Boer ‘Bittereinder’ civilians and cut Boer guerrilla supply lines in addition to providing genuine refugee shelter to ‘Joiners’ and ‘Hensoppers’, with the same disastrous consequences as the Spanish and the Americans as disease takes root in the camps.
As irony goes (and inconvenient truth) it is also the Germans who suggest the use of a concentration camp system during the Boer War, in addition to a Scorched Earth policy, to the British. Kaiser Wilhelm II, as a favour to his blood relative Queen Victoria – after the ‘Black Week’ British defeats to the Boers in late 1899, sets up a strategic planning session with his military elite and compiles a military strategy, not to help the Boers, but to help the British win the war and shared it with them instead. Kaiser Wilhelm II even proudly proclaiming at the end of the Boer War that the British had followed his plan precisely as he had outlined it to them – not Field Marshal Frederick Robert’s plan (see: John C.G. Röhl: The Kaiser and England during the Boer War).
Now, also as inconvenient history and etymology of concentration camps goes, the fourth country to use Concentration Camps is Germany, it’s Kaiser Wilhelm’s military elite who first uses the system for Germany – and it is NOT Adolf Hitler and his Nazi circle.
The 1st Genocide of the 20th Century
The first German concentration camps are initiated just 2 years after the Boer War, they fall part of the Herero Wars (1904-1908) in German South West Africa (now Namibia) and it is infamously officially regarded as the first Genocide of the 20th Century (not the Boer War).
It starts in a similar vein to the Boer War’s Guerrilla Phase, the Herero lead a guerrilla campaign against the Germans to overthrow their colonial yoke. It cumulates in a battle on the 11th August 1904, known as the Battle of Waterberg and the Herero army is defeated, scattered and weakened. In October 1904, General Lothar von Trotha issued orders to kill every male Herero and drive women and children into the desert, denying them access to key water holes. In the desert ‘hundreds of thousands’ of them promptly die of thirst.
The extermination order was finally suspended by the German government at the end of 1904, the surviving tribesmen are then herded as prisoners into Concentration Camps – in German, now termed “Konzentrationslager” (Concentration Laager or ‘camp’), there are 5 concentration camps and over the course of their existence the Hereto tribe is joined with members of the Nama tribe also rebelling against the Germans. In the concentration camps the Hereto and Nama are put to slave labour in support of the German military and German settlers. Again, the camps are horrific, and the inmates starved of rations and water, disease also takes hold.
These camps are fundamentally different to the British Boer War concept, these are slave labour camps, inmates are imprisoned, there are cases of them been shot, starved and worked to death – some are even hanged. There is no real consideration to medical care and as to medical intervention, the Germans also enter the history books as the first to use concentration camp inmates for medical experimentation.
In all, between the war, the order of extermination and resultant starvation and the concentration camps engaging slave labour approximately 80,000 Hereto and Nama die.
Image: Chained prisoners from the Herero and Nama tribes during the 1904-1908 war against Germany.
Modern Historians have drawn a linear connection between Germany’s ‘Konzentrationslager’ of the Namibian conflict in line with the German ‘Konzentrationslager’ of World War 2, the central thread is “pre-meditated Genocide” (systematic murder in effect). The idea of Concentration Camps to exterminate races of people and ‘purify’ the population starts with General Lothar von Trotha in his written statement on the matter;
“I destroy the African tribes with streams of blood … Only following this cleansing can something new emerge, which will remain.”
The simple truth is, when the Nazi party came to power in Germany, this German policy of using concentration camps for ethnic cleansing and not merely for defeating ‘Guerrilla’ warfare by cutting civilian supply lines as the Spanish, Americans and British had used them – and this Genocidal intent for “Konzentrationslager” becomes highly apparent and acceptable in Germany itself.
Enter Herr Hitler
Now we get to the subject of the Austrian born Bavarian Lance Corporal with megalomaniac tendencies, to which Jacob Reece-Mogg refers and to whom Grace Blakeley infers. What is his connection to The Boer War?
If you’re a big fan of Paul Kruger and Boer Republicanism, and believe that our modern interpretations of the Boer War have nothing to Nazism – now is the chance to look away, because this next bit is going to sting somewhat – our modern interpretation of the Boer War has a lot to with Adolf Hitler and Nazism – in fact Hitler and his Nazi inner circle’s interpretation of the Boer war still guides European opinion of it in Europe and it fundamentally reinforced the Afrikaner Nationalist interpretation of it in South Africa – a legacy that continues even to this day.
Huh! How’s that all connected … Kruger, Hitler and Nationalist Afrikaner ideology and identity? Well, it starts with Herr Hitler’s enthusiasm for everything Boer War related and his dramatic and spell-binding speeches.
Hitler would record in his book ‘Mein Kampf’ that in his youth;
“The Boer War came, like a glow of lightning on the far horizon. Day after day I used to gaze intently at the newspapers, and I almost ‘devoured’ the telegrams and communiqués, overjoyed to think that I could witness that heroic struggle, even from so great a distance…”
Then on the 30th January 1940, with Nazi Germany at the height of its influence and popularity, Adolf Hitler gave a speech at the Sportspalast and stated the following on The Boer War;
“They (Britain) waged war for gold mines and mastery over diamond mines”
Hitler then went on in the same speech to say of the Boer War:
“After all, this entire blockade warfare is nothing other than a war against women and children just as once was the case in the Boer War … It was then that the concentration camps were invented. England locked up women and children in these camps. Over 20,000 Boer women (and children) died wretchedly at the time.”
Just about every sentence Hitler is uttering here is either pure falsehood or a half truth – blaming the British for “inventing” the “Konzentrationslager”, painting the camps as “locked” prisons, and implying the British wage genocide and not war.
Image: Adolf Hitler speaking at the Sportspalast
Ah, but it’s just a speech Mr Dickens – you make too much of it! Hitler said many things comes the universal call … nobody took him seriously! Wrong … this gets much bigger than just a speech – this ‘Pro-Boer’ Nationalism morphs into an entire Nazi propaganda campaign – one which is regarded as the most influential and successful Nazi propaganda campaigns ever devised – so bear with me.
What Hitler is doing in his speech is using his intense ‘fame’, peaking in 1940, across Germany, Western Europe and the globe in some respects – remember that Hitler is a world player and influencer from 1935 to 1940, he is literally a “God” in Germany and Austria – what comes out his mouth people listen to and literally millions of people gobble it up as a truth. With this statement he achieves three things:
Firstly, he demonises the British (the only real “enemy” he has left in 1940) as an enemy of the German people, but also – most importantly – an enemy to Europeans at large – and he uses the Boer War for this purpose as it is in living memory for many Europeans, this deflects the focus on Germany as the enemy to Britain as the enemy of Europe. Europe is now also within the 3rd Reich’s scope of influence – which at the time needs to be viewed as sort of early version of the European Economic Union, and in 1940 it was literally at its height.
Nazism and the concept of the 3rd Reich was a lot more popular in Europe in the lead up to World War 2 than most people would believe now. In fact its position as “anti-bolshevist” (anti-Communist) and as “anti-Judeo Capital” found vast popular appeal in right wing and conservative parties across Europe – especially in France, the Netherlands and Belgium, these people would see Nazi Germany as liberators – not invaders – and after Germany invades Western Europe in 1940 they all immediately come into government of their respective countries as collaborating parties to the Nazi cause (the conservative and popular southern based “Vichy French” government is a case in point), and they immediately engaged with the 3rd Reich and it’s regional economic and political policies. Hitler is relying on these supporters to support his view that Britain and not Germany is the true enemy, and the Boer War according to Hitler is his ‘proof positive’ of this.
Secondly, Hitler is reinforcing Anglophobia and Republicanism in South Africa through propaganda and he is giving re-assurance to the Afrikaner nationalist cause from Berlin. To understand this better, Afrikaner Nationalism starts in earnest with the establishment of the National Party in 1914 – at this stage it has as its central ideology ‘Krugerism’ – Kruger’s political philosophy and the old ZAR’s (Transvaal) Republicanism constitution and race laws (Grondwet) at its centre. An Oligarchy bordering on a Theocracy with no political emancipation for Black Africans whatsoever (the majority), and racially based franchise and citizenship restrictions for white ‘foreigners’ (read British) and Jews.
By 1940 this party has evolved its ‘Krugerism’ ideology to a ‘Christian Nationalism’ ideology – a political philosophy which B.J. Vorster (a future South African head of state) famously equated with National Socialism (Nazism) in 1942 when he said:
“We stand for Christian Nationalism which is an ally of National Socialism. You can call this anti-democratic principle dictatorship if you wish. In Italy it is called Fascism, in Germany National Socialism and in South Africa, Christian Nationalism”.
Also bear in mind in 1940, when Hitler gave this speech and referenced the Boer War, the National Party was bound to the hip with openly pro-National Socialism, Pro-Hitler, Pro-Nazi Germany movements in South Africa – domestic political organs like the South African Nazi ‘shirt’ movements – Louis Weichardt’s South African Christian Nationalist Socialist Party or “Greyshirts” and Manie Wessels’ and Chris Havemann’s ‘Democratic Movement’ or “Blackshirts”. Other Nazi ‘shirt’ organisations included the Volksbeweging (People’s Movement) or ‘African Gentile Organisation’ which was established by H.S. Terblanche. Johannes Bruwer also founded the ‘Bond van Nasionale Werkers’ (National Workers Union) which became known as the “Brownshirts”.
