British and their allies sought to seize the vast colonial empire that the Germans had created in Africa.

PATRICK J. KIGERMAR

World War I commonly brings to mind scenes of Europe in conflict—the first Battle of the Marne, the siege of Verdun, and the bloody struggle of The Somme, as well as the brutal slog of trench warfare on the Western Front.

But the first bullet of the war in late July 1914 wasn’t actually fired in Europe. Instead, as Byron Farwell notes in his book The Great War in Africa, 1914-1918, it was a shot taken by an African soldier in a British uniform at German colonial forces in what is now Togo in West Africa, which back then was a part of Germany’s vast empire in Africa.

Africans Compelled to Fight

In the fighting in Africa between 1914 and 1918, the British and their allies sought to seize the vast colonial empire that the Germans had created in Africa. But on both sides, those who suffered the most in the conflict were Africans, whose lands had been seized from them by the Europeans in the mid to late 1800s.

“The fighting in Africa was between the colonial powers, but most of the soldiers were Africans,” explains Padraic Kennedy, an associate professor of history at York College of Pennsylvania. About two million Africans were compelled to fight in the war, and more than 150,000 African soldiers and bearers lost their lives, with many more wounded and disabled. In addition, many African civilians succumbed to starvation, due to food shortages created by the war’s disruption of agriculture, including armies’ seizure of food supplies and cattle, and the shortage of farmers, hunters and fishermen due to the Europeans’ conscription of African males.

“The conflict in one way or another affected almost every African group and family,” according to Derek Frisby, an associate professor in the Global Studies program at Middle Tennessee State University and an expert in military history.

The war in Africa also was very different from the conflict in Europe, where new technologies such as tanks and aircraft revolutionized warfare.

“The African Great War battles lack much of the industrialization inherent in Europe,” Frisby says. In particular, the artillery used so effectively in European fighting was mostly a non-factor in Africa, according to Frisby. None of the colonial powers had the necessary infrastructure, such as communications for observation and logistics for transporting artillery pieces and keeping them supplied with ammo and maintenance, and it was harder to find suitable terrain. And the forces there often had to make due with older weapons. As a result, Frisby says their greatest effect was in terrifying the native populations, rather than creating devastating barrages.

“Infantry remained the primary combat arm in Great War Africa, not surprisingly taking advantage of the machine gun,” Frisby explains.

In contrast to the often massive battlefield clashes in Europe, African World War I battles tended to be smaller in scale and drawn out over longer time spans. “They were fighting over so much land in Africa, that the fighting was very spread out,” explains Michael Green, associate professor of history at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Indeed, the crucial German East Africa campaign between 1916 and 1918, which pitted 165,000 troops from Britain, South Africa, Belgium and Portugal against a German colonial force of 25,000, took place over an area of 750,000 square miles—three times the size of Imperial Germany itself.

Many Africans wanted no part of the war at all. “The French encountered widespread rebellions as they attempted to conscript soldiers in various parts of West Africa,” says Etana Dinka, a history professor at James Madison University.

Here are some of the key battles of World War I in Africa.

1. First Battle of Garua, August 1914

After taking what is now Togo from the Germans with little resistance, the British and French went after the German colony of Kamerun in what is now Cameroon and sent a combined force of 7,000 British, French and African troops. But they encountered surprisingly tough resistance from the Germans, whose ranks included colonists with military experience, and African troops they had trained.

The Anglo-French force attacked and seized a German fort at Garua (also spelled Garoua) in late August, only to be shocked when the Germans counterattacked and recaptured their fort, killing the British commanding officer there and chasing the British out of the territory, according to an article on the campaign by Camaroonian historian Willibroad Dze-Ngwa. A few days later, the British captured Nsanakang, only to be repulsed by the Germans again. But the Allies learned from their early setbacks, which compelled them to “shift to a more defensive posture and take greater care against a German foe they believed was surrounded and could be easily defeated,” Frisby explains.

2. Allied Landing at Douala, September 1914

Still determined to take Kamerun from the Germans, the Allies attacked the crucial seaport of Douala from three directions at once in late September. The coordinated landings “spelled the beginning of the end of German influence in Kamerun,” Frisby says. “As a Marine, I’m always a little biased toward amphibious operations, yet even these relatively small operations demonstrate the value of amphibious operations, especially in Africa where the limited coastal ports became strategic jewels and were vital for any sustained presence.”

