Hitler’s South African Spies: Secret Agents and the Intelligence War in South Africa

by Evert Kleynhans

The story of the intelligence war in South Africa during the Second World War is one of suspense, drama and dogged persistence. In 1939, when the Union of South Africa entered the war on Britain’s side, the German government secretly reached out to the anti-war political opposition, and to the leadership of the pro-fascist Ossewabrandwag. The Nazis’ aim was to spread sedition in South Africa and to undermine the Allied war effort. To this end, they even offered to supply weapons to the Ossewabrandwag. But the critical strategic importance of the sea route round the Cape of Good Hope meant that the Germans were also after naval intelligence. Soon U-boat packs were sent to operate in South African waters, to deadly effect. With the help of the Ossewabrandwag, a network of German spies was established to gather important political and military intelligence and relay it back to the Reich. Agents would use a variety of channels to send coded messages to Axis diplomats in nearby Mozambique. Meanwhile, police detectives and MI5 agents hunted in vain for illegal wireless transmitters. Drawing on numerous primary and archival sources, Hitler’s South African Spies presents an unrivalled account of the German intelligence networks that operated in wartime South Africa and investigates the true threat level presented by Nazi Germany. It includes a fascinating account of the Royal Navy’s signals intelligence network in southern Africa and also details the hunt in post-war Europe for witnesses to help the South African government bring charges of high treason against key Ossewabrandwag members.

Genres: Nonfiction, History

288 pages, Paperback

Published May 6, 2021

Reviews

[Johan Conradie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very insightful. I never knew about the U Boat attacks in S A waters. Sanitizing of history, as described in the last chapters, is also nothing new. It happened then, it happens now.

[Stef · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lifts the lid on a dusty forgotten cauldron of South African Nazi sympathisers working against support for the Allies during WW II, and shines a light on emerging Afrikaner nationalism that would dominate 50 years of post war South African politics.
An excellent read for anyone with an interest in an era where the wounds of the Anglo-Boer war still festered, and rancour towards the British Empire were conflated with sympathies for the Third Reich as a means of resistance.
Impressively researched and meticulously recorded. An asset for an era that saw valuable archival material lost.

[Sven Zimmermann · Rating 5 out of 5]

A good read particularly if you are interested in this obscure part of World War Two. It has always fascinated me as to what the connection was between the Ossewabrandwag and the Third Reich. Evert covers a lot of ground in a very detailed fashion providing a very good understanding of what was happening in South Africa with regards to Nazi sympathisers.

[Michael M. Higgins · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book gives specific details of German spy rings in South Africa during WWII. Although well written, it may be of more interest to South Africans and UK/Commonwealth readers than the general reader from other countries interested in WWII.

[Francois Bouwer · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting overview of the intelligence war in South Africa during the Second World War. It explains the possible involvement of Die Ossewabrandwag in the pro-Germany faction within South Africa.
History not often known by the general public.

[Sean · Rating 5 out of 5]

definitely a must read for a different viewpoint on SA maritime history.
thank you for taking the time to compile the book.

[Anschen Conradie · Rating 5 out of 5]

#hitlersspies - Evert Kleynhans
#jonathanball

The author was a lieutenant in the enquiries section of the Department of Defence Archives in Pretoria. His discovery of the documents pertaining to Operation Eisbär (Polar Bear) paved the way for his doctoral dissertation in Military History in 2018 and this book was born as a result thereof.

Back to Operation Eisbär (also the opening scenes in the book) for a minute. In the spring of 1942 three German U-boats left Lorient in the Bay of Biscay. Their destination: the South African Coast. (Along the way they attacked and sank the British troopship Laconia near the equator.) They arrived in the Cape Town harbour in October 1942 and sank at least six Allied merchantmen (33 000 tons of shipping).

To understand how that was even possible, one has to return to pre-war Germany. In 1936 Hans van Rensburg, then a senior official in the Union’s Department of Justice, attended the Olympic Games in Berlin where he met Hitler, Goering, Goebbels and Von Epp. In 1941, after the resignation of Colonel JCC Laas, Van Rensburg became the leader of the Ossewabrandwag and immediately set to work to turn the cultural organization into a political one with a paramilitary wing, the Stormjaers. Their aim: an Axis-victory to swing popular opinion against the Smuts Government.

The history of the ‘contacts’ tasked with providing and transporting military and political intelligence from the Union via Luitpold Werz’s Trompke Network in Lourenço Marques, started with Will and Marietjie Radley (South Africans trapped in Germany at the outbreak of the war); transferred briefly first to Robey Leibbrandt (eventual archenemy of Ossewabrandwag) and then to Hans Rooseboom before, finally, to Lothar Sittig, who was, according to a MI6 report dated 1943, ‘the most important of Trompke’s agents in the Union’.

Sittig would become the chief architect of the Felix-network. The latter aimed to succeed in transmitting intelligence directly to Berlin via a wireless link, but to build a sufficiently strong transmitter required components found only in so-called diathermy machines utilized by hospitals. With the assistance of a Dutch National, Reijer Groeneveldt, employed at the Post Office, they not only stole the machine, but smuggled it all the way to Vryburg; an Ossewabrandwag stronghold that would become the centre of their intelligence transmissions.

The book also covers the post war hunt on those suspected of treason, Hans van Rensburg in particular. In spite of the efforts of men like Lawrence Barrett, the deputy Attorney General, and George Visser, a member of the SAP Special Branch, the Smuts Government was reluctant to charge Van Rensburg prior to the 1948 elections and the ‘German Papers’ (the complete Barrett report and supporting documents) disappeared shortly after Malan and the National Party came into power. Van Rensburg was never charged.

This book provides a fascinating look into long buried and almost forgotten history - secret agents and the intelligence war in Southern Africa 1939-1945 and deserves 5 stars from #Uitdieperdsebek

[Aleksander · Rating 2 out of 5]

With the title and the cover picture, and the fact that it was made into an audiobook, I expected a thrilling story of daring agents sent by the Führer himself into South Africa to infiltrate every corner of the country. Instead, I got an incredibly dry account of the amateurish and largely inconsequential activities of a few diehard Afrikaaner nationalists who asked local sailors what ships they were serving on, and mostly failed to relay that useless information to Germany.

There are some interesting parts, but the story itself is just not all that fascinating, and the author's style doesn't help. It's not only deliberately academic, but often incredibly repetitive and unnecessarily verbose.

While I appreciate the value of documenting this part of World War II history, I feel cheated. Perhaps I should have done more research before buying the book; or perhaps the publisher shouldn't have tricked me into buying it by implying through the title that Hitler had anything to do with this at all.