Civil war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Why did the Soviet military fight in Africa? What did the cadets see during excursions in Crimea?

Anti-colonial struggle in Africa. 1964

(the numbers indicate the years of independence)

African wars of our time

Africa is a continent at war since ancient times. After all, even the first historically recorded war in the classical sense was the “partly African” Egyptian-Hittite conflict of 1300 BC, since African Egypt waged this war on the territory of what is now Syria and Turkey. Over the entire post-colonial period (since 1957), there have been 35 significant armed conflicts on the continent, more than a hundred successful and failed coups d'état, not counting minor uprisings, inter-ethnic clashes and border incidents. During their course, about 10 million people died, most of whom (92%) were civilians. Africa accounts for almost 50% of the world's refugees (more than 7 million people) and 60% of displaced people (20 million people).

Most African conflicts are based on inter-ethnic and inter-clan contradictions. There are about 500 peoples and nationalities on the continent. This circumstance is aggravated by the arbitrariness of the borders of African states created by the colonialists. Many nations were divided. For example, the Somali people, as a result of colonial redrawing of the map of the Horn of Africa, ended up in four states - Somalia, Ethiopia, Djibouti and Kenya, which became a constant factor in the instability of the region. And vice versa. Many states are artificial colonial formations in which interethnic contradictions are virtually insurmountable. The latest example is the division of Sudan after a long period of civil wars.

The religious factor is also important - Christianity, Islam and various local cults (animism) form a complex and contradictory combination here, which often serves as the “ignition fuse” of many armed conflicts. Among the socio-economic causes of conflicts are poverty of the population, weakness of government structures, constant struggle for land and natural resources.

The most common types of armed conflicts in Africa are civil wars of varying levels of intensity, followed by interstate conflicts. These are often mixed wars. The most indicative in this sense is the Great African War or the “First World War” of Africa. Technically, these were two interrelated civil wars in Zaire, which later became the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In fact, almost all the states of Central and Southern Africa were drawn into this protracted armed conflict at various stages.

When they talk and write about African wars, they are talking, first of all, about the humanitarian aspects and problems of peaceful resolution of these conflicts. The military component (both strategic and tactical) is considered extremely rarely. Meanwhile, the wars in Africa have already formed their own separate chapter in modern world military history, and some of these wars in the history of military art.

This essay examines most of the armed conflicts of free Africa (the starting point is the late 1950s, when the process of decolonization of the continent became irreversible). Wars and conflicts - the most significant from the point of view of military art - are examined in more detail. For ease of presentation, they are grouped according to regional principles.

North Africa

In the modern military history of North Africa, Algeria and Libya certainly play a leading role. Modern Egypt, despite its African identity, fought almost all of its major wars with “non-African” Israel.

Algerian War of Independence

The Algerian War of Independence (1954–1962) had a major influence on the development of modern methods of warfare. In particular, the tactics of air cavalry (helicopter landings), which were then successfully used by the American army in Vietnam. Yet the French army showed a surprising inability to learn from previous wars in the early stages of the war. The lost campaign in Indochina, which was the same counter-guerrilla in nature as in Algeria, showed the need to wage a highly maneuverable war. Instead, the French command decided to rely on numerical superiority and technical superiority. But heavy armored vehicles were only useful in protecting garrisons; in the Atlas Mountains, tanks and heavy artillery were of little use. The constant increase in the contingent in Algeria, by 1958 the total number of troops and security forces amounted to 500 thousand people, plus the formation of self-defense from local French, did not help to radically change the situation.

The French military administration developed the tactics of quadrillage (breaking into squares). The country was divided into regions (squares), each of which was assigned to a specific military unit responsible for security. The “struggle for hearts and minds” also brought certain successes; parts of the collaborators - “harki” - defended their villages from the units of the National Liberation Front (FLN) of Algeria.

Throughout almost the entire war, the TNF partisan detachments were unable to carry out a single large-scale operation. Ambushes, attacks on small garrisons, acts of sabotage. The level of their tactical training remained low. Another front of the TNF was the urban guerrilla - terrorist attacks in the capital of the colony and other cities. Its effectiveness from the point of view of the strategy of indirect action was much higher - the war in Algeria became a serious problem for Paris and attracted the attention of the world community - which was to the advantage of the rebels.

The stagnation of the situation forced the French command to finally switch to tactics of maneuver warfare. Mobile groups (paratrooper units and parts of the French Foreign Legion) patrolled areas of partisan activity, escorted convoys, and were quickly deployed for support. At the same time, it was impossible to completely destroy the partisans, since their main bases were in Tunisia and Morocco. Although the possibilities of breaking through the border were significantly reduced by the “lines”.

The lines (most famously the line on the Tunisian border, nicknamed the “Maurice Line” after the then Minister of Defense) were a combination of live barbed wire barriers, minefields and electronic sensors that made it possible to detect a breakout attempt and timely transfer troops to the threatened area. Throughout the first half of 1958, the TNF tried to break through these lines, but was unsuccessful and suffered heavy losses.

In February 1959, the President of France Charles de Gaulle gave the order to conduct a general offensive against the forces of the TNF. This series of operations, led by the commander of the troops in Algeria, General Maurice Schall, lasted until the spring of 1960. Their essence was large-scale cleansing. Paratroopers and legionnaires combed areas blocked by army units. Helicopters and attack aircraft were widely used. FIO lost half of his command staff in battles, but did not suffer a decisive defeat.

