Germans attack Angola

A British chronology of the war records under 26 October 1914 a German attack on Angola, a colony of Portugal, which was not yet taking part in the war. The entry covers a series of events from the second half of October. According to Portuguese research, the German authorities in German South West Africa decided on 25 October to respond by force to the deaths of their men at Naulila. The first blow, against the post at Cuangar, came only on 31 October, however.

Neutral, but not impartial

Portugal did not enter the war in 1914, but it had been bound for centuries by an alliance with Britain. On 7 August 1914 the government declared in parliament that the country would honour its alliance obligations, but at London’s request it proclaimed neither neutrality nor entry into the war. Fearing for its African colonies, Lisbon sent reinforcements to them. At the beginning of October an expedition under Lieutenant Colonel José Augusto Alves Roçadas arrived at Moçâmedes in southern Angola to guard the border with the German colony.

The Germans in South West Africa were in an increasingly difficult position. Since September Union of South Africa troops had been landing on their coast, and the British fleet had cut the colony off from the world. Angola, through which food could be brought in and mail sent out, became very important to them.

The Naulila incident

In mid-October a small group led by Dr Hans Schultze-Jena, administrator of the Outjo district, set out from German South West Africa for Angola. He was accompanied by two officers, Lieutenants Alexander Lösch and Kurt Röder, a Danish interpreter, Carl Jensen, and African servants. The Germans crossed the border river, the Kunene, without notifying the Portuguese authorities. They wanted, they claimed, to discuss food supplies and the forwarding of mail.

A Portuguese patrol under Second Lieutenant Manuel Álvares Sereno stopped them and escorted them to the fort at Naulila. On 19 October (some sources give 18 October) a dispute broke out there. The Germans refused to lay down their arms and tried to ride away. According to later findings, Schultze-Jena aimed his carbine at the unarmed Sereno, and Lösch reached for his pistol. The Portuguese opened fire. Schultze-Jena and both officers were killed, and Jensen was taken prisoner.

Retaliation

In Germany and in the colony the incident was regarded as murder, and by the Portuguese as self-defence. The German authorities in Windhoek decided to respond by force. On 31 October a German detachment with machine guns surprised the Portuguese post at Cuangar on the Okavango river. Two officers, a sergeant, several European and African soldiers and a trader were killed. Sources differ on the number of dead, and also on who commanded the attackers. In Portugal the event went down in history as the “Cuangar massacre”. Other posts on the Okavango, among them Bunja, Sambio and Dirico, were also attacked or abandoned by their garrisons.

That was not the end. On 18 December 1914 several hundred Germans under Major Victor Franke (according to some sources as many as 2,000) attacked Alves Roçadas’s positions at Naulila and forced the Portuguese to retreat north. The two states were still not formally at war. Germany declared war on Portugal only in March 1916. In 1928 an international arbitration tribunal in Lausanne ruled that the Portuguese had acted in self-defence at Naulila, that the German reprisals had been unjustified, and awarded Portugal compensation.