George H. Cassar |
Review of Edward Paice, World War I: The
African Front. New York: Pegasus Books, 2008. Pp. xxxix,
488. ISBN 978-1-933648-90-3. |
Britain's entry into the Great War ended any
chance that the conflict would be confined to Europe. In extending
the war to Africa, the British were seeking not to add Germany's
colonies to their own already vast Empire but to prevent it from using
its territories as wireless installations and ports to assist its
commerce raiders. Both sides assumed the war would be over by
Christmas, to be followed by a process of political horse trading in
which any lost colonies would be restored to the rightful owners. However, as
the conflict dragged on and assumed greater intensity than
originally anticipated, old imperial rivalries resurfaced and
colonial objectives were reappraised. The British fired their first
shots in the war when, together with the French, they invaded
Togoland, which fell on 26 August 1914. South African troops gained
control of German South West Africa in July 1915 and the British
completed the conquest of the Cameroons in February 1916. But
resistance in German East Africa (modern-day Tanganyika) did not end
till the local commander, Colonel Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck,
surrendered two weeks after the armistice in November 1918.
Operations in Africa bore no resemblance to the
trench warfare of the western front, where men fell by the tens,
sometimes hundreds, of thousands in a single battle, and progress
was literally measured in yards. There were few set battles in
Africa as small armies marched and fought over thousands of square
miles, facing dangers that went beyond those of the battlefield.
Tropical diseases, killer bees and wild animals, inhospitable
terrain, much of it unmapped and unexplored, and blistering heat
made even the most hardened soldiers prefer the trenches of France
to the trauma of East Africa.
The campaigns in Africa are replete with unusual
incidents and larger-than-life characters that would ordinarily have
aroused considerable interest, were it not for the copious
blood-letting on the western front. Indeed, even today many general
histories of the First World War ignore the conflict in Africa.
Edward Paice's new book on the African front is therefore a most
welcome addition to the literature of this neglected theater. Author
of several excellent books on Africa[1]
and fellow of the Royal Geographic Society, Paice has integrated an
impressive array of printed and archival sources to produce a
scholarly, detailed, superbly written, and balanced history of the
political dynamics and operations in East Africa. He explains in his
introduction that, even if the war in Africa was a side-show to the
main struggle in France, it exacted very high financial and human costs from the main antagonists.
The small German army conducted its African war
on the cheap, but the British Treasury spent an immense sum,
estimated at more than £70 million (£2.8 billion in today's money).
Add the contributions of India and South Africa and the bill
approaches or surpasses that of the Boer War. The 126,000 British
troops in the East African campaign sustained over 22,000
casualties, including 11,189 dead. Additionally, fatalities among
Britain's African combatants and carriers, as well as Indian and
South African troops, exceeded 100,000, not to mention many
thousands permanently disabled by disease or injury. The Germans
made no attempt to keep records, but the death rate among African
carriers and their families (who followed) alone was estimated to be
no less than 350,000. Well might a historian refer to the campaign
as "a war of attrition and extermination which [was] without
parallel in modern times" (3).
Quite apart from the casualties suffered by
combatants and their support units, this book emphasizes the tragic
consequences of the war for the indigenous population of East
Africa. Germany's brutal policy and its troops' wholesale thefts of
food and cattle left the population to starve. And, too, the
incessant drain on manpower made survival more difficult for those
left behind. Further, in certain districts, the absence of rainfall
forced the population to subsist on wild roots; in extreme cases, so
it was reported, there was resort to cannibalism. Excluding the
carriers conscripted for service, an estimated 300,000 civilians
perished in German-occupied territories. But the greatest calamity
of all occurred at the end of the war, when Spanish influenza spread
across much of Africa, bringing untold suffering and nearly wiping
out entire villages.
Both sides tried hard to harness the immense
manpower pool of their African colonies for military purposes. Paice
addresses the question why African soldiers fought and died for
foreign imperialists whose motives for war were a mystery to them.
For unskilled Africans, eager to escape the rigid confines of their
tribe, the military offered a most lucrative and prestigious form of
employment. Survivors returned comparatively wealthy, able to marry
well and enjoy respect. Such troops were cheap, plentiful,
courageous, accustomed to the oppressive climate, immune to fever,
and able to endure incredible hardships on minimal rations. Most
Africans enlisted, however, not as soldiers but as carriers. As
neither vehicles nor beasts of burden were of use in the bush, the
carriers became the bedrock of the transport system. The British
alone employed a million carriers. Raising such numbers, given the
inherent dangers involved and the unpleasant nature of the work,
necessitated impressments, directly or indirectly. Carriers were
seldom paid.
Paice's intricate narrative focuses on other
non-military aspects of the campaign, for example, the attitude of
the respective belligerents to the war in Africa. Britain, apart
from wanting to neutralize the threat to its shipping lanes,
regarded the conflict as a nuisance, a remote side-show which
diverted funds, men, and material from the vital front in Europe.
