The Kaisers Guerilla: General Paul Emil von Lettow-Vorbeck (1870-1964) was the military commander of German East Africa (now Tanzania) during the First World War. For four years, with a force of German and African troops that never exceeded 14,000, he held in check a much larger force of 300,000 British, Belgian, and Portuguese troops that had invaded that remote German colonial possession from multiple directions. Undefeated in the field, Lettow-Vorbeck was also the only German commander to successfully invade imperial British soil - in this case, Northern Rhodesia - during the First World War. His exploits from 1914 to 1918, when he gained the respect even of the enemy, have been called the greatest single guerrilla operation in history, and the most successful. Lettow-Vorbeck returned home to Germany in early 1919 to a heros welcome, where he became involved in German nationalist politics. He refused to associate himself with the NSDAP, and just as strongly, he refused a British offer of asylum in 1939, choosing to remain in his Fatherland in the hour of its greatest peril. In the frenzy of historical witch-hunting that is standard operating procedure in todays Germany, Lettow-Vorbecks memory is now viewed as politically incorrect, and streets in numerous cities that were once named in his honor have been given new names and thereby ideologically purified.
Posted on: Wed, 22 Jan 2014 16:30:04 +0000
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