Germany committed the first act of genocide against blacks

[kgbudge]

The title "Kaiser's Genocide" suggests a sensationalist book attempting to cash in on the cultivated hysteria about the massacre of East European Jewry during the Second World War.

There's nothing cultivated or hysterical about my horror at the massacre of East European Jewry.

[jola]

A documentary film on the subject titled Namibia: Genocide and the Second Reich

A short description:

A hundred years ago, three quarters of the Herero people of the German colony of Namibia were killed, many in concentration camps.
Today, the descendants of the survivors are seeking reparations from the German government. This film tells for the first time this forgotten story and its links to German racial theories.
Described by the BBC as the story of Germany’s forgotten genocide. This powerful documentary by David Adetayo Olusoga took a sensitive and uncompromising look at the tragic circumstances leading to the massacre of three quarters of the Namibia population in German concentration camps built in Africa.
The programme included graphic reconstructions and did not shirk from showing disturbing scenes which revealed the savagery of european colonial ideology put into practise.
The documentary also showed the 2004 footage of Germany’s ambassador to Namibia expressing regret for their killing of thousands of Namibia’s Hereros during the colonial era. Unsurprisingly, the Germans refused to agree to the justifiable calls for reparations.
The programme also explored the current call for land reforms where most of Namibia’s commercial land is still owned by european farmers who make up 6 percent of the country’s population of 1.8 million.
Throughout it included interviews and powerful testimony from African survivors, descendants and reparation movement representatives thus making this a compelling programme which both educated the audience whilst treating the sensitive subject matter with the respect it deserved.

http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/namibia- ... ond-reich/

[michael mills]

Was there really a genocide of the Herero tribe in German South-West Africa?

Or was the alleged genocide simply a fiction of British propaganda in the First World War?

Certainly there was an uprising of the Herero tribe that lasted from 1904 to 1907, in the course of which a lot of Herero lost their lives. But was that loss of life anywhere near genocidal proportions, as has been claimed?

This is what the Wikipedia article on the alleged genocide claims:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herero_and ... a_Genocide

In total, from 24,000 up to 100,000 Herero perished along with 10,000 Nama.[6][7][8][9][10] The genocide was characterized by widespread death by starvation and thirst because the Herero who fled the violence were prevented from returning from the Namib Desert. Some sources also claim that the German colonial army systematically poisoned desert wells.[11][12]

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 of genocide in the 20th century. The German government recognized and apologized for the events in 2004, but has ruled out a financial compensation for the victims' descendants.

..........................................................

According to the 1985 United Nations' Whitaker Report, the population of 80,000 Herero was reduced to 15,000 "starving refugees" between 1904 and 1907[95] 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. German author Walter Nuhn states that in 1904 only 40,000 Herero lived in German South-West Africa, and therefore "only 24,000" could have been killed [13]

Already it is seen that there are wildly varying estimates of the number of Herero who perished during the uprising of 1904-07.

An examination of the population dynamics of the present Namibia casts doubt on whether there could possibly have been such a huge mortality of the Hereros as has been claimed.

The Wikipedia article on the Demographics of Namibia gives the following break-down of the indigenous population of the country into tribal groups. It is the most recent such break-down, dating from 1989, shortly before independence, at a time when the population of the country was 1.4 million;

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

Tribe....................Percent

Ovambo............... 49.8
Kavanga.................9.3
Damara..................7.5
Herero...................7.5
Nama....................4.8
Coloureds...............4.1
Caprivians..............3.7
San......................2.9
Basters..................2.5
Tswana..................0.9

Total:...................93.0

The remaining 7 percent of the population consisted of European and other settlers, who mostly entered the country after the suppression of the Herero and Nama uprisings.

Applied to the total population of Namibia in 1989 of 1.4 million, the above break-down yields the following population figures:

Ovambo...............697,000
Kavanga...............130,200
Damara................105,000
Herero.................105,200
Nama....................67,200
Coloureds...............57,400
Caprivians..............51,800
San......................40,600
Basters..................35,000
Tswana..................12,600

Total:.................1,302,000


Note that the Ovambo tribe constitutes just on half the total population. That is because the Ovambo are a settled population living in the well-watered north of Namibia and practising agriculture, which can support a much larger population than nomadic cattle-herding in arid and semi-arid regions, as was practised by the other indigenous tribes of Namibia living in the middle and south of the country. Accordingly, it is likely that at the time of European settlement, the OVambo tribe was already much larger than any of the other tribes, and probably constituted half of the population at the beginning of the 20th Century.

