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German East Asia (German: Deutsch-Ostasien), is a German colony in East Asia under the authority of German Ostasienflotte based on Singapur. Ostasien is comprised of Imperial protectorates, colonies, and concessions in the Far East, including Malaya, Indochina, Sarawak, New Guinea, Hainan, Weihaiwei, and the Pacific Islands.
Ostasien is not placed under the supervision of the imperial colonial office (Reichskolonialamt) but under that of the imperial naval office (the Reichsmarineamt or RMA).
Map of German Indochina and Malaya
History[]
German colonies in the Far East before 1919[]
Germans first became active as traders in the Pacific in the mid-nineteenth century, in which German merchants developed trading interests in Samoa, the Bismarck Archipelago, and the Marshall and Gilbert Islands. Intent on protecting German trading interests and expanding German overseas empire, the German Government annexed Kaiser Wilhelmsland (northeastern New Guinea) and the Bismarck Archipelago (New Britain and New Ireland) in 1884. The Marshall Islands and the northern Solomon Islands (Buka, Bougainville and other islands) were annexed in 1885. From 1885 to 1899 German New Guinea was a protectorate ruled by the Neuguinea Kompagnie. In 1897, the German Empire took advantage of the murder of two German missionaries to invade Qingdao and founded the Jiaozhou Bay colony. In 1899, Spain, having lost the Philippines, ceded the Carolines, Palau, and the Marianas to Germany in return for a payment. They were made administrative districts of German New Guinea. At the same time, after the Second Samoan Civil War, the Samoan Islands were divided by the three involved powers. The Samoa Tripartite Convention gave control of the islands west of 171 degrees west longitude to Germany, the eastern islands to the United States (present-day American Samoa) and the United Kingdom was compensated with other territories in the Pacific and West Africa.
The German Empire in the Pacific was not in a position to fight a war when the Weltkrieg broke out in 1914. The most significant military action was the Japanese 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 possessions in Asia and the Pacific fell without bloodshed.
German Acquisition and Pacification of French Indochina[]
After the victory in Europe over France in 1919, Germany demanded the transfer of the colonies of French Pondicherry, Indochina, and the Pacific colonies. On 11 November 1919, representatives of the two sides met in Copenhagen to sign a ceasefire, allowing the German re-entry into East Asia. However, Japan did not sign the Armistice and remains formally at war with the Central Powers. At the same time, French Indochina was experiencing an unprecedented tumult. During the Weltkrieg, Siam invaded French Indochina. Resenting French wartime policy and inspired by the Siamese, insurgent activities began to spread in Vietnam and mutinies took place among Vietnamese troops. The French colonial regime was more confused and stunned by the situation in the metropole. After a major defeat in Cambodia, the French offered a ceasefire arrangement, allowing Siamese troops to occupy Laos, Cambodia and a part of Cochinchina.
German islands in the Pacific
Suppression of the Vietnamese Insurgency in 1919
The French-Siamese collaboration lasted until 1921 when Germany was finally able to dispatch enough ships and troops to Indochina. Japan, still at war with Germany, felt it unable to stop Germany from acquiring Indochina. Germany and Siam negotiated their postwar border. The Siamese were sure that they could annex Laos, Cambodia and even part of Cochinchina. However, Germany decided that the Mekong river will be the new border.
Although the Vietnamese insurgency in 1919 was suppressed, Indochina was still very unstable. The loss of French colonisers to Siam greatly inflamed the nationalist sentiment among Vietnamese. Because of the chaotic situation and the importance of Cam Ranh Naval Base had for the German navy, the newly acquired Indochina was put under the military rule of Imperial Navy.
The Collapse of the British Empire and the Establishment of Ostasien[]
In 1923, following the formal end of the German-Japanese conflict and the return of Tsingtau, the new German chancellor, Arthur von Posadowsky-Wehner, ordered the reorganization of German East Asian Station (Ostasiatische Station). Considering Japan as a major enemy in East Asia, Tsingtau was regarded as too vulnerable to a Japanese invasion.
The Syndicalist revolution in Britain allowed Germany to further expand in the Far East. The German Empire managed to secure most of the British Asian Empire as well as the strategic colonies of the Strait Colonies, Brunei, and Sarawak. Singapur was taken as an ideal naval base of the Ostasiatische Station. All the newly-acquired colonies, under the political maneuver of Posadowsky-Wehner, were put under the Imperial naval office rather than the colonial office.