3. Battle of Tanga, November 1914

In East Africa, the British sought unsuccessfully for four years to defeat a much smaller German force commanded by Col. Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck, a wily and elusive master of unconventional warfare, who repeatedly outsmarted and out-maneuvered them. One of Lettow-Vorbeck’s first victories began when British Maj. Gen. Arthur Aitken sailed from India with an invasion force and staged an amphibious landing at Tanga in what is now Tanzania, in an effort to secure the harbor as a base for future British operations.

Lettow-Vorbeck got wind of the impending attack in time to be ready for the British. When the large-scale assault by Indian troops came on November 4, the Germans rained rifle and machine gun fire on the Indian troops, and counterattacked. The fight had an added complication—hordes of bees, which stung soldiers on both sides and for a time forced them to stop firing. The invading force collapsed, and when the British tried landing the next day, they ended up fleeing in chaos, abandoning their equipment and supplies. After the debacle, Aitken was relieved of his command, according to Hew Stratchan’s The First World War in Africa.

4. Battle of Gurin, April 1915

In what was one of the largest German attacks on a British colony, German forces attempted an incursion to Nigeria to threaten British forces and draw them away from their key strategic strongholds in Kamerun. “The steadfast and courageous British defense once again put the Germans on the defensive,” Frisby explains. Despite the successful repulsion of the German attack, they continued to fight for another 10 months in Kamerun, before their final stronghold at Mora fell in February 1916 ending their control of the country.

5. Battle of the Rufiji Delta, July 1915

The Allies mounted an extended Allied naval campaign off the coast of Tanzania, aimed at eliminating a German warship that posed a threat to shipping in the Indian Ocean. The light cruiser Königsberg was a speedy ship, heavily armed with guns and torpedo tubes. After initial efforts failed, in the spring of 1915, they tried a different approach, and dispatched a convoy of vessels small enough to maneuver in the Rufiji River system.

According to the Western Front Association, In July, two small British ships, the Severn and the Mersey, which were designed to sit unusually low in the water to be harder to detect, approached the river mouth. They managed to make it through a gauntlet of German gun batteries on shore and get into the channels of the river system. Guided by a spotter aircraft, they located the Königsberg and began firing upon it. The German cruiser fired back, and hit the Mersey twice, killing four of the crew and inflicted fatal wounds on another two. But the British ships managed to avoid being sunk, and five days later, they braved the German defense once again.

The Mersey was hit again, and lost two more sailors. But this time, the British ships managed to hit the Königsberg and inflict sufficient damage that the Germans had to abandon ship. Though the loss of the cruiser was a devastating blow to the Germans, Lettow-Vorbeck was able to salvage some of the ship’s guns and repurpose them for use on land. As Frisby says, the German officer was able to “extract some victory from the jaws of defeat.”

6. Battle of Namakura, July 1918

With the help of intelligence from a captured Portuguese map, Lettow-Vorbeck was able to pounce upon a Portuguese-British garrison in Mozambique. The Portuguese and British lost 200 men, including some who may have drowned in the river or been eaten by crocodile, and the Germans captured another 543, while suffering just nine casualties themselves. More importantly, they captured a badly-needed arsenal, including 10 machine guns, and 813,800 rounds of ammunition, in addition to 350 tons of food, according to historian Hew Strachan’s book, The First World War in Africa. That enabled Lettow-Vorbeck’s forces to keep fighting for months. In fact, he didn’t stop fighting until two weeks after the armistice was signed in Europe, when he learned of the war’s end and surrendered with his remaining 1,500 men to the British in what is now Zaire.

The war resulted in the demise of the German colonial empire in Africa. “The British and the French essentially divided up former German colonies amongst themselves,” Kennedy says. But it also had other permanent effects, including “a significant decline in the aura of European invincibility,” which would contribute to the eventual fall of European colonialism in Africa in the 1950s and 1960s.

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Courtesy: History (Posted on March 6, 2023)

The post 6 Key World War I Battles Fought in Africa first appeared on Sindh Courier.

