Unwanted Guests in Troubled Times: German Prisoners of War in the Union of South Africa, 1942-1943

This study examines the role of the Union of South Africa in acting as a detaining power for German prisoners of war taken during the North African campaigns of 1942–43. It highlights the specific problems caused by the sixty-eight hundred German prisoners as potential threats to domestic security in South Africa at a time of internal dissension, contrasting these with the relatively straightforward absorption of one hundred thousand Italian prisoners in the same period. It also looks at the more general problems faced by the British imperial authorities in dealing with German prisoners in this critical period of the war.