THE KING'S AFRIKANERS? ENLISTMENT AND ETHNIC IDENTITY IN THE UNION OF SOUTH AFRICA'S DEFENCE FORCE DURING THE SECOND WORLD WAR, 1939–45

1999 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 351-365 ◽  
Author(s):  
ALBERT GRUNDLINGH
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Common Denominator ◽  
World War ◽  
The South ◽  
Race And Class ◽  
Societal Issues ◽  
South African War ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
Second World

In contrast to the situation in Commonwealth countries such as Canada and Australia, South Africa's participation in the Second World War has not been accorded a particularly significant place in the country's historiography. In part at least, this is the result of historiographical traditions which, although divergent in many ways, have a common denominator in that their various compelling imperatives have despatched the Second World War to the periphery of their respective scholarly discourses.Afrikaner historians have concentrated on wars on their ‘own’ soil – the South African War of 1899–1902 in particular – and beyond that through detailed analyses of white politics have been at pains to demonstrate the inexorable march of Afrikanerdom to power. The Second World War only featured insofar as it related to internal Afrikaner political developments. Neither was the war per se of much concern to English-speaking academic historians, either of the so-called liberal or radical persuasion. For more than two decades, the interests of English-speaking professional historians have been dominated by issues of race and class, social structure, consciousness and the social effects of capitalism. While the South African War did receive some attention in terms of capitalist imperialist expansion, the Second World War was left mostly to historians of the ‘drum-and-trumpet’ variety. In general, the First and Second World Wars did not appear a likely context in which to investigate wider societal issues in South Africa.

"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.

scholarly journals An essay on what the reformation could not prevent the identification of church and 'volk'. Three examples reconsidered

2018 ◽  
Vol 83 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Amie Van Wyk
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Church Of Christ ◽  
World War ◽  
Boer War ◽  
Lutheran Church ◽  
South African War ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Gospel Message ◽  
Second World

In this year of REFO 500 the author investigates the question why the Reformation with its ‘theology of sola Scriptura and solus Christus’ could not prevent the successive identification of church and ‘volk’ in history and why it could not prevent the fatal consequences this identification had for the gospel message of reconciliation, the exemplary existence of the church of Christ and the coming of the kingdom of God. Three examples serve as proof for this statement: the attitude of the Anglican Church in England during the second Anglo-Boer War (now called the South African War)(1899-1902); the Lutheran Church in Germany during the Second World War (1939-1945) and the Reformed Churches in South Africa during the years of apartheid (1948-1994). All three examples reveal an untenable identification of church and ‘volk’, although in varying degrees. How could that happen?

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.

scholarly journals The inconography of Afrikaner nationalism and the Ossewa-Brandwag's 'ideal of freedom' in the South African internment camps of the Second World War

Historia ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 63 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-31
Author(s):  
Anna la Grange ◽  
Charl Blignaut
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
National Socialism ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Strong Impact ◽  
World War ◽  
The South ◽  
Internment Camps ◽  
Active Resistance ◽  
Strong Basis ◽  
Second World

The emergency measures of the Union government under Jan Smuts had a strong impact on the Ossewa-Brandwag (OB) during the Second World War. The OB was especially targeted by the government because of its overt pro-German and anti-British stance and its active resistance against the war effort. The ideology of the movement was built upon a strong basis of Afrikaner nationalism in conjunction with National Socialism which was supposed to legitimise the movement as an alternative to party politics. OB members expressed Afrikaner nationalist sentiments which meant resistance against Britain with the goal of attaining an independent republic - the so-called "ideal of freedom". Consequently, the OB's active resistance led to high numbers of internment. This article focuses on the South African internment camps of the Second World War. The nationalist iconography reflected in the artefacts created by OB members during their internment are analysed within the broader context of Afrikaner nationalism and the ideology of the OB. The OB had a very specific brand of Afrikaner nationalism and the ideal of freedom, central to its ideology, was combined with existing Afrikaner nationalist goals and subsequently nationalist iconography manifested itself in internees' creative expressions of their own personal nationalist sentiments. The artefacts also reflect the integration of Afrikaner nationalist iconography and the OB's ideal of freedom with personal contexts of imprisonment illustrating how political myths can be reshaped to provide meaning for the present realities of contemporaries.