The Wikipedia article on German South-West Africa, as Namibia was formerly known, gives the following figures for the population of the country in 1902:

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

In 1902 the colony had 200,000 inhabitants, though only 2,595 were German, 1,354 were Afrikaner, and 452 were British. By 1914, 9,000 more German settlers had arrived. There were probably around 80,000 Herero, 60,000 Ovambo, and 10,000 Nama, who were disparagingly referred to as Hottentots.

According to the above figures, in 1902 the Ovambo constituted only 30% of the population, rather than one-half, whereas the Herero constituted 40%. That break-down flies in the face of ecological reality; it is hardly likely that the Herero population, living by cattle-herding in a semi-arid region, could have been larger than the Ovambo population living by agriculture in a well-watered region in the north. It is probable that the number of Ovambo in 1902 has been under-estimated, while the number of Herero has been grossly over-estimated.

Subtracting the total number of European settlers (4,401) from the total population of 200,000 leaves an indigenous population of 195,599.

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:

Ovambo...............104,740
Kavanga................19,560
Damara.................15,774
Herero..................15,774
Nama...................10,095
Coloureds................8,623
Caprivians...............7,782
San.......................6,099
Basters...................5,258
Tswana...................1,893

Total:..................195,599

Note that the calculated figure of 10,095 Nama in 1902 is almost exactly the same as the number of 10,000 given in the article on South-West Africa. That suggests that the cal;culation is likely to be correct.

The calculation based on the growth of the Namibian population from 1902 to 1989 strongly suggest that the Herero population in 1902, before the uprising of 1904, was only of the order of 16,000, nowhere near the ridiculously high figure of 80,000 that has been claimed.

According to the United Nations figures quoted above, the number of Herero remaining at the end of the uprising, in 1907, was 15,000 "refugees", mostly confined in concentration camps.

If 15,000 Herero were left in 1907, that suggests that their mortality during the 1904-07 uprising was quite small, nowhere near the 60,000 or sao that has been claimed.

An alternative calculation that may be made is to compare the Herero population in 1907, at the end of the uprising, with the corresponding population in 1989, and apply the increase factor derived thereby to the entire indigenous Namibian population in 1989 to calculate the population of German South-West Africa in 1907. Such a calculation assumes that the rate of increase of all indigenous population groups from 1907 to 1989 was essentially the same, which is reasonable, since there does not appear to have been any further mass mortality of any one population group.

According to the United Nations, there were 15,000 Hereros remaining in 1907. By 1989, they had increased to 105,00, an increase factor of exactly 7.0. Dividing the total 1989 indigenous population of 1.302 million by the increase factor of 7.0 yields a calculated indigenous population in 1907 of 186,000.

That calculated 1907 population appears to be 9,600 less than the 1902 population of 195,600. That discrepancy might represent population losses of the Herero and Nama tribes during the uprising of 1904-07.

Analysis of the population dynamics, as performed above, suggests that whatever mortality of the Herero was incurred during the 1904-07 uprising, it was nowhere the level that has been claimed, and was not of such proportions as to indicate a deliberate genocide inflicted by the German administration. Rather, the counter-insurgency actions of the German forces sent to quell the uprising resulted in the confinement of the Herero tribe in concentration camps, not in mass extermination. Accordingly, it must be doubted whether there really was a genocide of the Hereros perpetrated by the German armed forces.

[Peter H]

German intelligence estimated 7,000 Herero warriors were in the field in 1904 (refer Olusoga & Erichsen).This jells with a Herero population of about 80,000 overall,something like 10% of the population were fit young men,capable of being arms.

Hereroland,based on the town of Okahandja,also had a large Herero urban population.

[michael mills]

German intelligence estimated 7,000 Herero warriors were in the field in 1904 (refer Olusoga & Erichsen).This jells with a Herero population of about 80,000 overall,something like 10% of the population were fit young men,capable of being arms.

Peter H,

The essential error you are making here is that you are applying criteria relevant to a modern population with an advanced economy to a tribe of semi-nomadic cattle herders living in an arid region.

It may be that in a modern industrial nation such as Japan during the Second World War, the armed forces constituted around 20% of the male population, or 10% of the total population.

However, among cattle-herding African tribes, all the initiated men had the function of warriors. Since the age of initiation was usually around 12 or 13, it would be quite conceivable for over half the males of a tribe to have the status of warriors, and to be engaged in fighting during war with other tribes or with European settlers.

