QUEENSLAND'S GERMAN CONNECTIONS - PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE

Colonies in conflict

As Europe’s tortuous web of national alliances teetered closer to conflict in 1914, peace in the surreally-named Pacific was also ebbing away beneath the surface, as Germany faced the loss of its distant colonies and cruisers, and Australia, Britain and Japan made plans. It had been two years since the last Imperial German Navy ship visited Queensland, as tensions rose at home, and forces were redisposed. Robert K Massie, in his seminal (2003) work on the climax of the naval charge to war, sketched the colonial view as it must have appeared to Berlin. “Now, in early June 1914, four German warships, painted white against the Pacific sun, lay in the Tsingtao roadstead. The mission of these vessels, the armored and light cruisers of the East Asia Squadron of the Imperial Navy, was to police the Kaiser’s possessions scattered across the expanse of the Pacific Ocean. In the central Pacific, there were the Marianas, the Carolines, the Marshall Islands, and Samoa, some annexed outright, some purchased in 1899 from an impoverished Spain after the naval disaster at Manila Bay had rendered the Spanish powerless in the Pacific. “To the south lay other German colonies: the Bismarck Archipelago, the Solomon Islands, German New Guinea, Neu Pommern (which British maps still called New Britain), and Neu Mecklenberg (formerly New Ireland). The guarding of these territories – a collection of volcanic islands, coral atolls and swatches of jungle – was the responsibility of the East Asia Squadron. If war broke out against France or Japan … little success was anticipated against the powerful Japanese fleet. Against Great Britain, war was not contemplated.” News of the tumbling dominoes across Europe could take hours, even days, by telegraphic cable to arrive in the Pacific, and Admiral von Spee wisely took most of his East Asia Squadron – the two Panzerkreuzer (armoured cruisers) Scharnhorst and Gneisenau , and three light cruisers ( Emden , Leipzig and Nürmberg ) – to sea and vanished into the vastness of the world’s biggest ocean. Queensland’s once-feted visitor Cormoran was too obsolete to fight, and was disarmed and hulked. With the start of hostilities, Emden detached at her young commander’s suggestion and made her way unobserved through the Indonesian archipelago. Over a two-month period she proceeded to paralyse Allied shipping movements in the Indian Ocean before being caught by HMAS Sydney at the Cocos-Keeling Islands. Her squadron colleagues achieved a similarly gallant measure of success as they made their way across the Pacific, destroying one British force before themselves being sunk. By Christmas 1914, Germany’s presence – colonial, mercantile and naval – in the Pacific had gone.

Above: A battered Emden lies wrecked and beached on North Keeling Island’s reef as a boatload of survivors approaches HMAS Sydney , and (below): this map gives an idea of how quickly the various German colonies were ‘rolled-up’ and by whom.

Massie skilfully sketched the machinations taking place on the Allied sides, even as the German cruisers were hunted out of existence. “The [British] Admiralty and government, encouraged by the Australian and New Zealand governments, were busy playing the old imperial game of colony-grabbing, endeavoring to occupy as much of Germany’s overseas territory as possible. In part, this was an effort to reward the Dominions for their loyalty to the mother country. But there was more to it. Well in advance, the British Admiralty had planned – in the case of war with Germany – to dismantle the German colonial empire. Months before war came, the Admiralty had invited Australia and New Zealand to be prepared to send expeditions to New Guinea, Yap, Nauru, and Samoa … New Zealand’s eye fell on the German islands to her northeast, particularly German Samoa, lying on her trade route to the west coast of America. Australia wished to snap up the whole of German New Guinea and other possessions administered from Rabaul, including the Bismarck Archipelago and the Solomon Islands. Both governments saw these acquisitions as a means of rallying public support for the dispatch of the ANZAC expeditionary forces to Europe, and they were quick in insisting on these projects.” Within weeks of the war’s start, assent was given in London, and Australian and New Zealand forces sailed to occupy the former German colonies.

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