East African Campaign (1914-918) Part II: War Comes to East Africa

Neutral Hopes

War among the whites was not supposed to happen in Sub-Saharan Africa. The Scramble for Africa and other colonial ventures had been morally justified on the idea of transmitting European civilization to the unenlightened (“White Man’s Burden”). The whites had to set an example by showing they had moved beyond fighting each other. There were another dimension to this ideological reasoning. One was that Europe itself was hoping never to repeat the widespread conflagration of earlier coalition wars, the Napoleonic Wars serving as the most recent example. Europeans had managed to avoid any such conflicts for about a century. What wars there were between the nations included ones that were quick (Franco-Prussian War) or limited in its scope (Crimean War). Thus Europe hoped to prevent any escalation of competing imperial interests into a repeat of earlier disasters.

By not allowing blacks to see white kill white, the Europeans in the colonies were primarily serving their own self-interests. After all, they were perfectly willing to send blacks to kill other blacks. What they realized was that if the supposedly superior whites began to kill each other, it would undermine the image they had cultivated for themselves. Even worse, such a war in the colonies might require the use of black troops against whites, further undermining the hierarchy of race. Thus far the only inter-white conflicts in Africa had occurred between the British Empire and the Boers in Southern Africa, and these were not between the imperial powers, but between just one of them and a defiant group of colonists. It was furthermore restricted to only one part of Africa. World War I would be the true violation of colonial neutrality.

An agreement of neutrality within the colonies was expressed in the Congo Act of 1885. This act, agreed upon at the 1884-1885 Berlin Conference, stipulated that in the case of any war between the colonial powers within Europe, the colonies themselves would stay neutral. This would protect European hegemony and power in Africa and allow it to continue in the aftermath. Many colonial officials and settlers clung to the hope that the Congo Act would avert war in Africa, but others saw it in a more realistic light. One stated that it remained effective insofar that it had not yet been tested. Indeed, as war clouds loomed, many in East Africa were planning to violate the Congo Act or at least take preparations such an eventuality. One was a Prussian officer, Lieutenant Colonel Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck, who set foot on East Africa in at the end of 1913.

Lettow-Vorbeck: Guerrilla or Bush-Fighter?

Lettow-Vorbeck’s task was to head East Africa’s Schutztruppe. He had about 5,000 men under his command, roughly half of them German and the other half Askari.  During his initial tour, he concluded that preparations had to be made for a war. While East Africa would be a sideshow, he believed he could pin down British resources and circumvent their use against the homeland. He militarized the police force to extend his force to a still-small but much larger 14,000 men, 3,000 German and 11,000 Askari. Such a small force called for new tactics, and he took a page out of the natives’ book.

Lettow-Vorbeck was liberal-minded when it came to other cultures. This was first evidenced in China in 1900-1901. He was part of a force tasked with relieving the besieged defenders of the embassies in Beijing during the Boxer Rebellion. Though he arrived too late for the main show, he still saw some limited action, but more importantly he displayed a quality that would serve him well in Africa. He exhibited a curiosity with foreign cultures, eager to learn how they functioned, and along with that an ability to build friendly, more equitable relations with non-whites. He helped put down the rebellions in German South-West Africa, though it is difficult to say how he felt about the extreme counter-measures used to repress the natives. What is known is that, like many other German officers, he was impressed by the enemy’s fighting style and kept notes.

Touring German East Africa, Lettow-Vorbeck formed a strategy in his mind. He concluded that with his small force a defensive posture was futile. German East Africa was roughly as large as Germany itself and there were too many avenues for invasion. Instead he believed an aggressive campaign would work, provided that the outnumbered Schutztruppe did not disperse itself too far, kept on the move, and hit the enemy at “sensitive” points. Hitting sensitive points would draw the enemy to pursue him, preventing them from solidifying a conquest of the colony. In short, Lettow-Vorbeck sought a hit-and-run war. In preparation he had caches of food and other supplies set up all across the colony. This would enable him to move back and forth across the colony without losing steam, provided he had an extensive carrier system.

