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Fascism, the Third

Reich and Afrikaner
Nationalism: An
Assessment of the
Historiography
a
PATRICK J. FURLONG
a
Bethany College , Kansas
Published online: 14 Jan 2009.

To cite this article: PATRICK J. FURLONG (1992) Fascism, the

Third Reich and Afrikaner Nationalism: An Assessment of the
Historiography, South African Historical Journal, 27:1, 113-126, DOI:
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 South A@XVIHktorkd Journal 27 (1992), 113-126

Fascism, the Third Reich and Afrikaner Nationalism:

An Assessment of the Historiography
PATRICK J. FURLONG
Bethany College, Kansas
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The appearance of several new books and a fascinating, if provocatively

unorthodox, article, on the subject of fascism and the authoritarian right in
South Africa during the 19% and 1940s prompts this review of the his-
toriography on this subject. The authors interest in these works was especially
piqued by their appearing since completing revision of a manuscript on this very
topic? The South African far right has, moreover, been more visible recently
than for many years, just as the National Party, once the most formidable
representative of the Afrikaner right, has gradually divested itself of its own
legacy of authoritarian nationalism and legally enforced racism, a legacy rooted
heavily in the events of the two decades preceding its 1948 victory. It therefore
seems especially appropriate to reflect on the state of the literature and on the
most recent contributions to the debate on to what extent the rise of Nazi
Germany, fascism in the broader sense, or imported authoritarian nationalist
and racist ideas are important for understanding the shaping of modem
Afrikaner nationalism, especially that characterized by many authors as
Christian nationalism.
Books on fascism in South Africa are certainly no novelty. In the past,
several works identified Afrikaner nationalism fairly closely with Nazism or at
least with fascism broadly conceived, the most well-known of these is Brian

1. C. Bloomberg.(edited by S. Dubow), Chrisrirm-N- and the Rise of thc Afrikmra

h d e r M in South Afica 1918-48 (Bloomington and Indianopolis, 1989); R. Citino,
Gammry and the Union of SouthAfiico in rhc Nod Paiod (New York, Westport, Connecticut
and London, 1991); k Hagemann, SiidofriGa und dos WacRcich? Rarsrnpolitisdte Afiinircir
und macmkk Rivolitcit (Frankfurt and New York,1989); J.M. Coetzee, The Mind of
Apartheid Geoffry CronjC 1907- , Social D p a m k , 17,l (June 1991), 1-35.
2. See PJ. Furlong, Between Crown and Swartika. The Impact of the Radical Right on thc
r thc Fascist Era (Hanwer, New Hampshire and London,
AjXkaner Nationahkt M o ~ m a r in
1991).

113
 114 PATRICK J. FURLONG

Buntings long-banned Rise of the South Afican Reich? These did not seriously
engage the problem of historical Afrikaner fascism in the pre-1948 period, but
were concerned either with the general phenomenon of Afrikaner nationalism
or with analogies between post-1948 Nationalist policies and the Third Reich.
This approach, which assumes a very loose definition of fascism, has become
generally discredited among serious students of both Afrikaner nationalism and
of comparative fascism in general. Other reasons for the latterday distaste for
the use of the fascistlabel have been the gradual apparent moderation of the
Nationalist regime, fading memories of wartime subversive activities by persons
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later closely associated with that government, and the rise of Marxian revisionist
scholarship, which has questioned the much-vaunted discontinuity between the
post-1948 apartheid regime and earlier segregationist governments.
It is harder to dismiss the case made by Howard Simson? using a
Poulantzian variant of the Marxist theoretical model of fascism as capitalism in
distress, an effort unfortunately limited by its use of only published sources. For
Simson, fascism is simply any capitalist state in which a primarily petty
bourgeois-based mass movement uses a combination of legal measures and
violence to achieve power. The regime thus established is marked by a militantly
anti-working class ideology and a massive expansion of monopoly capital under
the guise of building a strong national economy. In Simsons view, the socio-
economic base and function of Afrikaner nationalism are so close to those of
German Nazism and Italian Fascism that, given the allegedly farcical nature of
electoral politics in apartheid South Africa, the similarities between classical
fascism and what he calls Afrikaner fascism outweigh the differences? This
argument, while theoretically compelling provided that one accepts Simsons
structural Marxist premises, requires the suspension of any scruples about the
seriousness with which Afrikaners have treated their often messily internecine
politics, and the underplaying of the importance of the white working class in
the Nationalists electoral platform until at least the late l%Os. Without a more
thorough grounding in the primary sources, Simsons position therefore remains
problematic.

