Spitfire List Web site and blog of anti-fascist researcher and radio personality Dave Emory.

News & Supplemental  

Nazi and German Support for the Apartheid Government

Dave Emory’s entire life­time of work is avail­able on a flash dri­ve that can be obtained here. (The flash dri­ve includes the anti-fas­cist books avail­able on this site.)

COMMENT: In the after­math of Nel­son Man­de­la’s pass­ing, it is impor­tant to remem­ber the true nature of the forces he opposed and the fact that they did NOT dis­ap­pear with the demise of Apartheid. In FTR #225, among oth­er pro­grams, we exam­ined the Nazi her­itage of the Broeder­bond, the pri­ma­ry pow­er cen­ter of the Apartheid gov­ern­ment of South Africa. In Mis­cel­la­neous Archive Show M8 (Part 1; Part 2), we not­ed the pro­found Ger­man role in aid­ing the South African effort to devel­op the atom­ic bomb.

In FTR #‘s 317 and 324, we exam­ined Project Coast bio­log­i­cal war­fare pro­gram of the apartheid regime. Linked to ele­ments of CIA and Dr. Lar­ry Ford (pos­si­bly belong­ing to the milieu of the 2001 anthrax attacks), Project Coast involved the use of anthrax, as well as AIDS as weapons of bio­log­i­cal war­fare. In both pro­grams, we exam­ined the post-Apartheid sur­vival of the Broeder­bond as part of the Under­ground Reich.

An inci­sive post by German-Foreign-Policy.com (which feeds along the bot­tom of the front page) sup­ple­ments the pro­grams cit­ed above. The arti­cle notes the pro­found sup­port giv­en the Apartheid forces by the Third Reich and lat­er, the “new” Fed­er­al Repub­lic of Ger­many.

The point being that the forces against which Man­dela strug­gled were nei­ther iso­lat­ed nor triv­ial. They did NOT go away!

“Incrim­i­nat­ing Doc­u­ments;” german-foreign-policy.com; 12/09/2013.

EXCERPT: Fed­er­al Ger­man author­i­ties pro­vid­ed the apartheid regime of South Africa incrim­i­nat­ing doc­u­ments for a polit­i­cal tri­al against Nel­son Man­dela and oth­ers. [Evi­dence sug­gests that the CIA did the same–D.E.]  This has become known through research of Bon­n’s South Africa pol­i­cy. Accord­ing to this infor­ma­tion, West Ger­man author­i­ties pro­vid­ed doc­u­ments orig­i­nat­ing in the pro­ceed­ings to ban the KPD to a South African diplo­mat and offered the sup­port of Ger­many’s domes­tic intel­li­gence ser­vice. This was to help pre­pare a tri­al aimed at neu­tral­iz­ing the polit­i­cal resis­tance to the racist regime in Pre­to­ria. Nel­son Man­dela, who died last week, and is now being praised by Berlin, was also affect­ed. On the one hand, Bon­n’s objec­tive was to help apartheid to remain in pow­er, because it was con­sid­ered a reli­able pro-west­ern part­ner, and on the oth­er, to main­tain spe­cial West Ger­man influ­ence, which has also pro­vid­ed Ger­man com­pa­nies lucra­tive busi­ness. In fact, Ger­man com­pa­nies remained among the apartheid regime’s most loy­al sup­port­ers — to the end. Dur­ing Man­de­la’s incar­cer­a­tion, com­pa­nies in West Ger­many sup­plied South Africa’s mil­i­tary and police with heli­copters to car­ry out sur­veil­lance of protests. They were equipped with devices to iden­ti­fy activists, many of whom were from Man­de­la’s polit­i­cal entourage.

A Hitler Fan
Ger­man sup­port for South Africa’s racists extends long before the begin­ning of the apartheid regime. It became par­tic­u­lar­ly effec­tive begin­ning in 1933.Ger­man-South African rela­tions” had “devel­oped dur­ing the ‘Third Reich’ advan­ta­geous­ly,” accord­ing to research of the Ger­man South Africa pol­i­cy. Back then “under the pro­tec­tion of the South African Jus­tice and Defense Min­is­ter Oswald Pirow, whose fore­fa­thers were Ger­man and who, him­self, was a Hitler fan,” not only “the bilat­er­al trade” flour­ished, but it trig­gered “a brisk exchange” with “Afrikaans stu­dents and pro­fes­sors.” “Afrikaans anti-Semi­tes” attempt­ed to “assess the applic­a­bil­i­ty” of Nazi anti-Semit­ic laws “on South Africa’s Jew­ish pop­u­la­tion.” Ger­man South Africa “experts” had, for their part, con­sid­ered “Pre­mier Hert­zog’s strict pol­i­cy of racial seg­re­ga­tion to be a gen­uine South African attempt to solve the race prob­lem of the country.”[1] Many agreed in cir­cles of Ger­man trade to Africa. They were see­ing “a surg­ing col­ored flood tide ris­ing ever high­er” in South Africa. To “pro­tect west­ern cul­ture,” the “close coop­er­a­tion of the white peo­ples” was essen­tial, accord­ing, for exam­ple, to the peri­od­i­cal of the Africa Association.[2]

