“Echte Deutsche” or “Half-Baked Englishmen”? German Southwest African Settlers, the Mandate System, and the Naturalization Crisis, 1922–24

In German East Africa following the Great War, liquidation of German property and the repatriation of German settlers became the norm as British authorities systematically deported “ex-enemy combatants” from the Mandate that would become known as the Tanganyika Territory. German Southwest Africa, however, comprised a unique case. Southwest Africa was awarded to South Africa, a British Dominion, making the Southwest African Mandate one of only a handful of oddities that were not placed under the direct supervision of one of the victorious Allied Powers. More importantly, however, unlike in other former German colonies turned Mandate, particularly those given to British Dominions, 7,855 Germans—nearly two-thirds of the war-time population—were permitted to retain at least some of their property and remain in South Africa’s C-class Mandate.

From the moment South Africa made the unorthodox decision to allow Germans to remain in the Mandate territory, this group of settlers became the focal point of a unique diplomatic struggle. Who had jurisdiction over German communities in the Mandate—the Weimar Republic, the Union of South Africa, the British Empire, or the League of Nations? What citizenship status, and therefore, what rights, did this particular body of “Germans abroad” living in a Mandate have? The search for an answer to these questions culminated in the Naturalization Crisis of 1922-1924 when the Union of South Africa attempted to automatically naturalize all Germans in Southwest Africa as British subjects. In the midst of German colonialist organizations pressuring them to fight to retain their German citizenship and debates in the League about the legality of South Africa’s naturalization of individuals within a Mandate, Southwest African Germans constructed their own views on the purpose and value of citizenship as they strove to build not only an independent German identity in Africa, but also a self-governing state.