ABSTRACT
Especially in those years when the effects of the Great Depression were most dire, conditions of urbanization, white poverty and competition for jobs led to a convergence of fears around racial mixing. Such concerns, along with deepening economic crisis, demanded adjustments to the internal organization of white political culture, which was more or less completed with the formation of the UP in 1934. As early as 1940, white troops – frustrated by monotony and subject to the vagaries of military training camp routine – began to articulate a set of hopes and fears that centered on their future place as white men in post-war South African society. Despite the implicit contract between white volunteers and the state, white troops were fearful that the state would not honor its debts to them. Several liberal supporters of Smuts were afraid that extremist political tendencies might develop among white troops.
