German South West Africa in the First World War

German South West Africa, today Namibia, was a vast colony on the Atlantic coast of Africa, largely desert, bordering on the Union of South Africa. In the war it was conquered by the troops of that British dominion, led by two former Boer generals, Prime Minister Louis Botha and Defence Minister Jan Smuts. The invasion was delayed by a rebellion of some of the Boers, but once under way it took less than a year and ended with the surrender of the German forces at Khorab on 9 July 1915. It was the largest German colony conquered in its entirety up to that time.

The colony before the war

The German colony began at the bay of Angra Pequena, where in 1883 an agent of the Bremen merchant Adolf Lüderitz bought the first land and raised the German flag. From then on the bay was called Lüderitzbucht. In 1908 diamonds were found in the nearby dunes. Railways ran from the ports of Swakopmund and Lüderitzbucht inland, to the capital, Windhoek, and to the mines in the north. Before the war, however, the colony had no rail link with its neighbours and lived in isolation.

The colony lay in the shadow of the war of 1904–1908. After the Herero rising of January 1904 and the later rising of the Nama, German troops drove the Herero into the desert and shut the survivors in camps. An estimated 40,000 to 80,000 Herero and about 10,000 Nama died, and in 2015 the German government acknowledged these events as genocide. In 1914 the colony was thus home to German settlers on confiscated land and to decimated African peoples. According to the South African official history, the Germans had here a homogeneous, well-trained force of some 10,000 men in all.

Ports, wireless and rebellion (1914)

What mattered most to London were the colony’s ports and its wireless stations, above all the great station near Windhoek, which the German cruiser squadron could use. On 10 August 1914 the Union government undertook to send an expedition to seize them. News of a German detachment that had crossed the border near Nakob helped to win public opinion over to the war. On 14 September the armed merchant cruiser Armadale Castle destroyed the wireless station at Swakopmund with gunfire, and on 19 September Union troops landed unopposed at Lüderitzbucht. On 26 September, however, the Germans routed a Union detachment at Sandfontein, just across the border.

Many Afrikaners did not want to fight for the Empire against the Germans, who had sympathised with them in the Boer War. On 15 September General Christiaan Beyers resigned, and General Koos de la Rey was killed by a police bullet. In October Lieutenant-Colonel Manie Maritz went over to the Germans and the rebellion broke out, joined by some 11,000–12,000 men. Botha crushed it with troops who were themselves mostly Afrikaners, and the last rebels of Maritz and Kemp, after the attack on Upington, laid down their arms at the beginning of February 1915. Meanwhile the Germans in the colony struck at Portuguese Angola to avenge the killing of their men at Naulila.

The conquest (1915)

As the rebellion was dying down, Union troops landed at Walvis Bay and in mid-January took Swakopmund. Four forces set out on the invasion: Botha’s Northern Force from Swakopmund on Windhoek, General Duncan McKenzie’s Central Force from Lüderitzbucht, the Eastern Force from Kuruman and the Southern Force from Upington. Between them headquarters had some 13,000 mounted riflemen and 26 guns. At the end of March the Central Force took Aus. In April Smuts took command of the three forces in the south, but there was no heavy fighting there, because the Germans had left to defend themselves in the north. At the end of April McKenzie routed the retreating Germans at Gibeon.

Botha meanwhile was fighting his way across the Namib Desert. On 20 March his mounted troops took the wells at Jakalswater, on 5 May he entered Karibib, and on 12 May he rode into Windhoek, which the town authorities surrendered without a fight. The commander of the Schutztruppe, Lieutenant-Colonel Victor Franke, fell back north along the railway towards Otavi and Tsumeb. On 1 July a mounted brigade seized the springs at Otavifontein, and on 9 July Governor Theodor Seitz and Franke signed the surrender at the “Kilo 500” marker near Khorab. According to the official history, 204 officers and 3,166 other ranks laid down their arms. The terms were lenient: the officers kept their weapons, and the reservists went back to their farms.

After the surrender

The colony came under Union military administration. The campaign changed its position for good: in 1915 the Union extended the railway from Prieska through Upington to the southern line and linked Swakopmund with Walvis Bay by rail, tying the country into the railway network of South Africa. For the Union it was the first great victory, and many of its soldiers and commanders later fought in East Africa, where in February 1916 Smuts took command. In 1920 the League of Nations entrusted the Union with a mandate over the former colony. South African rule there lasted until 1990, when the country became independent as Namibia.