GERMAN ESPIONAGE AND BRITISH COUNTER-INTELLIGENCE IN SOUTH AFRICA AND MOZAMBIQUE, 1939–1944

2005 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 209-230 ◽  
Author(s):  
KENT FEDOROWICH
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Southern Africa ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Intelligence Gathering ◽  
Special Operations ◽  
Intelligence Operations ◽  
War Effort ◽  
Second World

For most of the Second World War, German and Italian agents were actively engaged in a variety of intelligence gathering exercises in southern Africa. The hub of this activity was Lourenço Marques, the colonial capital of Portuguese East Africa (Mozambique). One of the key tasks of Axis agents was to make links with Nazi sympathizers and the radical right in South Africa, promote dissent, and destabilize the imperial war effort in the dominion. Using British, American, and South African archival sources, this article outlines German espionage activities and British counter-intelligence operations orchestrated by MI5, MI6, and the Special Operations Executive between 1939 and 1944. The article, which is part of a larger study, examines three broad themes. First, it explores Pretoria's creation of a humble military intelligence apparatus in wartime South Africa. Secondly, it examines the establishment of several British liaison and intelligence-gathering agencies that operated in southern Africa for most of the war. Finally, it assesses the working relationship between the South African and British agencies, the tensions that arose, and the competing interests that emerged between the two allies as they sought to contain the Axis-inspired threat from within.

scholarly journals The Union of South Africa Propaganda Campaigns during the World War II

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anli Le Roux
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
South African ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
War Effort ◽  
The Media ◽  
War Experiences ◽  
Strategic Imperative ◽  
Second World

THE UNION OF SOUTH AFRICA PROPAGANDA CAMPAIGNS DURING THE SECOND WORLD WAR (1939–1945). Part 1: The African Mirror Newsreels IntroductionAccording to Danny Schechter, when one fights a war, "there is a need to create and maintain ties of sentiment between soldiers and citizens, as well as a need for popular mobilisation and media support" (2004:25). During the Second World War the case was no different in South Africa. The Union of South Africa propaganda campaigns in all its forms were aimed at "motivating, managing, and feeding the media" - which in turn fed the nation. This was a key strategic imperative to try to build, strengthen and maintain a consensus and united front behind the war effort (Schechter, 2004:25).The significance of contemporary filmic visualisation or off-screen enactments of war experiences and their place in South African historiography of the Second World War has long been an under-researched area....

Butler, Frederick Guy (1918–2001)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tony Voss
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
English Literature ◽  
Racial Segregation ◽  
Public Intellectual ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Eastern Cape ◽  
World War ◽  
Second World ◽  
English Heritage

Guy Butler, poet, playwright, director, historian, autobiographer, essayist, academic and public intellectual, was born and raised in the Eastern Cape in South Africa. He began his education at the Cradock High School and Rhodes University, and served in North Africa and Italy during the Second World War. Study at Oxford and a lectureship at Witwatersrand University led to his position as chair of English at Rhodes in 1952, the year that Stranger to Europe: Poems, 1939–1949 was published. His traditionally oriented poetry seeks human connection across the barriers of history, culture and legally enforced racial segregation. An innovative teacher, he promoted the study of South African English literature and founded departments of speech and drama, linguistics, and journalism at Rhodes University. Throughout his life he strove to reconcile his local loyalties to the Eastern Cape, to his Settler forebears, and to his English heritage — he established the 1820 Monument, the National English Literary Museum, the Grahamstown Festival, and the Institute for the Study of English in Africa — with an inclusive South African national identity. He translated Afrikaans poetry into English, and in plays such as Richard Gush of Salem and Demea celebrated representative historical and imagined figures of interracial and intercultural rapprochement.

"Liewer op 'n meshoop". De Zuid-Afrikaanse Kompagnie en de Dietse uitwijking na de Tweede Wereldoorlog

2011 ◽  
Vol 70 (4) ◽  
pp. 375-383
Author(s):  
Frank Seberechts
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
The South ◽  
Youth Movement ◽  
Second World

In het ADVN bevinden zich twee documenten die werden opgesteld en verspreid door de “Zuid-Afrikaanse Kompagnie” (ZAK). Deze organisatie trachtte in de eerste jaren na de Tweede Wereldoorlog Vlamingen te overhalen naar Zuid-Afrika te emigreren. Het was de bedoeling dat zij daar zouden meewerken aan de regeneratie van het Dietse volk. Met hun initiatief sluiten de auteurs aan bij een bredere stroom van tegelijkertijd imperialistische en volksnationalistische denkbeelden die de uitbreiding van het territorium zien als een noodzaak voor de versterking of de regeneratie van het eigen volk of ras. Vermoedelijk komen de documenten uit kringen van voormalige leden van de dissidente Vlaams-nationalistische jeugdbeweging.________“Rather on a dung heap”. The South-African Company and the Diets’ (Greater Netherlands) emigration after the Second World War. The ADVN holds two documents that were written and distributed by the “South African Company” (ZAK). In the first years after the Second World War, this organisation attempted to persuade Flemish people to emigrate to South Africa. It was the intention that they would cooperate in the regeneration of the Diets nation. With this initiative, the authors followed in the larger wake of imperialistic and extreme nationalist ideas, which consider the expansion of the territory as a necessity for the reinforcement or regeneration of their own people or race. It is likely that the documents originated from the groups of former members of the dissident Flemish nationalist youth movement.