3. B. Bunting, The Rise of thc South Afrcan Reich (Harmondsworth, 1%9); W.H.Vatcher
devotes a full chapter to the impact of fascism in his white Loagcc The Rise of Afrikrma
N a f i o n a h (New York and London, 1965). A more recent work in this genre is S. Mzimelas
Aparthekt South Afrcan NOrian (New York, 1983). Mzimela recently shifted his allegiances
to the right, becoming an official of the Inkatha Freedom Party.
4. H. Simson, The SocialOriginr ofAfrikme F a s c h and Its Apanheid Policy (Stockholm, 1980).
See also his The Afrikaner Nationalist Movement/Regime in Comparative Perspective
(Unpublished Paper, South Africa in the Comparative Study of Class, Race and Nationalism
Conference, New Yo&, 1982).
5. Simson, Afrikrma Fav9.stn, 3, 14-15 and 16Off.
 FASCISM A N D AFRIKANER NATIONALISM 115

By the 1970s such claims had gone out of fashion as the South African
academic left and centre sought what was felt to be more objectively based types
of analysis. From the liberal side of the spectrum, Heribert Adam dismissed the
fascist analogy as unhelpful, even misleading, a position taken up by another
structuralist Marxist, Dan OMeara, in his m u c h - d i i book Volkxkapi-
t u l h e , in which such arguments were rejected as lacking in historical specificity
and as unable to advance theoretical understanding?
The popular press, however, continued to make the most of ongoing
interest in stories of the home front during the Second World War. Former
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Sunday Timesjournalist Hans Strydoms book on Nazi agent Robey Leibbrandts

attempt to assassinate Smuts and set up a puppet government even incited
interest in a filmed version? George Visser, who was employed by the Smuts
government to investigate the activities of pro-Nazi elements, produced a less
controversial work: which, while offering much information on the overtly
pro-fascist Ossewa-Brandwag (--Wagon Guard or OB),did its best to distance
the ostensibly more moderate National Party from charges of supporting the
Axis.
Afrikaner nationalist historians have understandably been more vociferous
than most in rejecting the fascist analogy and have provided their own sanitized
version of the period coinciding with the rise of D.F. Malans Purified National
(later Reunited National) Party from 1934 to 1948. The older standard survey
texts repeat the argument that Malan and the Nationalists merely gently toyed
with the new foreign ideology coming from Europe? The major Afrikaans-
language studies of Afrikaner nationalism in the Nazi era are no more
forthcoming on the relationship between European fascism or the Nazi state
and developments in mainstream Afrikaner nationalism, although conceding
some fascist influence among groups to the right of the Nationalists such as the
OB. Another approach is to develop a closely defined typology of fascism

6. H. Adam, Perspectivesin the Literature: A Critical Evaluation, in H. Adam and H. Giliomce,

eds,TheRiSr mcd CrisisofAfrikrma P o w (Cape Town,1979), 25;D. OMeara, -V
ClaEl, CapW and Ideology h Ihc Devel~pm~U Of Afrikrma Notionolimr 1934-1948
(Johannesburg, 1983), 9-11.
7. See H.Strydom, For Volk and Fiihm: Robcy Leibbrandt and Operation We i d o m (Johannes-
burg, 1982).
8. G.C. V i ,OB: Traitors or P&B? (Johannesburg, 1976).
9. See, for instance, D.W.KrOger, hc Making o f a Nation- A History of the Union of South
Africa 19101961 (Johannesburg and London, 1969), 213 and BJ. Liebcnberg, Fmm the
Statute of Westminsterto the Republic of South Africa, 1931-1961 in C F J . Muller, ed., FivC
Hundred Yem: A Histoty of South A j k a (Pretoria and Cape T m ,1%9), 422.
10. See, for instance, relevant volumes from two of the most monumental series of Afrikaner
studies on the period, G.D. Scholtzs Die Omdkkehg van die Politkke DOJCC van die
Afrikrmn:Ad Mlf 193-1948 (Johannesburg, 1984) and J.H. le Row and P.W. Coetzer, eds,
 116 PATRICK J. FURLONG

on the basis of which J.C. Moll concludes that the post-1948 South African state
and government do not, contrary to the view of Bunting and others, show the
minimum number of characteristics necessary to qualify as fascist.
In addition to the concerns cited above, none of these works has combined
a case-study of connections between fascism and South Africa with a full-scale
examination of relevant archival materials and oral sources. This charge cannot
be made against Frederilc van Heerden, whose monumental doctoral thesis
plumbs a wide variety of Afrikaner nationalist records to demonstrate the
alleged insignificance of fascist influence on mainstream white South African
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politics.12 However, his pronouncedly apologetic stance in respect of the

