By Matthew Downey

Abstract:

While focusing on the European Axis powers’ support of anti-imperial movements in the British Empire, this study argues that such subversive strategies represented a compromising of racialized European fascism through its use for nationalist purposes by groups whom that ideology considered subhuman. That contention is built on through a study of its relation to German and Italian attempts to approach colonial populations in more ideologically consistent ways early into the war. Axis strategy began through appeals to white settlers to be anti-imperial in certain ways, later moving towards the support of indigenous movements that were more conceptually against imperial oppression. White nationalist groups in the colonised world were supported with rhetoric that portrayed kindred races forced into conflict because of imperialist political concerns. This paper argues that the Axis’ failure in that pursuit led them to pragmatically increase their other anti-imperial strategies that supported more non-white actors who were philosophically anti-empire, highlighting a degradation of ideological consistency.

Keywords: Anti-imperialism, Empire, Nationalism, Facism, Second World War, Colonialism.

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Introduction

The Second World War saw various attempts by the major Axis powers of Germany, Italy, and Japan in supporting anti-imperial movements in their enemies’ vulnerable colonies and possessions. Britain, who represented the Axis’ most steadfast enemy and the imperial possessor of a quarter of the globe, was the primary target of such strategies. Axis strategies drew on historical divides, ethnic ideology, and political appeal in order to sap Britain and its allies’ strength while providing ideological and organisational inspiration for radical nationalist actors.

While focusing on the European Axis powers’ support of anti-imperial movements in the British Empire, this study argues that such subversive strategies represented a compromising of racialized European fascism through its use for nationalist purposes by groups whom that ideology considered subhuman. That contention will then be built on through relating it to German and Italian attempts to approach colonial populations in more ideologically consistent ways early into the war. The particular racial dynamic warrants a focus on the European Axis powers, despite Japan’s strong anti-colonial support strategies; though German and Italian fascism differed in many respects, they shared much in terms of asserting racial nationalism amongst European settlers and immigrants. In defining anti-imperialism, one must be conscious of differentiating between opposition to the concept of empire versus opposition to a particular empire in a certain circumstance. In the beginning Axis strategy was rooted to the latter model, encouraging white settler nationalists in their struggles against particular imperial governments; later, Axis strategy moved towards the former model, supporting indigenous movements that were more conceptually against imperial oppression.

This paper will begin by discussing German and Italian attempts at building support among white settlers in the British Empire, particularly following the controversial onset of Nazi rule in Germany in 1933. This will be tied to those regimes’ work to build support among their own diasporic communities throughout the British sphere. They accordingly attempted to build ideological loyalty to fascism in order to foster a stronger diplomatic position for the Axis. Secondly, this paper will relate the failure of those attempts to the increased Axis support for more non-white campaigns, which contradicted the racial tenets of their fascist ideologies. Such campaigns featured a much looser association of ideology meant to pragmatically appeal to different groups. Finally, we will observe how the concerned European Axis powers supported anti-imperial movements materially and through ideological inspiration throughout the war effort. Their multifaceted approach was heavily affected by racial ideology. White nationalist groups in the colonised world were supported with rhetoric that portrayed kindred races forced into conflict because of imperialist political concerns. This paper argues that the Axis’ failure in that pursuit led them to pragmatically increase their other anti-imperial strategies that supported more non-white actors who were philosophically anti-empire, highlighting a degradation of ideological consistency.

Literature Review

Axis anti-colonial strategies during the war have been explored by a considerable body of academic work, with most focusing on the support of indigenous uprisings. The Middle East and North Africa, due to the geographically strategic importance of the area and the volatile regional conflicts between the Arabs and Jewish immigrants to Palestine, has drawn much scholarly attention. Works by Francis R. Nicosia and Jeffrey Herf have shed light on Nazi policy in the Arab world and the way that certain tenets of their antisemitic ideology were strategically advertised to stir up Arab audiences.^[1] Such strategies showed a selective application of fascist racism. Motadel contends that Nazi motivations in that sphere were essentially pragmatic while emphasising the importance of such engagement in enhancing anti-colonial organisation; such work has explored the interactions between Axis instrumentalization of religion and politics and the human agency required for actual cooperation.^[2]

