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Jan Smuts

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1870-1950
South African military leader, politician

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  1. Introduction
  2. Stories
  3. Biographical summary
  4. See also
  5. Further reading
  6. References

1. Introduction

Jan (pronounced ‘Yan’) Smuts was a South African military leader and prime minister for 13 years in two terms. He fought against the British in the Second Boer War (including interrogating Churchill) but supported Britain in both World War I and II. He was a member of David Lloyd George’s Imperial War Cabinet in 1917-18 and was instrumental in the formation of Britain’s Royal Air Force in 1918. He helped to create the League of Nations and drafted the preamble for the United Nations charter. During his political wilderness years he focused on botany and philosophy. He was Churchill’s close friend and advisor for over thirty years.

2. Stories

  • Originally earmarked to look after his family’s farm, Smuts became one of South Africa’s most prominent statesmen.
  • Smuts interviewed Churchill when he was captured in the Second Boer War.
  • Smuts and Churchill met in London in 1906 to discuss the future of South Africa.
  • Smuts became one of Churchill’s most trusted confidants and one of Churchill’s most devoted admirers.
  • Smuts was the only person to have influenced Churchill to allow his staff to get to bed relatively early.
  • Smuts could potentially have become Churchill’s replacement in the event of his death during World War II.
  • Smuts and Churchill have both been accused of racism; Smuts in the context of apartheid and Churchill in the context of Victorian attitudes about the British Empire.

Originally earmarked to look after his family’s farm, Smuts became one of South Africa’s most prominent statesmen.

The tradition in many Afrikaner farming families was that only the eldest son received a secondary school education and the second son took over the family farm. Smuts’s elder brother Michiel died of typhoid at age 16 and Jan took his school place at the age of 12, going on to study at Victoria College (now Stellenbosch University) and to gain top marks in law at Cambridge University. He would later become Cambridge’s first university chancellor from outside the UK.

He was a fearsome general in the Second Boer War, leading guerrilla troops against the British. He turned to politics, becoming minister of defence, amongst other roles. In World War I, he and Louis Botha defeated German forces in South West Africa (now Namibia). Smuts then commanded allied troops in East Africa, severely weakening the German army. He was a member of the Imperial War Cabinet in the UK in 1917 and was asked to review Britain’s military aviation structure, at the time split between the army and navy. He recommended combining the two air units into one, which became the Royal Air Force in 1918 under the initial direction of Lord Rothermere. He and Botha represented South Africa at Versailles in 1919, where he helped to draft the covenant of the League of Nations.

Smuts replaced Botha as prime minister on Botha’s death in 1919 until their South African Party was voted out in 1924, after which Smuts furthered his interests in botany and philosophy. He wrote Holism and Evolution (1925), proposing that the universe and humankind were progressing towards unified perfection.

In 1933 Smuts became deputy prime minister in a coalition with General JBM Hertzog’s National Party. Hertzog’s neutrality regarding World War II was rejected in favour of Smuts’s support for Britain, making Smuts prime minister again from 1939 to 1948. He attended the UK war cabinet and was the only person to sign both peace treaties ending the two world wars.

In 1945 he drafted the preamble to the United Nations Charter. He was ousted as prime minister in 1948. He remained in opposition, but the political rejection and the sudden death of his 42-year-old son Jacob from meningitis the same year aged him considerably and he died two years later.

Smuts interviewed Churchill when he was captured in the Second Boer War.

In 1898, Churchill was a war journalist riding in an armoured train on a recce near Estcourt in what is now eastern South Africa. The train was partially derailed by Boer guerrillas, led by General Louis Botha. Churchill spent the next 70 minutes under fire, taking a lead role in ensuring that the engine and some of the carriages escaped, carrying the wounded. He and 57 others were taken captive.

The distinction as to whether Churchill was an observer or a combatant was critical. If the former, he could be released; if the latter, he was a legitimate prisoner of war. If he was a civilian who had taken part as a combatant, he could receive the death penalty.

The Churchill name was already notorious in southern Africa as the result of Winston’s father Randolph having visited and written some derogatory articles about the Boers. It was quite a prize to capture his son. Churchill insisted that he was merely a war correspondent. Although unarmed when captured, it was only because he had left his pistol on the train by mistake. He had been observed by Boer soldiers taking command and being armed.