Government procurement policy and the establishment of manufacturing: Aircraft industry in Australia, Canada and South Africa 1918–39

2020 ◽  
pp. 002252662092078
Author(s):  
Malcolm Abbott ◽  
Jill Bamforth
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Government Procurement ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Aircraft Industry ◽  
World War ◽  
Aircraft Manufacturing ◽  
The World ◽  
Compare And Contrast ◽  
Second World

The purpose of this paper is to compare and contrast the different aircraft procurement policies of the Canadian, Australian and South Africa air forces in the formative years of the industry in each country between the world wars. In doing so, it will highlight some of the strengths and weaknesses exhibited by the different approaches taken by the three governments attempting to build up aircraft manufacturing in the inter-war period (1918–39). Before 1938, the Australian and South African governments made no attempt to attract investment by British and American aircraft manufacturers, the opposite of what Canadian Government did; as a result, the industry was less developed in the former two countries when the Second World War broke out.

Milton Shain The Roots of Antisemitism in South Africa

1998 ◽  
pp. 340-345
Author(s):  
Sander L. Gilman
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Second World War ◽  
African Culture ◽  
World War ◽  
Detailed History ◽  
History Of ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Second World

This chapter explores Milton Shain's The Roots of Antisemitism in South Africa, a second volume in his ongoing examination of the history of the Jews in South Africa (and its constituent parts). His earlier book, Jewry and Cape Society: The Origins and Activities of the Jewish Board of Deputies for the Cape Colony, provided a detailed and exquisite look at the inner workings of the Board of Jewish Deputies in the Cape. This ‘internal’ history of Cape Jewry revealed many of the tensions and problems that impacted on the migration and acculturation of Jews in southern Africa during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. His new volume is more expansive, and examines the detailed history of the idea of the Jew, and the Jewish response to this construction, in the Afrikaans- and English-speaking areas of South Africa. Shain's chronological spread reaches from the mid-nineteenth century to the end of the Second World War, with a short conclusion bringing the volume up to the present. His theme is the ‘origin’ of antisemitism in South African culture, a culture self-consciously a ‘frontier society’ in which Jews formed a minority that came to be identified with anglophone ideals and norms.

The Imperial Army Project

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Douglas E. Delaney
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
British Empire ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Archival Research ◽  
Military Cooperation ◽  
High Point ◽  
The Military ◽  
Second World

How did British authorities manage to secure the commitment of large dominion and Indian armies that could plan, fight, shoot, communicate, and sustain themselves, in concert with the British Army and with each other, during the era of the two world wars? This is the primary line of inquiry for this study, which begs a couple of supporting questions. What did the British want from the dominion and Indian armies and how did they go about trying to get it? How successful were they in the end? Answering these questions requires a long-term perspective—one that begins with efforts to fix the armies of the British Empire in the aftermath of their desultory performance in South Africa (1899–1903) and follows through to the high point of imperial military cooperation during the Second World War. Based on multi-archival research conducted in six different countries on four continents, Douglas E. Delaney argues that the military compatibility of the British Empire armies was the product of a deliberate and enduring imperial army project, one that aimed at ‘Lego-piecing’ the armies of the empire, while, at the same time, accommodating the burgeoning autonomy of the dominions and even India. At its core, this book is really about how a military coalition worked.

Implications

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Edele
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Soviet Regime ◽  
World War ◽  
Ongoing Debate ◽  
Middle Position ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
War Effort ◽  
Second World

This chapter turns to the present and explains the implications of the current study for the ongoing debate about the Soviet Union in the Second World War and in particular about the role of loyalty and disloyalty in the Soviet war effort. It argues that this study strengthens those who argue for a middle position: the majority of Soviet citizens were neither unquestioningly loyal to the Stalinist regime nor convinced resisters. The majority, instead, saw their interests as distinct from both the German and the Soviet regime. Nevertheless, ideology remains important if we want to understand why in the Soviet Union more resisted or collaborated than elsewhere in Europe and Asia.

scholarly journals Recalling Victory, Recounting Greatness: Second World War Remembrance in Xi Jinping's China

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Vincent K.L. Chang
Keyword(s):  
Turning Point ◽  
School Curriculum ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Xi Jinping ◽  
World War ◽  
National Unity ◽  
War Effort ◽  
Policy Objectives ◽  
Second World ◽  
Critical Turning Point

Abstract The recent surge in public remembrance of the Second World War in China has been substantially undergirded by a centrally planned and systematically implemented discursive shift which has remained overlooked in the literature. This study examines the revised official narrative by drawing on three cases from China's school curriculum, museums and formal diplomacy. It finds that the once dominant trope of “national victimization” no longer represents the main thrust in the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) rhetoric on the Second World War. Under Xi Jinping, this has been replaced by a self-assertive and aspirational narrative of “national victory” and “national greatness,” designed to enhance Beijing's legitimacy and advance its domestic and foreign policy objectives. By emphasizing national unity and CCP–KMT cooperation, the new narrative offers an inclusive and unifying interpretation of China's war effort in which the victory in 1945 has come to rival the 1949 revolution as the critical turning point towards “national rejuvenation.” The increasingly Sino-centric and centrally controlled narrative holds implicit warnings to those challenging Beijing's claim to greatness.

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