Delta Books

17/08/2023

In position 69 on the general bestsellers list and 34 on the list for non-fiction bestsellers in South Africa. Congratulations authors Evert Kleynhans and David Katz!
Favouring manoeuvre over attrition, and often punching above their weight, South African soldiers have become known for their tenacity, dash and ability to defy the odds. Their unique directive command style has also helped them to excel in defining battles and operations, from the campaign in German South West Africa in 1915 to the cross-border operations in Angola during the Border War.
In 20 Battles, military historians Evert Kleynhans and David Brock Katz investigate the evolution of South Africa’s armed forces over a century. Get your copy now!

01/09/2022

Jan Smuts’s abilities as a general have been much denigrated by his contemporaries and later historians, but he was no armchair soldier. He first learned his soldier’s craft under General Koos de la Rey and General Louis Botha during the South African War (1899−1902). He emerged from that conflict immersed in Boer manoeuvre doctrine.

After forming the Union Defence Force in 1912, Smuts played an integral part in the German South West African campaign in 1915. Placed in command of the Allied forces in East Africa in 1916, he led a mixed bag of South Africans and imperial troops against the legendary Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck and his Schutztruppen. His penchant for manoeuvre warfare and mounted infantry freed most of the vast German territory from Lettow-Vorbeck’s grip.

"General Jan Smuts and his First World War in Africa" by David Katz provides a long-overdue reassessment of Smuts’s generalship and his role in furthering the strategic aims of South Africa and the British Empire during this era.

19/08/2022

‘As dit kom by spesmagte-opleiding, dan vra die ouens baie vir my wat is die grootste les wat ek geleer het. Dit is: Jy het altyd nog ‘n kléin bietjie krag; moet nooit d**k dit is die einde van die lyn nie.

‘As daar nog suurstof in die lug is, kan jy nog aangaan; solank jy asem haal, kan jy nog aangaan . . . Die mens het eintlik ‘n baie hoë toleransie vir pyn, vir honger, vir allerhande goeters, vir uitdagings. Maar jy moet diép krap in jou gees en jou verstand – jy móét ‘n sterk kop hê. En dit is wat spesmagte-soldate anders maak as ander soldate.’
- Oud-Recce Johan Raath vandag in 'n artikel op Netwerk24. Sy jongste boek, A Breed Apart: The Inside Story of a Recce's Special Forces Training Year, het pas verskyn.

Johan Raath praat met Murray La Vita oor sy lewe as verkenningsoldaat en oor die boek waarin hy in fyn besonderhede die uiters strawwe opleiding beskryf waaraan die recces blootgestel is.

15/11/2021

Callie Roos, oudkapelaan en oud-Recce, gesels op Donderdag, 2 Desember, met Stephan Joubert oor sy boek In Christus. Die gesprek vind plaas by kerksondermure in Centurion en is gratis. Jy hoef net jouself te bring.

12/11/2021

A photo that stops one in one's tracks.

Photo of a Soviet war veteran near the Eternal Flame on the anniversary of Victory Day. 1966

23/10/2021

Excellent write-up of Evert Kleynhans's Hitler's Spies in Time of Israel. If you haven't got a copy yet, add it to your Christmas wishlist now!

In 'Hitler's South African Spies,' Evert Kleynhans uncovers 'suppressed' evidence that members of an ultimately ineffective effort to harm Allied ships escaped prosecution

03/10/2021

Remembering the Lomba ... 3 October 1987.
A moving message from Captain PJ Cloete, commander of Charlie Squadron:

THE LOMBA 100.
And so another year has passed. Still innocent and naive, no idea what the morrow would bring... the crucible of fire branding our souls forever. Innocence shattered, and an unwelcome immersion into the reality of war ~ death and destruction and its everlasting tendrils tightly bound and merged into our very souls.
03 Oct 1987, you awaited us as we lay awake caught up in our racing thoughts trying to grasp and prepare for the early call to arms, waiting for the battle to commence. Reality was far worse than anything we imagined on this night.
Little knowing that our lives would be changed forever, a family shattered by death, comrades physically injured ~ scarred for life for all to see and then those hidden scars no one ever see. Unbeknown to us would become a lifelong reality for all who survived... changed forever!
Salute men of Charlie Squadron & 61 Mech, we can never forget. Salute.

05/09/2021

Sounds like a fascinating book!
"Eric Axelson is a forgotten figure of South Africa’s wartime history. He was so often at the frontline that he might even be a forgotten hero. Axelson was a soldier, but he was mostly a historian. Ian van der Waag, himself a military historian, has given a small nudge towards Axelson’s resurrection."

Reviewer: Archie Henderson Sights, Sounds, Memories: South African Soldier Experiences in the Second World War, edited by Ian van der Waag (African Sun Media publishers) Eric Axelson is a forgotten…

15/08/2021

Another positive review for Robert Schapiro's SECRETS FROM THE COCKPIT. In the words of reviewer Vivien Horler, 'this book is about more than pilot shenanigans and seat sex:­ there’s a goodly bit of aviation too. I enjoyed it immensely.'

Review: Vivien Horler Secrets from the Cockpit, by Robert Schapiro (Jonathan Ball Publishers) I am not a nervous air passenger. I have every faith that the pilots know what they’re doing, and ditto…

03/08/2021

Former SAA pilot Robert Schapiro's SECRETS FROM THE COCKPIT is book of the month in Global Aviator magazine! Also, don't miss the article by his wife, Arlene Getz, about working on the manuscript after Robert passed away.

