The East Africa Campaign of WWI
It is a little-known fact that the longest-running campaign of WWI was the East Africa Campaign. It began at the moment war began, and continued until several weeks after the Armistice. It was a truly international effort, using Allied and Commonwealth troops from every corner of the world, and native African troops from almost every colony on the continent.
The Germans held two significant African colonies. German South West Africa, or modern-day Namibia, and German East Africa, known today as Tanzania. At the outbreak of war, these two territories posed a significant risk to Allied shipping in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, thanks to deep-water ports. As such, they had to go.
Initially the British lacked the manpower and organization to take care of this themselves, and South Africa, a newly minted British Dominion, was given the task, in the first instance, to deal with neighboring German South West Africa. The Germans did not mount much of a defense. They held to the view that victory would be achieved in Europe, after which they would get all of their colonies back, and everyone else’s too.
In East Africa, in the meanwhile, a gifted German commander by the name of Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck dug in, and began harassing the British across the border in what would later become Kenya. His objective was not so much to try and win a war, but to provoke the British into committing troops and resources into an unnecessary theater. He too maintained that the war would be won in Europe, and victory in Africa could be achieved simply by avoiding defeat.
As soon as South African troops had wrapped up the South West Africa Campaign, they arrived in East Africa in force. Led by the great South African General Jan Smuts, British forces, comprising mainly white South Africans, but also large numbers of Indians and native Africans, and much else besides, were amassed in Kenya and prepared to invade.
Now all that von Lettow-Vorbeck needed to do was stay on the run. Using a large force of African Askari, commanded by white German officers, he commenced a brilliant guerrilla campaign that devolved almost into a vast game of chess between him and General Jan Smuts. The Campaign ranged across the entirety of east/central Africa, through Kenya, the Tanganyika territory, Belgian Congo and Portuguese East Africa. It was, in many respects, a war of maneuver against the weather and physical conditions. To every one man killed in battle, thirty died of disease.
Von Lettow-Vorbeck surrendered to a British officer at the settlement of Abercorn in modern-day Zambia. The date was November 25, 1918, two weeks after the Armistice. Von-Lettow did not hear about the German surrender until then. He and General Jan Smuts later became friends, with each man professing a deep admiration for the other. It was a chivalrous age of warfare.