Germany committed the first act of genocide against blacks

[David Thompson]

MajorT -- Please avoid personal characterizations in posts. The forum rules forbid them; our intelligent readers, who can make up their own minds, don't want them; and your argument doesn't need them.

[michael mills]

The German census of 1911 counted just under 20,000 Herero living on the territory of German South-West Africa.

The Herero counted were those actually under the control of the German administration, to which the census-takers had access.

In addition, there were in 1911 the Herero refugees living in British Bechuanaland. Let us for the time being accept the figure of 15,000 such refugees given in the source linked by me. That makes a total of nearly 35,000 Herero living in 1911.

We know from German records that some 7,000 Herero prisoners died, mainly from typhoid fever, in prison camps in the period 1904-05. That would mean that at the beginning of the uprising in January 1904, there would have been at least 42,000 Herero.

In addition, there was an unknown number of Herero rebels who had not fled across the Kalahari to Bechuanaland, but rather to other remote parts of the territory claimed by Germany, particularly to the far north, Ovamboland, which was never under German control, and was not subjected to colonial administration until after the First World War, when South-West Africa had come under South African rule. The addition of those refugees, however many there were, would increase the total of Herero in 1904 even more.

It is quite possible that the figure of 15,000 Herero refugees in Bechuanaland is somewhat exaggerated, since another source quoted by the moderator gave 9,000. Adopting that lower figure yields this equation:

20,000 Herero counted by the German administration in 1911
9,000 Herero refugees in Bechuanaland
7,000 Herero rebels who died in captivity in 1904-1905
-------------------------------------------------------------
36,000 total Hereros at the beginning of 1904, not including refugees hiding out in various remote places in German territory.

I would suggest that a total of 35-40,000 Herero at the beginning of 1904 is a far more plausible figure than the canonical 80,000 that is so often quoted and was purely a guesstimate without any basis on an actual count.

As for the ability of the Herero to cross the Kalahari desert, in the 1890s a number of Herero fled across that desert to take refuge in British Bechuanaland after a failed uprising. They seem to have been able to cross that desert without dying of starvation and thirst in any numbers. It appears that they had knowledge of tracks through the desert with a good supply of waterholes, enabling a relatively safe crossing.

It is certain that there was a large-scale mortality of the cattle that the retreating Herero rebels were trying to drive across the Kalahari desert after the Battle of Waterberg, since the pursuing German troops found large numbers of carcasses. It has been surmised that the mortality of the cattle was caused by eating a poisonous plant, Macou, which is at its most toxic in late winter and early spring, precisely when the rebels were fleeing towards Bechuanaland.

In any case, the Kalahari, also known as the Omaheke, is by no means the lethal desert that it has been depicted as, as is shown by this article on the Omaheke Region:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omaheke_Region

In that article it is stated:

The agricultural patterns of this region is to a large extent homogenous. Most of the 900 commercial and 3,500 communal farmers in this area are cattle breeders. A regional office of the Ministry of Agriculture, serving the whole region, is based in Gobabis.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Anthropologically, almost the entire Mbanderu and Gobabis-Ju/wa ethnic groups are residing in the region. Furthermore, it is a rich cultural area for Herero, Damara-Nama, Tswana, Afrikaner and German, with a sprinkling of northerners.

So it is possible for pastoral nomads to live in the Omaheke Region.

In conclusion, there is no evidence for any intention on the part of the German Government to exterminate the Herero people as such. The German commander von Trotha did issue an order to his troops to shoot any male Herero rebels on sight, after his failure to surround and capture them at the Waterberg, but that order was applicable only to fleeing rebels, not to the numerous Herero who had not participated in the uprising (there were even Herero serving in the German forces), nor did it apply to women and children. Furthermore, it was over-ruled by the German Government after a couple of months.

Nor does the actual mortality rate of the Herero in the period 1904-07 indicate a genocide. It is most probable that at least two-thirds of the Herero survived the suppression of the uprising, either under German control or as refugees outside or inside German territory (around 30,000 out of around 40,000).