"His time in the SAAF was, as he wrote in his memoir, an adrenalin-fueled mix of exhilaration, fun and danger . . .
There was also a lot of hard partying. 'The phone rang in Grootfontein’s flight operations office and we got the type of call
young pilots dream about,' Robert wrote in an account of one of his border tours. 'Could three officers please come to a dance on Saturday night at a teachers’ college?’
We could! The only group we loved more than teachers were nursing students, who tended to be even wilder.”

23/07/2021

In an interview with the South African Jewish Report, Arlene Getz says of her husband, Robert Schapiro: 'Robert’s memoir is relevant on many levels. Yes, it’s about a young man who fought the odds to live his dream. But it’s more than just the story of one person’s life. It’s also a snapshot of an era in the evolution of aviation and in the history of South Africa.'
Schapiro's SECRETS FROM THE COCKPIT is out now and on the South African topsellers list!

Veteran South African pilot Robert Schapiro wrote Secrets from the Cockpit before he died. His wife, journalist Arlene Getz, talks to Mirah Langer about it.

22/06/2021

In his memoir “Secrets from the Cockpit”, former SAA pilot Robert Schapiro is disarmingly frank about life as an international pilot. Schapiro, who flew Dakotas in the Border War and Boeing 747s at SAA, describes near misses, emergency landings, passenger shenanigans and also divulges how pilots control rowdy travellers … Uplifting and humorous, his memoir offers a rare slice of aviation history.

Delta Books is giving away two copies of this book. To enter the competition, leave a comment with the name of one of the aircraft Schapiro flew. Competition ends on 4 July.

The winner of this competition is Friedrich Winkel - congratulations!

08/06/2021

Great article by Archie Henderson on Evert Kleynhans's book Hitler's Spies in Business Day today.

"In the spring of 1942, when World War 2 was still anybody ’s game, three German U-boats cruised in SA waters seeking easy pickings among the merchant ships that often sailed unescorted and out of convoy.
"SA believed the war was far away in the deserts of North Africa. Cape Town, for all its heavy artillery on Robben Island and at Fort Wynyard in Green Point, was so unprepared that Captain Carl Emmermann, commander of U-172, could bring his boat to the surface off Sea Point and allow his crew a night out: come up to the conning tower, one by one, and enjoy the city lights. Cape Town was lit up for an air raid exercise with searchlights casting beams across the sky. The real danger, meanwhile, lurked below.
"What followed was something of a turkey shoot."

06/05/2021

'My research shows how, during the war (1939 to 1945), the German government secretly reached out to the political opposition in South Africa, the Ossewabrandwag (oxwagon sentinels). This group was founded as an Afrikaner cultural organisation in Bloemfontein in 1939. During the war, the movement became decidedly anti-imperial and increasingly militaristic. The government regarded it as the proverbial “enemy within”.'

Following the war, the South African authorities were anxious to charge known war criminals, traitors and collaborators. But nothing came of it.

01/05/2021

The story of the intelligence war in South Africa during the Second World War is one of suspense, drama and dogged persistence. Now available at all good bookstores at a recommended retail price of R275.

25/04/2021

A second positive review for Evert Kleynhans's HITLER'S SPIES: Secret agents and the Intelligence War in South Africa. The reviewer writes as follows:
"Other authors have touched on the subject of spies in South Africa during the war, but Kleynhans has found a startling new element. Giving it away here would spoil it for the reader. He has also found out much more about the spies because of deeper research – in MI5 files in London, largely hidden files in South Africa and some lucky breaks in his pursuit of the story.
What emerges from his book is that espionage on both sides was a hectic business in South Africa during the war. "

  Review: Attie Hendriks Hitler’s Spies, by Evert Kleynhans (Jonathan Ball Publishers) Evert Kleynhans, a military historian, has turned a work of excellent academic research into an engaging …

12/04/2021

Neall Ellis is one of the best-known private military combat aviators alive. In this re-edition of GUNSHIP ACE, legendary war reporter and author Al J Venter, offers a fascinating account of some of Ellis’s exploits.

Ellis, who was awarded the Honoris Crux during the Border War, has seen action in countries like Angola, Bosnia, Sierra Leone and Afghanistan. Twice, single-handedly (and without a copilot), he turned the enemy back from the gates of Freetown, effectively preventing Foday Sankoh’s rebels from overrunning the Sierra Leone capital – once in the middle of the night without the benefit of night vision goggles. In recent years, Ellis also flew helicopter support missions in Afghanistan, where, he reckons, he has had more close shaves than in his entire previous four-decades put together.

Delta Books are giving away two copies of GUNSHIP ACE – to enter, write down the name of one of the countries in which Ellis has worked as a combat aviator. Competition ends on Friday, 16 April.

11/04/2021

In Rodney Warwick's review in Rapport of military historian Evert Kleynhans'd book HITLER'S SPIES he calls it a 'commendable landmark work in South African historiography'.

Geluk aan die militêre historikus Evert Kleynhans met die uiters positiewe resensie van sy boek in vandag se Rapport. Dit word n 'prysenswaardige bakenwerk in die Suid-Afrikaanse geskiedskrywing' genoem.

RapportWeb

01/04/2021

COVER REVEAL!
In the highly readable HITLER'S SPIES, Evert Kleynhans digs into a little-known part of South African history and uncovers fascinating information about German spy networks that operated in the country during World War II and also describes deadly U-boat attacks off the South African coast. Among others, he investigates whether naval and military information supplied to N**i Germany by these spies and anti-war groups played a role in these attacks.

The book will be on shelves on 15 April. Pencil it in!