Robey Leibbrandt And Operation Weissdorn

[Maritz]

Robey Leibbrandt was born in 1913 to a German father and Irish mother. He was fluent in German and served in the police as well as the military. He was a light heavy weigth boxer and participated in the 1936 olympics where he personally met Adolf Hitler and the heavy weigth Max Schmeling [Leibbrandt also fought him once] that knocked out Joe Louis. He was a vegetarian, never slept on a bed always on a board, and purified his system every 18 days by eating a handful of charcoal and sand with some water. He was dedicated to National Socialism and Mein Kampf was his bible. At the olympics he progressed to the semi-finals where he competed with a broken right hand and lost the fight due to a doubtful decision. To make things worse he was prohibited to fight in a contest between the losing semi-finalists.

At this time, the Whites in SA who held political power, were deeply divided on the war against Germany. The majority of Afrikaners, who had fought so bitterly against the British in the Boer War, could not conceive of fighting for the British now. The then leader, Gen Smuts, served in the British War Cabinet and was one of Churchill`s most trusted advisers. Anti-war efforts against war with Germany was led by Purified National Party and Ossewa Brandwag[Oxwagen Sentinel]. The OB [400 000 members] was semi-military but not militant enough. Leader of the OB, Hans Van Rensburg was suspected of being on the Smuts payroll and that he was playing a double role and using his position as leader of the OB to contain the anti-war faction. The lack of action caused the Stormjaers[Storm Troopers] to form within the OB. Smuts decides to enter the war on the side of the British with a large section of the population violently opposing it - the OB was growing.

While in Germany, Leibbrandt was mesmerized by Nazism. Just as the Afrikaners had lost their freedom at the Peace of Vereeniging, the Germans had been humiliated by the Treaty of Versailles. He had talks with a lot of top Nazi`s and it was decided that he would return to Germany for extensive training in sabotage and espionage. On his return, "Operation Weissdorn" was born. The operation required the assassination of numerous political and industrial leaders, most notably Smuts and jew Ernest Oppenheimer [Malan, Pirow, HertZOG and Van Rensburg later also made the hitlist]. Its success would have meant German access to SA vast mineral wealth, the return of SWA to the Nazi`s, the opening of the vital Cape sea route to German ships and the withdrawel of Union troops from North Africa.

The plan was to drop him by sea on the SA coast. In SA, he was to sway the OB his way or get the leaders to sanction sabotage. This failing he had to recruit from their more militant members especially the police, who were divided between the rigth-wing organisation and the state - 3000 well disciplined men was needed. They would obtain guns and steal explosives and Leibbrandt would train them in sabatoge. Informers were to be killed. The signal for large-scale disruption and sabotage would be the elimination of Smuts, to be undertaken by Leibbrandt himself. The journey took two and a half months in which they travelled 9100 miles. Leibbrandt was dropped from the boat, and with a dinghy he rowed to the west coast of his beloved SA where he eventually landed in 1941. The Germans suplied him with a transmitter and some cash.

Soon afterwards Leibbrandt met with the leader of the OB without success - he wanted nothing to do with sabotage. The second meeting almost ended in a punch-up and the two decided to go their seperate ways. The National Socialist Rebels were born and Leibbrandt started recruiting in all earnest. A lot of the Storm Troopers joined Leibbrandt`s group, to such an extent that the OB leader thought of killing Leibbrandt. Each member of the National Socialist Rebels signed an oath signed with their own blood, swearing allegiance to the Fuhrer, called the Blood Oath. Huge quantities of dynamite and detonaters was stolen from Iscor [Iron and Steel Corporation] - the first theft consisted of 5 boxes of dynamite; 1600 electronic detonaters and 400 fuse dets. To finance the sabotage campaign banks were robbed. Soon afterwards the sabotage started. As is so often the case with right-wing politics, the orgaisation was infiltrated by an police informant who became Leibbrandt`s rigth hand man. At the heigth of the National Socialist Rebels` onslaught against the jewish tide, Leibbrandt was arrested. Leibbrandt was found guilty of high treason and condemned to the gallows, but was later pardoned by Smuts to life-long imprisonment. He gave up the fight when Germany was defeated in the war. When the Apartheid government took over in 1948 he was released and died in 1966 of a heart attack.

Had Leibbrandt managed to assume control of the OB, had he succeeded in assassinating Smuts, had he not been curbed by the intrepid Taillard, the course of SA history might have been very different. In Taillard`s own words : "Robey Leibbrandt was a fanatic who knew no fear. I have no doubt he would have carried out his plans, given half a chance. How close SA was to civil disorder, the assassination of Smuts and other political leaders and a link-up with Nazi Germany, coming generations will never realise."

[Source : For Volk And Fuhrer]