Covering
events in the German colonies of Togoland, the Cameroons, South-West Africa,
and East Africa, The First World War in Africa was originally a chapter of the
monumental 1200 page To Arms, the first volume of a planned trilogy on WWI. In
it Hew Strachan describes military operations in their broader context, rarely
delving into the details of individual battles. Medicine and logistics were
critical: most casualties were the result of malaria or other diseases, while
even company-sized units required the support of porters in enormous numbers.
Tens of thousands of Africans were employed as soldiers, but hundreds of
thousands or even millions as porters.
In
Togoland the only strategic goal was the wireless transmitter at Kamina, used
by the Germans to communicate with ships. In the Cameroons, Entente command was
“divided over three governments (including the Belgians), four
governors-general, six independent commanders-in-chief, and eight column
commanders” — communications between which often went via London or Paris. The
Germans were led by a civilian governor whose principal goal was to maintain
Germany as a colonial power and who never allowed heavy fighting to damage
settlements.
The
conquest of German South-West Africa was intimately tied up with the internal
politics of South Africa, where an abortive Afrikaner revolt delayed the
invasion. Operations were “characterized by a maximum of movement and a minimum
of casualties”, with the south Africans under Botha using the railways to build
up supplies for mounted flanking movements that induced German withdrawals. (In
some cases the Germans abandoned positions only days before attacking Boer
units would have run out of water.)
Half
the volume is devoted to German East Africa. German military resistance here
rested not just on the Schütztruppen, who grew to number over 3,000 Europeans
and 12,000 black askaris, but on the colony’s economic, financial and medical
resources. These were augmented by the arrival of two shiploads of supplies
from Germany and by the salvaged guns and crew of the cruiser Königsberg.
British, Indian, South African, and Belgian forces were in many ways less well
resourced and prepared.
After
early successes, the Germans were forced on the defensive by the arrival of
large South African forces. Allied forces advancing from the north, west, and
south faced logistical and medical challenges, with units reduced to a fraction
of their full strength and dependent on tenuous supply chains. The Germans
failed to use their interior communications to win any major battles, but kept
their forces intact in a fighting retreat that took them first into Portuguese
East Africa and then into Northern Rhodesia, where they surrendered on 25th
November 1918.
German
commander Lettow-Vorbeck is still an outstanding leader in this narrative, but
Strachan debunks some of the mythology surrounding him. He continued to seek
out a decisive battle and never tried to fight a genuine guerrilla war. His
goal of tying up Entente troops was largely ineffectual, since South African
troops were unlikely to have been deployed elsewhere. And neither in East
Africa or elsewhere did the Germans make any attempt to incite revolution among
the native peoples, even where they had popular support; both sides were
concerned to maintain the status of Europeans.
Oxford
University Press 2004
A
book review by Danny Yee
Available
at at Timbooktoo : 4494345