During the Indian wars in the United States, it was normal for all the males of an Indian tribe except the very young (pre-teens) and the very old to take the field against the US Cavalry, and no doubt it was the same in the wars of African tribes against European settlers, such as the war of the Hereros against the German colonial rulers.

Peter H, you cannot bury your head in the sand in the face of the demographic reality of Namibia, or German South-West Africa as it was then.

In 1989, none of the indigenous tribes of Namibia, except for the agricultural Ovambu living in the well-watered north of the country, represented more than 10% of the population, most considerably less. There was an ecological reason for the numerical smallness of all the tribes except the Ovambo; they were cattle-herders living in the arid and semi-arid centre and south of the country, which could not support large populations.

The ecological and demographic reality in 1902, when the native population of South-West Africa was about 200,000, must have been essentially the same as in 1986, such that the Hereros could not have constituted more than 10% of the population, or about 20,000 persons. Assuming 10,000 males, it would have been quite conceivable for there to have been close to 7,000 Herero men with the status of warriors, who could have taken the field against the German army.

There is another reason for believing that the Herero population in 1904 was nowhere near the 80,000 claimed. The Herero had for a number of years been involved in conflict with the Nama, another cattle-herding tribe, which was ewncroachin on the grazing lands of the Herero. However, all the information have seen suggests that the Nama numbered no more than 10,000 in 1902 (in 1989 they were only about 67,000, about two-thirds the sze of the Herero tribe).

It seems inconceivable that a tribe numbering 10,000 could possibly have competed successfully for ecological space with a tribe of 80,000, whereas it might have been prepared to take on a tribe that was only twice as big at 20,000 persons.

When all the ecological and demographic constraints are taken into consideration, it appears that the Hereros numbered at most some 20,000 at the beginning of their uprising against German colonial rule, and were reduced to some 15,000 by the end of it. In other words, they may have lost about 25% of their number, a considerable mortality to be sure, but nowhere near the genocidal proportions that have been claimed.

It appears that the population loss suffered by the Hereros as a result of their uprising against German rule was grossly exaggerated by British propaganda during the First World War as part of the process of painting the German rivals of Britain as murderous Huns.

[Peter H]

The essential error you are making here is that you are applying criteria relevant to a modern population with an advanced economy to a tribe of semi-nomadic cattle herders living in an arid region.

It may be that in a modern industrial nation such as Japan during the Second World War, the armed forces constituted around 20% of the male population, or 10% of the total population.

However, among cattle-herding African tribes, all the initiated men had the function of warriors. Since the age of initiation was usually around 12 or 13, it would be quite conceivable for over half the males of a tribe to have the status of warriors, and to be engaged in fighting during war with other tribes or with European settlers.

During the Indian wars in the United States, it was normal for all the males of an Indian tribe except the very young (pre-teens) and the very old to take the field against the US Cavalry, and no doubt it was the same in the wars of African tribes against European settlers, such as the war of the Hereros against the German colonial rulers.

In 1879 the Zulu Nation of 3 million could only mobilise a maximum fighting force of 100,000 warriors.

[michael mills]

In 1879 the Zulu Nation of 3 million could only mobilise a maximum fighting force of 100,000 warriors.

According to this source

http://www.populstat.info/Africa/safricac.htm

the population of South Africa grew from about 5 million in 1900 to 52 million in 2005, a 10-fold increase in just oer 100 years.

Today, there are an estimated 10-11 million Zulu :

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

That means that in 1900, the Zulu population must have been around one million only, by extrapolation from the above growth factor.

That is using "Zulu" in the sense of the population of the Zulu kingdom created by Shaka in the early 19th Century, namely the original Zulu tribe of Shaka plus all the tribes conquered by him.

It appears that the Zulu kingdom consisted of 13 tribes, all under the hegemony of the original Zulu tribe. After the British defeat of the Zulu army in the 1870s, the kingdom created by Shaka broke up into the 13 tribes which all warred against each other. Eventually the 13 tribes were re-united to become the Zulu nation of today.

Peter H, it is unclear whether the 100,000 warriors you refer to as the fighting force of the Zulus in 1879 was drawn from the dominant Zulu tribe only, or from all the tribes under that tribe's domination. I think it most probable that they were drawn mainly from the dominant tribe, which of course represented only a relatively small part of the entire population of the Zulu kingdom.

In any case, it is a well-known historical fact that Shaka militarised the whole of his own tribe, with all the adult males (from early teens onward) forming the Zulu army. Hence, a maximum fighting force of 100,000 warriors probably equated to a total population, including women and children, of about 300,000 or so.

