By this time 100 years ago, the German Empire had lost all of its colonial possessions.
Well, all save one, but it would cling tenaciously to that one. I’m talking, of course, about
German East Africa.
I’m Indy Neidell; welcome to a Great War special episode about German East Africa in
the First World War.
German East Africa covered what is today much of Tanzania, Rwanda, and Burundi, which bordered-
among other colonies- British East Africa, the Belgian Congo, and Portuguese East Africa,
so once the war really got going, German East Africa was basically surrounded by enemies.
I’m not going to delve into the pre-war history of the region very much, but I will
mention Carl Peters. In 1884, Peters founded the Society for German Colonization, a group
dedicated to acquiring German colonies. This was the late time of the scramble for Africa,
when many European nations were trying to carve out their own chunks of the continent.
That year, Peters went to Africa and signed treaties with several tribal chiefs offering
them “protection” in exchange for sovereignty and the following year created the German
East Africa Company.
Now, German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck was opposed to Peters’ colonial plans and gave
him no backing. Bismarck didn’t want to potentially sour relations with the British
and wasn’t a colonization fan in general, but when Peters threatened to sell his acquisitions
to Belgium, Bismarck, and his pro-colonial National Liberal allies in the Reichstag gave
in and gave Peters an imperial charter.
Peters turned out to be an unsavory character, to say the least. In 1891 and 1892 he was
in German East Africa as Reichskommissar, ostensibly to help delineate the border with
British East Africa, but he was brutal to the locals. He took local girls as concubines,
and when one of them got together with his manservant, Peters had them both executed
and their villages destroyed. Stuff like that. Needless to say, this provoked local hostilities,
and Peters was recalled.
Anyhow, the next quarter century of German sovereignty was a period of frequent unrest and war.
At one point a local tribe, the Hehe, dealt the German Schutztruppe- the protection forces-
a humiliating defeat, and the Germans responded by invading their territory, destroying fields
and harvests to cause famine, and taking women and children as bounty. The Hehe turned to
guerrilla warfare and the conflict dragged on throughout the 1890s.
Between 1905 and 1908 there was an all-out war, the Maji-Maji War, during which tribes
united across ethnic and cultural boundaries against the Germans. The Germans responded
as before, and by the end of the war an estimated quarter of a million Africans died, as opposed
to 15 European Sc hutztruppe soldiers. Yep, 15 versus as many as 250,000. 382 Askari who
fought with the Germans also died and around 10,000 tribesmen during attacks on German
garrisons, but 15 to 250,000. For the three year war and it’s aftermath of famine and
starvation.
Then came 1914.
Now, in January 1914 Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck became commander of the Schutztruppe in German
East Africa. He had seen colonial combat in both the Boxer Rebellion and in German Southwest
Africa, and when the war broke out seven months later, he chose to ignore the Congo Agreements
that gave the colonies the option to remain neutral, and which colonial Governor Heinrich
Schnee favored.
Lettow-Vorbeck’s policy was offensives without compromise. He sabotaged the British Uganda
railway and defeated numerically superior British forces again and again. They were
demoralized until the fall of German Southwest Africa in mid 1915 suddenly gave the British
loads more South African troops to turn against von Lettow-Vorbeck. The British also began
to coordinate with the Belgian Congolese forces, and in early 1916, Portugal joined the war
with the Allies and von Lettow-Vorbeck now had to deal with attackers from all sides,
and he had no hope of relief or supplies arriving from Germany.
He withdrew to the southern part of the colony, which was great for his campaign of guerrilla
warfare. He had switched to this tactic since he could not afford to lose men, and that
would happen in open engagements win or lose. In 1917, he was forced to cross the border
into Portuguese East Africa, where his men ransacked the countryside for food and ammunition.
His war had now become an end to itself.
In 1918 in British Rhodesia, von Lettow-Vorbeck learned about the armistice and surrendered
November 25th.
But what was the colonial war like?
Well, unlike the war on, say, the Western Front, it was a war of movement. It was also
a war of foot soldiers since the terrain was unsuitable for mechanized or mounted troops,
and you couldn’t really drag around artillery, so most casualties were caused by malnutrition,
exhaustion, and disease. Allied troops suffered 17,700 losses and anywhere from 50,000 to
well over 100,000 carrier losses. On the German side were 734 European German casualties of
3,600, 6,300 Askaris - the recruited African soldiers- out of over 30,000, and around 100,000
carriers. Civilian deaths are difficult to estimate but may very well have been over
a million.
Von Lettow-Vorbeck claimed he could’ve continued the war for years, but is that really true?
From 1916 on, his troops were in terrible shape; they didn’t have shoes or anything
approaching matching equipment, and everything they did have was from enemy or local supplies.
Some soldiers didn’t mind going on for years, but may wanted to return to their families,
and an important note- von Lettow-Vorbeck’s comrades praised his style of leadership and
determination, they did not praise him for tactical or strategic genius.
The war in Africa was also supposedly more civilized than that in Europe.
And while it is true that German and British officers were keen on keeping things almost
sportsmanlike in nature, but when you look at, say, the askari on both sides, you see
that those same officers allowed their troops to commit the worst atrocities on the local
civilians. Rape, murder, looting; one Schutztruppe soldier had this to say, “Behind us we leave
destroyed fields... and famine for the time to come. We are no longer ambassadors of culture,
we are bringing, death, pillaging, and empty villages.” In fact, local civilians were
often forced to become carriers and not given enough food to survive.
There’s also the semi-myth of the faithful askari.
They were supposedly loyal to Germany to the bitter end and in the future were used to
portray German colonialism as superior to that of, say, Belgian, and to show what a
good and decent trade partner Germany would be to newly emerging nations later in the
20th century.
Askari were often recruited from other parts of Africa to make them more dependent, but
they were given decent regular salaries and relatively free reign; things like alcohol
abuse and polygamy were tolerated by British and German officers to promote goodwill, and
since askari were used to commit atrocities, in many cases desertion would mean retaliation
so it was safer to remain with the battalion. Still, there was an 18% desertion rate. Of
course, there were many many thousands of askari who were simply loyal to the end, but
it is a far more complicated situation than it seems on the surface.
In fact, you could say that about the entire situation of German East Africa during the
First World War; that it was far more complicated than it may seem on the surface. Or that it
may seem from stories and legends told about it afterwards.
Well, today was just a brief look at the colony and the war as well as a short analysis of
some of the questions and myths surrounding it. As always, I urge you all to look this
up for yourselves to get more detail and a better perspective of things.
If you want to see more from about the topic, we did a bio special on General von Lettow-Vorbeck,
you can check that out and hear me curse right here.
Let us know what other colonies you are interested in so we can start our research and of course:
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