Germany’s reluctance is also particularly visible in works on the Axis’ India policy; more broad studies, such as Hauner’s, contend that strategic considerations outweighed and influenced ideas of where such countries fit into Nazi racial hierarchy.^[3] Seminal biographical works on the main anti-imperial actors also highlight the driving agency of such figures in influencing Axis support, which was at times reluctant. Works like Milan Hauner’s study of the Faquir of Ipi, Romain Hayes’s on Subhas Chandra Bose, and Philip Mattar’s on Amin al-Husayni all show the way such Indigenous figures were able to negotiate with the Nazis to support their own ends.^[4] Such work usually pits Italy as essentially subordinate in those regards in comparison to Germany, despite Mussolini’s early appeal as an ideological basis for organising nationalist parties.^[5] Essentially, most works show a gradual willingness to strategically alter Nazi ideology.

There has been comparatively little written about Axis engagement with white settler populations. Some scholarly attention has been put on South Africa, where the Nazis had some considerable appeal amongst Afrikaners and German settlers. According to Citino, an intensely racist atmosphere in South Africa was heavily ideologically aligned with the Nazis;  he characterises the failure of J.B.M Hertzog’s nationalist coalition to rally around neutrality in 1939 as first and foremost a missed opportunity for German foreign policy.^[6] The works of Betcherman and Robin have shown how fascist elements were seen amongst French-Canadians, a somewhat analogous group to the Afrikaners in that they were both settler remnants of a former empire.^[7] However, while making note of the external influences of Italy and Germany, studies on Canadian fascism mostly have had a more domestic focus. Regarding Ireland, which was the most outwardly anti-British dominion in the empire during the interwar years, the activity of pro-Nazi government workers has been explored by the works of David O’Donaghue and Mervyn O’Driscoll.^[8] Ireland, despite its potential, nonetheless had little relevance in Axis anti-colonial aspirations due to the Irish government’s staunch neutralism and proximity to England.

Concerning German and Italian immigrants in the British Empire, and the fascist appeals to such groups, works by Garardo Papalia, Benjamin Goossen, and Grant W. Grams all study the way that the governments of Germany and Italy attempted to maintain a hold on their ethnic populations throughout foreign imperial settings.^[9] The historiography shows the applicability of the ethno-nationalist ideas of German and Italian fascism to potentially subversive settler groups; the major studies also show Hitler and Mussolini’s failures to apply those ideas in an ideologically consistent manner. It was such a degradation in the applicability of fascist ideology that necessitated a reliance on an increasingly pragmatic strategy.

Navigating Different Models of Fascism: French Canadians, Afrikaners, and the British

British fascism, emblemized by Sir Oswald Mosley and his British Union of Fascists, was utterly imperial in nature – it envisioned a Britain that was dominated by an Anglo-Saxon race and was economically and culturally self-sufficient.^[10] As such, there was an inherent tension with French-Canadian and Afrikaner fascism, being that both groups were decidedly anti-empire though pro-colonialism. Also, while both groups were closely entwined with their respective churches, French Canada was more assertively Catholic than the Afrikaners were Reformed Protestant. Lucia Pozzi’s research on the fascist Italian government’s relationship with asserting Catholic standards of morality points towards how Mussolini tried to utilise religion towards influencing the sympathies of such groups as the Quebecois.^[11] However, Mosley’s influence was more strongly seen in Canadian fascism, due to its overall Anglophone majority and the way that Arcand’s relative political weakness drove him to work with the federal Conservative party.^[12] Additionally, the moderate nationalism of the Liberal Canadian government did much to advocate for moderate detachment from European politics.^[13] Even during the war, the government made attempts to moderately address perceived issues in French Canada – Canadian recognition of Vichy France partially came from the perception that it would appeal to French-Canadians.^[14] This was opposed to South African white nationalism, which was much more closely connected to their European character.^[15]

Significantly, both the Dutch Afrikaners of South Africa and French-Canadians of Canada were remnants of a former conquered settler-colony on their respective continents which maintained their distinct cultures and languages. These groups thus, in the early twentieth century, harboured self-consciously defensive racial identities and an antisemitism that was intricately connected to an anti-Britishness nurtured by their scorn for English economic domination.^[16] Therefore, during the late 1920s and early 1930s, fascist movements developed organically among both peoples. Betcherman has shown how Mussolini’s fascism had many French Canadian admirers due to the influence of the Roman Catholic Church, as the Pope took a favourable view of Il Duce.^[17] Also, the reportedly nearly monolithic early support among Quebec’s substantial Italian community contributed to spreading the fascist message throughout the province.^[18] The Nazi party asserted itself in the relatively early days of organised Quebec fascism when emissary Kurt Ludecke began a collaboration with antisemitic and anti-liberal reporter Adrien Arcand, whose Parti National Social Chrétien asserted his public image as “le Fuhrer”.^[19]

