East African Campaign (World War I)
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The East African Campaign was a series of battles and guerrilla actions which started in German East Africa and ultimately impacted portions of Mozambique, Northern Rhodesia, Kenya, Uganda, and the Belgian Congo. The German colonial forces, led by Lieutenant Colonel (later Generalmajor) Paul Emil von Lettow-Vorbeck, fought for the duration of World War I and surrendered only after that war had ended.
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[edit] Background
German East Africa comprising the mainland part of modern-day Tanzania, Burundi, and Rwanda, was a large territory with complex geography, including parts of the extensive Great Rift Valley, Lake Tanganyika and Lake Victoria. It varied from the mountainous, well-watered and fertile north-west, to the drier and sandy or rocky centre, with wildlife-rich grasslands in the north-east and vast areas of uninhabited forest in the south-east. Its coast, inhabited by the Swahili people and Arab traders, dominated trade with Central Africa in conjunction with British-controlled Zanzibar and the coasts of modern-day Kenya and Mozambique.
At the start of the war, the German Governor Heinrich Schnee, ordered that no hostile action was to be taken. To the north, the British Governor of Kenya stated that Kenya "had no interest in the present war"[1] The reason for this was, in part, neither colony had many troops. But the commander of the tiny German Army in East Africa, Lieutenant Colonel Paul Emil von Lettow-Vorbeck, ignored Governor Schnee, nominally his superior, as well as orders from Berlin and assembled his army for battle. At the start of the war, the German Schutztruppe in German East Africa consisted of approximately 280 Germans of all ranks and 2,500 Askari, but would expand with German reservists, colonial volunteers and askaris.
[edit] Campaign history
[edit] Beginning, 1914-1915
The fighting in German East Africa began in August 1914. On 15 August, German troops stationed in the Rwanda-Burundi region shelled some villages in the Belgian Congo. On 22 August, a German naval vessel on Lake Tanganyika opened fire on the harbor of Albertville (now Kalemie). In September, the Germans staged raids into neighbouring British East Africa and Uganda. A tiny German navy on Lake Victoria existed, causing minor damage but a great deal of news. The British sent out some gun-boats in pieces over the railway to Lake Victoria to re-establish control over the lake.
In an effort to solve the raiding nuisance and to capture the entire northern, white settler region of the German colony, the British command devised a two-pronged plan. The British Indian Expeditionary Force “B” of 8,000 troops in two brigades would make an amphibious landing at Tanga on 2 November 1914 to capture the city and thereby control the Indian Ocean terminus of the Usambara Railway (see Battle of Tanga). In the Kilimanjaro area, the British Indian Expeditionary Force “C” of 4,000 men in one brigade would advance from British East Africa on Neu-Moshi on 3 November 1914 to the western terminus of the railroad (see Battle of Kilimanjaro). After capturing Tanga, Force “B” would rapidly move north-west, join Force “C” and mop up what remained of the broken German forces. Although outnumbered 8:1 at Tanga and 4:1 at Longido, the Schutztruppe under Lettow-Vorbeck prevailed. According to the British Official History of the War the events are described as one of “the most notable failures in British military history.”[2]
[edit] Naval war
The German naval command had just one major warship in the Indian Ocean when war was declared, the light cruiser SMS Königsberg. After very limited opportunities for commerce raiding, the ship sank the old British cruiser HMS Pegasus in Zanzibar harbor and then retired into the Rufiji River delta. After being cornered by British warships, including monitors and an old battleship, the cruiser was destroyed/scuttled. The surviving crew of Königsberg and her 10.5 cm (4.1 inch) main battery guns were taken over by the Schutztruppe. The British recovered and used six 4-inch guns from the sunken Pegasus.