Added to this was the Ossewabrandwag led by a Nazi devotee – Dr J.F.J. van Rensburg who transformed the Ossewabrandwag from a predominately Afrikaner cultural movement surrounding the 1938 Great Trek Centenary into a militarised, totalitarian, anti-Semitic, anti-British, anti-Anglo/Judaism capital and pro-Nazi movement operating under the guise of an Afrikaner cultural movement. In addition, the National Party’s Defence Minister, Prime Minister Barry Hertzog’s right-hand man, Oswald Pirow was another Nazi devotee, and it inspired his organisation – the Nazi ‘New Order’ or Nu Order. Added to this is the popular leader of the 1914 Boer Rebellion – Manie Maritz, who has become an Hitler worshiper and rabid antisemite, now leading the ‘anti-democratic’, ‘one party’, ‘national socialist’ – ‘Boerenasie’ (Boer Nation) party.
Images: SANP and Ossewabrandwag
As outlined by Werner Bouwer in his ‘National Socialism and Nazism in South Africa’ – to all these South African Hitler admirers and their followers, Hitler’s assurance that the British committed a Boer ‘Genocide’ is music to their ears. They all attested to the concept that the British had tried to ethnically cleanse South Africa of the Boer nation during the war – and here one of the world’s greatest leaders, a 20th Century iconoclast who agreed with them, and whose not to believe Adolf Hitler? He is a European powerhouse, he’s at the helm of a super-power like Britain and now he’s standing up to Britain and telling it as it is – if it comes from Hitler it’s a truism, the British committed Boer Genocide and stole the Boer’s gold … and it does not end there, Hitler goes further … much further.
Enter Herr Göring
During a press interview Hermann Göring (the spokesperson on behalf of Adolf Hitler), took a leaf out his Führer’s leader’s book on the Boer War when he deflected a challenge from Sir Nevile Henderson, the British ambassador to Berlin who protested about the German government’s use of concentration camps for the political ‘re-education’ of German’s dissonant non-believers in Nazism and opposition in 1935, and using a ‘press stunt’ Göring dramatically sprung up, walked over to a bookcase and like a thespian actor, grabbed a German encyclopedia opening it at “Konzentratinslager” he read out loud,
“First used by the British, in the South African War”.
Although factually incorrect, his action served as a skilful stroke of deflection of which Hermann Göring was a past master.
Image: Adolf Hitler (left) and Hermann Göring (right).
It was not just Hermann Göring in Hitler’s inner circle toeing his Führer’s line on the Boer War, using all the propaganda tools at their disposal, this myth was about to hit the big time as also in the ‘inner circle’ is the Nazi Propaganda Minister and he’s going to really propagate Boer War myths – not only in Germany, but also across the entire Western European continent.
Enter Herr Goebbels
Dr. Joseph Goebbels was a propaganda mastermind, he was a rabid, almost insane follower of his Führer, Adolf Hitler and a devout Nazi.
In printed media, the German propaganda machine would go even further on the back of Hitler’s speeches and use an image of Paul Kruger and the Boer War on propaganda posters to recruit Waffen SS troops in the Netherlands and Belgium, with whom these countries had an affinity for the Boer War. Both these countries proved highly fruitful in recruiting Waffen SS troops as they feared Bolshevism more than Nazism and for these conservative sections of the populations Nazism had an appeal (not to be confused with the SS, the Waffen SS also comprised ‘non-German’ and ‘foreign’ battalions – and later in the war they proved to be ferocious and devout combatants).
Next up in Goebbels’ propaganda arsenal was radio. Joseph Goebbels made this radio address on 19 April 1940, on the eve of Adolph Hitler’s birthday and said:
“On 3 September last year (1939), two hours after English plutocracy declared war on the German Reich, the British Prime Minister Chamberlain gave a radio speech …The point of the speech was that England had no intention of waging war against the German people … get rid of the Führer or so-called Hitlerism …. At the beginning of the war, however, they sang the same old song …. Its melody was dull and worn out. British plutocracy had tried to persuade the Boers during the South African war of the same thing. Britain was only fighting Krugerism. As is well known, that did not stop them from allowing countless thousands of women and children to starve in English concentration camps”.
Image: Joseph Goebbels making a radio address on the eve of Adolph Hitler’s birthday.
The idea that Britain and not Germany is the natural enemy of civilised Europe because of they way they conducted the Boer War and committing pre-meditated genocide in concentration camps is starting to take shape. Goebbels said of radio;
“We want a radio … that is an intermediary between the government and the nation, a radio that also reaches across our borders to give the world a picture of our character, our life, and our work.”
In this respect Radio Zeesen was also part of the arsenal, it was a Nazi German ‘International’ propaganda service radio station broadcasting in short wave in eighteen different foreign languages including Afrikaans, it broadcasted both Hitler’s speeches and Goebbels’ messages – and eagerly picked by devout Afrikaner Nationalists in South Africa.
Also, Goebbels loved, literally adored movies and the moving picture industry – he regarded this industry as his single most powerful propaganda tool, and he made a number of movies that came to define the Nazi legacy:
The Jud Süß – ‘Süss the Jew’ – was released in 1940, and it became an absolute blockbuster – today it is considered one of the most antisemitic films of all time. However, even this movie did not make it to the much-converted Reich Propaganda Ministry’s “Film of the Nation” rating. Only four movies made it to this rare honorary distinction deemed critical viewing for national identity in Nazi Germany – Heimkhehr (1941) – an anti-Polish movie, Der große König (1942) – a movie about Frederick the Great of Prussia, Die Entlassung (1942) – a movie about the dismissal of Otto von Bismarck and finally …… Ohm Krüger (1941), a movie about Paul Kruger and the Boer War.
Say what? Ohm Krüger – Uncle Paul Kruger! What on earth does that have to do with German National identity, all the other movies are about Germany and the Nazi journey in forging their National Socialist identity – that all makes sense, what on earth is a movie about South Africa and the Boer War doing in the mix – what does that possibly have to do with Nazi identity?
Well, as an inconvenient truth goes, it turns out quite a lot – so let’s examine what its purpose was, how its linked to Nazim, its relationship to Concentration Camp propaganda and how it fared – its impact.
Ohm Krüger, the man, the movie and the myth
Directed by Hans Steinhoff and starring Emil Jannings, Lucie Höflich and Werner Hinz. Although the plot has nothing to do with Germany, the story centres around a character which the Germans could admire, “Uncle” Paul Kruger – a man the Propaganda Minister wants to draw parallels to Adolf Hitler, who he deems is also a man with a common touch, from a simple background and one who is thrust into extraordinary circumstances due to international aggression and a conspiracy of greedy ‘foreigners’.
The plot revolves around a dying Kruger’s flashback, now old and blind confined to a sanatorium in Switzerland.
Harping back to an earlier time, Kruger is portrayed as having all the mystique of a great national leader at odds with Great Britain and proclaims, “With England, one cannot come to an understanding”, “We have only one aim, peace and liberty”, “One must be a dreamer to become a ruler.” Much as Adolf Hitler himself is proclaiming.
Lord Kitchener, the British Commander in South Africa is portrayed as a sadist stating things like “No more humanity”, “We must be without mercy”, “We must set up concentration camps” and fight the war “by colonial means.”
The film also centres on Cecil John Rhodes as the principle villain, desirous of Transvaal Gold he creates border disputes (the Jameson Raid) in cohorts with Joseph Chamberlain (the Colonial Secretary), who in turn solicits the support of Queen Victoria and Price Edward, who also become desirous of invasion once they learn of the gold in the region, Queen Victoria’s character states “If there’s gold to be found, then of course it’s our country. We British are the only ones capable of carrying the burdens of wealth without becoming ungodly”.
Kruger then tricks the British into signing a treaty which gives them the gold, but Kruger holds onto the supply of dynamite as a monopoly, which the British then have to buy from him at exorbitant prices.
Cecil Rhodes, having been tricked and outmanoeuvred by the astute Kruger, then tries to buy Paul Kruger’s allegiance offering him a ‘open’ chequebook. However, Kruger is incorruptible and rejects his offer. Rhodes then decides to expose members of Paul Kruger’s Raad (council) who are British spies on his payroll and shows Kruger a list of names. Fearing an internal plot that will over-throw his authority, Kruger decides to declare war against the British or lose his country.
The Boers are initially victorious in the war, but Lord Kitchener then rather cowardly decides to use Boer women and children as human shields and places them in concentration camps in an attempt to demoralise the Boer Army. To this point Kitchener’s character says, “an end to woolly humanitarianism, which means hitting the Boers where they are vulnerable. We must burn their farms, separate wives and children from their men folk, and put them in concentration camps. From today all Boer, without exception, are outlaws. No distinction is to be made between soldiers and civilians.”
Kruger’s own son, Jan Kruger, tries to find his wife in a concentration camp, he’s portrayed as educated at Oxford University and at first harbours pro-British sympathies, but changes his mind completely when a drunken British Sergeant assaults his wife. Jan Kruger is caught and becomes the martyr for the Boer cause when he is hanged by the neck by the British on a hill that looks like Golgotha. “I die for the Fatherland” he cries.
Like a Shakespearean tragedy, a British soldier then shoots Jan Kruger’s wife (their children are already dead) and the interned Boer women respond angrily to the hanging, so the British then form a skirmish line and brutally massacre them – indiscriminately shooting women in the back and mowing them down as they flee the executioner’s hill with Jan Kruger swinging from a lone tree.
The flashback concludes in the Geneva hotel room. In conclusion, the dying and blind Kruger reflects on the defeat of the Boers then prophesies the destruction of Britain by major powers of the world declaring “We were a small people, but great and powerful nations will arise to reduce the British to pulp” which alludes to the German Third Reich, Fascist Italy and later Imperial Japan.
