The War Years, 1939–1945: War Economy and Military Engagement

Mlombo, Abraham

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-54283-2_5

Abraham Mlombo⁴

Part of the book series: Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series ((CIPCSS))

148 Accesses

Abstract

During the Second World War, Southern Rhodesia and South Africa witnessed the transformation and expansion of their economies. The war had interrupted “normal” patterns of global trade, which affected countries deeply reliant on imports. As a major importer of manufactured goods, Southern Rhodesia had to find alternative sources to meet the demands of the Colony. Under the circumstances, the country turned inwards, and import substitution industrialisation (ISI) was encouraged by the Government. Although Rhodesian industrial expansion took place under wartime conditions, it was circumscribed by the massive growth of South African industries. Comparatively, South Africa had an established secondary industrial sector, and enjoyed a favourable trading position with Southern Rhodesia. In light of efforts to industrialise, Southern Rhodesia experienced existing trade patterns with South Africa as impediments to this process.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution

Chapter: USD 29.95; Price excludes VAT (USA)

eBook: USD 39.99; Price excludes VAT (USA)

Softcover Book: USD 54.99; Price excludes VAT (USA)

Hardcover Book: USD 54.99; Price excludes VAT (USA)

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

1.
T. Stapleton, ‘Views of the First World War in Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) 1914–1918’, War and Society, 20, 1 (2002), 26.
2.
I. Smith, Bitter Harvest: The Great Betrayal and the Dreadful Aftermath (Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball Publishers, 2001), 12.
3.
P. Berlyn, The Quiet Man: A Biography of the Hon. Ian Douglas Smith, Prime Minister of Rhodesia (Salisbury: Collins, 1978), 53.
4.
Ibid., 55–75.
5.
Gann and Gelfand, Huggins of Rhodesia, 151.
6.
The National Archives of the United Kingdom (TNA), Cabinet Office (CAB) 21/2433, The Role of Southern Rhodesia in War: Memorandum by the Overseas Defence Committee, 16 July 1951.
7.
Blake, History of Rhodesia, 235.
8.
I.C.B. Dear (ed.), The Oxford Companion to the Second World War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 1024.
9.
B. Nasson, South Africa at War, 1939–1945 (Auckland Park: Jacana, 2012), 55.
10.
A. Grundlingh, ‘The King’s Afrikaners? Enlistment and Ethnic Identity in the Union of South Africa’s Defence Force during the Second World War, 1939–45’, The Journal of African History, 40, 30 (1999), 353.
11.
Chanock, Unconsummated Union, 235.
12.
Ibid.
13.
H.J. Martin and N. Orpen, South Africa at War: Military and Industrial Organization and Operations in Connection with the Conduct of the War, 1939–1945, Volume 7 of South African Forces World War II (Cape Town: Purnell, 1979), 23.
14.
Davenport, South Africa: A Modern History, 299.
15.
Ibid.
16.
J. MacDonald, The War History of Southern Rhodesia, Volume 1 (Bulawayo: Books of Rhodesia, 1976), 9.
17.
Ibid., 10.
18.
Ibid.
19.
Ibid., 10–11.
20.
South Africa National Defence Force (hereafter SANDF) Archives, Pretoria, Chief of the General Staff GPS CGS GP 2, Box 9, Rhodesian Forces, Amalgamation of Southern Rhodesian with Union Forces, 1942.
21.
Ibid.
22.
MacDonald, War History of Southern Rhodesia, 11.
23.
Ibid.
24.
Gann and Gelfand, Huggins of Rhodesia, 150–151.
25.
Martin and Orpen, South Africa at War, 23.
26.
MacDonald, War History of Southern Rhodesia, 367.
27.
Ibid., 368.
28.
Blake, History of Rhodesia, 234. For detailed discussion, see A. Stewart, The First Victory: The Second World War and the East Africa Campaign (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016). See, Dear (ed.), Oxford Companion to the Second World War, 278. ‘Lt-General Alan Cunningham was a British Army officer, who in November 1940 took command of British forces in Kenya and helped win the East African campaign in 1941’.
29.