National Party, combined with his failure to use the records of the enemies of
Afrikaner nationalism, such as the wartime South African government or
concerned leaders of the Jewish community, or even of the Nazis themselves,
lessen the value of what would othenvise have been a major contribution to the
debate. Instead, we are left with the familiar position that the Nationalists
merely flirted brietly with a few superficial experiments with Nazism, none of
which were applied thoroughly. Indeed, Van Heerden hails Malans limited
triumph in the 1943 election as Leader of the Opposition as the triumph of
democratic values over the authoritarianism of the extreme right.13
Abroad, several scholars have addressed themselves to the problem of Nazi
policies in Africa. The general surveys of Nazi foreign policy or the activities of
Nazi agencies such as the partys Auslandsotgunisation (Foreign Organization),
headed ironically by the South African raised and educated Emst Bohle, say

Die N a s h u & Pa@: Drel 4 (Bloemfontein, 1986). The biographical literature is no more
helpful, with the most potted coverage of the war years in H.B. Thorns biography, D.J? Molmr
(Cape Town, 1980); Malan himself focuses on the struggle against British imperialism in his
autobiography, Afrikrmn-Volkromheid01 My Ervarings op die Pod Dam;hcen (Cape Town,
1989).The baaicworkr on other key figures are no better. Examples are CM.van den Heever,
G0terolLB.M. Hopog (Johannesburg,1946);J.FJ. van Rensburg, TheirPolhr C m d M k
Menwirsof the Commmrdmtt-GeMalofthe Osrovobrondwag(Johannesburg, 1956);J. Kruger,
Resident C.R Swan (Cape Town,l%l);PJ. Meyer,Nog NU Ver Garoeg NU: n Perroonlike
Rekmkap van v f i g Joar Georgmripecrdc -A (Johannesburg and Cape Town,1984);
and Dirk and Johanna de Villiersr biography of former President Botha, P.W (Cape Town,
1984).
11. This method is used by J.C.Moll in his impressive little volume, based however only on
secondary wurccd and some newspapers, Fascism.&: Die problcmoriak von V . - :
Fascism.&01 SlCid-Afriko(Bloemfontein, 1985).
12 FJ. van Heerden, NasionaalSosilisme 88 Faktor in die Suid-Afrikaanse Politiek, 1933-1948
(DPhil thesis, University of Orange Free State, 1972), 357.
13. Ibid, 357,385.
 FASCISM AND AFRIKANER NATIONALISM 117

little on South Africa and next to nothing on Afrikaner nationa1i~m.l~ The

standard work in English on the African component of Nazi policy is Wolfe
Schmokels study of German colonial policy after Versailles and is complemen-
ted by a collection of useful essays on German involvement in Africa by several
historians from the former German Democratic Republic, now available in
translation. Unfortunately, neither has much to offer on South African
politics, being more concerned with German continent-wide policies.
A similar problem afflicts Alexandre Kuma Ndumbes huge doctoral
thesis, which includes a substantial section on Southern Africa, but, given his
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demonological assumptions regarding the Nationalist regime, which place him

more or less in the Bunting school of thought, has relatively little to add to the
question of Afrikaner Ndumbe does provide the only really
detailed discussion of relevant Nazi sources in both Germanies before the late
1980s. but his lack of access to South African materials is as much a handicap
as Van Heerdens exclusive use of Afrikaner nationalist records. Moreover,
Ndumbes sometimes questionable factual reliability is compounded by his zeal
to pin the fascist label on the authors of a~artheid.~
* The literature is thus uniformly afflicted by two problems. On the one

hand, inadequate source materials limit the value of most existing studies. On
the other hand, the relevant scholarship is essentially either polemical or
apologetic in nature, or otherwise dismissive of the reality of any links between
Afrikaner nationalism and the European authoritarian right. The need for
further serious and detailed work is therefore obvious.
Of the four recent works cited at the beginning of this article, perhaps the
least satisfactory is that of Citino,18 to which I will devote comments of a

14. See for instance K Hildebrand, The Foreign Policy of the Third Rcich (Berkeley and Los
Angeles, 1973); D.M. McKale, The Swartika OUrJidc Germmy (Kent, Ohio, 1977); and W.
Michalka, N a f i o n a L s o M ~ h Aussenpolifik
c (Darmstadt, 1978).
15. W.W.Schmoke1,Lkam ofEnpinz: Geman Cobniahm 1919-1945 (New Haven and London,
1964) and H. Stoecker, ed., Geman Imperialisin m A w a : From the Beginnhp Unril the
Second World War (London and Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey, 1986).
16. A. Kuma Ndumbe 111, La Politique Africaine de IAllemagne Hitlerienne 1933-1943,2 vok.
(Troisieme cycle doctoral thesis, Lyons University II,1974), available in a published version
as Hider V
& L;rfrique (Paris, 1980);see also h i Afrikapolitik des dritten Reichs,Afrika
Hcurc, 21/22 (Nov. 1972), 456-9; Hitler, LAfrique du Sud et la Menace Imperialisle: Les
Relations Secretes entre Hitler et LAfrique du Sud, teS Temps Modcmes, 29 (Oct. 1973),
published as a separate pamphlet; and, most polemical in nature, a pamphlet for the UN
Centre Against Apartheid, RekAms between Nazi Germmy and SouthAfica: Thdr Infruence
on the De~~bprnuU of the Ideology of Apmthcid (New York, May 1976).
17. For instance, he describes Louis Botha and Jan Smuts as English immigrants: see Hitler,
LAfnque du Sud et la Menace Imperialiste, 13-14.
18. Citino, Germmy and the Union of South A@a.
 118 PATRICK J. FURLONG

