GERMANY LOSES ITS COLONIES IN THE FAR EAST:  SEPTEMBER 1914

Acknowledgements

German Colonies in the Far East: thespiritualpilgrim.net  Intro: reddit.com  The Pacific:  en.wikipedia.org Tsingtao:  deutsche-schutzgebiete  Samoa: collections.tepapa.govt.nz.  Africa: facebook

     It was soon after their defeat at the naval battle of Heligoland at the end of August, 1914, that the Germans were faced with the loss of their colonies in the Far East. Over the next few months their scattered colonial possessions in the Pacific, numerous in number but small in size, were quickly taken over.

     The Japanese, having declared war on Germany in accordance with the Anglo-Japanese Treaty of 1902, were more than willing to take on the bulk of this task. Inxaddition to expelling the Germans from their Chinese naval base at Tsingtao, just south of the Shandung Peninsula – assisted by British troops and Allied warships – they swiftly set out to capture the Mariana, Caroline, Palau and Marshall Islands south of Japan. (See map here and a more detailed map below)

     There was some concern with regard to Japan’s motivation at this time, despite a pledge from the Japanese government that it had no territorial ambitions in this area. This concern was somewhat justified early on. Having captured the Mariana Islands, they were requested by Britain to hand them to Australia for strategic reasons – the United States being concerned about the security of the Philippines – but the Japanese refused point blank, seeing them as “the spoils of war”. Despite this, at the end of the war, Japanese claims to the South Sea Islands were supported by Great Britain, France, Russia and Italy. As a result, the Versailles Treaty granted Japan a mandate over all the former German colonies north of the equator (an area known as Micronesia – see map below). They were forbidden from building any fortifications on these islands but, in effect, they were nothing short of colonial territories.

     Incidentally, it was from Micronesia that the Japanese launched their attack upon the American naval base at Pearl Harbour in December 1941 and brought the United States into the Second World War. ….  And it was from Micronesia that the Americans, having taken over some of the islands, launched their first bombing raid against the Japanese mainland.

WW1-1914-1918-WW1-1914-1918-WW1-1914-1918-WW1-1914-1918-WW1-1914-1918-WW1

     Furtherxsouth, Australia took over the German colony on the north-east coast of New Guinea, following their victory at the Battle of Bita Paka, and New Zealand occupied the western half of Samoa. Like the Japanese, neither encountered any serious resistance, and control of the areas posed no serious problems, though the distance between the small islands in Micronesia – some 2,500 in number – made administration somewhat difficult for Japan. There was quite a large migration of Japanese to the Carolines during the 1920s and 1930s, but at the end of the Second World War in 1945 a vast number were repatriated back to Japan.

To go back to the Dateline, click HERE

     But despite these territorial losses the German navy remained active in the Pacific. A task force under the command of Vice Admiral Maximilian von Spee sent two cruisers, the Konigsberg and the Emden, to support German colonies in East Africa and to attack British shipping in the Indian Ocean. The Konigsburg was eventually blockaded in the Rufigi River (German East Africa) and the Emden was later sunk by an Australian cruiser off the Cocos Islands, but not before they had destroyed HMS Pegasus off Zanzibar in the September, and a Russian cruiser off Penang the following month. Meanwhile Spee made for South American waters. As we shall see, it was here, off the Chilean coast, that he was to win the Battle of Coronel at the beginning of November.

     Next in time, however, as we shall see, was the opening of the African Front, marked by Allied attacks on the German colonies of Togoland and Kamerun.

CLICK HERE