The other powers placed more significance on the campaign. South
Africa was eager to expand its territory and the Belgian and
Portuguese governments were fighting to retain their colonies. The
Kaiser and his advisers believed that the presence of undefeated
German troops on African soil when peace negotiations began would
facilitate the immediate return of all former colonies to Germany.
Since the British blockade had cut off German aid, they risked
sending two supply ships, which succeeded in reaching the colony.
Later they tried unsuccessfully to supply Lettow-Vorbeck by air. In
a record-breaking flight of 4,340 miles in ninety-five hours, a
Zeppelin meandered from Bulgaria to Egypt before it was forced to
turn back without reaching its destination--Paice devotes a brief
chapter to this amazing episode.
After Turkey joined the war and proclaimed a
jihad against the Entente, the Germans, desperate to relieve
pressure on their forces in German East Africa, dispatched agents to
encourage the Muslim population to rise against the British.[2]
A widespread Muslim holy war in East Africa would threaten Britain's
security in Egypt and its control of the Suez Canal, not to mention
the risk of mutiny among the many African and Indian soldiers in the
British army. Rebellions in British Somaliland and among the Senussi
in the Western Desert were contained, but the greatest threat came
from Abyssinia where the new, seventeen-year-old emperor, Lij Iyasu,
announced that he was converting to Islam. There was considerable
anxiety in British governing circles that the emperor, who could
raise an army of at least 100,000 men, might declare a jihad, sweep
into the Sudan, and join hands with Lettow-Vorbeck. But a rebellion
deposed Lij Iyasu and his successor, a Christian, adopted a
neutralist policy. In the end Germany's efforts to unleash a
far-reaching jihad in East Africa failed because its agents lacked
an understanding of Islamic culture and religion which, like
Christianity, was divided into sects with outlooks as different as
those of disparate groups anywhere.
Internal politics are too often overlooked or
given short shrift in studies of military campaigns. Paice,
however, examines the subject thoroughly, particularly from the
perspective of two of Britain's allies. The leaders of South Africa,
Louis Botha and his austere deputy General Jan Smuts, once bitter
enemies of Britain, had in time become its staunchest adherents.
Their decision to actively support Britain in August 1914 was made
for what they believed to be the greater good of South Africa. It
was a brave move in view of traditional anti-British sentiment among
the Afrikaans-speaking population--and the fallout required Smuts
to suppress a rebellion led by his former colleagues and friends.
Intensely hated for having the blood of Afrikaner heroes on his
hands, he was the object of almost daily death threats. He gladly
left South Africa to assume command of field operations in East
Africa early in 1916.
Portugal's keenness to participate in the war was
bound up with party and political interests. The republic would have
preferred to remain neutral but feared losing its African colonies,
which somewhat palliated a deep-seated nostalgic yearning for past
glories. In the pre-war years, acrimony and factionalism had marked
Portuguese politics and led to frequent changes of government. The
onset of war exacerbated the country's instability and parlous
financial condition. Portugal's predicament hampered proactive
campaigning by its forces in eastern and southern Africa.
Paice points out that propaganda played a role in
the African conflict, just as it did in the European theater.
Britain's position regarding Germany's colonies hardened after the
first two years of the war. Prime Minister Lloyd George made it
clear that his government had no intention of ever returning
captured colonies to Germany. By firing the first shot across the
bow, the British initiated the propaganda war. Seizing the
initiative, they questioned Germany's fitness to rule and poured
scorn on its vicious pre-war conduct, accusing it of using the
natives as pools of slave labor and committing what amounted to
genocide. As might be expected, the charges were exaggerated but
there was undeniable proof that in suppressing revolts in German
South West Africa between 1904 and 1906 and in German East Africa in
1907, scorched-earth tactics had caused the death of some
350,000 natives. Thrown on the defensive, the Germans insisted that
since then they had made many beneficial reforms and that on the
whole their rule was hard but fair. The British gained the upper
hand in the war of words for, while their own record was far from
spotless, they had not been nearly as repressive and cruel as the
Germans.
The greater part of the book is devoted to a
compelling and in many ways unique account of military operations in
East Africa. Paice clearly explains the tactics used in engagements
and the changing strategy of the campaign, examining the activities
of all the belligerents, not only the British and Germans. He
further describes how strained relations between British army
leaders and their Belgian and Portuguese counterparts often severely
impeded military cooperation. He relates tales of extraordinary
courage and adventure which inspired a number of novels and movies.[3]
The British navy had no trouble gaining control
of the waters along the eastern coast of Africa and within German
East Africa, culminating in their destruction of the cruiser
Königsberg in the Rufiji delta. It was a different matter on
land, where the British and their allies faced huge challenges, some
self-made, others inevitable in a torrid area twice the size of
Germany. Distrust of Africans initially led the British to exclude
them from combat in favor of Indian troops, who were, it turned out,
under-equipped and ill-suited for the war being waged. Oddly enough,
it was Smuts who first started to use black troops in field
operations--with much improved results. British and South African
commanders, slow to adapt to bush warfare tactics, had to cope with
imperfect communications, tropical diseases which sometimes halved
their available forces, and vegetation so dense that large
opposing units often passed as little as half a mile apart, each unaware of the
other's presence.