In South Africa, the rise of fascism was much more vehement among the Afrikaners. A combination of the more racialized society of South Africa, the substantial German minority in the country following the annexation of German Southwest Africa during the First World War, and the powerful political position of the ethno-nationalist Nasionale Party aided the spread of more directly Nazi-inspired fascism.^[20] Indeed, unlike Arcand, fascist leaders in South Africa, like Oswald Pirow, met Hitler and Mussolini personally.^[21]  In the early 1930s, anti-imperial French-Canadians and Afrikaners both seemingly provided a substantial opportunity for German and Italian influence on a level that could prove potentially subversive to a degree that pro-imperial British fascists would not.

In Australia, which was much more homogeneously Anglicised, Perkins has argued that, while some anti-British sympathy was intertwined, fascist sympathies were largely based around an “incredible naivety” that assumed Nazism stood “for the same ideals of political liberty as England,” thus not providing much opportunity for Axis exploitation.^[22] While white nationalists among settler minorities in the dominions were anti-British for primarily socio-cultural reasons revolving on historical conflict, the Axis tried to utilise such groups as anti-imperial activists specifically against the political institutions of Britain. The proliferation of British fascism, which preached institutional change in Britain whilst celebrating its imperial rule, weakened the effectiveness of such fascist anti-imperial rhetoric.

The nature of the Nazi attitude towards Britain had two major factors that contributed to the failure of an adequate resonance of their ideology in white anti-British movements: Hitler felt a racial kinship between the Germans and the Anglo-Saxons; and it was the liberal nature of the British government that made the Nazi and British states natural enemies.^[23] In South Africa, the political and social strength of ethnic nationalism allowed for much more direct influence from the Nazis. As such, well into the war years there were still attempts by the Nazis to propagate support among white Africans.^[24] While the anti-imperial nature of French-Canadian fascism eroded fast, it remained consistent among the Afrikaners.

Immigration, Ethnic Appeals, and Diasporic Diplomacy

The ethnic component was integral to the nature of German and Italian overtures in white settler colonies. A large degree of what success such overtures saw was due to the contribution of German and Italian communities in the British Empire. To the German and Italian fascist governments, obtaining the early support of its emigrant diaspora was crucial to their images. As both Hitler and Mussolini headed regimes that claimed to be reclaiming their nations’ former glory from democratic and multicultural corruption, mass emigration to settle more successful empires could not continue.^[25] This was particularly true for Mussolini; mass emigration from Italy due to impoverishment, to places ranging from Australia to Canada, but most significantly in the United States, was one of the embarrassments which he set himself on correcting.^[26] Thus, appeals to diaspora communities had to be integrally anti-imperial, as they insisted upon the supremacy of the fatherland to their new home.^[27] This mindset was to have detrimental ramifications into the war years, when Dominion governments, alongside the United States, would detain German, Italian, and Japanese people under the assumption they were enemy aliens and potential spies – no matter how long they or their families had lived in the country.^[28]

While there was some fear that such groups were being used for espionage, it was more likely that they would be used to convince those in their adopted countries to advocate for peace with the Axis.^[29] This position was anti-imperial in that it portrayed the Anglo-German war as being determined by specific imperial political ambitions; whereas Germany, Italy, and Britain belonged as allies (especially Germany and Britain, who Nazi ideology saw as ethnically kindred) those nations had been dragged into conflict by a corrupt liberal state preoccupied by imperial rivalries .^[30] What diasporic communities of Italians and Germans in the British Empire represented was such an idea: friendly visitors fostering peace between nations. For this reason, Hitler and Mussolini kept tight control of their emigrant communities; any German emigrant, for instance, that was seen to behave in “anti-German” ways risked denaturalization and seizure of property.^[31] Likewise, Mussolini’s regime also discouraged Italian assimilation in the British world for reasons of national prestige.^[32] In Nazi thought, ethnic Germans outside Germany, die Volksdeutschen, belonged perpetually to Germany – this applied to the Germans and Mennonites settling the Canadian prairies just as much as it did the Germans living in eastern Europe.^[33] If the British Empire, from Queensland to British Columbia, required of its white non-English settler-immigrants that they assimilated into an Anglo-imperial society, then Hitler and Mussolini demanded of their nations’ diasporic groups that they be moderately anti-empire.

