page_title: German South West Africa
section_title: First World War
hierarchical_section_title: German South West Africa / First World War
caption_attribution_description: English: Map of the South-West Africa Campaign in 1915.
context_page_description: German South West Africa was a colony of the German Empire from 1884 until 1915, though Germany didn't officially recognise its loss of this territory until the 1919 Treaty of Versailles. With a total area of 835,100 km², it was one and a half times the size of the mainland German Empire in Europe at the time. The colony had a population of around 2,600 Germans.
  German rule over this territory was punctuated by numerous rebellions by its native African peoples, which culminated in a campaign of German reprisals from 1904 to 1908 known as the Herero and Namaqua genocide.
  In 1915, during World War I, German South West Africa was invaded by the Western Allies in the form of South African and British forces. After the war its administration was taken over by the Union of South Africa and the territory was administered as South West Africa under a League of Nations mandate. It became independent as Namibia on 21 March 1990.
context_section_description: During the First World War, South African troops opened hostilities with an assault on the Ramansdrift police station on 13 September 1914. German settlers were transported to concentration camps near Pretoria and later in Pietermaritzburg. Because of the overwhelming numerical superiority of the South African troops, the German Schutztruppe, along with groups of Afrikaner volunteers fighting in the Maritz Rebellion on the German side, offered opposition only as a delaying tactic. On 9 July 1915, Victor Franke, the last commander of the Schutztruppe, capitulated near Khorab.
  Two members of the Schutztruppe, geography professors Fritz Jaeger and Leo Waibel, are remembered for their explorations of the northern part of German South West Africa, which became the book Contributions to the Geography of South West Africa (Beiträge zur Landeskunde von Südwestafrika).
caption: Map of the 1915 South West Africa Campaign
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