Sindh Courier Monitoring Desk

“The nation was on the brink. Mobs burned Black churches to the ground. Courts threw thousands of people into prison for opinions they voiced—in one notable case, only in private. Self-appointed vigilantes executed tens of thousands of citizens’ arrests. Some seventy-five newspapers and magazines were banned from the mail and forced to close. When the government stepped in, it was often to fan the flames.”

This was America during and after the Great War: a brief but appalling era blighted by lynching, censorship, and the sadistic, sometimes fatal abuse of conscientious objectors in military prisons—a time whose toxic currents of racism, nativism, red-baiting, and contempt for the rule of law then flowed directly through the intervening decades to poison our own. It was a tumultuous period defined by a diverse and colorful cast of characters, some of whom fueled the injustice while others fought against it: from the sphinxlike Woodrow Wilson, to the fiery antiwar advocates Kate Richards O’Hare and Emma Goldman, to labor champion Eugene Debs, to a little-known but ambitious bureaucrat named J. Edgar Hoover, and to an outspoken leftwing agitator—who was in fact Hoover’s star undercover agent. It is a time that we have mostly forgotten about, until now.

In American Midnight, award-winning historian Adam Hochschild brings alive the horrifying yet inspiring four years following the U.S. entry into the First World War, spotlighting forgotten repression while celebrating an unforgettable set of Americans who strove to fix their fractured country—and showing how their struggles still guide us today.

The book published in September last, is said to be bestseller and selected as one of the most anticipated books of Fall2022 by a number of leading newspapers. This book by legendary historian Adam Hochschild, has been described a masterly reassessment of the overlooked but startlingly resonant period between World War I and the Roaring Twenties, when the foundations of American democracy were threatened by war, pandemic, and violence fueled by battles over race, immigration, and the rights of labor.

Joanna Scutts, in a review published by New Republic (Published on October 18, 2022), says Adam Hochschild’s new book explores “what’s missing between those two chapters”—an enraging, gruesome, and depressingly timely story about the fragility of American democracy, as both institution and concept. The most prominent figure in this story is Woodrow Wilson, who enjoyed a benign-to-heroic reputation for most of the twentieth century. In bringing the United States into the war, Wilson created a sunny myth of the nation as uniquely virtuous: peace-loving, despite its violent origins, and selfless, despite the hand-over-fist profits that the war was already bringing to American factories. It was such a powerfully appealing line of thinking that “seldom would any later president depart from such rhetoric.” Most famously, Wilson urged his audience that “the world must be safe for democracy”—without anyone stopping to question whether its noble defenders had any idea what the word meant.

In his review titled ‘How World War I Crushed the American Left’, Joanna Scutts writes that according to Hochschild, it was partly belief and partly self-interest—the desire to maintain his party’s tenuous hold on power—that spurred Wilson’s determination to “crush the Socialists.” His narrative helps explain why the left has had such difficulty regaining its political ground in the United States in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, even when economic crises lay bare (again and again) the failures of capitalism. Anti-Red sentiment, from the 1910s on, was a toxic brew of racism, xenophobia, misogyny, and fear, in which rational arguments about the fair distribution of resources were comprehensively drowned.

In the decade before the war, the U.S. was home to a thriving network of radical groups and leaders. Russian-born Emma Goldman, anarchist and birth control advocate, was a wildly popular speaker (in English, Yiddish, or German, as needed) and the publisher of her own magazine. Alice Paul, head of the National Woman’s Party, was determined to hold Wilson to his promise of support. The NAACP, founded in 1909, shone a spotlight on lynching and advocated for African American civil rights. Activism against “preparedness” and war had been on the rise in left-wing circles since 1914, led especially by women like the writer and left-wing activist Crystal Eastman, head of the New York Woman’s Peace Party and executive director of the American Union Against Militarism, out of which the ACLU was later formed.

These were the groups that came under attack during the war. Emma Goldman, who drew thousands to rallies for her No-Conscription League, was arrested the very day that the Espionage Act went into effect, almost as though it had been designed for her.

