Germany invades Poland, starting World War II

Three years of mounting international tension - encompassing the Spanish Civil War, the Anschluss (union) of Germany and Austria, Hitler's occupation of the SÁ¼detenland and the invasion of Czechoslovakia - culminated in the German invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939. This date is generally held to be the starting date of World War II in Europe. Britain and France declared war on Germany two days later. On September 4, 1939, the South African parliament refused to accept Hertzog's stance of neutrality in World War II and voted against his motion in favour of Jan Smuts. Upon becoming Prime Minister of South Africa, Smuts declared South Africa officially at war with Germany and the Axis powers. Smuts immediately set about putting the Defence Force on a war footing. The question of whether to join the war was one of the most divisive issues to have emerged within the South African White community within the last century. In general Afrikaners strongly opposed the war, yet, primarily for economic reasons, more than half of the White soldiers who voluntarily enlisted where Afrikaans. The expansion of the army and its deployment overseas depended entirely on volunteers, however given the country's attitude to race at the time Black, Indian and Coloured volunteers could only serve in a non-combatant capacity. Only a small proportion of the men who volunteered for service were deployed as frontline combatants. South Africans fought in East Africa (July 1940 to November 1941), North Africa (May 1941 to November 1942), Madagascar (June to November 1942) and Italy (April 1943 to May 1945) and deployed troops to Allied ships that docked at South Africa's crucial ports adjoining the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. The most momentous battles for the South African forces were at Tobruk in Libya, where a South African division had to surrender to the German Afrika Korps under General Erwin Rommel in June 1942, and at El Alamein in Egypt, where the Afrika Korps was forced to retreat. South African troops were amongst the first to enter Rome, Italy, in June 1944 as part of the offensive against Mussolini in the Italian Campaign. The official number of South African's who volunteered for the war and the number of South African casualties differ from source to source; the South African Military History Society claim that all told, 211 193 white (including 24 075 women) and at least 123 131 Black, Coloured and Indian South Africans took part in the war as full-time volunteers, and 63 341 persons of all races as part-time volunteers. Total casualties amounted to 12 046 dead (including 4 347 who were killed in action or died of wounds), 14 363 wounded and 16 430 captured or missing. More than 7 000 South Africans were decorated or mentioned in dispatches. Far away from the frontlines of the war South Africa itself never experienced conflict on home soil and suffered no civilian casualties or damage to land and property. Link: To read more about South Africa's involvement in the war click here