New Zealanders occupy Samoa

On 30 August 1914 in Apia, the capital of German Samoa, the German flag was lowered and the British flag raised in its place. The day before, troops of New Zealand had landed on the island of Upolu. The Germans offered no resistance. Samoa was the second German colony lost in this war, after Togoland, and for New Zealand it was the first military operation of the First World War.

A request from London

A few days after the outbreak of war the British government asked New Zealand to seize the German colony in Samoa. The main concern was the radio station at Apia, which could serve German warships in the Pacific, including the squadron of Admiral Maximilian von Spee. The New Zealanders quickly formed a force of more than 1,400 men, named the Samoa Advance Party of the New Zealand Expeditionary Force. It was commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Robert Logan.

On 15 August two transports sailed from Wellington. Since the German squadron might be somewhere in the Pacific, the convoy sailed under strong escort. At New Caledonia it was joined by the Australian battlecruiser HMAS Australia, the cruiser HMAS Melbourne and the French armoured cruiser Montcalm.

Without a single shot

On 29 August the ships arrived off Apia. The Governor of Samoa, Erich Schultz(-Ewerth), had no forces capable of defending the island and did not want to expose the inhabitants to bloodshed. He decided not to resist. Before the New Zealanders arrived the Germans disabled the radio station. The soldiers landed unopposed and occupied the most important buildings.

The next day, 30 August, a ceremony was held in front of the courthouse in Apia. Logan read a proclamation by which the government of New Zealand, in the name of King George V, took over the occupation of all German territories in the Samoan islands. Governor Schultz and several senior officials were taken to New Zealand. They were interned on Motuihe Island near Auckland, in a camp for high-ranking prisoners.

What followed

On 14 September Admiral von Spee’s armoured cruisers, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, appeared off Apia. The admiral decided, however, that an attack on the port made no sense and sailed away without a fight. The New Zealand occupation continued peacefully until the end of the war.

The most tragic chapter came in November 1918. The ship Talune brought Spanish flu from Auckland to Samoa. The New Zealand administration did not impose a quarantine and failed to cope with the epidemic. According to various estimates between 7,500 and 8,500 people died, about a fifth of the islands’ population. Meanwhile in neighbouring American Samoa, which closed its ports to arrivals, no one died of the flu. The tragedy long weighed on relations between Samoans and New Zealanders. In 2002 the Prime Minister of New Zealand apologised to the Samoans for the wrongs committed during colonial rule.

After the war the League of Nations entrusted Samoa to New Zealand as a mandated territory. The islands regained their independence in 1962, the first of the Polynesian states to do so.