A Life in Limbo: Otto von Strahl’s Activities for and against Germany in the Union of South Africa

ABSTRACT During World War II, Baron Otto von Strahl, a German career diplomat and trader, became one of South Africa’s most important intelligence assets in the fight against Nazi infiltration. But he died indigent, an immigrant to the United States of America, because the German post-war authorities refused to recognise him as a Nazi opponent. Many decades after his death historians have begun to praise him as a resistance fighter, though ignoring certain ambiguities in his activities in South Africa. Von Strahl had denounced fellow Germans as dangerous Nazis without any tangible evidence, bringing about their internment by the South African authorities. Based on archival research in South Africa, Namibia, and Germany, this article exposes a paradox in von Strahl’s activities for South Africa: as an undoubted expert of South Africa’s infiltration by Nazi envoys and their propaganda, he focused on the German population, which constituted a relatively minor threat to the country’s stability, but he ignored the menace coming from pro-Nazi radical Afrikaner movements. His role has been exaggerated by those who accused him of treason during and after the war in Germany, whilst both his accusers and post-war defenders neglected his pro-Jewish attitude as the main motivation for switching sides in 1939.