To be sure almost half the 15,000 Herero rebels who were held in POW camps in the period 1904-05 perished, mainly of typhoid fever. However, there is no evidence of any intention on the part of the German authorities that the mortality rate should be so high, any more than there was on the part of the British Government when it interned the Boer civilian population of Transvaal a few years previously.

[David Thompson]

Michael -- You wrote: (1)

In conclusion, there is no evidence for any intention on the part of the German Government to exterminate the Herero people as such. The German commander von Trotha did issue an order to his troops to shoot any male Herero rebels on sight, after his failure to surround and capture them at the Waterberg, but that order was applicable only to fleeing rebels, not to the numerous Herero who had not participated in the uprising (there were even Herero serving in the German forces), nor did it apply to women and children.

Contrast your characterization with the reported text of Gen. von Trotha's remarks to the Herero nation (my emphases):

The Herero nation must now leave the country. If it refuses, I shall compel it to do so with the 'long tube' (cannon). Any Herero found inside the German frontier, with or without a gun or cattle, will be executed. I shall spare neither women nor children. I shall give the order to drive them away and fire on them. Such are my words to the Herero people.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lothar_von_Trotha

and to the Nama (Bushmen):

The Nama who chooses not to surrender and lets himself be seen in German territory will be shot, until all are exterminated. Those who, at the start of the rebellion, committed murder against whites or have commanded that whites be murdered have, by law, forfeited their lives. As for the few not defeated, it will fare with them as it fared with the Herero, who in their blindness also believed that they could make war successfully on the powerful German Emperor and the great German people. I ask you, where are the Herero today?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lothar_von_Trotha

(2)

It is most probable that at least two-thirds of the Herero survived the suppression of the uprising, either under German control or as refugees outside or inside German territory (around 30,000 out of around 40,000).

This supposition is refuted by your retro-extrapolation earlier in the thread, calculating only 15,774 Herero based on subsequent net population increases:

Comparison of that 1902 indigenous population with the indigenous population in 1989 (1.302 million) shows that between 1902 and 1989 it increased by a factor of 6.65647575.

Division of the population numbers of the different tribes in 1989 by that increase factor yields the following calculated figures for each tribe as at 1902, assuming the same net rate of growth for each tribe

http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 4#p1635134

Note also that all of the pre-war estimates placed the proportion of Hereros at 33%-40% of the total population of Namibia. The total number of Hereros was reckoned at between 60,000-100,000. In 1911, however, five years after the uprising, there were only 15,000 Hereros – one quarter of the lowest of the earlier estimates -- and even three or four generations later in 1989, the Herero comprised only 7.5% of the population – only a quarter or less of the estimates of pre-war population proportions.

(3)

When one looks at the real data, the claim of a genocide either intended or perpetrated by the German colonial administration looks increasingly untenable.

See the definition of the crime, from the 1948 Convention on Genocide (obviously not in effect during the Herero war, where its use is an anachronism):

Article 2
In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

Article 3
The following acts shall be punishable:

(a) Genocide;
(b) Conspiracy to commit genocide;
(c) Direct and public incitement to commit genocide;
(d) Attempt to commit genocide;
(e) Complicity in genocide.

Article 4
Persons committing genocide or any of the other acts enumerated in Article 3 shall be punished, whether they are constitutionally responsible rulers, public officials or private individuals.

http://www.hrweb.org/legal/genocide.html

[michael mills]

The proclamations issued by Von Trotha, addressed to the Herero and Nama rebels respectively, contained threats which had the purpose of frightening the rebels into giving up their struggle and either leaving German territroy or surrendering.

They cannot unequivocably be construed as either a documentation of an intention of the German Government to exterminate the Herero and Nama tribes, nor as an order to the men under his command to carry out such an extermination.

My views on any topic are constantly evolving as I learn more about that topic. There is a copy in the National Library of Australia here in Canberra of the book by Horst Drechsler, the East German historian who was the first to consult the archives of the former German Colonial Office held at Potsdam, and I have requested it.