It is probable that the majority of the male population of the Zulu kingdom in 1879 belonged to the subjugated tribes and hence did not belong to the Zulu army, their role being that of serfs for the dominant original Zulu tribe.

There is no comparison with the Zulus of the well-watered eastern coast of South Africa, an agricultural population ruled over by a dominant tribe of warriors, with the Herero of South-West Africa, a small tribe of nomadic cattle-herders living in a semi-arid region which they shared with similarly small nomadic tribes.

Peter H, you cannot get away from demographic and ecological reality. Nomadic cattleherders living in arid region = small population. Settled agriculturists living in well-watered region = large population.

[David Thompson]

Michael -- You wrote:

Assuming 10,000 males, it would have been quite conceivable for there to have been close to 7,000 Herero men with the status of warriors, who could have taken the field against the German army.

I don't think so. The estimates I've seen for the ratio of warriors to population are 1:6 for US Indian tribes in J. F. D. Smyth's A Tour in the United States of America (1784), I, p. 347; 1:8 for the Roman Republic, in Papers of the American Historical Association, Volume 1, p. 63 (1885); 1:8 for New York and Pennsylvania during the US Civil War, in John Thomas Scharf's History of Philadelphia, 1609-1884 vol.1, p. 828 (1884); for various powers in 1841 the ratios are England 1:140, France 1:110, Austria 1:100, Russia 1:90, Bavaria 1:69, Prussia 1:68, Wirtemberg 1:59, Sweden 1:53, Denmark 1:57, Roman States 1:300, Tuscany 1:300, US 1:1,600, China 1:514 (from the American Peace Society's Advocate of Peace vol. 4, p. 56 [1841]). In 1973 the figures for North Vietnam were 1:39 and 1:35 in South Vietnam (Howard M. Leichter, A comparative approach to policy analysis: health care policy in four nations [1979] p. 84).

These ratios might serve as a more accurate guide than your guess, putting the pre-war Herero population at a minimum of 42,000, and probably more like 56,000 or more.

See also History and Population Change in the Herero of Southern Africa (about 9,000 Herero fled to Botswana during the Herero War and subsequently stayed there)
http://www.ssc.wisc.edu/cde/cdewp/91-41.pdf

and

Literary Digest, Oct. 26, 1918 (vol. 59), p. 21 (German census of 1911 showed 15,100 Herero remaining in South-West Africa)
http://books.google.com/books?id=-qs8AA ... 22&f=false

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi Michael,

You seem to have moved from authoritatively asserting in your first post here (7 November 2010) that the Herero's did suffer massive losses at German hands, but that the Germans were not directly responsible for most of them because the Hereros culpably retreated into waterless areas, to equally authoritatively asserting in your last post (yesterday) that in fact there probably weren't all that many Hereros in the first place and so their losses were relatively not that heavy.

The difference in numbers seems to be one of going from accepting there were some 65,000 Herero deaths that were not largely the Germans' fault to contending there may have been as few as 5,000 Herero losses that were.

This is a fairly startling piece of double revisionism!

I suspect that you had forgotten what excuse you gave the Germans in November last year, and concocted an entirely new one almost a year later! The only thing in common between the two seems to be the fundamental premise that the Germans were much maligned and innocent - a predictable theme common to almost all your contributions.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The population of Africa has multiplied manyfold in the last century, (see, for example, McCevedy's Atlas of Population History and his Atlas of African History), yet on your most recent figures the Hereros seem to have increased in number only marginally in the same period. (I would point out that your posts contain rather different figures for the recent Herero population, but I assume that those in your last post supersede earlier ones.)

Your latest population figures seem to indicate a major loss of life for the Herero at some stage in the past century, and there appears to be no evidence for it in the post-German period.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

P.S. The proposition that small tribes cannot compete with much bigger tribes is disproved everywhere from Zululand to Rwanda.

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi Guys,

Doesn't the current nebulous number crunching rather overlook the matter of German intent?

Did the Germans intend to wipe out the Herero?

The answer appears to be "Yes".

Did the Herero suffer massive losses throughout their population as a result?

Again the answer appears to be "Yes".

Is this genocide?

Again, "Yes".

Was this exceptional in historical terms (i.e, "the first act of genocide against blacks")?

Sadly, "No".

Does it nevertheless represent a link in the chain of events that led to the so-called "Holocaust"?

"Yes".

Is the title The Kaiser's Genocide sensationalist?

"Yes".

