Lettow-Vorbeck: The Uncatchable Lizard?

Grainy black and white film of March 13th, 1964 shows ranks of sombre middle-aged men gathered in a cold Pronzdorf cemetery. Many are uniformed soldiers. Two elderly Africans walk behind the coffin, dignified in their fez caps. Kai-Uwe von Hassel, the then West German defence minister, reads a eulogy. It is the funeral of Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck, a First World War general who won the respect of Allied adversaries and was perhaps Germany’s last great military hero. Von Lettow’s exploits are still taught as case studies in US military colleges, where instructors present him as the 20th century’s greatest guerrilla leader.

Von Lettow achieved this status by becoming the only undefeated German commander of the First World War. After the Armistice he fought on with his mainly African force until he could be persuaded, two weeks later, that the war was over. He also led the only invasion of British territory during the war, raiding what is now Kenya and Malawi in 1914 and what is now Zambia in 1918. These feats won him the Iron Cross, first and second class, and a triumphal return to Berlin in 1919. Greeted by fervent crowds, he rode a black charger through the Brandenburg Gate, his East African bush hat turned up jauntily on one side.

Von Lettow won his place in the guerrilla pantheon by using mobility and ingenuity as weapons just as potent as the military tactics espoused in the textbooks. Cut off from Germany, with the Royal Navy prowling the coast, von Lettow’s Schutztruppen (protection force) was always outnumbered, out-resourced and outgunned. After an exemplary defence of German East Africa (now Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi), his men had slipped their encirclement and devoted a further year to tormenting adjacent Portuguese and British colonies. By the time the Schutztruppen finally surrendered over 1,000 (mainly Portuguese) rifles, they faced 111,731 British troops and porters, plus substantial Portuguese and Belgian forces.

Heroic status

The case for von Lettow’s heroic status is well rehearsed among historians. He succeeded in his prime objective of tying down huge Allied resources and keeping these from the European fronts (where von Lettow’s two brothers fought – one killed, the other invalided by gas poisoning).

While there were other resourceful German officers, what distinguished von Lettow was his attitude. At a time when many Europeans saw Africans as inferior, von Lettow always praised the valour and effectiveness of the Askaris that made up most of his force, describing them as ‘our brave black soldiers’. The Askaris defeated European and Indian opponents many times and their example is believed to have inspired the next African generation in its independence struggle.

As the Allies surrounded the Schutztruppen by sea and land, with planes, vehicles, radio, superior armaments and supplies at their disposal the local German governor, Heinrich Schnee, ordered a surrender but in vain. Instead von Lettow fought back with continuous innovation, in spite of a yawning technology and resource gap, developing his own anti-malarials from tree bark, planting and harvesting crops as he moved his men and repeatedly relieving the Allies of guns and ammunition.

Above all, von Lettow’s men showed iron determination. Belated tidings of the Armistice forced a surrender, but the frustrated Germans argued that there had been no end in sight to their campaign. When the news came von Lettow claimed to be considering a push west hundreds of miles further to the Atlantic. Though his force was few in number and suffering attrition, its model of mobile foraging, recruiting and surprise attack might have permitted this.

Explaining his success, most writers (including von Lettow himself) have pointed to how he had been groomed for the task. He was born in Saarland in 1870 into minor nobility at the apex of Prussian militarism, his father was an officer hero of the Franco-Prussian war and a correspondingly demanding task-master. Von Lettow’s upbringing ensured he was as devoted to the kaiser as the kaiser was to empowering his armed forces. Before his posting to German East Africa in 1913 von Lettow’s military experience included the Boxer Rebellion and conflict in German South-west Africa (GSWA). Fighting in harsh environments was in his blood and in that of his men. A British officer present at the German surrender wrote that the Germans looked ‘as hard as nails’.

