So, I saw a lapel pin with a Torch on it been promoted as a “Torch Commando” pin on a collectors site, I have one like it in my collection, and I sincerely thought that although not Torch Commando it was a related civic association concerned with the Constitutional Crisis of the 1950’s. Turns out I was wrong! At times I’m very happy to be proved wrong, and the investigation into this simple “torch” pin led me down a rabbit hole to uncover some history that really is “lost” to most South Africans (certainly to the collectors of war-time memorabilia). For in this search for the truth .. we find .. “The Truth Legion”.
Image: Truth Legion pin and propaganda (left) and Torch Commando pin and propaganda (right).
The Truth Legion … what the heck was that all about? Well, it’s origins all point to Nazi Germany.
Nazification of the Afrikaner Right
It turns out that at the beginning of World War 2, Jan Smuts and his government needed a vehicle to promote the “truth” about why South Africa went to war and to counter-act far right Nationalist and Nazi propaganda streaming into South Africa via radio stations like Radio Zeesen (a Nazi German propaganda service radio station broadcasting in short wave in eighteen different foreign languages including Afrikaans) and via the German intelligence service of the Ober Kommando Wehrmacht (German High Command) called the “Abwehr”, which had been engaged in coordinating direct operational intelligence and the spread of propaganda in the Union of South Africa and South West Africa (Namibia).
If foreign influence was not enough, domestically 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”.
The Greyshirts’ organ of communication, a newspaper called oddly enough “Die Waarheid” (the ‘truth’), “Ons Reg” (Our Right) was published by the “Blackshirts” and the “Terre Blanche” (White Land) published by the People’s Movement. They nailed their colours literally to the mast – Die Waarheid and Terre blanche both used a swastika on their mastheads indicating their pro-Nazi and National Socialistic sympathy.
Image: Die Waarheid – note masthead
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 and pro-Nazi movement operating under the guise of an Afrikaner cultural movement. Dr Johannes van Rensburg would even go as far using the Ossewabrandwag and its structures to directly assist Nazi Germany in espionage and intelligence operations in South Africa. During the war a secret wireless transmitter was installed in on Dr van Rensburg’s farm near Vryburg. The wireless service was run by Nazi spy, Lothar Sittig (codename Felix), a South African with German roots, and assisted by Dutch journalist, Henri Jacques (Hans) Rooseboom, who was inserted into the Union by the Nazis in October 1939.
In addition, the National Party’s Defence Minister, another Nazi devotee, Oswald Pirow inspired his organisation – the Nazi ‘New Order’ and its leaflets and even the National Party itself, with its communication organs – the ‘Transvaaler ‘and the ‘Burger’ towing Nazi German sympathises and ideologies – all this added to the heady mix of Nazi propaganda and Nazi German sympathies streaming into South Africa. All targeting white Afrikaners primarily with the purpose of de-stabilising South Africa’s war effort and even trying to effect regime change to a Nazi German friendly South African ally.
So, to counter act all of this, Jan Smuts, now very concerned about the unchecked growth of Nazism in South Africa and South West Africa, and particularly the spread of “propaganda, falsehood, delusion and fomenting of strive carried on by foreign agents” – in response Smuts promoted Dr Ernst Gideon Malherbe, one of South Africa’s foremost academic minds, to the head of Intelligence and gave him the rank of Colonel. He then went about structuring the intelligence and counter-intelligence services to meet war-time objectives. In the main, three propaganda agencies were conceived, the Bureau of Information (BOI), the Directorate of Military Intelligence (DMI) and the Union Unity Truth Service (UUTS).
Now, that badge and symbology sending us down the rabbit hole is the “Union Unity Truth Service (UUTS)” or “Truth Legion” – so who and what then are the UUTS?
Union Unity Truth Service (UUTS)
The Union Unity Truth Service was a “Non-state” propaganda service, in other words it operated “outside” state institutions like the Intelligence Services and Union Defence Force. The purpose was to develop an institution in which ‘loyal’ civilians, concerned with the rise of Nazi propaganda and extremism in South Africa would establish a “Truth” Service to counter-act it.
The Union Unity Truth Service (UUTS) was established in September 1939, literally in the same month that Smuts rose to Prime Ministership and declared war against Nazi Germany. It was inspired by Sir James Rose Innes, Brigadier General HNW Botha, Colonel Sir W Dalrymple and Sir Charles Smith.
They appealed to the public for a “publicity fund to finance a nation-wide campaign to support Smuts’ Government … to deal with propaganda from abroad and misrepresentations at home … to promote mutual understanding between all sections of people”. The fund, known as the Union Unity Fund underpinned the objectives of the UUTS movement, which were defined as “providing intellectual, moral and political support for Smuts and the national government in the prosecution of the war”.
The South African public was called upon to both support and contribute financially to the Unity Fund and the UUTS. It’s Head Quarters were based in Johannesburg, Thomas Robertson – a Rand Daily Mail journalist was appointed as the Director of the UUTS and he positioned it as “The New Crusade” with General Jan Smuts as its Commander in Chief. In line with Union policy (and objectives) all UUTS communications, emblems, merchandising, books, leaflets etc would be bi-lingual in English and Afrikaans. An advisory Committee sat behind the Director, and it was headed up by a United Party Senator – Mr G. Hartog.
As it operated “outside the state” fundraising would take place via a ‘Field Unit’ called “The Truth Legion” which consisted of a literal ‘army’ of Smuts loyalists who called themselves “Truth Legionnaires” – they would go about canvassing and raising funds through the sale of Jan Smuts’ books, badges and speeches. Here are two examples of books sold by the “Truth Legion” – “Why the Union is at war with Nazi Germany” – speech by General Smuts, Nov 1939 and “Greater South Africa – Plans for a better world” – the speeches by General Smuts , Nov 1940. Note the ‘Publisher’ details in both books comprises the Truth Legion’s torch emblem and their details.
Other Truth Legion activities consisted of the production of Afrikaans-language film “Noordwaarts” (Northwards), the publication of an illustrated magazine called “Libertas”, they also got behind the ‘Peace through victory’ campaign (essentially to counter campaigns advocating peace with Nazi Germany).
The Truth Legion also operated an underground radio station called “Mystery Radio Freedom” to counter-act the Afrikaans broadcasts of Nazi German’s “Radio Zeesen”. In addition, they also compiled an released a patriotic song, selling the records to raise funds, and here’s an example of the record and song-sheet, note again the “Truth Legion” Torch emblem.
Images: Free South Africa recording and song sheet
By 1940 the UUTS/Truth Legion established a School of Propaganda and Political Education at the Kero Hotel in Johannesburg. It marketed a ten day course on propaganda and politics – primarily aimed at university students – the lecturers of the course were all powerhouse academics and government officials – Advocate G Saron lectured on ‘Nazism and the Fifth Column’, Professor Leo Fouché lectured on ‘propaganda history’, Dr Malherbe – the head of the Intelligence Service lectured on ‘film propaganda’ – they were accompanied by the likes of Professor Hoernlé, Professor T Haarhoff, Professor ID MacCrone and Dr S Biesheuvel – all of who formed part of the military’s education programme, the AES.
In addition to all of this, according to Fankie L Monama’s publication ‘South African Propaganda Agencies and the Battle for Public Opinion during the Second World War, 1939–1945’. “The UUTS also brought in the head of the Bantu Press, BFG Paver, whose company was tasked to produce propaganda newspapers for blacks. In some instances, the UUTS liaised with OWI (United States) and MOI (Britain) for supplying propaganda material from those countries for distribution in South Africa. The activities of the Truth Legion were also extended to other parts of Africa to generate “sympathisers” to the Allied cause, particularly in Portuguese East Africa”.
In Conclusion
It’s amazing what a simple ‘lapel’ pin find can unravel, because this is all a very “hidden” history and there is preciously little for the ‘armchair’ amateur historians, commentators, journalists and collectors to find – and its hoped that any future confusion between ‘The Torch Commando’s’ Torch emblem and the Truth Legion’s Torch emblem, which is a war-time emblem and pre-dates the Torch Commando and its post war Anti-Apartheid protests by 12 years is now cleared up. The war-time contribution of South Africa remains a highly unknown area, as these structures and even intelligence files were all but collapsed and even destroyed by the incoming Afrikaner Nationalist government in 1948.
Consider this, in July 1948, mere months after the National Party won the election, Colonel Malherbe’s successor Colonel Charles Powell (Colonel Malherbe was by the time the Vice Chancellor of the University of Natal), was sitting in the National Intelligence archive and in came none other than the National Party’s new head of Defence – Frans C. Erasmus – who promptly dismissed Colonel Powell on the spot with a 24 hours notice. He then proceeded to remove “two lorries” worth of documentation outlining the National Party’s affiliations with Nazi Germany and flirtation with Nazism from the Intelligence archive – not to be seen in ‘public’ again – well – not for a very long time.
Fortunately in recent years, historians now unshackled by old Apartheid restrictions have started challenging these old archives and intelligence files (in South Africa, Germany and the United Kingdom), and it’s a treasure trove of information, so organisations like “The Truth Legion” have started to re-surface, and we are all now richer for it.
Written and Researched by Peter Dickens
Main consultation sources include:
Wartime Propaganda in the Union of South Africa, 1939 – 1945 by Fankie Lucas Monama 2014
South African Propaganda Agencies and the Battle for Public Opinion during the Second World War, 1939–1945 – Fankie L Monama
National Socialism and Nazism in South Africa: The case of L.T. Weichardt and his Greyshirt movements, 1933-1946 By Werner Bouwer
The National Socialist Rebels and the Ossewabrandwag
Not frequently referred to in the Nazification of the Afrikaner right is Robey Leibbrandt’s own organisation for even more radicalised Afrikaners seeking more militant action than that offered by the Ossewabrandwag – the National Socialist Rebels.
Robey Leibbrandt
So how did that come about? Simply put, when Robey Leibbrandt was put ashore in South Africa by the Nazi German state for ‘Operation Weissdorn’ he was under the impression that he was to meet with the Ossewabrandwag leadership and inform them that he was now the only legitimate leader of the Afrikaner nation and take over control of the Ossewabrandwag.
Such was his megalomania, thuggery and aggression that even the radio operator who was earmarked to come ashore with him refused to do so, citing fear for his life and remained on-board the yacht instead (the Captain and crew were also relieved to get rid of Leibbrandt such an annoyance he had become). Naturally when Leibbrandt was finally able to get to the leader of the Ossewabrandwag to inform him of the leadership change as specified by his German handlers, Dr Johannes (Hans) van Rensburg, the leader and Kommandant General of the Ossewabrandwag would have none of it and refused to recognise Robey Leibbrandt outright, a row broke out and the two became irreconcilable.
So, no matter, Robey Leibbrandt would find within the Ossewabrandwag supporters who staunchly followed National Socialism, start his own organisation and he would overcome the leadership crisis by getting them to swear alliance to him in person – in blood. Taking a leaf out of his hero’s book, Adolf Hitler who used a similar oath to get the German military establishment to swear sole allegiance to him as the sole and legitimate leader of the German Volk by name, so too did Robey Leibbrandt get his followers to swear allegiance to him as the only legitimate Afrikaner leader, by name.