However, the futility of further continuing the war became increasingly obvious in France. In 1961, active hostilities virtually ceased. A year later, Algeria gained independence.

Other Algerian wars

Soon the FIO units were tested for strength as the regular army of free Algeria. In the fall of 1963, the Algerian-Moroccan border dispute escalated into a full-scale clash called the Sand War. Well-equipped units of the Moroccan army invaded the Algerian province of Tindouf, but they failed to achieve significant success. Acting in a “hit and run” style, seasoned FIO veterans negated the enemy’s technical superiority. In response, the Moroccans, to protect against raids by Algerian troops, erected Fortified Sand Walls - an analogue of the Maurice Line. These tactics were then used by them during the Western Sahara War. As a result, after nine years of fruitless clashes, Morocco and Algeria demarcated the border by signing a corresponding agreement in 1972.

Unfortunately, one of the painful problems of the African continent is the numerous civil wars that occurred in almost every second African country. Over the past 20th century alone, there have been at least several dozen such military conflicts in Africa, some of which have passed from the 20th century to the 21st century and are still ongoing. What is the reason for this, why some Africans, instead of living in peace and harmony, kill other, same Africans? In our opinion, there are several reasons for this, and one of them is the consequences of European colonialism.

The fact is that most African countries at the beginning of the 20th century were someone’s colonies: English, French, German, Portuguese, and only in the 50s did a movement for the independence of African peoples and the formation of national states begin. And here the main problem is buried - during the formation of the same national countries, the ex-European colonialists already combined the incompatible, different tribes with different cultures, traditions, mentality (yes, African peoples are just as different as, say, European ones) turned out to be citizens of the same country. Of course, this could not but cause conflicts. (However, in Ukraine, people seem to have a similar mentality; to be convinced of this, simply go on a bus trip along the route Dnepropetrovsk Berdyansk, but, nevertheless, this did not protect against conflict in the east of our country).

A typical example of such a conflict was the civil war in Nigeria, which lasted from 1967 to 1970. Its reason was precisely the cultural and religious divergence of the local tribes - the north of Nigeria was inhabited by the Muslim Hausa tribes, who had professed Islam for many centuries, led a nomadic lifestyle, and had strong patriarchal traditions. In the south lived the Ibo tribes, who adopted Christianity back in the 19th century through the efforts of European missionaries. For they were distinguished by greater democracy and love of freedom, if in the Hausa everything was decided by the local sultan, who had virtually unlimited power, then in the Ibo tribes, although they had their own leaders, all important decisions were made at the collective council of all residents of a particular tribe (real democracy in African ). And these two such different peoples, different in tradition, culture, mentality, religion, finally, by the will of the British (Nigeria was a British colony) became fellow citizens of one country.

What happened next is not difficult to guess, each of these two groups sought to lead the political leadership of Nigeria, at first Ibo managed to do this, and their representative Johnson Ironsi became the interim president of the country, but as a result of a military coup carried out by the northern tribes of Faus, he was killed, and power was already captured by their protege, General Yakubu Gowon. From that moment on, a real civil war began, the Ibo and Fausa military began to recklessly shoot each other, the country was swept by a wave of violence, which very quickly also developed into a conflict on religious grounds: the Muslim Nigerians of Fausa eagerly began to kill their fellow Ibo citizens, who were Christians . The latter also did not remain in debt, following the Old Testament “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.” In a word, Nigerian Muslims and Christians killed each other like in our “good old” European Middle Ages, only instead of bows and spears they had Kalashnikov assault rifles and the good old Soviet T-34 tanks, which were willingly supplied by the Soviet Union to African countries.

In general, to avoid this, it would simply be better for them to be citizens of different countries, where each would live according to the traditions of their tribes, but as they say, we have what we have.

Another reason for civil conflicts in Africa in the second half of the last century was the cold war, speaking of two worldviews: Western, capitalist, and Soviet, communist. However, not only African countries became victims of this war (remember the war in Korea and Vietnam), but they too. A striking example here is the civil war in Angola between the pro-communist MPLA group and the UNITA party, led by the charismatic Angolan Jonas Savimbi, a former friend of US President Ronald Reagan himself.

The Angolan communists of the MPLA were actively supported by the Soviet Union and Cuba, Cuban volunteers actively fought on their side, Soviet advisers and specialists were sent to Angola (here http://www.bratishka.ru/archiv/2011/1/2011_1_4.php you can read the memoirs one such specialist about “African Afghanistan”) and of course weapons and military equipment. UNITA and the stubborn anti-communist Savimbi were helped by “damned imperialist America” and the neighboring Republic of South Africa, which did not want to have a “communist infection” on its borders.

In conclusion, I would like that in the new century, civil conflicts would affect African peoples less and less, if not disappear altogether, so that all Africans, and not only Africans, but all people in general, would live in peace and love, as the hippies once said: “ Make love not war."

The First World War revealed to the entire civilized world unprecedented bloodshed, the horror of gas attacks and the dreary nightmare of thousands of kilometers of trenches filled with liquid mud. One of the main and most characteristic features of that war was the extremely low mobility of the opposing armies: at the cost of the lives of hundreds or even thousands of soldiers, it was sometimes possible to advance a few kilometers deep into enemy territory. This situation drove professional soldiers on both sides into a state of impotent rage, since it was completely different from what was taught in military academies.