The archives of the former German Colonial Office were held in Potsdam, and fell into Soviet hands at the end of the Second World War, subsequently being handed over to the government of the German Democratic Republic. That is the reason why it was an East German historian who first used them in writing a history of German colonial policy before the First World War.

By all accounts, Drechsler was a loyal servant of the East German regime, ideologically committed to Communism, who wrote his book as an "anti-imperialist" work in the Communist sense, ie as part of the Soviet-Bloc propaganda offensive against "Western Imperialism". That does not mean that his book on the Herero and Nama revolts must be without merit, but it does mean that it must be used with due care as a work conforming to the ideological line prescribed by the East German Government.

I will let you know my impression of Drechsler's book once I have read it. It is often quoted as the main source of the canonical belief in a genocide committed by the Imperial German Government.

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi David,

I have looked to see where I may have made "personal characterizations in posts".

I presume (and please correct me if I'm wrong) that it was this directed to Michael:

"Your abuse of (admittedly not very well documented) sources is intellectually dishonest and deceptive."

I appreciate that your much more informed and evidential approach to this subject is not helped by such interventions, so I grudgingly accept your admonishment.

However, I would note that nobody is, so far, disputing this "characterization". Although I often disagree with Michael, he is generally diligent and usually straightforward and serves a very useful purpose here in that he forces others to refine and source their arguments better. However, on this occasion, he fell some way below his usual standards.

Furthermore, I believe, that misuse, or misrepresentation of sources is also against forum rules. This is clearly a much more serious charge, as it can falsify the very historical record AHF is attempting to establish and promote.

Cheers,

Sid.

[David Thompson]

Sid – You wrote:

However, I would note that nobody is, so far, disputing this "characterization". Although I often disagree with Michael, he is generally diligent and usually straightforward and serves a very useful purpose here in that he forces others to refine and source their arguments better. However, on this occasion, he fell some way below his usual standards.

Furthermore, I believe, that misuse, or misrepresentation of sources is also against forum rules. This is clearly a much more serious charge, as it can falsify the very historical record AHF is attempting to establish and promote.

(1) When a poster here cites to material as supporting his argument, when in fact it refutes it, we expect and invite other members to point that out. The forum's purpose is to provide reliable information on controversial historical issues, and drawing attention to such errors serves the forum purpose.

Once it is pointed out, such a mistake carries its own message. Our readers are intelligent and generally well-informed people, who can draw their own conclusions about the facts at issue and the credibility of the posters participating in the discussion.

(2) If a poster falls below his usual standards, he has only himself to blame. Speculation on that poster's possible subjective motives for falling below those standards -- whether his omission of material adverse to his position was careless or a deliberate act of deception -- does not advance the basic factual discussion one bit. That is a matter for individual readers to decide for themselves.

Personal accusations or exchanges are an unwelcome and distracting sideshow here because they undercut the forum's purpose of providing information about the topic. Furthermore, they invariably provoke "flame wars" between posters which typically carry over into other threads as well. Consequently, we do not tolerate remarks of that sort, whether they are disputed by others or not.

(3) As for the enforcement of forum standards, that is left to the moderators, acting under the supervision of the forum's proprietor, Marcus Wendel. Once a member has made his factual contribution to the discussion, his job is over, and the moderators handle the rest.

Now let's get back on topic.

[michael mills]

I would like to address Major T's accusation of "cherry-picking" and "dishonesty"in my post of Monday 14.

Major T seems to believe that if one quotes a particular item of information from a particular source, one is obliged to accept all the claims made by that particular source.

That is not so. One is not obliged to accept a claim made by that source if the claim is not logically supported by the item of information quoted. Furthermore, the claim should most definitely not be accepted if it contradicts the item of information in question.

In the source quoted by me, there was definite contradiction between the claim which I omitted, and about which omission Major T was complaining, and the item of information I used.

This was the source I used:


http://www.namibia-1on1.com/a-central/n ... eroes.html

Within that source, the item on Herero chief Hosea Komombumbi Kutako made this claim:

He was released at the end of the uprising in which around 65,000 out of 80,000 Ovaherero were killed......