The scale and the cost of these years of oppression is hard to calculate. The arrest figures, which likely climb into the tens of thousands, have never been fully counted and cannot, in any case, properly measure the invisible impact of this climate of fear: We can only guess at the true extent of the harassment, lost jobs, self-censorship, fractured relationships, and psychological damage. Yet it was the continuation and escalation of this repression after the end of the fighting that is most shocking. The Sedition Act, passed in the spring of 1918, expanded the Espionage Act to encompass still more acts of vague disloyalty and threat.

The crushing of socialism—and a new bugbear, communism—was total. The treatment of Eugene Debs was a stark illustration of the crackdown. Debs had won 6 percent of the popular vote in 1912, as the Socialists were making gains at the local and state level, threatening both Republicans and Democrats. By 1917, Hochschild notes, there were 23 Socialist mayors in office across the country, leading cities including Toledo, Pasadena, and Milwaukee. Debs opposed the war steadfastly, but he was so widely respected that the government feared directly attacking him. Instead, a disinformation campaign was launched—by whom, historians are still unsure—which implied that he had changed his position. To counter the accusations, the frail 62-year-old leader addressed his party’s state convention in Canton, Ohio, in June 1918. Careful not to advocate resisting the draft, he nevertheless roused his crowd by declaring that “in all the history of the world you, the people, never had a voice in declaring war.” Two weeks later he was arrested. When he ran for president again in 1920, it was from jail.

During these years, democratically elected socialist members of the New York State Assembly were expelled, and the House of Representatives refused to seat Wisconsin Congressman Victor Berger when he was reelected in 1918. The initial justification for silencing leftist voices, that they were sowing opposition to the war and the draft, had disappeared. In its place had arrived a generalized threat of revolution, fanned and fueled by every stray remark about ways that American society could be fairer to workers. Although most Americans today are far more familiar with the Cold War–era Red Scare, it did not come out of nowhere. The blueprint for that later crackdown was established during World War I, by many of the same actors, such as J. Edgar Hoover, who would revive it after World War II.

Adam Hochschild’s new book documents a period of thriving radical groups and their devastating suppression.

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Courtesy: Amazon, New Republic

The post How the American Left was crushed first appeared on Sindh Courier.

Major General Syed Ali Hamid

The US Military Assistance Program for Pakistan that was signed in 1954 was spearheaded by the Trans East District of the US Army Corps of Engineers. A major general with a staff of 18 was based in Karachi and one of the first projects that they undertook was the expansion of the airbase at Mauripur to receive the F-86 Sabers.

However, this was not the first time that the American military had set foot in Karachi. They were there during the Second World War in far greater numbers and to implement projects and programs at a far greater scale.

Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, the Sino-Japanese War which had commenced in 1937 merged with the conflict in Burma and the two developed into a major theatre of operations that the US termed the China-Burma-India (CBI) Theatre. To deliver large quantities of supplies to the British India Army in Assam and the Chinese Nationalist Forces in Western China, from early 1942 onwards, the US developed India into a huge base for air operations and logistics. The ports available in India were limited. The presence of the Axis enemy within striking distance of Calcutta precluded its use as well as other ports on India’s eastern seaboard. On the west, Bombay was heavily congested with British traffic and only Karachi was available.

And so, Karachi became an important link in a 3,000-km supply chain stretching till Assam and another 1,600 km to Kunming in China. Its surroundings were also developed into a major base for training air crews and a staging post for Allied air force personnel.

Karachi became an important link in a 3,000-km supply chain stretching till Assam and another 1,600 km to Kunming in China

The tremendous task of organizing the long Lines of Communication was given to Brigadier General Wheeler, who was heading the mission in Iran. He was placed in command of the Services of Supply (SOS) of the CBI Theatre which initially established its headquarters in Karachi in March 1942. Using the staff from his mission and some early arrivals of US personnel, he set up a provisional port detachment which got the port and other operations underway. Their first job was to move 20,000 tons of military cargo for China that was diverted from Singapore and Rangoon. In May, the SOS headquarters shifted to New Delhi and its organization was divided geographically with Base Section No 1 in Karachi responsible for Western India and Base Section No 2 in Calcutta looking after the entire eastern operations extending into China. That same month, the port detachment was replaced by two companies of a Port Battalion. The hall of the Karachi Goan Association near Empress Market was requisitioned for the Headquarters of the No 1 Base Section. Within this hall, the American Red Cross established clubs for officers and enlisted men with a menu that offered a decent meal – starting with soup and ending with dessert and coffee for Rs.25. Hotels and hostels were remodeled to provide billets for the staff of the headquarters, the port battalion and service personnel transiting through the city.

