Germany’s First Holocaust: 1904-1908

By Hannah Lickert
(an Uhuru Solidarity Movement member at Lancaster University, U.K.)

January 27th marked the 52nd anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. Many survivors would agree that 'liberation' is not quite the right word; the Soviet invasion and dismantling of the concentration camps in January 1945 was the start of a long and painful journey for thousands of häftlinge, or prisoners, many of whom did not see their homes for months, even years, despite being free from German rule. When the gates of the camps finally became two-way, the world was increasingly disgusted as pictures and testimonies began to flow out, and many could not believe that the Germans were be capable of such a thing.

Anyone keeping tabs on the German treatment of other races in the previous fifty years, however, might have thought differently. The Germans had exacted genocide on a massive scale only forty years before, and had built concentration camps to take care of the survivors. Germany today has had good practice in dealing with the atrocities their elders committed in war-time Europe, and feel great shame for it, but not nearly as much thought or regret is donated to this earlier massacre of hundreds of thousands of South-West Africans.

Already, the average reader will be losing interest. Africa is still the 'dark continent,' an exotic unknown, and it is difficult to get a handle on the political climate and situations out there, partly because it would shed light on the horrific amount of blood on European hands. We are used to the idea of death on a large scale in Africa, and so events like the 1904 near-extermination of the Herero and Nama tribes in modern-day Namibia disappear into 'the Africa problem,' unsurprising and therefore almost acceptable.

In 1883, a German trader named Adolf Luderitz bought a stretch of land in South West Africa. He built a town there, named it after himself, and soon attracted thousands of German settlers, who took over the surrounding area, creating Deutsch-Südwestafrika. This was not the German's only imperial conquest; in the 1884 Berlin conference, the leaders of Europe divided up Africa between them, with Germany walking away in charge of Togo, Cameroon and German East Africa, in addition to their Luderitz land. It was designed to spread the powerful Second Reich, but primarily to provide lebensraum, or living space, for the Germans, no matter who was living there already.

Out of all their colonies, the South-West Africa land attracted the most migrant Germans. The settlers entered into many negotiations with the leaders of the most prolific tribe there, the Herero, who were willing to do business at first. Unsurprisingly, the Germans turned out to be less than gracious guests; hundreds of incidences of rape and abuse of Herero women outraged the tribe, and by 1903 the imminent uprising took place. Around 100 Germans were killed in the ensuing battles, which finalised the decision that had been brewing in the minds of the settlers since day one: total extermination.

Despite the uprisings being very localised, based in only one town, the Germans had to include the entire Herero tribe in their ethnic cleansing. They started with the peaceful community in Otjimbingwe, the chief of which, Zacahrias, pledged his loyalty to Germany and promised no revolts. One Sunday, threatened by the far-off rumours of Herero revolts elsewhere, the German troops stationed in Otjimbingwe strung barbed wire around the church, which contained the entire Herero community gathered there for Sunday Service, and killed every man, woman and child.

At this point, Governor Leutwein, the chief of the African-based German army, extended a diplomatic hand to the Herero chief Samuel Maherero, in order to avoid a full-scale war. The pro-Imperialists back in Berlin, however, had different ideas, and were zealously eager to use the one isolated uprising as an excuse to wipe out the tribe completely, a view uncontested in general by the German people. All this time, the Euro-propaganda machine had been pumping out racist cartoons and slogans, painting the black man as a savage who kills white children and rapes white women, a monster who poses a serious threat to German happiness in occupied land. The crushing of the Herero seemed like the only logical solution.

And so, six months after the uprising, an infamous Lieutenant General, Lothar von Trotha, for whom 'negotiation is a sign of weakness,' arrived in Deutsch-Sudwestafrika. By this point, the terrified Herero had moved as far away from the German settlers as possible, desperate to avoid the now 14 000 strong army. The Germans soon found the tribe, located at the last waterhole before the Kalahari desert, and surrounded them on three sides. The plan was to advance on the tribe, killing as many as they could, with the incomplete circle driving the survivors to certain death in the Kalahari (known to the Herero as the Omahaki).

The plan worked perfectly, and continued for weeks. Once the Herero had passed the last waterholes, the Germans built a 200 mile stretch of guard posts to ensure that any Herero trying to return to their land would be shot. Von Trotha's orders had been exact: 'All the Herero must leave the land. If they refuse, then I will force them to do it with the big guns. Any Herero found within German borders, with or without a gun, will be shot. No prisoners will be taken. This is my decision for the Herero people'.