SANDF Archives, Pretoria, Chief of the General Staff GPS CGS GP 2, Box 9, ‘Amalgamation of Southern Rhodesian with Union Forces, 1942’.
30.
Ibid. For more on the Delhi conference see N. Mansergh, Survey of British Commonwealth Affairs: Problems of Wartime Cooperation and Post-War Change 1939–1952 (United Kingdom: Routledge, 2013), 84–85. ‘The fall of France encouraged the Commonwealth countries east and south of the Suez in the autumn of 1940 to plan the better use and distribution of resources collectively at their disposal. They met in Delhi in October, Lord Linlithgow at the opening meeting suggested that the East Group Conference, as it was described, fell into a category “almost unique” in the political experience of the British Commonwealth. The novelty, in so far as it existed, lay in the assumption of responsibilities by a group of Commonwealth countries in the interests of the whole. Those responsibilities were, first to attempt to make Commonwealth countries in the areas self-supporting in respect of their war needs, and secondly to help in increasing measure in supplying the war needs of the United Kingdom. Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, India, and Burma were represented at the Delhi conference, as well as Southern Rhodesia, Ceylon, Hong Kong, Malaya, and Palestine, and the United Kingdom. When its deliberations had ended a standing conference was established known as the Eastern Group Supply Council, but its machinery was not completed until the Central Provisions Office was set up in March 1941, with the responsibility of provisioning troops in the Middle and Far East and of coordinating the military demands of countries within the region. The usefulness of the Eastern Group Supply was related to the amount of food and war materials produced by its member countries’.
31.
NAZ, S 482/158/40, Union Nationals, Exemption from Military Service of Union Nationals in Southern Rhodesia, ‘Liability of Union Nationals for Military Service in Southern Rhodesia’, Secretary to the Cabinet (Southern Rhodesia), 1 February 1941.
32.
Ibid.
33.
Ibid., Union Nationals, Exemption from Military Service of Union Nationals in Southern Rhodesia, J.C. Smuts to G.M. Huggins, 27 December 1940.
34.
The National Archives of the United Kingdom (TNA), Dominion Office (DO) 35/1411, Lord Harlech to C.R. Attlee, 5 January 1943.
35.
Cape Times, 11 February 1944.
36.
J. Spence, ‘South Africa and the Modern World’, in M. Wilson and L. Thompson (eds.), The Oxford History of South Africa: South Africa 1870–1966, Volume 2 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971), 478.
37.
Ibid.
38.
Ibid.
39.
Martin and Orpen, South Africa at War, 26.
40.
Nasson, South Africa at War, 1939–1945, 43.
41.
Ibid., 43–44.
42.
Martin and Orpen, South Africa at War, 34.
43.
Kruger, Age of the Generals, 194.
44.
Nasson, South Africa at War, 104.
45.
J. Keene, South Africa in World War II: A Pictorial History (Cape Town: Human and Rousseau, 1995), 33–35.
46.
Nasson, South Africa at War, 104.
47.
SANDF Archives, Pretoria, Chief of the General Staff GPS CGS GP 2, Box 9, Rhodesian Forces, A meeting was held on 19–20 June 1942 between the Prime Ministers of Southern Rhodesia and the Union.
48.
MacDonald, War History of Southern Rhodesia, 367.
49.
Ibid., 368.
50.
A. Jackson, The British Empire and the Second World War (London and New York: Hambledon Continuum, 2006), 176.
51.
MacDonald, War History of Southern Rhodesia, 368.
52.
Ibid., 372.
53.
TNA, DO 121/244/2, Sir Eric Machtig Private Papers, South Africa and Southern Rhodesia, Arrival to South Africa, Resume of points made by Smuts. Minute. On the morning of my arrival (Thursday, 23rd July), 28 July 1942.
54.
Ibid.
55.
Ibid.
56.
TNA, DO 35/1274, E. Baring to E. Machtig, 28 August 1945.
57.
TNA, DO 35/1391, E. Baring to Rt. Hon. Viscount Cranborne, 15 November 1943.
58.
Ibid., E. Baring to E. Machtig, 15 February 1944.
59.
SANDF Archives, Pretoria, Chief of the General Staff GPS CGS GP 2, Box 9, Rhodesian Forces, Discussions between Col. Day (S. Rhodesia), Brigadier. de Waal and Col. Campbell-Ross (U.D.F.), early in August 1942.