To any historian who knows his salt, this entire plot is pure fable, it really is “Ouma se stories” – absolute ‘Hollywood’. Gold is the ‘Catalyst’ to the war but not the ‘Casus Belli’ of the war – that’s a franchise vote for a disenfranchised majority in the Transvaal. No women and children are ever shot in a Concentration Camp by any British soldier – ever, didn’t happen, there’s also no recorded ‘massacre’ as is portrayed in the movie, didn’t happen either – in fact there is also no recorded hanging in a concentration camp, public or otherwise.
The British are victorious in both phases of the war – not the Boers. Kruger’s’ son is never executed by the British, they also never shoot his wife. Kitchener goes to pains to distinguish between civilians and combatants in proclamation after proclamation. The Jameson raid is to raise ‘white’ disenfranchised miners, into revolt not hordes of native ‘blacks’ into rebellion (as is the movie’s sub plot – with Blacks depicted as ‘treasonous’, ‘primative’ and ‘ignorant’ requiring good white Afrikaner benevolence and oversight). Joseph Chamberlain is exonerated over the Jameson Raid and there is no documented proof he had oversight of the raid whatsoever, Queen Victoria certainly had no knowledge of the Raid.
Queen Victoria is also not a drunk and in fact goes out her way to affirm her wish for independence for the ZAR. Jan Kruger is never a British sympathiser, nor does he go to Oxford, also there is no such thing as list of ZAR ‘Raad’ spies shown to Kruger by Rhodes as the ‘trigger’ to the war – the ‘trigger’ to the war is the Boer invasions of sovereign British territories on the 11th October 1899. The British never seize a gold mine, they nationalise nothing, in fact they don’t even really benefit from the taxes from the mines – the mines remain in private hands, before and after the war.
And the Nazi German propaganda machine didn’t miss a beat in the movie, the evil Cecil Rhodes is played by none other than the Austrian actor Ferdinand Marian, who was better known to German audiences as Süss the Jew in the very popular and disgustingly antisemitic “The Jud Süß” – a better villain to link Judeo-Capitalism with British-Capitalism they could not find.
As antisemitic the undertone is, as racist the overtone is, British missionaries are seen handing out rifles to Black South Africans to rise in rebellion and kill Boers singing ‘God save the Queen’ and onward Christian soldiers. Queen Victoria herself is portrayed as a cunning old harridan addicted to whisky, and a Winston Churchill look alike is portrayed as an overfed commander of a concentration camp for Boer women, who are kept in a condition of starvation and whose plight is depicted, not in bell tents on open veldt, but in an Auschwitz look-alike camp complete with towers and barbed wire containment fences.
On Churchill, the Nazi propaganda machine surrounding the movie also doesn’t miss a beat either. Churchill’s involvement in the Boer War is mercilessly exploited, even accusing him directly of implementing the concentration camp policy (which is pure fabrication) – and the following media release accompanies the film:
“The same Churchill who in South Africa saw his ideas about exterminating the Boers followed throughout, as the English rulers, voicing polished humanitarian slogans, while driven by mere greed, unleashed the most contemptible actions on a people under attack. The same Churchill is now Great Britain’s prime minister.”
Winston Churchill is an imbedded journalist and later a combatant and has nothing to do with concentration camps, in fact he never laid eyes on a Boer one – he returns to Great Britain at the end of the 1st Phase (Conventional war phase) of the war before the camp system is initiated.
British concentration camps were portrayed in the film as intentionally inhumane. Meanwhile, as irony goes, at the same time major expansion of the Nazi German system of concentration camps is taking place, designed for actual ethnic cleansing, slave labour and systematic murder and it was being enthusiastically implemented by those very same Nazi.
As extreme irony goes, the set of the British concentration camp for Ohm Krüger was actually but a few miles from a real Nazi Concentration Camp at Sachsenhausen, an interesting case of art imitating life. Out of 200,000 inmates in the real camp, half died, about 100,000 people from 1936 to 1945 – twice as many than the entire Boer War, and that is only ONE of the German concentration camps – theirs is murder on an industrial level.
Finally, as the film’s prediction goes – the world powers do not rise up to crush Britain, in fact they rise up and crush Germany. But to the power of propaganda, there are still people in South Africa and Europe who would take all of Ohm Krüger as an absolute truism – even to this day.
To see the full movie of Ohm Krüger – with English sub titles, here is the YouTube link:
What’s the outcome, how does this movie do?
It’s a massive success, a propagandistic blockbuster, it’s by far the most expensive film produced in Nazi Germany up to that time with a 5.5 million Reich Marks budget and a massive film lot outside Berlin that resembles a mini-South Africa with 100 Longhorn cattle and African huts. Ohm Krüger offers plenty of entertainment – ‘wild west’ frontier grit alongside its vivid battle scenes, as if John Ford’s Monument Valley had been transposed onto South Africa’s Transvaal region.
It is first screened on 4th April 1941 in Germany, and it’s rolled out across Europe – it opens in Italy in September 1941, France on the 1st October 1941, Hungary on the 19th December 1941, Finland on the 15th March 1942 and it even makes it to Japan on the 2nd September 1943. It makes it way right across Europe – Bulgaria, Austria, Netherlands, Belgium etc.
Both locally and internationally, it is received to rapturous applause. It is pitched as the European cinema equivalent to ‘Gone with the wind’ and it’s a winner – literally, not only the first movie to win the converted ‘Film of the Nation’ and the award for ‘Film of Special Value in terms of state policy and art’, but importantly – it also wins the Mussolini Cup for the Best Foreign Film at the 1941 Venice Film Festival.
The movie is so popular, the Nazi propaganda machine even decided to re-release it in 1944. In the end – millions of people see it, today it is regarded as Nazi propaganda master stroke. However, as irony goes the Nazi propaganda machine ‘Bans’ the movie in 1945, not because it’s a great yarn, entertaining and an outstanding propaganda piece – but because they are concerned that the graphic massacre of Boer women at the end of the movie would upset the female population of Germany concerned about their treatment at the hands of the counter-attacking and invading Soviet Union and other Allied armies at the end of the war.
How does this movie stack up to our modern understanding of Concentration Camps, what does it do to link Nazi Concentration camps to Boer Concentration Camps? Let’s look at how the international critics review this movie in relation to this question.
Erwin Leiser in his 1974 work Nazi Cinema said;
“Ohm Kruger is meant to show that Britain is the brutal enemy of any kind of order or civilization … when England realizes that even with cannon and rifles she cannot crush the little nation whose heroic struggle is jubilantly acclaimed by the whole world, she (England) decides to commit one of the most obscene acts in the history of the world … the technique makes it possible to reveal that concentration camps were no German invention: the peculiar logic of Gobbels thereby justifies the Nazi camps.”
And Roger Manvell in his study of Films and the Second World War concludes;
“The shattering conclusion to the movie, the concentration camp massacre, provokes and disturbs even today, not only due to its undeniable artistry, but more because of how it invites comparison with the still greater horrors we associate with Nazi Germany, atrocities this movie was designed to rationalize and exonerate.”
Bottom line, the movies broad appeal, the unrelenting publicity and propaganda machine surrounding it, its popular acceptance in Europe and extensive distribution cements the idea throughout Europe that the Boer Concentration Camps are a British invention and that they are intended to ethnically cleanse the Boer nation. By demonising the British in this way, the German propaganda machine very successfully deflects and sanitisers their own Nazi ‘Extermination Camp’ Concentration Camps which are indeed intended to ethnically cleanse Europe of Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, asylum patients and even Freemasons.
The Nazi German death rate in their concentration camp, POW camp and extermination camp systems is on an industrial scale, 18.5 million die in total, a figure so high that it is almost impossible to comprehend – the idea that concentration camps are purposefully engineered and designed to eliminate hundreds of thousands of people at a time, the 6 Nazi extermination camps in Poland alone kill over 3 million people.
In Conclusion
The net result of it, to this day, throughout Europe (as this is all still in living memory within one generation to many) the British are forever tarnished with the idea that they “invented the concentration camp” and they committed “systematic murder” and genocide to “hundreds of thousands” of Boers as the poorly misguided and very misinformed Grace Blakeley blurts out in her response to Jacob Rees-Mogg.
Now, Grace Blakeley is not a known South African historical commentator, in fact it’s doubtful she’s ever read a proper historic treatise on the Boer War, the conversation she is having with Jacob Rees-Mogg is on Winston Churchill’s legacy, the Boer War is mentioned in passing. What she states as ‘facts’ on the Boer War are nothing more than perceptions, and in Europe the perceptions on the Boer War were driven by the both Nazi propaganda machine and the concept of the German Konzentrationslager.
Afrikaner Nationalism from 1948 and their Christian Nationalist propaganda on the Boer War is highly isolated, it exists in South Africa only, it does not make it onto a European platform in any significant way whatsoever – as far as the British education establishment are concerned the official history of the Boer War is Leo Amery’s 7 volumes titled ‘The Times History of the war in South Africa’ – end of story, and it says nothing about “systematic murder”, ethnic cleansing or the British “inventing the concentration camp”, it’s this history that Etonian teachers impart to the likes of Jacob Rees-Mogg.
Grace Blakeley has never been exposed to an Afrikaner Christian Nationalist education and it’s doubtful she’s even read Leo Amery – she would not know what a South African ‘Boer’ is if one jumped up and bit her on the bum. It’s not accredited history that is guiding Grace Blakeley, she has no clue that the Spanish and Americans used concentrations camps before the British. The Spanish who actually invented the concentration camp and whose mortality rate on Cuban civilians far exceed that of the Boer camps get away with it scot-free, even to this day, such is the power of this propaganda.