I omitted that claim, for which Major T accused me "intellectual dishonesty" and "deception".

I omitted the above claim, because it quite clearly conflicted with the item of information I did use, which was this section in the item on Paramount Chief Samual Maharero, the leader of the uprising:

Of those who fled into the Kalahari Desert, about 15,000 emerged in Bechuanaland, today Botswana. About 12,000, mostly women and children were placed in concentration camps.

That item of information implies that there were at least 27,000 Herero survivors of the uprising, 15,000 refugees in Bechuanaland and another 12,000 prisoners in concentration camps.

That contradicts the claim made in the section on Chief Kutako, which implies that there were only 15,000 Herero survivors (80,000 less 65,000 killed).

I selected the information contained in the section on Chief Maharero, since it was more consistent with the results of the official 1911 census, which counted just under 20,000 Herero living under German control, a figure that did not include refugees in Bechuanaland or other British territory, or Herero escapees living wild in German territory, the so-called "Field Herero".

Since the claim made in the section on Chief Kutako clearly underestimated the number of Herero survivors by a large amount, and there exaggerated the number of Herero dead, I omitted it as unreliable.

Nor did I accept unreservedly the figure of 15,000 Herero refugees in Bechuanaland; I referred to a lower estimate of 9,000 refugees.

The fact is that I was making careful use of the sources available to me, making judgements as to their reliability and internal consistency. I accepted data which were consistent with other reliable data, such as the results of official censi, and rejected data that were not so consistent.

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi Michael,

I cannot discuss this in public anymore, but I will happily get back to you with an explanation on PMs when I can back on line.

If you wish to discuss it elsewhere I am on [email protected].

Cheers,

Sid.

[michael mills]

This is a response to claims made by Sunbury in the thread "The Kaiser's Holocaust", which has been locked due to supposed duplication of this thread.

It appears that the claims posted by Sunbury in that thread are derived from the book "The Kaiser's Holocaust".
I stated that it was a trashy and sensationalist book, and the claims made by Sunbury have confirmed me in that opinion, since I know from my reading of other sources that those claims are false and misleading.

The main problem with a book like "The Kaiser's Holocaust" is that it reads history backwards, ie it views events in South-West Africa in the first decade of the 20th Century through the prism of much more momentous events that occurred in Europe four decades later. But history moves forward, not backward.

The thesis of "The Kaiser's Holocaust", that there was a causal connection between German rule in South-West Africa and National Socialist rule in Europe in the 1940s, essentially rests on three assumptions:

1. That German colonial rule was somehow different from that of other colonial powers such as Britain;

2. That the experience of colonial rule had a major influence on German political and social life; and

3. That persons involved in the German administration of South-West Africa played a major role in the development of National Socialist ideology and its practice during the Second World War.

All three of those assumptions are demonstrably false.

Germany came to colonialism very late, at least two centuries after the major 20th Century colonial powers Britain and France, and its rule over the few possessions that it managed to acquire can be seen to be very much based on the model created by those major powers. Furthgermore, it was only ever a very minor colonial power.

The object of all colonial rule was to exploit the land and people subject to that rule for the economic benefit of the ruling power, and in that respect German colonial rule in South-West Africa, Togoland, Tanganyika, New Guinea and other places was no different from that of other colonial powers.

In the Cape Colony, the British colonial rulers had throughout the 19th Century fought a series of wars against the various native peoples, in the course of which those peoples had been forced back, and their land and cattle confiscated and ahnded over to European settlers. There had been uprisings against British rule that had been crushed with great loss of life among the native insurgents.

When the Germans arrived on the scene at the end of the 19th Century and took possession of South-West Africa, they simply followed the pattern of rule over and exploitation of African peoples that had been developed over a long period by the British. There was absolutely nothing in German rule in South-West Africa, including the brutal crushing of native uprisings, that was not an integral part of the pattern of colonial rule established by the major colonial powers.

In the case of a major colonial power such as Britain, the experience of colonial rule did have a decisive influence on the political, social and economic development of the home country. For example, Britain's economic development and its rise to the status of World power was a result of the enormous wealth it derived from its colonial possessions, first the sugar islands in the Caribbean and then more importantly from India.