more general and comparative nature, as I have reviewed this volume

elsewhere. This book is, despite its faults, too important to ignore, simply
because there is no current English-language alternative: Ndumbes major work
is in French and Hagemanns massive contribution is restricted to those who
can wade throu his often dense and at times almost impenetrable academic
German style.&ost South African scholars will therefore have to seek out
Citinos book as the most detailed readily accessible study of relations between
Nazi Germany and South Africa.
Unfortunately, Citino restricts the body of his work to the period 1933-9,
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already covered in William Kienzles fine 1974 unpublished dissertation which

paid particular attention to the very considerable scope of economic relations
between the two countries in that period?l Like Kienzle, his primary sources
are captured German Foreign Office Records (available on microfilm from the
US National Archives Service), but he offers sketchier coverage of commercial
relations, and does not use any other unpublished German materials, nor indeed
any South African archival collections. Coupled with the apparent lack of
Afrikaans-language material, this makes his work so dependent on his German
sources that he repeats their inaccuracies: for instance, he continually refers to
Afrikaners as Boers.It is also a pity that he has no more than a brief
postscript on the war years; for this the reader must turn to Hagemann, who is
admittedly sketchy in his treatment of the second half of the war.
Citino is of course a diplomatic historian of Germany, not an Africa-
nisLZ To the extent that he restricts himself to diplomatic history, he
provides a more thorough reading of the Foreign Office Records than anyone
else at this time, albeit from the perspective of the German officials serving in
Southern Africa more than from that of the central bureaucracy in Berlin. He
demonstrates that links between the two countries were already significant even
before Hitlers accession to power, for instance in relation to setting up ISCOR.

Like Hagemann, who provides more detailed information on this aspect of

the subject, Citino shows that even among South Africans of German origin,
there was less than unanimous support for Hitler, a conclusion which a reader
limited to South African materials such as the papers of Harry Lawrence or Jan
Smuts might not necessarily reach. As HagemaM points out, the Nazis
themselves, in fact, were often internally at odds, as elsewhere, on the best

19. In a forthcoming issue of the IruaMlioMl Journal ofAfrican Historical Sncdics

20. Hagemann, SidarfiiGnund dus I)rincRcich:
21. See W.R.Kienzle, German Policy Towards the Union of South Africa, 1933-1939(PhD
dissertation, Pennsylvania State University, 1974).
22. His major prior work was The Evolution of Bliakrieg Tactics: Gammty pefordr Itself Againn
Pol& 1918-1933 (Westport, Connecticut, 1987).
 FASCISM AND AFRIKANER NATIONALISM 119

strategy to pursue, with the Foreign Office keener to pursue friendly relations
with the host country, whereas the Nazi Party Auslandso?ganisationprovided a
constant source of friction with the same government by attempting, however
imperfectly, to provide a miniature state-within-a-state for the local German-
speaking minority. Individual German officials could also make a big difference:
as Hagemann perceptively notes, when the prudent and highly regarded Emil
Wiehl was succeeded at the German Legation in Pretoria by the arrogant
Leitner, not only did tensions with the Union government increase, but it
became increasingly difficult for Berlin to guage accurately the likely response
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of South Africa should Britain become involved in a war with Germany.