The port at Karachi had 22 ship berths and large ships could be moored in the 20-metre-deep water channel and unloaded with the aid of floating cranes. Since there was no shipside or transit sheds at the early stages, the cargo was directly loaded onto to railway bogies or truck by coolies. However, very rapidly, American engineers developed the jetties, wharves and warehouses to handle large consignments and during 1942, the port discharged and shipped 130,300 tons of cargo; in addition to disembarking 13,800 servicemen.

The arrival of the first contingent coincided with the heightening of tensions in Karachi where anti-colonial nationalists were urging the population to rise up against British rule and unfriendly posters displaying slogans like “Americans Quit India” were visible. Therefore the contingent of 2,000 American engineers were issued ammunition, loaded on trucks and sped through Karachi to the Malir Cantonment. However Karachi remained peaceful and in their spare time the Americans took to exploring the city – but everything north of Bundar Road was out of bounds. Joint patrols by British, American and Indian Military Police roamed the bars and nightclubs to ensure that peace prevailed. The Americans also went sightseeing outside the city to the shrine at Mangho Pir to see the alligators and to the historic graveyard at Thatta. It was at Karachi that the Americans arriving from the US, after a sea voyage of 60 days, got their first look at the “enchanting Far East”. A Guide to Karachi informed them: “Karachi has the credit of being considered the Paris of the East as it is the cleanest city in the whole of India”. Apart from providing information on sites to visit, the guide book listed four English cinemas, five hotels, seven cafes and six book stalls. According to the booklet, the exchange rate for a dollar was under Rs.3-and-a-half.

Apart from the port, the Americans also took over the operations of the Karachi Airport. It was already well established as a center of communication for the Indian Subcontinent. A guide book on India informed US service personnel:

In recent years Karachi has become the main gate of India for the aerial service, and before the war there were regular mail and passenger services between London and the city. It was the converging point of five air-lines serving directly 20 countries of the world. Through the air-base of this city passed all traffic between the two hemispheres. The airport has given a great impetus towards the expansion of the city of Karachi”.

Malir – bare, dusty and often windswept – was not a pleasant base. Summers were hot and water was rationed. The barracks were surrounded by large thorny acacia bushes and it was difficult to determine where the limits of the garrison ended and the desert began

During the war, Karachi Airport became a major transshipment base for units of the United States Army Air Force and equipment being used by Tenth Air Force in eastern India, Burma and the Fourteenth Air Force in China. Several operational bomber and fighter units flew into Karachi for short organizational periods prior to their deployment. Air Technical Service Command had extensive facilities where aircraft were received, assembled and tested prior to being flown to their combat units at forward airfields. It also functioned as a major maintenance and supply depot for both air forces. To handle the expanded operations, the Americans added parking aprons, large hangers and an operations building. Close by was the maintenance base at Drigh Road managed by the Royal Air Force, where a huge number of aircraft for the Royal Indian Air Force and the Air Force of Nationalist China arrived in crates from the US and UK and were inspected, assembled and tested before being ferried to the warfront in Burma and China.

The largest concentration of American servicemen was at Malir. During the initial stages of the Second World War, Malir was a Transit Camp for troops of the British India Army being shipped to the Middle East and North Africa. However, in 1942 most of it was handed over to the US Army who initiated a massive building program to expand the cantonment to accommodate 20,000 servicemen as well as 38 mess halls, 300 barracks and allied facilities. An airfield along with a Bombing Practice Range was prepared and used by a US Air Force Overseas Training Unit and a Chinese Operational Training Unit. The primary mission of the Overseas Training Unit was the training of all US Air Force units and personnel within the CBI Theatre prior to their operational employment. In September 1942, the 341st Bombardment Group was activated in Malir and was one of the first bomber units in the CBI Theatre to be equipped with B-25 Mitchell medium bombers. These medium bombers had been shipped in crates from the United States and assembled at the Karachi Airbase. The Chinese Operational Training Unit trained pilots of the air force of Nationalist China. In 1943 it was upgraded to Chinese-American Air Training Wing where pilots were trained on B-25 Mitchell Bombers. Ultimately all these training establishments were merged into a China-Burma-India (CBI) Air Forces Training Command at Malir.

