Much has been said about the resistance groups of World War Two.
Stories of brave souls fighting their oppressors across Europe and Asia have
become increasingly well known. But things weren’t so clear-cut in Africa.
In this video, we shed light on the Ossewabrandwag and its paramilitary wing, the Stormjaers,
a South African resistance group aligned with the Nazis and against the Allies. This is their story.
Division has long plagued South Africa, and this was keenly felt by many Afrikaners in the 1930s.
It had been 100 years since the Great Trek: when Boer colonists had made their
arduous journey from South Africa’s coastal settlements to the interior,
where they hoped to finally be free of British influence. This became
the founding myth for Afrikaners, who aimed to replicate their forebears’ courage, fortitude,
and determination. These characteristics were strongly reinforced during both
conflicts between Afrikaner colonists and British Imperialists, conflicts known as the Boer Wars,
and helped to forge a collective identity for a people who believed they had been placed in their
land “by the hand of God.” Germany remained a supporter of the Boers throughout both Boer Wars.
Jumping forward to 1938, Afrikaner nationalism was spreading at an astounding rate.
Even though the Boer Wars had ended decades ago, many were still angry at the British.
They felt that their enforced incorporation into the Union of South Africa politically
sidelined them and that their interests weren’t served by a British bureaucracy. The Afrikaners
looked elsewhere for a societal example to replicate. They found it in Nazi Germany.
The Afrikaner solicitor Johannes Van Rensburg had strong connections with Germany. He had completed
a master’s degree in German before travelling to the Third Reich on official business as South
Africa’s Secretary of Justice. His government position opened doors, and Van Rensburg met
Hitler, Goring, and several other Nazi officials. He was impressed by Hitler’s leadership and doubly
impressed by what he saw as Germany’s discipline and productivity. In his mind, the path of
fascism and the values of the old Trekboers went hand-in-hand. He declared himself to
be a National Socialist, a Nazi, and resolved to implement these beliefs at home in South Africa.
Upon his return to South Africa, Van Rensburg helped organise the Ossewabrandweg.
In English, it means ox-wagon sentinel or ox-wagon guard. The name captured the spirit of the old
ox-wagon trekkers who established Boer control in the hinterland and combined it with ideas
of the modern Afrikaner Volk. The organisation was hugely successful. From a handful of members
in Bloemfontein, the Ossewabrandweg quickly developed into a country-wide movement numbering
300,000-plus members. The start of World War Two in September 1939 boosted membership further, as
many Afrikaners felt they had been dragged into a war with Germany at the behest of a foreign power.
The Ossewabrandweg styled itself as an organisation of do-ers,
not talkers, and purposefully distanced itself from mainstream politics. Prominent
men set up local Kommandos to spread their message and attract new members.
In parliament, Ossewabrandweg members of the National Party argued that South Africa should
make peace with Germany. The British didn’t know it at the time, but leading Ossewabrandweg men
were in contact with Nazi foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, and he had assured
them that Afrikaners would dominate all of southern Africa when the Germans won the war.
As the Ossewabrandweg’s membership swelled, so too did its notoriety.
Young men especially taken with ideas of Afrikaner nationalism began fighting in the streets against
leftists and those seen to represent a pro-British order, like soldiers. If these men had been from
anywhere else, they would probably have been conscripted for service in the Allied armies,
but nationalistic young Boers were seen as too politically unreliable for service overseas. Any
who were serving were thrown out of the military, which commonly lost them their social status.
The Ossewabrandweg’s response was to reject British control entirely.
But to do this, they needed an army. That’s where the Stormjaers came in.
The Stormjaer organisation started as a group of young brawlers acting as guards for Ossewabrandweg
meetings. Soon they united into a group responsible for the personal security of senior
members. They were all hand-picked and constituted a very small number of the total Ossewabrandweg
membership. In the region of Natal, for example, there were only 250 Stormjaers selected from
12,000 regular members. You couldn’t simply join the Stormjaers; you had to be invited
to a secret meeting. Others needed to vouch for your nationalistic beliefs and dependability.
If you were believed to be trustworthy, you had to prove your commitment by executing a so-called
traitor. A man would be tied up with a bag on his head somewhere out in the veldt. The
recruit was then given a pistol and ordered to kill him. The man was really an ally, and the
pistol loaded with a blank, but recruits wouldn’t find this out until they had passed the test.
