Herero and Nama genocide
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The Herero and Nama genocide or Namibian genocide,<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> formerly known also as the Herero and Namaqua genocide, was a campaign of ethnic extermination and collective punishment waged against the Herero (Ovaherero) and the Nama peoples in German South West Africa (now Namibia) by the German Empire. It was the first genocide to begin in the 20th century,<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref name=GermanyConfronts>Template:Cite news</ref> occurring between 1904 and 1908.<ref name=Germanyagrees/> In January 1904, the Herero people, who were led by Samuel Maharero, and the Nama people, who were led by Captain Hendrik Witbooi, rebelled against German colonial rule. On 12 January 1904, they killed more than 100 German settlers in the area of Okahandja.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
In August 1904, German General Lothar von Trotha defeated the Ovaherero in the Battle of Waterberg and drove them into the desert of Omaheke, where most of them died of dehydration. In October, the Nama people also rebelled against the Germans, only to suffer a similar fate. Between 24,000 and 100,000 Hereros and 10,000 Nama were killed in the genocide.<ref>Template:Harvp;Template:Page needed Template:Harvp: "see his footnotes to German language sources citation #1 for Chapter 13."; Template:Harvp; Template:Harvp;Template:Page needed Template:Harvp; Template:Harvp</ref> The first phase of the genocide was characterized by widespread death from starvation and dehydration, due to the prevention of the Herero from leaving the Namib desert by German forces. Once defeated, thousands of Hereros and Namas were imprisoned in concentration camps, where the majority died of diseases, abuse, and exhaustion.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite AV media</ref>
In 1985, the United Nations' Whitaker Report classified the aftermath as an attempt to exterminate the Herero and Nama peoples of South West Africa, and therefore one of the earliest attempts at genocide in the 20th century. In 2004, the German government recognised the events in what a German minister qualified as an "apology" but ruled out financial compensation for the victims' descendants.<ref name="BBC08142004">Template:Cite news</ref> In July 2015, the German government and the speaker of the Bundestag officially called the events a "genocide"; however, it refused to consider reparations at that time.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Despite this, the last batch of skulls and other remains of slaughtered tribesmen which were taken to Germany to promote racial superiority were taken back to Namibia in 2018, with Template:Interlanguage link, a German Protestant bishop, describing the event as "the first genocide of the 20th century".<ref name="returnremains">Template:Cite news</ref><ref name="returnofremains" />
In May 2021, the German government issued an official statement in which it said that Germany
"apologizes and bows before the descendants of the victims. Today, more than 100 years later, Germany asks for forgiveness for the sins of their forefathers. It is not possible to undo what has been done. But the suffering, inhumanity and pain inflicted on the tens of thousands of innocent men, women and children by Germany during the war in what is today Namibia must not be forgotten. It must serve as a warning against racism and genocide."<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation
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The same year, the German government agreed to pay €1.1 billion over 30 years to fund projects in communities that were impacted by the genocide.<ref name="Germanyagrees">Template:Cite news</ref>
BackgroundEdit
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The original inhabitants of what is now Namibia were the San and the Khoekhoe.
Herero, who speak a Bantu language, were originally a group of cattle herders who migrated into what is now Namibia during the mid-18th century. The Herero seized vast swathes of the arable upper plateaus which were ideal for cattle grazing. Agricultural duties, which were minimal, were assigned to enslaved Khoisan and Bushmen. Over the rest of the 18th century, the Herero slowly drove the Khoisan into the dry, rugged hills to the south and east.Template:Sfn
The Hereros were a pastoral people whose entire way of life centred on their cattle. The Herero language, while limited in its vocabulary for most areas, contains more than a thousand words for the colours and markings of cattle. The Hereros were content to live in peace as long as their cattle were safe and well-pastured, but became formidable warriors when their cattle were threatened.<ref name = Totten>Template:Cite book</ref>
According to Robert Gaudi, "The newcomers, much taller and more fiercely warlike than the indigenous Khoisan people, were possessed of the fierceness that comes from basing one's way of life on a single source: everything they valued, all wealth and personal happiness, had to do with cattle. Regarding the care and protection of their herds, the Herero showed themselves utterly merciless, and far more 'savage' than the Khoisan had ever been. Because of their dominant ways and elegant bearing, the few Europeans who encountered Herero tribesmen in the early days regarded them as the region's 'natural aristocrats.Template:' "Template:Sfn
By the time of the Scramble for Africa, the area which was occupied by the Herero was known as Damaraland. The Nama were pastorals and traders and lived to the south of the Herero.<ref name = OlusogaErichsen10TKH>Template:Cite book</ref>Template:Rp
In 1883, Adolf Lüderitz, a German merchant, purchased a stretch of coast near Lüderitz Bay (Angra Pequena) from the reigning chief. The terms of the purchase were fraudulent, but the German government nonetheless established a protectorate over it.<ref name=gewald>Template:Cite book</ref> At that time, it was the only overseas German territory deemed suitable for European settlement.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>
Chief of the neighbouring Herero, Maharero rose to power by uniting all the Herero.<ref name=gewald/>Template:Rp Faced with repeated attacks by the Khowesin, a clan of the Khoekhoe under Hendrik Witbooi, he signed a protection treaty on 21 October 1885 with Imperial Germany's colonial governor Heinrich Ernst Göring (father of Hermann Göring) but did not cede the land of the Herero. This treaty was renounced in 1888 due to lack of German support against Witbooi but it was reinstated in 1890.<ref name="KDM">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
The Herero leaders repeatedly complained about violation of this treaty, as Herero women and girls were raped by Germans, a crime that the German judges and prosecutors were reluctant to punish.<ref>Template:Cite thesis</ref>
In 1890 Maharero's son, Samuel, signed a great deal of land over to the Germans in return for helping him to ascend to the Ovaherero throne, and to subsequently be established as paramount chief.<ref name="KDM"/><ref name=gewald/>Template:Rp German involvement in ethnic fighting ended in tenuous peace in 1894.<ref name=bridgman />Template:Rp In that year, Theodor Leutwein became governor of the territory, which underwent a period of rapid development, while the German government sent the {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} (imperial colonial troops) to pacify the region.<ref name="BBC290801">Template:Cite news</ref>
German colonial policyEdit
