Let me paste and copy a few lines looking at those past events from another angle. I admit that my view is biased as yours is. I am a little bit tired to read hundreds of "papers" about German genocide on the Hereros which quickly make the turn to Holocaust. I wanted to know what happened.
First an article from the Journal of Genocide studies 2005, in memoriam of the author of the term "genocide" Raphael Lemkin, who also describes the Herero genocide. Nevertheless, I read:
Lemkin was not well informed about the cultural, socio-economic, and political conditions that determined the life of the Herero in Namibia further:
With regard to his analysis of the colonial war between the Herero and the German Schutztruppe (colonial troops), Lemkin’ s sources are even more questionable: he relied almost completely on British reports andsources whose aim was to discredit Germany as a responsible and competent colonizer....
http://www.inogs.com/JGRFullText/Schaller.pdfThen I come across a
Namibian site, where those drama took place. It writes:
The 11th and 12th January saw the German farms and trading posts dotted along the Swakop and White Nossob rivers in the Okahandja and Windhoek districts being sacked. The way in which the German men were murdered was often slow and brutal with the victims suffering death by being systematically burned, clubbed and mutilated. Throughout the conflict many of the Germans, including captured and wounded soldiers, finding themselves outnumbered and with no chance of escape resorted to shooting themselves in preference to being reduced to the tortured playthings of the natives. Those who didn't - suffered the consequencesFor six months that kind of warfare was going on. Then after the Hereros had been surrounded and beaten in the battle of Waterberg, their leader had been fled on British territory, they followed that path, chased for a short time by exhausted German troops. It can be read further:
August 12th and 13th: Deimling and Von Muhlenfels sections began moving east in pursuit of the main body of fleeing Hereros. The entire surrounding area of the Waterberg had been grazed-out by the Herero animals and the German horses and draft animals had not been fed since 10th. ...The air was thick with fine dust and the Germans suffered greatly. Whenever they reached a waterhole at they found them choked with dead Herero stock..The German commander's diary: "There is a lack of water for man and beast, horses die of the rampant horse sickness, the climate is barbarous, ... The incidence of typhoid amongst the men has risen steadily since the 11 August and the horses and mules were dying of thirst..
The Germans soon gave up the pursuit. The Hereros continued their way of warfare:.
The women with the children and livestock fled ahead of the men who took the 'rear-guard'. ... Soon the waterholes were choked with the carcasses of dead animals and rendered useless for any followers and closing down the path of return.... After their return , the German commander von Trotha wrote a letter, that all male Hereros on the ground of German East Africa will be shot and females and children will be shot at (meaning: it will be into their direction but not directlyy at them), to chase them out of the country. He wrote: "All Hereros must leave the country. If they do not do so, I will force them with cannons to do so. Within the German borders every Herero, with or without weapons, with or without cattle, will be shot. I no longer shelter women and children. They must either return to their people or they will be shot at. "
http://www.namibia-1on1.com/herero-uprising.htmlSummary: The Hereros without any warnings ambushed and sadistically massacred farmers including their women and children. The farmers legally had purchased their ground but permitted the Hereros to feed their cattle on it, following a local tradition. The ground never was owned by the Hereros, who started the uprising. The Herero did not spare from torturing the wounded or captured soldiers, set into motion to stop the cruelties. Those soldiers even committed suicide in order to avoid being captured. After having lost one battle the Herero decided to escape through a desert. Not to be followed on their path by the Germans, they poisoned the waterholes left behind on their track. As expected, Germans did not follow them for long. On that pursuit no contact between Germans and Hereros occured. Many Hereros did not make it to the British colonial territory on the other side. The death cause, how many of them died; what they did after arrival and the way they were received by the British troops remainsl in the dark. Nevertheless they claim to have suffered from a German genocide, costing 60.000 Herero lives.
My questions:
1: Shouldn't it be considered that the practice of poisoning all waterholes in a desert , which are left behind on one's path, also bears in it the danger, that no more water holes will come upfront? Sparing some of the waterholes even behind could have been more intelligent for survival. Is it possible that the Hereros poisoned one water hole which they shouldn't have poisoned: the last one?
2. How many uninvolved travellers or merchants on their track fell victim to that behaviour, which is a crime in a desert?
3. The official survivor count by British colonial troops, 9 months later, probably also was inaccurate, because only those being present at one specific emplacement were counted (2000) and no further investigation about the others took place. It is not even known how many started the trail. The generally published number of 60.000 is obtained from missionars , having estimated the number of all existing Hereros (73.000) in the year 1874, which then was reduced by the number of those, fallen or captured during the uprisings (which happened 32 years later) and the number of those, counted by the British troops as survivors.
4. The words of the German commander von Trotha, released immediately after returning from the failed pursuit, might sound too hard. Probably two weeks later he would have been back to a more diplomatic style. In addition he suffered from Typhoid Fever. "Typhus"' comes from the Greek word for "fog" and describes the mental condition of the patients. Having had mental symptoms of "cholera", meaning "rage", the letter would have been worse. It should be known what he said 6 months later.
by Cristiano de S.O Campos on 18 Mar 2008 02:29 
