Botha, Smuts and the Great War

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By Antonio Garcia & Ian Van Der Waag

Helion & Company, 2023

Reviewed by Jim Gallen

The United States' slow and meandering road to the Great War is familiar to many Roads readers. Less well known is the path the Union of South Africa followed to the Great War.  These two USAs shared some factors. Protected by thousands of miles of ocean, both had strong British 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 lives and in each the decision to go to war was politically divisive. Botha, Smuts and the Great War is the saga of South Africa's road to and through the Great War and the men who led it.

The background to South Africa's entry into the Great War was unique. The interior of the tip of Africa was settled by Dutch who migrated inland from the Cape of Good Hope to escape pressure from arriving British. Boer isolation lasted until gold and diamonds were discovered 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 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 in the trenches of the Western Front. There was, however, one exception to this policy. A volunteer infantry brigade was organized and sent to Egypt and then on to the Western Front. These Springboks, as they called themselves, fought notably on the Somme in 1916 and the further British campaigns of 1917–1918.

Bordering on German Southwest Africa and within striking distance of German East Africa, its best opportunity to contribute to the Allied cause was to neutralize German colonies while freeing British troops for the European Theatre.  Germany’s goal was to hold as many troops in Africa as long as possible. Moreover, the German wireless station in Windhoek was an Axis asset the Allies could not be allowed to capture.

Success in Southwest Africa

South Africa participated in two major campaigns from September 1914 through July 1915, initially taking German Southwest 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 26 September 1914 at Sandfontein, the 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, while Smuts landed a central force at the German naval base at Luderitz and joined with UDF’s Eastern and Southern forces. This led to the unconditional surrender of SWA on 9 July  1915. Having achieved peace in the west, Botha returned to Pretoria to face a Boer revolt and political opposition over government policies while Smuts moved to 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 East Africa 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 to the end of 1916, Smuts built a reputation for success of which the Allies otherwise had little. Though his German and African forces were outnumbered, Lettow-Vorbeck’s German and native troops used interior lines and initiative to keep the campaign active until news arrived of the armistice of 11 November 1918.

Jan Smuts (Detail), by John Singer Sargent,
National Portrait Gallery

Smuts was too talented a character to be left in African jungles. On 12 March 1917, he arrived in London to public adulation and as South Africa’s representative to the Imperial War Conference and, at Lloyd George’s request, joined the War Cabinet. 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, Smuts was a convenient handyman, carrying out missions to the United States, North Africa, the Middle East and Italy, playing a part in the settlement of labor strikes in South Wales involving police and coal miners, and the establishment of the Royal Air Force. He would be a significant figure in the Versailles Peace Conference, advocating for the League of Nations and his vision for southern Africa. 

Roads readers appreciate the multi-faceted impacts of the Great War. This 311-page volume sheds light on theatres rarely illuminated. Its description of African campaigns, supplemented by photos and maps, describe types of warfare not normally associated with the Great War, but shown to be related to the whole. The 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 Great War literature in this book. 

Jim Gallen