WI: post WWII Eastern Germans expelled to South Africa instead of Western Germany?

[StrangeMedicine]

In the aftermath of WWII, the Eastern Quarter of Germany was given to Poland and Soviet Russia, and 15 million Germans were expelled from those territories and from the Sudetenland, into the remnants of Germany. I recently read that many Afrikaners were pro-German at that time, and were concerned about the demographics of South Africa tilting away from their favor. What if South Africa had offered to take those Germans instead, and resettle them in South Africa and South-West Africa (Namibia) which already had a large ethnic German population?
At the time, there were about 12 million people in South Africa (including Namibia), of whom 3 milliion (25%) were White. Taking in 15 million Germans would be a massive influx that would put a huge strain on the country, but it would also make Whites 18 million out of 27 million, or 2/3 of the country. This would probably make apartheid less severe, since Whites would be the majority, and thus, they could retain control over the country without needing to disenfranchise everyone who wasn't White. Conservative Germans who fled the Soviet Armies would also probably vote with Afrikaners.

 

[r1ncewind]

Interesting idea.. xould SA support such en immigration in the short term for food and such?

 

[StrangeMedicine]

Interesting idea.. xould SA support such en immigration in the short term for food and such?

I'm not sure that South Africa (which was less populated than West Germany, but also was not devastated by bombings and war etc...) would have a harder time feeding them than West Germany did in our world.

 

[walmart]

No way South Africa can sustain or transport that many Germans. The nationalist party was opposed to immigration due to fears of the Afrikaans becoming a minority of the white population.

 

[David T]

There were all sorts of countries which needed immigrants and to which Germans could theoretically have emigrated--and some of which did get substantial German emigration after 1945--e.g., Australia. But not surprisingly, the great majority of Germans preferred to live in Germany. And as have others noted, the Nationalists in South Africa were worried that more immigration would deprive the Afrikaners of their majority status among South African whites. (About the only immigrants they welcomed were Dutch Calvinists.)

 

[TheMann]

As everyone has correctly pointed out, you'd need to get South Africa on board with this plan, and the Afrikaner nationalists surely wouldn't be UNLESS (big if, this) you could get the Nationalists to look at the incoming Germans as natural allies inside of South Africa OR the Afrikaners see themselves as the European peoples of Africa and support the Germans' arrival as support for that.

Neither option is gonna get 15 million of them there, but even one-fifth of that both creates a real German community in South Africa AND almost certainly butterflies apartheid as we know of it, though racism isn't gonna go away any times soon in South Africa.

 

[Raferty]

The National Party would not want to import that many people, who would quickly dwarf its own population. The point of the National Party was to advance the social and material interests of Afrikaners. It supported immigration only so far as it accomplished those goals. They were pro-Dutch immigration, but skeptical of Commonwealth immigration. The idea of a common white identity politics in South Africa in the 1940s was a fiction. One developed in the late 70s and early 80s as the National Party became more open to English voters, and most critically, started to lose support from the most ardent Afrikaner Nationalists who supported the HNP and KP, but that took a while to happen. The early Nats were not interested in racial bean counting of the entire population in the way that the later Nats would after Rhodesia and Portuguese Africa went away; they were interested more in control over land and institutions, because they saw Britain as the primary enemy still, rather than African Nationalists. The pro-German sentiment among Afrikaners was really more of an anti-British one than any real affinity for the alien politics of the Third Reich, which were entirely based in Europe with European ambitions.

There is also the logistical question here. I don't think, even in the age of mass state mobilizations and industrial war, that a movement of 15 Million internally displaced people to Southern Africa would be likely even with massive help from both the Western Allies and the Soviets.

Now, if you are talking about a fraction of this population, than I think it could have been accepted, but it would have to be a small fraction.

 

[Pauh the federalist]

Any chance of South Africa, bolstered by the security of white majority, incorporats any of the others white minority regions into a larger South African state in a alt UK decolonization?

Bechuanaland Protectorate - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

(The former becoming)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botswana
(The latter including)

Southern Rhodesia - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

Northern Rhodesia - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

Nyasaland - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

 

[Black]

Could South Africa accept lower level SS members to help institute apartheid?

 

[WolfNeuron]

Absolutely ASB. This is like asking what if the UK let in 60 million French immigrants in 2020. Absolutely zero chance of a.) that many germans choosing south africa and b.) sa doubling their population in 2 years and becoming majority/plurality germany. This would work well on the ASB forum though.

 

[Byzantion]

In the aftermath of WWII, the Eastern Quarter of Germany was given to Poland and Soviet Russia, and 15 million Germans were expelled from those territories and from the Sudetenland, into the remnants of Germany. I recently read that many Afrikaners were pro-German at that time, and were concerned about the demographics of South Africa tilting away from their favor. What if South Africa had offered to take those Germans instead, and resettle them in South Africa and South-West Africa (Namibia) which already had a large ethnic German population?
At the time, there were about 12 million people in South Africa (including Namibia), of whom 3 milliion (25%) were White. Taking in 15 million Germans would be a massive influx that would put a huge strain on the country, but it would also make Whites 18 million out of 27 million, or 2/3 of the country. This would probably make apartheid less severe, since Whites would be the majority, and thus, they could retain control over the country without needing to disenfranchise everyone who wasn't White. Conservative Germans who fled the Soviet Armies would also probably vote with Afrikaners.

What about Soviet Volga Germans and Eastern European expelled Germans from Baltic States, Yugoslavia, Czech, Romania, etc?Would be many Millions more.

 

[riggerrob]

OTL Remember that Boers hated and feared the British Commonwealth for good reason.Think about for-trekkers during the 19th century. Then Cecil Rhodes seized North Rhodesia for his own wealth … er … the glory of the British Commonwealth.
Boers and Rhodesians had less reason to fear displaced Germans. First, the Dutch and Afrikaner languages are much closer to German. … such that those dialects are often referred to as "Low German." . Remember that Krupp and Mauser sold first-rate guns to Boers who used them to almost defeat the British Army. If Boers could assimilate thousands of Fench-speaking Hugenot refugees, they could equally easily assimilate German.
Boers only dominated the South African economy after two bloody World Wars, because so many English-speaking South fFricans volunteered to fight and bleed in France, that it thinned the ranks of English-speaking South Africans for a generation.

ATL Too easy!
Many German refugees could also settle in Rhodesia and former German colonies like Cameroon, Namibia, Togo and Tanzania. With their scientific and industrial knowledge, German immigrants could lead a new wave of African industrialization.

 

[Mr_Fanboy]

I think that something like this might be more easy to accomplish in a timeline where more or all of Germany falls under Soviet occupation as a result of the war.

 

[SealTheRealDeal]

[various posts about how the National Party would never ever allow it]
They aren't in power until 1948. The United Party's policies are what need to be considered.

If they would be interested in mass importation of Germans, would enough get citizenship before the 1948 elections to impact the vote? It's worth noting that the National Party only won by three seats, and that the United Party actually won the popular vote.

 

[Raferty]

Could South Africa accept lower level SS members to help institute apartheid?

The SS was a semi-pagan occultist organization in hoc to National Socialist ideology, based around an anti-Slavic and anti-Semitic hypercharged variant of PanGerman nationalism.

Apartheid ideology, with its focus on group separation and the idea of Afrikaners as a chosen people, grounded in a particular strain of Calvinism, had too many differences for this to be plausible. The Anglophobia was shared, the anti-Semitism was of a different, less murderous variety but was shared as well. That is about it, though.