Finally, new Stormjaers had to take an oath. Some had to do it with a loaded gun to their heads,
others with a pistol in one hand and a bible in the other, to symbolise their pact with violence.
The last line of their oath was, “If I retreat, shoot me. If I fall,
avenge me. If I charge, follow me. So help me God.” Only men who had sworn the oath
before an officer were considered full Stormjaers and ready to fight.
Interestingly, policemen and railway workers were vastly overrepresented among the Stormjaers.
The Stormjaers were organised much the same way modern terrorist cells often are.
Each man knew the handful of other operatives he worked alongside and his immediate superior.
Officers did not know the names of all the men under their command, just the senior ones.
If one person was compromised and spilled the beans, very few Stormjaers would be at risk.
If they needed to, these men could always escape into the veldt just as their forebears had,
and return once things had calmed down.
In early 1942, the role of Stormjaers shifted substantially. Instead of existing to support
the Ossewabrandweg, they began carrying out their own missions and pursuing their own interests.
To battle the Allies on their home turf, the Stormjaers committed acts of sabotage and
subversion. They almost always attacked at night, blowing up railway lines and telegraph cables to
cut communications between the widely dispersed South African forces. The Stormjaers also cut
power supplies to government buildings and blew up post offices, notably at Benoni in February 1942.
This hamstrung the South African war effort, as troops badly needed
in Europe and North Africa had to be kept back to guard government infrastructure.
Just like Hitler’s SA and SS, from which they drew inspiration, the Stormjaers attacked
leftist organisations. On one occasion, they ransacked the Left Club in Pretoria,
smashing up everything inside. On another, they teamed up with the police,
with whom they had deep connections, to raid the headquarters of the South African Communist Party.
Unsurprisingly, the Stormjaer’s main targets were often Jewish businesses.
Firebombing attacks were their favourite, and many Jewish shops and homes went up in flames
in the Krugersdorp and Lichtenburg areas. The police were slow to investigate these attacks,
as the culprits were often their mates. There was little justice for the victims of this violence.
On the more extreme end, Stormjaers dabbled in assassination. George Heard had been a
political journalist and harsh critic of Afrikaner nationalism before joining the South African Navy.
While on leave in Cape Town, he disappeared without a trace. His body was never found, but
his position near the top of Ossewabrandweg’s kill list points to assassination by the Stormjaers.
And this wasn’t the only case. Stormjaers abducted Frank Mentz, a fellow Afrikaner
nationalist, and beat him almost to death as a warning against traitorous activity.
His crime? Making a disparaging remark about another Ossewabrandweg Kommando.
The same fate befell Froneman, a Kommandant, who was mistakenly believed to be a traitor. Even
Hendrik Verwoerd, Afrikaner nationalist and editor of the newspaper Die Transvaaler, was a target.
But he managed to narrowly escape their wrath. Verwoerd went on to have a career in politics,
becoming the Prime Minister of South Africa. He is commonly known as the “Father of Apartheid.”
Even among the hardened Afrikaners, violence against their own proved
too extreme. As the Second World War dragged on,
many began to see the Stormjaers as thugs rather than the vanguard of the Volk.
Despite all the talk about racial superiority, the Germans were getting soundly beaten by the
Soviets on the Eastern Front and Rommel had been forced out of North Africa by 1944.
Few still saw a German victory as inevitable, and the Ossewabrandweg’s political opponents
moved to take the organisation down. Mass arrests occurred, mostly targeting the police force,
and this significantly reduced the strength of the Stormjaers. The Germans, who had been
keenly watching the situation in South Africa the whole time, reported that the Stormjaers
had 8,000 fighters at their peak in 1942. By 1945, this was down to just 3,200, and not all of these
men were still active. The rest had been locked away in internment camps for the war’s duration.
The war may have ended in 1945, but the legacy of the Stormjaers remained. Many avowed Nazis
found a place in the government administration of Apartheid-era South Africa in the 1950s.
But what do YOU think? Should the government have done more to crack down on the Ossewabrandweg
early on? Was it a good idea or a bad one to keep the Stormjaers a small elite force?
How much do YOU think they influenced the war effort? Let us know in the comments!