In the social and political area, a prime example is provided by the British Civil Service, a body of trained professional administrators, which provided the model for all modern Government administrative organisations; it had its origin in the body of officials recruited by the British East India Company to administer its possessions in India, and was taken over by the British Government when the latter assumed the rule over India from the Company in 1858.

By contrast, no such influence is found in the case of Germany, mainly because the modern German state was created on the basis of developments occurring within Europe, and thus had assumed its final form before it set about acquiring overseas colonial possessions. Those overseas possessions were very minor, and contributed very little to the German economy, a stark contrast to the case of Britain. Nor were the German colonies places of large-scale European settlement, unlike British colonies such as Australia, Canada and New Zealand, or French Algeria.

As for the third element, it is obvious that the sources of National Socialist racial ideology are to be found in Eastern Europe, not in the German colonies. The chief ideologist of National Socialism, Alfred Rosenberg, came from Russia, and his ideas were patently derived from the ethnic conflicts occurring in that country, in particular the conflict between Jews and Slavs. Hitler himself occasionally used analogies drawn from European colonial rule over non-European peoples in describing his vision for future German rule over territories conquered in the East, but those analogies were always those of British rule in India, or of American continental expansion, never from the German coloniues, in which he had no real interest.

Persons who played a role in the German administration of South-West Africa and later joined the National Socialist Party, such as Ritter von Epp, never had any decisive influence on the National Socialist Government of Germany, which had no real interest in re-acquiring overseas colonies, but rather sought domination within Europe.

Sunbury has made much of the alleged racial theories of anthropologists such as Eugen Fischer, which were supposedly developed through the study of native peoples in South-West Africa, and which supposedly then formed the basis of National Socialist ideology. I presume he derived that claim from statements made in the book "The Kaiser's Holocaust".

I have repeatedly asked Sunbury whether he has read the book written by Fischer on the results of his anthropological research carried out in South-West Africa, and Sunbury has consistently failed to answer. I therefore conclude that he has not read the book, and has not the slightest idea of the real nature of Fischer's research. The claims he has made in this thread must be based on statements made in the book "The Kaiser's Holocaust", which are therefore historically false.

I have read Fischer's book, and therefore know that it is a work of purely scientific physical anthropology, which had as its aim to determine whether the Mendelian laws of heredity applied to a human population derived from the mixture of two very different ancestral populations, such as the Rehobother Basters of South-West Africa, descended from marriages between European settlers in the Cape Colony and native peoples. His research demonstrated that the Mendelian laws did apply, and that the crossing of two different races did not result in a stable self-perpetuating mixed race, but in the constant re-emergence of the original races in the proportion A+2AB+B, where A and B represent persons having the physical characteristics of the ancestral races and AB persons having characteristics of both.

There was nothing in Fischer's research that had any connection with racialist theory, the concept that the moral value of a person was determined by his racial descent. Fischer did conclude that the Basters showed signs of degeneracy, for example in their laziness and tendency to alcoholism, but he attributed that not to biological but rather to social factors, namely their feeling of superiority to the native peoples because of their partically European ancestry and their possession of large numbers of native servants to whom they could leave all manual labour.

In his book, Fischer did express support for the theory of eugenics, namely the concept that the human race could be progressively improved through selective breeding. However, he tempered that support with a warning that a eugenic program could only be implemented on the basis of a thorough understanding of the biological mechanism of heredity, which did not yet exist.

Thus, it is clear that there is no ideological connection between the anthropological research of Eugen Fischer and National Socialist political racialism. Where Sunbury has gone wrong is to rely on the book "The Kaiser's Holocaust", which has manifestly falsified the work of Fischer and other anthropologists.

Another element in the book that is a sensationalist falsification is the way it presents the use by German physical anthropologists of indigenous skeletal material obtained from South-West Africa. It was a common practice at the time for indigenous skeletal material to be sent from colonies to Europe for the purpose of studying the different branches of the human race and the course of human evolution; that practice existed in North America and Australia, as well as in Africa, and was in no way specifically German or related to any political ideology. Some of that skeletal material was put on display in European museums, and also used as the basis for various theories as to the physical evolution of the human species.

