NAZI ACTIVITY

Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 93, 21 April 1939, Page 9

NAZI ACTIVITY

IN AFRICAN COLONIES

UNION COUNTER MEASURES

There have "been several references lately to the measures taken by the Government of the Union of South Africa to deal with German activities in the former colonies of the Reich. Little has been published on this point, but some illuminating details are provided by Professor Stephen H. Roberts in his "House That Hitler Built."

Beginning in South-West Africa in 1932, German propaganda and political activity had reached such proportions by 1934, that it was forbidden by the Union Government. A Commission of Inquiry, which reported in 1936, declared that the 31,000 Europeans who live in the territory were "inordinately preoccupied with politics," and also discovered that the agitation was inspired by the Nazi Party's Foreign Department in Berlin. In addition, it was revealed that agents had been sent out to work for "the Nazification of all German institutions in the country." The German flag had been substituted for the Union flag on public buildings and school children were being taught the Nazi ideas of history. Branches of the Hitler Youth were in existence, and the Deutscher Bund, the political party of the Germans in the colony, had become a completely Nazi body. The Commission found that "there was no room for individual thought or action in the Bund. It has become a voting machine pledged to political— and, at that, foreign dictation; the individual is dragooned into conformity by threats of reprisals and persecutions." UNDER FOREIGN RULE. In this manner the Germans in SouthWest Africa became unified under the rule of a foreign Power. In 1923 Germany had assented to the naturalisation of the Germans there, but she now interfered in the territory with the result that the colonial population returned to dependence on Berlin. These facts were pointed out by the Commission. The South African Government thereupon took up an attitude of strong opposition to any extension of Nazi influence. The Youth Movement was declared illegal and its leader expelled. The Union Government declared that it had no more intention of abandoning the mandate than it had of abandoning its own territory. At the same time it continued a separate administration in South-West Africa, and though a two-thirds majority of the Legislative Assembly of the mandated territory requested incorporation of the colony in the Union the Commission of Inquiry set up to go into the question reported in March, 1936, that it was unable to reach any conclusion though it agreed that it was impossible that intervention by Germany should be allowed to continue. This resulted in the Deutscher Bund regarding the failure of the Legislative Assembly to obtain unification as a victory for them. They became increasingly assertive. Their noisiness

has increased as the assertiveness of the colonial campaigners in Germany has increased. OTHER AFRICAN COLONIES. In other African colonies the situation is not quite the same. In Tanganyika, which borders on Kenya, Germans have received appointments from the Nazi Party and at one time attempted to create their own courts to try cases between themselves. The population has been more orderly than that of South-West Africa, but there is steady economic penetration by Germany, and a fixed belief that the mandate will one day return to the Reich. In the territory there are 5,000,000 natives and only 8500 Europeans. In the Cameroons. four-fifths of which went to France, all but a handful of Germans have been displaced. In the British fifth, however, the German settlers have regained their original supremacy. In any event there were fewer than 2000 Germans in Togoland and the Cameroons before 1914.