The blood signature oath read as follows:
“I stand before God and swear this sacred oath that I, as an Afrikaner, will faithfully serve my Volk and Vaderland with my whole heart, body, soul and mind, along the lines indicated to me by the leader of the National Socialist Rebels in the person of Robey Leibbrandt and no one else, from now until death. The deep seriousness with which I recognise myself as a National Socialist Rebel finds expression in the blood with which I forever bind my person through the medium of my signature. I am nothing. My Volk is all. God be with us. The Vierkleur on High.”
Ossewabrandwag on parade holding old ZAR Republic VierKleur flags
Not to miss out on the legitimacy of Adolf Hitler as the supreme leader (can’t usurp the Führer), the blood oath also partly read as follows:
“All my fight and striving is for the freedom and independence of the Afrikaner people of South Africa and for the building up of a National Socialist State in accordance with the ideas of Adolf Hitler.”
Hans van Rensberg
The enemy of my enemy is my friend
Posing a significant threat to the Ossewabrandwag – both in terms of drawing members, ideology and in leadership and overall control of the Afrikaner right-wing, the Ossewabrandwag would engage the tried old philosophy of the ‘enemy of my enemy is my friend’ and sell out the National Socialist Rebels and Robey Leibbrandt to the British. Yup, they used the British, their stated enemy, to get rid of them, and given the oath they only need to get rid of the leader.
According to Dr Garth Benneyworth, British Intelligence documents he uncovered in the British National Archives, whilst in the UK in 2005, revealed that Hans van Rensburg sold out Robey Leibbrandt’s base of operations to the British SIS (Secret Intelligence Service) who in turn tipped off General Jan Smuts, which in turn led to Leibbrandt’s capture by the Union of South Africa’s security forces on Christmas Eve, 1941.
Charged and found guilty of High Treason, Robey Leibbrandt was sentenced to death. His sentence was commuted to life in prison by General Jan Smuts, the South African premier, some sources say it was because Smuts and Leibbrandt’s father served together during the South African War (1899-1902) and Smuts had a high regard for Leibbrand’s Dad, other sources point to Smuts not wanting the blood of yet another Jopie Fourie martyr on his hands. In any event, when the National Party government came to power in 1948, Leibbrandt was officially pardoned and walked out a free man – much to the disgust of the hundreds of thousands of South African’s who had fought against Nazism during the war.
In conclusion
Now, for those out there who still believe the Ossewabrandwag was just a ‘cultural’ organisation, anti-British only, think of it this way – what if Johannes van Rensburg had abided the Nazi German requirement that Robey Leibbrandt, a pure Nazi thug, take control of the Ossewabrandwag and ultimately leadership of the Afrikaner right. What if he stepped aside? Could have happened, only it did not – but why?
The answer simply is both Robey Leibbrandt and Johannes van Rensburg where equally megalomanic – both admired Adolf Hitler, both admired National Socialism and both abided the ‘Blut und Boden’ principle and the ‘Führer’ principle, both had Stormjaers (Stormtroopers) as followers, both were Afrikaner Christian Nationalists, both were anti-Semitic, both were fierce anti-Communists, both were anti-British/Judaeo Capital, both had secret oaths and ceremonies and both were wired into the Nazi spy network directly supporting the Nazi war effort. The only difference; Leibbrandt was a thug and Dr Hans van Rensburg was a skilled politician.
It was always going to be bloody power struggle for sole dictatorship such is the nature of the National Socialist ideology (like Adolf Hitler – the ‘skilled politician’ exterminated Ernst Röhm – the ‘thug’) – and that’s exactly what happened – the Ossewabrandwag wanted Robey Leibbrandt dead (the inner circle of the Ossewabrandwag even issued the instruction for his ‘liquidation’) and no doubt Leibbrandt and the National Socialist Rebels wanted Dr Hans van Rensburg dead.
Written and researched by Peter Dickens
For more on the South African organisations flirting with Nazism, here are some easy links to previous Observation Posts;
So what does the 1938 Great Trek Centenary have in common with Sailor Malan’s returning war veterans anti-apartheid movement – The Torch Commando?
Well, it’s all in the name – ‘Steel Commando’ – so what is a Steel Commando and what the heck does it have to do with the famous 1938 Great Trek Centenary defining Afrikanerdom and Sailor Malan’s later ’Torch Commando’ in 1951.
So here’s the backdrop:
The 1938 Great Trek Centenary
In 1938, the Broederbond under the directive of its Chairman, Henning Klopper sought to use the centenary of Great Trek to unite the ‘Cape Afrikaners’ and the ‘Boere Afrikaners’ under the symbology of the Great trek. In this endeavour artificially creating a shared heritage. He started a Great Trek re-enactment with two Ox-Wagons in Cape Town and addressed the large crowd of 20,000 spectators by saying;
“We ask the entire Afrikanerdom to take part in the festival celebration in this spirit. We long that nothing shall hinder the Afrikaner people as a whole from taking part. This movement is born from the People; may the People carry it in their hearts all the way to Pretoria and Blood River. Let us build up a monument for Afrikaner hearts. May this simple trek bind together in love those Afrikaner hearts which do not yet beat together. We dedicate these wagons to our People and to our God.”
By that he hoped to combine the ‘Cape white Afrikaners’ with the ‘Boer white Afrikaners’ in the symbology of the Great Trek under a fabricated Nationalist ideal of Christian Nationalism – and only meant ‘White’ Afrikaners in the Broederbond’s definition of what constituted ‘Afrikanerdom’ and not really the Afrikaans speaking peoples as a ‘whole’ – certainly not the Coloured and Black Afrikaners. The Trek celebration would be pitched as an assertion of Afrikaner white power in South Africa and the Trek as the true path to a overall South African nationhood and identity and ignore the histories of everyone else – black and white – in creating a future South African identity.
In any event the trek re-enactment was very successful in re-aligning white Afrikaner identity under the Christian Nationalist ideal. In the end eight wagons from all around the country threaded their way to Pretoria to lay the cornerstone of the Voortrekker monument – in front of a crowd of 200,000 people. Whilst at the same time, four ox-wagons went to the site of the battle at Blood River for a commemoration service on the 16th December. The wagons stopping in countless towns and villages all around the country along the way to re-name street after street after one or another Voortrekker hero, and laying imprints of the wagons wheels in freshly laid cement at many halts (there are still ‘imprints’ at my hometown in Hermanus).
Images: Henning Klopper’s Ox-Wagons named – The ‘Piet Retief’ and the ‘Andries Pretorius, leave Cape Town from the foot of Jan van Riebeeck’s statue to commence the 1938 Centenary of The Great Trek.
The Broederbond had staggered onto the ideal way to ‘unify’ the Afrikaner – a round the country travelling carnival – from the cities to the platteland, on to far flung corners and everything in between. Henning Klopper himself amazed at the reaction and the success of it all – so much so he turned to divine intervention and called it a “sacred happening”.
The Ossewabrandwag
A mere two short years after the Centenary Trek, South Africa was at war with Nazi Germany. Leading up to the war, the South African government was a ‘Fusion’ coalition party between the National Party under Prime Minister Barry Hertzog and General Jan Smuts’ South African Party as his deputy – in an entity called The United Party. The decision to go to war was won by Smuts and a majority vote. Hertzog, whose National Party was already splitting along more radical right lines with the advent of the ‘Pure’ National Party resigned and Smuts became the wartime Prime Minister.
Another one of the primary reasons for the National Party gravitating to radical right-wing lines was the Ox-wagon Great Trek Centennial of 1938. One of the wagon group’s leaders during the trek was Dr Johannes Van Rensburg, a lawyer who had served previously as National Party ‘Secretary of Justice’ in 1933 and was a part-time Union Defence Force officer – he had been to Germany in his capacity as Secretary and met both Hitler and Göring as well as other Nazi officials, he was deeply impressed with both the leadership and discipline offered by Nazism and became an admirer.
So, from the Centenary event in celebration of this coming together of Afrikaner identity under a white-only Afrikaner Nationalism came a cultural movement called the Ossewabrandwag (meaning Ox Wagon Sentinel or ‘Fire Watch’) – abbreviated OB – eventually led by Dr Johannes van Rensberg. Formed in 1938, the ‘Fire’ part of the OB name referred to the rapidly spreading “wildfire” of Christian Nationalism and ‘white’ Afrikanerdom set off by the 1938 Ox-Wagon Centenary Trek, eventually gaining about 250,000 – 300,000 members in total.
The Ossewabrandwag at the on-set was loosely associated to Dr D.F. Malan’s ‘Pure’ National Party. However so as not to tread on one another’s feet, the relationship between the Ossewabrandwag and National Party needed to be formalised. So Dr D.F. Malan met with OB leaders on the 29th October 1940 which resulted in declaration known as the ‘Cradock Protocol’. It specified the two operating spheres of the two respective organisations. They undertook not to meddle in each others affairs and the National Party endeavoured to work for white Afrikanerdom and Christian Nationalism in the “political” sphere while the OB would operate on the “cultural” front.
Images: Ossewabrandwag members on parade and taking a Nazi styled salute
Resigning from the Union Defence Force, when war was declared, Dr Johannes Van Rensburg moved to promote the edicts of Nazism in the OB and even directly support the Nazi Germany war effort-ordinating espionage activities for German submarines, the OB under his leadership also evolved away from being a mere ‘cultural movement’ forwarding Nationalist Afrikaner identity, to an active domestic para-military movement with strong Nazi convictions.
Dr Van Rensburg, having resigned as an officer in the Union Defence Force at the start of the war, had always professed been a National Socialist, and as an open admirer of Nazi Germany and Adolph Hitler, the ideas and rituals of membership of the OB had a distinctive Nazi leaning as a result.
Officially, the National Party – when under Hertzog and then under Dr D.F. Malan took the position of ‘neutrality’ as to South Africa’s wartime involvement, but in reality hundreds of thousands of Afrikaner Nationalists were joining openly pro-Nazi Germany movements like the Ossewabrandwag (OB) and its ‘Stormjaers’ (Storm Troopers) military wing, the Nazi Party of South Africa – the South African Christian National Socialist Movement (SANP), the National Socialist Rebels under Robey Leibbrandt, a Nazi Germany insurgent and the Nazi world expansionist order in South Africa – The New Order (NO) under Oswald Pirow who had served as a National Party Defence Minister under Hertzog.
The Steel Commando
The recruitment of white Afrikaners to volunteer for war service became paramount to Union’s Defence Force wartime objectives. On the other side of the Afrikaner coin stood Afrikaners like General Jan Smuts and Dr Ernest Malherbe, who had also been swept up in the enthusiasm of 1938 Great Trek Centenary and the establishment of a unified Afrikaner identity, but not buying into its underpinning Christian Nationalism ideology.
The Malherbe family, for example, being descendants of a French Huguenot and Afrikaners to their core had nothing in common with the Broederbond but had been caught up with all the Afrikanerdom of the 1938 Centenary Trek. At Blood River on 15 December, in the shade of one of the Centenary trek wagons, Dr Ernie Malherbe’s father-in-law, Dominee Paul Nel, baptised their daughter Betty-Jane with water from the Blood River.
When South Africa declared war, Dr Ernie Malherbe and a group of academics, notably Alfred Hoernle and Leo Marquard, persuaded General Smuts to set up, under Malherbe, a corps of information officers to counter subversion in the armed forces generated by the likes of the Ossewabrandwag and the Broederbond and to stimulate the Afrikaner troops and potential white Afrikaner recruits to consider what they were fighting for. Smuts then made Malherbe Director of Military Intelligence with the rank of Colonel. Henceforward South African propaganda which had just been focused on countering Nazi propaganda became much more positive and more South African in its orientation.