Today indigenous peoples in various countries are demanding the return of the skeletal material that was taken for the purpose of scientific study. There is however no causal connection between the study of that skeletal material and the racial ideology of political movements such as German National Socialism; allegations of such a connection are made for the purpose of political propaganda.

[David Thompson]

Let's stick to the Herero-Nama war in this thread, and discuss ethnology, eugenics and NS-ideology in a separate thread. Otherwise this thread will develop the same problems that caused The Kaiser's Genocide thread (at http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=186772) to be locked -- a lack of coherent focus.

[David Thompson]

The posts discussing Eugen Fischer now have a thread of their own at http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=187091. Please post relevant comments there.

[Piotr Kapuscinski]

Casper W. Erichsen is a co-author of the book by David Olusoga, Casper W. Erichsen: The Kaiser's Holocaust. Germany's Forgotten Genocide and the Colonial Roots of Nazism. Faber and Faber, 2010.

Casper W. Erichsen:

First German concentration camp, in fact entire network of concentration camps, was built in 1904 in German South-West Africa, modern Namibia. People from two African nations - Herero and Nama - were locked in those camps. Those camps were real hell on Earth, in which a genocide took place. They were called Konzentazionslager. Those "centers" looked very similar to those built a dozen or so years later in Europe by Nazi Germany. They consisted of a number of primitive barracks or huts, surrounded by armed guardians and barb wire or heaps of cut thornbushes. Camps suffered from overpopulation, lack of drinking water, blankets, medicaments and clothes. And first of all - food. People were being starved. Sometimes some wastes were being thrown to them, or at best a handful of rice. But they had were not given any pots, so rice had to be eaten in the raw. Instead of clothes, they were given large sacks with cut openings for hands and head. The effects of this were terrible - diseases, vermin, parasites, decaying / rotting wounds. Finall - massive death ratio. Average lifespan in German camps in Africa was not higher than few months. The guards of those camps were behaving like "master race". Herero and Nama were treated worse than animals. Tortures, yelling, torments, sexual exploitation of young girls and women. All prisoners were forced to slave work while building infrastructure of the German colony - roads, railways, houses. Those who couldn't cope with that extremely hard work, were usually being beaten and then killed. The worst of all camps was located on the Shark Island - it is a small rocky island located near the port town of Lüderitz. It is connected with terra firma by a small bridge. Terrible place. No trees, no any shelter from heat of the sun. In the Winter there is really cold there, due to very cold sea currents, strong winds and waves hitting the small island. Germans placed there several thousands natives. Men, women and children. They were used for building the wharf. All day long they were paddling in ice cold water. Supervisors were exceptionally brutal - we know examples of people who preferred to tear their throats with barehands rather than going to Shark Island. The mortality ratio in this camp was close to one hundred percent. Nearly all prisoners were killed. Corpses of the murdered were being thrown straight to the ocean. They were often drifting along the illuminated waterfront of Lüderitz, where German people were having fun in exclusive restaurants and beer-houses. Prisoners on Shark Island could hear the music and the laugh of women coming from Lüderitz. There is one more aspect of activity of German camps in Africa - medical experiments. However, there were no any doctors or medical care in those camps. Sick prisoners were simply dying. Only later German military doctors appeared and... it was even worse than with no medical care. They were not interested in saving the lifes of Herero and Nama. They concluded, that high mortality ratio among the prisoners is for them a great opportunity to carry out medical experiments. Drastic things were being done. Various substances were being injected to both alive and dead people. Abdomen were being opened by surgeons. One doctor "distinguished" himself from the rest - it was dr Bofinger. What was shameful, was the practice of concocting fragments of corpses of prisoners on a massive scale. Why? The answer is simple - on German universities at that time there was a trend for racial research. For example measuring and comparing skulls, bones, brains of various human races and drawing nonsensical "conclusions" about the superiority of some races over other races from this "research". Hosts of German scientists and students who were doing this "research", needed research material. Authorities of the German South-West Africa decided to provide them with that material for low price. The source of origin of that "human research material", were of course concentration camps. What parts of corpses of dead prisoners were being send to Germany? All of them - brains, livers, hands, ears, eyes, female and male genitalia. Everything cut-off and pickled in jars. But mostly skulls were being send. In camp Swakopmund women were being forced to cook cut-off heads of their fellow, dead prisoners and then to scrape the remaining flesh from those boiled heads with use of sharp pieces of glass. Those heads often belonged to very close relatives of those women. Skulls from Africa were then being send both to scientific centers but also to houses of private collectors in Germany. Even today in collections throughout Germany we can find many skulls and shrunken heads of Herero and Nama.

