Nazism
A vehement anti-communist (indeed, when running in Gezina in 1929 Pirow vowed to legislate communism out of existence), Pirow became an admirer of Adolf Hitler after meeting him in 1933. He toured Europe in 1938 and claimed to offer Hitler a free role in Eastern Europe in return for allowing the Jews to leave Germany. During this tour he also met Benito Mussolini, António de Oliveira Salazar and Francisco Franco and became convinced that a European war was imminent, with Nazi victory assured. Pirow's Germanophilia was such that the family spoke only German at home and his daughter Else even caused a minor controversy in Britain in June 1939 when she told the Daily Express that the Pirows felt more German than South African.
Pirow supported Hertzog's calls for neutrality when war did arrive and followed his leader into the new Herenigde Nasionale Party (HNP). By September 1940 he had launched his own New Order group within the HNP, backing a Nazi style dictatorship. This group took its name from his 1940 New Order in South Africa pamphlet in which he embraced the ideology. The pamphlet ran through seven editions in its first year of existence.
Daniel François Malan initially tolerated the actions of the New Order but soon came to see it as a divisive influence on the HNP and at the Transvaal party congress of August 1941 he forced through a motion ending the group's propaganda activities, particularly their insistence on a one-party state. Pirow and 17 of his supporters in Parliament reconstituted as the New Order on 16 August, although they continued to be associated with the HNP and attend their caucus meetings. The group finally broke from the HNP altogether in 1942 after both Malan and Johannes Gerhardus Strijdom openly rejected the Nazis. Pirow did not run in the 1943 election although a number of New Order candidates did and they were all heavily defeated. Although Pirow continued to publish a newsletter until 1958 his political career was effectively over, leaving him to return to legal practice.
Read more about this topic: Oswald Pirow