Askaris

From Great North Road

By Steve Stephenson

The story of German East Africa (comprising present-day Rwanda, Burundi and continental Tanzania) was very different, thanks to the quality of the local askaris (European-trained African troops) and to the military genius of the German commander Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck. A landing of troops from India was repelled with ignominy by the Germans in November 1914. A massive invasion from the north, comprising British and colonial troops under the South African J.C. Smuts, was launched in February 1916, to be coordinated with a Belgian invasion from the west and with an independent British one from Nyasaland in the south; but though Dar es Salaam fell to Smuts and Tabora to the Belgians in September, Lettow-Vorbeck maintained his small force in being. In November 1917 he began to move southward across Portuguese East Africa (Germany had declared war on Portugal in March 1916) and, after crossing back into German East Africa in September 1918, he turned southwestward to invade Northern Rhodesia in October. Having taken Kasama on November 9 (two days before the German armistice in Europe), he finally surrendered on November 25. With some 12,000 men at the outset, he eventually tied down 130,000 or more Allied troops.