Malir – bare, dusty and often windswept – was not a pleasant base. Summers were hot and water was rationed. The barracks were surrounded by large thorny acacia bushes and it was difficult to determine where the limits of the garrison ended and the desert began. The cantonment was divided into four segments and for a newcomer, the layout of the road network was very confusing. To avoid getting disoriented, an American serviceman drew a sketch of the confused layout giving the quadrants and roads American names. In one corner he scribbled “These streets were named and the map delineated in the interest of aching feet, by one who one night walked in many circles. The war is over honey, and my feet are tired”. In an article that was published in The Roundup (the journal of the CBI Theatre), an American servicemen recollects that during his stay in Malir, he was prepared to offer his right arm for a bit of shade during the hot summer months of 1943-45. However when he revisited Karachi in 1960, he was pleasantly surprised to find that the roads were tree-lined and was grateful to a couple of army officers who invited him to a very smart Officers Club that in his days had been the PX Retail Store for the servicemen. Sadly for him, the golf club was no more as the area had been taken up for the aircraft approach to the Karachi runway. Returning to Karachi he dined with great pleasure at his past haunts like the old Café Grand and more recent additions like the ABC Chinese and Mexicano Restaurant.

A welcome distraction for the US servicemen were about 7,000 Polish refugees who were accommodated in Malir in 1943 and later transferred to Valivade near Kolapur in India. They were part of a much larger number approximating 28,000 who were expelled from Eastern Europe, entered Iran and finally reached Karachi where they stayed at two refugee camps between August 1942 and December 1944. Both the camps were supervised and well administered by representatives of the British and Polish governments and the American servicemen helped in organizing events like Christmas parties and pantomimes.

By the end of 1943, the Burma campaign started shifting in favor of the Allies. Calcutta was no longer under threat and replaced Karachi as the principal US seaport in India. But this did not mean an end to their interest in the Karachi and the SOS still maintained an area hospital, refrigeration facilities, a rail transportation office and other logistic services. The activities at the port were handled by a small Army staff supervising native labor, but this did not impair operational efficiency. During 1943 on three occasions Karachi stood first among overseas US Army ports in the discharge of monthly cargo. In 1944 the port did an outstanding job by unloading a ship with 5,597 tons of cargo within 48.5 hours. Karachi Airbase also continued to remain the port of entry into India of the US Army Air Transport Command and the training facilities at Malir continued with their assignment.

When the war ended, the port at Karachi was reactivated for embarking personnel of the CBI Theatre under a plan codenamed Operation Magic Carpet. They were initially brought all the way from Burma by train but subsequently through an airlift and billeted at the Replacement Depot in Malir. After processing, they were trucked to ship-side for embarkation and the first transport departed in September 1945 with 3,000 servicemen. Evacuation operations peaked next month when 26,350 troops were loaded on eight transports. Finally, having embarked over 80,000 personnel from Karachi, the Americans closed port operations in January 1946.

A souvenir booklet prepared for the US servicemen departing for home reminded them about the things that they would remember best about India.

“You won’t forget the smells – the animal odour of fresh hides on a bullock-drawn two-wheeled cart, the musky odour of curry wafted into your Jeep as you drive past a food shop on a back street, the cooling salt air blown into the docks as you worked a ship, and the acrid stink of the bad-mannered camel […] And you’ll remember some beautiful Indian women – the tall Sikh girls in their loose white pyjama pants, the doe like Hindus in their warm colored wrap-around sarees; Moslem beauties decked out in gilt, silver and silk for a religious festival; and perhaps behind the typewriters those slim Anglo-Indian girls, brown-skinned, large-eyed, often fiercely British in speech and custom”.

Aside from the facilities that they constructed, there is little evidence that the Americans were at Karachi for so long in such large number. A stone marker erected in Malir on which were inscribed the distances to cities in India and Europe also showed that New York was 9,782 miles from Malir and San Francisco was 11,875 miles. But it is no longer to be found there.

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Courtesy: The Friday Times Lahore (First published June 21, 2019)

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