South Africa (HM6)

In South Africa, J.B.M. "Barry" Hertzog was Prime Minister when broke out. The Afrikaner, who actually had fought the British Empire in the Second Boer War, didn't want this war; but now the pro-British wing of his United Party under Field Marshall rebelled. As a consequence, Hertzog was toppled, and Smuts came to power, who declared war on on September 5th in 1939. He had many prominent opponents though, like Oswald Pirow, an admirer of , and John Vorster, leader of the anti-British and pro-German Ossewabrandwag. That's why the latter one and other extreme Rightists were thrown to prison preventively. Also, the Army just had somewhat more than 5,000 Soldiers when the war started, and only the white Minority was allowed to serve as Soldiers.
As a reward for his loyalty towards the Empire, Smuts became a member of the British War cabinet.
The South African Air Force carried out the first bombing raid of the East African campaign at the n border city of Moyale in June 1940, mere hours after 's declaration of war.
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DateFormat = yyyy
Period = from:1935 till:1941
TimeAxis = orientation:vertical
ScaleMajor = unit:year increment:5 start:1940
# there is no automatic collision detection,
# so shift texts up or down manually to avoid overlap
Define $dx = 25 # shift text to right side of bar
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 bar:Leaders color:blue width:25 mark:(line,white) align:left fontsize:S
 from:start till:1939 shift:($dx,5) text:Barry~Hertzog
 from:1939 till:1941 shift:($dx,5) text:Jan~Smuts
de:Südafrika (W6)
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Category:South Africa