JEWISH IDENTITY IN THE FACE OF ANTI-SEMITISM

1998 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 895-900
Author(s):  
ELISABETH ALBANIS
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
The Face ◽  
History Of ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
English Speaking World ◽  
Anti Jewish ◽  
Second World

A history of the Jews in the English-speaking world: Great Britain. By W. D. Rubinstein, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1996. Pp. viii+539. ISBN 0-312-12542-9. £65.00.Pogroms: anti-Jewish violence in modern Russian history. Edited by John D. Klier and Shlomo Lambroza. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Pp. xx+393. ISBN 0-521-40532-7. £55.00.Western Jewry and the Zionist project, 1914–1933. By Michael Berkowitz. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Pp. xvi+305. ISBN 0-521-47087-0. £35.00.Three books under review deal from different perspectives with the responses of Jews in Western and Eastern Europe to the increasing and more or less violent outbursts of anti-Semitism which they encountered in the years from 1880 to the Second World War. The first two titles consider how deep-rooted anti-Semitism was in Britain and Russia and in what sections of society it was most conspicuous, whereas the third asks how Western Jewry became motivated to support the Zionist project of settlement in Palestine; all three approach the question of how isolated or intergrated diaspora Jews were in their respective countries.

scholarly journals Prace konserwatorskie i badania architektoniczne klauzury dawnego opactwa cysterskiego w Krzeszowie po drugiej wojnie światowej

2019 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. 341-357 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ewa Łużyniecka ◽  
Monika Dąbkowska
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
The South ◽  
History Of ◽  
Post War ◽  
Second World

This article is about conservational and study works on the enclosure of an old cystercian abbey in Krzeszów, that were made after the Second World War. Post-war history of conservation of this monument exhibits two periods. The first one covers 50 post-war years, where only routine maintenance was done. The latter period began at the beginning of the XXI century. Since then fragments of the building were renovated piece by piece. Current cultural and touristic needs were taken into consideration.Revalorization of Krzeszów Abbey in years 2007-2008 and since 2014 revealed the basements and relicts of the groundfloor of the south and west wings of the complex. At the same time the architectural studies were made, resulting in new conclusions of transformations of this building.

Further Regional Studies

War Epidemics ◽  
2004 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Smallman-Raynor ◽  
Andrew Cliff
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
World War I ◽  
South African ◽  
Geographical Location ◽  
Prisoners Of War ◽  
World War ◽  
The South ◽  
South African War ◽  
Forced Labour ◽  
Study Sites

In Chapters 7 to 11, we have examined a series of recurring themes in the geography of war and disease since 1850 through regional lenses. In this chapter, we conclude our regional–thematic survey by illustrating further prominent themes which, either because of their subject-matter or because of their geographical location, were beyond the immediate scope of the foregoing chapters. In selecting regional case studies for this chapter, we concentrate on wars which have not been examined in depth to this point (the South African War and the Cuban Insurrection) or which, on account of their magnitude and extent, merit examination beyond that afforded in previous sections (World War I and World War II). Four principal issues are addressed: (1) Africa: population reconcentration and disease (Section 12.2), illustrated with reference to civilian concentration camps in the South African War, 1899–1902; (2) Americas: peace, war, and epidemiological integration (Section 12.3), illustrated with reference to the civil settlement system of Cuba, 1888–1902; (3) Asia: prisoners of war, forced labour, and disease (Section 12.4), illustrated with reference to Allied prisoners on the line of the Burma–Thailand Railway, 1942–4; (4) Europe: civilian epidemics and the world wars (Section 12.5), illustrated with reference to the spread of a series of diseases in the civil population of Europe during, and after, the hostilities of 1914–18 and 1939–45. As before, the study sites in (1) to (4) span a broad range of epidemiological environments, from the cool temperate latitudes of northern Europe, through the tropical island and jungle environments of the Caribbean and Southeast Asia, to the warm temperate and subtropical savannah lands of the South African Veld. Diseases have been sampled to reflect this epidemiological range. The South African War (1899–1902) has been described as the last of the ‘typhoid campaigns’ (Curtin, 1998)—a closing chapter on the predominance of disease over battle as a cause of death among soldiers (Pakenham, 1979: 382). From the military perspective, typhoid was indeed the major health issue of the war, accounting for a reported 8,020 deaths in the British Army (Simpson, 1911: 57).

Nationalization and Ethnicization

2021 ◽  
pp. 85-182
Author(s):  
Dieter Gosewinkel
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
World War ◽  
Emerging Democracies ◽  
Race And Class ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The One ◽  
Fundamental Tension ◽  
Second World

The emerging world civil war is the subject of an extensive chapter on the interwar period and the Second World War. This phase was marked by a fundamental tension. On the one hand, there was the systematic codification and substantive expansion of political and social civil rights in the emerging democracies and social welfare states of Europe. Legal inequality between the sexes diminished; a social security net began to spread across all of Europe. On the other hand, these expanding rights were increasingly reserved for a country’s own citizens and thereby nationalized. This restrictive tendency escalated to the extreme with the race and class-based exclusion and extermination policies of the dictatorships in Europe’s “bloodlands” (Timothy Snyder) prior to the Second World War and intensified during its course. Citizenship changed its function and went from being an institution of governmental protection to one of discriminatory selection and extermination policy.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document