An Irishman’s Diary on Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck and Germany’s colonial army in Africa during the first World War

Many years ago, when our passenger ship Amra anchored in the harbour of Dar es Salaam after the voyage across the Arabian Sea from Mumbai, I was taken by the sight of the city's splendid waterfront. The long vista of white flat-roofed buildings gleamed under the tropic sun amidst palm trees and colourful shrubbery.

One building caught my attention, largely because it seemed out of character with the others. It looked like a church imported from Europe, with a tower, sloping red-tiled roofs and canopies. This indeed was a Lutheran church, established by German missionaries in 1898 when the city and area was under German colonial control. It was one of the few visible relicts of that era.

Later I worked with a man who at one time had been a Catholic lay missionary in Tanzania, Brendan Shortall. He had a remarkable linguistic ability and had developed his conversational German from talking to elderly veterans who had, many years before, served in the Schutztruppe, the German colonial army during the first World War.

Overwhelming odds

He told me about the exploits of the commander of the German forces, Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck, and his troops in holding out against overwhelming odds for the entire four years of the war. This was a minor theatre of war, in no way comparable to the apocalyptic conflict in Europe but it is a remarkable tale of African soldiery and astute generalship.

When the war broke out in 1914, the Germans found themselves isolated in their East African colony. Their forces consisted of some 200 German officers and 2,500 local African troops, called askaris. In addition there were some 2,500 volunteers from the German settler community. All were poorly equipped, many with outdated rifles and scattered about the vast territory of Tanganyika, as Tanzania was then known.

The British sent an expeditionary force of 8000 from Mumbai in British India and assaulted the key port and railway terminus of Tanga. It was badly planned and executed. Von Lettow-Vorbeck used his thousand-man force shrewdly, and after four days of fighting the British retreated to their transport ships, leaving behind modern rifles and ammunition as well as field guns and food supplies, items badly needed by the Germans.

The German commander then led his troops in a series of raids into the British colony of Kenya and on into Uganda, attacking forts and the strategic railway line from the port of Mombasa to the eastern shores of Lake Victoria.

The askaris in the Schutztruppe were well trained, lean and athletic men who could walk long distances over unforgiving terrain. Von Lettow-Vorbeck, fluent in Swahili, admired their powers of endurance and their courage in combat.

He appointed some as officers, saying: “We are all Africans here.”

By 1916 the British felt it was time to bring the marauding Germans to heel. Gen JC Smuts and a force of 45,000 men took to the field. In addition, colonial troops from Rhodesia, Uganda and, most significantly, the Belgian Congo advanced into German territory.

The Germans were forced to retreat before the superior armies and adopt a type of hit-and-run warfare.

In one encounter, von Lettow-Vorbeck, at a place called Mahiwa, defeated an army of 4,900 with a force of 1,500 troops, inflicting serious casualties on them.

However, the victors suffered casualties too that were not easy to replace and used up most of their ammunition.

Von Lettow-Vorbeck relied on the bushcraft of his highly mobile askaris to find the best routes across difficult terrain as they retreated further south. New regiments of askaris were formed but they could never match the power and resources of the British, who were using their own askaris, including the King’s African Rifles.

The Germans crossed into Mozambique, the territory of another enemy, Portugal. They overcame the garrison of a key fort there and were able to replenish their meagre supplies of food, guns, ammunition and medicines.

In September 1918 they crossed back into the German colony, turned west, again evading larger British forces and began raiding in Rhodesia. Von Lettow-Vorbeck was heading towards the Belgian territory of Katanga when he was told of the Armistice. His depleted forces surrendered and were well treated by the British.

Von Lettow-Vorbeck and his remaining German officers were repatriated. They were feted as heroes in a country bitter in defeat.

Some years later, Smuts invited him to London and they became lifelong friends.

After the second World War, during which both von Lettow-Vorbeck’s sons were killed and his house in Bremen demolished by Allied bombing, Smuts and other officers arranged for food parcels to be sent to their former opponent, who was in difficult straits.

In much better circumstances, in 1953, von Lettow-Vorbeck visited Tanganyika, then under British control, where he had warm and emotional meetings with the remaining members of his African soldiers.

In 1964, the year of his death at the age of 94, the then West German government provided backdated pay and pensions to the 350 surviving members of the Schutzgruppe.

Today, the distinctive church in Dar es Salaam is both a tourist attraction and the centre of a thriving religious community.