Both German colonial authorities and European settlers envisioned a predominantly white "new African Germany," wherein the native populations would be put onto reservations and their land distributed among settlers and companies.<ref>Template:Harvp</ref> Under German colonial rule, colonists were encouraged to seize land and cattle from the native Herero and Nama peoples and to subjugate them as slave laborers.<ref name=bridgman>Template:Cite book</ref>Template:Rp<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>Template:Wbr<ref name=hull>Template:Cite book</ref>Template:Rp<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>Template:Wbr<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>Template:Wbr<ref name=Steinmetz>Template:Cite book</ref>Template:Rp
Resentment brewed among the native populations over their loss of status and property to German ranchers arriving in South West Africa, and the dismantling of traditional political hierarchies. Previously ruling tribes were reduced to the same status as the other tribes they had previously ruled over and enslaved. This resentment contributed to the Herero Wars that began in 1904.<ref name="bridgman" />Template:Rp<ref name=hull/>Template:Rp
Major Theodor Leutwein, the Governor of German South West Africa, was well aware of the effect of the German colonial rule on Hereros. He later wrote: "The Hereros from early years were a freedom-loving people, courageous and proud beyond measure. On the one hand, there was the progressive extension of German rule over them, and on the other their own sufferings increasing from year to year."Template:Sfn
The Dietrich caseEdit
In January 1903, a German trader named Dietrich was walking from his homestead to the nearby town of Omaruru to buy a new horse. Halfway to Dietrich's destination, a wagon carrying the son of a Herero chief, his wife, and their son stopped by. In a common courtesy in Hereroland, the chief's son offered Dietrich a ride.Template:Sfn
That night, however, Dietrich got very drunk and after everyone was asleep, he attempted to rape the wife of the chief's son. When she resisted, Dietrich shot her dead. When he was tried for murder in Windhoek, Dietrich denied attempting to rape his victim. He alleged that he awoke thinking the camp was under attack and fired blindly into the darkness. The killing of the Herero woman, he claimed, was an unfortunate accident. The court acquitted him, alleging that Dietrich was suffering from "tropical fever" and temporary insanity.Template:Sfn
According to Leutwein, the murder "aroused extraordinary interest in Hereroland, especially since the murdered woman had been the wife of the son of a Chief and the daughter of another. Everywhere the question was asked: Have White people the right to shoot native women?"Template:Sfn
Governor Leutwein intervened. He had the Public Prosecutor appeal Dietrich's acquittal, a second trial took place (before the colony's supreme court), and this time Dietrich was found guilty of manslaughter and imprisoned.Template:Sfn The move prompted violent objections of German settlers who considered Leutwein a "race traitor".Template:Citation needed
Rising tensionEdit
In 1903, some of the Nama clans rose in revolt under the leadership of Hendrik Witbooi.<ref name="BBC290801" /> A number of factors led the Herero to join them in January 1904.
One of the major issues was land rights. In 1903 the Herero learned of a plan to divide their territory with a railway line and set up reservations where they would be concentrated.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> The Herero had already ceded more than a quarter of their Template:Convert territory to German colonists by 1903,<ref name=bridgman />Template:Rp before the Otavi railway line running from the African coast to inland German settlements was completed.<ref name=chalk />Template:Rp Completion of this line would have made the German colonies much more accessible and would have ushered a new wave of Europeans into the area.<ref name="drechsler">Template:Cite book</ref>Template:Rp
Historian Horst Drechsler states that there was discussion of the possibility of establishing and placing the Herero in native reserves and that this was further proof of the German colonists' sense of ownership over the land. Drechsler illustrates the gap between the rights of a European and an African; the {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} (German Colonial League) held that, in regards to legal matters, the testimony of seven Africans was equivalent to that of a colonist.<ref name=drechsler />Template:Rp According to Bridgman, there were racial tensions underlying these developments; the average German colonist viewed native Africans as a lowly source of cheap labour, and others welcomed their extermination.<ref name=bridgman />Template:Rp
A new policy on debt collection, enforced in November 1903, also played a role in the uprising. For many years, the Herero population had fallen in the habit of borrowing money from colonist moneylenders at extreme interest rates (see usury). For a long time, much of this debt went uncollected and accumulated, as most Herero had no means to pay. To correct this growing problem, Governor Leutwein decreed with good intentions that all debts not paid within the next year would be voided.<ref name=bridgman />Template:Rp In the absence of hard cash, traders often seized cattle, or whatever objects of value they could get their hands on, as collateral. This fostered a feeling of resentment towards the Germans on the part of the Herero people, which escalated to hopelessness when they saw that German officials were sympathetic to the moneylenders who were about to lose what they were owed.<ref name=bridgman />Template:Rp
Racial tension was also at play. The German settlers often referred to black Africans as "baboons" and treated them with contempt.<ref name=bridgman />Template:Rp<ref name="Samuel1" />
One missionary reported: "The real cause of the bitterness among the Hereros toward the Germans is without question the fact that the average German looks down upon the natives as being about on the same level as the higher primates ('baboon' being their favourite term for the natives) and treat them like animals. The settler holds that the native has a right to exist only in so far as he is useful to the white man. This sense of contempt led the settlers to commit violence against the Hereros."<ref name="Samuel1">Template:Cite book</ref>
The contempt manifested itself particularly in the concubinage of native women. In a practice referred to in Südwesterdeutsch as Verkafferung, native women were taken by male European traders and ranchers both willingly and by force.<ref name="Samuel1" />
RevoltsEdit
In 1903, the Hereros saw an opportunity to revolt. At that time, there was a distant Khoisan tribe in the south called the Bondelzwarts, who resisted German demands to register their guns. The Bondelzwarts engaged in a firefight with the German authorities which led to three Germans killed and a fourth wounded. The situation deteriorated further, and the governor of the Herero colony, Major Theodor Leutwein, went south to take personal command, leaving almost no troops in the north.<ref name=Samuel>Template:Cite book</ref>
The Herero revolted in early 1904, killing between 123 and 150 German settlers, as well as seven Boers and three women,<ref name=bridgman />Template:Rp in what Nils Ole Oermann calls a "desperate surprise attack".<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
