Military photo

On 30 November 1885, the police troop (Polizei-Truppe) was founded in Togo-Germany with twelve Haussa soldiers. They were mercenaries who had served in the British troops and belonged to a West African people of the Muslim faith. The troop was founded in the presence of a German warship, because the Togolese wanted to prevent the enlistment of these soldiers. The German colonial administration had continued to recruit only soldiers of Muslim faith, because they differed from the Togolese in their faith. Using Prussian rules, swearwords and curses, beatings and physical abuse, the soldiers were trained until the objective of creating a unit of soldiers was achieved: unconditional obedience and rigour in training, transmission of an elite consciousness. The soldiers were thus prepared to use the indelicacy they had developed against the population.