Carrier systems, or porterage, saw columns of African laborers carry the goods and supplies of whoever was employing them. The lack of good roads for draft animals required these long lines of people and the work was often miserable. It had first been used within the Arab slave trade, when abducted peoples would be forced to carry other goods along with themselves. While blasting the slave trade, Europeans found it necessary to adopt the carrier system. Many strove to make it more humane while others treated the porters poorly. As war loomed, there were still few railroads, or roads in general, to use motorized vehicles. Draft animals had their use, but were susceptible to a myriad of local diseases, mainly from the tsetse flies. Human labor was still required for logistics, especially in a war of movement. With Prussian efficiency, the Germans came up with an altered system of porterage. Hundreds of thousands of Africans were employed in this system. Many were temporary carriers who only had to transport supplies up to a certain distance. They would then pass off supplies to other temporary carriers or to ones permanently attached to Schutztruppe forces. This system promised to prevent overwork, but faced serious strain as the war went on and supply lines stretched.

Lettow-Vorbeck has been labeled a guerrilla fighter by many writers. They see his war of movement as a precursor to future Cold War conflicts across tropical regions. Edwin Hoyt, author of Guerrilla, went so far as to write that he was “the most successful guerrilla leader in world history, and that his record has never even been approached by any others, in terms of impact on his enemies, in terms of survival in the field with no sources of supply for months on end, in terms of managing a racially mixed fighting force with enormous skill, in terms of courage its and heroism, and finally in terms of superb generalship that kept his enemies almost constantly guessing”. High praise indeed, but not quite accurate.

While it is true that Lettow-Vorbeck’s style of fighting was unconventional by European standards, it cannot accurately be labeled as guerrilla-fighting. In fact, he had merely merged two conventional forms together. It was traditional German Bewegungskrieg (“War of Movement”) mixed in with African bush-fighting. Bewegungskrieg was Prussia’s answer to its specific strategic location in Europe. Prussia was usually surrounded by many hostile enemies, and did not have the manpower and resources to conduct a protracted war. Its leader Frederick the Great had come up with a strategy of swift movement. His army would consolidate and strike swift and hard, aiming for a knockout blow and quick victory. This kept Prussia alive during the Seven Years’ War (Bewegungskrieg explains how in World War II Germany scored a smashing victory in its first battle with each foe). However, a decisive early blow would be impossible in East Africa. Bewegungskrieg would be effective in a limited tactical but not strategic sense. The Schutztruppe would have to keep the fight going and hope for a favorable conclusion in Europe. This was where the conventional African form of bush-fighting would come in handy. Filled with dense jungles, stretches of infertile land, and stretches of hills, and also still undeveloped by European standards, East Africa was not conducive to massive armies and their required logistics. Already stuck with a small army, Lettow-Vorbeck had no trouble adjusting. He would also adopt the hit-and-run style of bush fighting, and his majority-native force would prove excellent for this. Just as the Herero, Nama, and Maji-Maji participants had dogged German colonial troops, the Schutztruppe would dog the Entente forces.

Lettow-Vorbeck's army also did not follow many of the requirements of a guerrilla force. His men stayed in uniform and followed a traditional military structure. They did not blend in with the civilian population. They did live off the land with aid from the civilian populace, but the local African peoples were not politicized, at least not in the name of the German Empire. They supported the Schutztruppe for a myriad of reasons ranging from a dislike of one of the Entente powers to the threat of force. In fact, at several points the Schutztruppe found itself fighting natives who were independent of the Entente forces. Many participants in the Maji-Maji Rebellion were still too subdued and unarmed to defy the Germans, but those that had managed to hold onto an arsenal took action. The Wahehe, survivors of the Rebellion, harassed German columns when they passed through their land. Echoing earlier reprisals, Germans hung any Wahehe men who fell into their hands. Thus the Schutztruppe was still a colonial force of the occupiers rather than a guerrilla resistance.

Neutrality Ends

If not for the war, Heinrich Schnee might have been remembered as one of the better colonial administrators. Instead his arguments with Lettow-Vorbeck made him unpopular with military history enthusiasts. His later association with the Nazi party would also soil his reputation.