Images; World War 2 recruitment posters targeted at white Afrikaners – note the poster drawing on the ‘the road to South Africa’ commencing from The Battle of Blood River to the Boer War Commandos to the South African Union Army – the title “Still loyal to the path of South Africa” is a direct play on the 1938 Centennial Trek which the Broederbond pitched as “Die Pad van Suid-Afrika,” a symbolic ‘path’ to South Africa’s nationhood taken by the Voortrekkers. This poster attests that joining the Smuts appeal to war is the true path to nationhood.
Critical to Smuts’ call for volunteers to serve in combat regiments was the white Afrikaner nation (as ‘whites’ and ‘coloureds’ were only deemed eligible to carry firearms in the military per segregationist policies and not ‘blacks’). The Union’s Defence Force at the beginning of the war was woefully under strength. Simply put, without the white Afrikaners volunteering for war-time service, South Africa’s wartime commitments for combatants would be ineffectual.
Colonel Malherbe would take a leaf out of the Broederbond’s 1938 Centenary Trek used to ‘unify’ the Afrikaner – a round the country travelling carnival covering just about every town and village in the remotest areas. Only this time Colonel Malherbe intended that the travelling carnival ‘unify’ the Afrikaner behind Smuts’ call to arms to fight with Britain and France on the side of the Allies. He would use armoured cars instead of ox-wagons and his message was almost diametrically opposite to that of the Broederbonds’.
Colonel Malherbe would call his countrywide travelling carnival – The Steel Commando, added to this would be a propaganda and recruitment pamphlet dropping campaign from SAAF aircraft called the Air Commando. The Steel Commando would consist of vehicle to carry a full military band, various armoured cars and a truck converted into a mobile recruitment station. Critical to the Steel Commando would be a contingent of old Republican Boer War veterans (South African War 1899-1902) to give it a sense of ‘Afrikanerdom’ and ‘duty’ to South Africa. The term ‘Commando’ would be given to the convoy – solely because it resonated with old Republics ‘Kommandos’ of the Boer war and as a result had Afrikaner appeal. Isie Smuts (called ‘Ouma’), Jan Smuts’ wife and very popular amongst Afrikaners, young and old, was also positioned as a volksmoeder (people’s mother) a term originated in the Boer War and was initially drawn upon by Afrikaner nationalists to represent ‘the mother of the nation’ connected to the concentration camps – Isie Smuts would become a volksmoeder for the Union’s wartime cause comforting the Afrikaner men and women in uniform and the country’s ‘First Lady.’
This convoy would enter small rural and farming towns with the fanfare of the marching band ahead of it, flanked by the Boer War Republican veterans and the recruiting station behind.
Was it effective in capturing the Afrikaner hearts and minds as the Centenary Trek had been? The truthful answer is – yes. In all the South African standing forces in WW2 comprised 334,000 full-time and voluntary service personnel, 211,000 were White, 77,000 were Blacks and 46,000 were Coloureds and Indians. Of the 211,000 whites, 60% were estimated by Malherbe as being white ‘Afrikaners’ – 126,600 – the majority ethnic group in the South African Union’s Defence Force during World War 2.
To see the effect of a Steel Commando parade, this video outlines one addressed by Smuts as a demonstration of the achievements of recruitment is very telling – note the extensive use of Boer Commando veterans.
What the Steel Commando and Colonel Malherbe’s recruitment drive also did was literally spit the Afrikaner ‘hearts and minds’ in two, one half supporting the National Party’s call to neutrality or the Ossewabrandwag’s call to directly support Nazi Germany – and the other half of white ‘Afrikanerdom’ – supporting the ideals of Union between English and Afrikaans, General Smuts’ policies and the Allied war against Nazi Germany.
Post 1948
The dynamics behind the National Party’s accent to power without a majority vote in 1948 have been vastly researched but suffice it to say that for returning War Veterans from WW2, fighting against Nazism, the advent of a political party with numerous leaders who had been directly and/or indirectly flirting with Nazism during the war as a net result of organisations like the Ox Wagon Sentinel (Ossewabrandwag) and other Neo Nazi factions merging with The National Party was an abhorrent idea and an insult to the sacrifice of their comrades in arms.
The War Veteran’s Action Committee
The outrage to this and the implementation of the first Acts and Bills that would become ‘Apartheid’ would result in a merger of war veteran members of the Springbok Legion veteran’s association and war veterans predominant in the United Party’s political structures in April 1951 – the ‘War Veteran’s Action Committee WVAC (the WVAC was to eventually evolve into The Torch Commando) under the leadership of the charismatic war-time fighter ace – Sailor Malan, a veteran with Afrikaans heritage. Pains were taken to ensure the make-up of the WVAC was 50/50 English/Afrikaans.
The WVAC kicked off their mission with a protest at the Johannesburg Cenotaph on 21st April 1951 during a commemoration service – laying a coffin draped in the national flag as a symbol to depict the death of the Constitution. They ramped their protests up with three torchlight protests in Port Elizabeth, Johannesburg and Durban. At these protests, comprising over 30,000 people in total, a set of resolutions were ratified to take to Cape Town and present to Parliament. The resolutions basically were a warning to the government that the military veteran community would embark on a political struggle unless the National Party government resigns.
Steel Commando (version 2)
But how to whip up support for their cause, and how to whip up the planned mega-torchlight rally in Cape Town to hand over the demands? Here the WVAC took a leaf out of Colonel Malherbe’s Union Defence Force ‘Steel Commando’ recruitment drive. They would not even change the name, the WVAC’s ‘Steel Commando’ would be run along the same lines with military precision. All around the country from far flung places vehicles would converge with the Steel Commando and the Commando itself would drive through multiple towns and villages whipping up publicity and support.
The Steel Commando of the WVAC (Torch Commando) would, as a primary objective also look to recruit, all the Afrikaans war veterans who in their minds may have erroneously voted for the National Party in 1948 and call them back to Smuts’ more moderate politics. To this end, as Colonel Malherbe had done using Republican Boer War veterans, the WVAC would do exactly the same with their version of the Steel Commando and use the old Boer War Veterans. Kommandant Dolf de la Rey, a Boer War veteran whose Commando had been involved in capturing Winston Churchill and national hero was appointed to lead The Steel Commando with Sailor Malan as his 2nd in Command – two Afrikaner war heroes leading the convoy. They would also keep the term Commando when the WVAC formed ‘The Torch Commando’ later as a nod to Afrikaner heritage. Kommandant de la Rey was also affectionally given the term ‘Oom’ by the publicity machine to conjure up respect from the Afrikaner community. This sentiment can be seen in the newspaper reporting outlined as follows:
Of the Steel Commando trip to Cape Town, wrote one newspaper correspondent: “Cape Town staged a fantastic welcome” for Kmdt de la Rey and Group Captain Malan, he related the enthusiasm of the crowd to the same that liberation armies received in Europe. The Johannesburg Star said: “The Commando formed the most democratic contingent ever to march together in the Union. Civil servants found themselves alongside the colored men who swept the streets they were marching so proudly upon.”
“In the front jeep rode Oom Dolf de la Rey, a white-haired old Boer of seventy-four, who looked so startlingly like the late General Jan Smuts that people looked twice at him and then cheered wildly. Oom (Uncle Dolf) was the man who, as a young burgher on commando fifty years before, had captured Winston Churchill, then a war correspondent with the Imperial forces in South Africa.In the second jeep stood a younger man with tousled brown hair, his hazel eyes cold and angry, the man who had been the most famed fighter pilot in all the RAF — Adolph Gysbert Malan, known all over the world as Sailor. He was the real hero of the hour. The people tried to mob him. Men and women, white as well as brown, crowded round his jeep and stretched out their hands to touch him.”
Video: The Steel Commando on-route to Cape Town – note the use of Boer War Kommando veterans.
The ‘Steel Commando’ convoy gathered media attention and grew in size as it converged on Cape Town on the 28th May, a crowd of 4,000 greeted it as it converged in Somerset West before heading to Cape Town that evening. In Cape Town, the Steel Commando arrived to a packed crowd of protesters on The Grand Parade outside the City Hall of between 55,000 to 65,000 people – consisting of whites and coloureds, supporters and veterans alike (veterans were estimated at 10,000). Many holding burning torches as had now become the trademark of the movement. Spooked by it all the National Party were convinced that a military coup was on and as a precautionary measure placed manned machine gun positions around the rooftop of the nearby Houses of Parliament.
Sailor Malan was literally carried on shoulders by cheering crowds to give his speech. Joined by Dolf de la Rey and even future Afrikaner anti-apartheid activist and fellow war veteran Mattheus Uys Krige as well as the English speaking South African war-time soprano and heroine who led them in song – Perla Gibson. In Sailor Malan’s speech to the crowd famously accused the national party government at this rally of;
“Depriving us of our freedom, with a fascist arrogance that we have not experienced since Hitler and Mussolini met their fate”.
Images: Kommandant Dolf de la Rey and Group Captain Sailor Malan addressing crowds at the Steel Commando in Cape Town
Buoyed by the success of The Steel Commando, The Torch Commando would officially form and would in the course of time rise to 250,000 plus members – so if one asks – was The Steel Commando as successful as its original concept – the pre-war 1938 Ox-Wagon centennial staged by the Broederbond, and whose idea was drawn on by Colonel Malherbe for the Defence Forces’ Steel Commando’ wartime recruitment drive, the answer is yes, and here’s why;
In Conclusion
The white population voting base in 1951 was estimated about 1,000,000 whites. 250,000 whites had polarised to Ossewabrandwag radically politically right on the back of the 1938 Great Trek ‘Ox Wagon’ Centennial .. and 250,000 whites had gravitated radically politically left on the back of The Torch Commando. Literally driving a dividing line between the white voting base (English and Afrikaans) – half in support of Apartheid and half against Apartheid.
It would also splinter the white Afrikaner voter base and the Broederbond’s attempt at a shared Afrikaner National identity, the majority would be swayed by Christian Nationalism as an ideology and keep the National Party in government on a slim margin, becoming more entrenched as the National Party engaged gerrymandering and jack-boot totalitarian politics going into the future – however a significant portion of white Afrikaners would remain ‘Smuts-men’ and resist Christian Nationalism for many years to come – they simply would not buy into the Broederbond’s initial tenants of bringing ‘Afrikanerdom’ under the singular banner of ‘white’ Afrikaner Nationalism and saw it for what it was – a corruption of Afrikaner history, exclusive, hateful and divisive.
The irony, all this fracturing would be caused by the same vehicle to ‘unify’ the white Afrikaner – a travelling carnival appealing directly to the hearts and minds of far flung rural white Afrikaners, initially conceived by the Broederbond to drive an Apartheid agenda starting in Cape Town and picked up in the end, a tad over a decade later, by the Torch Commando to drive an anti-Apartheid agenda – to the same far flung rural white Afrikaners and in a twist of fate ending up back where it all started – Cape Town.
It’s a little known fact, one of Field Marshal Erwin Rommel’s key officers, a person in his ‘Inner Circle’ and his personal advisor and aide was in fact a South African. Very few South Africans joined the Nazi military forces during the Second World War, there are a number of South West Africans (now Namibia) who joined Nazi Germany’s armed forces whilst South West Africa was a South African Protectorate, which is understandable given South West Africa used to be a German colony prior to World War 1 and they were all of German heritage. A handful of South African Prisoners of War even joined or were coerced to join the Waffen SS during the war itself.