===================================

Interview of C. W. Erichsen with P. Zychowicz:

P. Zychowicz:

Concentration camps about which we are talking, were an element of a war between Germany and native population, which started in 1904. According to German press from that time, violence was started by the Herero, who were murdering and raping white women and children?

C. W. Erichsen:

This is propaganda. Causes of the war were much more complicated. German colonists in the South-West Africa were in difficult situation. Even though more and more of them were coming, they still had not enough land in their possession. Most of pasturages and cultivating soil still belonged to Herero and Nama. Similar situation was with herds of cattle, which constituted the main branch of economy of the colony. German farmers were forced to lease land from native chieftains...

P. Zychowicz:

And they apparently did not like this fact.

C. W. Erichsen:

Gently speaking... Because at the same time most Germans had a radically racist attitude. They considered Herero and Nama as Untermenschen. So they treated the natives in a very arrogant way. They were beating them, stealing their property, often even raping their women. All of this caused the fact, that situation started to be extremely tense. Germans wanted to grab the land of Herero and Nama - and these tribes had enough of being humiliated.

P. Zychowicz:

And then just one spark was enough, to light the fire.

C. W. Erichsen:

Yes. Finally - at first Herero, and then Nama - took their arms and rebelled against German rules. Going back to your previous question - during entire war, Herero murdered only 4 German children and 2 German women. There were even situations, when - after attacking and banishing or killing from some German farm their men - African warriors were safely convoying German women and children from that farm to a nearby town.

P. Zychowicz:

And how did treatment of women and children look like on the other side of the conflict?

C. W. Erichsen:

In concentration camps alone, Germans murdered 20,000 native women and children. To this number we need to add victims of massacres and pacifications of villages and settlements. We are speaking about dozens of thousands of victims here. The life of Herero or Nama - no matter, if that was a warrior, a woman, or a child - had no any value for the Germans. It is estimated that in total they murdered 80 % of entire population of Herero and around 50 % of Nama. And we are talking about tribes which numbered respectively 100,000 and 20,000 people.

P. Zychowicz:

This a paradox that "civilized" Europeans were behaving in a barbaric way, while "savage" natives were carrying out the military confrontation in a relatively decent way.

C. W. Erichsen:

This indeed might seem astonishing. However, native inhabitants of this part of Africa were by no means "complete savages", but people, who observed the laws of war. Apart from their own, very old traditions of fighting wars in a honorable way, perhaps also long-lasting missionary activity of Christian missionaries contributed to this fact.

P. Zychowicz:

And why didn't the Germans observe the laws of war?

C. W. Erichsen:

Because for them, Herero and Nama were not equal opponents. They were considered as subhumans, towards whom no humanitary principles needed to be implemented. They thought that only brute force could teach the "savages". Germans conducted a total war of attrition against Herero and Nama tribes.

P. Zychowicz:

However, that war was not a Sunday walk for the Germans, right?

C. W. Erichsen:

Some natives had firearms. They perfectly knew the terrain and were masters of guerilla warfare. On 11 August 1904 near Warterberg took place a pitched battle between forces of the Herero and German forces commanded by general Lothar von Trotha. Germans planned to encircle and utterly destroy the enemy, but African warriors - together with several dozen thousands of women and children, as well as herds of their cattle - managed to break through the ring of encirclement. But later Germans pushed them back into Omaheke desert.

