Читать книгу World War One: History in an Hour - Rupert Colley - Страница 9
ОглавлениеThe British asked their dominions to seize nearby German colonies, requests that were gladly accepted. By October 1914, Samoa had fallen to New Zealand, and German New Guinea and the Bismarck Archipelago (modern-day Papua New Guinea) to Australia.
Japan declared war on Germany on 23 August 1914 and promptly seized all the German-held islands in the North Pacific. In September, Japanese forces landed in neutral China and laid siege to the German base at Tsingtao on the coast of China, capturing it on 7 November.
In Africa, the war was fought against the German colonies. In German East Africa, the maverick German commander, Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck, held out for the whole war, only surrendering on 23 November 1918. Elsewhere, Germany lost its colonies in West Africa with Togoland and Cameroon falling to the Allies, and in the south where South Africa conquered German South West Africa (Namibia) with relative ease.
On 23 May 1915, Italy entered the war on the side of the Allies. Having joined the Triple Alliance with Germany and Austria–Hungary in 1882, Italy had kept its neutrality until lured into war on the Allies’ side by British promises of Habsburg territory.