General Rommel (centre) briefing fellow officers
However there are only three South African nationals from the Union itself (that we are aware of at least) who up-front joined the German Armed Forces proper. Two of them were allowed to re-settle in South Africa after the war, and both of them enjoyed amnesty and prosperity under the National Party government. One remained in Germany.
One is well-known – Robey Leibbrandt, his story as a Nazi insurgent to destabilise the South African war effort by trying to ramp up Nationalist Afrikaner militarist opposition to the war and subsequent capture is well documented, so too his treason trial and subsequent release and amnesty by the National Party (who during the war supported the Nazi cause). However little is known of this second Wehrmacht officer – Heinz Werner Schmidt.
Heinz Werner Schmidt
To be fair to Heinz Schmidt, he was born in South Africa to German parents, and at a very young age he moved around Africa with his family, classified as ‘volkdeutsche’ spending more of his formative years and completing his university education in Germany itself, becoming a dual national with a German citizenship in addition to his South African one. Leaving South Africa at the age of 4 he regarded himself as German above all and was swept up with the rest of the country in the euphoria of Nazism. When war broke out, he was in a unique position – he had a choice. He could choose to fighting for either South Africa and the Allied cause or Germany (as his dual citizenship allowed), he even had the choice of sitting the war out in South Africa (service was voluntary), he chose to his convictions to support the Nazi cause and became a German Army officer.
At one point in the war he found himself in command of Wehrmacht units directly engaging South African Army units and then, more ironically, with Europe and Germany devastated he engaged his South African birthright which gave him sanctuary in South Africa itself after the war. In fact he built two very successful South African companies and one is a well-known household brand.
So lets examine who Heinz Schmidt was and what he did. Born in South Africa, Lieutenant Heinz Schmidt served in North Africa as Erwin Rommel’s (“The Desert Fox”) personal aid and advisor – an aide-de-camp in military speak. As he was “South African-born” he was therefore considered, in line with military logic, an expert on Africa. Already a veteran of the Polish Campaign, Schmidt joined Rommel’s staff in March 1941 from Eritrea and was subsequently present during a number of battles in Egypt and later Tunisia, and was later to write a bestseller depicting his years with Rommel, namely “With Rommel in the Desert”.
Heinz Schmidt with General Rommel – Schmidt is third from the left.
Werner Schmidt by his own admission was surprised that General Rommel took him on as his advisor as he really did not have a depth knowledge of Africa, however been the only officer in Rommel’s inner circle of officers with a smattering of African heritage he found himself the only man for the job, and he happily took it on.
Lieutenant Heinz Werner Schmidt also had a sound combat record, just days before he was appointed as the aide-de-camp to General Erwin Rommel, he was commanding a heavy weapons company. In fact Schmidt played a key role in overrunning the South African positions on 23rd November 1941 during the Battle of Sidi Rezegh. He found himself in the thick of things with the German Wehrmacht’s 115 Rifle Regiment which lined up to attack the South African’s flank and over ran them.
Lieutenant Heinz Werner Schmidt described the scene as follows:
“We headed straight for the enemy tanks. I glanced back. Behind me was a fan of our vehicles—a curious assortment of all types—spread out as far as the eye could see. There were armoured troop carriers, cars of various kinds, caterpillars hauling mobile guns, heavy trucks with infantry, and motorized anti-aircraft units. Thus we roared on towards the enemy ‘barricade.’
“I stared at the front fascinated. Right ahead was the erect figure of the Colonel commanding the regiment. On the left close by and slightly to the rear of him was the Major’s car. Tank shells were whizzing through the air. The defenders (editors note: the South African Brigade) were firing from every muzzle of their 25-pounders and their little 2-pounder anti-tank guns. We raced on at a suicidal pace.”
Battle scene at Sidi Rezegh November 1941
So, here we have a very unique instance in South African military history a ‘South African’ commanding enemy troops in direct combat against his ‘countrymen’. In an action which devastated South African forces in defeat with the loss of many South African lives.
Lieutenant Heinz Werner Schmidt went on to have a very successful stint as Rommel’s advisor for the balance of the North African campaign, and his book on Rommel is regarded as one the most insightful works on Field Marshal Rommel.
Post War
What happened to Heinz Schmidt and in what actions he took part after the North African campaign is unclear, we know that he lived with Rommel and was even present at his 50th birthday on 15 November 1941. Heinz ended his book with the end of the African campaign – it was about Rommel after all, he did not elaborate on his movements and units in which he served, what his units did or on which front he served (Eastern, Western or Italian) after the Afrika Korps was defeated, and even after Rommel death.
What is clear is that Heinz Schmidt survived the war and like many Wehrmacht officers sought sanctuary outside wore torn Germany. Fortunately for Heinz the very Nazi sympathetic National Party came to power in South Africa in 1948, three short years after the end of World War 2. Heinz now chose to embrace his South African citizenship and return to his birthplace, South Africa to re-start his life.
He moved to a small German community in Natal called ‘New Germany’, located just inland from Durban. ‘New Germany’ was established well before World War 2 in 1848 by a party of 183 German immigrants. With the strong cultural ties to Germany, German social clubs and many German compatriots, this island of German heritage in South Africa proved ideal for Heinz Schmidt to start again, and he did so with great success.
He started two companies which are now household brands in South Africa, Pineware and Gedore tools, Pineware makes household appliances under its own brand, anyone who has bought a Pineware toaster, iron or electrical appliance will know it. Gedore tools makes the Wera line of tools. Pineware was sold to Lion Match.
By all accounts he was a friendly and charming man, he had many humorous stories of his time with Rommel and was regularly seen at Remembrance Parades in Durban. Heinz Schmidt died in Durban after a short illness, aged 90, in 2007. At the time his holding company business, H. W. Schmidt Industrials, was family owned.
In Conclusion
There you have it, another tale of a person highly sympathetic to the Nazi cause who found success in post 1948 Nationalist South Africa. He unfortunately (rightly or wrongly) joins Robey Leibbrand, B.J. Vorster and others who enjoyed political or business success in full sanctuary under the National Party government and as a result he was never held account or even investigated as to his actions fighting against his own countrymen.
Had this happened under Smuts’ United Party he would surely have become a ‘person of interest’ to the state, especially given his actions directly led to South African deaths. Treason is generally legally defined as citizen ‘taking up arms’ against the country of his of citizenship. In the case of dual citizenship (as was the case with Heinz Schmidt), if the person did not renounce his citizenship of the country he went to war against (which he did not) the usual practice during and after the war was to convict the person of treason, in the other Allied nations – especially the UK, USA and Australia many people like Heinz faced the same situation after the war, especially in the cases where their dual nationals and even nationals had joined the Waffen SS and German Wehrmacht, most received very light sentences and fines, in exceptional cases those found guilty of High Treason were executed or handed life sentences.
This however did not happen in South Africa after the war and the tenets of the law on treason for a dual national were not tested. The only case of a South African member of the German Wehrmacht which was tested was Robey Liebbrandt, it was during the war itself, and he narrowly escaped the death sentence (Jan Smuts intervened with clemency).
The North African campaign was regarded as the ‘gentlemen’s war’ by all forces fighting it, primarily because it was fought according to the conventions. Whether Heinz would have been simply regarded defeated Wehrmacht officer at the end of the war holding a dual nationality, had no recored of war crime and had not violated his South African citizenship rights. And then subsequently allowed to get on with his life in South Africa as a simple veteran is a matter of conjecture – we will never know as it was never challenged.
The issue of treachery aside, his book is however a sentinel work on Field Marshal Erwin Rommel – the ‘Desert Fox’ and it gives a unique and valuable historic insight into someone who is arguably regarded as one of the best military commanders of the war. Heinz Schmidt lived with and went to war with Rommel, his story is both very interesting and very unique.
To give an idea of the value his book from an insight perspective, the famous Rommel quotable quote as to using captured ‘booty’ (enemy equipment) for personal use is thanks to Schmidt’s work. Rommel, whose signature British issue goggles often worn above his visor on his cap said “Booty is permissible I assume; even for a general“. A quote which now finds itself in use in military outfits the world over when reasoning the use of ‘booty’.
With that, as South Africans we find ourselves contributing again to a rich military heritage with our own very unique history highlighting of our lessor known past of ‘Nazi’ collaborators and World War 2 Wehrmacht veterans.
History is always a three-way prism. As with South African statute forces fighting communism on two fronts – the Angolan Border ‘Bush’ War and the internal ‘struggle’ movements in the 70’s and 80’s – so it was during the Second World War as well, this time the ‘struggle’ movement was a little different and South African statute forces were fighting Fascism and Nazism (National Socialism) on two fronts, both on the international stage and on the domestic front at home.
Little is known of the domestic conflict during World War 2 as it was effectively shielded and even erased from the state’s educational history curriculum – to the point that little is known about it by subsequent generations of South Africans even to this day. By far the biggest of all the domestic pro Nazi organizations in South Africa at this time was a movement called the “Ossewabrandwag” (abbreviated to OB).
The feature image shows a Ossewabrandwag rally and its leadership along with an inserted emblem of the organization. Read on for a fascinating and relatively unknown part of South African military history.
Background and formation
The Ossewabrandwag (OB), meaning in English Ox-wagon Sentinel was an anti-British and pro-Nazi German organization in South Africa during World War II. It was officially formed in Bloemfontein on 4 February 1939.
As a background to it, in the South African War (1899–1902), Britain conquered the Boer Republics. Germany supported the Boer cause. After the war, there was a general reconciliation between Afrikaners and Britain, culminating in the formation of the Union of South Africa in 1910, under the leadership of former Boer fighters, Louis Botha and Jan Smuts. South African troops, including tens of thousands of Afrikaners, served in the British and South African Union forces during World War 1 and again in World War 2.
Nonetheless, many Boers from the ex Transvaal and Orange Free State Republics remembered the extremely brutal tactics used by Britain in the Boer War and remained resentful of British rule. They were especially resentful of the concentration camp and scorched earth policies engaged by the British to bring to bring an end to the guerilla tactics used by ‘Bitter einders’ at the close of the war.
In the 1930’s the chief vehicle of Afrikaner nationalism was the ‘Purified National Party’ of D. F. Malan, which later became the ‘National Party’. As in 1914, the Second World War appeared to a relatively small group of far right-wing Afrikaner nationalists as a golden opportunity to establish Afrikaner nationalist rule and move to make South Africa a republic independent of Britain.
‘We are now ceaselessly on the road to our goal: the Republic of South Africa – the only status under which we can truly exercise the right to self-determination as a country,’ said D.F. Malan on 6 September 1939 at the on-set of the Second World War.
Prior to this, 1938 was also the centennial anniversary of the Great Trek (the migration of Boers to the interior). The Ossewabrandwag was established in commemoration of this Great Trek. Most of the migrants traveled in ox-drawn wagons, hence the group’s name. The group’s leader was Dr Johannes Van Rensburg, a lawyer who had served previously as Secretary of Justice, in 1933 he had been to Germany in his capacity as Secretary and met both Hitler and Goering as well as other Nazi officials, he was deeply impressed with both the leadership and discipline offered by Nazism and became an admirer. The OB at the on-set of the centennial was loosely associated to Malan’s National Party.