To make matters worse, coordination plans between
the allies were rarely carried out successfully. Political wrangling
marked every phase of Anglo-Belgian cooperation. The Belgians
believed the British wanted to deprive them of conquered enemy
territory, if not dispossess them of their colonies at the end of
the war. The British, for their part, suspected the Belgians might
use any captured German territory as a bargaining chip in secret
negotiations with Berlin for a separate peace. Belgian involvement
in the campaign ceased at the end of 1917, as the remnants of the
German forces trudged closer to Portuguese East Africa.
To the Portuguese government, the war in Africa
was more important than the one in Europe. But limited financial
resources, unpopularity of the conflict at home, and fear that a
defeat in the colonies would have serious political repercussions
militated against its forces fighting the Germans more actively. The
British held the Portuguese army in contempt, viewing it as more a
liability than an asset. Had the Portuguese cooperated in British
plans to encircle the German army instead of avoiding
confrontations, the war might have ended in 1916.
What might have been does not detract from the
heroics of Lettow-Vorbeck, who commanded the Schutztruppe
(local militia comprising German officers and NCOs and African
levies called askaris). The story of this genius of irregular
warfare is well known. Waging a four-year war against overwhelming
odds, he never lost a major engagement to the British. His early
successes included a series of raids into British East Africa (now
Kenya); he repelled an attack at Tanga though outnumbered eight to
one, and won a victory over the British at Jassin. With the arrival
of large South African forces, he was thrown on the defensive,
relying mostly on guerrilla tactics but, under the right
circumstances, willing to face his adversaries head on. South
African commanders repeatedly attempted to surround Lettow-Vorbeck's
main force or compel him to fight a decisive battle, but each time
he eluded them. His objective in prolonging the campaign was to tie
down large Allied forces which might otherwise be used against
Germany on the western front. Though the British kept pouring in more
troops and captured all the major ports and towns in German East
Africa, the war dragged on as Lettow-Vorbeck marched his army the
length and breadth of the country before invading Mozambique and
Northern Rhodesia. To avoid delays, he left his wounded behind to be
tended by the British and released his own prisoners if they gave
their word not to rejoin the war. All the while, he kept his army
intact and one step ahead of the Allies. His askaris endured
unimaginable hardships but remained at his side, apparently less out
of loyalty than fear--deserters were shot or hanged. In the end, his
forces were reduced to a band of several thousand nomads, who remained in the field by seizing any supplies they could lay their
hands on.
Paice has added significantly to our
understanding of how a small German army (never exceeding 15,000 men) evaded the grasp of much larger British forces.
Lettow-Vorbeck was more than tough, courageous, and resourceful. An
expert in bush warfare, he had participated in and studied closely
Germany's campaign to crush the native uprising in German South West
Africa, becoming well versed in mobile warfare and its inherent
logistical and medical challenges. He relied on his interior lines
and knowledge of the country to move quickly, taking full advantage
of the vast spaces in which to retreat, as well as the rainy season,
which forced his pursuers to halt and allowed him to plan his next
moves.
I have only two minor complaints about this book.
First the maps could have been clearer and more detailed: the print
is sometimes too small and some locations referred to in the text
are absent from the maps. Second, the title is misleading: the
author's entire focus is East Africa and he makes no pretense of
covering the other fronts. It would, however, be ungracious to close
on a critical note. This is a first-rate study by a scholar who has
done justice to the nature of the war and suffering in East Africa.
It is difficult to imagine anyone adding significantly to Paice's
account in a book that will surely interest students of the Great
War and Africa.
Eastern Michigan University
gcassar@emich.edu
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[1] See, e.g., Lost Lion of Empire: The Life of
Cape-to-Cairo Grogan (London: HarperCollins, 2001), and
Tip and Run: The Untold Tragedy of the Great War in Africa
(London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2007).
[2] The story here, which Paice relates in detail,
is ignored by Byron Farwell, The Great War in Africa,
1914-1918 (NY: Norton, 1986), and Hew Strachan, The First
World War in Africa (NY: Oxford U Pr, 2004), two of the
better known general studies of the war.
[3] The best known being C.S. Forester's The
African Queen (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1935), later a
film directed by John Huston (United Artists 1951).
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