In 1919 a dryosaurid fossil species found in Tanzania, dating from the late Jurassic period, was even named dysalotosaurus lettow-vorbecki in von Lettow’s honour. Dysalotosaurus translates as ‘uncatchable lizard’. Yet nearly a century later, and after more sober analysis, is the von Lettow legend still justified? And what can be learned from a less studied topic: the officer’s conduct before and after his golden period in East Africa?

Questioning the myth

There are important factors in relation to von Lettow’s military genius generally not recognised by those who describe his achievements. First is von Lettow’s fortunate timing in terms of his arrival on Dar es Salaam’s quayside (having shared a steamer with the author Karen von Blixen, who became a lifelong friend) in January 1914. He had almost a year to impress his authority on the Schutztruppen before the first substantive battle took place at Tanga in November 1914. Von Lettow used this time well, but he inherited rather than created what was already a formidable fighting force. The Askaris were drawn mainly from tribes with martial traditions, a number of whom had experience serving as mercenaries for Arab slavers. An enlightened family policy was also in force, allowing spouses and children to travel with military units, which boosted morale and helped to bond units against local populations. The Schutztruppen also had ample experience of suppressing rebellions: between 1891 and 1914 they had participated in 91 punitive expeditions, which necessitated small-unit tactics rather than European-style manoeuvres. With far less fanfare Lieutenant von Heydebreck (in GSWA) and Major Zimmerman (in German Cameroon) also did well with their Askaris.

Second, von Lettow benefited from a series of weaknesses on the Allied side. These were exposed at the Battle of Tanga, where the incompetent British General Aitken managed to throw away a ten to one advantage and failed to take the colony’s second city. The Allies’ supply lines became fantastically stretched across terrain made up of mountains and swamp. Above all they were struck by a series of diseases that wiped out pack animals even faster than it did their soldiers. While von Lettow feuded with his colonial governor, Schnee, this was minor compared with the challenges faced by the Allies in co-ordinating the forces of Britain, its recent enemy Boer-led South Africa, colonial rival Belgium and revolution-rocked Portugal.

A third point is that it is not at all certain that von Lettow’s men could have lasted much longer in spite of his claims to the contrary. What they had engaged in was really constant (if inspired) tactical retreat, rather than true guerrilla war, with decreasing hope of confronting the main Allied force and minimal support from local people other than in the appallingly-governed Portuguese territories. At their surrender the men were reduced to bare bones. Disease was rife, though German doctors did better than their Allied counterparts, and desertion was a growing problem. Von Lettow wrote that his African force ‘faithfully followed its German leaders throughout the whole of the war’, but omitted to mention that he helped his porters to resist temptation by roping them together in September 1918 and operated a shoot-to-kill policy for any who escaped. The other capable German officers were also progressively lost: the hernia-blighted Wahle (born in 1855 and officially the oldest combatant of the First World War) asked to be left behind from the exhausting perpetual march; the mercurial Witgens contracted typhus; and the barbaric Naumann, after killing a British prisoner and allowing the rape of native women, became the only German sent from Africa to the UK to stand trial for war crimes.

Though it may have helped von Lettow’s success, his ruthlessness is also often left out of positive accounts. The wounded could be abandoned, often to a likely death from jungle predators or starvation. One officer deemed to have performed poorly was reportedly offered a revolver which he duly used to kill himself. Above all porters and locals were exploited through forced labour and the expropriation of food. In this respect it is true that the British behaved only slightly better (perhaps because they were less desperate) and the Portuguese were often worse. Also, despite warm words about how German East Africa was ‘full of promise’, von Lettow did not act to protect it. Governor Schnee argued for surrender so that neither population nor assets would be harmed, believing all would be returned once Germany won the war in Europe. Von Lettow paid no heed, perhaps treasonably so, and as he waged his long fight the colony did indeed suffer. Ludwig Deppe, one of the Schutztruppen’s doctors, later regretted that: ‘Behind us we leave destroyed fields … and, for the immediate future, starvation. We are no longer the agents of culture, our track is marked by death, plundering and evacuated villages.’

