German Colonial Wars and the Context of Military Violence by Susanne Kuss

Author:Susanne Kuss [Kuss, Susanne]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Nonfiction, History, Military, Other, Germany, Modern, 20th Century
ISBN: 9780674977587
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Published: 2017-03-27T04:00:00+00:00

Numbers and Conclusions

The contributions to the campaign by both the army and the navy medical services are recorded in the Medical Reports produced by each service for every war.94 These publications document the overwhelming attention accorded by the medical officers to firearms injuries sustained as a result of both enemy action and accident. This was followed by the care accorded to sufferers of gastric conditions as well as a range of illnesses typical to a colonial theater such as typhus, dysentery, malaria, heatstroke, VD, foot sores, bruises, and sprains.

In the aftermath of the Boxer War, the German military medical authorities referred to the state of health exhibited by the East-Asian Expeditionary Corps as “fair.” In 1900–1901, the medical services attached to the force of 18,360 registered the treatment of 19,583 persons, of whom half were confined to the hospital.95 Some 20 percent of those hospitalized had suffered mechanical injuries (a figure including gunshot wounds); a similar figure was recorded for those suffering from complaints of the digestive system. Fourteen percent presented problems with their respiratory organs and VD, respectively, while the figures for those treated for dysentery and typhus stood at 6 and 3 percent, respectively.96 Of the 201 deaths registered by the expeditionary corps (itself representing only 1.1 percent of the German troop strength), 133 were the victims of disease, of whom seventy had died from typhus. Three fatalities were the result of suicide; sixty-five had fallen victim to “accident,” a euphemism also covering those killed in action.97 Six hundred eighty-nine persons had been recorded as invalids by September 1904, representing 3.8 percent of the total strength of the force. The 3,690-strong naval expeditionary corps deployed in the conflict registered 117 deaths (3.2 percent), of which fifty-two (1.4 percent) followed from an infectious disease.98 Eighty-eight men (2.5 percent) were invalided out of the service. While the I and II Sea Battalions, the Field Battery, and the Pioneer Company recorded only a handful of wounded, those naval personnel participating in the Seymour expedition and the III Sea Battalion from Qingdao registered a considerably higher level of dead, wounded, and invalidity.99

Of the 17,856 soldiers dispatched to German South-West Africa between January 1904 and March 1907, 1,613 died. Eighty-eight of those deaths had resulted from combat or accidents. This figure is dwarfed by the 725 fatalities caused by illness.100 The loss of 450 men in the course of the typhus epidemic—which reached its high point in December 1904—is to be compared against a total number of 8,195 soldiers deployed in the conflict at this point. The year 1904 alone saw the death of 1,038 men. Four hundred twelve died of illness, the majority from typhus, while the rest died in action, from wounds, or through accidents or were recorded as missing. By 1908, 7,831 men were rendered invalid, over 90 percent of whom were classed as unfit for active and tropical service; only some 10 percent were rendered unfit for active service.101

The 839 men of the naval expeditionary corps dispatched to German

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