Citinos extensive treatment of domestic South African politics in two
separate chapters seems a strange obtrusion into such a diplomatic history,
particularly in light of his limited sources, and relies heavily on long German
reports on the subject. What does become apparent is the enormous interest of
German officials in South Africa as the one British dominion with the potential
to be drawn into the German sphere of influence.
Such interest could have yielded real benefits, especially if Berlin had
maximized the potential value of having the Germanophile Hertzog as Prime
Minister and the German-descended Oswaid Pirow at the crucial defence and
transport ministries. Citino does differ from HagemaM in asserting that
Hertzog was not especially pro-German in outlook, and even claims that he was
not unfriendly to the Jews (a position not supported by the much more variable
sentiments evidenced in my own research). But both concur that, by constantly
pushing for the return of South-West Africa and interfering in the South
African German community, the Nazis alienated to some extent many
conservative Afrikaners, both in the Fusionist and Purified Nationalist camps.
My work on the unsuccessful Nationalist negotiation of an electoral pact
in 1938 with the avowedly pro-Nazi South African Greyshirts confirms this
point: regardless of their sympathy for the new order in Germany and even
interest in introducing elements of European far right political programmes into
South Africa, the vast majority of Afrikaner nationalists were deeply suspicious
of being identified too closely with a foreign power.= There was little interest
in exchanging British for German domination, although in practice in at least
the early years of the war this was often lost sight of in the rush to take
advantage of what then seemed a likely German victory by creating a republic
entirely separate from the British Empire. Such a republic was to be modelled
on lines more in keeping with the New Order lauded so warmly by the editor
of the National Party organ Die Oosferlig, Otto du Plessis, in a notorious

23. See Furlong, &ween Crown and Swastika, 39-41.

 m PATRICK J. FURLONG

pamphlet published by Malans Nasionale Pers. The way in which Christian

nationalists like Du Plessis sought to build their republic not only on imported
ideas, but also on the model of the old Boer republics needs some close
analysis, but is not discussed in any detail in these new works.
Citinos treatment of anti-Semitism, which became dramatically more
visible in South Africa in the 193Os, is on particularly shaky ground, relying
once again on German reports, which exaggerated the slightest promising sign
in this regard, at least in the 1930s and, naturally enough, presented the
adoption by the Nationalists of anti-Jewish policies as essentially the product
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of Nazi influence, rather than a much more complex and often opportunistic
response to the growth of anti-Semitic groups such as the various shirt
movements to the right of the party, which may have been more directly
affected by the anti-Jewish propaganda then flooding South Africa from
Germany. Hagemann is no more illuminating on this subject than Citino.
Citinos handling of the Jewish issue underlines his too ready reliance on
the simple black-and-white interpretation of his sources; this is equally true of
his tendency to see Hertzogs United Party as of one mind in its support in 1939
for war with Germany, in contrast with the more sympathetic position of the
Purified Nationalists. The problem of the Hertzog-Smuts divide within the
United Party is not understood with the sensitivity of a scholar more thoroughly
steeped in South African historiography, but this imbalance in knowledge of
European versus South African affairs characterim the book as a whole.
The scholar wishing to obtain a more thorough attempt to integrate the
diplomatic material with an examination of the problem of fascism in Afrikaner
nationalism must therefore turn to Hagemanns compendious contribution. This
wide-ranging study encompasses several of the areas previously studied
separately by individual scholars, including economic relationships with
Germany, diplomatic affairs, the German minority within South Africa, German
wartime interest in South Africa, South African anti-Semitism and racism, and
the rise of Christian nationalism.
Whereas Citino thoroughly mines a single vein of evidence, Hagemann, an
apparently well-funded historian who studied at the University of Bielefeld, has
been able to draw on a vast range of primary and secondary material in
German, English and Afrikaans. The bibliography indicates that he has searched
files in all the major relevant South African archives (the crucial relevant
Foreign Ministry records, like those for Defence, the Prime Ministers Office,
and the Police were apparently still closed during his research) in addition to
various archives in Germany, the Netherlands, Britain and Namibia.

24. 0.du Plespis, Die Nuwc Suid-A~Xka:Die Revolurie van die Twinrigsrc Eeu (Port Elizabeth,
1941).
 FASCISM AND AFRIKANER NATIONALISM 121

