Surrender of Lettow-Vorbeck

On 25 November 1918 at Abercorn, today’s Mbala, on the northern edge of Northern Rhodesia, the German Schutztruppe of General Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck laid down its arms before the British Brigadier-General W. F. S. Edwards. So ended the last campaign of the First World War. Lettow-Vorbeck had fought in East Africa since August 1914, from the victory at Tanga to the raid deep into Northern Rhodesia in the last days of the war, and had never allowed himself to be destroyed. He surrendered because Germany had lost, not his force.

The march to Abercorn

After the ceasefire on the Chambeshi river on 14 November the German column set off in short stages back north through Kasama to Abercorn. It was there that General Jacob van Deventer, commander of the British forces in East Africa, ordered it to go, because it was the nearest place where he could feed the Germans. North of Kasama the column passed the 1st Battalion of the 4th King’s African Rifles under Lieutenant-Colonel Hawkins, with whom it had fought its last skirmishes. Lettow-Vorbeck declined an invitation for the German officers to dinner, but praised the tact of the British officers. Hawkins admitted to him that for lack of supplies he could not have followed the Germans any further anyway. The Germans even had to let him have some of their cattle.

On the way Lettow-Vorbeck argued with the British over the meaning of Article 17 of the Armistice of Compiègne. Van Deventer had first written of the “unconditional surrender” of all German forces in East Africa, whereas the armistice spoke only of their “unconditional evacuation”. The German commander protested several times against the British War Office treating evacuation as equivalent to surrender and disarmament, but received no answer either from the Allies or from the government in Berlin. He even considered breaking off the talks and going over to the Belgians. He decided, however, that this was a trifle compared with the peace terms that awaited Germany. When he arrived in Abercorn in a car sent by Edwards, he was told that the weapons handed over would be counted towards the armament Germany had to surrender under the armistice, and that the ceremony itself would not have the character of a laying down of arms.

Laying down arms

The troops reached Abercorn on 25 November in pouring rain, which delayed the arrival of some units by many hours. Over the square where the weapons were handed in flew the British flag, and Lettow-Vorbeck admitted that the character of a surrender could not be entirely avoided. According to British accounts the ceremony began at eleven. Edwards did not accept the German general’s sword, and the officers and European soldiers kept their personal weapons. Also present at Abercorn was the governor of German East Africa, Heinrich Schnee, who had marched with the troops since 1916.

The Germans handed over 1 Portuguese gun, 37 machine guns, 1,071 British and Portuguese rifles and 208,000 rounds of ammunition. Lettow-Vorbeck noted with satisfaction that there was not a single modern German rifle among them: his force had long been fighting with weapons captured from the enemy. Troop numbers differ from source to source. The South African official account gives 155 Europeans and 1,168 askaris. Lettow-Vorbeck himself lists the governor, 20 officers, 5 doctors, a few officials, 125 European other ranks and NCOs, 1,156 askaris and 1,598 porters. A Western Front Association study counts 29 officers, 125 European soldiers, 1,168 askaris, 1,522 porters and 819 African women. By comparison, at the beginning of 1916 the Schutztruppe had, according to the same South African account, about 2,700 Europeans and 12,000 askaris.

Prisoners of war

The British quickly took away the surrendered weapons. The askaris were confined in a camp surrounded by a thick thorn hedge, too cramped, which led to quarrels with the British askaris. They were to be taken to a camp at Tabora to await the settlement of their back pay and their return home. The Europeans were sent to Dar es Salaam, from where they were to sail to Germany. Lettow-Vorbeck failed to obtain the money for the askaris’ and porters’ pay, years in arrears and amounting to about one and a half million rupees, so he gave them only certificates. They were paid only several decades later, by the authorities of the Federal Republic of Germany.

Escorted by Hawkins’s battalion, the column then marched to Bismarckburg on Lake Tanganyika. On 28 November it bivouacked by the great waterfall on the Kalambo river and waited several days for steamers. Some of the officers were still urging their commander to seize a British camp and resume the fight. On 2 December van Deventer replied to Lettow-Vorbeck’s protest that until new instructions came from London he had to treat his soldiers as prisoners of war.

Balance

The Germans in East Africa had no chance of victory from the start. Lettow-Vorbeck, however, set himself a different aim: to tie down as many troops of the British Empire as possible far from Europe. For more than four years an army of a few thousand, and in the end of fewer than one and a half thousand, forced the British, Belgians and Portuguese to field tens of thousands of soldiers against it, and a far greater number of porters. The local population paid an enormous price. A memorial in Mbala commemorates 1,467 porters from Northern Rhodesia alone who were killed or died during the war, and in the campaign as a whole tens of thousands of them died, above all from disease and hunger.

At the beginning of 1919 the Europeans of the Schutztruppe sailed from Dar es Salaam for Europe. On 2 March 1919 Berlin gave them a ceremonial welcome, and Lettow-Vorbeck led the veterans in their threadbare tropical uniforms through the Brandenburg Gate. For many Germans he became a symbol of the army “undefeated in the field”, which the right readily exploited in the years that followed.