At the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, the colony was invaded and quickly overrun by British and French forces during the Togoland campaign and placed under military rule.

In February 1884, the chiefs of the town of Aného were abducted by German soldiers and forced to sign a treaty of protection.

From his base on the Spanish island possession Fernando Po in the Bight of Biafra he traveled extensively on the mainland of Africa.

On 5 July 1884 Nachtigal signed a treaty with the local chief, Mlapa III [fr], in which he declared a German protectorate over a stretch of territory along the Slave Coast on the Bight of Benin.

Consul Heinrich Ludwig Randad Jr., resident agent of the firm C. Goedelts at Ouidah, was appointed as the first commissioner for the territory.

Colonial administrators and settlers brought scientific cultivation to the country's main export crops (cacao, coffee, cotton).

After the end of World War I, members of the newly established Czechoslovakia government considered acquiring the colony as Czechoslovak Togo, but the idea never proceeded past creating a flag.

In 1960, the new state invited the last German governor of Togoland, Duke Adolf Friedrich of Mecklenburg, to the country's official independence celebrations.