Smuts was a state attorney and handled Churchill’s case. He described Churchill as a ‘scrubby, squat figure of a man, unshaved. He was furious, venomous, just like a viper.’1 Churchill later said, ‘I was wet and draggle-tailed. He [Smuts] was examining me on the part I had played in the affair of the armoured train – a difficult moment.’2 Smuts sent him to Pretoria as a prisoner, but later reconsidered, partly because the Times war correspondent Leo Amery had been allowed to go free. He issued an order for Churchill’s release but by the time it reached Pretoria, Churchill had already escaped. Churchill made his way to Lourenço Marques (now Maputo, Mozambique), then Durban, and managed to involve himself in the liberation of both Ladysmith and the Pretoria prisoner of war camp. His adventures made front page news in the UK and elsewhere. He did not learn about Smuts’s release order until years later.

Smuts and Churchill met in London in 1906 to discuss the future of South Africa.

By 1906, Smuts was deputy leader of Het Volk (The People’s Party), led by Louis Botha, and Churchill was under-secretary of state for the colonies for the newly installed Liberal Party, led by Prime Minister Henry Campbell-Bannerman. Smuts persuaded Botha that this was the time to seek self-government for the former Afrikaner republics of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State.

Smuts flew to London and met Churchill at the Colonial Office. British officials were concerned about the inexperienced Churchill dealing with the formidable Smuts, so Churchill’s private secretary Eddie Marsh was placed behind a screen in the corner of the room to keep track of conversations. Churchill opposed Smuts on the basis that Smuts was asking for his country back only three years after being defeated.

Nevertheless, the two men got on well, as did Churchill and Smuts’s accompanying daughter Helen, leading to false rumours of their engagement. Smuts also established a cordial relationship with Campbell-Bannerman and told him he had ‘a choice between having another Ireland or a friendly country within the Empire’.4 By the end of 1907 both the Transvaal and the former Orange Free State had gained self-government.

This was part of a pattern of both Smuts and Churchill putting the past behind them and moving forwards. Smuts met severe Afrikaner opposition at home for negotiating compromise arrangements with the British and then proposing to support Britain in World War I instead of remaining neutral. Likewise, Churchill’s sympathies for the Boers were not popular with many Conservatives.

In a similar vein, after the defeat of Germany in 1918, Smuts and Churchill were both against the punitive nature of the Versailles Treaty. Smuts described it as an ‘abomination’5 and wrote presciently that it ‘will prove utterly unstable and only serve to promote the anarchy which is rapidly overtaking Europe’.6 At the negotiations in Paris, Churchill said, ‘I was all for war when it was on. Now it is over, and I am all for peace’7 (see Bernard Baruch).

Smuts became one of Churchill’s most trusted confidants and one of Churchill’s most devoted admirers.

In August 1942, the north African campaign against Field Marshal Erwin Rommel was not going well. Churchill flew to Cairo to make some major decisions about senior military leadership. Smuts joined him from South Africa. Churchill wrote to Clementine: ‘Smuts was magnificent in counsel. We could work together with the utmost ease. He fortified me where I am inclined to be tender-hearted, namely in using severe measures against people I like.’8

Churchill replaced General Claude Auchinleck with General Harold Alexander, who was soon joined by Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery. Morale improved dramatically and Rommel was defeated, a major turning point in World War II.

Churchill’s doctor, Charles Wilson (later Lord Moran), wrote that ‘Smuts is the only man who has any influence with the PM; indeed, he is the only ally I have in pressing counsels of common sense on the PM. Smuts sees so clearly that Winston is irreplaceable, that he may make an effort to persuade him to be sensible.’9

Brendan Bracken once made a derogatory remark about Smuts, which Churchill countered with ‘My faith in Smuts is unbreakable; he is a great man’.10 To Anthony Eden, he said, ‘He [Smuts] is as I imagine Socrates might have been.’11 Churchill commented to the South African high commissioner to the UK in 1945 that ‘Smuts and I are like two old love-birds moulting together on a perch, but still able to peck’.12

The respect and fondness were mutual. Smuts wrote a birthday message to Churchill in 1944, saying, ‘My thoughts are much with you, my friend; the one in all the world to whom so many owe so much.’13 At a speech in London in 1943, he said, ‘The British people are united to a man behind the greatest leader they have ever had.’14 He said to Churchill’s bodyguard Walter Thompson, ‘Take great care of Mr. Churchill; he is one of the greatest men the world has ever known.’15

A memento of the relationship remains in Chartwell today: a photo of Smuts on Churchill’s desk in his study, placed there during their lifetimes.