Attempts by the Germans and Italians to appeal to the loyalties of white settlers in the British Empire, whether through propaganda or directly through government agencies, such as the Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle, were resounding failures. Most settlers still had family connections in Europe, and therefore were well aware of the negative realities of fascist rule and ambitions on that continent.^[34] In the end, the moral convictions of fighting against the illiberal and expansionist fascists, who were imperially minded themselves, won out against any notion that Hitler and Mussolini were set to free the continent from corrupt liberal conspirators.^[35] Indeed, while German and Italian immigrants were somewhat responsive, at least initially, to fascist propaganda in the 1930s, with the onset of war most of those groups were even more so willing to display their loyalty and convictions to their new country through enlisting to fight.^[36]

Reconciling Fascist Ideology with Axis Strategy  

In South Africa, significantly positive responses to Nazism were relatively easily controlled by the pro-Empire government.^[37] The early and outward nature of the major parties with fascist sympathies meant that any groups deemed to be potentially dangerous were easily identified for internment during the war.^[38] Also, the fact that Hitler was ultimately bent on an amicable peace with Britain during the early part of the war meant that a strong anti-imperialism was not advocated in a significant way among white settlers. Even in Ireland, perhaps the “white dominion” with the most prolific anti-British sentiment, where Nazi sympathy among certain high-power individuals was somewhat rampant, the actual behaviour of the fascist states contributed to a lack of any wholesale adoption of their ideology.^[39]

To most people, the war was clearly centred around ideology more than nationhood.^[40] In ideology, the Nazis and the Italian fascists both claimed to be emancipatory in a white supremacist sense.^[41] While appealing to a white colonial setting, German and Italian fascist thinkers and policy makers forwarded an idea of a more advanced and racially pure form of empire; they advertised a future detached from the British political context that was corrupted by Jewish influence.^[42] . In attempting to give white anti-imperial movements support and strength through the provision of ideological organisation and coherency, Hitler and Mussolini were using such movements to an end of strategic peace with Britain – one that displayed a popular will in favour of fascist ideology and against steadfast British liberalism.^[43] As such, there was a misalignment with their ideological appeal and their strategic goals from the beginning; this gave some precedence for the even more dramatic ideological changes that would allow for Hitler and Mussolini’s support for indigenous anti-imperialism.

Axis Use of Religion

One major way that the European Axis attempted to garner support amongst colonial groups during the war was through appealing to religion. As previously alluded to, Mussolini’s regime was apt to use its influence on the Roman Catholic church to gain support abroad.^[44] For Catholic minorities throughout the British Empire, this had some effect in gaining sympathy for Mussolini, though it did not succeed in building much antipathy towards the British.^[45] The Nazis had more trouble in appealing to the Christian Church, due to their outward anti-Catholicism and punishment of religious dissenters.^[46] However, the Germans during the war still made some prolific attempts to garner Christian support. They achieved some success by appealing to Christian antisemitism, which blamed the Jews for both killing Christ and subverting “Christian nationalism”, as well as stoking fear of atheistic Bolshevism.^[47] For groups ranging from Mennonites to Lutherans, hatred of Soviet communism was enough to drive many members into the arms of the Nazis.^[48] In a colonial setting, however, Christianity far too often a tool of preaching loyalty to the Crown to be utilised effectively for fascist anti-imperialism.^[49] Islam provided a much more useful tool, due to the prevalence of both religious and cultural antisemitism in the Muslim world and the already extant anti-colonial streak of political Islam.^[50]

