cabinet' alongside Smuts and N.C. Havenga. Aviation had been an early hobby of Pirow's and thus was to influence his work as a cabinet minister. His role in the cabinet also included responsibility for railways and harbours and from this basis he founded South African Airways and furnished it with Junkers aircraft. For Pirow, a strong advocate of both republicanism and a greatly increased role for South Africa in Africa as a whole, the foundation of the national airline was an important step in making the country more powerful. 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. In January 1935, the German cruiser Emden visited Cape Town, where Pirow arrived to welcome Karl Dönitz, the captain of the Emden, to South Africa. In a speech to the crew of the Emden, Pirow stated: "Germany as a civilised state, is one of the chief exponents of our Western culture, which can be maintained only by white peoples, and preserved only by the united co-operation of all. Today, more than ever, when the rising tide of the coloured races is reaching higher and higher, the active help of a strong Germany is more than ever necessary. For us in South Africa the maintenance and spread of our white civilisation is a question of life and death. In this sense, I express the hope that Germany will again soon become a colonial power in Africa". Pirow's speech at first attracted little attention, being only reported in the Cape Argus newspaper until the British journalist George Ward Price brought it up in an interview with Hitler for the Daily Mail newspaper. In response, Hitler stated: "Until it has been confirmed I should not like to pass any opinion. I will only say that if South Africa or any other government would offer to give us back any of our colonies we would accept them willingly". At that point, the speech became the subject of much debate both within South Africa and in Great Britain, where it was felt to be an offer to return Southwest Africa (modern Namibia) to Germany. In the Foreign Office, it was believed that Hitler was "testing the weaker vessel first" as a gambit to force the British, the French and the Belgians to return the former