page_title: German New Guinea
section_title: World War I
hierarchical_section_title: German New Guinea / History / World War I
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: 75 Pfennig Notgeldschein (1922) von Neustadt in Mecklenburg, dem heutigen Neustadt-Glewe.Der Text beklagt den Verlust der Kolonie Deutsch-Neuguinea durch den Friedensvertrag von Versailles. Maße: 61&#160;mm&#160;x&#160;97&#160;mm. English: 75 Pfennig "Notgeld" banknote (1922) of Neustadt in Mecklenburg, today Neustadt-Glewe. The text complains about the loss of the colony German New Guinea after the Treaty of Versailles. Size: 61&#160;mm&#160;x&#160;97&#160;mm.
context_page_description: German New Guinea consisted of the northeastern part of the island of New Guinea and several nearby island groups and was the first part of the German colonial empire. The mainland part of the territory, called Kaiser-Wilhelmsland, became a German protectorate in 1884. Other island groups were added subsequently. New Pomerania, the Bismarck Archipelago, and the northern Solomon Islands were declared a German protectorate in 1885; the Caroline Islands, Palau, and the Mariana Islands were bought from Spain in 1899; the protectorate of the Marshall Islands was bought from Spain in 1885 for $4.5 million by the 1885 Hispano-German Protocol of Rome; and Nauru was annexed to the Marshall Islands protectorate in 1888.
  Following the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, Kaiser-Wilhelmsland and nearby islands fell to Australian forces, while Japan occupied most of the remaining German possessions in the Pacific. The mainland part of German New Guinea, the Bismarck Archipelago and the North Solomon Islands are now part of Papua New Guinea. The Micronesian islands of German New Guinea are now governed as the Federated States of Micronesia.
context_section_description: Following the outbreak of World War I, Australian troops captured Kaiser-Wilhelmsland and the nearby islands in 1914, after a short resistance led by Captain Carl von Klewitz and Lt. Robert "Lord Bob" von Blumenthal, while Japan occupied most of the remaining German possessions in the Pacific. The only significant battle occurred on 11 September 1914 when the Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force attacked the low-power wireless station at Bita Paka (near Rabaul) on the island of New Britain, then Neu Pommern. The Australians suffered six dead and four wounded – the first Australian military casualties of the First World War. The German forces fared much worse, with one German officer and 30 native police killed and one German officer and ten native police wounded.  On 21 September all German forces in the colony surrendered.
  However, Leutnant (later Hauptmann) Hermann Detzner, a German officer, and some 20 native police evaded capture in the interior of New Guinea for the entire war. Detzner was on a surveying expedition to map the border with Australian-held Papua at the outbreak of war, and remained outside militarised areas. Detzner claimed to have penetrated the interior of the German portion (Kaiser Wilhelmsland) in his 1920 book Vier Jahre unter Kannibalen ("Four Years Among Cannibals"). These claims were heavily disputed by various German missionaries, and Detzner recanted most of his claims in 1932.
  After the Treaty of Versailles of 1919, Germany lost all its colonial possessions, including German New Guinea. In 1923, the League of Nations gave Australia a trustee mandate over Nauru, with the United Kingdom and New Zealand as co-trustees. Other lands south of the equator became the Territory of New Guinea, a League of Nations Mandate Territory under Australian administration until 1949 (interrupted by Japanese occupation during the New Guinea campaign) when it was merged with the Australian territory of Papua to become the Territory of Papua and New Guinea, which eventually became modern Papua New Guinea. The islands north of the equator became the Japanese League of Nations Mandate for the South Seas Islands. After Japan's defeat in World War II, the former Japanese mandate islands were administered by the United States as the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands, a United Nations trust territory.
caption: "Notgeld" banknote (1922). The text complains about the loss of the colony after the Treaty of Versailles.
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