The timing of their attack was carefully planned. After successfully asking a large Herero clan to surrender their weapons, Governor Leutwein was convinced that they and the rest of the native population were essentially pacified and so withdrew half of the German troops stationed in the colony.<ref name=bridgman />Template:Rp Led by Chief Samuel Maharero, the Herero surrounded Okahandja and cut railroad and telegraph links to Windhoek, the colonial capital. Maharero then issued a manifesto in which he forbade his troops to kill any Englishmen, Boers, uninvolved peoples, women and children in general, or German missionaries.<ref name=bridgman />Template:Rp The Herero revolts catalysed a separate revolt and attack on Fort Namutoni in the north of the country a few weeks later by the Ondonga.<ref name="col">Template:Cite journal</ref><ref name="nam101">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
A Herero warrior interviewed by German authorities in 1895 had described his people's traditional way of dealing with suspected cattle rustlers, a treatment which, during the uprising, was regularly extended to German soldiers and civilians, "We came across a few Khoisan whom of course we killed. I myself helped to kill one of them. First we cut off his ears, saying, 'You will never hear Herero cattle lowing.' Then we cut off his nose, saying, 'Never again shall you smell Herero cattle.' And then we cut off his lips, saying, 'You shall never again taste Herero cattle.' And finally we cut his throat."Template:Sfn
According to Robert Gaudi, "Leutwein knew that the wrath of the German Empire was about to fall on them and hoped to soften the blow. He sent desperate messages to Chief Samuel Maherero in hopes of negotiating an end to the war. In this, Leutwein acted on his own, heedless of the prevailing mood in Germany, which called for bloody revenge."Template:Sfn
The Hereros, however, were emboldened by their success and had come to believe that, "the Germans were too cowardly to fight in the open," and rejected Leutwein's offers of peace.Template:Sfn
One missionary wrote, "The Germans are filled with fearful hate. I must really call it a blood thirst against the Hereros. One hears nothing but talk of 'cleaning up,' 'executing,' 'shooting down to the last man,' 'no pardon,' etc."Template:Sfn
According to Robert Gaudi, "The Germans suffered more than defeat in the early months of 1904; they suffered humiliation, their brilliant modern army unable to defeat a rabble of 'half-naked savages.' Cries in the Reichstag, and from the Kaiser himself, for total eradication of the Hereros grew strident. When a leading member of the Social Democratic Party pointed out that the Hereros were as human as any German and possessed immortal souls, he was howled down by the entire conservative side of the legislature."Template:Sfn
Leutwein was forced to request reinforcements and an experienced officer from the German government in Berlin.<ref name=clark>Template:Cite book</ref>Template:Rp Lieutenant-General Lothar von Trotha was appointed commander-in-chief (Template:Langx) of South West Africa, arriving with an expeditionary force of 10,000 troops on 11 June.<ref>Herero Genocide in Namibia, Montreal Holocaust Museum</ref><ref>German-Herero conflict of 1904–07, Encyclopedia Britannica</ref>
Meanwhile, Leutwein was subordinate to the civilian Colonial Department of the Prussian Foreign Office, which was supported by Chancellor Bernhard von Bülow, while General Trotha reported to the military German General Staff, which was supported by Emperor Wilhelm II.<ref name=bridgman />Template:Rp<ref>Isabel V. Hull, "The military campaign in German Southwest Africa, 1904 – 1907 and the genocide of the Herero and Nama", Journal of Namibian Studies, 4 (2008): 7–24</ref>
Leutwein wanted to defeat the most determined Herero rebels and negotiate a surrender with the remainder to achieve a political settlement.<ref name=clark />Template:Rp Trotha, however, planned to crush the native resistance through military force. He stated that:
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By late spring of 1904, German troops were pouring into the colony. In August 1904, the main Herero forces were surrounded and crushed at the Battle of Waterberg.<ref name=Samuel />Template:Rp
GenocideEdit
Template:Genocide of Indigenous peoples Template:Genocide In 1900, Kaiser Wilhelm II had been enraged by the killing of Baron Clemens von Ketteler, the Imperial German minister plenipotentiary in Beijing, during the Boxer Rebellion. The Kaiser took it as a personal insult from a people he viewed as racially inferior, all the more because of his obsession with the "Yellow Peril". On 27 July 1900, the Kaiser gave the infamous Hunnenrede (Hun speech) in Bremerhaven to German soldiers being sent to Imperial China, ordering them to show the Boxers no mercy and to behave like Attila's Huns.Template:Sfn General von Trotha had served in China, and was chosen in 1904 to command the expedition to German South West Africa precisely because of his record in China.Template:Sfn In 1904, the Kaiser was infuriated by the latest revolt in his colonial empire by a people whom he also viewed as inferior, and took the Herero rebellion as a personal insult, just as he had viewed the Boxers' assassination of Baron von Ketteler.Template:Sfn The tactless and bloodthirsty language that Wilhelm II used about the Herero people in 1904 is strikingly similar to the language he had used about the Chinese Boxers in 1900.Template:Sfn However, the Kaiser denied, together with Chancellor von Bülow, von Trotha's request to quickly quell the rebellion.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>
No written order by Wilhelm II ordering or authorising genocide has survived.Template:Sfn In February 1945 an Allied bombing raid destroyed the building housing all of the documents of the Prussian Army from the Imperial period.Template:Sfn Despite this fact, surviving documents indicate that Trotha used the same tactics in Namibia that he had used in China, only on a much vaster scale. It is also known that throughout the genocide Trotha sent regular reports to both the General Staff and to the Kaiser.Template:Sfn Historian Jeremy-Sarkin Hughes believes that regardless of whether or not a written order was given, the Kaiser must have given General von Trotha verbal orders.Template:Sfn According to Hughes, the fact that Trotha was decorated and not court-martialed after the genocide became public knowledge lends support to the thesis that he was acting under orders.Template:Sfn
General von Trotha commented: "I know the tribes of Africa…. They are all alike. They only respond to force. It was and is my policy to use force with terrorism and even brutality. I shall annihilate the African tribes with streams of blood and streams of gold."<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> General von Trotha stated his proposed solution to end the resistance of the Herero people in a letter, before the Battle of Waterberg:<ref name="mamdani">Template:Cite book</ref>Template:Rp
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I believe that the nation as such should be annihilated, or, if this was not possible by tactical measures, have to be expelled from the country ... This will be possible if the water-holes from Grootfontein to Gobabis are occupied. The constant movement of our troops will enable us to find the small groups of this nation who have moved backwards and destroy them gradually.{{#if:|{{#if:|}}
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Trotha's troops defeated 3,000–5,000 Herero combatants at the Battle of Waterberg on 11–12 August 1904 but were unable to encircle and annihilate the retreating survivors.<ref name=clark />Template:Rp