[edit] Lake Tanganyika expedition
In 1915, two British motorboats, HMS Mimi and HMS Toutou were transported by land to the British shore of Lake Tanganyika. They captured the German ship Kingani, renaming it HMS Fifi, and with two Belgian ships under the command of Commander Geoffrey Spicer-Simson, attacked and sunk the German ship Hedwig von Wissmann in a bid to secure the lake as the strategic key to the western part of the German colony. The Graf von Götzen was the only German ship to survive. Lettow-Vorbeck then had its Königsberg gun removed and sent by rail to the main fighting front.[3] The ship was scuttled after a floatplane bombing attack by the Belgians on Kigoma and before advancing Belgian colonial troops could capture it. It was later refloated and used by the British[4] (and was still plying the lake under the Tanzanian flag at the turn of the 21st century and may yet be in service today).
[edit] British reinforcements, 1916
General Horace Smith-Dorrien was assigned the command to fight the Schutztruppe, but he contracted pneumonia during the voyage to South Africa which prevented him from taking command. In 1916, General J.C. Smuts was given the task of defeating Lettow-Vorbeck. Smuts had a large army (for the area), some 13,000 South Africans including Boers, British, and Rhodesians as well as 7,000 Indian and African soldiers. Also, not under his direct command but fighting on the Allied side, was a Belgian force and a larger but totally ineffective group of Portuguese military units based in Mozambique. A large Carrier Corps of African porters under British command carried supplies for Smuts' army into the interior, much of which lacked railway or established roads. Despite all these troops from different allies, this was essentially a South African operation of the British Empire under Smuts' control. During the previous year, Lettow-Vorbeck had also gained troops and his army was now 1,800 Germans and some 12,000 Askaris.
Smuts army attacked from several directions, the main attack was from the north out of Kenya, while substantial forces from the Belgian Congo advanced from the west in two columns, over Lake Victoria and into the Rift Valley. Another force advanced over Lake Nyasa (Lake Malawi) from the south-east. All these forces failed to capture Lettow-Vorbeck and they all suffered from disease along the march. One unit, 9th South African Infantry, started with 1,135 men in February and by October its strength was reduced to 116 fit troops, without doing much fighting at all.[5] However, the Germans nearly always retreated from the larger British forces and by September 1916, the German Central Railway from the coast at Dar es Salaam to Ujiji was fully under British control.
With Lettow-Vorbeck's forces now confined to the southern part of German East Africa, Smuts began to withdraw his South African, Rhodesian and Indian troops and replaced them with askaris of the King’s African Rifles (KAR). By the start of 1917 more than half the British Army in the theater was composed of African soldiers, and by the end of the war, it was nearly all African troops. Smuts himself left the area in January 1917 to join the Imperial War Cabinet at London.
[edit] Belgian-Congolese participation
Belgian-Congolese participation in the campaign was sizeable — for the logistics alone some 260,000 carriers were mobilized, not counting troops.
The colonial armed forces of the Belgian Congo ('Force Publique') started a campaign on 18 April 1916 under the command of General Charles Tombeur, Colonel Molitor and Colonel Olsen. They captured Kigali on 6 May. The German forces in Burundi fought well, but had to give in to the numerical superiority of Force Publique. By 6 June 1916 they had completely occupied Rwanda and Burundi.
Force Publique then started the campaign to capture Tabora, an administrative center of central German East Africa. They marched into German territory in three columns and took Biharamuro, Mwanza, Karema, Kigoma and Ujiji. After several days of heavy fighting they secured Tabora. Fearing Belgian claims on the German colony, Smuts ordered their forces back to Congo, leaving them as occupying forces only in Rwanda and Burundi. But the British were obliged to recall Belgian-Congolese troops to help for a second time in 1917, and after this event they coordinated campaign plans.
[edit] Last years, 1917-1918
Despite continued efforts to capture or destroy Lettow-Vorbeck's army, the British failed to end the German resistance. First Major General Reginald Hoskins (of the KAR) took over, then another South African, Major General J. L. van Deventer, was assigned command. Van Deventer launched an offensive in July 1917. Lettow-Vorbeck's forces were divided into three groups and two of them managed to escape the offensive but the third, some 5,000 men under Hauptmann [captain] Theodor Tafel, was forced to surrender.
