Louis Botha's War: The Campaign in South West Africa, 1914 - 1915

Louis Botha was prime minister of the Union of South Africa when Britain declared war on Germany in 1914. As South Africa was a dominion of the British Empire, Botha was asked to lead his country on a campaign against the Germans across the border in South West Africa. In light of the relatively recent Anglo-Boer War, many Afrikaners balked at the request, but the prime minister was committed politically to unifying Boer and Brit and came down heavily in favor of taking up arms against Germany. So began a war on two fronts. While Union Defence Force troops gathered on the border and prepared to launch an offensive, a handful of Botha’s former comrades incited an Afrikaner rebellion intent on keeping South Africa out of the war, or worse, siding with Germany. Louis Botha’s War is the story of how a former Boer War fighting-general-turned-politician crushed a rebellion, rallied his country’s first united army to fight in harsh conditions and defeated the enemy in the Great War’s first successful Allied campaign. Botha’s actions and these events would determine the fate of South West Africa, and its relationship with its southern neighbor, for the next eighty years.