Germany
Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck
1870–1964 Commander of the Schutztruppe, German East Africa
A Prussian officer who served in China during the Boxer Rebellion and in South West Africa during the Herero war, Lettow-Vorbeck arrived in German East Africa in January 1914. Defying the governor's wish for neutrality, he took the offensive and won at Tanga. Thereafter he refused any decisive engagement, living off the land and the enemy's supplies, and dragging pursuers across hundreds of miles of Tanzania, Mozambique and Zambia with an army of askari and carriers. Promoted to general, he surrendered on 25 November 1918. In Germany he became a national hero, and he entered politics as a conservative in the Weimar Republic. Historians admire his generalship but stress that it rested on the labor, and the sacrifice, of his African soldiers and the civilians whose crops he requisitioned.