Paul Von Lettow-Vorbeck (1870-1964), German military general who led a brilliant and undefeated guerrilla campaign against vastly more numerous British and Allied forces in East Africa during World War I.

Von Lettow-Vorbeck was born on March 20, 1870, in Saarlouis, near Saarbrücken, Germany. Between 1900 and 1901 he served as 2nd lieutenant in Germany’s East Asian Expeditionary Corps, and took part in putting down the Boxer Rebellion in China. He then served until 1914 in German South-West Africa (now Namibia), where he participated in the suppression of rebellions of the natives of Herero and Hottentotten between 1904 and 1908.

Holding the rank of lieutenant-colonel, in February 1914 he was appointed commander of the colonial forces in German East Africa (now Tanzania), the most important of the German overseas possessions. At the outbreak of World War I in August 1914 Von Lettow-Vorbeck, on his own initiative while isolated from outside command and using tactics learned in China and South-West Africa, launched a guerrilla war against Allied possessions in East Africa with a force that never exceeded about 14,000 (3,000 Germans and 11,000 Askaris or native Africans), but ultimately faced a force of between 250,000 and 300,000 British, Belgian, Indian, Portuguese, and South African troops.

Von Lettow-Vorbeck began the war by attacking British railways in Kenya, and three months later, after attempting to capture Mombasa, repulsed a much larger British and Indian invasion force that had earlier landed at Tanga to conquer German East Africa. His force remained on the offensive with raids into Kenya and Rhodesia (now Zambia and Zimbabwe), destroying British forts and railways and capturing supplies. He also managed to salvage the guns from the destroyed German warship Königsberg in the Rufiji delta, south of Dar es Salaam.

In March 1916 Allied forces under the command of the South African general Jan Christiaan Smuts went on the offensive, capturing Tanga, Bagamoyo, Dar es Salaam, and Tabora, but failed to pin down Von Lettow-Vorbeck, who then retreated into the south-east of German East Africa. In 1917 the Allies launched attacks from Kenya, Rhodesia, Belgian Congo (now Democratic Republic of the Congo), and Portuguese East Africa (now Mozambique), forcing Von Lettow-Vorbeck south into Portuguese East Africa that December to seize supplies, and advancing as far south as Quelimane by July 1918. He then launched fresh raids against northern Rhodesian forts in November 1918, capturing Kasama, and was in the midst of planning further large raids when news of the November 11 Armistice reached him. Although undefeated, Von Lettow-Vorbeck, now a general, surrendered his force of 3,000 to the British on November 25, 1918, at Mbaala, northern Rhodesia.

Von Lettow-Vorbeck returned to Germany a national hero in January 1919. In July of that year he led a brigade of right-wing Freikorps that crushed the left-wing Spartacist forces in Hamburg. Von Lettow-Vorbeck was however obliged to resign from the army having declared his support for the right-wing Kapp Putsch in 1920. From May 1929 to July 1930 he served as a deputy in the Reichstag, later unsuccessfully trying to establish a conservative opposition to Hitler. He subsequently refused Hitler’s offer of an ambassadorial position, and was later forced to work as a gardener to support himself. After World War II Smuts and other Allied veterans of the East African campaign, moved by his destitute plight, arranged for Von Lettow-Vorbeck to receive a pension. He died on March 9, 1964, in Hamburg.