In 1917, the German High Command made an attempt to deliver much-needed supplies to Lettow-Vorbeck by air from Germany. The naval dirigible L.59 Zeppelin traveled over 6,400 km (4,000 miles) in 95 hours, but in the end the mission failed when the airship received an abort message over the radio from the German admiralty.[6]
The German forces were, however, still able to tie down large British forces and even defeat them on occasion. The Schutztruppe fought a pivotal and costly battle at Mahiwa in October 1917 where they lost 519 men killed, wounded or missing and the British 2,700 killed, wounded or missing.[7] After the news of the battle reached Germany, Lettow-Vorbeck was promoted to Generalmajor.[8]
Nevertheless, the British troops were closing in on the Germans and so on 23 November 1917, Lettow-Vorbeck crossed south into Portuguese Mozambique to gain recruits and supplies by capturing Portuguese garrisons. By leaving German East Africa he no longer had to defer to the civil authority of Governor Schnee. With his caravan of troops, carriers, wives and children he marched through Mozambique for the next nine months, avoiding capture but unable to gain much strength. Then the German Army crossed into Northern Rhodesia in August 1918. On 13 November 1918, two days after the Armistice was signed in Europe, the German Army took and burnt its last town, Kasama which had been evacuated by the British. The next day at the Chambezi River, Lettow-Vorbeck was given a telegram announcing the signing of the armistice, and agreed to a cease-fire: the 'Von Lettow-Vorbeck Memorial' marks the spot in present-day Zambia. As requested, he marched his undefeated army to Abercorn and formally surrendered there on 23 November 1918.[9]
[edit] Assessments
- In this campaign, disease killed or incapacitated 30 men for every man killed in battle (on the British side).[10]
- In one capacity or another, nearly four hundred thousand Allied soldiers, sailors, merchant marine crews, builders, bureaucrats, and support personnel participated in the East Africa campaign. They were assisted in the field by an additional six hundred thousand African bearers. The Allies employed nearly a million people in their fruitless pursuit of Lettow-Vorbeck and his handful of warriors.[11]
- The achievement of Lettow-Vorbeck deserves undying fame. He was cut off from home. He could entertain no hope of a decisive victory. His aim was purely to keep the British on the stretch as much as possible for as long as possible and to make them expend the largest possible resources in men, in shipping, and in supplies. By this yardstick he was successful.[12]
- In retrospect, the East African campaign came to look like a 'sideshow' of the First World War. As memory focused on the vast slaughter of the Western Front, the Indians, Africans and British who had borne the pains of that 'poisonous country' were all but forgotten. Even today, it is only possible to give approximations of the total fatalities. The British forces lost over ten thousand men, two thirds of them from disease. German losses were about 2,000. But the black people of East Africa suffered far more as carriers who died from disease, exhaustion and military action. No one bothered to record their fate. One modern estimate is 100,000 dead on all sides. Black civilians also suffered dreadfully. War devastated many localities, bringing hunger, disease and death in its train. Thousands of Africans perished in the outbreak of influenza that swept over their continent at the end of the war. To some Africans at least, long stigmatised as "savages" by Europeans, it was plain that there was often a savage behind the white man's mask of civilisation.[13]
- An unknown Belgian missionary in Congo wrote about the Congolese community as a society where "the father is at the front, the mother mills grains for the soldiers, while the children are carrying the food to the front." No Congolese colonial troops fought in Europe, but the people of the Congo paid also a high price in the Great War.