The relationship with the National Party
There were however sharp differences between Dr van Rensburg and Dr D.F. Malan over the right course of action to be followed when South Africa declared war on Germany in 1939. Both believed that everything depended on the outcome of the war, both believed that Germany would win it, however Malan relied on negotiation with Germany to achieve his objectives, van Rensburg on the other hand believed that at some stage freedom would have to be fought for and began to formulate a militant opposition to the South African government to undermine South Africa’s war effort.
At first, relations between the National Party and the Ossewabrandwag were cordial, with most members of the Ossewabrandwag belonging to the party as well. At the higher levels, National Party leaders like P.O. Sauer and F. Erasmus (later to be made Cabinet Ministers when Malan came to power) were members of the OB.
CR SwartBJ VorsterPW Botha
Three future National Party South African Prime Ministers/State Presidents held key leadership positions in the Ossewabrandwag. ‘Generals’ like C.R. Swart (later South Africa’s first State President) was a member of the Groot Raad (Chief Council) of the Ossewabrandwag, B.J. Vorster (later to become Prime Minister of South Africa) was a keynote OB leader and formed the OB’s Cape Branch and even PW Botha (future South African State President) joined the Ossewabrandwag and worked with Vorster to establish the OB’s Cape branch.
Other National Party stalwarts where also prominent in the Ossewabrandwag organisation, Eric Louw, for example – who later to become the National Party’s Foreign Minister. That to say the National Party and the Ossewabrandwag were, to coin a phrase, “two peas in the same pod” is an absolute truism.
Combining the impact of the war and the very dynamic personality of Dr van Rensburg, the Ossewabrandwag soon grew into a significant force, a mass movement whose membership at its peak was estimated to be between 200,000 and 400,000 members.
The relationship between the Ossewabrandwag and National Party at first was very well-defined and D.F. Malan even met with OB leaders in Bloemfontein which resulted in declaration known as the ‘Cradock Agreement’. It specified the two operating spheres of the two respective organizations. They undertook not to meddle in each others affairs and the National Party endeavoured to focus on Afrikanerdom in the party political sphere, while the Ossewabrandwag was to operate on the other fronts of the ‘volk’ (white Afrikaans people’s).
‘Nazification’ of the far right
In 1940 the Ossewabrandwag created within in structures an elite organization known as the Stormjaers – the storm troopers of Afrikanerdom. The formation of the Stormjaers (English meaning: Assault troops) was in essence a paramilitary wing of the OB. The nature of the Stormjaers was drawn upon the lines of Nazi Germany’s army ‘Storm troopers’, as were the Nazi and fascist rituals and salutes, this is evidenced by the oath sworn in a by new recruits (in some instances a firearm was levelled at them whilst they read the oath): “If I retreat, kill me. If I die, avenge me. If I advance, follow me” (Afrikaans: As ek omdraai, skiet my. As ek val, wreek my. As ek storm, volg my).
Johannes van Rensburg been sworn into the Ossewabrandwag
The Stormjaers were deployed in variety of military operations ranging from the defence of Nationalist political platforms to pure sabotage, they dynamited post offices and railway lines and cut telephone wires. Van Rensburg even wrote “The Ossewabrandwag regards itself as the soldiery of the (South African) Republic . . . the Ossewabrandwag is the political action front of Afrikanerdom.”
The ideologies of the Nazis were penetrating deep into right-wing Afrikaner political identity. In 1940, directly after Nazi German decisive victories in Europe, Otto du Plessis (later to become Administrator of the Cape under the National Party) published a pamphlet – The Revolution of the Twentieth Century – in which he openly espoused the Ossewabrandwag’s policy of totalitarianism.
B.J. Vorster’s brother, Rev. Koot Vorster, who was a Dutch Reformed Church minister, was also a predominant Ossewabrandwag leader. He summed up the pro-Hitler and Pro-Nazi standpoint of the OB during an address to a student group on September 15, 1940:
“Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf’ shows the way to greatness – the path of South Africa. Hitler gave the Germans a calling. He gave them a fanaticism which causes them to stand back for no one. We must follow this example because only by such holy fanaticism can the Afrikaner nation achieve its calling.”
Kowie Marais, an OB member, years later recalled in an interview the admiration he and his friends held for Hitler: “We thought he (Hitler) might rejuvenate western civilization…against the communist-socialist trends that were creeping in from the east. We thought it was the dawn of a new era.”
Oswald Pirow also publicly identified himself with National-Socialist doctrines and Nazi Germany and established the Nazi expansionist ‘New Order’ movement inside the ranks of the former Hertzogites.
There even existed South Africa’s own Nazi party called the SANP and it’s militant wing the ‘Greyshirts’ led by Louis Theodor Weichardt (who later became the National Party Senator for Natal). This pure Nazi movement had 5000 odd loyal followers.
Dr Van Rensburg from the OB had always professed been a National Socialist, as an open admirer of Nazi Germany and Adolph Hitler, and the ideas and rituals of membership put forward by his organization had a distinctive Nazi leaning as a result.
According to OB political thinking, Afrikaans would be the only official language in a free, independent, Christian-National Republic. The English-speaking South Africans, regarded as an “un-national” element, would be condemned to an inferior status. Anti-Communism was an important backbone of OB policy in line with Nazi hatred of communism.
The emphasis of the OB was also on race and racial purity. Members were exhorted to ‘think with your blood’, and the Nazi creed of ‘Blut und Boden’ (Blood and Soil) was promoted as an OB value. ‘Family, blood, and native soil – that is, next to our religion and our love of freedom, our greatest and our most sacred national heritage’ (Die O.B. 28 October 1942).
The OB always displayed an exaggerated interest in physical culture and the need for dictatorial discipline. “Give us a master ! Give us bonds which tie us to a stable way of life” wrote van Rensburg.
On issues of family value, the leaders of the OB proclaimed that the duty of the man was to work and fight and the duty of the woman to create and tend the home and family.
In essence the Ossewabrandwag was based on the Führer principle, fighting against the British Empire, anti-capitalist in nature – they called for the removal and expropriation of “British-Jewish” controlled capital, the communists, the Jews and the system of parliamentarism. All based on the principles national socialism.
An irony is not lost here, in modern South Africa the African National Congress (ANC) now call this ‘British-Jewish controlled capital’ a new name – ‘white monopoly capital’ and call for the same capture of this elusive capital as a justification for their cause too.
Johannes van Rensburg at a Ossewabrandwag torch rally
Insurrection
From the outset of the war a series of violent incidents took place between statutory force South African soldiers and the Ossewabrandwag. This was to cumulate on Friday 31 January 1941, when van Rensburg was due to hold a meeting at the Johannesburg City Hall when a riot broke out between OB Stormjaers and South African Union Defence Force soldiers who were determined not to allow van Rensburg to have a platform for his support of Nazi Germany – with whom they were now at war with.
The Stormjaers were armed with sticks,pipes, batons, knives, sjamboks and even bicycle chains, while the soldiers were for the most part unarmed and the battle raged in downtown Johannesburg for two days. Armoured cars were brought in while enraged UDF soldiers set fire to Nationalist newspaper offices and set police vans alight. Tear-gas canisters were hurled in every direction between the two antagonists and the Police.
Before a commission of inquiry on the Johannesburg riot, Dr van Rensburg declared that it was only OB discipline and restraint which had prevented reinforcements in outlying areas from being brought into town and broadening the scope of the battle.
In support of OB activities the National Party even came out in direct support of the OB against Smuts’ government resolution to detain and ban members of the OB. Dr D.F. Malan defended the OB in a speech on 5 March 1941, saying:
“The Ossewabrandwag has been accused of lending itself to subversive activities and also of encouraging them. Now I say: Carry out your threat. Ban it. Prevent it and prevent its meetings. If the Ossewabrandwag decides to be passively disobedient and refuses to be dissolved . . . I shall share the consequences with the Ossewabrandwag. At this stage I am prepared to say to you that if the government decides upon that act and the Ossewabrandwag decides not to submit, I shall keep my pledge”.
It was a clear sign to Smuts’ government that unity in the ranks of the Afrikanerdom movements was as unified as ever since the outbreak of the Second World War.
To give an idea of sabotage and violent attacks, at the height of the Second World War – 1942, Ossewabrandwag Stormjaer activities included:
Explosions over a large area of mines at Klerksdorp, Vereeniging, Delmas and in Potchefstroom the OB blew up power lines – 29 January 1942. All telegraph and telephone communication between Bloemfontein and the rest of South Africa were dislocated in one attack in February 1942.
Railway, telegraph and telephone lines in various parts of the Free State were destroyed in February 1942. Fifty-eight Stormjaers were eventually charged with high treason, and a quantity of hand grenades were found. Stormjaers also blew up two telephone poles behind the Pretoria Central Jail, but were never captured.
Two other Stormjaers, Visser and van Blerk were convicted of a bombing at the Benoni Post Office, as a result of which an innocent bystander was killed, they were both sentenced to death. The sentence was commuted to life imprisonment.
A few members of the OB were shot while trying to escape from internment camps or jails, the most known was the dramatic pursuit OB General, Johannes van der Walt, who was shot while on the run near Krugersdorp.
A number of arms cache’ and hiding places for the Stormjaers can still be found, the inserted picture shows Ossewabrandwag graffiti in a cave in the Excelsior area.
B.J. Vorster
One very predominant leader of the Ossewabrandwag was Balthazar Johannes (B.J.) Vorster, South Africa’s future Prime Minister. Along with like-minded OB colleagues he regarded the war as an opportunity to get rid of the hated domination of the United Kingdom of South Africa and welcomed the Nazis as allies in their fight.
The firebrand nature of the Ossewabrandwag appealed to Vorster more than the National Party, so while South African troops were helping to make the world safe from Hitler’s National Socialism, Vorster was appointed as a ‘General’ in the Ossewabrandwag for the Port Elizabeth district to promote the National Socialism doctrine back home. On his politics he famously announced the Ossewabrandwag’s position on Nazism and said in 1942:
‘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”.
BJ Vorster addressing a OB meeting
Vorster was eventually arrested under the emergency regulations in September 1942, he immediately went on hunger strike and after two months was transferred to Koffiefontein internment camp as prisoner No. 2229/42 in Hut 48, Camp 1. B.J. Vorster was eventually released on parole in January 1944 and placed under house arrest.
Interned alongside BJ Vorster was another Ossewabrandwag member Hendrik Johan van den Bergh who eventually went on to found the Bureau of State Security (B.O.S.S.), an intelligence agency created under the National Party on 16 May 1969 to coordinate military and domestic intelligence. Van den Bergh was to become known as the “tall assassin” given his physical height.
Direct German intervention
The German Nazis themselves saw the activities of the Ossewabrandwag as very positive to their fight. Van Rensburg was even played up over Zeesen radio as the real leader of the Afrikaner people.
In June 1941 Robey Leibbrandt was landed from a German yacht on the Namaqualand coast with 10,000 dollars, a radio transmitter, and instructions to make contact with van Rensburg and investigate the possibilities of joint action with the Ossewabrandwag. His mission, overseen by German Admiral Wilhelm Canaris was Operation Weissdorn, a plan for a coup d’état to overthrow the government of General Jan Smuts.