Precedents for the exploitation of Islam by European powers for anti-imperial ends were found in the strategy of both Imperial Germany and their Entente enemies in the First World War.^[51] For the Nazis, appealing to a religion like Islam was advantageous in the way it transcended race, making the ideological complications of their support for anti-imperialism somewhat less apparent. European Muslims from places ranging from Lithuania to Bosnia could be approached and used in building a wider credibility for the Germans and Italian regimes among Islamic groups by and large.^[52] During the First World War, Germany’s Islamic strategy had mostly relied on the endorsement they enjoyed through their alliance with the Ottoman Empire, who tried to legitimize their war effort through the declaration of a jihad against the Entente.^[53] One of the main weaknesses with that approach was that the legitimate religious authority of the Ottoman sultanate was debated and not wholly recognised throughout the Islamic world. As such, in the Second World War there was an attempt to correct that issue through the endorsement of a selection of different Islamic leaders who had established nationalist and anti-imperial pedigrees. These leaders included Amin al-Husayni, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, who sided with the Nazis in their crusade against the British and what was seen as the British-sponsored Zionist movement.^[54] Nazi pro-Islam policies were somewhat paradoxical; while the focus on religion overshadowed racist fascist ideas in rhetoric, when it applied to anti-imperial Islamism it was inevitably directed at non-white actors officially prejudiced against in Nazi law.

The ideology of the Nazi party was not adverse to some openness in their views of religion; while extremely discriminatory on racial terms, many in the Nazi high command, such as Himmler and Hitler himself, had intense interests in various beliefs ranging from the occult to ancient Hindu legends.^[55] Indeed, as Herf notes, the Germans tried to gain widespread support “by presenting the Nazi regime as a champion of secular anti-imperialism.”^[56] That secularism was contrasted against the dangerous enforced atheism of the Soviet Union in Nazi rhetoric.^[57] This may be held up against the Italian fascists, who intensely identified themselves with the Roman Catholic Church specifically.^[58] Accordingly, from a religious perspective, the Nazis were better suited for adapting their ideology to anti-imperial Islamic movements. However, there were major complications in the racial connotations that went along with such Islamic political movements. German cooperation with subversive Islamic movements, whether it be the Volga Tatars fighting the Soviet successors to their Russian Imperial oppressors, or the Palestinian Muslims trying to combat the inconsistently pro-Zionist British government, saw the Nazis working with groups they ideologically abhorred for the strategic exploitation of regional conflicts.^[59]

Ideological Compromise: Axis Support for Grassroots Anti-Colonial Resistance

Alignment with the Islamist resistance compromised the racial consistency of European Axis colonial strategies. This opened the door for a pragmatic movement towards the support of ideologically anti-colonial grassroots and guerilla campaigns amongst indigenous populations. The Germans began actively, at the very least in rhetoric, supporting figures like Subhas Chandra Bose, who had headed the Indian National Congress and advocated for a Free India that was dictatorial in structure.^[60] Ironically, the political organisation of the Raj had been one of the things Hitler most admired about the British Empire. While Bose, who lived in Berlin from 1941 to 1943, tried to personally convince the Fuhrer to remove all mentions of Indians and India from an edited Mein Kampf, such suggestions were disregarded.^[61] In the case of Bose, the impetus to German support was complicated. For, while the fascist movements had given Bose inspiration on how to organise aggressive nationalism, it was just that coherence that made the Nazis reluctant to overly support him in a practical sense.

Because of the strength of Bose’s reputation and his individual dedication to advertising his cause on an international level, any sufficient level of support by the Germans would be a large commitment.^[62] This apprehension harkened back to the case of al-Husayni, who was forced into exile in Germany after the disastrous failure of his uprising in Palestine.^[63] When the Nazis were still trying to maintain the option of peace with Britain, they were adverse to being seen at the middle of such an independence movement at the heart of British imperialism; even after peace became effectively untenable after 1941, strategic barriers, such as the distance between German troops and India and the relatively small amount of Indian volunteers for the Wehrmacht’s Indian Legion from captured prisoners of war, hindered any strong movements on the Germans part.^[64]

The Nazis mostly gave support to Bose and his “Free India” by providing a platform of legitimacy, allowing for Bose to essentially make his presence in the German capital whatever he willed.^[65] Indeed, to Bose, his proclaimed Free India in Berlin was akin to the Polish, Czech, Dutch, or other European exiled governments at that time headquartered in London.^[66] This was despite any official recognition of the legitimacy of Bose’s regime, or even of India’s right to independence, by the Germans.^[67] The Italians attempted to follow suit, providing support for Iqbal Shedai and creating an Indian Legion of their own, with much less success than the Germans.^[68]

