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Asian and Pacific theater of World War I
Part of World War I
Tsingtao battle lithograph 1914
The Siege of Tsingtao.
Date 3 August 1914 (1914-08-03) – 5 January 1919 (1919-01-05)
(4 years, 5 months and 2 days)
Location China, Bismark Archipelago, Caroline Islands, Line Islands, German New Guinea, German Samoa, Guam, Mariana Islands, Marshall Islands, Tahiti, Mas a Tierra
Belligerents
Allies:

Flag of Japan Japan
Flag of the United Kingdom United Kingdom

  • Flag of Australia Australia
  • British Raj Red Ensign India
  • Flag of New Zealand New Zealand

Flag of France France
US flag 48 stars United States
Flag of the Republic of China (1912-1928) China

Central Powers:
Flag of the German Empire Germany

Flag of Austria-Hungary 1869-1918 Austria-Hungary

The Asian and Pacific Theatre of World War I was a conquest of German colonial possessions in the Pacific Ocean and China. The most significant military action was the careful and well-executed Siege of Tsingtao in what is now China, but smaller actions were also fought at Bita Paka and Toma in German New Guinea. All other German and Austrian possessions in Asia and the Pacific fell without bloodshed. Naval warfare was common; all of the colonial powers had naval squadrons stationed in the Indian or Pacific Oceans. These fleets operated by supporting the invasions of German held territories and by destroying the East Asia Squadron.

Allied offensives in the Pacific[]

Allied offensives in the Pacific[]

One of the first land offensives in the Pacific theatre was the Occupation of German Samoa in August 1914 by New Zealand forces. The campaign to take Samoa ended without bloodshed after over 1,000 New Zealanders landed on the German colony, supported by an Australian and French naval squadron.

Australian forces attacked German New Guinea in September 1914: 500 Australians encountered 300 Germans and native policemen at the Battle of Bita Paka; the Allies won the day and the Germans retreated to Toma. A company of Australians and a British warship besieged the Germans and their colonial subjects, ending with a German surrender. After the fall of Toma, only minor German forces were left in New Guinea and these generally capitulated once met by Australian forces. In December 1914, one German officer near Angorum attempted resist the occupation with thirty native police but his force deserted him after they fired on an Australian scouting party and he was subsequently captured. By 1915, the only uncapitulated German force was a small expedition under the command of Hermann Detzner which managed to elude Australian patrols and hold out in the interior of the island until the end of the war, for which he became a figure of some renown.

German Micronesia, the Marianas, the Carolines and the Marshall Islands also fell to Allied forces during the war.

Retreat of the German East Asia Squadron[]

When war was declared on Germany in 1914, the German East Asia Squadron withdrew from its base at Tsingtao and attempted to make its way east across the Pacific and back to Germany. After concentrating the majority of its force at Pagan Island, the fleet raided several Allied targets as it made its way across the Pacific. Detached cruisers raided the cable station at Fanning and then rejoined with the squadron. Later the German forces would attack Papeete where Admiral Maximilian von Spee with his two armoured cruisers sank a French gunboat and a freighter before bombarding Papeete's shore batteries.

The next engagement was fought off Chile at the Battle of Coronel on November 1, 1914, Admiral Spee won the battle by defeating a British squadron which was sent to destroy him. His two protected cruisers and three light cruisers sank two Royal Navy protected cruisers and forced a British light cruiser and auxiliary cruiser to flee. Over 1,500 British sailors (all hands aboard both cruisers) were killed while only three Germans were wounded. The victory carried them home as the German fleet decided to avoid attacking the Falkland islands in December 1914. They later learned that it would have likely been a terrible loss had they gone.

The German vessels moved passed the Falklands and continued their journey back to Germany.

The cruise of SMS Emden[]

SMS Emden was left behind by Admiral Graf Maximilian von Spee when he began his retreat across the Pacific. The ship won the Battle of Penang, in which the Germans sank a Russian cruiser and a French destroyer. Emden also harried merchant vessels of the Allies and destroyed over thirty of them. She went on and bombarded Madras, India, causing damage to British oil tanks and sinking an Allied merchant ship. The attack caused widespread panic in the city and thousands of people fled from the coast, fearing that the Germans may have begun an invasion of India as a whole.

After a very successful career as a merchant raider, Emden was engaged by HMAS Sydney at the Battle of Cocos, where the German vessel was destroyed. A group of sailors under the command of Hellmuth von Mücke managed to escape towards the Arabian peninsula which was then part of the Ottoman Empire, an ally of the German Empire during World War I.

The Siege of Tsingtao[]

File:Bundesarchiv Bild 134-C1299, Tsingtau, Vorderste deutsche Frontlinie.jpg

The German front line at Tsingtao.

Tsingtao was the most significant German base in the area. It was defended by 600 German troops supported by 3,400 Chinese colonial troops and Austro-Hungarian soldiers and sailors occupying a well-designed fort. Supporting the defenders were a small number of vessels from the Imperial German Navy and Austro-Hungarian Navy. The Japanese sent nearly their entire fleet to the area, including six battleships and 50,000 soldiers. The British sent two military units to the battle from their garrison at Tientsin numbering 1,600, and the Chinese who were unoccupied by the Germans, sent over a few thousands troops on the side of the allies.

The bombardment of the fort started on October 31. An assault was made by the Imperial Japanese Army on the night of November 6. The garrison surrendered the next day. Casualties of the battle were 200 on the German side and 1,455 on the Allied side. One Allied protected cruiser was also sunk by a German torpedo boat and when defeat was certain, the Germans and Austro-Hungarians scuttled their squadron.

The cruise of SMS Seeadler[]

The SMS Seeadler, an auxiliary cruiser windjammer and merchant raider, commanded by Felix von Luckner managed successful attacks on Allied shipping in both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. During her career she captured sixteen vessels and sunk most of them. In August 1917 SMS Seeadler was wrecked at the island of Mopelia in French Polynesia so the Germans established a small colony on the island which housed them and several Allied prisoners, most of whom were American. Eventually when starvation proved to be an urgent concern, Luckner and his crew left the prisoners on the uninhabited island and set sail in lifeboat for Fiji. There, on September 5, Luckner captured a French schooner named Lutece and renamed her Fortuna. After that they headed for Easter Island and again their ship was wrecked when it grounded on a reef. Subsequently the Germans were interned by the Chileans on October 5, 1917 which ended the journey. During the entire cruise only one man perished, due to an accident.

The scuttling of SMS Cormoran[]

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File:SMS Cormoran (1909).jpg

SMS Cormoran

The United States was involved in at least one hostile encounter with Germans in the Pacific during World War I. On August 7, 1917, the SMS Cormoran was scuttled in Apra Harbor, Guam to prevent her capture by the auxiliary cruiser USS Supply. The Americans fired their first shots of the war at the Germans as they attempted to sink their ship. Ultimately the Germans succeeded in scuttling the Cormoran but with a loss of nine men dead.

Manchu Restoration[]

The German government was accused of being behind Zhang Xun's monarchist coup in China to prevent Duan Qirui's pro-war faction from supporting the Allies. After the coup failed in July 1917, Duan used the incident as a pretext for declaring war on Germany. The German and Austro-Hungarian concessions in Tientsin and Hankow were occupied and their nationals detained. An even more serious plot was Germany's funding of the Constitutional Protection Movement, which geographically split China into two rival governments for eleven years.

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