Nor has Grace Blakeley any idea of Boer mortality during the war. Her view is sheer perception based on the output of an extensive and very effective Nazi German propaganda campaign in Europe, coupled with the fact that Germany is singularly responsible for linking concentration camps to systematic murder and pre-meditated genocide, which it invented (not the British) as early as 1904, and by 1945 had perfected the killing machine on an unpredicted level. Hence the reason Jacob Rees-Mogg has to remind her that she’s promoting a Nazi construct and intensionally confusing the matter.
The erstwhile Professor Fransjohan Pretorius in tacitly harbouring the same sentiment and directly supporting Grace Blakeley as both of them are now in unison challenging Jacob Reese-Mogg, and this desire to morally “set him strait” is testament to the power of the propaganda driving both of them. In pitching his rebuttal to Rees-Mogg and approaching the media in the way Professor Fransjohan Pretorius does, he is allowing everyone else, now armed with confirmation bias, to challenge Jacob Rees-Mogg’s misunderstandings only and not challenge the Nazi inspired mistruths peddled by Grace Blakeley.
On linking Nazism, Kruger, Krugerism and Christian Nationalism, I’m afraid the hard truth is that linking Kruger to Hitler was done very effectively by the German propaganda ministry in Europe prior to and during World War 2. The Afrikaner Nationalist ‘right’ in their support of Nazi Germany during WW2 and infusing the edicts of Krugerism with Weimar Eugenics to create Apartheid after World War 2 certainly creates a linear relationship and reinforces the argument somewhat.
Written and Researched by Peter Dickens
References:
National Socialism and Nazism in South Africa: The case of L.T. Weichardt and his Greyshirt movements, 1933-1946 By Werner Bouwer
Ohm Kruger/Uncle Kruger: The notorious of Nazi Germany’s Anti-British Statements. By Blaine Taylor
Concentration camps in the South African War? Here are the real facts! by Professor Fransjohan Pretorius
BBC On-Line: Jacob Rees-Mogg comments on concentration camps
IMDb On-Line: Ohm Krüger
Ohm Krüger: The Genesis of a Nazi Propaganda Film By Christian W. Hallstein
Films and the Second World War (1974) by Roger Manvell
Morbidity and Mortality in the Concentration Camps of the South African War, 1899-1902 (2007) by Dr Iain R. Smith (History, Warwick University) and Dr Elizabeth van Heyningen (University of Cape Town) 2007.
Nazi Cinema (1974) by Erwin Leiser
The Kaiser and England during the Boer War by John C.G. Röhl
South African Scientific Journal “The Boer concentration camps of the South African War, 1900-1902” By Elizabeth van Heyningen – Department of Historical Studies, University of Cape Town, South Africa
The Rise of the South African Reich. By Brian Bunting – published in 1964.
Thanks to JennyB Colourising and Tinus Le Roux for the colourised images.
I’ve recently looked at the ideology of Afrikanerdom, after taking some criticism for ‘bashing’ a small but very vocal sect of anti-Smuts Afrikaners (some even in my own family). I’ve contested that they do not epitomise Afrikanerdom but seem to think they do. It’s a complex subject, as ‘Afrikanerdom’ is as white as it is black, but bear with me.
When it comes to the ‘Boer War’ (The South African War 1899-1902), there are two very hotly debated areas, both ‘shape’ Afrikanerdom – certainly in the white sense of it. The first is the idea of the “Bitter-Einder” (the Bitter Enders), the group of Afrikaners who painfully decided to continue the war on ‘guerrilla principles’ after the ‘conventional phase’ ended and Pretoria fell. Some historians point to these guerrillas as having brought the catastrophe of the concentration camps and the scorched earth farm buring policy on themselves – they’re to blame as the British had little choice. Little is really understood as to ‘why’ they continued the fight, as the fight was clearly lost – sheer madness the only conclusion. But, it’s in the ‘why’ that we find Afrikanerdom.
Jan Smuts during ABW2 as a Boer General with his horse
The second hotly debated subject is Jan Smuts, his impact to South African politics and ‘Afrikaner’ identity spans 6 decades, no other ‘Afrikaner’ can hold a flame to it. His detractors fall on old National Party propaganda and political smearing and old family folklore to paint him as ‘turning British’ for reconciling the warring British and Boer races (and by some strange leap in logic some also point to him as responsible for the concentration camps). Little time is given to actually reading what Smuts said or wrote and a strange almost belligerent hatred overrides all reason.
Sir Winston Churchill said of Smuts that “He fought for his own country; he thought for the whole world.” by that he meant Smuts remained an Afrikaner patriot for one but also philosophised for all mankind. Churchill’s long time admiration for Smuts also lay in his abilities as one of the few successful Bitter-Einder Boer Generals, not in a need for him to identify as somehow British. Smuts’ context of Afrikanerdom is found in his justification for being a Bitter-Einder’ and there is nothing better to understand his mind and to understand the ground zero of 20th century ‘Afrikanerdom’ and the modern white Afrikaner psyche than to read what Smuts himself puts down.
What follows are some extracts .. they are well worth the read, and anyone who walks away from reading this still thinks that Jan Smuts is somehow ‘English’ needs their brain replaced – for they have never taken the time to read what the man actually wrote. Here’s an Afrikaner at heart – simple.
Image: General Jan Smuts (seated centre) with his Commando, colourised by Tinus Le Roux
This is a letter, written to W.T. Stead by Jan by Smuts whilst in the field with his commando at Vanrhynsdorp on 4 January 1902 (Source: Published from his private papers by Hancock and van der Poel) – it covers some excerpts as the full content is too long to publish here, but they more than adequately make the point.
“I know the difficulty of the modern man of action and intelligence, accustomed as he is to ideas of natural laws and physical or economical explanations of all phenomena, to understand or appreciate the tremendous force of faith in the affairs of the world, but unless he overcomes this difficulty the present war will, in all essential respects, remain for him an insoluble mystery. A mustard seed of real faith avails more in the affairs of the world than mountains of might or brute force – and only he who thoroughly understands this will be able to appreciate the true inwardness of the present struggle.
The condition of the two South African Republics in very truth baffles description. Not William the Conquerer himself created a more complete desert between the Tyne and the Humber in the eleventh century than Lord Kitchener has created in the twentieth. All living animals – horses, cattle, sheep, pigs, fowls, even dogs, have been killed, and generally in a manner too shocking to relate. More than once I set my commandos to kill the poor brutes which had been maimed by the British soldiery and then left by them to slow death and starvation; even four or five days after atrocities had been committed one would find these poor dumb brutes writhing in pain, and struggling and bleating for water and food among the dead. I have seen strong and brave men with tears in their eyes – totally overcome by the sight of this horrible suffering.
To me the saddest sight in this war has been the sufferings which women and children have endured to escape capture by the British columns. Like wild beasts they have been everywhere hunted out with Lee-Metford and Maxim and consigned to the death-in-life of the camps. For these reasons the brave Boer women have endured hardships and undergone privations such as one only reads of in the ancient records of Christian martyrdom. ‘They were tempted, were slain with the sword; they wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins; being destitute, afflicted, tormented (of whom the world was not worthy:) they wandered in deserts, and in mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth’. (Hebrews XI: 37,38).
I do not ask what rules of international law sanction this rapine and ruin. I only state it as a fact – as a fact which I have seen with my own eyes and which is beyond all manner or doubt or dispute: quaeque ipse vidi et quorum pars magna fui. No wonder that for many burghers the state of their desolate country has become a sight too painful to bear; no wonder they prefer to continue the war beyond its borders.
The British military authorities adopted a policy of devastation and of treating non-combatant women and children as prisoners of war. They expected the Boers to quail before the absolute destruction of their property and the sufferings of their women and children. The said military authorities , however, made one fatal error in their calculations-an error which they will continue to make to the very end of the war. They had learnt in the case of all the tribes that with which they had come in contact during recent generations that one big defeat, followed by the burning of their chief town or kraal and the raiding of their cattle , was sufficient to utterly cow and prostrate them. And so they expected from the despised Boer. But the policy of spoliation and the infliction of suffering on non-combatants – so far from producing the expected result – had exactly the opposite effect. It raised the spirit of the Boers; it sent the iron deeper into the soul; that the God of Battles might not be with them yet the Spirit that dies not quench the smoking flax nor bruise the broken reed was with them to strengthen and sustain.
A second important consequence of this policy of spoliation has been the elimination from the Boer ranks of all those elements which are useless from a military point of view. The ordeal has been too terrible for the weak and the faint. First of all went the irresponsible braggarts who had clamoured for war and had called the peacemakers cowards and traitors. The man who expected to gain something from continuing in the field; the man who preferred to protect his property; the man who had lost all hope of a successful issue followed. There remain the stout-hearted and able-bodied – the men of physical courage, the men of moral endurance, whom self-respect and honour keep true to their country’s cause; the men of invincible hope in the future and child-like faith in God – truly a select band, the like of whom, I fondly think, is not to be found in the wide world today.
And these are the men whom Mr. Chamberlain, standing in the House of Commons, does not shrink from classifying as brigands and ruffians. These are the men against whom the High Commissioner (Milner) has the infantile audacity to hurl his proclamation of permanent banishment and universal confiscation.