Closer analysis of the references indicates, however, that for primary

materials, he has not made as fruitful use of certain kinds of South African
sources as he might have. He seems more comfortable with German- and, to a
lesser extent, English-language materials, making only the most limited use of
the very rich materials consulted at the Institute for Contemporary History in
Bloemfontein, the principal repository for the records of modem Afrikaner
nationalism. Indeed, his discussion of Afrikaner nationalism as such, while
helpful, is among the less impressive sections of his book (just 13 pages are
devoted to Christian nationalism, and only 14 to the Broederbond, compared
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with 31 on Nazi subversion in the Union and South-West Africa in the 193os,
31 on trade relations, and 49 on diplomatic relations before the war). On anti-
Semitism, he has not mined Jewish or Afrikaner sources nearly as effectively as
he has his Nazi materials, while on diplomatic relations, such as the neutrality
question, he relies only on published selections from the Smuts Papers and
ignores the equally crucial Hertzog Papers. His book is therefore impressive, but
less than truly magisterial in its command of the sources.
Some of this problem is of course beyond any authors control. Despite the
broad spectrum of materials upon which Hagemann draws, he acknowledges
that some key documents, such as the original version of Count Durckheim-
Montmartins much-cited report to Berlin on bringing South Africa into the
German sphere of influence, have seeminglydisappeared. He does not, however,
deal with the even greater problem that large quantities of German Foreign
Office records were destroyed on Hitlers orders at the end of the war, a fate
which also befell some two truckloads of material on the OB and the Broeder-
bond in the hands of South African Military Intelligence, removed on the orders
of F.C. Erasmus when he took office at the Defence Ministry.= Continuing
difficulties with access to official records at the Central Archives until at least
the late 1980s also pose a problem (with the end of the Emergency and the
advent of the De Klerk era, this situation may be changing); nobody will ever
really know the full scope of South Africans entanglement with wartime fascism
without such materials. Nevertheless, Hagemann makes one of the most
persuasive attempts yet.
He has a simple but compelling thesis: that German-South African
relations, while made closer by their racial ties, were constantly frustrated by
their rivalry for domination of the region and even the continent as a whole,
especially as South Africa sought to carve out a role for itself as a serious player
on the international scene.

25. E.G.Malherbe,Educafion m South Afrca VoL 11: 1923-1975 (CapeTown and Johannesburg,
1977), 683.
 122 PATRICK J. FURLONG

Trade relations provide a good example. Notwithstanding one of the most

effective Jewish boycotts of German goods, South African trade with Germany
actually increased after 1933, primarily because of the warm support of Hertzog,
Pirow and like-minded cabinet ministers. On the other hand, German
government agencies saw such trade in a one-sided way, trying to strengthen
German-speaking and ethnically related Afrikaner business at the expense of
English-speaking enterprises. Moreover, in addition to the South-West African
dispute, the Italian invasion of Ethiopia greatly increased South African fear of
fascist intervention in their own desired sphere of influence, drawing them
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closer to Britain, until the final break came in September 1939.

On the subject of Afrikaner nationalism, although providing a far less
satisfactory discussion of the internal dynamics within Afrikaner nationalism (he
provides little discussion of developments after early 1942, and almost none for
after 1943, when the German sources on South Africa largely dry up),
Hagemann shows a wnsitivity to the subject lacking in almost all his predeces-
sors.This perhaps reflects the sheer range of the material to which he has been
exposed in his research.
Although Hagemann agrees with OMeara that Christian nationalism
cannot in essence be characterized as fascist according to any generally
recognized definition of the term, he does concede the striking similarity
between the extreme nationalism, anti-liberalism, anti-Marxism and anti-
parliamentarism of this ideology and European forms of fascism in the interwar
period. This position could probably be developed to advantage by applying the
typology adopted by Stanley Payne in describing the Greyshirts as fascist, the
OB as a radical right group and the National Party as rightist, but essentially
conservative.26 But Hagemann shows even more ambivalence in describing
Christian nationalism as a South African variant of fascism, albeit marked by
a specifically Christian character, but lacking any autochthonous South
African ideology. His comments on the ambivalence of this movement,
including both pro-capitalist and anti-capitalist and both modernizing and anti-
modern elements, raises the question of why he does not provide a more
thorough comparative discussion of radical Afrikaner nationalism in the context
of the immense variety of European, Latin American and even Asian rightist
movements of this period. Indeed, this remains a real need in the literature,
although it will require a scholar steeped in several languages not usually
familar to South Africanists. The parochialism of South African historiography
so long criticized by the revisionists has not been overcome in respect of
Afrikaner history. Ironically, while South African history has quite rightly