The pursuing German forces prevented groups of Herero from breaking from the main body of the fleeing force and pushed them further into the desert. As exhausted Herero fell to the ground, unable to go on, German soldiers killed men, women, and children.<ref name=totten />Template:Rp Jan Cloete, acting as a guide for the Germans, witnessed the atrocities committed by the German troops and deposed the following statement:<ref name=drechsler />Template:Rp
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I was present when the Herero were defeated in a battle in the vicinity of Waterberg. After the battle all men, women, and children who fell into German hands, wounded or otherwise, were mercilessly put to death. Then the Germans set off in pursuit of the rest, and all those found by the wayside and in the sandveld were shot down and bayoneted to death. The mass of the Herero men were unarmed and thus unable to offer resistance. They were just trying to get away with their cattle.{{#if:|{{#if:|}}
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A portion of the Herero escaped the Germans and went to the Omaheke Desert, hoping to reach British Bechuanaland; fewer than 1,000 Herero managed to reach Bechuanaland, where they were granted asylum by the British authorities.<ref>Nils Ole Oermann (1999) Mission, Church and State Relations in South West Africa under German Rule 1884–1915, p. 97, Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart Template:ISBN</ref> To prevent them from returning, Trotha ordered the desert to be sealed off.<ref>Ulrich van der Heyden; Holger Stoecker (2005) Mission und Macht im Wandel politischer Orientierungen: Europaische Missionsgesellschaften in politischen Spannungsfeldern in Afrika und Asien zwischen 1800–1945, p. 394, Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart Template:ISBN</ref> German patrols later found skeletons around holes Template:Convert deep that had been dug in a vain attempt to find water. Some sources also state that the German colonial army systematically poisoned desert water wells.<ref name=totten>Samuel Totten, William S. Parsons, Israel W. Charny (2004) Century of Genocide: Critical Essays and Eyewitness Accounts, Routledge, NY Template:ISBN</ref>Template:Rp<ref name=kroll>Dan Kroll (2006) Securing Our Water Supply: Protecting a Vulnerable Resource, p. 22, PennWell Corp/University of Michigan Press Template:ISBN</ref> Maherero and 500–1,500 men crossed the Kalahari into Bechuanaland where he was accepted as a vassal of the Batswana chief Sekgoma.<ref>Thomas Tlou (1985) A History of Ngamiland, 1750 to 1906 : The Formation of an African State, Macmillan Botswana, Gaborone, Botswana Template:ISBN</ref>
On 2 October, Trotha issued a warning to the Herero:<ref group="DE">translated from German: "Ich, der große General der Deutschen Soldaten, sende diesen Brief an das Volk der Herero. Die Herero sind nicht mehr deutsche Untertanen. Sie haben gemordet und gestohlen, haben verwundeten Soldaten Ohren und Nasen und andere Körperteile abgeschnitten, und wollen jetzt aus Feigheit nicht mehr kämpfen. Ich sage dem Volk: Jeder, der einen der Kapitäne an eine meiner Stationen als Gefangenen abliefert, erhält tausend Mark, wer Samuel Maharero bringt, erhält fünftausend Mark. Das Volk der Herero muss jedoch das Land verlassen. Wenn das Volk dies nicht tut, so werde ich es mit dem Groot Rohr dazu zwingen. Innerhalb der Deutschen Grenzen wird jeder Herero mit und ohne Gewehr, mit oder ohne Vieh erschossen, ich nehme keine Weiber oder Kinder mehr auf, treibe sie zu ihrem Volke zurück, oder lasse auf sie schießen. Dies sind meine Worte an das Volk der Herero. Der große General des mächtigen Deutschen Kaisers.
"Dieser Erlaß ist bei den Appells den Truppen mitzuteilen mit dem Hinzufügen, daß auch der Truppe, die einen der Kapitäne fängt, die entsprechende Belohnung zu teil wird und daß das Schießen auf Weiber und Kinder so zu verstehen ist, daß über sie hinweggeschossen wird, um sie zum Laufen zu zwingen. Ich nehme mit Bestimmtheit an, daß dieser Erlaß dazu führen wird, keine männlichen Gefangenen mehr zu machen, aber nicht zu Grausamkeiten gegen Weiber und Kinder ausartet. Diese werden schon fortlaufen, wenn zweimal über sie hinweggeschossen wird. Die Truppe wird sich des guten Rufes der deutschen Soldaten bewußt bleiben."<ref>Bundesarchiv Potsdam, Akten des Reichskolonialamtes, RKA, 10.01 2089, Bl. 23, Handschriftliche Abschrift der Proklamation an das Volk der Herero und des Zusatzbefehls an die Kaiserliche Schutztruppe, 2. Oktober 1904</ref><ref>Der Einsatz der Telegraphie im Krieg gegen Afrikaner, p. 195</ref></ref> <templatestyles src="Template:Blockquote/styles.css" />
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He further gave orders that:
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Trotha gave orders that captured Herero males were to be executed, while women and children were to be driven into the desert where their death from starvation and thirst was to be certain; Trotha argued that there was no need to make exceptions for Herero women and children, since these would "infect German troops with their diseases", the insurrection Trotha explained "is and remains the beginning of a racial struggle".<ref name=clark />Template:Rp After the war, Trotha argued that his orders were necessary, writing in 1909 that "If I had made the small water holes accessible to the womenfolk, I would run the risk of an African catastrophe comparable to the Battle of Beresonia."<ref name=totten />Template:Rp
The German general staff was aware of the atrocities that were taking place; its official publication, named Der Kampf, noted that:
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This bold enterprise shows up in the most brilliant light the ruthless energy of the German command in pursuing their beaten enemy. No pains, no sacrifices were spared in eliminating the last remnants of enemy resistance. Like a wounded beast the enemy was tracked down from one water-hole to the next, until finally he became the victim of his own environment. The arid Omaheke [desert] was to complete what the German army had begun: the extermination of the Herero nation.<ref>Tilman Dedering, Template:"'A Certain Rigorous Treatment of all Parts of the Nation': The Annihilation of the Herero in German South West Africa, 1904", in Mark Levene; Penny Roberts (1999) The Massacre in History, pp. 204–222, Berghahn Books, NY Template:ISBN</ref><ref>Helmut Bley (1971) South West Africa under German rule, 1894–1914, p. 162, Northwestern University Press, Evanston Template:ISBN</ref>{{#if:|{{#if:|}}
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Alfred von Schlieffen (Chief of the Imperial German General Staff) approved of Trotha's intentions in terms of a "racial struggle" and the need to "wipe out the entire nation or to drive them out of the country", but had doubts about his strategy, preferring their surrender.<ref>Manus I. Midlarsky (2005) The Killing Trap: Genocide in the Twentieth Century [Hardcover] p. 32, Cambridge University Press Template:ISBN</ref>
Governor Leutwein, later relieved of his duties, complained to Chancellor von Bülow about Trotha's actions, seeing the general's orders as intruding upon the civilian colonial jurisdiction and ruining any chance of a political settlement.<ref name=clark />Template:Rp According to Professor Mahmood Mamdani from Columbia University, opposition to the policy of annihilation was largely the consequence of the fact that colonial officials looked at the Herero people as a potential source of labour, and thus economically important.<ref name=mamdani />Template:Rp For instance, Governor Leutwein wrote that:
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Having no authority over the military, Chancellor Bülow could only advise Emperor Wilhelm II that Trotha's actions were "contrary to Christian and humanitarian principle, economically devastating and damaging to Germany's international reputation".<ref name=clark />Template:Rp
Upon the arrival of new orders at the end of 1904, prisoners were herded into labor camps, where they were given to private companies as slave labourers or exploited as human guinea pigs in medical experiments.Template:Sfn<ref>Naomi Baumslag (2005) Murderous Medicine: Nazi Doctors, Human Experimentation, and Typhus, p. 37, Praeger Publishers, Westport, CT Template:ISBN</ref>
Concentration campsEdit
Survivors of the massacre, the majority of whom were women and children, were eventually put in places like Shark Island concentration camp, where the German authorities forced them to work as slave labour for German military and settlers. All prisoners were categorised into groups fit and unfit for work, and pre-printed death certificates indicating "death by exhaustion following privation" were issued.<ref>Wolfram Hartmann, Jeremy Silvester, Patricia Hayes (1999) The Colonising Camera: Photographs in the Making of Namibian History, p. 118, University of Cape Town Press; Ohio University Press Template:ISBN</ref> The British government published their well-known account of the German genocide of the Nama and Herero peoples in 1918.<ref>Jan-Bart Gewald, Jeremy Silvester (1 June 2003) Words Cannot Be Found: German Colonial Rule in Namibia: An Annotated Reprint of the 1918 Blue Book (Sources on African History, 1), Brill Academic Publishers, Leiden Template:ISBN</ref>
Many Herero and Nama died of disease, exhaustion, starvation and malnutrition.<ref name=GermanyConfronts/><ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Estimates of the mortality rate at the camps are between 45%<ref name="HBV">Clarence Lusane (2002) Hitler's Black Victims: The Historical Experiences of European Blacks, Africans and African Americans During the Nazi Era (Crosscurrents in African American History), pp. 50–51, Routledge, New York Template:ISBN</ref><ref name="Helmut Walser Smith 2008 199">Template:Citation</ref> and 74%.<ref name=Steinmetz />Template:Rp<ref name="HBV" /><ref name="Helmut Walser Smith 2008 199" />
Food in the camps was extremely scarce, consisting of rice with no additions.<ref name=rao>Aparna Rao (2007) The Practice of War: Production, Reproduction and Communication of Armed violence, Berghahn Books Template:ISBN</ref>Template:Rp As the prisoners lacked pots and the rice they received was uncooked, it was indigestible; horses and oxen that died in the camp were later distributed to the inmates as food.<ref name=hull />Template:Rp Dysentery and lung diseases were common.<ref name=hull />Template:Rp Despite those conditions, the prisoners were taken outside the camp every day for labour under harsh treatment by the German guards, while the sick were left without any medical assistance or nursing care.<ref name=hull />Template:Rp Many Herero and Nama were worked to death.<ref name=GermanyConfronts/>
Shootings, hangings, beatings, and other harsh treatment of the forced labourers (including use of sjamboks) were common.<ref name=hull />Template:Rp<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> A 28 September 1905 article in the South African newspaper Cape Argus detailed some of the abuse with the heading: "In German S. W. Africa: Further Startling Allegations: Horrible Cruelty". In an interview with Percival Griffith, "an accountant of profession, who owing to hard times, took up on transport work at Angra Pequena, Lüderitz", related his experiences:
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During the war, a number of people from the Cape (in modern-day South Africa) sought employment as transport riders for German troops in Namibia. Upon their return to the Cape, some of these people recounted their stories, including those of the imprisonment and genocide of the Herero and Nama people. Fred Cornell, an aspiring British diamond prospector, was in Lüderitz when the Shark Island concentration camp was being used. Cornell wrote of the camp:
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Shark Island was the most brutal of the German South West African camps.<ref>Thomas Pakenham (1991) The Scramble for Africa, 1876–1912, page 615, Random House, New York Template:ISBN</ref> Lüderitz lies in southern Namibia, flanked by desert and ocean. In the harbour lies Shark Island, which then was connected to the mainland only by a small causeway. The island is now, as it was then, barren and characterised by solid rock carved into surreal formations by the hard ocean winds. The camp was placed on the far end of the relatively small island, where the prisoners would have suffered complete exposure to the strong winds that sweep Lüderitz for most of the year.<ref name="preventgenocide" />
German Commander Ludwig von Estorff wrote in a report that approximately 1,700 prisoners (including 1,203 Nama) had died by April 1907. In December 1906, four months after their arrival, 291 Nama died (a rate of more than nine people per day). Missionary reports put the death rate at 12–18 per day; as many as 80% of the prisoners sent to Shark Island eventually died there.<ref name="preventgenocide">News Monitor for September 2001 Prevent Genocide International</ref>
There are accusations of Herero women being coerced into sex slavery as a means of survival.<ref name=mamdani />Template:Rp<ref>Template:Citation</ref>
Trotha was opposed to contact between natives and settlers, believing that the insurrection was "the beginning of a racial struggle" and fearing that the colonists would be infected by native diseases.<ref name=clark />Template:Rp
Benjamin Madley argues that although Shark Island is referred to as a concentration camp, it functioned as an extermination camp or death camp.<ref>Benjamin Madley (2005) "From Africa to Auschwitz: How German South West Africa Incubated Ideas and Methods Adopted and Developed by the Nazis in Eastern Europe", European History Quarterly Vol. 35, pp. 429–432: "Operational from 1905 to 1907, Haifischinsel, or Shark Island, was the twentieth century's first death camp. Though referred to as a Konzentrationslager in Reichstag debates, it functioned as an extermination centre."</ref><ref>Madley, p. 446: "Colonial Namibia's death camp at Shark Island was different from Spanish and British concentration camps in that it was operated for the purpose of destroying human life. Thus, it served as a rough model for later Nazi Vernichtungslager, or annihilation camps, like Treblinka and Auschwitz, whose primary purpose was murder."</ref><ref>Isabel V. Hull (2006) Absolute Destruction: Military, Culture And the Practices of War in Imperial Germany, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY Template:ISBN; see footnote #64, pp. 81–82:Template:"'Sterblichkeit in den Kriegsgefangenlargern', Nr. KA II.1181, copy of undated report compiled by the Schutztruppe Command, read in Col. Dept. 24 Mar. 1908, BA-Berlin, R 1001. Nr. 2040, pp. 161–62. The other annual average death rates (for the period Oct. 1904 to Mar. 1907) were as follows: Okahandja, 37.2%; Windhuk, 50.4%; Swakopmund, 74%; Shark Island in Lüderitzbucht, 121.2% for Nama, 30% for Herero. Traugott Tjienda, headsman of the Herero at Tsumbe and foreman of a large group of prisoners at the Otavi lines for two years, testified years later to a death rate of 28% (148 dead of 528 labourers) in his unit, Union of South Africa, 'Report on the Natives', 101."</ref>