‘How long is this war still going to last’ is the question asked by almost every Englishman who meets a Boer. The English are evidently weary and tired to death of the whole business. And no wonder, for their feeling of racial revenge must be pretty well satiated after the ruin and sorrows in which the Boers have been involved. For every thinking Briton, even the most hostile to the Boers, must feel in his heart of hearts, that this sorry business has added no glory and never will add any glory to the Empire – no military glory, for the odds were too uneven; the methods resorted to by the British too shocking to the humaner feelings of mankind, and the unique tenacity of the Boers has finally come to overshadow every other feature of war; no political glory, because the issue had become one of their freedom or subjugation. And mankind reserves its lasting honour for, and award its crown of glory only to, those who have striven for the highest ideals of humanity; who have made deathless sacrifices for liberty or justice or religion; and who by heroic self-sacrifice for the highest ends have raised and ennobled the ethical consciousness of mankind. But this much is certain, that the issue of glory is against the British Empire, and that the world has only seen another proof of universal moral law that they who deliberately seek glory shall not find it.
What are the principal moral forces operative within the area of the war today? I ask the question here because only he who thoroughly appreciates their character will be able to understand the factors on which the continuance and issue of the present war depend. The flower of the Boer army …. and who to a large extent still continue in the field today, were actuated by a vaguer but profounder aspiration …. purified and deepened a hundredfold by loss and suffering and sorrow during the course of the war, remains today the most vital and vitalizing force in the Boer mind, and must be carefully studied by all who wish to understand the true conditions of the continuance and issue of the present war.
The Boers, as a people, have an extraordinary faith in God. Theirs is not a God of the mechanical type …. Theirs is a God …. rather of the type of the Hebrew prophets – …; who from and with the passions and aspirations, the good and evil deeds of men, shapes the divine policy, moulding sin and sorrow, deeds of honour and of shame, like some potter at the wheel, into the divine ends of His world-government. The barbarous measures of the enemy, which bring a blush of shame to the fair face of Christian civilization, were expected by them, for had not Scripture to be fulfilled? All these things, and even worse, were foretold by the prophets, and with patience and resignation they are prepared to bear the yoke which not so much the enemy as God has laid on them; the inhuman proclamations of Lords Kitchener and Milner were read and pondered by them in the sacred writings before they were issued in SA, and the remarkable resemblance in the procedure of the Nebuchadnezzar of prophecy and the Kitchener of our day is to them only another confirmation of their belief that this is God’s work and that the final issue will also be His. …. this remarkable faith in God and in their destiny has only become stronger; broken and bleeding they have clung all the more passionately to the great hope, praying indeed that the cup of agony might be taken away from them, but never dashing it down in impatience or despair. For the Boers feel that they are not enduring themselves, and inflicting on their loved ones, mere useless suffering, as Lord Kitchener is so fond of reminding them, but that victory will yet be theirs, and the seed now sown in sorrow and tears will be reaped by posterity as a glorious harvest in the land that is far away…
This view, which will seem strange and intelligible to matter-of-fact politicians, is today held by the bulk of the Boers in the field. The Boers fight now in a spirit akin to that of the early Christian martyrs; they listen to reports of defeat and rapine, of the suffering of their wives and children in the prison camps, with that calm resignation which springs from the assurance that such is God’s will”.
Images: Lord Kitchener’s policy of Scotched Earth, Boer farmsteads been destroyed by British and Imperial Troops.
Images: British Boer War period concentration camps, colourised by Jenny B
Researched by Peter Dickens
With much thanks to ‘Boer War Crank’ on-line. Master images of a young Jan Smuts and concentration camp children – colourised thanks to Tinus Le Roux.
It’s an almost ingrained idea in South Africa that ‘concentration camps’ were invented by the British during the 2nd Anglo Boer War (1899 – 1902) and there is an equally ingrained idea in some circles in South Africa which holds that the Nazi holocaust styled concentration camp simply followed on the lead set by the British in South Africa.
However, both of these ingrained concepts are untrue – they are myths.
This is not to say the concentration camps did not happen, they did. It’s also not to say the concentration camp system in South Africa visited death to a civilian population on an unacceptably large and traumatic scale – they did. It’s also not to ‘Boer Bash’ by way of any sort of ‘deniability’, the Boer nation suffered greatly under the concentration camp policy – no doubt about that at all.
It is to say that historic perspective and facts need to come to the fore to debunk myths and in the ‘concentration camps’ legacy in South Africa there are certainly a couple of myths – and they arose because of political expediency and the cognitive bias generated by the National party’s ‘Christian Nationalism’ education policy over five very long decades – so they are strongly rooted and tough to challenge.
There are three basic myths at play surrounding the 2nd Anglo Boer War (1899 – 1902) concentration camps.
That Concentration Camps first came into existence during the 2nd Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902) and the British invented them.
That Hitler modelled the Nazi concentration camp system on the British system used in the 2nd Anglo-Boer War.
That it was the Boer women and children in South Africa who experienced the indignity and tragedy of a concentration camp system, with no thanks to the British.
That’s a lot to take in for someone with an ingrained belief, so let’s start with each of these myths:
Did the British invent the ‘Concentration Camp’?
The straight answer is; No.
The actual term ‘concentration camp’ was invented by the Spanish (as campo de concentración or campo de reconcentración) in 1896 – three years before the 2nd Anglo-Boer War (1899 – 1904) started. It originated during The Cuban War of Independence (Guerra de Independencia cubana, 1895–98) was the last of three liberation wars that Cuba fought against Spain.
A rebellion had broken out in Cuba, then a Spanish colony in 1895. The rebels, outnumbered by Spanish government troops, turned to guerrilla warfare (and here another myth which says the Boer’s invented ‘guerrilla warfare’ is debunked).
Colon Cemetery, Havana, Cuba, 1898
In response to guerilla warfare the Spanish commander Valeriano Weyler ordered the civilians of Cuba to be ‘concentrated’ in concentration camps under guard so they could not provide the rebels with food, supplies or new recruits.
Initial rebel military actions against the Spanish had been very successful and it forced Spain to re-think how to conduct the war. The first thing they did was replace their commander on the ground in Cuba, Arsenio Martinez Campos, who had for all intents and purposes failed to pacify the Cuban rebellion. The Conservative Spanish government of Antonio Canovas del Castillo sent Valeriano Weyler out to Cuba to replace him. This change in command met the approval of most Spaniards back home in Spain, who thought him the proper man to crush the rebellion.
Valeriano Weyler reacted to the rebels’ guerilla tactics successes by introducing terror methods: periodic executions, mass exile of residents, forced concentration of civilians in certain cities or areas and the destruction of their farms and crops. Weyler’s methods reached their height on October 21, 1896, when he ordered all countryside residents and their livestock to gather within eight days in various fortified areas and towns occupied by his troops.
Hundreds of thousands of people had to leave their homes and were subjected to appalling and inhumane conditions in the crowded towns and cities.
Civilians interned into these concentration camps were in a perilous situation as poor sanitation quickly lead to deadly disease and combined with the lack of food an estimated 25 to 30 percent of the civilian population subjected to these concentration camps died during the three years of warfare.
Patients in San Carlo Hospital, Matanzas, in the last stages of starvation
In the end 225,000 ‘non combatant’ Cuban civilians died in just 18 months between 1896 and 1897. That is some number, nearly a quarter of a million Cubans, and its a stain of blood which sits with modern Spain and one for which there has been little by way of reparation or apologies.
It also means Spain holds the rather dishonourable mantle of inventing the concentration camp system and even the term itself, not the British.
Then was South Africa the 2nd place where Concentration Camps were used?
The straight answer is again – No.
The second country to operate concentration camps was the United States of America in September 1899 in the Philippines. At this point in the historic time-line the British had not yet engaged the ‘Concentration Camp’ system in its full-blown manifestation in South Africa (which started in earnest at the beginning of 1901).
By 1899, the United States of America had recently acquired the Philippines from Spain, only to be confronted by a rebellion by Filipinos who wanted independence rather than American rule. Known as the Philippine–American War or the Tagalog Insurgency 1899 – 1902 (same timing as the 2nd Anglo-Boer war more or less).
The Filipinos turned to guerrilla warfare and in response the Americans copied the Spanish solution used in Cuba earlier.
In September 1899, American military strategy shifted to suppression of the resistance, in coordination with the future president, William Howard Taft, then the U.S. civil administrator of the islands changed course. Tactics now became focused on the control of key areas with ‘Internment’ and ‘segregation’ of the civilian population in “zones of protection” from the guerrilla population which became defined as ‘concentration camps’.
Government issuing rice to civilians in a Bauan concentration camp
Concentration camps were set up on the islands of Marinduque and Mindanao, and civilians from rebel-sympathising districts were forced to reside there. As in Cuba, the death rate in these concentration camps from disease was horrendous.
These “reconcentrados,” or concentration camps, were crowded and filled with disease; as the frustrations of guerrilla warfare grew, many U.S. fighters resorted to brutal retaliatory measures, one U.S. camp commandant referred to the concentration camps as the “suburbs of hell.”
The U.S. State Department estimates that around 20,000 Filipino and 4,000 U.S. combatants died in the fighting in the Philippines, and as many as 200,000 Filipino civilians died as a result of violence, famine and disease, with most losses attributable to cholera. Stanley Karnow observers that the American treatment of Filipino citizens “as cruel as any conflict in the annals of imperialism.”
The concentration camps policy was highly effective to the American War effort , As historian John M. Gates noted, “the policy kept the guerillas off-balance, short of supplies and in continuous flight from the U.S. army, As a result many guerrilla bands, suffering from sickness, hunger and decreasing popular support, lost their will to fight.” America had won, but at what cost?
