published by Head Zeus

At the start of World War Two, the British lagged way behind the Germans in the aerial arms race. The primitive Whitleys, Hapdens and Wellingtons, that formed the backbone of Bomber Command, were inadequately equipped and prone to technical failure. For the most part, they proved no match for their German counterparts. This all changed with the advent of the most famous and iconic four- engined bomber of the conflict – the legendary Avro Lancaster.

When British Prime Minister Winston Churchill could see no other road open to victory, it was to this form of strategic air-power that he turned, the Commander in Chief of Bomber Command, Air Marshall Arthur Harris, having all but convinced him that the Third Reich could be bombed into submission. The cost of the campaign would prove high with Bomber Command’s casualties amounting to almost one-seventh of all British deaths in action by land air, and sea from 1939-1945. While 55 573 aircrew, almost all officers and NCOs, were killed, the German losses were far higher. It is estimated that somewhere between 300 000 and 600 000 people, many of them civilians, were killed by the bombs of the RAF and USAAF.

As effective as the strategy was, it was not without its critics. While many questioned its morality, especially where it involved significant civilian casualties, what is unquestionable is the patient courage of the bomber crews. Packed into their cramped flying metal tubes, they faced the strain of constant operations night after night, forging out into the empty darkness, knowing that the German gunners, probing searchlights and fighter planes would most likely be waiting for them and that their chances of returning were not good. Of the aircrew who served in Bomber Command, a staggering 44.4 per cent lost their lives.

This book is very much a monument to the gallantry, fortitude and endurance of these men. It is based on a series of interviews the author had with Ken Clark, the only surviving member of his crew and one of the very last witnesses of the Allied bombing campaign. Like many young men of his generation, he had been swept up by the whole romance of flying (my father, who also served in Bomber Command, was another), enrolling in flying school as soon as he was able to. He failed to make it as a pilot but was offered and accepted the role of bomb aimer, for which he was eventually awarded the DFC.

Thereafter he took part in countless missions over Germany and the rest of Europe and was also heavily involved in the Normandy D Day invasion. A mixed bag of personalities, the men he flew with were drawn from all over the Commonwealth. His pilot, Flying Officer Jim Comans, for instance, was Australian, another crew member was a Canadian.

Written with remarkable factual authenticity, The Crew captures the terror and exhilaration, the comradeship and self-sacrifice that, for the duration of the war, was at the heart of these men’s experiences. Author Price handles the big political set pieces, that formed the background to the bombing campaign, superbly but his narrative is also consistently enlivened by his ability to telescope in on the small and telling details that reveal what the life of an ordinary Lancaster crewman was like.

published by Jonathan Ball Publishers.

Although located far from the main theatres of conflict, South Africa’s strategic global position, because of the Cape sea route, was considered of vital importance to both the Allied and Axis powers throughout the Second World War.

Determined to disrupt Allied shipping, the Germans quickly dispatched packs of U Boats into South African waters. Initially, at least, they enjoyed some success with a considerable tonnage of shipping being sunk. Hoping to encourage sedition within the country itself, as well as gather valuable military and naval intelligence, the Germans also set up an espionage network – commonly referred to as the Trompke network – operating out of Lourenco Marques in Portuguese-held Mozambique.

They found willing accomplices on South African soil. The decision by the Smuts government to declare war on Germany had not been a universally popular one with a substantial segment of the Afrikaner community still harbouring deeply anti-British feelings as a result of the Boer War. Their opposition to South Africa’s participation in the war crystallised around support for the Ossewabrandwag, a cultural organisation founded in September 1939 and led by the defiantly anti-Imperial Hans Van Rensburg. At first, the contact between Germany and this group of disgruntled South Africans was fairly haphazard but as the war progressed more secure lines of communication were established, particularly through the enigmatic Felix Network.

Alerted to the threat, the British and South African authorities retaliated in kind by establishing their counter-intelligence units although their effort to track down the enemy was often bedevilled by inter-service rivalry and the fact that some local government officials were not entirely committed to the Allied cause. Although a wealth of evidence would be gathered after the war pointing to the fact that Van Rensburg and his cohorts had committed wartime acts of high treason the election of the National Party in 1948 and a changing political climate would ensure they were never prosecuted and got off scot-free.

In writing about this period of our turbulent history, Kleynhans – a senior lecturer in the Department of Military History at the Faculty of Military Science at Stellenbosch University – gained much material from the Ossewabrandwag Archive, an under-appreciated, and largely unknown, archival collection containing key source material detailing the nature and operation of the German intelligence networks in Southern Africa. As well as uncovering a great deal of factual information, his excellent study includes vivid stories about would be German spies crossing crocodile-infested rivers to gain access to South Africa, daring escapes from internment camps and the setting up of transmitter stations, which could communicate directly with Berlin, in remote parts of the Highveld.

As Kleynhans readily acknowledges much of the intelligence gathered for transmission by these isolated cells seems to have been of questionable value. In his view, however, they did serve “a definite propaganda purpose among antiwar segments of South African society”.

What they also did was show up the deep divisions within South Africa society. Undoubtedly the most thorough, even-handed and detailed account of this now mostly forgotten chapter of our history written so far, Hitler’s War admirably captures this schizophrenic state, as well as filling in some crucial gaps in the historiography of the war.