26. S.G.Payne, Fasci.wt~Compahn andlk$nition (Madison, Wisconsin, 1980), 17.

27. Hagemann, SkiojXh und dac WacReich, 346.
 FASCISM AND AFRIKANER NATIONALISM 123

become more thoroughly embedded in African history in recent years, there has
been no concomitant attempt to place relevant areas of South African history
in an appropriate extra-African context.
This comment raises the contribution of the late Charles Bloomberg,
brought before the public in an excellent edition by Saul Dubow, who has done
a superlative job of creating order out of what was apparently a vast and
unwieldy manuscript.28 For Bloomberg can understand South African
Christian nationalism only in the context of its roots and parallels in the ultra-
conservative, neo-Cslvinist world of the Dutch Anti-Revolutionary Party before
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its conversion to a more liberal worldview under the heel of wartime Nazi
occupation. Like the Afrikaner Christian nationalists, the ARP showed an
extraordinary ambivalence toward fascism as an admittedly quasi-pagan
manifestation of its revolt against the liberal spirit of 1789.
Bloombergs work has only a few footnotes, limiting the scholars ability
to trace his materials, and suffers from the very difficult conditions under which
this eccentricallybrilliant journalist completed his lifes great work. Errors there
certainly are: Hitler is said to have taken over Austria in 1934 rather than 1938
and the war issue is given as the reason for the formation of the National Party
in 1914; he states that the OB toned down ifs pro-Nazi enthusiasm later in the
war, whereas my own evidence suggests a more explicitly pro-National Socialist
message in that period, he sees the wartime Broederbond executive as
predominantly pro-NP, whereas the executives records suggest a deep split
between a large pro-OB faction and the pro-Nationalist wing.29
For some, Bloombergswork may be a historical curiosity, largely oblivious
to the great changes in historiography of the last two decades. He happily
indulges in all the old shibboleths of a Broederbond conspiracy and the
nineteenth century Calvinist explanation of the Afrikaner worldview, so
thoroughly discredited in the works of Dan OMeara and Andrb du Toitm
Yet this essentially intellectual history, despite perhaps overstretchhg the
analogy between the ARP and the Broederbond, fits a valuable niche in the
literature on the Afrikaner right. It includes a wealth of relevant historical detail

28. Bloomberg, ChnXan Naiiomhm.

29. Bid, 154,158,180 and 182.
30. In addition to OMearas V - m , relevantworks include A. du Toits two Lcy articles,
No Chosen People: lXe Myth of the Calvinist Origins of Afrikaner Nationalism and Racial
Ideology, American Historid Revicw, 88, 4 ( a t . 1%), 20-52 and Puritans in Africa?
Afrikaner Calvinism and Kuyperian Neo-Calvinism in Late Nineteenth Century South
Afrid, Comparatiw Snrdiu in Sociqv and History, 21,2 (Apr. 1985), m-40.
 124 PATRICK J. FURLONG

on Afrikaner nationalist groups and individuals, including much not available

in previous studies of the Broederbond?l
Bloomberg builds a strong case for the impact of fascism on leading figures
in the Afrikaner nationalist movement such as LJ. du Plessis, Piet Meyer, Nico
Diederichs, John and Koot Vorster, and for the involvement of National Party
figures such as C.R. Swart, M.D.C. de Wet Nel and Eric Louw with far right
groups like the OB, but acknowledges the complexity of such relationships. For
Bloomberg is not a supporter of the Bunting position; in essence he agrees with
Hagemann that Christian nationalism (like that in the Netherlands), was
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ambivalent toward fascism, but that (unlike the Dutch variety) radical Afrikaner
nationalists were not alienated from fascism by the events of the early war years;
instead, they continued to draw selectively from fascism and Nazism those
elements most congenial to their own history and current needs.
Bloomberg rightly points out that the quarrel between the OB and the NP
later in the war was not the product of intrinsically different attitudes to the
Third Reich; both were decidedly pro-German, even if both were not necessarily
equally pro-Nazi, and even the OB qualified its support for Nazism. I would add
that absolutely essential to any treatment of the rift between the NP and OB
was that this rested less on different attitudes to fascism than on individual and
organizational jealousy: the NP knew that as the Nazis shifted their interest to
the OB, the threat of a non-party state as advocated by OB boss Hans van
Rensburg had to be met head-on. The NP itself, however, could be just as
authoritarian as the OB, was deeply involved in the drawing up of the famous
Draft Constitution for a republic more in keeping with the New Order
(discussed with great clarity by Bloomberg) and, when the time came to face the
real enemy, Smutss United Party, unofficial OB support was crucial in electing
such well-known NP supporters of authoritarian nationalism as Albert Hertzog
and Nico Diederichs.
The 1948 election became, as Bloomberg perceives it, even if not
necessarily the victory of sometime adherents of fascism (Hagemann, despite all
his qualifications in the preceding chapters, comes very close to this position in
his final paragraph), that of a counter-revolutionary movement rooted as much
in the nineteenth century world of Abraham Kuyper and Paul Kruger as in the
twentieth century world of Hitler, Mussolini or Van Rensburg. For all that, the
reader cannot but note that the ARP was just a generation ahead of Hitler in