Ger­man-Afrikaans Spe­cial Rela­tion­ship
Accord­ing to the study men­tioned above, the “Ger­man-Afrikaans Spe­cial Rela­tion­ship” which had devel­oped since the 1930s, again became “notice­able” since the revival of the West Ger­man — South African rela­tions through the estab­lish­ment of the West Ger­man Gen­er­al Con­sulate in Cape Town in Jan­u­ary 1951. The 1948 elec­toral vic­to­ry of the South African regime, which con­sol­i­dat­ed apartheid “pro­vid­ed the best pre­req­ui­sites” for this revival. Not least among the rea­sons, is the fact that dur­ing the first phase of the apartheid regime, lead­ing South African politi­cians had either “received some of their aca­d­e­m­ic train­ing in Ger­many, or from Ger­man mis­sion­ar­ies.” Bonn and Pre­to­ria were engaged in nego­ti­a­tions for a cul­tur­al agree­ment, already in 1955, “which from the point of view of Ger­many, should, above all, ben­e­fit South Africa’s large Ger­man minor­i­ty.” How­ev­er, Bonn found itself forced to post­pone final­iza­tion of the treaty for a cou­ple of years — until the end of 1962 [3] — “because of the inter­na­tion­al iso­la­tion of South Africa due to its apartheid pol­i­cy.”

No Crit­i­cism
At times, due to the grow­ing polit­i­cal moral pres­sures, cer­tain tac­ti­cal con­ces­sions placed lim­its on Bon­n’s basic will­ing­ness to coop­er­ate with the apartheid regime. For exam­ple the West Ger­man gov­ern­ment refused to allow South Africa’s For­eign Min­is­ter to vis­it, dur­ing his planned Euro­pean tour in the imme­di­ate after­math of the Sharpeville Mas­sacre in March 1960. At the same time trade was boom­ing. In 1957, the Fed­er­al Repub­lic of Ger­many rose to become the third most impor­tant sup­pli­er of South Africa and there­by that regime’s most impor­tant eco­nom­ic sup­port­er. Accord­ing to for­eign min­istry records from May 31, 1961, refer­ring to mea­sures, such as the de fac­to dis­in­vi­ta­tion of the South African For­eign Min­is­ter in the Spring of 1960, any dec­la­ra­tion on the part of Bonn, that could be inter­pret­ed as show­ing under­stand­ing for “South Africa’s stand­point on race, could do con­sid­er­able harm to our image in the col­ored world and, above all, be exploit­ed at our expense by Pankow and the Sovi­ets.” Nev­er­the­less the fact remains: “we intend, also in the future, with con­sid­er­a­tion for the good rela­tions and the large Ger­man minor­i­ty in South Africa, to avoid express­ing pub­lic crit­i­cism of South Africa’s domes­tic relations.”[4]

Sup­port from Bonn
Bonn con­tin­ued its sup­port of Pre­to­ria on a work­ing lev­el — for exam­ple, dur­ing the tri­al of 156 mem­bers of the oppo­si­tion for high trea­son in late 1956, which the Apartheid author­i­ties used to weak­en the grow­ing resis­tance. Nel­son Man­dela was one of the defen­dants. Accord­ing to the above men­tioned study, “the pros­e­cu­tion sought Bon­n’s assis­tance in this impor­tant tri­al,” and received it with­out delay. West Ger­man author­i­ties passed on to the South African Chargé d’Af­faires — with insuf­fi­cient exam­i­na­tion — “sev­er­al doc­u­ments (war­rants, indict­ments and ver­dicts) of the pro­ceed­ings to ban the KPD.” The West Ger­man Attor­ney Gen­er­al’s Office also indi­cat­ed that the Fed­er­al Office of the Pro­tec­tion of the Con­sti­tu­tion could meet the “South African request con­cern­ing doc­u­ments about the KPD’s ‘front orga­ni­za­tions’.” The author of the analy­sis sus­pects, these doc­u­ments had been “asked for dur­ing a phase of the tri­al, where the pros­e­cu­tion was about to run out of argu­ments against the defen­dants.” In any case, the pros­e­cu­tion evi­dent­ly was of the opin­ion that “the study of the KPD tri­al (...) also pro­vid­ed valu­able insights,” the West Ger­man tri­al observ­er in Pre­to­ria, Har­ald Bielfeld, report­ed to Bonn in Octo­ber 1958. Bielfeld had already pre­vi­ous­ly been active in South Africa — as a diplo­mat of the Ger­man Reich.[5]