Leibbrandt was a South African Olympic boxer who later came a fervent Nazi follower. He joined the German Army, where he became the first South African to be trained as a Fallschirmjäger (paratrooper) and glider pilot. Leibbrandt was trained with comrades of the Brandenburgers at a sabotage training course of Abwehr II (Abwehrschool “Quenzgut”) near Brandenburg an der Havel, west of Berlin.
Once in South Africa he soon made contact with the Stormjaers and was brought to Pretoria to see van Rensburg.
Nothing, however, came of the negotiations. Leibbrandt’s megalomania was enough to deter anyone from cooperating with him, and van Rensburg refused to be drawn. At the same time Leibbrandt’s fanaticism attracted a number of members of the Ossewabrandwag over to his side, and within a short while Leibbrandt was leading his own group, calling themselves ‘The National Socialist Rebels’ whose members were bound to one another by a blood oath which partly read:
“All my fight and striving is for the freedom and independence of the Afrikaner people of South Africa and for the building up of a National Socialist State in accordance with the ideas of Adolf Hitler.”
The quite truce between Leibbrandt and van Rensburg quickly developed into open hostility. Leibbrandt, disappointed that the OB did not officially support his mission and its resultant failure began to openly attack van Rensburg as an ‘agent’ of Smuts. This sealed his fate. After a few months in South Africa he was ‘sold out’ by OB insiders, his location now known to the Smuts government, he was arrested, together with a number of leading Stormjaers.
Placed on trial Leibbrandt was sentenced to death for treason, but the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment after much lobbying from Afrikaner Nationalist organisations. Mindful of the deep-seated split in his own Afrikaans community, to quote Jan Smuts at the time his sentence was commuted to life “I did not want the blood of another Jopie Fourie on my hands”.
The Stormjaers sabotage activities were getting too violent for DF Malan’s National Party policy of negotiated settlement with Germany when (and if) they won the war. Many of these acts of violence were going too far for the majority of moderate Afrikaners, and Malan ordered the National Party to break all ties with the OB later in 1942.
The South African Union government then cracked down heavily on the OB and the Stormjaers, placing thousands of them in internment camps for the duration of the war.
Summing up the achievements of the Ossewabrandwag’s campaign of sabotage, van Rensburg wrote this in his autobiography which was published after the war:
“I fought (Smuts’) war effort and I fought it bitterly with all the means at my disposal – which were considerable…. There is no doubt that they (the Ossewabrandwag) seriously hampered the government’s war effort. Hampered it because the government was forced to draw off considerable manpower to guard many strategic points and essential services. A not inconsiderable military element also had to be retained in South Africa as a strategic reserve for possible emergency.”
At the end of the war, the Ossewabrandwag was absorbed back into the National Party and ceased to exist as a separate body, many of its members achieving political notoriety as members of the National Party government on their accent to power with the National Party electoral win over Smut’s United Party in 1948.
Returning war veterans react
Imagine the sheer frustration felt by the veterans after “The War for Freedom” (as WW2 was known) had been fought with the massive cost in South African lives (literally tens of thousands), to rid the world of Nazism and Fascism in the ‘good fight’ – only to come home in 1945 and within three short years find the ‘home grown’ pro Nazi Germany and pro Nazi philosophy politicians swept into government. The very men and their philosophy they had gone to war against in the first place.
By the early 1950’s the South African nationalist government was littered with men, who, prior to the war where strongly sympathetic to the Nazi cause and had actually declared themselves as full-blown National Socialists: Oswald Pirow, B.J. Vorster, Hendrik van den Bergh, Johannes von Moltke, P.O. Sauer, F. Erasmus , C.R. Swart and Louis Weichardt to name a few, and there is no doubt that their brand of politics was influencing government policy.
Louis WeichardtOswald Pirow
Louis Weichardt was the South African Nazi ‘grey-shirts’ founder (he later became a National Party MP) in the left image and Oswald Pirow (Nazi ‘New Order’ founder in South Africa) inspecting German Luftwaffe troops on a ‘unofficial’ visit to Nazi Germany on behalf of the ‘old’ National Party – later he became a key Public Prosecutor under the ‘new’ National Party.
Also by the early 1950’s, this state of affairs in the make up and philosophy underpinning South Africa’s ‘new’ ruling party, led to open Anti-Apartheid protests from the South African military veterans community – in their tens of thousands, led by Adolph ‘Sailor’ Malan and other returning war heroes in Torch Commando rallies (The Torch) and it ultimately led to the marginalization of South African war veterans, their veteran associations and the ultimate suppression of anti-Apartheid movements like the Torch by the National Party.
Images of Sailor Malan at an anti-apartheid Torch Commando rally in Cape Town attended by over 10 000 returning South African World War 2 veterans.
Sailor Malan famously accused the national party government at this rally of “depriving us of our freedom, with a fascist arrogance that we have not experienced since Hitler and Mussolini met their fate”.
Covering Tracks
In the interests of consolidating themselves in power and in the interests of securing the ‘white’ vote from both English and Afrikaans voters (especially English-speaking white South Africans of British extraction) much of this legacy was a political hot potato for the National Party. Nazism, Fascism and National Socialism was purged from Europe with the loss of millions of lives, and exposed for what it is – a crime against humanity.
Political careers – especially those of future National Party State Presidents and Prime Ministers would not be helped if their associations to Nazi Germany, Nazi political philosophy and even anti-British ideals where openly promoted. Especially when National Service was instituted and the National Party called on Jewish and English-speaking white South Africans of British heritage and even moderate or leftist Afrikaners to rally behind their cause to ‘fight communism’ and serve in the statutory armed forces as conscripts.
So it was shielded – in formal secondary education it was not formally taught at all and it was never really widely reported on by the state media apparatus when referring the political legacies of the likes of B.J. Vorster or P.W. Botha. In 1948, two months after taking office the National Party even went so far as removing two truck loads of intelligence on the Broederbond and Ossewabrandwag accrued by the Smuts government from their archive, and it especially included Broederbond plans on how South Africans would be educated along Christian Nationalism lines, this intelligence was never to be seen again. This would give B.J. Vorster his favourite fall-back line of “prove it” whenever someone challenged him on his Nazi sympathising past. Except ‘banned’ overseas anti-apartheid movements, they went to town on the link of Apartheid to Nazism and broadly promoted it to anyone who would listen. This was of course gagged in South Africa under emergency regulations and banned organisation listings. The result is that little is left of it in the modern historical narrative on South Africa in the country itself.
At best, in South Africa, it was re-branded as a ‘fight against the British’ because of the atrocities committed by the British during the Boer War, a sort of retribution, cleverly phasing moral correctiveness to justify it. What this narrative also aimed to do was unbundle all the underlying Nazi ideology, philosophy, ritual and politics which had been coupled so openly during the war to the Ossewabrandwag’s ideals of Christian Nationalism by future National Party leaders. Covering it up with ‘moral outrage’ instead. Whilst retribution for the Boer War was a primary driver of the Ossewabrandwag, and there is good reason behind this objective, it was not the only driver, and ignoring the entire underpinning ideology of the group is only to look at half of the whole.
Many historians have asked if Nazism played a role in the creation of Apartheid as philosophy, and frankly the answer is yes it did, both directly and indirectly by the architects of Apartheid who so readily adopted Nazi ideals, rituals and philosophy during the war, in open and on the public record. It is this for this reason that National Party did not want any open or constant linkages made to this, their darker past, because when in power the ideals behind Nazism were so abhorrent to the majority of white South Africans that it would have certainly lost them their authority.
In Conclusion
In the end it all disappeared into a politically generated one-sided nationalist narrative of South Africa’s history, and was lost or ‘re-presented’ as retribution for the Boer War to future generations. It even remains a very dark and relatively unknown topic even to this day, however, so strong is this legacy that it has continued to lurk in the Afrikaner far right for many years and resurfaced openly again in the ‘Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging’ – Afrikaner Resistance Movement (abbreviated to ‘AWB’) in the early 1990’s. When German Nazi swastika flags made a regular appearance next to the AWB flags – which were also styled after the swastika. In addition to German National Socialism finding itself back into the AWB ideology itself, it also wound its way into AWB identity – including insignia and uniform.
AWB Rally in Pretoria
This legacy is far-reaching, and it also remains an irony that the Ossewabrandwag (and later the AWB) embarked on acts of armed insurrection which by any modern definition would be considered a ‘terrorist’ act, and the same people involved in them would readily brand the ANC for ‘terrorism’ with no hindsight to their own time spent as a ‘terrorist’, fighting to destabilise the government of the day with bullets and bombs in very much the same way.
Ironic that the future ‘struggle’ of South Africa’s Black people (and many White people too) against the political philosophy of these men would emulate the same ‘struggle’ these men initiated against ‘British rule’ – and in both instances it carried with it armed insurrection, detention of ‘heroes’, imprisonment of a future President and the promotion of a political “ism”, albeit that ‘Communism’ and ‘African Socialism’ were diametrically opposite to ‘Fascism’, ‘Nazism’ and ‘Christian Nationalism’ – far left and far right of the political sphere respectively.
The net result, the importance and legacy that the Ossewabrandwag has left us with, is that ‘race politics’ continues to haunt us and ‘centre’ balanced moderate politics in South Africa has been completely elusive since 1948.
Evolution of Symbology (L-R) Nazism, Ossewabrandwag, Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging
References from South African History On-Line, Wikipedia and “The Rise of the South African Reich” 1964 written by Brian Bunting, “Echoes of David Irving – The Greyshirt Trial of 1934” by David M. Scher. “Not for ourselves” – a history of the SA Legion” by Arthur Blake. Lazerson, “Whites in the Struggle Against Apartheid”. Neil Roos. “Ordinary Springboks: White Servicemen and Social Justice in South Africa, 1939-1961″. David Harrison “The White Tribe of Africa, South Africa in Perspective” 1981.
This story starts during World War II when approximately 2 000 Afrikaners were interned by the Jan Smuts government (mainly at Koffiefontein) because of their overt sympathy for the Nazi cause and/or their involvement in ‘terrorist’ groups like the Ossewabrandwag (including men like BJ Vorster – a future South African President) which attempted to sabotage the war effort. After the Nazis lost the war, three short years later many of these Nazi sympathisers won their own home-front battle when the National Party took power in 1948 with a very narrow majority.
Deep down in some of these new Apartheid governing elite was a strong desire to help their German friends so poorly affected by the outcome of the war, and why not? It would be a humanitarian thing to do.
A plan was hatched to adopt a large number of Nazi war orphans. Under the authority of Dr Vera Buhrman and Schalk Botha, the Duitse Kinderfonds (German Children’s Fund) was established and attracted huge support the Afrikaner Nationalist elite at the time.
One of the orphans, Werner van der Merwe, many years later described the plan as “a protest declaration by a group of influential Afrikaners against the fact that the (Smuts) government opposed Nazi Germany during the war”. Herein lies the problem with it, the plan moved away from a strictly humanitarian undertaking to a political and ideological one, and there were problems with its underlying rational from the beginning.
Here’s how it began The DAHA (Deutsch Afrikanischer Hilfsausschuss) and the VNLK (Women’s Lending Committee) operating under the ‘Broederbond’ (Afrikaner Brother Bond) gathered a quarter of a million pounds between 1945 and 1957 to undertake emergency relief work in post-war Germany. Mrs. Nellie Liebenberg, founded the mission with the aim of bringing 10 000 orphans from mainly Nazi families killed during the war, and move them to South Africa.
