1918 — Lettow-Vorbeck Surrenders

Two weeks after the Armistice silenced the guns in Europe, the fighting in Africa finally stopped. On November 25, 1918, German general Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck formally surrendered at Abercorn — today's Mbala, in Zambia — laying down arms undefeated after a four-year guerrilla campaign that tied down nearly 400,000 Allied troops. His small force had outlasted the war's end elsewhere, and it laid down its weapons only when word of that ending finally reached it in Africa.

Beside him stood the African askari fighters and nearly a million carriers who bore the war's heaviest burden; hundreds of thousands never made it home. A quiet stone memorial in Mbala marks the spot where World War I ended in Africa.