Medical experiments and scientific racismEdit
Template:Further Prisoners were used for medical experiments and their illnesses or their recoveries from them were used for research.<ref>Sebastian Conrad, German Colonialism: A Short History, p. 129. Cambridge University Press, 2008</ref>
Experiments on live prisoners were performed by Dr. Bofinger, who injected Herero who were suffering from scurvy with various substances including arsenic and opium; afterwards he researched the effects of these substances via autopsy.<ref name = OlusogaErichsen10TKH />Template:Rp
Experimentation with the dead body parts of the prisoners was rife. Zoologist Template:Interlanguage link (1872–1955) noted taking "body parts from fresh native corpses" which according to him was a "welcome addition", and he also noted that he could use prisoners for that purpose.<ref>Zimmerman, Andrew, Anthropology and Antihumanism in Imperial Germany, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, London: 2001, p. 245: "The zoologist Leonard Schultze happened also to be on a collecting trip in Southwest Africa when the war broke out. He found that, although the fighting made the collection and preservation of animals difficult, it presented new opportunities for physical anthropology: 'I could make use of the victims of the war and take parts from fresh native corpses, which made a welcome addition to the study of the living body (imprisoned Hottentots [Nama] were often available to me).Template:'"
This translates the original German: "Andererseits konnte ich mir die Opfer des Krieges zu nutze machen und frischen Leichen von Eingeborenen Teile entnehmen, die das Studium des lebenden Körpers (gefangene Hottentotten [Nama] standen mir häufig zu Gebote) willkommen ergänzten." Leonhard Schultze, Zoologische und anthropologische Ergebnisse einer Forschungsreise im westlichen und zentralen Südafrika ausgeführt in den Jahren 1903–1905, Gustav Fischer: Jena 1908, S. VIII.</ref>
An estimated 300 skulls<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> were sent to Germany for experimentation, in part from concentration camp prisoners.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> In October 2011, after three years of talks, the first 20 of an estimated 300 skulls stored in the museum of the Charité were returned to Namibia for burial.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref> In 2014, 14 additional skulls were repatriated by the University of Freiburg.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
Number of victimsEdit
A census conducted in 1905 revealed that 25,000 Herero remained in German South West Africa.<ref name=chalk>Frank Robert Chalk, Kurt Jonassohn (1990) The History and Sociology of Genocide : Analyses and Case Studies, Montreal Institute for Genocide Studies, Yale University Press 1990 Template:ISBN</ref>
According to the Whitaker Report, the population of 80,000 Herero was reduced to 15,000 "starving refugees" between 1904 and 1907.<ref>UN Whitaker Report on Genocide, 1985, paragraphs 14 to 24, pages 5 to 10 Prevent Genocide International</ref> In Colonial Genocide and Reparations Claims in the 21st Century: The Socio-Legal Context of Claims under International Law by the Herero against Germany for Genocide in Namibia by Jeremy Sarkin-Hughes, a number of 100,000 victims is given. Up to 80% of the indigenous populations were killed.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref name="BBC1"/>
Newspapers reported 65,000 victims when announcing that Germany recognized the genocide in 2004.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
AftermathEdit
With the closure of concentration camps, all surviving Herero were distributed as labourers for settlers in the German colony. From that time on, all Herero over the age of seven were forced to wear a metal disc with their labour registration number,<ref name=mamdani />Template:Rp and banned from owning land or cattle, a necessity for pastoral society.<ref name=rao />Template:Rp
About 19,000 German troops were engaged in the conflict, of which 3,000 saw combat. The rest were used for upkeep and administration. The German losses were 676 soldiers killed in combat, 76 missing, and 689 dead from disease.<ref name=hull />Template:Rp The Reiterdenkmal (Template:Langx) in Windhoek was erected in 1912 to celebrate the victory and to remember the fallen German soldiers and civilians. Until after Independence, no monument was built to the killed indigenous population. It remains a bone of contention in independent Namibia.<ref name="centenary">Template:Cite news</ref>
The campaign cost Germany 600 million marks. The normal annual subsidy to the colony was 14.5 million marks.<ref name=hull />Template:Rp<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> In 1908, diamonds were discovered in the territory, and this did much to boost its prosperity, though it was short-lived.<ref name=chalk />Template:Rp
In 1915, during World War I, the German colony was taken over and occupied by the Union of South Africa, which was victorious in the South West Africa campaign.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> South Africa received a League of Nations mandate over South West Africa on 17 December 1920.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>
Link between the Herero genocide and the HolocaustEdit
The Herero genocide has commanded the attention of historians who study complex issues of continuity between the Herero genocide and the Holocaust.<ref>David Johnson; Prem Poddar (2008) A Historical Companion to Postcolonial Literatures – Continental Europe and its Empires, p. 240, Edinburgh University Press Template:ISBN</ref> It is argued that the Herero genocide set a precedent in Imperial Germany that would later be followed by Nazi Germany's establishment of death camps.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
According to Benjamin Madley, the German experience in South West Africa was a crucial precursor to Nazi colonialism and genocide. He argues that personal connections, literature, and public debates served as conduits for communicating colonialist and genocidal ideas and methods from the colony to Germany.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> Tony Barta, an honorary research associate at La Trobe University, argues that the Herero genocide was an inspiration for Hitler in his war against the Jews, Slavs, Romani, and others whom he described as "non-Aryans".<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
According to Clarence Lusane, Eugen Fischer's medical experiments can be seen as a testing ground for medical procedures which were later followed during the Nazi Holocaust.<ref name="HBV" /> Fischer later became chancellor of the University of Berlin, where he taught medicine to Nazi physicians. Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer was a student of Fischer, Verschuer himself had a prominent pupil, Josef Mengele.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Franz Ritter von Epp, who was later responsible for the liquidation of virtually all Bavarian Jews and Roma as governor of Bavaria, took part in the Herero and Nama genocide as well.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Historians Robert Gerwarth and Stephan Malinowski have criticized this claim, asserting that Von Epp exercised no influence in Nazi extermination policies.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>