A concentration camp in Tanauan, Batangas
As with the Spanish in Cuba, the United States of America generally also does not view their use of concentration camps as a crime against humanity, but rather as an extreme measure to stop ‘guerrilla warfare’ by cutting off the civilian support of the guerrilla fighters.
So, no apology from the United States for their status as the second country to use a concentration camp system, it also is not the last time they would use a ‘concentration camp’ system – they would use it again during the Vietnam War (more of that later).
Then was South Africa the 3rd place where Concentration Camps were used?
This time, sadly – the straight answer is – Yes.
The third country to set up concentration camps was Britain, but they did not initially call them concentration camps, they called them ‘Government Laagers” and ‘Refugee Camps’.
The reasons were similar to that of Spain in Cuba and the USA in the Philippines; Britain was at war with the two Boer Republics of South Africa, which had turned to guerrilla warfare once their conventional field armies were defeated. This stage is known as ‘Stage 3’ – The Guerrilla Phase of the South African War 1899-1902.
Stage 1 (Boer Success) and Stage 2 (British Response) end the ‘Conventional Phase’ of the war in late 1900 with the capture of Pretoria – Stage 3 – the Guerrilla Phase starts in earnest from the start of 1901 and lasts a year and a half ending May 1902.
The decision taken by the British was to hasten the end of the Guerrilla Phase, in essence the policy was to concentrate civilians located in conflict zones into government run camps (concentration camps) and destroy stock, crops, implements and farm buildings so the Boer guerrilla forces would run out of supplies and their support network would be crushed. As with the two previous situations perpetuated by Spain and the USA before, these British camps soon became rife with disease and thousands of people died, mostly from measles, pneumonia, typhoid and dysentery.
Why do the British refer to their ‘Concentration Camps’ as ‘Refugee Camps’ when they are clearly not?
The reason for the British sticking to the use of the term ‘Refugee Camps’ instead of ‘Concentration Camps’ is because these camps in South Africa actually started out as ‘refugee camps’: The first two of these camps (refugee camps) were established by the British to house the families of burghers who had surrendered voluntarily.
On the 22nd September 1900, Major-Gen J.G. Maxwell signalled that “… camps for burghers who voluntarily surrender are being formed at Pretoria and Bloemfontein.” As result of this military notice the first two ‘refugee’ camps were indeed established at Pretoria and Bloemfontein respectively.
Imperial War Museum caption “A refugee Boer family, the wife in traditional black and white costume, surrounded by their possessions, at a railway station”.
The aim outlined by the British for these two refugee camps was supposedly to protect those families of Boers who had surrendered voluntarily. A proclamation was even issued by Lord Kitchener by 20th December 1900 which states that all burghers surrendering voluntarily, will be allowed to live with their families in ‘Government Laagers’ until the end of the war and their stock and property will be respected and paid for.
But (and its a big BUT), by 21st December 1900 (the very next day) Lord Kitchener comes up with a different intention completely, and this one does not the safe-keeping of people, property and stock in mind. In a stated memorandum to general officers Lord Kitchener outlined the advantages of interning all women, children and men unfit for military services, also Blacks living on Boer farms, as this will be;
“the most effective method of limiting the endurance of the guerrillas … The women and children brought in should be divided in two categories, viz.: 1st. Refugees, and the families of Neutrals, non-combatants, and surrendered Burghers. 2nd. Those whose husbands, fathers and sons are on Commando. The preference in accommodation, etc. should of course be given to the first class. With regard to Natives, it is not intended to clear (Native) locations, but only such and their stock as are on Boer farms.”.
A group of Boer children with a native African woman at a ‘refugee’ camp. Imperial War Museum image.
With that memorandum now writ, effectively by January 1901, the camps stopped becoming ‘Refugee Camps’ and became ‘Concentration Camps’ governed by forced removal, in effect – displacement camps of civilians forcibly removed from their farmsteads.
The British, for the sake of politically sanitizing this policy from a public opinion perspective, continued to call these camps as ‘Refugee Camps’ and in many circles in the United Kingdom they are still referred as such even today, a good example of this is the Imperial War Museum – when they any publish picture showing Boer families being rounded up on their way to a concentration camp they are almost always (and incorrectly) tagged as ‘refugees’ in the caption.
So how is it that Nazi German Concentration Camps are linked to the ‘British’ Concentration Camps?
The answer is simply, because of Hermann Göring.
During a press interview Hermann Goring (the then spokesperson on behalf of Adolph Hitler), served to deflect a challenge from a British ambassador who protested about the Nazi concentration camps, and by using a ‘press stunt’ when he dramatically sprung up and quoted from a reference book that the British invented them in the first place (when in fact this is factually incorrect) and it just served as a skillful stroke of political deflection of which Hermann Göring was a past master.
Why a deflection? Because the German ‘Concentration Camps’ were fundamentally different from those initiated by the Spanish, and then the Americans and finally the British, their camps were all tactical responses to guerrilla warfare, whereas the Nazi ‘concentration camps’ started out for camps for political dissent in opposition to National Socialism (Nazism) as ‘re-education’ camps, as a central theme to them.
Socialist systems driven on nationalist lines, whether German Nazi or Russian/Chinese Communism all have in them this phenomenon to re-educate (and if necessary exterminate) anyone in their society not conforming to their idea of the ‘social hive’ or ‘community’. The Soviet system of ‘Gulag’ re-education camps are no different to the early German Nazi concentration camps in their purpose (and as deadly).
German Nazi Concentration Camp for Political Prisioners
That the German ‘concentration camps’ later evolved into systematic pre-meditated murder with the idea of exterminating entire populations of specific races to solve an ideological problem, and it is an entirely different objective to those objectives behind the British concentration camps in South Africa.
In Nazi Germany and their occupied countries the ‘concentration camp’ evolved into the ‘extermination camp’ for people following the Jewish faith – primarily but not exclusive to Jews – the system also included other people not deemed Aryan enough within the confines of Nazi philosophy or conformist enough to their idea of socialism – gypsies (travellers), free-masons, homosexuals, communists and even the mentally ill all found themselves on the wrong side of Nazism.
Auschwitz concentration camp for the extermination of Jews and other Nazi undesirables.
But, for some reason, certainly in some circles in South Africa, Hermann Göring’s master class in deflecting a press junket is held up as Gospel, now, in the hindsight of history who would really believe anything Hermann Göring came up with?
What’s the big difference between a Nazi concentration camp and a British concentration camp?
The fundamental differences between a Nazi concentration camp (re-education/extermination camp) and a British concentration camp (forced removal/refugee camp) are massive.
Himmler’s report to Hitler detailing the executions of civilian prisoners – especially Jews.
For starters, unlike Nazi Germany, there is no historical document or any supporting record that the British embarked on the extermination of the Boer nation using systematic pre-meditated murder. Not one document or letter whatsoever, whereas in the case of Nazi extermination camps there is an entire undeniable record of premeditated murder.
Secondly, the concentration camps in South Africa were isolated and relatively unguarded, mostly unfenced and they were relatively porous affairs where people came in and out and aid workers came in and out – very different to the Nazi German idea of lining people up on a train platform under armed escort without a suitable aid worker in sight and marching them straight into gas chambers and/or mass graves in their tens of thousands.
The fundamental difference however is in the core thinking behind the military objective requiring concentration camps, for the British the military objective was to bring a quick end to a guerrilla campaign initiated in the final phase of the South African war, They did this by rounding up civilians in support of Boer guerrillas, placing them into camps and cutting off these ‘commando’ guerilla groups from their supply of food, feed, ammunition and recruits.
On the other hand, the objective of the German concentration camps of WW2 was not to put an end to any form of guerrilla warfare whatsoever, it was to systematic exploit and exterminate entire populations along ideological lines of race superiority.
What is common in respect of both forms of concentration camp is that many people died, and in both respects that single act qualifies a tragedy and a failure of the human condition.
Did the deaths in the camps come about because of a hatred for the Boer race?
The answer simply to this question is – No.
The argument that the British concentration camps were designed to systematically wipe the Boer population from the planet by way of extermination because of race hate for Boers falls apart when you consider the British did not target only the ‘Boers’ for deportation to concentration camps.
The truth is the British targeted everybody who they perceived to be involved in the supply of horse feed, ammunition, weapons and food to guerrilla Boer commandos. This included Black Africans in addition to the Boers themselves.
Medical inspection inside a Black concentration camp as administered by the Native Refugee Department. Orange Free State, 1901. Photo research by Dr Garth Benneyworth.
The unfortunate truth that central to the concept of concentration camps to South Africa is simply railway supply.
When the British marched into Pretoria, raising the union jack in victory of the conventional war – they found themselves stretched deep into ‘hostile’ territory with extended and vulnerable supply lines stretching over hundreds of kilometres.
On losing their capital cities, the Boer strategy switched and they moved their government ‘into the field’ to embark on a ‘Guerrilla Warfare’ phase – with the intention to disrupt supply to the British now based in Bloemfontein and Pretoria and isolate the British into pockets (mainly along the railway lines).
To do this they would need food, ammunition and feed supplied directly from their own farmsteads or supporters surrounding their chosen targets. The relatively easy targets were trains and train lines (due to isolation and expanse), and after many a locomotive steamed into Pretoria riddled with bullet holes or didn’t make it all, Lord Kitchener got fed up at the arrogance of Boer resistance after the war had been effectively ‘won’ in his eyes and he acted decisively.
Locomotive No. 99 “KOMAAS” destroyed by the Boers near Middelburg.