60.
Ibid.
61.
D. Lowry, ‘Rhodesia 1890–1980: “The Last Dominion”’, in Robert Bickers (ed.), Settlers and Expatriates: Britons over the Seas (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 120–121.
62.
H. Maclear Bate, Report from the Rhodesias (London: Andrew Melrose, 1953), 94–95.
63.
C.W. Meredith, ‘The Rhodesian Air Training Group, 1940–1945’, Rhodesiana, 28 (1973), 19.
64.
MacDonald, War History of Southern Rhodesia, 13.
65.
TNA, DO 119/1151, E.J. Harding to Lord Harlech, 16 October 1942.
66.
Jackson, British Empire and the Second World War, 230.
67.
Martin and Orpen, South Africa at War, 155.
68.
MacDonald, War History of Southern Rhodesia, 474.
69.
Ibid., 474.
70.
Ibid., 486.
71.
Mlambo, ‘From the Second World War to UDI, 1940–1965’, 78.
72.
NAZ, S 482/158/40, Union Nationals, Exemption from Military Service of Union Nationals in Southern Rhodesia, ‘G.M. Huggins to J. Ainsworth, 21 February 1944’.
73.
TNA, DO 35/831/1, Southern Rhodesia Compulsory Native Labour Act, 23 June 1943.
74.
D. Killingray, ‘Labour Mobilisation in British Colonial Africa for the War Effort, 1939–46’, in D. Killingray and R. Rathbone (eds.), Africa and the Second World War (London: Macmillan, 1986), 75.
75.
Ibid., 76. See also, D. Johnson, World War Two and the Scramble for Labour in Colonial Zimbabwe, 1939–48 (Harare: University of Zimbabwe Publications, 2000).
76.
D. Killingray and M. Plaut, Fighting for Britain: African Soldiers in the Second World War (Suffolk: James Currey, 2010), 66.
77.
Martin and Orpen, South Africa at War, 89.
78.
NASA, SAB, BTS 10/1/37, Vol. 1, Letter from Minister of External Affairs J.C. Smuts to Prime Minister of Southern Rhodesia, 3 January 1941.
79.
Kruger, Age of the Generals, 197.
80.
B.J. Liebenberg, ‘From the Statue of Westminster to the Republic of South Africa, 1939–1961’, in Prof C.F.J. Muller (ed.), Five Hundred Years: A History of South Africa (Pretoria: Academica, 1969), 417.
81.
Ibid.
82.
Nasson, South Africa at War, 13.
83.
Dear (ed.), The Oxford Companion to the Second World War, 1026.
84.
L.H. Gann and P. Duignan, ‘Changing Patterns of a White Elite: Rhodesian and Other Settlers’, in L.H. Gann and P. Duignan (eds.), Colonialism in Africa 1870–1960, Volume 2: The History and Politics of Colonialism, 1914–1960 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), 120.
85.
South African Mining Journal, 5 September 1942.
86.
NAZ, S730, Co-operation Union of South Africa, ‘Memorandum: Notes on Organisations of Women’s Auxiliary Army and Women’s Auxiliary Air Force, 26 February 1941’.
87.
Ibid.
88.
Ibid.
89.
MacDonald, War History of Southern Rhodesia, 381.
90.
Phimister, Economic and Social History of Zimbabwe, 251.
91.
NAZ S482-458/39, Rhodesian Plough and Machinery Co. Ltd: Protection of Native Ploughs, 17 May 1940.
92.
V. M. Gwande, ‘Organised Secondary Industry and the State in Zimbabwe, 1939–1979’ (Forthcoming PhD thesis, University of the Free State, 2018), 32.
93.
Southern Rhodesia Legislative Assembly Debates, 1 May 1940, col. 175.
94.
Southern Rhodesia Legislative Assembly Debates, 1 May 1940, col. 171.
95.
Ibid., col. 179.
96.
Southern Rhodesia Legislative Assembly Debates, 1 May 1940, cols. 182.
97.
Ibid., cols. 181–182.
98.
Phimister, Economic and Social History of Zimbabwe, 252.
99.
NAZ S106, Letter by the IDAC to the Prime Minister, October 1942.
100.
See Gwande, ‘Organised Secondary Industry and the State in Zimbabwe’, 36–37.
101.
Phimister, Economic and Social History of Zimbabwe, 252.
102.
East Africa and Rhodesia, 17 May 1945.
103.
R. Dumett, ‘Africa’s Strategic Minerals During the Second World War’, Journal of African History, 26, 4 (1985), 397.
104.
Ibid.
105.
N. Nattrass, ‘Economic Growth and Transformation in the 1940s’, in S. Dubow and A. Jeeves (eds.), South Africa’s 1940s: Worlds of Possibilities (Cape Town: Double Storey Books, 2005), 21.
106.
Ibid., 22.
107.
N. Mlambo, ‘Arms Production and War Supply in Southern Africa, 1939–1945: Limitations of the Industrial War Effort of South Africa and Zimbabwe During the Second World War’ (PhD thesis, University of Cape Town, 2000), 152.