This announcement, put into a letter, was the first example in European history of an order to exterminate an entire people. Despite the shock it was met with back in Germany (it became a national scandal, alarming and disgusting to the general public and the Reichstag), von Trotha refused to retract his statement, and he and his army spent the next two months carrying out their mission. Eventually, the Kaiser bent to governmental pressure, and ordered the Lieutenant General to accept the surrender of the Herero.

Thus, new orders came through: to round up any remaining Herero they could find, which eventually numbered 13,000 (from a tribe previously numbering 80,000), and transport them to Germany, where they would be kept in another world first: concentration camps. The Nama tribe, the other populous inhabitants of Deutsch Sudwestafrika, were destined for the same fate: their uprising following the failed Herero one had to led to 10,000 deaths, half the tribe, with the remaining 9,000 destined for the camps.

The camps, as with Auschwitz and Treblinka and all the other second world war compounds, were designed to exterminate the remaining Herero and Nama. Children were born there, begot by the rape of the tribeswomen by German soldiers. Von Trotha heavily criticised this, not out of concern for the women and newborns, but for the rapists: 'To receive women and children, most of them ill, is a serious danger to the German troops. And to feed them is an impossibility. I find it appropriate that the nation perishes instead of infecting our soldiers.' The mixed race children (as well as severed heads of prisoners) were examined with interest, especially by a geneticist named Eugen Fischer. His resulting book, 'The Principles of Human Heredity and Race Hygiene,' was read by none other than the incarcerated Hitler, and formed part of the basis for his ideas of Ubermenschen, or a supreme, pure race.

The camps were in the capital city Windhoek, and in total 4 000 people were worked, starved and beaten to death. They were shuttled around on cattle trucks, just like at Auschwitz, assigned a number (which they had to wear round their necks like dog collars), just like at Auschwitz. Some were kept as slaves, resulting in a massive economy boom, and many were rented out to companies. This proved so successful that some of the companies, such as Werman Shipping, started their own camps. Today, a shopping mall stands on that site.

The focus on death in these camps was so strong, and so certain, that pre-printed death certificates, with "death from exhaustion" as the cause of the death, were produced in the thousands.

By 1908, when heavy criticism forced von Trotha to recall the order he had been allowed to pursue for four years, around 100,000 Herero and Nama had been ethinically cleansed, without most of the world even noticing, and without any real attempt by Europe at intervention. Villages in the occupied land lay deserted, empty of their tens of thousands of murdered residents. Many people in Windhoek today, and the towns around it, completely deny their past; most don't even know about it, and this is partly due to the fact that no monument to the genocide exists. There are, however, multiple statues and memorials to the German soldiers who had died in the colonial battles of the 2nd Reich, and most insulting of all, the Germans erected a huge statue to mark their victory over the Herero, on the actual site of their biggest concentration camp, which is still there today.

Namibia is now mostly divided between 4000 white farmers, and for four years, Namibians have been battling with the German government for $2m dollars in reparations to buy back their land. In 2004 they invited the Germans to send a representative to speak at a memorial rally for the battles. They wanted to hear it called genocide. The rep apologised and asked for forgiveness for years of ongoing European brutality and suppression of the truth. It's an almost unique step in Europeans admitting their bloody vendetta against tribal peoples, but it won't solve land issues or win reparations case. Katuutire Kaura, Leader of the Opposition says: "We cannot let bygones be bygones while we are living like strangers in our own country."

People look back at Auschwitz and say it couldn't happen today. Perhaps in the 1940s the Herero were looking back on their past and saying the same thing. But it does happen, and it will again. Especially in a hidden nation like Africa, where thousands die unnoticed every day, either as a result of internal conflict, disease, natural disasters, or, not uncommonly, the effects of over a hundred years of imperialism and oppression.

We know that there is no easy solution when an entire continent is ripped savagely apart and pillaged for its people and natural resources, and the answer cannot lie in charity, but in solidarity. Africans must be allowed to reclaim what is rightfully theirs, and gain responsibility for their minerals, their oil, their culture, their entire lives and means of subsistence. They are the richest continent in the world, in terms of what we can farm or mine from them, and yet they must watch it pass them by every day on freight trains and trucks, bound for countries like ours that rely and thrive on the systematic repression and underpayment of millions of workers who cannot afford the goods they produce. It is a very distanced form of slavery, but since they do not live in our houses, we are not reminded of the injustice on a daily basis.

If you are now wondering how to help right these appalling wrongs, please visit www.apscuhuru.org or www.uhurunews.com to watch the vital work of organisations like the Uhuru Movement, the African People's Solidarity Committee, and the All-African People's Development and Empowerment Project (see also www.developmentforafrica.org), most recently conducting African-led development in Zimbabwe and Sierra Leone. There are thousands of people devoting their lives to stopping the persecution of Africans world-wide; I urge you to become one of them.