War finally broke out in Europe. On June 28, 1914, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie were assassinated in the Bosnian city of Sarajevo by the Serbian Black Hand. When the Serbian government refused to cooperate in punishing the culprits, the Austro-Hungarian Empire declared war. What follows next is a simplification of what was really the last steps of a mind-boggingly complex series of events. Russia rushed to Serbia’s aid and Germany to Austria-Hungary’s. France fulfilled a treaty obligation by joining Russia, and Britain joined this alliance as well when Germany violated Belgian neutrality. By August the greatest war yet seen by man had begun. In German East Africa Schnee ordered that no provocative moves be made by the colony’s military. He was not the only one who sought the Congo Act’s promised neutrality. To the north in British East Africa, many settlers scoffed at the notion of fighting in Africa to win a war back in Europe. Aside from not wanting to risk their lives, there were economic concerns. A few months of service away from their settlements could end with their untended farms turning to nothing. Yet other settlers were eager to prove their bravery and patriotism and signed up.

There were too many patriots and opportunists for neutrality to succeed. Some of the first shots of the war were fired in German Togoland, which was rapidly conquered by an Anglo-French force. On August 4, 1914, the day war was officially declared, the British made their first moves on East Africa and seized several small outposts. The first major action occurred on August 8, when the British cruisers HMS Astraea and HMS Pegasus steamed towards Dar es Salaam and bombarded the port. They demanded that all ports be declared open cities. Schnee, still hoping to avoid a devastating war in his colony, acquiesced and Lettow-Vorbeck grudgingly withdrew his forces from Dar es Salaam. Though forced to give up defending the port, he made his first audacious move. He crossed the northern border and dispersed the tiny force guarding the town of Taveta (in present-day Kenya). His force became the first and only German one to take British soil in the entire war. He followed up his initial success by digging deeper along the Uganda railway into British East Africa.

His first campaign was soon beset by difficulties. He noted that the “supply of a single company in the conditions” or East Africa “required about the same consideration as would a division in Germany”. Coming to the rescue was Major General Kurt Wahle, who just so happened to be on a vacation visiting his son when the war started. Despite far outranking Lettow-Vorbeck, he quickly offered his services as a subordinate and did an effective job organizing the Schutztruppe’s logistics. As for the conclusion of the campaign, the Schutztruppe found the King’s African Rifles, consisting mostly of native black troops, to be a match for them. While the Schutztruppe and KAR traded victories in small skirmishes, the British took further measures to deter this invasion. They put heavy armor on two of their trains and had them run up and down the railway to ward off raids. A force of 4,000 Indians under Brigadier General James Marshall Steward landed at Mombasa. Lettow-Vorbeck now found himself outnumbered two to one.

Lake Victoria also saw action. It began with the British steamer Winifred and the German tugboat Muansa. The Muansa threatened the British lake port of Kisumu and Winifred steamed out to confront her. The following firefight was intense and Muansa inflicted heavy casualties on the Winifred’s deck with its machine guns. The crew of the Winifred struggled to get their best weapon, a Hotchkiss gun, in a good clear position to blast the Muansa. A railing blocked the barrel, so they hastily erected a mount so they could fire over it. The mount did not stand up when the gun fired and it fell apart. Then the gunners painstakingly sawed off part of the railing. By the time they did so the Muansa had retreated. The following day a force of KAR troops and East African Mounted Rifles landed to take out a nearby Schutztruppe post. The Schutztruppe Askaris, despite their surprise, put up an effective fire. As with Lettow-Vorbeck’s raid into British East Africa, the native KAR troops proved their worth. Sighting the smoke issued by the Schutztruppe’s outdated rifles, they were able inflict heavy casualties, forcing a withdrawal and gaining a victory. Despite their effective performance on all fronts, the black soldiers in the KAR would be disregarded for much of the East African campaign by prejudiced officers. By refusing to acknowledge the benefits of employing native soldiers, these officers would hamstring their own efforts.

The Konigsberg’s Run Begins

What garnered the most attention at the time was the beginning of the 15-month game of cat and mouse with the German light cruiser SMS Konigsberg. The Konigsberg, completed and launched in 1905, was one of the prizes of the expanding Germany navy. It had escorted the Kaiser’s yacht on several occasions. It had been sent on a two-year tour of the Indian Ocean in an effort to bolster German colonial prestige as well as to assure the colonists that they had naval protection, though against the natives and Arab pirates rather than the British Royal Navy. Currently north of German East Africa, it received word of the outbreak of war on August 5. Its captain was Maximilien Looff. Looff had initially enjoyed his tour, often going ashore to hunt big game. But as tensions escalated in Europe, he found himself barraged by instructions on where to acquire more coal or food as well as thinly veiled attempts by British Admiral King-Hall to gather intelligence on him and his ship. He struggled to learn where all potential enemy ships were, and recognized that he was surrounded by enemies.