Smuts was the only person to have influenced Churchill to allow his staff to get to bed relatively early.

During World War II, Churchill would often summon his senior staff to Chequers at weekends, where in the evenings they would dine, watch a film and then start work after midnight until as late as 3.30 a.m. On one occasion Jan Smuts was present when Churchill announced at one o’clock in the morning, ‘Well, now we will start work.’

‘No’, said Smuts, ‘I am not going to start work. I am not going to be a party to your murdering the British Chiefs of Staff. Here they are, they have to be back in the office by 9 o’clock in the morning, ready for meetings at 9.30; you will still be lying in bed with a fat cigar, dictating to your Secretary. They have to work all morning and all afternoon; in the afternoon you have a siesta. You bring them down here and make them work all night as well; you will kill them and I am not going to be a party to that.’

Smuts stood up and went to bed. The room was completely silent for a short while, then Churchill also stood up, saying, ‘Well, perhaps we’d better go to bed.’ Mountbatten, later admiral of the fleet, was present that night as chief of combined operations. He recounted the story many years later, saying, ‘It was the only time we were let off’.16

Smuts saved generals Alexander and Montgomery from receiving a broadside from Churchill in October 1942 when foreign secretary Anthony Eden reported that they were being inactive and defensive during the critical Second Battle of El Alamein. Churchill was incensed and called a chiefs of staff meeting, to which Smuts was also invited. Eden repeated his claim, after which Field Marshal Alan Brooke (Chief of the Imperial General Staff; ‘CIGS’) pointed out that Montgomery had withstood counterattacks by Rommel and was preparing for his next offensive. Churchill turned to Smuts, who fully supported Brooke. ‘This settled the situation’, wrote Brooke in his diary. ‘The flow of words of the mouth of that wonderful statesman was as if oil had been poured on the troubled waters!’17

Smuts could potentially have become Churchill’s replacement in the event of his death during World War II.

Although Smuts was a notable British enemy during the Second Boer War, by the end of World War I he had become a respected member of the British establishment. He had risked his political career to support Britain in its war against Germany and had been highly effective in his military command of South African and imperial troops in Africa.

He made such an impression on David Lloyd George while leading a South African delegation to a conference in London in 1917 that he was asked to stay on to be part of his war cabinet, which he did for a year and a half. He also chaired the War Priorities Committee (which included Churchill as minister of munitions), helped to resolve a Welsh coal miners’ strike, and advised the British government on various issues. Churchill and Smuts spent much time together during this period, no doubt telling many Boer War stories.

Smuts’s reputation as an international statesman grew in the 1920s and 1930s, despite his difficulties in South African domestic politics. His role in clinching a key South African parliamentary vote in 1939 in favour of supporting the UK against Germany in World War II was critical for the UK, providing a vital naval staging post to and from Asia as an alternative to the precarious route via the Mediterranean. He was made an honorary British field marshal in 1941.

There was much concern in the UK as to what would happen if Churchill died during World War II. In October 1940, his assistant private secretary Jock Colville commented that a colleague had suggested that Smuts could act as replacement. Colville was immediately convinced, saying that Smuts has ‘the experience, the wisdom, the drive and the reputation to prove himself a worthy successor to Winston’.18 He wrote to his mother Lady Cynthia Colville, a lady-in-waiting to Queen Mary, widow of George V, with the intention that the idea should filter through to her son King George VI. He also promoted the concept to others.

It seems that Churchill himself considered the idea of leaving Smuts in charge when leaving for the Tehran Conference in 1943. However, Churchill survived the war and the proposal of Smuts succeeding him was never formalised.

Smuts and Churchill have both been accused of racism; Smuts in the context of apartheid and Churchill in the context of Victorian attitudes about the British Empire.