There was a bit more success in the more independent anti-imperial campaigns in the strategic positions of Northwestern India and Mesopotamia. On the Northwest Frontier, the campaign by the Faquir of Ipi was given financing and supplies. At the head of the Pathan tribe, who were simply continuing their age-old struggle against the encroachment of British India, the Faquir worked independently, giving the Germans an opportunity that was relatively low risk and high reward.^[69] Because of that potential, the Axis had in fact been supporting the Faquir and his Afghan allies since before the war even began.^[70] Likewise, in Iraq, where the pro-British government was overthrown in a coup by Rashid Ali al-Gaylani, what seemed to be a minimal amount of Axis support caused major harm to Britain’s war effort due to the centrality of Iraq as both a source of petroleum and a key point on the route to India.^[71] In the end, al-Gaylani’s government fell following a British invasion, and the distractions caused by the Faquir were not enough to win a war. What is therefore illustrated by such examples, as well as those of Bose and al-Husayni, is that the European Axis powers were uncomfortable with their ideological position in relation to the anti-imperial movements they were strategically obligated to support.

Conclusion

The European Axis powers, Hitler’s Germany and Mussolini’s Italy, had many differing details in their ideology yet shared many similarities in the racial tone of their fascist structures. For that reason, this essay has focused on those regimes in particular, exploring the applicability of their ideologies to their strategies of supporting anti-imperial movements during the Second World War. Such movements were focused mostly on the British Empire, as the preeminent global imperial force that was most directly involved in fighting the European fascist powers after the fall of France. It is important, when considering the Axis support of anti-imperialism, to maintain a distinction about the difference between combating imperialism as a concept versus combating a specific form of empire emblemized by a particular state. The fascist Axis powers were not against the idea of empire and were even supportive of the racial foundation of British imperialism; however, they were explicitly opposed to the politics of the British Empire – liberalism – and utilised that in supporting varied anti-British movements.

This paper has argued that German and Italian anti-imperialism during the Second World War moved away from strict ideological adherence to racial and nationalist tenets of their fascism. As such, the essay’s structure has centred around exploring Axis primary engagement with white colonial groups as opposed to non-white and indigenous colonial groups. In the early stages of the war, and indeed even preceding it, Hitler and Mussolini both made multifaceted approaches to settler communities in different parts of the British Empire, encouraging ideological loyalty to the fascist European powers and thus subverting their loyalty to the British Empire. Therefore, this study has argued that the European Axis powers supported anti-imperial movements in two successive strategies: the first, being consistent with their racial ideology, was by appealing to the loyalties of white settler groups; the second, which was ideologically inconsistent, was by strategically supporting a multifaceted group of select indigenous and non-white anti-colonial activists.

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Endnotes

^[1] Francis R. Nicosia, Nazi Germany and the Arab World (Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press, 2015): 16-7; Francis R. Nicosia, The Third Reich and the Palestine Question (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1985): 201; Jeffrey Herf, “Nazi Germany’s Propaganda Aimed at Arabs and Muslims During World War II and the Holocaust: Old Themes, New Archival Findings,” Central European History, 42 (December 2009): 709.

^[2] David Motadel, “The Global Authoritarian Moment and the Revolt Against Empire,” The American Historical Review, 124 (June 2019): 844; David Motadel, Islam and Nazi Germany’s War (London UK: Belknap, 2014): 8-9.

^[3] Milan Hauner, India in Axis Strategy: Germany, Japan and Indian Nationalists in the Second World War (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1981): 1-10.

^[4] Milan Hauner, “One Man against the Empire: The Faquir of Ipi and the British in Central Asia on the Eve of and during the Second World War,” Journal of Contemporary History, 16 (January 1981):183-4; Romain Hayes, Subhas Chandra Bose in Nazi Germany: Politics, Intelligence and Propaganda, 1941-1943 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011):25-7; Philip Mattar, The Mufti of Jerusalem: Al-Hajj Amin al-Husayni and the Palestinian National Movement (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992): 47-9.

^[5] Hayes, Subhas Chandra Bose, 6; Patrick Bernhard, “Colonial Crossovers: Nazi Germany and Its Entanglements with Other Empires,” Journal of Global History, 12 (2017): 206-8.

^[6] Robert Citino, Germany and the Union of South Africa in the Nazi Period (London UK: Greenwood, 1991): 229.

^[7] Lita-Rose Betcherman, The Swastika and the Maple Leaf: Fascist Movements in Canada in the Thirties (Toronto: Fitzhenry and Whiteside, 1975): 23; Martin Robin, Shades of Right: Nativist and Fascist Politics in Canada 1920-1940 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992): 125.

