War History Network members appreciate the multi-faceted impact of war.  Botha, Smuts And The Great War is a fascinating case study of the then new Union of South Africa. Its path to war shared factors with that other USA, the United States of America.  Protected by thousands of miles of ocean, both had strong English influences countervailed by anti-British ethnics, German and Irish in America, Dutch Boer in Africa.  Either could have sat out the war without much disruption to their development and prosperity and in each the decision to go to war was politically divisive.  This book is the saga of South Africa's road to and through the Great War and the men who led it. 

South Africa's history is unique.  Dutch settlers, after migrating inland from the Cape of Good Hope to escape encroaching British, established isolation that lasted until gold and diamonds were discover in their republics.  After British conquest during the Boer War, a segment of Boer political and military leadership hitched their wagons to the Empire’s star and became a dominant, though not unopposed, force in the political life of the Union.  Louis Botha and Jan Smuts, both prominent officers in the Transvaal Republic Army, became leaders of the new Dominion within the Empire.  It was they who fought as Empire soldiers against the foe and worked as nation builders during and through the war. 

South African participation in the Great War was driven and limited by its tradition and geography. Its Union Defense Force (UDF), a blend of Boer Commandos (comparable to American militia) and a faint copy of British forces, was better equipped for cavalry campaigns in Africa than a place in the trenches of the Western Front.  Bordering on German Southwest Africa and within striking distance of German East Africa, its best opportunity to advance its own interests and contribute to the Allied cause was to neutralize German colonies while freeing British troops for the European Theatre.  Unable to evacuate its colonial forces, Germany’s objective was to hold as many Allied troops in Africa as long as possible.  The German wireless station in Windhoek was an Axis asset the Allies could not be allowed to remain. 

South Africa participated in two major campaigns.  From September 1914 through July 1915, it took German Southwest Africa. That having been accomplished, South African troops moved to the continuing war against German East Africa. 

Southwest Africa was significant, both for the threat it posed to the Union and for information transmitted from its wireless station in Windhoek.  After an initial rebuff on September 26, 1914 at Sandfontein, Prime Minister and General Botha designed a three-pronged attack to subdue the German forces.  Botha commanded the Northern force invading from Walvis Bay, a South African enclave midway on the SWA coast, Smuts landed a central force at the German naval base at Luderitz and joined with UDF’s Eastern and Southern forces, leading to the unconditional surrender of SWA on July 9, 1915. 

Having achieved peace in the west, Botha returned to government in Pretoria to face a Boer revolt and political opposition over government policies while Smuts moved to military command in the east.   

Fighting in German East Africa was a much more drawn out, less organized campaign spreading over German East Africa, British Northern Rhodesia, Portuguese Mozambique and the Belgian Congo.  In contrast to the desert of Southwest Africa, the terrain, thick vegetation and disease ecology made the eastern African theatre less conducive to the sweeping movements of mounted troops on which Botha and Smuts had built their success.  Commissioned to lead a polyglot army drawn from South Africa, East and West Africa, the Belgian Congo, Lusophone (Portuguese speaking) Africa, Britain and India, Smuts took on the respected German commander, Colonel Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck.  From the beginning of to the end of 1916, Smuts built a reputation for success, of which the Allies had little elsewhere. Lettow-Vorbeck’s outnumbered German and native troops used interior lines and initiative to keep the campaign active until news arrived of the armistice of November 11, 1918. 

Too talented a character to be left in African jungles Smuts arrived in London on March 12, 1917 to public adulation.  As South Africa’s representative on the Imperial War Conference and, at Lloyd George’s request, a member of the War Cabinet, he carried out missions to the United States, North Africa, the Middle East, Italy and settlement of labor strikes in South Wales involving police and coal miners.  Though plans to grant Smuts a military command were stymied by British unwillingness to share rank with a colonial who so recently had been an enemy, he would be a significant figure in the Versailles Peace Conference, advocating for the League of Nations and his vision for Southern Afrrica. 

This 311-page volume sheds light on theatres rarely illuminated.  Its narrations of African campaigns, supplemented by photos and maps, describe types of warfare not normally associated with the Great War, demonstrated to be related to the whole.  The Great War, that destroyed empires and spawned nations, is shown to have molded South Africa.  Amidst the turmoil of war, South Africa’s choice of the path to apartheid, which still influences our world, is documented on these pages. 

Authors Antonio Garcia and Ian Van Der Waag have crafted a valuable addition to the Great War literature.

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