Finally, von Lettow seemed to enjoy more than a fair share of luck. In the most hostile terrain, he repeatedly stumbled upon Allied arms, medicines and food supplies when they were most vitally needed. On many occasions the Allies themselves pounced on sites that von Lettow had departed so recently that campfires still smouldered. In 1916 a British colonel claimed he stopped one of his soldiers from shooting von Lettow in the back from 14 paces, as it would be improper conduct towards a man he described as ‘a decent opponent’. (Napoleon of course cited luck as his favourite quality in a commander.)

It is understandable that none of these reservations seemed to matter to the massed Berliners applauding von Lettow on his return in 1919. He was undefeated, clearly loyal to the kaiser and greatly respected by his men. Most would agree with von Lettow’s own description in his book, My Reminiscences of East Africa (1920): ‘We had come home unsullied.’ By contemporary military standards, his conduct during the First World War did indeed make him a hero.

But his professional career lasted longer than the duration of the war and the earlier periods are often ignored by historians. In fact there is much there that illuminates the man.

Experience

Von Lettow learned his trade in three countries before arriving in Tanzania. First in his homeland: at the militaristic boarding schools he attended in Berlin, in cadet corps there and at Potsdam; in service on Germany’s general staff; and with the Sea Battalion in the Saxon port of Wilhelmshaven. Between these environments and his disciplinarian officer father, the young von Lettow absorbed the values of the Prussian aristocrat-soldier: determination, modesty, loyalty to the traditional hierarchy.

Next was China in 1901, where von Lettow served for a year in the international coalition that supressed the Boxer Rebellion. Here he gained first-hand experience of guerrilla tactics and the differences in the conduct of the various western armies. He thought the British poorly organised. 

Finally, in 1904, von Lettow volunteered to assist the general to whom he had been attached in China in the suppression of another rebellion, this time in Germany’s South-west Africa colony (now Namibia). This chapter is generally skated over in the mostly favourable historical coverage of von Lettow. The commander to whom he reported was the infamous General Lothar von Trotha, whose crushing of the uprising of the Herero and Namaqua peoples is now recognised as an act of genocide. In an exchange later mirrored in the struggle between Von Lettow and Heinrich Schnee, von Trotha overruled the conciliatory approach of the local German governor, stating: ‘I know enough of African tribes that they give way only to violence. To exercise this violence with crass terrorism and even gruesomeness was and is my policy.’

Von Trotha was true to his word. Following their military defeat at the battle of Waterburg in October 1904 the Herero people, trapped on three sides, were deliberately forced en masse into the Omaheke Desert. Waterholes were poisoned and any of those, including women and children, who attempted to escape their inevitable fate in the desert were shot or bayoneted by guards. Von Trotha admitted: ‘I believe that the nation as such should be annihilated’ and described the campaign as one of ‘racial struggle’. With subsequent use of concentration camps, slave labour and inhumane medical experiments, the parallels with the later Nazi genocide are evident and, indeed, a number of the same individuals participated in both.

It remains unclear to what extent von Lettow took part in von Trotha’s brutal campaigns. There is little reference to them in his own writings, though he praises the Africans’ bravery and martial endeavour. Von Lettow did fight at Waterburg. He subsequently ‘rode patrol’ in the desert and ‘participated in a skirmish’, before succumbing to a bout of typhus. It may have been that his role was peripheral. However, with Von Trotha relieved of his command and recalled to Germany in 1905 amid an outcry, it would also have been politic for anyone with a reputation to defend to downplay any association with that episode.

Von Lettow’s account of the aftermath of Waterburg is perhaps ingenuous in subtly shifting responsibility for the Herero deaths away from the Germans: ‘The Hereros died in masses in the sandveld, as they were not prepared to flee over the border into the British Kalahari.’ His sympathy remained with the army and its commander:

General von Trotha was blamed by some people for his ruthless measures, but I believe that an insurrection on such a scale must be immediately stamped out by every means available.