There is no doubt that Smuts believed in the superiority of white races and opposed extending the vote to non-whites in South Africa, with a minor exception in later years for educated black Africans. One of his motivations for seeking to unite the Afrikaners and the British (‘two Teutonic peoples’)19 was because of their fragile situation as half a million people of European origin at the southern end of a continent populated by over 100 million Africans. Apart from the two Boer wars with the British, there had also been numerous battles in southern Africa between Europeans and the Xhosa and Zulu peoples.

In the early 1900s and 1910s, Smuts opposed any extension of political rights to black Africans and introduced segregationist legislation. In 1923, he rejected a call for more Indian rights by saying ‘equal rights for Indians in South Africa would lead to equal rights for Natives, and that would mean the end of South Africa’.20 In a lecture tour to the UK in 1929, he described his vision for the civilising influence of the white man in Africa, a view widely held by Europeans at the time.

The racial issue hounded him for decades. In 1946, the Indian delegate to the UN quoted Smuts’s own words embedded in the UN Charter preamble to condemn the treatment of Indians in South Africa. Smuts disagreed with the extreme form of separate development (apartheid) pursued by the National Party government from 1948 but remained an adherent of white minority rule. His United Party supported minor liberalisation in its 1948 election campaign but lost, ending Smuts’s second term as prime minister.

Churchill too believed that western institutions and cultures were a civilising influence, as embodied by the British Empire. As a very public figure, his views have come under the spotlight, especially in relation to Indians, Hindus, Muslims and Jews. See ‘Race’ in Controversies.

3. Biographical summary

OccupationBarrister, statesman, military leader and philosopher
CountryUK (British citizenship renounced in 1896); South Africa
CareerBarrister exams (1895). South African Republic state attorney (1898-1900). Boer commando general, 2nd Boer War (1900-02). Deputy leader, Het Volk party (1904-10). Colonial Secretary and Education Secretary (1907-10). Minister of Defence (1910-19). Minister of Interior and Mines (1910-12). Minister of Finance (1912-13). Major General in campaign against German South West Africa (1916). Lieutenant General of Allied forces in East Africa. Imperial War Cabinet, UK (1917-18). South Africa Prime Minister (1919-24). Minister for Native Affairs (1919-24). Holism and Evolution (1926). Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Justice (1933-39). South Africa Prime Minister (1939-48). Observer at British War Cabinet (1943). UK honorary Field Marshal (1941). Chancellor of the University of Cambridge (1948-50).
Born1870 at Bovenplaats family farm, Riebeek West, near Malmesbury, Cape Colony
FatherJacobus ‘Kosie’ Smuts (1845-1914), farmer
MotherCatharina ‘Cato’ de Vries (1845-1901), farmer
SiblingsSecond of seven children:
1. Michiel (1866-1882); died of typhoid aged 16 when Jan was 12
2. Jan Christiaan (1870-1850)
3. Maria (1872-1923); married name Hoffman
4. Jacobus ‘Kosie’ (1874-1939)
5. Boudewyn (1876-1953)
6. Pieter (1884-1885)
7. Adriana (1884-1952)
EducationRiebeek West school; Victoria College (now Stellenbosch University) and University of the Cape of Good Hope (Literature and Science); Christ’s College, Cambridge University (Law); Middle Temple, London (barrister)
SpouseSybella ‘Isie’ Krige (1870-1954), m. 1897 until his death; farmer’s daughter; teacher; ‘Ouma’ (grandma) of the nation; ashes scattered at same place as husband Jan
Relationships–
Children1. Kosie (1898); died aged 3 weeks
2. Jossie (1898); died aged 4 weeks
3. Jacobus (1899-1900)
4. Susanna ‘Santa’ (1903-66); married name Weyers
5. Catharina ‘Cato’ (1904-68), married name Clark
6. Jacob ‘Japie’ (1906-48), died aged 42; meningitis
7. Sybella ‘Sylma’ (1908-76), married name Coaton 1930
8. Jan ‘Klein Jannie’ (1912)
9. Louis (girl) (1914), married name McIldowie
Adopted Kathleen in the 1920s
Died1950 on family farm Doornkloof, Irene, near Pretoria, Union of South Africa, aged 80; heart attack (15 years before Churchill)
BuriedState funeral; cremated; ashes scattered on a hill on family farm Doornkloof; marked by an obelisk
Chartwell 
Other ClubYes
NicknameHandyman of the Empire; Orator of the Empire; Slim Jannie (ambivalent term, usually used by opponents; ‘slim’ is Dutch for ‘crafty’); Oubaas (elder; senior person; head of a family)
Height 5’9″ (1.75 m)

