South Africa
Jan Smuts
1870–1950 South African defense minister; commander in East Africa, 1916; Imperial War Cabinet, 1917
A lawyer who studied at Cambridge, Smuts served as a Boer commando officer in the Second Boer War, helped create the Union of South Africa and became defense minister under Louis Botha. In 1914 he organized the forces that put down the Maritz Rebellion; in 1915 he and Botha conquered German South-West Africa. He took charge of the campaign in German East Africa in 1916, where some contemporaries criticized him for prolonging the fighting while many men died of disease; Lettow-Vorbeck was still at large when Smuts left to join the Imperial War Cabinet in 1917. His review of the air services that year led to the Royal Air Force. He was prime minister from 1919 to 1924 and from 1939 to 1948, and died on 11 September 1950.