Mahmood Mamdani argues that the links between the Herero genocide and the Holocaust are beyond the execution of an annihilation policy and the establishment of concentration camps and there are also ideological similarities in the conduct of both genocides. Focusing on a written statement by General Trotha which is translated as: <templatestyles src="Template:Blockquote/styles.css" />
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Mamdani takes note of the similarity between the aims of the General and the Nazis. According to Mamdani, in both cases there was a Social Darwinist notion of "cleansing", after which "something new" would "emerge".<ref name=mamdani />Template:Rp
Robert Gerwarth and Stephan Malinowski have questioned the supposed link with the Holocaust, finding it to be lacking in empirical evidence, and argue that Nazi policy represented a distinct turn away from typical European colonial practice. Additionally, they write that studies supporting the link completely ignore the influences of World War I, the German Revolution, and the activities of the Freikorps in the inurement of extreme violence as a method in the German political consciousness.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>
Patrick Bernhard writes that the Nazis, including Heinrich Himmler, explicitly rejected the colonial experience of the German Empire as an "appallingly outdated" model; when they did draw inspiration from colonialism for Generalplan Ost, it was from the contemporary work of Italian fascists such as Giuseppe Tassinari in Libya, which they viewed as a shining example of fascist modernity.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>
ReconciliationEdit
RecognitionEdit
In 1985, the United Nations' Whitaker Report classified the massacres as an attempt to exterminate the Herero and Nama peoples of South West Africa, and therefore one of the earliest cases of genocide in the 20th century.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
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In 1998, German President Roman Herzog visited Namibia and met Herero leaders. Chief Munjuku Nguvauva demanded a public apology and compensation. Herzog expressed regret but stopped short of an apology. He pointed out that international law requiring reparation did not exist in 1907, but he undertook to take the Herero petition back to the German government.<ref>"Its Past on Its Sleeve, Tribe Seeks Bonn's Apology" (31 May 1998) The New York Times, p.3</ref>
On 16 August 2004, at the 100th anniversary of the start of the genocide, a member of the German government, Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul, Germany's Federal Minister for Economic Development and Cooperation, officially apologised and expressed grief about the genocide, declaring in a speech that:
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She ruled out paying special compensations, but promised continued economic aid for Namibia which in 2004 amounted to $14M a year.<ref name="BBC08142004" /> This number has been significantly increased since then, with the budget for the years 2016–17 allocating a sum total of €138M in monetary support payments.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
The Trotha family travelled to Omaruru in October 2007 by invitation of the royal Herero chiefs and publicly apologised for the actions of their relative. Wolf-Thilo von Trotha said:
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We, the von Trotha family, are deeply ashamed of the terrible events that took place 100 years ago. Human rights were grossly abused that time.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>{{#if:|{{#if:|}}
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Beginning in 2025, Namibia has marked 28 May, the date when the Germans closed their concentration camps in 1907 following international criticism, as Genocide Remembrance Day.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
Negotiations and agreementEdit
The Herero filed a lawsuit in the United States in 2001 demanding reparations from the German government and Deutsche Bank, which financed the German government and companies in Southern Africa.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref> With a complaint filed with the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York in January 2017, descendants of the Herero and Nama people sued Germany for damages in the United States. The plaintiffs sued under the Alien Tort Statute, a 1789 U.S. law often invoked in human rights cases. Their proposed class-action lawsuit sought unspecified sums for thousands of descendants of the victims, for the "incalculable damages" that were caused.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref name=D+C>Template:Cite news</ref> Germany seeks to rely on its state immunity as implemented in US law as the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, arguing that, as a sovereign nation, it cannot be sued in US courts in relation to its acts outside the United States.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> In March 2019, the judge dismissed the claims due to the exceptions to sovereign immunity being too narrow for the case.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
In September 2020, the Second Circuit stated that the claimants did not prove that money used to buy property in New York could be traced back to wealth resulting from the seized property and therefore the lawsuit could not overcome Germany's immunity. In June 2021, the Supreme Court declined to hear a petition to revive the case.<ref>High Court Skips Case Over German Imperial Africa Atrocities. Law360. 7 June 2021. Retrieved 7 September 2021.</ref>
Germany, while admitting brutality in Namibia, at first refused to call it a "genocide", claiming that the term only became international law in 1945. However, in July 2015, then foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier issued a political guideline stating that the massacre should be referred to as a "war crime and a genocide". Bundestag president Norbert Lammert wrote an article in Die Zeit that same month referring to the events as a genocide. These events paved the way for negotiations with Namibia.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref name="Guardian1"/>
In 2015, the German government began negotiations with Namibia over a possible apology, and by 2016, Germany committed itself to apologizing for the genocide, as well as to refer to the event as a genocide; but the actual declaration was postponed while negotiations stalled over questions of compensation.<ref name="Guardian1">Template:Cite news</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
On 11 August 2020, following negotiations over a potential compensation agreement between Germany and Namibia, President Hage Geingob of Namibia stated that the German government's offer was "not acceptable", while German envoy Ruprecht Polenz said he was "still optimistic that a solution can be found."<ref name="burke2020">Template:Cite news</ref>
On 28 May 2021, the German government announced that it was formally recognizing the atrocities committed as a genocide, following five years of negotiations. The declaration was made by foreign minister Heiko Maas, who also stated that Germany was asking Namibia and the descendants of the genocide victims for forgiveness. In addition to recognizing the events as a genocide, Germany agreed to give as a "gesture of recognition of the immeasurable suffering" €1.1 billion in aid to the communities impacted by the genocide.<ref name="DW1">Template:Cite news</ref><ref name="BBC1">Template:Cite news</ref>