^[8] David O’Donoghue, “State Within a State: The Nazis in Neutral Ireland,” Dublin Historical Record, 60 (Autumn 2007):167-8; Mervyn O’Driscoll, Ireland, Germany and the Nazis: Politics and Diplomacy, 1919-1939 (Dublin IR: Four Courts, 2004): 13-9.

^[9] Gerardo Papalia, “The Italian ‘Fifth Column’ in Australia: Fascist Propaganda, Italian-Australians and Internment,” Australian Journal of Politics and History, 66 (2020): 215-6; Benjamin Goossen, “Terms of Racial Endearment: Nazi Categorization of Mennonites in Ideology and Practice, 1929-1945,” German Studies Review, 44 (February 2021): 31; Grant W. Grams, Coming Home to the Third Reich: Return Migration of German Nationals from the United States and Canada, 1933-1941 (Jefferson NC: McFarland, 2021): 4.

^[10] John E. Richardson, “British Fascism, Fascist Culture, British Culture,” Patterns of Prejudice, 53 (2019): 241.

^[11] Lucia Pozzi, “The Regulation of Public Morality and Eugenics: A Productive Alliance Between the Catholic Church and Italian Fascism,” Modern Italy, 25 (2020): 317-8.

^[12] Betcherman, The Swastika and the Maple Leaf, 9-11, 25.

^[13] Lois Foster and Anne Seitz, “Official Attitudes to Germans during World War II: Some Australian and Canadian Comparisons,” Ethnic and Racial Studies, 14 (1991): 480; W.L. Mackenzie King, Canada at Britain’s Side (London: Macmillan, 1941): 75-8.

^[14] Manchester Guardian (7 May 1942). Olivier Couteaux, Canada Between Vichy and Free France, 1940-1945 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013): 12-6.

^[15] Arkadiusz Zukowski, “The Union of South Africa Towards the Outbreak of the Second World War,” African Studies, 42 (2016): 18-9.

^[16] Betcherman, The Swastika and the Maple Leaf, 23; Citino, Germany and the Union, 72-3.

^[17] Pozzi, “The Regulation of Public Morality,”319-20.

^[18] Betcherman, The Swastika and the Maple Leaf, 7-8.

^[19] Robin, Shades of Right, 144, 156; Manchester Guardian (22 September 1933).

^[20] Myra Ann Houser, “’Open Fascism has Appeared on this Continent’: South Africa’s Independent Press and Anti-Fascism, 1937-1947,” South Africa History Journal, (2022): 4-5; “German Nazi Activities in South Africa,” National Archives Kew, CO323/1599/12; L.E. Neame, “Is South Africa Anti-British?” Fortnightly Review, 126 (September 1929): 289.

^[21] Houser, “‘Open Fascism,’” 5.

^[22] John Perkins, “The Swastika Down Under: Nazi Activities in Australia, 1933-39,” Journal of Contemporary History, 26 (January 1991): 113.

^[23] Daphne Bolz, “Reversing the Influence: Anglo-German Relations and British Fitness Policies in the 1930s,” Sport in History, 34 (2014): 585.

^[24] Adam Payne, Nazi Plot in South Africa: The Amazing Story of Nazi Activities in South Africa and a Plot for an Armed Rising on the Outbreak of War (London UK: Todd Magazines, 1940): 18-20.

^[25] Grams, Coming Home, 3-4.

^[26] Philip V Cannistraro and Gianfausto Rosoli, “Fascist Emigration Policy in the 1920s: An Interpretive Framework,” The International Migration Review, 13 (Winter 1979): 673-4; Papalia, “The Italian ‘Fifth Column’,” 215-7.

^[27] Papalia, “The Italian ‘Fifth Column’,” 217; Perkins, “The Swastika,” 112-5.

^[28] Foster and Seitz, “Official Attitudes,” 475; Stephen A. Fielding, “Righting Canada’s Wrongs: Italian Canadian Internment in the Second World War,” BC Studies, 182 (2014): 234.

^[29] Manchester Guardian (6 June 1941).

^[30] Manchester Guardian (29 April 1939); Bolz, “Reversing the Influence,” 574.

^[31] Philip W Bennett and Andreas Peglau, “The Nazi Denaturalization of German Emigrants: The Case of Wilhelm Reich,” German Studies Review, 37 (February 2014): 47.

