Namibia/German South-West Africa
Prelude to the Holocaust
In May, the German government officially acknowledged that its colonizers massacred tens of thousands of Herero and Nama people early in the 20th century in German South-West Africa, present-day Namibia. It pledged reparations of $1.35 billion to pay for reconstruction and development.
Some historians view the colonial genocide as a prelude to the Holocaust. Jürgen Zimmerer wrote:
· …the common factor is the readiness to exterminate certain groups of human beings. Finally, it is the breaking of the ultimate taboo, not only to talk or write about extermination of entire peoples but to put it into action, which was first carried out in the colonies and then took its most radical form in the Holocaust, which links the genocides.
In 1884, German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck announced that the estates of a Bremen tobacconist in South-West Africa would be placed under German protection, making it the first German colony. There were only a handful of colonists in the country and about 80,000 Herero, 20,000 Nama and, in the north, about 450,000 Ovambo. The Herero and Nama managed large cattle herds over the vast grasslands.
The Herero expelled the first German administrator, Heinrich Göring, the father of Herman Göring. The next administrator, Curt von François, then launched massacres against Herero civilians, killing women and children and burning their corpses in their grass huts. His successor, Theodor Leutwein, was less violent yet nonetheless promoted cultural genocide and planned to seize tribal lands and force the Herero to become servants for the colonizers.
A devastating outbreak of cattle disease and a malaria epidemic forced most of the Herero to sell their land. Many of them resorted to wage labor. The Germans prospered as the Herero suffered. When the Herero fought back, the Germans responded with a campaign of genocide. General Lothar von Trotha sent a letter to the Herero proclaiming:
· The Herero people are no longer German subjects…The Herero people must leave the country. If the nation doesn’t do this, I will force them with the [cannon]. Within the German borders, every Herero, with or without gun, with or without cattle, will be shot. I will no longer except women and children, I will drive them back to their people or I will let them be shot at.
German troops used machine guns to kill thousands of Herero then drove the survivors, including women and children, into the waterless desert where most of them died. The Nama, who also feared extermination, fought a three-year guerilla war with the Germans. Von Trotha’s army burned Nama villages, fields and granaries and deported thousands to concentration camps, where nearly half of the inmates died from torture, malnutrition or lack of medical care. Sexual violence against women was widespread.
By 1908, about 60,000 Herero and 10,000 Nama—80 percent of the Herero and 50 percent of the Nama populations--were killed or starved to death in concentration camps. Historian Elizabeth R. Baer notes the links to the Holocaust:
· Other Germans who had participated in the genocide of the Herero subsequently became devoted Nazis, shaping policy under Hitler on future colonization, race, interracial unions, sterilization and so-called medical experimentation. An early manifestation of eugenics was the decapitation of Herero and Nama in Southwest Africa after the genocides; indigenous women prisoners were forced to scrape the skin from these skulls, which were then sent to Berlin for examination to “prove” that the skulls came from a subhuman species. Images of this atrocity were made into postcards, as were floggings of laborers, and sent home to the Fatherland.
Earlier this year, more than 100 years after the massacres, German officials acknowledged the genocide and pledged $1.35 billion in aid to Namibia. But a July essay in The New York Times argues that this is insufficient:
· [M]any Nama and Herero feel it is nowhere near enough. Nandiuasora Mazeingo, chair of the Ovaherero Genocide Foundation, called the agreement “an insult.” After all, the sum is comparable to German development aid to Namibia over the past 30 years — and the negotiations largely excluded Herero and Nama people. More than a century after the massacre, Germany’s apology falls far short… To begin to atone for its Namibian genocide, it must negotiate directly with descendants of survivors and commit to wide-ranging reparations… As it did with Jews after World War II, Germany should meet with representatives from Herero and Nama communities to design reparations, taking into account both the material damages of genocide and the psychological and spiritual suffering caused by more than a century of denial.
These could take many forms: Germany could commit to direct compensation, work to return the land robbed from Herero and Nama people and return the skulls of those killed in German concentration camps. Germany could also integrate the Namibian genocide into its national narrative, through public education and commemoration, and build memorials at the sites of former concentration camps.
But to truly seek forgiveness and address the disaster it caused, Germany must first do something simple: Look Herero and Nama people in the eye and listen to what they say.
Sources:
The Genocidal Gaze, Elizabeth R. Baer, Wayne State University Press, 2017.
“Every Herero Will be Shot,” Dominik J. Schaller, in Forgotten Genocides, R. Lemarchand, ed., University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-57279008
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-57306144
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/28/world/europe/germany-namibia-genocide.html
https://www.ushmm.org/collections/bibliography/herero-and-nama-genocide
I can’t get over the cruelty— it’s likely the trauma has been passed down through the generations and exists to this day.