Trench mud is not capable of giving birth to heroes, but without heroes there cannot be a warring people: the ideologists of the state are obliged to regularly provide examples of heroism and devotion to their country, otherwise people give up from deprivation and aggressiveness disappears.

For the French, such a national hero was the young fighter pilot Georges Guynemer, who shot down fifty-four enemy aircraft and died heroically in the fall of 1917; For the British, the symbol of military romance at the end of the war unexpectedly turned out to be the eccentric in actions and hater of military uniforms, professional archaeologist and amateur intelligence officer Lawrence of Arabia, who led the partisan struggle of Arab tribes in the Turkish rear in the Middle East.
Germany was clearly losing the war and therefore needed heroes even more urgently. And in 1918 such a hero appeared - Colonel Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck became him. The name of this officer is associated with the defense of the most valuable colony of the German Empire - German East Africa (today it is the territory of Tanzania).

Arriving in the country at the very beginning of 1914, Lettov-Forbeck did not yet know that he would have to spend several years here, waging a real partisan war. He was not inexperienced; he also cannot be called a white-handed staff theorist: back in 1904-1906, he fought quite successfully in South-West Africa (modern Namibia) with the rebel Herero and Hottentot tribes, and therefore knew perfectly well all the features of combat in the conditions African bush heaths. Even earlier, at the very turn of the century, in 1900-1901, he happened to participate in the suppression of the so-called “Boxer Rebellion” in China.

It was during this period that Lettov-Vorbeck managed to thoroughly study the tactical qualities of the British troops - then this knowledge was very useful to him when organizing partisan raids behind the British rear.
In August 1914, British ships bombarded the colonial capital of Dar es Salaam with main-caliber artillery, thereby demonstrating their serious intentions and clearly hinting at surrender.
The German governor had no intention of engaging in hostilities with the British, but was removed from his post by Colonel Lettow-Vorbeck, who, in fact, assumed full power in wartime conditions. The colonel moved north, leading his troops along the Kenyan border. At the same time, Lettov-Vorbeck’s small mobile detachments managed to inflict several defeats on the British in local battles.

At the beginning of November, the German colonial detachments were even able to repel an attempt to land eight thousand Anglo-Indian troops on the strategically important port of Tanga. It is significant that Lettow-Vorbeck had a little more than a thousand people under his command at that moment, most of them being native Askari soldiers.
However, the very next year, the colonel became convinced that the clear quantitative superiority of the British troops left the German troops with nothing else to do but conduct a classic guerrilla war and in every possible way avoid any more or less massive operations conducted in classical ways.

The main composition of the German colonial troops, as already mentioned, were detachments of native soldiers called askari. Lettov-Vorbeck even managed to organize several permanent training camps for askari training.
Conducting a long armed struggle in a state of complete isolation from the metropolis presented many difficulties, including those relating to purely local characteristics. For example, it was very difficult for the Germans to prepare a large number of askari at once, since the local Africans reacted very sensitively to the military situation and intuitively sided with the stronger ones. The Askari also had their own customs and habits, to which the Europeans inevitably had to adapt.
For example, Lettow-Vorbeck himself mentions the following incident in his memoirs: during a difficult night climb to Mount Casigao, which took place in extremely difficult conditions, one of the askaris noticed that a German officer had severely scratched his face while wading through thorny bushes.
The reaction of the native soldier was peculiar: he took off his stocking, which he had not changed for five days, and carefully wiped his officer’s face with it. To the German’s credit, he was only slightly surprised by the eccentric act of his subordinate. The askari himself immediately explained that this was an ancient military custom and that this was done only for true friends.

In general, it was a somewhat strange war, especially if you compare it with what was happening at that time in the European theater of operations. To serve each European during partisan raids, there were five to seven colored servants. One person prepared food and acted as an orderly, while the rest carried supplies of clothing, food, a tent, a bed and other things. The main difference between peacetime and wartime for a German officer traveling in East Africa was that under normal peacetime conditions he would have been accompanied by approximately twice as many colored servants.
But despite everything, the few Kaiser officers managed to form strong and effective colonial troops in battle, quite capable of conducting active guerrilla operations in local conditions.

Empirically, the Germans came to the conclusion that they should not disperse their main forces, but act primarily in small patrols. “Later on, these patrols were highly valued. From Engare Nerobi, small mixed detachments of 8 to 10 Europeans and Askaris bypassed the enemy camps, which had advanced to Longido, and acted on his communications with the rear.
Thanks to the booty taken from Tanguy, we had telephone sets; these detachments included them in the English telephone wires and waited until larger or smaller enemy detachments or ox-drawn transports passed by. The enemy was fired upon from an ambush from a distance of 30 meters, prisoners and booty were taken - and the patrol disappeared again into the endless steppe.”, Lettov-Forbeck later wrote.
When, as a result of several raids, it was possible to obtain a certain number of horses and mules, two cavalry companies were formed, which, in the form of a fairly strong partisan detachment, were sent on long searches across the vast steppe regions located north of Mount Kilimanjaro.

This detachment reached the Uganda and Magadh railways, destroying bridges, attacking guard posts, blowing up railway tracks and carrying out other kinds of sabotage on the routes of communication between the railway and enemy camps.
At the same time, foot patrols sent into the areas east of Kilimanjaro had to advance on foot for many days through dense bush and enemy guards to carry out the same tasks. They usually consisted of one or two Europeans, three or four askaris and five or seven porters. Their raids sometimes lasted more than two weeks.

Lettov-Forbeck recalled the actions of these foot patrols as follows: “They had to make their way through enemy guards, and were often betrayed by native spies. Despite this, they mostly achieved their goal, sometimes spending more than two weeks in the raid. For such a small number of people, one killed animal or small catch represented significant help. Despite this, the deprivation and thirst in the unbearable heat were so great that many times people died of thirst. The situation was bad when someone fell ill or was injured; often, despite all the desire, there was no way to transport it. Transporting the seriously wounded from the Ugandan railway across the entire steppe to the German camp, if this happened, presented incredible difficulties. Colored people understood this, and there were cases when a wounded askari, fully aware that he was being left to be devoured by numerous lions, did not complain when he was abandoned in the bushes, but, on the contrary, gave weapons and cartridges to his comrades, so that at least they died. This patrol activity became more and more refined. Familiarity with the steppe grew, and along with patrols that acted secretly, avoided clashes and dealt with explosions on railways, combat patrols developed their activities. They, consisting of 20-30 or more askari, sometimes armed with one or two machine guns, looked for the enemy and tried to inflict losses on him in battle. At the same time, in the dense bushes, things came to such unexpected collisions that our askari sometimes literally jumped over the lying enemy and thus reappeared in his rear. The influence of these enterprises on the development of enterprise and readiness for battle was so great among Europeans and coloreds that after a series of successes it would be difficult to find an army with a better fighting spirit..

By organizing such sabotage raids, German officers successfully used the excellent hunting abilities and warlike spirit of the askari for their own purposes. In addition, the vanity of the Africans was actively used: all native soldiers who distinguished themselves in battle promptly received awards or promotions. Such a competent approach to working with “human material” could not but bear fruit: throughout the war, black soldiers were distinguished by amazing trust and affection for their German officers.

Gradually, the tactics and equipment of the German “partisans” improved. “Our equipment also did not remain idle. Clever fireworks makers and gunsmiths, together with factory engineers, constantly produced new devices suitable for damaging railways. Some of these mechanisms exploded only after a certain number of axles had passed over them.

With the help of the last device, we counted on the destruction of steam locomotives, since the British, for the sake of safety, began to place one or two platforms loaded with sand in front of them. Dynamite was available in large quantities as an explosive material on the plantations, but the explosive cartridges captured at Tang were much more effective.”

Somewhat surprised by such stubborn resistance from insignificant German forces, the British began to develop attacks on German troops in the area of Mount Kilimanjaro. But Lettov-Vorbek, meanwhile, evacuated most of his troops and the most valuable equipment to the south and began to prepare without haste for the continuation of the partisan war.

The British were forced to remember the lessons of the Anglo-Boer War and develop counterinsurgency tactics in order to protect the strategically important Ugandan railway. The British entrusted the conduct of this “special operation” to a specialist - the former leader of the Boer rebels during the Anglo-Boer War, General Jan Smuts.
“On both sides of the railway, the British cleared wide strips, which were fenced off on the outer edge with a continuous clearing of thorny bushes. Then, approximately every two kilometers, strong blockhouses, or fortifications, equipped with artificial obstacles, were built, from which patrols had to constantly inspect the railway track. Special detachments were kept on standby, a company force or more, for immediate transfer on special trains upon receipt of a message about an attack on any point on the railway. In addition, covering detachments were sent in our direction, which tried to cut off our patrols as they returned from the railway - as soon as spies or posts located on elevated points reported this,”- Lettov-Forbek later recalled.

Looking ahead, let's say that all these measures by the British did not ultimately yield any comforting results. And even the experience of the former partisan General Smuts could not significantly change the overall picture of the “small war” in East Africa. Here we see, by the way, one of the most obvious paradoxes of guerrilla warfare: even very experienced leaders of the partisan movement, having become generals of the regular army, in the fight against partisans began to make exactly the same mistakes and blunders as their long-time opponents.

At the heights southeast of Casigao and up to the seashore and further in the area of coastal settlements, English camps were also located, against which, in turn, the actions of German patrols and “flying squads” were directed. Lettow-Vorbeck sought to continually harm the enemy, forcing him to take defensive measures and thus tie up his forces right here, in the area of the Ugandan Railway.
For this purpose, strong points were created for German combat patrols; primarily from the coast to Mbujuni (on the Taveta - Voi road). The same work was carried out in the more northern region. The enemy camp at Mzima on the upper reaches of the Tsavo River and its communications with the rear along this river were constant targets of sabotage carried out both by patrols and by larger detachments of Germans.

Nevertheless, in March 1916, General Smuts, with the support of British and Belgian troops, launched a decisive offensive in two columns from the border with Kenya into the depths of German possessions. By August, Boer units reached the Morogoro Mountains and cut the railway connecting the port of Kigoma on Lake Tanganyika with the sea coast. To avoid being surrounded, the Germans were forced to leave Dar es Salaam to the enemy and retreat south to the Rufiji River valley.

However, this was where the main successes of the Boers ended: the people were exhausted by difficult transitions, and besides, it is unlikely that all the Boers from the recent enemies of the British Empire became its ardent allies, ready to give their lives for the Queen of England. Soon General Smuts himself was recalled from Africa, and most of the South Africans left after him.

Leaving East Africa, Jan Smuts was sincerely confident that Lettow-Vorbeck would not last long, but everything turned out quite the opposite. After the departure of Smuts, the British chief specialist in combating partisans, the Germans were left with only one main enemy - a lack of food, ammunition and fodder.

However, the German “rangers” have already learned to cope with all these difficulties. Food supplies were replenished with the help of hunting teams that hunted buffalos, elephants and antelopes in the steppe. Sugar was replaced with a large amount of wild honey, and salt was obtained by evaporating sea water on the shore. African women spun fabric from local cotton that was used for clothing, workshops made shoes from the skin of killed animals, and local craftsmen even learned to make diesel fuel from coconuts.
Several German missionary hospitals located in the south were quickly and effectively repurposed, turning into field hospitals that provided invaluable assistance to Lettow-Vorbeck’s “partisans.” It is significant that the Germans even managed to establish a continuous production of quinine, the main remedy at that time for the fight against tropical fever and malaria: a rare European could not get sick from these common ailments in tropical conditions.

Lettow-Vorbeck's tactics and strategy fully fit into the canons of classical guerrilla warfare - in an organized retreat before superior enemy forces, German troops were constantly looking for opportunities to inflict damage on their enemy. However, the inner ferment of the Prussian officer, brought up on the theory of “classical” war by Clausewitz, sometimes made itself felt, and then Lettov-Vorbeck ventured into open battle.

So, in October 1917, having received information from his scouts, he secured a position near the village of Mahiva that was advantageous and well adapted for defense. The frontal attacks of the British expected by the Germans were not long in coming. The commander of the British units in this area, General Beaves, usually did not indulge his opponents in tactical delights, preferring to hit the enemy in the strongest place and rush forward through the defense, regardless of any losses.
The result of such tactics was not long in coming: in four days of fighting, the British lost more than one and a half thousand people (a quarter of the corps), while the Germans had only about a hundred people killed and missing; Numerous trophies were captured, including ammunition and even machine guns, precious for any partisan.

Despite the obvious success, these losses, absolutely miniscule by the standards of a major war, forced the colonel to think about how he could continue to fight, since the loss in ammunition, weapons, manpower and especially in competent officers was extremely difficult to make up.
July 1918 saw another operational success for the Germans and their black Askaris, who captured one of the most important railway junctions. In order to throw off the trail of the pursuing British units and avoid a difficult crossing of the large Zambezi River, the Germans abruptly changed the direction of their movement and quickly marched north.

However, the unexpected happened here: the blow was struck by an invisible and merciless enemy - the Spanish flu, which was widespread at that time. Most of the German troops were affected by this infectious disease. After the epidemic, Lettov-Vorbeck had only less than two hundred Germans and about one and a half thousand askari at his disposal.

Trying with all his might to break away from the enemy and give a respite to the soldiers weakened after the epidemic, the colonel led his troops across the northern shore of Lake Nyasa into the territory of British Rhodesia. The fact that this new partisan raid was quite successful is evidenced by the following fact: on November 11, 1918, on the very day when Germany, exhausted by the war, was forced to agree to a truce, the Kaiser’s colonial troops under the command of Lettow-Vorbeck took the inhabited Kasama point.

But this was already the last military success of the German “partisans” - the next day, British General Deventer, commander-in-chief of the military forces of the region, officially notified Lettow-Vorbeck of the cessation of hostilities.
In Germany, the colonel was greeted as a national hero. Already here he learned that the strategy he had developed brilliantly justified itself. Such classic techniques of guerrilla warfare as operational flexibility and tactical improvisation, the use of the enemy's numerical superiority against himself and complete autonomy in the logistics of one's troops made it possible to retain a disproportionate number of allied forces in the secondary theater of operations.

In fact, in the best periods, the number of soldiers and officers at Lettow-Vorbeck did not exceed fourteen thousand people, while a group of more than three hundred thousand British, Belgian, Portuguese and South African troops acted against them.

On the strategic and geopolitical scale of the world war, Lettow-Vorbeck’s activities turned out to be almost unnoticeable. In this regard, a parallel immediately arises with another famous contemporary - Thomas Lawrence of Arabia, whose guerrilla strategy, although it allowed British troops to achieve operational success in Asia Minor, ultimately did not play any significant role on the scale of the entire war.

The post-war fate of Colonel Lettow-Vorbeck is quite typical for a Prussian officer of the old Kaiser school: immediately after his return from East Africa, he led the so-called “Free Corps” - volunteer detachments that suppressed the communist uprising in Hamburg. Then, while serving as commander of the Mecklenburg troops, he took part in the Kapp Putsch of 1920.

After the failure of the putsch, the colonel resigned, but over the next ten years he was regularly elected as a deputy of the Reichstag. Lettow-Vorbeck’s book “My Memoirs of East Africa,” written by him in the 1920s, did not have any literary value, since all the events were presented there in dry and clear military language, with a minimum of emotions and lyrical digressions.
At the same time, it cannot be said that these memoirs did not make any contribution to the theory of the “small war”: in the 1920-1930s, the Russian translation of the book by the Kaiser’s colonel was one of the main sources in the training of Soviet saboteurs - along with the books of Drobov, Karatygin, Denis Davydov and Lawrence of Arabia.

To Lettow-Vorbeck’s credit, it must be said that he never became a Nazi, although all his life, like most Germans of that time, he was a staunch nationalist. He categorically refused the position of ambassador in London offered to him by Hitler, so during the Second World War he lived under the guardianship of his daughter as a private citizen.
Having lost both sons during the war, Lettov-Vorbeck could not experience any warm feelings towards the Nazi regime. At the same time, he continued to maintain friendly relations with his former enemy Jan Smuts, whose food parcels from South Africa were very useful to the old soldier in the most difficult post-war years.

In 1964, shortly before his death, Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck again came to East Africa. The former askari, who had grown old together with their commander, gave him the warmest welcome. The former colonel once again walked through the sites of long-standing battles and raids that put him among the most successful partisan commanders in world military history.

PY.SY: When the famous General Lettow-Vorbeck died in 1964, the German Bundestag decided to take a beautiful step - to find the surviving black German partisans in Africa and pay them a bonus for their selfless service to the Empire.
A bank representative flew to Tanzania, to the city of Dar es Salaam. And there he encountered a difficulty - HOW (!?) can one determine that this elderly man fought under the command of a legendary commander? A lot of time has passed - 46 years. Many fighters have already died. No one has any supporting documents left.
Then the old black soldiers began to bring shabby pieces of German uniform - as a sign of confirmation of their service. But, unfortunately, this could not serve as proof.

And then the banker found a way out. He himself was a participant in the First World War. And he began to check everyone who came for money on their knowledge of drill training and on the correct execution of commands. It turned out that none of the blacks FORGOT a single command in German.
“Be equal!”, “Humble!”, “Left!”, “To the right!”, “Circle!”, “Charge!”, “Cut-cut!”, “ stop! one-two!” - the old soldiers did all this correctly and with great enthusiasm. For which they received the promised bonus.
So, military drill is not forgotten! Drill – it’s drill in Africa too

Bottom line Defeat of the partisans Opponents Great Britain
Strengths of the parties about 7,000 soldiers and officers

Italian guerrilla war in Ethiopia (1941-1943)- armed resistance in 1941-1943 by the remnants of Italian troops in Italian East Africa to the British after the defeat of the Italian army in the East African campaign of World War II.

Story

When Italian General Gugliermo Nasi capitulated on honorable terms to the British with the last remaining part of the Italian colonial army after defeat at the Battle of Gondar in November 1941, which formally ended the East African Campaign, many Italian soldiers decided to continue the fight and began guerrilla warfare in in the mountains and deserts of Ethiopia, Eritrea and Somalia. Almost 7,000 soldiers (according to Italian historian Alberto Rosselli) took part in this struggle against the British army and the Ethiopians in the hope that the German-Italian army under the leadership of General Rommel would achieve victory in Egypt (which would turn the Mediterranean into the Italian Mare Nostrum) and retake control over the territories of the Italian colonies recently occupied by the British.

Initially there were two main Italian partisan organizations: Fronte di Resistenza(Resistance Front) and Figli d'Italia(Sons of Italy).

Fronte di Resistenza was a secret military organization led by Colonel Lucetti, whose members were concentrated in all major cities of the former Italian East Africa. The main areas of their activity were military sabotage and the collection of information about British troops to be sent by one means or another to Italy.

Organization Figli d'Italia was created in September 1941, that is, even before the final “official” capitulation of the Italians in Ethiopia, from the blackshirts of the “Milizia Volontaria per la Sicurezza Nazionale” (a fascist organization of volunteer soldiers). They engaged in a guerrilla war against the British and persecuted those Italians - both civilians and former soldiers of the colonial army - who collaborated in one way or another with British and Ethiopian troops and were called "traitors" by members of the organization.

Other groups that fought against the British were Amhara fighters led by Lieutenant Amedeo Guillet in Eritrea and Major Gobbi's guerrilla force operating in Dessa, in northern Ethiopia. In early 1942, guerrilla fighting groups emerged in Eritrea under the command of Captain Aloisi, whose activities were dedicated to helping Italian soldiers and civilians escape from British concentration camps located in the cities of Asmara and Decamera. In the early months of 1942 (due to the conquest of British Somaliland in August 1940), Italian guerrilla groups also appeared in British Somaliland.

There were also a number of Eritreans and Somalis (and even a small number of Ethiopians) who assisted the Italian rebels. But their numbers dropped significantly after the defeat of the Axis forces at the Battle of El Alamein at the end of 1942.

These partisan units (called in Italian bande) operated over a fairly vast territory - from the north of Eritrea to the south of Somalia. Their weapons consisted mainly of old 91 rifles, but also Beretta pistols, Fiat and Schwarzlose machine guns, hand grenades, dynamite and even a few small 65mm cannons. However, they always lacked sufficient ammunition.

Since January 1942, most data bande began to act more or less coordinated, obeying the orders of General Muratori (formerly the commander of the fascist “militia” in the colony). He supported (and in fact organized) a revolt against the British by the Azebo-Galla tribal group of the Oromo people inhabiting the Galla-Sidama region in northern Ethiopia, becoming one of the main protagonists of this uprising. The uprising was suppressed by British and Ethiopian troops only at the beginning of 1943.

In the spring of 1942, even the Emperor of Ethiopia, Haile Selassie I, began to establish diplomatic “channels of communication” with the Italian rebels, because he was frightened by Rommel’s victory at Tobruk in Libya. Major Lucetti stated after the end of the war that the Emperor, if Axis forces reached Ethiopia, was prepared to accept an Italian protectorate with the following conditions:

General amnesty for Ethiopians who fought against Italy;
The presence of Ethiopians in all government bodies of the protectorate and at all levels of government;
Participation of Emperor Haile Selassie in the future government of the protectorate.

However, there is no documentary evidence that such conditions were actually put forward by the emperor.

In the summer of 1942, the following partisan detachments acted more actively and more successfully than others against the British: under the leadership of Colonel Calderari in Somalia, under the leadership of Colonel di Marco in the Ogaden, under the leadership of Colonel Ruglio in Danakil and under the leadership of the “Blackshirt centurion” de Warde in Ethiopia. Their successful ambushes forced the British command to send additional troops from Sudan and Kenya, including tanks and even aircraft, to the guerrilla-ridden former Italian East Africa.

In the summer of that year, the British decided to place most of the Italian population of the coastal regions of Somalia in concentration camps in order to exclude the possibility of their contact with Japanese submarines operating nearby.

In October 1942, the morale of the Italian rebels began to gradually dry up due to Rommel's defeat at the Battle of El Alamein, as well as due to the capture of Major Lucetti (leader of the organization) by the British Fronte di Resistenza).

The guerrilla war, however, continued until the summer of 1943, when Italian soldiers began to destroy their weapons and - sometimes - even make successful attempts to escape to Italy; for example, the mentioned Lieutenant Amedeo Guillet (nicknamed the "devil commander" by the British) reached Tarentum on September 3, 1943. Moreover, he even asked the Italian War Ministry for “an aircraft loaded with ammunition to be used for guerrilla attacks in Eritrea,” but the government’s armistice with the Allies a few days later put an end to this desperate plan.

One of the last Italian soldiers in East Africa to surrender to British forces was Corrado Tuchetti, who later wrote in his memoirs that some soldiers continued to fight and ambush the British until October 1943. The last Italian officer to fight a guerrilla war against the British in East Africa was Colonel Nino Tramonti, who fought in Eritrea.

Thus, the fighting in East Africa was the longest of all that took place on the African continent during the Second World War.

Heroes of the guerrilla war

Italian poster dedicated to the guerrilla war in Ethiopia.

Of the many Italians who fought the British as guerrillas in East Africa between December 1941 and October 1943, two deserve special mention as they received medals for this “unknown” World War II campaign:

List of major Italian partisan officers who took part in the war

Lieutenant Amedeo Guillet in Eritrea;
Lieutenant Francesco De Martini in Eritrea;
Captain Paolo Aloisi in Ethiopia;
Captain Leopoldo Rizzo in Ethiopia;
Colonel di Marco in the Ogaden;
Colonel Ruglio in Dancal;
Blackshirt General Muratori in Ethiopia/Eritrea;
Officer ("centurion") of the Blackshirts de Warde in Ethiopia;
Blackshirt officer ("centurion") Luigi Cristiani in Eritrea;
Major Lucetti in Ethiopia;
Major Gobbi in Dess;
Colonel Nino Tramonti in Eritrea;
Colonel Calderari in Somalia.

Notes

Literature

Bullotta, Antonia. La Somalia sotto due bandiere Edizioni Garzanti, 1949 (Italian)
Cernuschi, Enrico. La resistenza sconosciuta in Africa Orientale Rivista Storica, dicembre 1994.(Rivista Italiana Difesa) (Italian)
Del Boca, Angelo. Gli Italiani in Africa Orientale La caduta dell’Impero Editori Laterza, 1982. (Italian)
Rosselli, Alberto. Story Segrete. Operazioni sconosciute o dimenticate della seconda guerra mondiale Iuculano Editore. Pavia, 2007 (Italian)
Sbacchi, Alberto. Haile Selassie and the Italians, 1941-43. African Studies Review, vol.XXII, n.1, April 1979. (English)
ASMAI/III Archivio Segreto. Relazione Lucchetti. 2 Guerra Mondiale pacco IV. (Italian)
Segre, Vittorio Dan. La guerra privata del tenente Guillet. Corbaccio Editore. Milano, 1993 (Italian) i new date

Links

The Devil Commander Amedeo Guillet
The Italian guerrillas in Italian East Africa (Italian)

Partisan movements of World War II and the first years after it

In October 2011, the United States opened another front in the “fight against extremism”: a detachment of 100 special forces was sent to Uganda to capture the legendary “Holy Spirit” Joseph Kony, the leader of the partisan “Army of the Lord.” Since 1986, Kony’s troops have killed more than 150 thousand people in the struggle to build a “new Zion.”

In January 2012, about 50 British “military advisers” and 30 French “security consultants” joined 100 American special forces. In addition, about 100 thousand military personnel from four African countries - South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Central African Republic and Uganda - are participating in the operation to capture Joseph Kony and his detachment of 10-15 thousand people. But three months of military operation have not yet brought success: the leader of the “Army of the Lord,” as before, is elusive. Who is Joseph Kony, who forced the armies of 7 countries to unite in the fight against him?

Joseph Kony started out as a Catholic priest. But in 1985, when he was 23 years old, under the influence of his cousin Ellis Lakwena, he dramatically changed his views not only on Ugandan and African life, but also on religion.

His sister by that time was a respected and influential person in Uganda, the founder of the political-religious “Holy Spirit Movement”. This Movement, according to her plan, was to put an end to the lack of rights of the common people and the dominance of corrupt officials. Ellis Lakvena anticipated the RosPil organization of Alexei Navalny. True, she did not act on social networks, but in real life, bringing tens of thousands of people onto the streets.

By 1988, the Holy Spirit Movement had established its power in about ten small towns in Uganda. And it seemed to Lakwena that now she would have enough strength to capture the capital of the country, where the “federals” were entrenched. In the summer of the same year, under her leadership, a detachment of 30 thousand people moved to the capital Kampala. They walked unarmed, singing biblical psalms. On the approaches to Kampala, the protesters were met by Ugandan riot police and other punitive forces. People were shot from cannons and heavy machine guns. No one counted the dead; according to various estimates, there were from 1 to 3 thousand people. The wounded Ellis Lakwena managed to escape to neighboring Kenya. But her spine was damaged by a bullet, and until her death in 2007, she could no longer physically lead the Ugandan protest movement.

(This is what Ugandan bureaucrats and security officials look like)

By the way, the non-systemic opposition of the country assured that the punitive detachments were then led by British military advisers. Since then, Lakwena’s cousin, Joseph Kony, has retained a persistent hatred of all English-speaking whites; having fallen into his clutches, they were doomed to a painful death under sophisticated torture.

Kony’s further life path was similar to the biography of Vladimir Lenin: until then, a peaceful Catholic priest decided to become an irreconcilable revolutionary, burning with a desire to avenge his sister and the murdered “dissenters.” He resigns from the rank of Catholic priest. More precisely, Joseph Kony organizes the religious political-terrorist movement “Ugandan People's Democratic Christian Army”.

Joseph Kony, as a result of deep reflection, came to the conclusion that a new, fair society can only be built from children untouched by the sins of the modern world. He quickly formed a detachment of 100-150 “dissenters,” and these militants began to capture village children. Within a couple of years, this Movement numbered more than 2 thousand people, and Joseph Kony declared himself a “Major General.” Looking ahead, let's say that from 1988 to the present day, his squad has kidnapped, according to various estimates, from 60 to 100 thousand children.

Then, in the early 1990s, Kony developed a more coherent ideology for his Movement. He declared the ultimate goal of the struggle to be the construction of “Zion,” a theocratic state based on the 10 biblical commandments. To do this, it was necessary to kill all the bad people affected by sins. Kony renamed his movement the “Lord's Resistance Army,” and officially declared himself the incarnation of the “Holy Spirit.”

Uganda is a fairly poor country in terms of natural resources. And Joseph Kony’s brigade needed money to fight against “sin.” And then he expanded the geography of his activities, heading to the neighboring Democratic Republic of the Congo. There, the “Holy Spirit” entered into a fight with local tribes for diamonds. As a result, by the beginning of the 2000s, diamonds began to bring him up to 20 million dollars a year. So Kony got money to increase the size of his brigade, to purchase weapons, ammunition, and medicine.

(Child soldiers of the Lord's Resistance Army)

During these same years, Kony began to increasingly cross the borders of two more neighboring states - the Central African Republic and Sudan. At first, the reason for this migration was the military operations of the Ugandan army, which temporarily drove Kony out of the country. And then the “Lord’s Resistance Army” felt the taste of easy victories in the Central African Republic and Sudan - the local armies were weak and could not resist Kony’s raids. He also took children away from these countries, and also punished corrupt officials and inhumane bureaucrats. One of the methods of execution was burning on a cross. His henchmen simply chopped simple “minions of power” into pieces with axes. This allowed “militant atheists” in the West to classify the dead as victims of militant Christians.

During the guerrilla war, Joseph Kony destroyed about 150 thousand people, and he made another 2 million blacks forced refugees. And all this time he remained elusive to local security forces. One of the secrets of his longevity, in addition to supporting simple autochthons, is a complete ban on satellite phones among his comrades (and there is no mobile communication in the jungle at all). It is impossible to find him using a phone signal (let us remember that it was direction finding by satellite phone that cost the lives of the leaders of Chechnya, Dudayev and Maskhadov). The only way to deal with Joseph Kony and his squad is to go into the jungle.

And so in October 2011, American, and a little later British and French special forces decided to go into the jungle. Why did the “world community” become so concerned about the capture (or destruction) of the “Holy Spirit” so late, especially since the International Court of Justice issued the sanction for his arrest back in 2005?

(Joseph Kony's headquarters)

The reason for this was oil. In the early 2000s, huge oil reserves were confirmed in southern Sudan. For her sake, the “world community” decided to dismember the country (the Interpreter’s blog already wrote about the declaration of independence of South Sudan in the summer of 2011). In addition, the division of Sudan was a blow to China’s interests in this region - the Chinese had previously put a lot of effort and money into feeding local elites who promised oil to Chinese state-owned companies. And then in one hour they lost billions of dollars. By the way, conspiracy theorists still say that the Lord's Resistance Army is sponsored by Beijing - this is a pin with which Asian communists can somehow tease their Western competitors.

The new state of South Sudan fell into the orbit of Western transnational oil companies. Joseph Kony also came into orbit as an entity bringing destabilization to this region and the “peaceful development of the oil industry.”

By the way, Joseph Kony deifies oil. He calls it “the juice of the ancestors,” and believes that it was formed from the bodies of blacks (and blacks once inhabited the entire planet up to the North Pole, and were driven to Africa by whites relatively recently). He gives communion to the militants of his Army with oil, draws crosses on their bodies with it, believing that they protect against bullets. For now, they are protecting.