Soon after, as von Lettow led his own first command against another rebellious tribe, the Hottentots, he was hit by an explosive shell. ‘My left eye seemed to slosh in my head like a red soup with black dumplings,’ he recounted. Taken in a bullock cart 70 kilometres to a doctor, treatment could save only the sight in his right eye and this was the end of his time in South-west Africa.

A changed Germany

In the aftermath of the First World War von Lettow struggled to adapt to a very changed Germany and there was further controversy. Returning there after five years, his reception was rapturous. But in describing his country as undergoing ‘tribulations’, von Lettow was correct. The kaiser had renounced his crown and fled to Holland. The navy faced mutiny. workers’ councils had been established in many cities. Under the Armistice agreement parts of Germany itself and all of its colonies were transferred to the victorious Allies.

In 1919 von Lettow led troops (including some from Africa) to suppress the revolutionary Spartacist uprising in Hamburg. The fluidity of the moment is reflected in the fact that the Spartacists had already seen fit to approach him themselves, asking him to join them. Von Lettow experienced a more personal revolution as he embarked on marriage after nearly half a century of batcherlordom. In early March 1919 he telegrammed Martha Wallroth, whom he had known before the war and now discovered was divorced. He proposed a meeting at a Berlin train station, having confidently prearranged a registry office wedding for the following morning. Martha initially refused this audacious suggestion but soon changed her mind. The two wed shortly after at von Lettow’s parents’ house, accompanied by his father sitting upright in bed wearing his own Iron Cross and his mother in her wheelchair.

The following year von Lettow was obliged to resign from the army, having shown (half-hearted) support for the anti-democratic Kapp Putsch. Loyalty was a central part of his character, but it was selective and, as someone who had grown up steeped in monarchism, elected governments did not necessarily deserve it. Also unworthy in his view were the Nazis. He was impressed at how they rebuilt Germany’s armed forces and reclaimed the Rhineland from the Allies. He viewed them as the only practical way of combatting Communism, but he also spoke of their ‘trampling the rules of justice and decency’ and of their ‘overestimation of power’. Not wanting to become one more ‘compliant tool’ for Hitler, von Lettow reportedly spurned the Führer’s offer of ambassadorship in London (though this is not mentioned in his own memoirs). It didn’t help the Nazis’ cause in von Lettow’s eyes that Heinrich Schnee, the governor of East Africa with whom he had quarrelled so bitterly, was himself now an important party member; had Hitler won the war he would have become administrator of all German colonies.

Von Lettow’s mixed relations with the Nazi state were perhaps due to his association with the monarchy and the old guard. In the 1930s the local Bremen SA persecuted him, trashing his office. But von Lettow also served under a Nazi mayor on the city’s council. Though sometimes persona non grata, during the Second World War he also had enough influence for Soviet prisoners to be assigned to work on his hunting reserve digging ditches. Von Lettow knew some of the July 1944 Hitler bomb plotters and was suspected (incorrectly) by the Nazis of involvement. By 1941 both his sons, Rüdiger and Arnd, had been killed while serving as soldiers and both were commended for their bravery. His nephew and surviving brother were also killed and his house in Bremen was destroyed by Allied bombing in 1944.  He believed that Germany lost the Second World War in part because Hitler ‘lacked both the education and ability to master the situation’.

The retired soldier was often impecunious, as were most Germans whose pensions were ravaged by the great 1920s’ inflation. Even between the wars he would travel fourth class on railways, though this may have been Prussian parsimony as much as actual poverty. At that time payment for his lectures often took the form of milk, butter or eggs. After the war, when the 80-year-old von Lettow’s pension, on which he had to support his family, was reduced to DM130 per month his old adversary, the South African General Smuts, arranged for an additional DM200 to be sent monthly from London, while von Lettow worked making and selling buttons. The conquering British had also treated him well, allowing him to keep his hunting rifles contrary to regulations; the British Resident Officer had fought against him in East Africa. For his part Von Lettow criticised their own machine-gun hunting techniques.

