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Archiver > SOUTH-AFRICA > 2004-05 > 1083776085


From: "Angela Gerber" <>
Subject: RE: [ZA] War
Date: Wed, 5 May 2004 18:54:45 +0200
In-Reply-To: <409883BA.15898.1FED57A@localhost>


Hi All,

Does anyone have any information/stories on the German families, that were
living in Johannesburg at the time, and that had to flee to Lourenço
Marques, by train(I think). Some were imprisoned.

Regards,
Angela

P.S.) Found this interesting site on Google

http://husky1.stmarys.ca/~wmills/course322/12Boer_war.html


-----Original Message-----
From: Steve Hayes [mailto:]
Sent: Wednesday, May 05, 2004 6:04 AM
To:
Subject: Re: [ZA] War Dates

On 5 May 2004 at 11:09, Andrew Rodger wrote:

> Various others have answered, but here is my two-bobs'-worth:
>
> I believe that, constitutionally, SA was at war with Germany at the same
time
> as the UK declared war, because, although they were self-governing, SA,
> Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Newfoundland (then not yet a Province
of
> Canada) did not have "Dominion Status" until the Statute of Westminster
was
> passed, I think in 1931.
>
> In 1939, Newfoundland was a Province of Canada; the rest by then had
> Dominion Status and could therefore declare war separately, and did.
> Robert Menzies's speech to the Australian people on this topic as in
> error: he said (It is my melancholy duty to inform you that Great
> Britain has declared war on Germany and consequently this country is
> also at war." In fact Australia was at war because the Menzies
> Government had declared war in its own right, although of course they
> would not have done so if Britain had not. (His brother Frank, who was
> a constitutional lawyer by trade, would not have made that mistake; he
> was later one of the draftsmen of the constitution of Kenya.)
>
> Both World Wars ended on common dates for all the Allies (two different
> dates, VE Day and VJ Day, in the case of the Second World War), because
> the end of the war was brought about by the German surrender in each
> case and the Japanese surrender in the second case.

Surely the war itself only ended with the surrender of Japan, or else one
could say that it also ended on a third date, with the surrender of Italy.

It was a "world" war because it was brought about by the merging of several
smaller conflicts in different parts of the world - the Italian invasion of
Abyssinia (Ethiopia), the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, and the German
invasion of Poland. As you say, South Africa entered the conflict on 4
September 1939.
--
Steve Hayes
E-mail:
Web: http://www.geocities.com/Athens/7734/stevesig.htm
Phone: 083-342-3563 or 012-333-6727


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