Kitchener concentrated on restricting the freedom of movement of the Boer commandos and depriving them of local support. The railway lines and supply routes were critical, so he established 8000 fortified blockhouses along them and subdivided the land surrounding each of them into a protective radius.
Wherever and whenever an attack took place, or where sufficient threat existed to this system, Kitchener took to the policy of depopulating the radius area, burning down the farmsteads, killing the livestock and moving all the people – both Black and White (it mattered not to the British what colour they were) into their ‘Government Laagers’ which were in effect – concentration camps.
British burning of Boer farmsteads as a tactic to cut the supplies to and support of Boer Commando’s food, feed, recruits and ammunition.
Two different systems of concentration camps existed in South Africa, one specifically for Blacks only and one mainly for Whites (these also contained Black servants and staff to Boer families). Both were run very differently. The outcome was however tragically the same for both. Disease, mainly water-bourne ones took hold and in the Boer civilian’s camps the official death toll is 26 370 people, whereas in the Black camps it is estimated that 20,000 people died (the official records here were not accurately kept by the British – as they were in the Boer camps).
African women in a Black concentration camp in Klerksdorp,
Another point to consider as to the tragedy of the British Concentration camps in South Africa, is that some of the British staff working in the camps died from the same diseases that the killed Boer inhabitants of these camps – a sure sign of poor management and lack of proper medical understanding, medicine and aid – rather than a premeditated intention to murder. The sad truth here, disease is indiscriminate.
Did we learn the lesson not to use concentration camps again?
The answer to that sadly is … No.
As said earlier, the Spanish and the Americans found the Concentration Camp system highly effective in bringing guerrilla warfare to an end – a grisly, painful, barbaric end yes, but and end none the same. The British, rather sadly found the same – that despite the unacceptable damage to a civilian population, the tactic of concentration camps proved very succesful in bringing about a prompt end to what was proving to be a protracted war with an equally protracted affair of all round misery to civilian and combatant alike.
But at what price? Such a tactic of rounding up civilian groupings and containing them so they cannot supply guerrilla fighters in the field has time and again brought unacceptable death rates to civilians – along with fundamental setbacks in a culture or population’s wellbeing and evolution. The consequences of concentration camps, whether they are culturally, politically, economically or emotionally considered are far-reaching, highly negative and very deep.
Which brings us back to the United States of America, the second country to use a concentration camp system at the end of the 1800’s, because they were back at it again as late as the 1960’s – not even forty years ago – during the Vietnam War.
US troops Burning villages in Vietnam
In Vietnam they would engage exactly the same system – create ‘firebases’ in ‘protected zones, whenever there was a ‘flashpoint’ of guerrilla activity they would starve the guerrillas of their means to fight by cutting off their supplies (food and weapons), and they would do this by burning suspected villages and homesteads to the ground and moving all the affected civilian population into government-run ‘Strategic Hamlet’ camps – concentration camps in effect.
The only saving grace in all of this is that by the mid 1960’s medicine had moved on and diseases which had killed civilians in their droves in concentration camps at the end of the 1800’s could now be easily cured and even stopped in the 1960’s – as simply put better medical understanding, vaccination, antibiotics and penicillin had all come a long way by the end of the 1960’s – so too had government agencies handling civilian affairs during wartime.
Villages in a ‘Strategic Hamlet’ – Vietnam War
So instead of getting any form of admission to running ‘concentration camps’ and wholesale displacement and civilian death in the Philippines and even later in Vietnam – what we get from modern-day America are bland, soulless American military definitions outlining incidents when they the accidentally kill a bunch of citizens – and they now call it unavoidable “collateral damage.”
From a military strategic and tactical perspective, in many respects, the techniques used by the Americans for fighting ‘guerrilla warfare’ in the Vietnam War during the 1960’s and early 1970’s is almost no different to the techniques used by the British fighting the same type of guerrilla warfare in 1901 and early 1902. The Americans built ‘fire-bases’ to protect strategic points and fan out from to find Vietcong guerrillas, the British built ‘blockhouses’ next to protected strategic points and fanned out to find Boer guerrillas. The Americans rounded up Vietnamese civilians around flashpoints and burnt the farmsteads … the British did the same and burnt the farmsteads. During the Vietnam War the Americans and their proxy state ran camps for displaced civilians under the strange alias of ‘The Strategic Hamlet Program’ – in effect concentration camps, the British ran camps for displaced civilians under the strange alias of ‘Government Laagers’ – in effect also concentration camps.
Vietnam War ‘Strategic Hamlet’ – note the containment and defensive perimeter
So what’s the difference? It’s the concept of ‘Total War’ that has blurred the lines, it starts to become almost impossible to separate the idea of combatants and non combatants from soldier and civilian – when civilians aid the soldiers by maintaining their combat readiness. The ANC used the same excuse to bomb Southern Cross Aid offices, a civilian charity supplying the SADF with gift aid and the SADF even used the same excuse when a whole bunch of civilians came into the cross-fire at Cassinga in Angola during the Angolan Border War.
In conclusion
The impact of the British concentration camp policy in South Africa is far-reaching, deeply traumatic and still has bearing today as it’s an issue that requires national healing and international recognition. It is not a light matter. However, we have to be true to pursuing the facts and discarding the propaganda and politically motivated miss-truths.
Boer women and children in a British Concentration Camp
So, we stand by the myth now debunked – the British did not invent the ‘concentration camp’, and certainly not the ‘concentration camp’ as we have come to know the system employed by the Nazis.
History however does show us that a policy to counter-act Guerrilla Warfare by herding civilians into concentration camps is generally a very bad idea from a purely humanitarian perspective, nothing of any good has come from it, its morally corrupt and the British (like the Americans and the Spanish before them) are complicit and guilty of using this policy, and it is to their eternal shame.
As to guerrilla warfare bringing on ‘total war’ and the consequences thereof it’s an American General, William Tecumseh Sherman whose comment rings so tragically true in this respect
“War is cruelty. There is no use trying to reform it. The crueller it is, the sooner it will be over”.
With sincere thanks to Tinus Le Roux for all the Boer War colourised images used in the article. References include The Spanish Reconcentration Policy by PBS. The U.S. Army and Irregular Warfare by John M. Gates. Imperial War Museum.
This period cartoon captures that moment when President Paul Kruger, who in a game of political chess with Queen Victoria, is about to make a “blunder” – a disastrous move in chess which is ill considered. The British Army is ominously overseeing the move and Kruger, rightfully so, looks very worried.
The “blunder” move was simply this, after much sabre rattling and posturing by Milner and other British Imperialists in Southern Africa over mineworker representation in the Transvaal, on 11 October 1899 President Paul Kruger of the Transvaal/South African Republic (a day after his 74th birthday) in alliance with another Boer Republic – The Orange Free State, in a rather surprising move to many – declared war on Great Britain.
The move by two relatively small Boer Republics to declare war on what was then the world’s only real superpower came with some astonishment to Queen Victoria and the British Government in the United Kingdom. The British Imperialists in Southern Africa, along with the British Gold and Diamond mining magnets, on the other hand could hardly believe their luck.
Alfred Milner, the Governor of the Cape Colony had taken a belligerent stand with Kruger and pressed very hard for war against the “Transvaal” Boer Republic, it essentially stood in the way of Imperial expansionist plans. However he did not generally have poplar support back in the United Kingdom for a war . Once the declaration of war came from Kruger it was used as a “causes belli” (a legitimate justification to go to war) to the British public.
More alarming to the British at home in the United Kingdom was that night 800 men of the Potchefstroom and Lichtenburg commandos under General Koos de la Rey (one of General Piet Cronjé’s field generals) attacked and captured the British garrison and railway siding at Kraaipan between Vryburg and Mafeking, some 60 kilometres south west of Mafeking and well inside sovereign British territory.
Thus, with the invasion by Boer forces of a British Colony, so began the Second Anglo-Boer War. Under the orders of Cronjé the Mafeking railway and telegraph lines were cut on the same day, and the dice was rolled.
Not to trivialise the matter as a game of chess, the move by Kruger would have horrific consequences for the Boer nation. The war would see the desperation of Guerrilla tactics being employed by the Boer Forces, after the “conventional” phase of the war was lost, as a last ditch effort to maintain their sovereignty “in the field”. The use of this tactic spurred the British to fight the remainder of the war in an utterly ruthless and murderous manner, especially in the treatment of Boer women and children – the British policies of scorched earth and concentration camps would leave a very bitter and tarnished legacy.
The question we ask now, with all the 20/20 hindsight in the world is why? Why on earth would Kruger fall for all the sabre rattling and posturing by The British? Did he not anticipate the massive mobilisation of biggest expeditionary force the British had ever assembled to go “get their Colonies back”? Did he not see the underpinning greed of mining concerns operating in Africa – did the Jameson Raid not warn him of this?
Contrary to less informed opinion, at the onset of the war there no “massive” build up of British arms along the borders of the two Boer Republics to really threaten imminent invasion of them. “Sabre rattling” (limited reinforcements where ordered) and warnings – yes, but a vast build up of arms – no. To coin a phrase – they where playing “chess” using an age old tactic to force the hand.
At the on-set the Boer Republics in fact had the upper hand militarily and quickly put siege to the relatively small and isolated British garrisons on the two British Colony’s borders (notably Ladysmith, Kimberley and Mafeking). At the start of the war, numbers and arms in fact favoured the Boer Republics, it was only after war was declared that a truly massive British Imperial build up of arms and men to be shipped to Southern Africa occurred.
