Several key members of that government were admirers of NS, had visited Germany
on study tours, etc
Sendt fra min iPhone
20. feb. 2020 kl. 01:40 skrev Lawrence Helm <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:
I found this strange “footnote” in the Kindle edition of Weinberg’s A World
At Arms at the end of Chapter 2. I did not find this note in my (original
edition) hard copy:
“Some of the opponents of war with Germany sympathized with National
Socialism, and the leaders of this faction would take over the government in
Pretoria in 1948, dominating the government of what was to become the
Republic of South Africa thereafter. . . .”
This is a wee bit ambiguous it seems to me. When I first read it I assumed
Weinberg was saying that South Africa had a National Socialist government
beginning in 1948 and “thereafter.” In a subsequent reading I think he is
merely saying that the name of the South African state was, after, 1948,
named “the Republic of South Africa” and not that it had a Nazi government
from 1948 and “thereafter” . . . but I’m not sure.
This reference is described by Weinberg as coming from Kenneth Ingham, Jan
Christian Smuts: The Conscience of a South African (New York: St. Martin’s
1986), pp. 205-7 – if anyone happens to have that book.
I couldn’t find anything helpful from Wikipedia.
Lawrence