Maximilien Looff, commander of the Konigsberg. He would receive praise for his dogged
performance, but would also spend much of the war butting heads with Lettow-Vorbeck.

These enemies consisted mostly of British ships, with a couple French ships around Madagascar. Admiral King-Hall hoped to intercept German merchant ships to prevent the possibility of their conversion into armed merchant cruisers. He decided that the island of Zanzibar, positioned off of German East Africa, would serve as the ideal central base for any future naval operations. The Konigsberg was outnumbered, but was more up-to-date than most of the British ships. Looff hoped that his ship and his crew would outperform the enemy and make up the numbers game. His first major action predated the start of the war, when in late July three British ships tried to trap him inside Dar es Salaam’s harbor. His crew outran them and escaped to the open seas.

With war verified, the Konigsberg set out for German East Africa. Loof radioed all German merchant ships to get to the safety of ports in German East Africa as he guided his ship south. The main concern was the coal supply. With all nearby ports and fueling stations under hostile or neutral control, the Konigsberg needed to borrow from other German ships or raid for fuel supplies. If it did not get coal, it would not reach German territory. The Konigsberg gave chase to the first non-German merchant ship it saw, only to learn that it had expended precious coal to run down an German merchant ship. The two ships had both mistaken each other for the British and acted accordingly. Looff replenished his coal by taking some from every German ship he encountered. The Konigsberg’s hunger for coal was still not satisfied when it effortlessly captured the British City of Winchester. The coal aboard the British steamer was of inferior quality and one of Looff’s subordinates argued that it would be safer to not use it at all. Bombs were planted and detonated on the City of Winchester, sinking it. Having just made its first kill, the Konigsberg high-tailed it east to escape Rear Admiral Pierce’s East India Squadron. Its coal reserves were finally saved by a rendezvous with the steamer Somali. The two ships had spent the last several weeks playing cat-and-mouse with the British until they could finally meet, and in the nick of time. The Somali bore coal which gave the Konigsberg the life it needed to get to the defense of German East Africa.

But the Konigsberg’s woes were not over by a long shot. The British had already bombarded Dar es Salaam, destroyed some of its facilities, and gotten Schnee’s pledge of neutrality. The original destination of the Konigsberg was no longer safe. Needing time and space to fix up his ship, Looff decided to head for the Rufiji Delta. This was a wise move. The Germans were the only Europeans to have thoroughly studied and charted the Rufiji’s tangle of waterways. He could thus easily elude the British Navy should it try to follow him into the delta. While refueling and refitting inside the delta, Looff learned that a British ship, the HMS Pegasus, was undergoing repairs in the port at Zanzibar. The Pegasus had earlier tried to force the German port of Bagamoyo to accept neutrality. When the port had refused the Pegasus fired on its customs house. Now it was in port for engine repairs.

The Konigsberg emerged from the delta and steamed for Zanzibar. On September 20 it surprised the Pegasus and within twenty minutes had turned it into a cauldron of smoke and fire. The Pegasus, under Captain John Ingles, put up a valiant effort, but its fire waned as its guns were taken out. The Konigsberg’s Radio Officer Niemeyer was able to jam enemy communications, ensuring that no aid came, save for a tugboat, the Helmuth, which was unfortunate enough to appear during the battle. It was quickly sunk. The victorious Konigsberg departed, dropping barrels overboard to give the illusion of mine-laying and deter any pursuit. The Pegasus clung to life, it engines still functional enough for it to move. Its crew tried to get it to shallow water and beach it for repairs, but could not make it in time. At 1430 hours, the cruiser capsized and sank. British casualties numbered 39 killed and 55 wounded to none for the Germans.

By the end of September 1914, both Lettow-Vorbeck and Looff had shown defiance in the face of overwhelming odds, but their trials had just begun.

Next Month: The Sting of Defeat! Britain launches a major offensive on German East Africa. Little do they suspect how formidable the Schutztruppe, as well as the native environment, can be.

Sources

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Gaudi, Robert. African Kaiser: General Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck and the Great War in Africa, 1914-1918. New York: Caliber, 2017.
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