4. See also

Boer War

  • Rothermere, Lord (Harold Harmsworth) (article about Churchill by Daily Mail war correspondent G.W. Steevens)

Royal Air Force

South Africa and race

Churchill controversies

  • Imperialism
  • Race

5. Further reading

Jan Smuts

Smuts and Churchill

Churchill and the Boer War

  • Churchill, Winston S., The Boer War: London to Ladysmith via Pretoria and Ian Hamilton’s March (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2013) (combines two books published in 1900)
  • Millard, Candice, Hero of the Empire: The Making of Winston Churchill (Penguin, 2016) (Second Boer War including escape from prison)

South Africa

  • Nattrass, Gail, A Short History of South Africa (Biteback Publishing, 2017)
  • Meredith, Martin, Diamonds, Gold, and War: The British, the Boers, and the Making of South Africa (PublicAffairs, 2008)
  • Thompson, Leonard, and Lynn Berat, A History of South Africa (Yale University Press, 2014)

Royal Air Force

  • Buckley, John, and Paul Beaver, The Royal Air Force: The First One Hundred Years (OUP Oxford, 2018)
  • Overy, Richard, The Birth of the RAF, 1918: The World’s First Air Force (Penguin Books Limited, 2018)

Miscellaneous

  • Jackson, Ashley, The British Empire: A Very Short Introduction (OUP Oxford, 2013)
  • Rattansi, Ali, Racism: A Very Short Introduction (OUP Oxford, 2007)

6. References

1. Sir John Kennedy, The Business of War: The War Narrative of Major-General Sir John Kennedy, ed. by Bernard Fergusson (Hutchinson, 1957), p. 316.

2. Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill: Volume 8: Never Despair, 1945–1965 (Random House, 1988), p. 565.

3. Kennedy, p. 316.

4. Ibid.

5. Jan Christiaan Smuts, Selections from the Smuts Papers: November 1918-August 1919, ed. by W.K. Hancock and Jean Van der Poel (Cambridge University Press, 1966), p. 157.

6. Smuts, p. 83.

7. Bernard Baruch, My Own Story (Holt, 1957), p. 119.

8. Winston S. Churchill and Clementine Churchill, Speaking for Themselves: The Personal Letters of Winston and Clementine Churchill, ed. by Mary Soames (Black Swan, 1999), p. 467.

9. Charles M.W. Moran, Winston Churchill: The Struggle for Survival, 1940-1965 (Constable, 1966), pp. 146–47.

10. Moran, p. 317.

11. Quoted in Paul H. Courtenay, ‘Winston Churchill’s Great Contemporaries: Jan Christian Smuts’, The Churchill Project – Hillsdale College, 2017.

12. John Colville, The Churchillians (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1981), p. 135.

13. Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill: Volume 7: Road to Victory, 1941-1945 (Heinemann, 1966), p. 1079.

14. J.C. Smuts, Jan Christian Smuts (Cassell, 1952), p. 433.

15. W.H. Thompson, I Was Churchill’s Shadow (C. Johnson, 1951), p. 127.

16. Mountbatten of Burma, ‘Churchill and…War’, The International Churchill Society, 1970.

17. Alanbrooke, Field Marshal Lord, War Diaries: 1939-1945 (University of California Press, 2001), pp. 335-6

18. John Colville, The Fringes of Power: Downing Street Diaries: Volume One: 1939-October 1941 (Sceptre, 1986), p. 319.

19. Jan Christiaan Smuts, Selections from the Smuts Papers: June 1886-May 1902, ed. by William K. Hancock and Jean Van der Poel (Cambridge University Press, 1966), p. 82.

20. Jan Christiaan Smuts, The Fields of Force: 1919-1950, ed. by William K. Hancock (Cambridge University Press, 1962), p. 149.