108.
Mlambo, ‘Arms Production and War Supply in Southern Africa, 1939–1945’, 156.
109.
Southern Rhodesia, Economic and Statistical Bulletin of Southern Rhodesia, Vol. XIII, No. 22 (Salisbury, 1946), 7.
110.
Southern Rhodesia, Official Year Book of Southern Rhodesia, No. 4 (Salisbury, 1952), 683.
111.
Southern Rhodesia, Economic and Statistical Bulletin of Southern Rhodesia, 7.
112.
Southern Rhodesia, Official Year Book of Southern Rhodesia, No. 4 (Salisbury, 1952), 684.
113.
Commercial Opinion, 24, 289, February 1947.
114.
Ibid.
115.
Southern Rhodesia, Official Year Book of Southern Rhodesia, No. 4 (Salisbury, 1952), 686.
116.
Southern Rhodesia, Economic and Statistical Bulletin of Southern Rhodesia, 9.
117.
Ibid., 4.
118.
N. Samasuwo, ‘Food Production and War Supplies: Rhodesia’s Beef Industry During the Second World War, 1939–1945’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 29, 2 (2003), 495.
119.
Southern Rhodesia, Economic and Statistical Bulletin of Southern Rhodesia, 7.
120.
Southern Rhodesia, Official Year Book of Southern Rhodesia, No. 4 (Salisbury, 1952), 684.
121.
G. Arrighi, The Political Economy of Rhodesia (The Hague: Mouton, 1967), 40.
122.
Gwande, ‘Foreign Capital, State and the Development of Secondary Industry in Southern Rhodesia, 1939–1956’ (MA thesis, University of the Free State, 2015), 25.
123.
Arrighi, Political Economy of Rhodesia, 40.
124.
TNA, Air Ministry and Royal Air Force (AIR) 19/397, Note for Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Harris on the Training Schemes in Southern Rhodesia, 29 August 1945.
125.
See, I.C.B. Dear (ed.), The Oxford Companion to the Second World War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995).
126.
K.P. Vickery, ‘The Second World War Revival of Forced Labor in the Rhodesias’, International Journal of African Historical Studies, 22, 3 (1989), 425.
127.
Samasuwo, ‘Food Production and War Supplies’, 492.
128.
See, Southern Rhodesia, Economic and Statistical Bulletin of Southern Rhodesia, Vol. XIII, No. 22 (Salisbury, 1946), 7.
129.
Mlambo, A History of Zimbabwe, 95.
130.
Dumett, ‘Africa’s Strategic Minerals During the Second World War’, 383.
131.
Ibid.
132.
Nattrass, ‘Economic Growth and Transformation in the 1940s’, 23.
133.
Nasson, South Africa at War, 12.
134.
Nattrass, ‘Economic Growth and Transformation in the 1940s’, 23.
135.
Houghton, ‘Economic Development, 1865–1965’, 36.
136.
Mlambo, History of Zimbabwe, 95.
137.
Gwande, ‘Organised Secondary Industry and the State in Zimbabwe, 1939–1979’, 29.
138.
Mlambo, ‘From the Second World War to UDI’, 81. For qualification of this claim, see especially Gwande, ‘Organised Secondary Industry and the State in Zimbabwe, 1939–1979’ (Forthcoming PhD thesis, University of the Free State, 2018).
139.
Mlambo, E.S. Pangeti and Phimister, Zimbabwe: A History of Manufacturing 1890–1995 (Harare: University of Zimbabwe Publications, 2000), 31.
140.
Commercial Opinion, 19, 231, April 1942.
141.
See Gwande, ‘Foreign Capital, State and the Development of Secondary Industry in Southern Rhodesia, 1939–1956’, 21.
142.
Loney, Rhodesia: White Racism and Imperial Response, 64.
143.
D.G. Clarke, Contract Workers and Underdevelopment in Rhodesia (Gwelo: Mambo Press, 1974), 14.
144.
Ibid.
145.
Ibid., 15.
146.
Southern Rhodesia Legislative Assembly Debates, 10 May 1940, col. 445.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Bloemfontein, South Africa
Abraham Mlombo

Authors

Abraham Mlombo
View author publications
You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Mlombo, A. (2020). The War Years, 1939–1945: War Economy and Military Engagement. In: Southern Rhodesia–South Africa Relations, 1923–1953. Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54283-2_5

Download citation

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54283-2_5
Published: 08 September 2020
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-54282-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-54283-2
eBook Packages: HistoryHistory (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics