Naulila, 1914: Portugal's first battle with Germany, fought in Angola

The Germans came out of the bush from the east, with the rising sun behind them. It was about five in the morning of 18 December 1914, and Fort Naulila, a mud-walled post ringed with thorn-bush fences on the south bank of the Kunene River, anchored the Portuguese line along the border with German South West Africa.2 sources2 sources

Major Victor Franke, the most experienced officer in the German colony, had planned a pincer attack. It went wrong at once. One of his companies, misled by its guide, was still marching along the river when the battle began, and the Portuguese opened fire first, from trenches the German scouts had missed. Their gunners aimed too high.1 source1 source

The German guns did not miss. A shell hit the fort's munitions store, which exploded, and the huts and barracks around it caught fire. The east side of the position was held by African troops who had no training for artillery and machine-gun fire; they took cover in the trenches and then gave way.2 sources2 sources

Franke was shot in the face by a sniper firing from a tree, handed command to his deputy, Captain Georg Trainer, and ordered the fort stormed. The Germans went in with bayonets. By about 8.30 the fighting was over, and by nine the last Portuguese soldiers had crossed the Kunene, heading north.1 source1 source

Portugal and Germany were not at war. They would not be for almost 15 months more.2 sources2 sources

The frontier between Angola and German South West Africa was fixed by a Luso-German treaty of 30 December 1886, drawn by negotiators who did not know the ground. It ran up the Kunene to some cataracts “south of Humbe”, then due east. No map was attached, nobody was sure which cataracts were meant, and the line cut through the Ovambo kingdoms.1 source1 source

On the ground Portugal ruled far less than its maps claimed. At the start of the twentieth century only about a fifth of Angola was under Portuguese control. On 25 September 1904 the Cuamato routed a Portuguese column at the Pembe ford on the Kunene: Barroso puts its losses at about 300 of 500 men, Zollmann at more than 300 dead from a force of over 1,000. Between August and October 1907 Alves Roçadas, then a captain, avenged the defeat with a campaign that occupied the Cuamato country and made him a national hero.3 sources3 sources

East of Cuamato lay the Kwanyama, the most powerful Ovambo kingdom, still unconquered. Its young king, Mandume ya Ndemufayo, ruled from 1911 at N'giva, today Ondjiva. Many Kwanyama men worked in German mines across the border, and the Portuguese were convinced that German traders and missionaries were arming them. The arbitrators later found no proof of that, though German officials did send Mandume some rifles as gifts in late 1914.3 sources3 sources

The war reached Portugal's colonies early. On 24 August 1914 a German post on the northern border of Mozambique attacked the Portuguese post of Maziua, its commander believing, wrongly, that the two countries were at war. In September South African troops invaded German South West Africa for the British Empire, and the colony's Schutztruppe, no more than 2,000 regular colonial soldiers in August 1914, faced invasion from the south.2 sources2 sources

Lisbon decided to send troops to both colonies. On 18 August Roçadas was named to command the Angola expedition and govern the Huíla district, and on 11 September his men marched from the Rotunda to the quay through cheering crowds. The core, about 1,400 men, was a battalion of the 14th Infantry from Viseu with mountain artillery and engineers. His orders: secure the border, subdue the Kwanyama if needed, and avoid any international incident.3 sources3 sources

In October 1914 the German colony, cut off by the Royal Navy and short of food after a drought, depended on supplies brought in through southern Angola. Dr Schultze-Jena, head of the Outjo district, rode north with two officers, Lieutenant Roeder and First Lieutenant Lösch, and an interpreter, a Dane called Jensen, to arrange supplies and post. They camped near Eriksson's Drift and, the arbitrators later found, had crossed into Portuguese territory, probably without knowing it.2 sources2 sources

On 18 October Sereno, a Portuguese cavalry officer with the rank of alferes (second lieutenant), rode in with 15 European troopers and told the Germans to leave Portuguese territory. They talked, then dined together. Neither side spoke the other's language, and Jensen's Portuguese was poor. The Germans understood that the local commander, the capitão-mor of Cuamato, was at Naulila. Sereno had meant that he was at Cuamato, further north.2 sources2 sources

On the morning of 19 October the Germans rode with Sereno to the fort, expecting to be back in camp that day. When Sereno produced his commander's written order to bring them to Cuamato, Jensen mistook it for a letter that had supposedly just arrived, and Schultze-Jena met it with suspicion. He refused to go, and his African orderlies saddled the horses. Sereno, unarmed, grabbed his bridle. Every witness except Jensen said Schultze-Jena then pointed his carbine at Sereno and Roeder drew a pistol. Sereno ordered his men to fire.1 source1 source

Schultze-Jena died on the spot. Roeder died of his wounds inside the fort, and Lösch was shot down 300 or 400 metres outside it as he fled. Jensen and a soldier named Kimmel were interned. Neither colonial government told the other anything, and the Germans broadcast news of the “murder” in plain language between their own radio stations, messages the governor of Angola never received.1 source1 source

In Windhoek, Governor Theodor Seitz and his commander concluded that Portugal had joined Britain and laid a trap. Within days they ordered reprisals. On 31 October German troops destroyed the Portuguese fort at Cuangar on the Cubango, killing nine Portuguese and 14 African soldiers by Zollmann's count, and between 4 and 15 November they destroyed the posts of Bunga, Sambio, Dirico and Mucusso. A larger expedition under Franke was sent against Naulila itself.3 sources3 sources

Franke's march north took six weeks. With the real danger in the south, his force was under a tenth of the colony's troops: two companies of about 90 and 150 men and a battery of 150 with six guns, plus four machine guns, hauled by 2,000 oxen through a drought that killed hundreds of them. When the colony's commander died in a grenade accident on 12 November, Franke took over the whole Schutztruppe.1 source1 source

Roçadas knew from mid-November that Franke was coming, but not where he would strike. He spread his men along 30 to 35 kilometres of the river to cover the fords and the road to Humbe. Lisbon did not help: on 25 November the Ministry of the Colonies reminded him that “we are not at war with Germany”, and he was forbidden to cross the border.2 sources2 sources

On 16 December the whole German column was camped about 25 kilometres west of Naulila. The next afternoon it marched east, away from the fords Roçadas was guarding, and round the weaker eastern flank of the fort. Barroso counts about 600 men in the fort, some 200 of them African soldiers; Zollmann counts some 800 in and around it, including 300 Mozambican infantrymen. Outside were Cuamato auxiliaries armed by the Portuguese.2 sources2 sources

Accounts of the battle split along national lines. Germans described Portuguese soldiers running back and forth without a plan and a cavalry counter-charge cut down by machine guns. The Lisbon daily O Século praised a charge by the cavalry squadron of Lieutenant Francisco Aragão, who was taken prisoner. Roçadas himself called most of his soldiers “a perfect flock” with a “complete absence of military solidity” and offered to resign. Norton de Matos refused.4 sources4 sources

The historian Luís Barroso, who worked from the Portuguese military archive, blames the dispersal of the Portuguese, the poor training of the conscripts, the decision to leave a whole flank to untrained African troops, and Roçadas's haste to order the retreat. Sereno, the officer at the centre of the October shooting, was among the Portuguese killed. After the fighting a German court-martial hanged seven Africans caught with rifles and no uniform; Portugal later said they were enlisted soldiers.4 sources4 sources

Franke's column had not come to conquer Angola. It pulled down the fort, collected a captured machine gun, rifles and 16 ox wagons, and on 19 December started home. Captain Trainer sent a captured Portuguese sergeant to Roçadas with a letter proposing joint action against an African rising he saw coming. The arbitrators found that it reached Roçadas at Dongoena at 6 pm, with the retreat already under way. He never answered.3 sources3 sources

Roçadas could not believe that 400 Germans had come all that way only to destroy Naulila. He took them for the vanguard of an invasion and fell back to Dongoena, then Humbe. On 19 December, on false reports that the Germans had crossed the river, the garrison of Fort Roçadas blew up its own ammunition store as ordered. The explosion was heard in Humbe and taken for a German bombardment, and Humbe was abandoned too.2 sources2 sources

The retreat ran on for ten days, through Cahama to Gambos, about 150 kilometres north of Naulila. Roçadas ordered all the southern forts evacuated. Garrisons left food and weapons behind; Fort Evale alone abandoned 40,000 cartridges. The Swiss arbitrators later accepted that falling back as far as Humbe had been a necessity after the defeat, but found that the retreat beyond it was Portugal's own free decision, taken under no German pressure.3 sources3 sources

The Cuamato, conquered only seven years before, read the retreat as the end of Portuguese rule. They looted the empty forts and took their weapons. King Mandume's men joined the Cuamato and Evale in an attack on Fort Kafima, east of Evale, whose garrison was wiped out. Settlers' farms were robbed and burned, and within days not one Portuguese fort was left between the Kunene and the border of Northern Rhodesia.2 sources2 sources

Politics in Lisbon decided what came next. In late January 1915 Pimenta de Castro, who opposed entering the war, formed a government, and in February he sent Pereira d'Eça, the former war minister who had picked Roçadas, to Angola as governor-general and commander, away from Lisbon. His orders were to restore Portuguese prestige and crush the rising “with the utmost rigour”.2 sources2 sources

He arrived on 1 April 1915 to find some 11,000 men, badly trained and short of everything. He hoped to fight the Germans, but in July, soon after his column reached Humbe, he learnt that German South West Africa had surrendered to South Africa on 9 July. His report called it the most unpleasant news of the whole campaign: only the African enemy was left in the field.2 sources2 sources

In that dry country only about 5,000 soldiers and up to 1,000 African auxiliaries could be supplied beyond the Kunene. Pereira d'Eça led the main column of about 2,700 men east from Humbe on 12 August, aiming for Mandume's capital. On 18 August, at the waterholes of Mongua on the edge of Kwanyama country, Mandume's war leaders attacked the Portuguese square. Barroso, following Portuguese sources, dates the battle 19 to 21 August.2 sources2 sources

The battle lasted three days. The Kwanyama cut the road behind the column, seized supply wagons and fought for the water; the Portuguese, parched, dug trenches. Mandume came up with his guard on the evening of the 19th, and on the 20th his men attacked for ten hours, at times within 50 metres of the trenches, against field guns and machine guns. Then they broke off.2 sources2 sources

Portuguese records list 35 dead, four of them officers, and 57 wounded. Nobody counted the Kwanyama dead: Portuguese officers claimed 4,000 to 5,000, while Mandume told a missionary he had lost 25. The Portuguese occupied N'giva on 2 September.1 source1 source

Mandume escaped south across the border and kept fighting from Oihole, inside a neutral strip of disputed land. He died there in battle with South African troops on 6 February 1917. Officials reported that machine-gun fire killed him; Kwanyama oral history holds that, wounded, he shot himself rather than be taken.1 source1 source

Famine did more killing than guns. After years of drought the rains failed again, and war destroyed herds and harvests. Missionaries described refugees dying on the roads and too weak to bury the dead. After the rising was put down, a Portuguese commission, whose findings supported Portugal's claim against Germany, estimated that more than 150,000 Africans had died, more than 500,000 cattle had been lost and crops destroyed on more than 180,000 hectares. The arbitrators took these figures as a rough idea of the damage, not exact counts.2 sources2 sources

For the interventionists in Lisbon, Barroso argues, the African expeditions were a way to make war with Germany more likely while keeping public opinion on side, since defending the colonies was the one cause everyone accepted. By June 1915 an interventionist government was back in power in Lisbon, with Norton de Matos as war minister, and it was set on war. In February 1916, at Britain's request, Portugal seized the German merchant ships sheltering in its ports.2 sources2 sources

Germany declared war on 9 March 1916. Its declaration cited the expeditions to Africa as “directed against Germany” and said that, after the Naulila incident, its troops had attacked the Portuguese believing the two countries were already at war. The Portuguese Expeditionary Corps (CEP), whose vanguard reached France in January 1917, went on to send some 55,000 men to Flanders.4 sources4 sources

The Treaty of Versailles let Portugal claim for damage done by Germany before 9 March 1916. In 1920 the Swiss lawyer Aloïs de Meuron was appointed arbitrator; the two sides argued the question of liability in Lausanne in September 1926, and in 1928 a law professor, Robert Guex, and a federal judge, Robert Fazy, both Swiss, joined him. Germany's defence was that its attacks were lawful reprisals for the killings of October 1914.1 source1 source

The award of 31 July 1928 rejected both national versions of the October incident. The German mission had not been preparing an invasion, and Sereno had not laid a trap. The shooting was “fortuitous”, the result of misunderstandings caused by an incompetent interpreter, some imprudence by Schultze-Jena, and a gesture that made Sereno believe he was acting in self-defence. No breach of international law by Portugal meant no ground for reprisals.1 source1 source

Even with a valid grievance, the judges added, a reprisal is lawful only after an unanswered demand for redress, and never out of all proportion to the offence. Germany owed the direct damage of the raids and a limited share of the rising's cost, which it should have foreseen. It owed nothing for subduing the Kwanyama, who had resisted Portugal before the war; much of the rest flowed from Portugal's own retreat.1 source1 source

Portugal never collected the money as a separate debt: on 16 February 1933 another tribunal ruled that it fell under the Young Plan, Germany's general reparations settlement, and by then reparations had been ended. The award outlived the debt. Lawyers still cite the Naulilaa case, with the extra “a” the judges gave the fort's name, as a classic statement of the rule that a reprisal needs a prior wrong, a prior demand and proportion.1 source1 source

The battle settled where Angola ends. With the Kwanyama defeated, Portugal finally held the frontier agreed in 1886, and in June 1926 Portugal and South Africa, which now ran the former German colony, signed a border agreement starting the line at the Ruacana Falls. The provisional line of 1915 had already left about 70 per cent of the Kwanyama on the Angolan side, and the border still divides them between Angola and Namibia.1 source1 source

After the war Portugal named streets in Lisbon and Porto after Naulila and its “heroes”. Independent Angola tells the story through Mandume: Mongua was declared a historic site in 1994, a national memorial rose over his grave at Oihole in 2002, and Lubango's university bears his name. Namibia honoured him at its Heroes' Acre the same year.1 source1 source