^[32] Papalia, “The Italian ‘Fifth Column’,” 217.

^[33] Valdis O. Lumas, Himmler’s Auxiliaries: The Volksdeutsches Mittelstelle and the German National Minorities of Europe, 1933-1945 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993): 22-3; Goossen, “Terms of Racial,” 28.

^[34] Zukowski, “The Union,” 18.

^[35] “Italian Legion in Canada,” National Archives Kew. FO/371/29950.

^[36] “Italian Legion in Canada,” National Archives Kew. FO/371/29950.

^[37] Payne, Nazi Plot, 31; Manchester Guardian (6 January 1940): This news article refers to a mass Johannesburg rally with over 1 000 arrests.

^[38] Luigi Bruti Liberati, “The Internment of Italian Canadians,” in Enemies Within: Italian and Other Internees in Canada and Abroad, eds. Franca Iacovetta et al (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000): 76-7.

^[39] O’Donoghue, “State,” 169-70.

^[40] Foster and Seitz, “Official Attitudes,” 478.

^[41] Peter Staudenmaier, “Racial Ideology between Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany: Julius Evola and the Aryan Myth,” Journal of Contemporary History, 55 (2020): 477-9.

^[42] Andreas Hillgruber, “England’s Place in Hitler’s Plans for World Dominion,” Journal of Contemporary History, 9 (January 1974): 10.

^[43] Hillgruber, “England’s Place” 17; Bernhard, “Colonial Crossovers,” 215.

^[44] Betcherman, The Swastika and the Maple Leaf, 23.

^[45] Betcherman, The Swastika and the Maple Leaf, 23-5.

^[46] Richard Steigman-Gall, “The Nazis’ ‘Positive Christianity’: A Variety of ‘Clerical Fascism’?” Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions, 8 (2007): 315-6; Betcherman, The Swastika and the Maple Leaf, 31.

^[47] Steigman-Gall, “The Nazis’,” 322.

^[48] Hildegard M. Martens, “Accommodation and Withdrawal: The Response of Mennonites in Canada to World War II,” Social History, 7 (1974): 318.

^[49] Andrew S. Thompson and Meaghan Kowalsky, “Social Life and Cultural Representation: Empire in the Public Imagination,” in Britain’s Experience of Empire in the Twentieth Century, ed Andrew Thompson (Oxford UK: Oxford University Press, 2012): 269.

^[50] Benjamin D. Hopkins, “Islam and Resistance in the British Empire,” in Islam and the European Empires, ed. David Motadel (Oxford UK: Oxford University Press, 2014): 151.

^[51] Motadel, Islam, 20-3.

^[52] Motadel, Islam, 166-7, 183-5.

^[53] Motadel, Islam, 29.

^[54] Mattar, The Mufti of Jerusalem, 47.

^[55] Hayes, Subhas Chandra Bose, 125; Eric Kurlander, “Hitler’s Monsters: The Occult Roots of Nazism and the Emergence of the Nazi ‘Supernatural Imaginary,” German History, 20 (2012): 538.

^[56] Herf, “Nazi Germany’s,” 709.

^[57] Motadel, Islam, 86.

^[58] Walter L. Adamson, “Fascism and Political Religion in Italy: A Reassessment,” Contemporary European History, 23 (February 2014): 55.

^[59] Motadel, Islam, 51-3.

^[60] Hayes, Subhas Chandra Bose, 7.

^[61] Motadel, “The Global Authoritarian Movement,” 860; Hayes, Subhas Chandra Bose, 116, 143.

^[62] Hayes, Subhas Chandra Bose, 20.

^[63] Hayes, Subhas Chandra Bose, 67.

^[64] Roderick de Normann, “Infantry Regiment 950 – Germany’s Indian Legion,” Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research, 75 (Autumn 1997): 176-7.

^[65] Hayes, Subhas Chandra Bose, 117.

^[66] Hayes, Subhas Chandra Bose, 29.

^[67] Hayes, Subhas Chandra Bose, 87.

^[68] Yasmin Saikia, “Uncolonizable: Freedom in the Muslim Mind in Colonial British India,” South Asian History and Culture, 7 (2016): 121.

^[69] Hauner, “One Man,” 183-4.

^[70] Hauner, “One Man,” 192.

^[71] Nicosia, Nazi, 162-3.

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