31. See AN. Pelzer, Dic Afrikrmcr Broeabbod E m @ 50 Jaar (Cape Town,1979), the official
sanitized account; the controversial works by J.H.P. Serfontein, Brothahood of Power: An
Eqw& of the S a m Afrikrmcr BruederW (Blmmington, Indiana and London, 1978)and H.
Strydom and 1. Wilkins, I7&? S u p w - A ~Inside
: theAfrikamr5mdchmd (Johannesburg,
1978); and, from the unusual perspective of the disaffected far right, B.M.Schoemans Dic
BroeabW in dic Afrikrmcr-Politick (Pretoria, 1982).
 FASCISM AND AFRIKANER NATIONALISM 125

confronting the nightmares of modem conservatives: the breakdown of order,

the challenge to traditional values, and the liberal demand for equality and for
a new, international sensibility.
This is where the novelist J.M. Coetzees slight but striking contribution
to the subject can be introduced?2 For Coetzee, 1948 cannot be wished away
as revisionists like OMeara have, precisely because the nightmares which fed
Afrikaner nationalist ideologues like Geo!Trey Cronje were very real to them,
feeding a kind of social madness. It was Foucault who introduced many
historians to the intriguing possibilities of studying madness; Coetzee offers here
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his equally provocatively eclectic thoughts on a political variety of insanity,

which he believes to have infected a wide swathe of the white electorate in 1948,
as an antidote to those who would explain the 1930s and 1940s in strictly
rational, instrumentalist terms.
Regardless of whether one agrees with all the post-Freudian psychobabble
littering much of this article, it does raise an important issue for the student of
fascism, for fascism, when all is said and done, has a distinctly irrational
component, drawing on a hysterical reaction to modernization. The recent
litarature on the South African right has tended to overlook this. It was as an
irrational reaction to modernization that Hitler found such support among the
small shopkeepers, craftsmen, farmers and white collar workers of his day who
felt so threatened by the brave new industrial and transnational worlds of liberal
capitalism and Marxist socialism. This is also why the petit bourgeois intelleo
tuals of the Broederbond were able to forge a cross-class alliance of Afrikaner
workers, farmers and emerging entrepreneurs and professionals terrified by a
world in which they could not imagine competing with rapidly urbanizing black
workers and large-scale English capitalists. Apartheid, like fascism, offered a
panacea that does not negate more consciously rational explanations for 1948.
Bloombergs work comes together here with Coetzees, for in the
atmosphere of South Africa in the 1940s. Cronjes mad obsession with racial
mixing found a special resonance as a symbol of all that confronted the mid-
twentieth century Afrikaner. Cronje was a sociologist who was both a prominent
OB figure and one of the most influential Afrikaner writers on race relations
in the years during and immediately after the war (his contribution to Regverdige
Russe-Apartheid reads like a first draft of the Sauer Report, the basis for the
1948 NP apartheid platform). In so doing he provides a link with the work of
Citino and Hagemann, who stop short in the body of their work before the end
of the war. For Cronjes work was thoroughly imbued with the Nazi-style
biological racism propagated by his mentor G. Eloff, something atypical in
Afrikaner political writing, and so obviously the product of external influences.

32. Coetzee, The Mind of Apartheid.

 126 PATRICK J. FURLONG

Yet Cronjes work was widely hailed in both party and church circles, because
his anti-infection model of full-scale segregation, clothed in quasi-fascist
rhetoric, resonated with one of the oldest excuses of South African governments
for keeping black and white apart, that of preserving public health.
Thus, as Hagemann is so at pains to stress throughout his work, the
common interest in the race question and in preserving their own identity
brought together German Nazis and radical Afrikaner nationalists even when
geo-political concerns or religious scruples limited the scope of their coopera-
tion. Therefore, even though Berlin increasingly questioned the value of the OB,
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let alone of the Np,as a reliable partner in South Africa, and gradually replaced
any prior hopes of replacing the Smuts government with a policy calculated
more to irritate and harrass this remote comer of the Allied war effort,
Afrikaner nationalism did not cease to be affected by the years of dalliance with
the European radical right. The focus of Christian nationalist interest was no
longer English liberal democracy, but the black majority.
With the defeat of the Nazis abroad and the collapse of the South African
far right, the purportedly more moderate NP, deeply involved at home in its
own complex alliances and feuds with ultra-rightist groups such as the
Greyshirts and OB, was certainly the one surviving viable bearer of the radical
Afrikaner nationalist tradition. The NP remained attached to a parliamentary
system of sorts and, as Hagemann notes, it continued to be suspicious of a
fascist-style leadership cult; nor, as he argues, were there any documentable
institutional ties between Nazi Germany and the real force behind the party, the
Broederbond. But individual connections there were aplenty, and those who had
drunk of the waters of authoritarian nationalism found a ready home in the
post-1948NP, especiallyafter the hard-line Verwoerd faction gained ascendancy
in the 1950s.
As Hagemann points out in his closing words, Germans have never
satisfactorily agreed on whether 8 May 1945 was a day of liberation or of
catastrophe for Germany, but those Afrikaner intellectuals who had been such
admirers of Nazi Germany have never asked that question. They did not need
to, for on the contrary, the alleged correctness of their Christian national path
seemed to be realized when, just three years later, Christian nationalism came
to power in South Africa.