46 Bonhoeffer, Dietrich and St Helena Almost 30,000 Boers, mostly women and children, and 14,000 Africans died in the camps The destruction of much of the countryside also led to food shortages In the spring of 1902 the Boers were forced to accept defeat Under the Treaty of Vereeniging all of South Africa became part of the British Empire Further reading: Evans, Martin The Boer War: South Africa 1899–1902 London: Osprey Publishing, 1999; Pakenham, Thomas The Boer War New York: Random House, 1993 Janice J Terry Bonhoeffer, Dietrich (1906–1945) theologian and social activist Soldiers man their guns during the Boer War, which pitted the agrarian Dutch settlers of South Africa against the British Republic To undercut possible British moves, the Boers demanded that the British withdraw all their troops; when the ultimatum was rejected, the Boers attacked the Cape Colony and Natal, laying siege to the cities of Kimberley, Mafeking, and Ladysmith The defense of Mafeking was led by Robert Baden-Powell, the founder of the Boy Scouts The future prime minister of Britain Winston Churchill also participated in the war, as did the Indian nationalist leader Mohandas K Gandhi, who served in the British medical corps After initial defeats, the British rallied their troops and in 1900 appointed Horatio Herbert Kitchener, who had just successfully taken the Sudan, as the commander in chief With superior firepower the British army successfully lifted the sieges, but the Boers then resorted to hit-and-run guerrilla warfare tactics, some of which they had learned from the Zulus in earlier confrontations To defeat the Boers, Kitchener adopted techniques that were used against guerrilla fighters throughout the world in the 20th century These included slash-and-burn attacks against civilian farms and cutting off supplies of food and arms to Boer fighters by placing the civilian population in concentration camps Thousands of Boer women and children were rounded up and placed in armed camps, where many starved to death Their farms were then burned to the ground, thereby depriving the Boer fighters of cover and food supplies Many indigenous Africans were also placed in camps Some were sent to camps in Bermuda, India, Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German pastor and brilliant theologian who was made famous by his role in the German resistance movement He was executed in April 1945 for his involvement in plots to overthrow Adolf Hitler Bonhoeffer and his twin sister, Sabine, were born on February 4, 1906, in Breslau, Germany (now Wroclaw, Poland) His father, Karl Bonhoeffer, was a distinguished psychiatrist, and his mother, Paula, presided over the early education of her eight children with the aid of a governess, entering her children for state examinations at an early age In 1912 the Bonhoeffers moved to Berlin, where Dietrich’s father took a post as a professor of psychiatry By age 14 Dietrich Bonhoeffer had already decided to pursue theology His family was not particularly religious, attending church only occasionally, but respected his decision even at a relatively young age In 1923 at age 17, Bonhoeffer entered the University of Tübingen In 1924 he switched to the University of Berlin, a center for theology made famous by one of its founders, Friedrich Schleiermacher The theology faculty was headed by Adolf von Harnack, an eminent theologian, and Reinhold Seeberg, a well-known systematic theology professor and author Bonhoeffer stood out as a brilliant, studious, and somewhat independent thinker It was during this period that Bonhoeffer began to read and be influenced by the works of the NeoOrthodox movement, a reaction to the liberal theology of Schleiermacher and von Harnack made famous by Karl Barth Bonhoeffer began work on his doctoral thesis in mid-1926 under Seeberg, finishing in December 1927 at age 21 with a rarely awarded summa cum laude