P. Zychowicz:

What happened on that desert?

C. W. Erichsen:

People had shortage of water - they were dying like flies. They attempted to drink the blood of their cattle, but it was only increasing their thirst. Entire desert was full of scattered corpses. At first old people and children died. There was no return, because general von Trotha issued a so called "Extermination Order".

P. Zychowicz:

I beg your pardon?

C. W. Erichsen:

Extermination Order. This is one of few examples in history, when a war criminal produces such an obvious proof of his crime on paper. Trotha, in his appeal to the natives from 3 October 1904, wrote that any member of the Herero tribe encountered on German territory, was going to be shot. This order / appeal became a catalyst of a human slaughter. German patrols started their Herero hunting. Entire villages and settlements were being massacred. In the meantime incidentally many natives who did not belong to the Herero tribe were also slaughtered, because Germans did not really have any good methods of distinguishing the natives between each other... Those Herero who were lucky to survived this orgy of murders, were locked in those concentration camps described above.

P. Zychowicz:

Did Emperor Wilhelm II know about what his generals were doing in Africa?

C. W. Erichsen:

There is no doubts about this. He was the commander in chief of armed forces. (...)

(...) to be continued (this is not full text of the entire interview)

===========================================

I also found such a documentary movie about the issue in question:

[DavidFrankenberg]

Hello,

i wanted to remember some facts that should be repeated again and again, and should not be forgotten :

1-the Herreros started the war

2-the Herreros wanted to genocide the Germans and began to do so (killing 100-200 german people, women, children, men ; the 12 of april 1904)

3-its is assumed that Göring's father was in charge at the time of the so-called genocide, but he was not. Heinrich Göring was in charge until 1890 in Namibia, he has nothign to with it... so there is absoluetly no link between jewish holocaust and this so-called herrero genocide.

4-the Herreros were armed by the Brits. They gave them rifles used during the Boers war. No doubt that when Herrero leader claimed "kill all white people" he added "except British". The Boers war lasted 1899-1902, the Herrero war began in 1904.

5-most of the losses of the war were the result not of shootings, but of diseases...

6-The Herrero leader chose to go in the desert making his people starve and not to surrender....

So now, we have to face this question : why a little african tribe declared war (and wanted to genocide) to Germany (the 2nd XIXth century world power) while themselves were living scantily ?

2 events played a role : in 1894 the Herreo suffered a plague that killed almost all his cattle and terribly aggravated their conditions of living. And in 1899-1902 occurred the Boers War which poisoned the relationship between Germany and England, and therefore between their colonies Namiba and South Africa.
Herreros saw an opportunity to become great again, and the Brits saw an opportunity to expulse Germany of South Africa and to make feel the pain of war to the Germans.

It is very painful to read that : 1-"Germans genocided Herreros", 2-"Herreors are the victims, Germans are the bad boys, usual "nazis hitlerians" genociders blablabla"... 3-Britishs giving lessons after the Boers War...

I am very grateful to Mr Mills for trying to make some light on the number of Herreros.

Some links http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/her ... -1904-1907 https://www.deutsche-schutzgebiete.de/s ... erberg.htm

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi David,

1. The Herreros started the war? When, exactly, did they invade Germany? I thought the root of the problems was Germans being in Africa.

2. The Herreros wanted to genocide the Germans? How could they do more than kill a few of the small proportion of the German population that was in SWA? They may well have wanted to kill German men, women and children, but genocide against 65,000,000 Germans, 99.99% of whom were on another continent thousands of miles away, was physically impossible for them.

But just supposing that the Herreros were as bad as you claim, how does this justify in any way the genocidal scale of the German reaction?

Cheers,

Sid.

[wm]

The answer to the question "why didn't the Germans observe the laws of war?" should have been they didn't have to, firstly because it was civil war (so it wasn't an armed conflicts among nations), secondly because the Herreros weren't signatories of the Hague Convention of 1899 (assuming they were an independent nation).