Following the announcement, the agreement needs to be ratified by both countries' parliaments, after which Germany would send its president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, to officially apologize for the genocide. The nations agreed not to use the term "reparation" to describe the financial aid package.<ref name="DW1"/><ref name="BBC1"/>
The agreement was criticized by the chairman of the Namibian Genocide Association, Laidlaw Peringanda, who insisted that Germany should purchase their ancestral lands back from the descendants of the German settlers and return it to the Herero and Nama people. The agreement was also criticized because negotiations were held solely between the German and Namibian governments, and did not include representatives of the Herero and Nama people.<ref name="DW1"/><ref name="BBC1"/>
Further criticism of the agreement came in 2024 with the filing of the South Africa v. Israel case at the International Court of Justice. After President Geingob criticized Germany's decision to back Israel in the case, Nandi Mazeingo of the Ovaherero Genocide Foundation called on Namibia to go further, saying "What South Africa did for Palestine is what Namibia must do for us as Hereros and Namas. They must go to that ICJ also, for us."<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
RepatriationEdit
Peter Katjavivi, a former Namibian ambassador to Germany, demanded in August 2008 that the skulls of Herero and Nama prisoners of the 1904–1908 uprising, which were taken to Germany for scientific research to claim the superiority of white Europeans over Africans, be returned to Namibia. Katjavivi was reacting to a German television documentary which reported that its investigators had found more than 40 of these skulls at two German universities, among them probably the skull of a Nama chief who had died on Shark Island near Lüderitz.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> In September 2011, the skulls were returned to Namibia.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> In August 2018, Germany returned all of the remaining skulls and other human remains which were examined in Germany to scientifically promote white supremacy.<ref name=returnremains /><ref name=returnofremains>Template:Cite news</ref> This was the third such transfer, and shortly before it occurred, German Protestant bishop Petra Bosse-Huber stated "Today, we want to do what should have been done many years ago – to give back to their descendents the remains of people who became victims of the first genocide of the 20th century."<ref name=returnremains /><ref name=returnofremains />
On 17 May 2019, as a part of the repatriation process, the German government announced that it would return a stone symbol which it took from Namibia in the 1900s.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
MediaEdit
- A BBC documentary, Namibia – Genocide and the Second Reich (2005), explores the Herero and Nama genocide and the circumstances surrounding it.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation
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- In the documentary 100 Years of Silence, filmmakers Halfdan Muurholm and Casper Erichsen portray a 23-year-old Herero woman, who is aware of the fact that her great-grandmother was raped by a German soldier. The documentary explores the past and the way Namibia deals with it now.<ref>Template:YouTube</ref>
- Mama Namibia, a historical novel by Mari Serebrov, provides two perspectives of the 1904 genocide in German South West Africa. The first is that of Jahohora, a 12-year-old Herero girl who survives on her own in the veld for two years after her family is killed by German soldiers. The second story in Mama Namibia is that of Kov, a Jewish doctor who volunteered to serve in the German military to prove his patriotism. As he witnesses the atrocities of the genocide, he rethinks his loyalty to the Fatherland.<ref>Serebrov, Mari (2013) Mama Namibia, Windhoek, Namibia: Wordweaver Publishing House Template:ISBN</ref>
- Thomas Pynchon's novel V. (1963) has a chapter that includes recollections of the genocide; there are memories of events that took place in 1904 in various locations, including the Shark Island concentration camp.<ref name="repository.library.georgetown.edu">(RE)VISIONS OF GENOCIDE: NARRATIVES OF GENOCIDE IN THOMAS PYNCHON'S V. AND GRAVITY'S RAINBOW, Peyton Meigs Joyce, p. 28-29</ref>
- His later novel Gravity's Rainbow refers to it as well, giving a highly fictionalized account.
<ref name="repository.library.georgetown.edu"/>
- Jackie Sibblies Drury's play, We Are Proud To Present a Presentation About the Herero of Namibia, Formerly Known as Southwest Africa, From the German Südwestafrika, Between the Years 1884–1915, is about a group of actors developing a play about the Herero and Nama genocide.<ref>J.S. Drury (2014) We are Proud ..., Bloomsbury Methuen Drama Template:ISBN</ref>
See alsoEdit
Template:Portal Template:See also
- Genocides in history (before World War I)
- Genocide of indigenous peoples
- List of ethnic cleansing campaigns
- List of genocides
- List of war crimes
- Atrocities in the Congo Free State, perpetrated in the Congo Free State (not universally recognized as a genocide)
- Maji Maji Rebellion, German East Africa (modern-day Tanzania)
- Scramble for Africa
- Violence against Duala civilians during World War I
- Darfur genocide
- Native American genocide in the United States<ref>Hull, Isabel V. (2005) Absolute Destruction: Military Culture and the Practices of War in Imperial Germany, p. 30, Cornell University</ref><ref name=":0">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation
|CitationClass=web }}</ref>
- Genocide of Indigenous Australians<ref name=":0" />
Original German textsEdit
ReferencesEdit
SourcesEdit
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Bibliography and documentariesEdit
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- Exterminate all the Brutes, Sven Lindqvist, London, 1996.
- A Forgotten History-Concentration Camps were used by Germans in South West Africa, Casper W. Erichsen, in the Mail and Guardian, Johannesburg, 17 August 2001.
- German Federal Archives, Imperial Colonial Office, Vol. 2089, 7 (recto)
- "The Herero and Nama Genocides, 1904–1908", J.B. Gewald, in Encyclopedia of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity, New York, Macmillan Reference, 2004.
- Herero Heroes: A Socio-Political History of the Herero of Namibia 1890–1923, J.B. Gewald, Oxford, Cape Town, Athens, OH, 1999.
- Let Us Die Fighting: the Struggle of the Herero and Nama against German Imperialism, 1884–1915, Horst Drechsler, London, 1980.
- Olusoga, David & Erichsen, Casper W. (2010). The Kaiser's Holocaust : Germany's Forgotten Genocide and the Colonial Roots of Nazism. London: Faber and Faber.
- Gerwarth, Robert, and Stephan Malinowski. “Hannah Arendt’s Ghosts: Reflections on the Disputable Path from Windhoek to Auschwitz.” Central European History 42, no. 2 (2009): 279–300. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40600596.
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- The war and massacre is significantly featured in The Glamour of Prospecting, a contemporary account by Frederick Cornell of his attempts to prospect for diamonds in the region. In the book he describes his first hand accounts of witnessing the concentration camp on Shark Island and other aspects of the genocide. Template:Cite book
External linksEdit
Template:German colonial campaigns Template:Genocide topics Template:Authority control