Vietnamese mass protest against German execution of Phan Boi Chau in 1925
Following in French-KMT collaboration in 1924, a Vietnamese syndicalist, Nguyen Sinh Cung, also known as Nguyen Ai Quoc, was sent to Guangzhou under the alias Ho Chi Minh. Ho, under the command of the Commune of France, was engaged in training Vietnamese revolutionaries to destabilize German Indochina. Despite heavy-handed measures taken to restore stability in Indochina, the situation didn't improve. In 1925, Germany arrested and executed the famous Vietnamese nationalist Phan Boi Chau, resulted in a serious backlash. Ho Chi Min would die in 1936.
During the German intervention in southern China, the Kaiserliche Marine conducted operations mainly from Singapur and Indochina rather than their traditional base in Tsingtau. The importance of Southeast Asian colonial assets was further elevated. In 1926, the Ostasiatische Station set up a formal office in charge of the colonial administration in new East Asian colonies, known as Ostasien. German Pacific colonies, originally under the authority of colonial office, were also put under the supervision of Ostasien in order to coordinate naval defense plans. At the top of the Ostasien territory stood the governor (A senior navy officer), who was directly subordinated to the imperial naval office. The governor was head of the military and the civil administration within the territory. The former was run by the chief of staff and deputy governor, the latter by the Zivilkommissar [civil commissioner]. The legendary admiral Hellmuth von Mücke has been the governor of Ostasien ever since its establishment.
Ostasien naval office in Singapur
As a result of the rapid expansion of the German colonial empire, it's impossible for Germany to establish direct rule over the far east colonies. Deutsch-Ostasien inherited a diverse and complicated series of colonies divorced from their metropole; forced to acknowledge Germany's superiority and yet all too Byzantine to reconstruct or totally reorder, lest they collapse and bring German administration with them. Thus, the Ostasien office in Singapur exists not as a colonial bureaucracy, or even formally as an authority, but instead as a jurisdiction; a stretch of territory in which the relatively impartial admiralty must at once balance local interests, contend with varying colonial systems, and ensure the protection of it all.
Military[]
Army[]
The land force of Ostasien is mainly comprised of marine units of the Kaiserliche marine, aimed to maintain order and conduct limited interventions. Despite some colonial units inherited from former colonial administrations like Indochinesisch Schützendivision, the Ostasien authority remains very cautious about forming native units.
Ostasien Naval Exercise, 1934
[]
Faced with the Imperial Japanese Navy, the Ostasiatische Station was the strongest overseas formation in the Imperial Navy. Under the administration of Admiral Hellmuth, Ostasienflotte became an experimental field for avant-garde naval tacticians whose views cannot be accepted in Wilhelmshaven. Ostasiatische Station consists of some most advanced battleships, aircraft carriers, and a strong cruiser fleet to protect German interest in the Far East.
The strategy of the Ostasiatische Station is known as the Singapur Strategy. The Ostasiatische Station has started a massive construction plan in 1928 to upgrade the naval facilities in Singapur. The Kaiser Wilheim II dry dock in the newly built Sembawang naval base is expected to be the greatest dockyard in the Pacific Area when the project is finished.
Aside from the main force fleet, Ostasiatische Station also patrols Chinese rivers with a flotilla of suitable, shallow-draught gunboats, referred to as "China gunboats".
Air Force[]
As a result of the interservice rivalry between Luftstreitkräfte and Kaiserliche Marine, the Ostasiatische Marine-Fliegerabteilung is only a modest air force equipped with outdated planes. However, Admiral Hellmuth von Mücke believed in the potential of the naval air force in the future war against the Japanese Empire to protect East Asian colonies. He planned to expand and modernize the Ostasiatische Marine-Fliegerabteilung in the 1934 naval project, especially the Carrier Air Wing.
Foreign relations[]
A Colony of Germany; is part of the German-led Reichspakt alliance along with Flanders-Wallonia, Finland, United Baltic Duchy, Lithuania, White Ruthenia and Ukraine.
As a detachment of the Kaiserliche Marine, Deutsch-Ostasien has no authority to conduct diplomatic actions. However, the military nature of Deutsch-Ostasien and the prestige of admiral Hellmuth von Mücke allows it to take necessary expedient measures to protect the interest of the Kaiserreich in the Far East.
Mücke is also developing a special relationship with Mittelafrika, another major autonomous German colony.