what was going on in Germany at the same time:
debate about what happened in the African colonies also took the form of more formal political controversy, in particular in the Reichstag, the parliament of the day. Here, the Social Democrats and the Centre Party representing Catholic petty bourgeoisie and workers, at least potentially were in the majority, and they castigated colonial excesses, if not colonialism as such. In particular August Bebel, the Social Democrat patriarch and parliamentary leader, dubbed the struggle of the Ovaherero as a ‘fight in despair’, immediately when the war had begun. This was precisely on account of their loss of ‘their former independence and freedom’, and Bebel likened this struggle to that of Arminius, styled at the time as a German national hero for his victory over the Romans in 9 AD. Referring to the execution of Ovaherero leaders he exclaimed: ‘But this is the world turned upside down. In truth, the Herero defend the country which has been theirs for centuries, which they view as their heritage given to them by the Gods, and which they are obliged to defend by employing all means at their disposal.’ (Bebel 1904: 581, 584). Roughly a year later, Bebel slashed out at von Trotha’s conduct of the war likening it to that of ‘any butcher’s henchman’, a ‘barbarous kind of war making’, unfit to lay claim to civilisation (Bebel 1905: 697).
The parliamentary conflict came to a head when in late 1906, the Imperial government used a procedural issue to resolve the Reichstag, claiming the majority had un-patriotically withheld the funds from the soldiers fighting for the fatherland in South West Africa. The tactics of snap elections, along with a reshuffle of German parliamentary politics was successful, reducing the number of Social Democratic deputies and forging a new broad alliance supporting the government of Count Bülow (cf. Crothers 1941). This success was predicated, besides using features of the electoral system, on an unprecedented mobilisation of right wing civil society organisations (cf. Wehler 1995: 1079-80; Nipperdey 1998: 601; Sobich 2004; 2006). Still, Social Democrats also retorted by electoral propaganda strongly critical of the war and its conduct (cf. Short 2004).From the vantage point of today this attests to entangled history.
Entangled History and Politics: Negotiating the past between Namibia and Germany by Reinhart Kössler
Unfortunately the rest of the paper isn't very interesting.
But
this seems to be a reasonable source:
The Herero were a very traditional community often misunderstood by their colonizers. In warfare for example, they were seen as cruel and without honor by the German colonizers. As I.V. Hull (2005) illustrates by quoting August Kuhlmann, a missionary who inspected German missions in SWA (1904):
“They took no prisoners. They used large knives or clubs (kirris) to kill wounded enemy soldiers.
When they lacked bullets, they made their own out of bits of scrap metal and glass, which left jagged, often fatal, wounds. They ritually mutilated enemy corpses, which caused the German to surmise (probably incorrectly) that they had tortured the wounded. They stripped the dead of their uniforms and wore these themselves. Herero women hid in thorn bushes and encouraged their men folk with chants, which German soldiers found chilling and which fed the myth that Herero women participated in killing.”
In this period of time, there were internal wars taking place between native tribes, in particular the Nama and the Herero, thus one must remain aware that the Germans were not the only factor causing unrest. It was merely this which led the Herero chief of Okahandja, Maharero, to sign a protection treaty with the Germans (1885), to prevent the Nama Chief Hendrik Witbooi’s regular attacks on Herero cattle posts. The Germans saw this treaty as their claim to SWA. The Herero realized this only later and annulled the treaty 3 years after it had been signed (1888).
However the Herero from Okahandja continued to be in regular contact with the Germans and especially with their missionaries, some of them adopting Christianity and setting up churches. It was Hendrik Witbooi who in 1890 wrote to Samuel Maharero, Kamaharero’s son and successor, stating: “You will eternally regret that you have given your land and your right to rule into the hands of the whites.”Nonetheless in that same year Samuel Maharero renewed the protection treaty. As a result he was to be recognized as supreme Herero leader by the Germans to the exclusion of other Herero leaders. The Germans were thus of importance to the Herero, in the same way they were to the Germans.
According to Zimmerer (2003) we should be aware of the fact that most African groups had forged tactical alliances with the Germans and we cannot see them as passive victims of colonial politics. As Zimmerer writes:
“There is also considerable evidence that the African chiefs and captains viewed the so-called ‘protection treaties’ less as subjugation to some abstract German state personified by the Kaiser than as alliances between states. That is another reason why it is erroneous to represent the war of 1904 to 1907 as an ‘uprising’ or ‘rebellion’. That corresponds to the perception of the colonial powers who had, for the most part, reached agreements about the possession of territory at internal conferences, but it is not at all the African perspective. It is therefore more appropriate to speak of war.”
Concentration camps were the German’s reaction of dealing with the survivors of the battles.
After the fighting between the Germans and Herero had ended a campaign of extermination had begun. Survivors were killed or left to starve. This was abruptly ended with the successful protest of Mission Societies in Germany. Missionaries were employed to incite Herero to surrender, and those who did surrender, were housed in concentration camps.