On the one hand, one purpose of the scheme was humanitarian, a second was it enabled some from the Afrikaner far right who gave Nazi German support during the war to follow it up with some real help. The third objective, and the most important one to the mission is a little more sinister, this was to strengthen the ‘white’ Afrikaner people with a massive injection of more ‘pure’ white blood, and reconcile the white Afrikaner political dominance in South Africa. This can be found in the prerequisite sought from the orphans to be brought to South Africa – the children had to be white, healthy, Protestant, ‘pure aryan’ German (not Jewish or other) and aged between 3 and 8 years old.
The very ambitious plan to bring out 10 000 such children to enshrine white South Africa with a ‘fountain of white youth’ however ran into problems. This mission by the then ‘opposition’ party took root whilst the Jan Smuts was still in government, The Afrikaner nationalists were very excited about their new plan, but the Smuts foresaw that the underpinning rational spelt bad news for South Africa destined to deeper race politics, he was of the opinion that the project could create problems – and he would unfortunately be proved right.
In the interim in 1947, the secretary of the ‘German Children’s Fund’, Schalk Botha, and a physician, Dr. Vera Bührmann, travelled to Germany to inspect possible children who met the the nationalists criteria of 10 000 ‘white protestant’ children. However, they arrived too late and most children were already earmarked for foster care elsewhere by post war agencies in Germany.
They could only locate 83 children between the ages of 2 and 13 who met the criteria and who were available, mainly from the Schleswig-Holstein region.
Back home in South Africa, the National Party had ousted Jan Smuts’ party in May 1948 and the way was clear for the mission. The Afrikaner press carried advertisements for volunteer parents. Only Afrikaans speakers and members of the Dutch Reformed Church were eligible to adopt a child. Four hundred and fifty parent couples expressed interest in adopting a child. With limited numbers, preference was given to families regarded as ‘Afrikaner elite’. The orphans arrived in Cape Town on the 8th September 1948. Some travelled by train to Pretoria, and welcomed there by the Kappiekommando – a woman’s brigade strictly of ‘Boer’ heritage (known for wearing the traditional black Dutch ‘kappie’).
Socialisation, nurture and not nature dictates the outcome of children. No human being is ‘born bad’ because of their biological parent’s political or ideological disposition, countless studies into the children born to true Nazi butchers and criminals have proven that there is no connection whatsoever in their DNA or personality to behave like their parents – they are not born with a ‘evil’ DNA streak mapped with a political ideology. How children behave and think, and how they become politicised into a ideology is very much a product of how they are reared into a society, and how their society influences them.
Some good
The same can be said of these orphan children in the right environment, being brought up in well to do, by the Afrikaans elite, some of these children were to become outstanding citizens, some of the best South Africa was to produce. This immigration scheme is however an interesting episode in the Afrikaner’s cultural history, especially since the orphans made a contribution to South Africa in recent years out of proportion to their limited numbers.
Marietjie Malan, one of the orphans was the most famous, and became the darling off the Afrikaans media, especially because she was adopted by the new Prime Minister, Dr. D.F. Malan. Today’s story carries as its master picture a picture of Marietjie and her adopted father (from the DF Malan Archive).
Dr. D.F. Malan, as a leader of National Party, wrote to the The German Children’s Fund to express his interest in adopting a child. It went without saying that the application of a person of his stature would be successful, since such a high-profile adoption would advance the cause.
Prior to and during the war, Dr DF Malan was strongly in support of Nazi Germany, albeit he officially chose ‘neutrality’ and his views of groups like the Ossewabrandwag and South African ‘Nazi’ Gryshemde (Grey Shirts) were somewhat negative, he never abided their violent approach to change, but he did form a loose political association between them and the National Party.
Maria Malan, his wife, as soon as the orphans arrived in Cape Town, was at the centre where the orphans were to be housed and the first to choose a child. Marietjie was a small four-year-old girl who caught her attention. To Maria, it was a ‘spiritual birth’ to the new child. To the little girl, however, the experience was traumatic – especially as she was separated from her younger brother.
Marietjie, would however soon wrap her new father around her little finger. Members of the press, accustomed to running into a brick wall when they attempted to interview D.F. Malan, witnessed Malan’s stern features softening when Marietjie appeared. She was the only person who was able to circumvent Maria’s strict rule that Malan was generally not to be disturbed, Yet, while Malan strolled and played with his new daughter the outcome of Malan’s intense race politics such as this adoption program was beginning to play out in South Africa.
Hundreds of thousands of returning WW2 military veteran’s in ‘Torch Commando” led by WW2 flying ace and Afrikaner hero ‘Sailor Malan’ began defying his policies (a distant cousin of his) and the ANC Defiance Campaign, with a orchestrated campaign of Black civil disobedience, which began shortly afterwards.
Given this elitist upbringing, notably, these German war babies, produced other significant South Africans. A few followed paths which took them away from their politicised youths.
Werner Nel became an internationally renowned operatic baritone, and later a professor of music at Potchefstroom University. He even went on to receive the South African Academy of Science and Art award, the Huberte Rupert Prize for classical music.
Other predominant South Africans include; Professor Eike de Lange, Professor Siegfried Petrick (Veterinary Science) and Professor Werner van der Merwe (History).
Some very bad
However, for all the good and great South Africans rescued by The German Children’s Fund, the socialisation of some into ‘far right’ Nazi sympathising Afrikaner families played a significant role in formulating their political identities. Identities which will forever taint what was deemed as a humanitarian mission. Especially those adopted by former members of the Ossawabrandwag and South African Nazi Party ‘Grey Shirt’ members.
Another factor underpinning this was that the National Party seemed to hold Germanic scientific prowess in great esteem and tried hard to attract German chemists and biologists to South Africa, with some success. One controversial appointment was the German geneticist Professor Peter Geertshen who headed a wolf-breeding programme, with the idea of creating a animal which would be trained to track down and kill terrorists.
Some of the orphans even had a tough time. Future pig farmer Herbert Leenen found himself used as no more than a farm labourer by his new family and eventually broke ties with his new “parents”.
Forever Tainted – Lothar Neethling
The most stand out adopted child, who has by default tainted the entire program was General Lothar Paul Neethling. His history has forever stoked the controversy of nature versus nurture, as his story inadvertently brought to South Africa – the very DNA of the German Nazi Party.
Lothar Paul Neethling, who at the time of his adoption went by his biological parents’ name Tietz. The Tietz children all went to different families. Unusual, given that the original idea was also that only children aged two to eight would be included, but during her German travels, Buhrman took pity on a bright young Prussian teenager, Lothar Paul Tietz, whose brother and sister had made the cut.
Lothar Paul Tietz was thirteen-years old, and the eldest of the group of orphans – in fact he was regarded as the ‘head boy’ of the group because of his age and maturity.
As a thirteen year old Lothar had vivid memories of the traumas of the war, losing his parents, nazification, leaving his country and being seperated from his siblings, and he was desperate for a sense of order.
How their parents were killed is not known, but towards the end of the war the Tietz siblings were moved to an orphanage in Elbing, where Buhrman met them. This tall, polite 13-year-old impressed her, but lurking within him was five years experience of National Socialist education and he had also been exposed to the Hitler Youth.
Lothar Tietz was cherry-picked for adoption by the Pretoria-based Chairman of the German Children’s Fund, Dr J.C. Neethling. Lothar’s new father was notorious, he was interned for pro-Nazi activities during the war, was a South African Nazi Party ‘Grey Shirt’ and then a leading ‘Black Shirt’ within the organisation – radical and from South Africa’s far right he was also a leading Ossewabrandwag functionary.
Lothar adopted the surname ‘Neethling’ and said of the experience that it was a “big adventure”, and once he arrived in South Africa he was prepared to cut his ties with Germany, and was “pleased to adopt my new fatherland”.
He did his utmost to ingratiate himself with his hosts by becoming a better Afrikaner than his classmates – excelling in rugby and at school, and absorbing every nuance of Afrikaner culture – and he was rewarded accordingly, being viewed as a fine example of the Aryan ideal and the ‘Kinderfonds’ experiment.
Lothar Neethling moved so effortlessly through the ranks. He rose to the number two position in the South African Police – as chief deputy commissioner, scientific and technical services.
He also became a respected scientist in his own right, earning two doctorates in forensics – one from the University of California – and was honoured by several prestigious international scientific associations. He became a member of the Afrikaans Academy of Arts and Science and his scientific work earned him awards including a golden award from AAAS and a medal from the Taiwanese government. In 1971, Neethling founded The South African Police’s forensic unit. His work in the unit earned him seven SAP awards and three years later he was appointed Chief Deputy Commissioner.
Capt. Dirk Coetzee
But in November 1989 Captain Dirk Coetzee, the former commander of ‘the Vlakplaas’ South African Police ‘death squad’, pulled the plug on the ‘hit squads’ with a newspaper scoop. Among his allegations was that Neethling used the police forensic laboratories he controlled to supply him with “knock-out drops” for the murder of African National Congress (ANC) suspects. He alleged that he would collect the poison – known to him as Lothar’s potion, from Neethling’s home or from his laboratory, and administer to it to ANC suspects.
Lothar Neethling immediately sued newspapers carrying the story for libel. At the trial his case back-fired and Judge Johann Kriegler declared that Gen. Lothar Neethling was indeed, a poisoner.
Not deterred by this verdict Gen. Lothar Neething took his case to the Appellate Division, the court found that both Neething and Coetzee were poor witnesses, but could find sufficient onus of proof and Gen. Lothar Neething won his case.
Later, the Truth and Reconciliation commission was to bring out more accusations against Gen. Lothar Neething Former state functionaries who appeared before the truth commission not only confirmed the role played by Neethling’s laboratories in the production and supply of poisons to assassinate anti-apartheid activists, but also revealed he was the number-two man in Dr Wouter Basson’s biological and chemical warfare programme.
After been ordered to pay Neethling’s court settlement from the Appellate Court trial, the Vrye Weekblad (one of the newspapers at the centre of the controversy) was forced into bankruptcy and closed in February 1994. The newspaper’s editor, Max du Preez maintained that Neethling had lied in court and, after TRC hearings in September 1997, he laid criminal charges of murder, perjury and fraud against Lothar Neething. However, according to Du Preez, his charges against Lothar Neethling were never thoroughly investigated.
In a hail of controversy, charges and allegations, Lothar Neething died of lung cancer in Pretoria on 11 July 2005, aged 69. Whether the allegations were founded or not, his legacy and that of the National Party’s German WW2 orphan program would be forever tarnished.
In the end, what this child adoption program proved was that political ideology for ‘race’ enhancement underpinning what is a humanitarian mission, can never really be condoned. The ‘political’ hot potato it created, albeit relatively ‘buried’ in the annuals of history will always resurface, and whether we like it or not, it will aways be yet another pointer to the absurdity of Apartheid and the underpinning far right nationalism which brought it about. Regardless of all the good and wellbeing it brought to children very much in need.
References: van der Merwe, Vir ‘n ‘Blanke Volk’: Die Verhaal van die Duitse Weeskinders van 1948 (Johannesburg: Perskor-Uitgewery, 1988), 1998 Mail and Gardian arickle and Wikipedia. Photos of Dr Malan from the Malan historical family archive.