Outdated attitudes

It is easy to characterise Von Lettow’s views as outdated, from his lifelong relish of hunting, to writing in 1957 of how, despite colonialism’s ‘drawbacks’, Africans ‘still need European leadership’ and his defence of apartheid. A trip back to Africa a few years earlier showed mutual emotional attachment between von Lettow, whose Swahili was still proficient, and veteran Askaris. This was further cemented by the belated payment to the Askaris in 1964 of First World War wages.

Heroes have nearly always been created by both their actions and by the spinners of myths. The First World War was short of named heroes, though many conducted themselves heroically. It lacked decisive battles; on Europe’s Western and Eastern fronts invading armies neither made much progress nor were dramatically turned back and it was hard for men to show they made a difference. Postwar populations and publishers therefore looked elsewhere for stories. Many combatants in the East African conflict wrote memoirs, making the most of the exotic setting and extreme events. The importance of narrative had been recognised even before the fighting began. Even in the Germans’ darkest hour, for instance, posterity was considered worth the staff time of a military historian, who marched alongside the Schutztruppen. 

Von Lettow was an enthusiastic participant in this legacy, especially after his forced departure from the army and a brief career in conservative politics. He was in demand as a speaker throughout Germany, as well as Britain too, his celebrated achievements compounded by a pithy, modest (perhaps Prussian) delivery and an ability to tell a story. Frequent approaches from the press culminated in a German magazine paying for him and his daughter to tour Africa in the 1950s. Von Lettow also had great success with two books, My Reminiscences of East Africa (1920, in both English and German) and My Life (1957, translated into English for the first time in 2012). My Life, in particular, deals with controversial topics, such as Hitler’s regime and the Herero conflict. He admitted that ‘impressions are so strong that they erase each other’, but stayed in touch with many comrades with whom he could cross-check details. He recognised the importance of what he had been involved in, deciding to write because ‘the experiences of that campaign deserved to be preserved’. Indeed writing may have absorbed the same intense energy that he had previously devoted to the army. After his beloved mother Marie died on April 3rd, 1919, von Lettow’s sister recounted to him that until the end she had looked expectantly at the door in the hope that her son would appear. Unaware of the urgency, he delayed responding to her summons and instead went to a meeting about writing. Von Lettow spoke warmly of his mother’s qualities and her endurance of ‘my choleric father’, whom he had now surpassed as a recognised military leader.

Last Teutonic knight

Von Lettow’s memoirs are by a man who does not seem enlightened by modern values. In My Life he still sees Africa as unready for independence; he defends von Trotha, a man widely recognised as a war criminal; and, if he criticises the Nazis as unjust and a disaster for Germany, there is scant sympathy expressed for their victims. But while the books concentrate on his actions they also show compassion. In the South-west African conflict, von Lettow praised the humanity and judgement of some of the guerrilla forces he confronted, which would not have been the norm. The Portuguese African colonial regime is criticised for its cruelty. There is almost always respect shown for ordinary soldiers, especially the Askaris. There is also little dwelling on what must have been great sources of sadness for von Lettow – the disillusionment surrounding the disappearance of Germany’s monarchy and aristocracy and the personal tragedies he suffered with the deaths of his brothers and sons in the respective conflicts.

Von Lettow perfectly met the German need for a hero in the First World War. He might almost be seen as the last of the great Teutonic knights, with his aristocratic background and devoted service to the Prussian kaiser; certainly there were none that came after. Indeed: he spoke of the ‘Teutonic sense of loyalty peculiar to us Germans’. The ‘unbeaten’ moniker that he carried was problematic, in that it possibly reduced some Germans’ acceptance of the Versailles Treaty. It may also not be entirely accurate to describe von Lettow as a guerrilla fighter, since he rarely drew on voluntary support from local civilians. What is certain, though, is that he was a great soldier; one who described his approach to fighting when he wrote:

The Great King [Frederick the Great] was surely right when he taught us to ignore all the rules of the art when necessary, and to do so very quickly.