The Most Impor­tant Direct Financier
Over the years, West Ger­many’s rela­tions to South Africa have remained close — even while oth­er coun­tries had begun to take a dis­tance to the Apartheid regime. For exam­ple, when more than 100 US enter­pris­es with­drew from South Africa in mid 1987, Ger­man com­pa­nies expand­ed their trade and invest­ments. West Ger­many also approved export cred­it guar­an­tees for Ger­man deliv­er­ies, as the pub­li­cist Bir­git Mor­gen­rath, co-author of a book on West Ger­man busi­ness rela­tions with South Africa [6] recalled years ago. West Ger­man com­pa­nies con­tributed also to “South Africa becom­ing a nuclear pow­er,” wrote Mor­gen­rath: These com­pa­nies — par­tic­u­lar­ly Siemens — are accused of hav­ing sup­plied South Africa with the sep­a­ra­tion noz­zle process devel­oped in West Ger­many for ura­ni­um enrich­ment for nuclear bombs.” And West Ger­man banks made exten­sive loans to the Apartheid regime. As Mor­gen­rath wrote, the Fed­er­al Repub­lic of Ger­many had final­ly become the “world’s most impor­tant direct financier of Apartheid.”[7] . . . .

 

Discussion

2 comments for “Nazi and German Support for the Apartheid Government”

  1. check out this free book about the Broeder­bond- this book was a sen­sa­tion in South Africa-

    http://www.scribd.com/doc/131352246/BROEDERBOND-South-African-Secret-Society-by-Ivor-Wilkins-and-Hans-Strydom

    Posted by Tembel | December 13, 2013, 10:27 am
  2. http://www.timesofisrael.com/mandela-received-mossad-weapons-training/

    Man­dela received Mossad weapons train­ing
    Late South African icon met with Israeli agents in Ethiopia in 1962 under the alias David Mob­sari, Israeli doc­u­ment shows
    By JTA Decem­ber 20, 2013, 5:52 pm 1

    Nel­son Man­dela received train­ing from Israel’s Mossad in the 1960s, an Israeli gov­ern­ment doc­u­ment has revealed.

    Man­dela, the for­mer South African pres­i­dent and anti-apartheid leader who died ear­li­er this month, was trained by Mossad agents in weapon­ry and sab­o­tage in 1962, accord­ing to a report in Haaretz that was based on a doc­u­ment in the Israel State Archives labeled “Top Secret.”

    The doc­u­ment, a let­ter sent from the Mossad to the For­eign Min­istry in Jerusalem, said Mossad oper­a­tives also attempt­ed to encour­age Zion­ist sym­pa­thies in Man­dela, Haaretz report­ed.

    Man­dela led the strug­gle against apartheid in his coun­try from the 1950s. He was arrest­ed, tried and released a num­ber of times before going under­ground in the ear­ly 1960s. In Jan­u­ary 1962, he left South Africa and vis­it­ed var­i­ous African coun­tries, includ­ing Ethiopia, Alge­ria, Egypt and Ghana.

    Man­dela met with the Israelis in Ethiopia, where he arrived under the alias David Mob­sari.

    The let­ter not­ed that Man­dela “showed an inter­est in the meth­ods of the Haganah and oth­er Israeli under­ground move­ments” and that “he greet­ed our men with ‘Shalom,’ was famil­iar with the prob­lems of Jew­ry and of Israel, and gave the impres­sion of being an intel­lec­tu­al. The staff tried to make him into a Zion­ist,” the Mossad oper­a­tive wrote.

    “In con­ver­sa­tions with him, he expressed social­ist world­views and at times cre­at­ed the impres­sion that he leaned toward com­mu­nism,” the let­ter con­tin­ued, not­ing that the man who called him­self David Mob­sari was indeed Man­dela.

    This let­ter was dis­cov­ered sev­er­al years ago by David Fach­ler, 43, a res­i­dent of Alon Shvut, who was research­ing doc­u­ments about South Africa for a master’s the­sis.

    Posted by Vanfield | December 22, 2013, 9:46 am

Post a comment