Lisa Shearin in ‘Bewitched and Betrayed’ said “It’s not treason if you win” and this rings very true to South African traitors from the past and now the present. How history repeating itself in South Africa can be ironic at the best of times, the country’s ethnic diversity will always ensure that one community’s freedom fighter is another community’s terrorist.
This was as true of the Afrikaner Nationalists during the Second World War, as much as it was true to the African Nationalists during the political and armed “struggle” in the more recent past. Both produced ‘traitors’, both had leaders incarcerated, both went on to ultimately govern South Africa and both produced Presidents who were themselves imprisoned as “traitors to the state”. Ironically – both went on to pardon their fellow activists and make heroes of them. The issue of ‘treachery’ set aside by the ‘winner’.
Robey Leibbrandt
This is the story of one such South African national – Sidney Robey Leibbrandt, who was led by the German military intelligence (Abwehr) during the Second World War under the pseudonym ‘Robert Leibbrand’.
Born in Potchefstroom Leibbrandt was an Afrikaner Nationalist of both German and Irish decent. He was also a South African Olympic boxer, however his political ideology drove him to become a German secret agent and ‘freedom fighter’ – primarily against the British influence and political power within South Africa.
Leibbrandt went to Germany in 1938 to study at the Reich Academy for Gymnastics, and stayed on when war broke out. He joined the German Army, where he became the first South African to be trained as a Fallschirmjäger (paratrooper) and glider pilot. Leibbrandt was trained with the Comrades of the Brandenburgers at a sabotage training course of Abwehr II (Abwehrschool “Quenzgut”) near Brandenburg an der Havel, west of Berlin.
Operation Weissdorn
Admiral Wilhelm Canaris
The German Admiral Wilhelm Canaris ordered “Operation Weissdorn” a plan for a coup d’état to overthrow the South African government of General Jan Smuts and assassinate Smuts. Central to the plan was Leibbrandt, who left Germany on 5 April 1941 to lead and execute it.
In June 1941, under the code name Walter Kempf, Leibbrandt was dropped on the Namaqualand coast north of Cape Town (Mitchell’s Bay) by a confiscated French sailboat (the Kyloe). His mission was to make contact with the South African pro-Nazi movement, the Ossewabrandwag, and expand his ranks of ‘freedom fighters’.
In the 1930’s the chief vehicle of Afrikaner nationalism was the Purified National Party of Dr D.F. Malan, (which went on to become the National Party as we know it today) and in 1938 the National Party celebrated the centennial anniversary of the Great Trek – the Ossewabrandwag was established in commemoration of the Trek, it was led by Dr Johannes Van Rensburg who was a lawyer and also a dedicated admirer of Nazi Germany.
Afrikaner Nationalist Resistance
The role of the Ossewabrandwag (OB) evolved to become a militant one – the nationalist members were unsympathetic to Britain because of the Boer War and became increasingly hostile when South Africa declared war on Germany in 1939. As sympathizers with Nazi Germany they felt their only solution was armed struggle.
Within the ranks of the Ossewabrandwag was a formation of Stormjaers (Assault troops). The nature of the Stormjaers was evidenced by the oath sworn by new recruits: “If I retreat, kill me. If I die, avenge me. If I advance, follow me”
The Stormjaers engaged in sabotage against the South African government. They dynamited electrical power lines and railroads, and cut telegraph and telephone lines (These types of acts were going too far for most Afrikaners and Malan later ordered the National Party to break with the Ossewabranwag in 1942)
Robey Leibbrandt, on landing in Mitchell’s Bay hoped to tap into this large resource of Afrikaner ‘Stormjaers’ in his plan to assassinate Smuts and overthrow the government. He made his way to Cape Town to meet and make arrangements with Dr van Rensburg in Pretoria. However, rather disappointingly he found van Rensburg unsympathetic to his plan. Nothing came of the negotiations. Leibbrandt’s megalomania was enough to deter anyone from cooperating with him, and Dr van Rensburg refused to be drawn. Some sources even point to a physical alternation between van Rensburg and Leibbrandt in their final meeting.
Undeterred Leibbrandt continued in his attempts to drum up support from the Afrikaaner Nationalists winning converts from the Ossewabrandwag and the National Party to support his cause with fiery speeches at meetings held in the Orange Free State and in the Transvaal. These converts to Liebbrandt’s band of ‘Stormjaers’ called ‘The National Socialist Rebels’ took a specific Nazi Blood Oath, and trained in bomb making and sabotage. Their blood oath partly read:
“All my fight and striving is for the freedom and independence of the Afrikaner people of South Africa and for the building up of a National Socialist State in accordance with the ideas of Adolf Hitler.”
Leibbrandt was fully determined in his plot to overthrow the government by force of arms and assassinate Jan Smuts, he famously said the following before leaving for South Africa.
“The signal for the coup d’ etat will shake South Africa to its very foundations. The whole world will understand it. The gigantic leading figure of General Smuts will be felled like a heavy oak tree at the psychological moment. I will commit this deed on my own. It will happen without help or support.” Sydney Robey Leibbrandt (Berlin, March 20, 1941)
Capture
Leibbrandt’s small group of National Socialist Rebels kept the South African government on high alert by committing various sabotage acts. However, the quiet truce between Leibbrandt and van Rensburg quickly developed into open hostility. Leibbrandt, disappointed that the OB did not officially support his mission and its resultant failure began to openly attack Dr van Rensburg as an ‘agent’ of Smuts. This sealed his fate. The OB felt Leibbrandt a liability to their cause.
After Liebbrandt and his group of Stormjaers got into a confrontation and gunfight with UDF soldiers in the autumn of 1942, Leibbrandt went on the run and evaded the police. He was betrayed by fellow nationalists in the Ossewabrandwag who disclosed his location and he was eventually arrested in Pretoria in December 1942. Ironically the arresting officer was Claude Sterley, a fellow Springbok boxer and friend.
To get on top of all the wartime dissent and armed resistance from the nationalists, the South African government also cracked down very heavily on the Ossewabrandwag and the Stormjaers, placing thousands of them in internment camps for the duration of the war. Among the internees was future Prime Minister B. J. Vorster, who was a regional leader (General) of the Ossewabrandwag.
Field Marshal Jan Smuts
On 11 March 1943 Leibbrandt was sentenced to death for high treason. Although Leibbrandt refused to give evidence at any stage in the trial, he claimed that he had acted “for Volk and Führer” and gave the German Salute (Hitler Salute) when he first entered the court, to which several spectators responded and calling “Sieg Heil”. After being sentenced to death, Leibbrandt shouted loudly and clearly “I greet death”.
General Jan Smuts however later commuted his sentence to life imprisonment, confiding that he did not want the blood of another Jopie Fourie on his hands. In this respect Smuts, as an Afrikaner throughout his career usually bowed to a policy of appeasement politics when it came to Afrikaner issues and his ‘Volk’.
This can clearly be seen in the treatment of both ‘traitors’ and enemies of the state – Smuts took a heavy hand to executing the ring leaders of the Rand Revolt who were mainly ‘English’ Communists, but when it came to the Boer Revolt everyone involved was freed, except Jopie Fourie (who had not resigned from the Union Defence Force as an officer when becoming a rebel and therefore had a different case of treason and was court marshalled by the military instead – whereas all the other rebels had resigned). Smuts took the same relatively ‘light handed’ approach to the Ossewabrandwag and clear cases of sedition and treason as was the case with Leibbrandt and chose not to execute them.
It’s not treason if you win
When the National Party was elected to rule in South Africa in 1948, D. F. Malan issued an amnesty over all their fellow war offenders, including the likes of Liebbrandt and the future President BJ Vorster. The National Party then folded the Ossewabrandwag and absorbed their members and structures into the party.
Leibbrandt left the prison and was greeted by crowds of Afrikaner right-wingers and Nationalists as a “folk hero”. The returning servicemen from World War felt it a slap in the face, a blatant political statement as to how much the Afrikaner Nationalists disregarded those who had gone to war against Nazism. To them it was an affront to the sacrifice and loss of thousands of their compatriot South Africans in the war.
Leibbrandt remained politically active in his later life, founding the organisation Anti-Kommunistiese Beskermingsfront (Anti-Communist Protection Front) in 1962, and producing a series of pamphlets titled Ontwaak Suid-Afrika (Wake up South Africa). He was also a passionate sportsman and hunter. Robey Leibbrandt, “Der treue Gefolgsmann” (the loyal follower) died on 1 August 1966 from a heart attack.
The irony is that once in power the rise of African Nationalism (ANC) and their decision to embark on armed resistance mirrors that of the Afrikaner Nationalism. Like the armed wing of the Afrikaner Nationalists – the Ossewabrandwag ‘terrorists’ and ‘traitors’ were imprisoned as enemies of the state, so too were the armed wing of the ANC – Umkhonto we Sizwe. Once in power the Afrikaner Nationalists – the NP – behaved no different to the African Nationalists – the ANC – they built heroes and legacies around their military ‘heroes’, issued pardons and amnesties – and also renamed streets and institutions after them.
In Conclusion
But most ironic is that from the ranks of imprisoned ANC leaders emerged Nelson Mandela, and from the ranks of imprisoned National Party members emerged BJ Vorster – both of whom went on to become President. Strange how history turns and repeats itself.
Both entirely different now, history now looks favourably on Mandela and the African Nationalists (ANC) and its cabal and dismisses their acts of treason in light of a ‘honourable cause’ (liberation from oppression) and history now views Vorster, the Afrikaner Nationalists (NP) and their cabal, like Robey Liebrand and their various acts of treason very unfavourably and point to a ‘dishonourable cause’ (suppression of liberation by oppression).
This brings another famous quote on what qualifies and defines treason, it’s from T.S. Elliot and is very applicable and rings true to the above statement;
“The last temptation is the greatest treason: to do the right deed for the wrong reason”.
Written and Researched by Peter Dickens. Reference: Wikipedia and extracts from “Volk and Fuhrer” by Hans Strydom. Colourised images of Robey Leibbrandt with thanks to Frans Bedford-Visser. Colourised image of Jan Smuts thanks to Photo Redux.
He moved to a small German community in Natal called ‘New Germany’, located just inland from Durban. ‘New Germany’ was established well before World War 2 in 1848 by a party of 183 German immigrants. With the strong cultural ties to Germany, German social clubs and many German compatriots, this island of German heritage in South Africa proved ideal for Heinz Schmidt to start again, and he did so with great success.
To give an idea of the value his book from an insight perspective, the famous Rommel quotable quote as to using captured ‘booty’ (enemy equipment) for personal use is thanks to Schmidt’s work. Rommel, whose signature British issue goggles often worn above his visor on his cap said “Booty is permissible I assume; even for a general“. A quote which now finds itself in use in military outfits the world over when reasoning the use of ‘booty’.
Marietjie, would however soon wrap her new father around her little finger. Members of the press, accustomed to running into a brick wall when they attempted to interview D.F. Malan, witnessed Malan’s stern features softening when Marietjie appeared. She was the only person who was able to circumvent Maria’s strict rule that Malan was generally not to be disturbed, Yet, while Malan strolled and played with his new daughter the outcome of Malan’s intense race politics such as this adoption program was beginning to play out in South Africa.
The most stand out adopted child, who has by default tainted the entire program was General Lothar Paul Neethling. His history has forever stoked the controversy of nature versus nurture, as his story inadvertently brought to South Africa – the very DNA of the German Nazi Party.
The Observation Post 