Did Cameroonians/Tanzanians /Africans from German-occupied Africa fight alongside Germans on the Western Front in WWI?
I know Africans fought for Germany in Africa in WWI but I haven’t been able to narrow down any evidence of Africans fighting on the Western Front on the German side. If so, where were they from? Did they fight at the Meuse-Argonne in 1917?
France and Belgium sent African-staffed troops to Europe, both during the war itself and as part of the occupying forces that held German territory for several years after the war. There was an outcry against this in the German media and propaganda. So I’d say no, Germany did not employ such troops in Europe, at least not to any significant extent.
Thanks Schnitte. The faux (?) outrage (it seems like that to me) in the satirical Kladderadatsch seems to bear out your view.
I don’t think any of the colonial powers except France used African troops on the western front. On the British side there were definitely racial reasons for this. They were happy to employ the “martial races” in India but not black Africans. That is, outside of the campaign against the Germans in East Africa (one the most brutal campaigns of WW1 which led to massive death in East Africa), where both sides employed African troops (as you mention) as well as large numbers of Indian troops on the British side.
There was certain amount of “don’t ask don’t tell” with the mixed race middle class in the British Caribbean, but generally the British did not allow black troops to fight for them outside Africa. I don’t know if the Germans has similar racist reasons, but I do know they did complain about French using “uncivilized” black African troops against them.
So there were no British African or Caribbean troops on the Wester Front, either as military or as a labor?
Yes as labour, South African Native Labour Corps as one example.
There were black Caribbean and African troops used as labor on the western front (where they were very much in harms way, and suffered casualties) they were banned by British imperial policy from fighting “white” nations.
While France, Britain and Belgium were able to send colonial troops to fight on the Western Front in WWI by the tens of thousands, above any other considerations Germany faced the unsolvable practical reality that it was cut off from anything overseas by the British naval blockade. The Schutztruppe couldn’t be sent to fight in Europe whether Germany wanted them to or not.
The Schutztruppe were also quite busy being defeated by Allied forces (mostly South African) in South West Africa itself within the first few months of the war, so they wouldn’t have had much time to intervene in the European theatre anyway.
I recall reading accounts of German askaris from a particular ethnic group who forced the Gurkhas to retreat at Tanga. That does give them unique bragging rights.
From a purely military point of view the whole campaign by German-led African troops is incredibly impressive, they held our against far larger British force for the entire war (actually longer as the orders to surrender after the 1918 armistice didn’t reach them until a while after the end of the war).
But in the process a huge percentage of the population of the East Africa were killed (and then the weakened survivors were decimated by the post-war flu pandemic)
A great book on that is -
The Germans who never lost by Edwin P. Hoyt, Jr