Nevertheless, is the title The Kaiser's Genocide justified?

Again, "Yes".

[David Thompson]

MajorT -- You wrote:

Is this genocide?

Again, "Yes".

It would be more accurate to phrase the question as "Would this be genocide if it was done after 1948?" In 1904-07 genocide was not an independent war crime, and its elements had not even been defined. Applying the term to events which occurred before 1948 is anachronistic.

[michael mills]

You seem to have moved from authoritatively asserting in your first post here (7 November 2010) that the Herero's did suffer massive losses at German hands, but that the Germans were not directly responsible for most of them because the Hereros culpably retreated into waterless areas, to equally authoritatively asserting in your last post (yesterday) that in fact there probably weren't all that many Hereros in the first place and so their losses were relatively not that heavy.

You are right, I have changed my view of this historical event.

Unlike some rigid ideologues, I have the intellectual flexibility to change my view in the light of new evidence.

Initially, I accepted the population figures quoted in the various articles referred to in this thread. But when I began to look into the demographics of Namibia and the growth of its population from 1902 to 1989, I realised that the claim of a Herero population of 80,000 prior to the anti-colonial uprising simply did not compute.

An additional factor has been added to my calculation by the information in the above post by David Thompson that a part of the original 1902 Herero population fled into Botswana and stayed there, with the result that their descendants did not form part of the Herero population of Namibia in 1989, my starting point.

If we add those 9000 Herero who fled into Botswana to the 15,000 who remained in South-West Africa, we get a starting population of 24,000, which is likely to be the absolute maximum, given the demographic and ecological realities of Namibia now and at the beginning of the 20th Century.

That would suggest that there was no substantial excess mortality, that most the bones found on the sites of the settlements where the German authorities concentrated the rebellious Herero population represented normal mortality, which certainly was very high in the early 1900s. All indigenous African populations had very high mortality rates, which was why they were of such small size when European colonisers first arrived; the reduction of those high mortality rates, due to modern medicine introduced by precisely those colonisers, has been what has led to the explosive population growth in Sub-Saharan Africa in the middle to late 20th Century, including among the Herero.

The data introduced by David Thompson would also suggest that the Herero rebels who were pushed into the Kalahari Desert by the advance of the German forces did not perish en masse, as has been claimed, but simply resettled in Botswana, where they were no longer a problem for the German administration of South-West Africa. Such resettlement may have been what von Trotha was trying to achieve, despite his bombastic statements.

Despite all that I have written, I would be willing to revise it if anyone can come up with an explanation of the demographic history of Namibia from 1900 to the present that allows for a "genocide" of he magnitude that has been claimed.

[michael mills]

The population of Africa has multiplied manyfold in the last century, (see, for example, McCevedy's Atlas of Population History and his Atlas of African History), yet on your most recent figures the Hereros seem to have increased in number only marginally in the same period

Major T, take a closer look at what I wrote.

I quoted data showing that in 1989, the Herero tribe constituted 7.5 percent of a total Namibian population of 1.4 million. That meant that their number in 1989 was around 105,000.

Comparing the 1989 indigenous population with the corresponding 1902 population, I calculated an increase factor between those two dates of 6.65647575.

Dividing the 1989 Herero population by that increase factor yielded a notional Herero population in 1902 of 15,774, which is almost exactly the claimed number of Herero remaining after the suppresson of their uprising.

Accordingly, the demographic data simply do not allow for a huge Herero mortality in the period 1904-07.

[michael mills]

Finally, a word about the alleged "racial research" carried out by German scientists on the indigenous population of South-West Africa, that is supposed to have been a precursor of National Socialist eugenics.

The population group of most interest to physical anthropologists was not the Herero but the Rehobother Bastaards, also known as Basters, a group of mixed European and Khoisan ancestry that originated in South Africa and migrated to South-West Africa in the 19th Century.

The object of their interest was the way in which observable physical characteristics such as skin colour were inherited in a stable inbred group of such widely different ancestry. It had little or nothing to do with concepts of racial superiority.

One of the physical anthropologists who studied the Basters was the American Carleton Stevens Coon. I remember reading a book of his that had photographs of Basters; they varied in appearance from some who looked exactly like the stereotypical "Bushmen" to others who loooked completely "nordic".

[Peter H]

According to Olusoga & Erichsen of the 16,363 Herero counted in the 1908 census,5373 were children...."many who had been born in the concentration camps and as the result of rape".This disapportionate number of surviving minors also indicates that "excessive punishment" was suffered by their adult parents.