East African Campaign
The East African campaign, beginning with the German repulse of a British amphibious landing at Tanga in November 1914, was the longest campaign of the entire war: Colonel Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck's force of German officers and African askari soldiers remained in the field until 25 November 1918 — two weeks after the Armistice in Europe. Outnumbered at times more than ten to one, Lettow-Vorbeck waged a mobile guerrilla campaign across German East Africa, Mozambique, and Northern Rhodesia, deliberately tying down hundreds of thousands of Allied troops and porters who might otherwise have served in Europe. The campaign's human cost fell overwhelmingly on Africans: well over 100,000 soldiers, porters, and civilians died from combat, disease, and the famine produced by both sides' requisitioning. The campaign extended the war across an entire continent and exemplified how European rivalries consumed colonial societies that had no stake in the quarrel. Lettow-Vorbeck surrendered undefeated, the only German commander of the war to occupy British imperial territory.
- Year: 1914 CE
- Category: Military