[edit] See also
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- Carrier Corps
- Jan Smuts
- Geoffrey Spicer-Simson
- History of Kenya - Colonial History
- History of Tanzania - First World War
- Paul Emil von Lettow-Vorbeck
- East African Campaign (World War II)
- Mimi and Toutou Go Forth: The Bizarre Battle for Lake Tanganyika (book)
- German East Africa
[edit] Footnotes and references
- ^ Keegan, John. The First World War, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999
- ^ Farwell, The Great War in Africa, 1914-1918, p. 178
- ^ Miller, Battle for the Bundu, p. 211
- ^ Foden, Giles. Mimi and Toutou Go Forth — The Bizarre Battle for Lake Tanganyika. New York: Penguin Books, 2004
- ^ Falls, Cyril. The Great War. New York: Capricorn Books. 1961, p. 253
- ^ Willmott, H.P. First World War. London: Dorling Kindersley, 2003, p. 192
- ^ Miller, Battle for the Bundu, p. 287
- ^ Hoyt, Guerilla, p. 175; the promotion was from Lt.Col. to Generalmajor, bypassing full Colonel. Generalmajor was equivalent to Brigadier in the British Army and Brigadier General in the U.S. Army
- ^ The Northern Rhodesia Journal online, Vol IV No 5 (1961), p. 440-442. “The Evacuation of Kasama in 1918.” Accessed 7 March 2007
- ^ Keegan, p. 300
- ^ Garfield, Brian. The Meinertzhagen Mystery. Washington, DC: Potomac Books. 2007, p. 274 ISBN 1597970417 (see Hodges, Geoffrey, p. 20-200)
- ^ Falls, p. 254
- ^ Reid, Fred. In Search of Willie Patterson: A Scottish Soldier in the Age of Imperialism. Dunfirmline: Cualann Press. 2002, p. 121
[edit] Bibliography and further reading
- Abbott, Peter. Armies in East Africa 1914-1918. Osprey, 2002 ISBN 1-841-76489-2
- Anderson, Ross. The Forgotten Front: The East African Campaign: 1914-1918. Tempus Publishing, Ltd. 2004 ISBN 0-752-42344-4
- Farwell, Byron, The Great War in Africa, 1914-1918. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. 1989 ISBN 0-393-30564
- Gardner, Brian. On to Kilimanjaro. Macrae Smith Company. 1963. ISBN 1-111-04620-4
- Hodges, Geoffrey, Editor. The Carrier Corps: The Story of the Military Labor Forces in the Conquest of German East Africa, 1914-1919. 2nd revised edition. Nairobi: Nairobi University Press. 2000
- Hoyt, Edwin P. The Germans who never lost. New York: Funk & Wagnalls. 1968, and London: Leslie Frewin. 1969. ISBN 0090964004. Note: This book is a study of Captain Max Looff and his crew of the light cruiser Königsberg
- Hoyt, Edwin P. Guerilla: Colonel von Lettow-Vorbeck and Germany's East African Empire. New York: MacMillan Publishing Co., Inc. 1981; and London: Collier MacMillan Publishers. 1981 ISBN 0-02-555210-4
- Miller, Charles. Battle for the Bundu: The First World War in East Africa. New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1974 ISBN 0-025-84930-1
- Mosley, Leonard. Duel for Kilimanjaro. New York: Ballantine Books, 1963
- Paice, Edward. Tip and Run: The Untold Tragedy of the Great War in Africa, Weidenfeld & Nicolson. 2007 ISBN 0-297-84709-0
- Rutherford, A. (ed.). Kaputala: The Diary of Arthur Beagle & The East Africa Campaign 1916-1918. Hand Over Fist Press (for Introduction [1]), 2001 ISBN 0-9540517-0-X
- Sibley, J.R. Tanganyikan Guerrilla. New York: Ballantine Books. 1973 ISBN 0345098013
- Strachan, Hew. The First World War in Africa. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2004 ISBN 0-199-25728-0
- Stevenson, William. The Ghosts of Africa. New York: Ballantine Books. 1981 ISBN 0-345-29793-8 (fictionalized account)
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