Central to the dispute, for the British at least was the issue of workers rights and political representation of mainly British expatriate population setting up business and working on the Gold mines in the Transvaal. The two sides summited on the 15 May 1899 in Bloemfontein to avoid war and Milner and Kruger immediately clashed over the issue of citizenship – Kruger was only prepared to grant expatriates citizenship to the “Transvaal” i.e. South African Republic after 14 years of residency, Milner insisted the period be 5 years. The issue came to head and negotiations broke down – both protagonists as belligerent to one another as ever.
Both Milner and Kruger knew that the vast number of British expatriates in the Transvaal would unseat the Boer government by simple majority if they became citizens, to Kruger the proposals where an attempt by Britain to take over his country (and its resources) by simple subjection. It is best summed up in his own reply to Milner when he said “Our enfranchised burghers are probably about 30,000, and the newcomers may be from 60,000 to 70,000 and if we give them the franchise tomorrow we may as well give up the Republic.’ Kruger went on to say, “It would be ‘worse than annexation’.
To the British it was a matter of individual rights to political representation in the Republic, which was now at a boiling point on the rand. Given the simple change in the country’s demographic due to the Gold Rush, this change was likely to be permanent and these rights could not be avoided – in essence the Boer Republic would eventually cease to exist through popular vote, it was just a really a matter of when.
To the Boers it was a fight to remain in power and keep their country. It had been contested before, the British military had already taken over the Transvaal some years before as a British Protectorate (over the issue of representation again – this time the African tribes had disputed the territory) and the British had been outed by the Boers in a small and swift war (the 1st Boer War or “Transvaal War” in 1880/81) which re-gained them their sovereignty over the territory. It however remained a disputed territory to many, it had now become even more complex with the massive influx of expatriates and business, and the memory of Britain’s control of the Transvaal was still fresh – for both the Boers and the British.
The answer to why Kruger moved when he did, lay in the hope that the initial successes of the Boer Forces against the smaller British Forces garrisoned in Natal and the Cape Colony at the time would bring about detente. As with the victory of the Transvaal War (the 1st Boer War 1880 to 1881) to out the British from that Republic then, Kruger hoped a swift victory would bring sense to the British position with regard to British expatriates “rights” and “citizenship” on the mines in the Transvaal and put any Imperial British expansionist plans and Milner’s obstinate attitude towards the Boer Republics to bed.
In hindsight, the move was indeed a blunder, Kruger did not get the detente he sought. Change in the Transvaal’s political and demographic make-up was inevitable, and Kruger would not embrace it – a fierce sense of patriotism and sovereignty where central edifices for him and he chose to take up arms to stall the inevitable in a last ditch effort to keep his country under Boer control (a similar parallel can be drawn years later when the “union” of South Africa was taken back politically by the hard line Afrikaner Nationalists in 1948).
No doubt “Gold” played a role, the simple fact that it was discovered is very central to the dispute. However of interest is just how much of a factor it played – The Boer standpoint at the time was Britain’s “Gold-magnets” started the war out of greed (the Jameson raid in their eyes proved that to them). Some modern option is the British wanted to “steal” the Republic’s gold, however the economics of matter is that the Gold was in fact already owned by the British private concerns mining it and they paid a tax to the Transvaal government for the sale of it. This agreement on ownership and tax did not change when the Union of South Africa was established after the war, so there was no real financial gain for Britain in going to war (the fact is they owned the Gold already).
What lies more at the heart of this matter of greed is “Empire” as an ideology central to the world politics at the time – the expansion of territory around the globe by the British – the concept of a “Cape to Cairo” band of control over the whole of Africa and the sun never setting on the British Union flag. British global expansionism was central to Milner and others as Victorian characters and the two Boer Republics stood in the way of it.
To put perspective on the robust, very brave, tenacious and largely suicidal move by Kruger in today’s context – it would be akin to two relatively small prosperous oil/gas neighbouring states like “Qatar” and “The United Arab Emirates” getting into a coalition and then declaring war against the current global Superpower – the United States of America – who has vested interest in their territories (business and large numbers of expats) and in their product (oil/gas). Today’s “Oil” is yesterday’s “Gold” in the context of global monetary exchange and world dominance (the on-going wars in the Middle East involving all the Superpowers is testament to that). There would only be one outcome, and it would be as disastrous in this comparison context now as it was for the Boer Republics in their context then.
There are few times you see a balanced documentary on the The South African War (1899-1902) a.k.a. the Boer War when it comes to the issue of the British concentration camps and this landmark documentary “Scorched Earth” is another in a line up that gets it right and wrong all at the same time.
As South Africa addresses its history from a holistic perspective, the complete story of the 2nd Anglo Boer War starts to emerge – the scale of the concentration camps as not strictly a “white” issue, but a “black” issue too is now becoming highly apparent. That the war is now been viewed in both contexts and in the context of its historical time opens up new questions on the deep scars of hatred, still not fully addressed, affecting all of South Africa’s ethnic groups.
Apportioning ‘Blame’
That the concentration camps are a human tragedy on an epic level is not debatable. The key question to be addressed is the aspect of “blame”.
Can blame be put at one man’s feet – Lord Kitchener under whose watch and policy this tragedy unfolded and a man with a disdain for the Boer nation, or does blame lie in cultural misunderstanding – actually going as far as blaming the women themselves for not following British heath regulations for tented camps, not trusting the nursing and hospital staff due to language and cultural barriers and using ancient remedies which accelerated the deadly social diseases instead?
Or, more to the point, does blame lie in the complete British maladministration of the camps, lack of medicine and lack of site and logistics planning by the British policy makers and proponents of the camp system?
White Concentration Camp of the 2nd Anglo Boer War
Does blame lie with the Boer Commanders insistence on continuing a war after it had been “lost” through conventional war – fully in the knowledge that their kinfolk and entire nation’s survival was heading to complete annihilation?
Does blame lie in the sheer racism and lack of human respect to ‘Blacks’ by prevailing Victorian’s considering them ‘less civilised’ in need of white patronage and the even harsher racist attitudes and laws in the two Boer Republics to purposefully ignore an unfolding human tragedy in the ‘Black’ camps? Does blame even lie with men at war with one another and the propaganda to paint one another as somehow lesser human beings?
Black Concentration Camp of the 2nd Anglo Boer War
Does blame lie in the British initiating a medieval policy of putting to the crucible those women and children whose menfolk where still fighting and rewarding those whose men had stopped fighting with extra food by way of incentive? And then the very thorny question – does blame lie in a system used by the British which had the potential to decimate a nation’s youth?
In essence, there is a strong case to argue that the concentration camps where a punitive measure to stop a phase of war which nobody really understood – the conventional war was lost when the Boer’s capital cities were taken, the decision by the Boer commanders and “government in the field” to take the war into a guerrilla one – supplied and fed by homesteads – simply brought the homesteads into the line of fire and war’s ravages – especially disease which proved the biggest killer.
To the Victorian men and women the unfolding tragedy in South Africa was shielded for much of the war and when exposed in the media by the likes of Emily Hobhouse it only really highlighted the plight of the ‘whites’. In this respect Emily Hobhouse’s words to Kitchener are sharply poignant “I’m not pro Boer, I’m British, and this isn’t our way”.
Or is the blame as simple as blaming a virus. The biggest killer in the Boer War was measles, a child’s disease which killed 30% of the white camp population, most of whom were children. It was also not this first or the last time a measles epidemic killed Boer children – epidemics existed in Voortrekker lagers log before the Boer War, with the same devastating consequences. The simple truth – the biggest killer of British soldiers in the Boer War was Typhoid, more died of disease than bullets – the same is true of the civilian populations – the British ones under Boer siege at the opening of the war, and the Boer ones under British camp oversight at the end of the war.
In Conclusion
There is a very long way to go – but the future in reconciling the true effect of this war and redressing it as a nation – is to understand that the Boer War was not only a “white” man’s war, nor the concentration camps strictly about Afrikaans women and children, a much bigger story exists and which needs to be reconciled with – and that is the suffering of South Africa’s black population and the extraordinary losses they experienced in concentration camps too – which only now are becoming fully understood. For more on the ‘Black’ concentration camp history do visit this Observation Post link for a fuller story: To fully reconcile The Boer War is to fully understand the ‘BLACK’ Concentration Camps
The redress for white Afrikaners in South Africa as to any form of global awareness and world condemnation of this tragedy to their nation lies in the reconciliation of the history with the previously unwritten and misunderstood “black” history behind The 2nd Anglo Boer War. Only if it is a national issue, a common cause and a national healing process implemented to dealt with it – will amends and long-awaited apologies from the British be found.
Written by Peter Dickens. Image copyright, Imperial War Museum. ‘Scorched Earth’ documentary, Director Herman Binge, produced for M-Net by Pearson Television, copyright 2001.
The actual term ‘concentration camp’ was invented by the Spanish (as campo de concentración or campo de reconcentración) in 1896 – three years before the 2nd Anglo-Boer War (1899 – 1904) started. It originated during The Cuban War of Independence (Guerra de Independencia cubana, 1895–98) was the last of three liberation wars that Cuba fought against Spain.
The second country to operate concentration camps was the United States of America in September 1899 in the Philippines. At this point in the historic time-line the British had not yet engaged the ‘Concentration Camp’ system in its full-blown manifestation in South Africa (which started in earnest at the beginning of 1901).
The third country to set up concentration camps was Britain, but they did not initially call them concentration camps, they called them ‘Government Laagers” and ‘Refugee Camps’.
The answer is simply, because of Hermann Göring.
The Observation Post 