"The harbinger of Nazism": how Germany carried out the first genocide in the twentieth century

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

In 1884 Namibia became a German colony. According to experts, Germany was late for the imperialist division of the world and was forced to be content with the possessions least interesting from a European point of view, from which it squeezed out everything it could economically.

The brutal exploitation pushed the local population into an uprising, to which the German authorities responded with massacres of the Herero and Nama peoples. For the survivors, concentration camps were created, in which large-scale experiments were carried out on prisoners. The experience gained in African camps was used by the Nazis during World War II, historians say. It took a hundred years for Berlin to recognize the fact of the genocide in Namibia, but they are in no hurry to apologize and pay compensation to the descendants of the victims.

Back in the 17th-18th centuries, individual Germanic principalities tried to create small colonies in Africa specializing in the slave trade, but they lasted only a few decades and were captured by other European states - in particular, Holland and France. Therefore, at the time of unification (1871), Germany did not have any overseas possessions.

“Initially, the priority for Prussia was the struggle for the unification of the German lands, and not the search for new possessions overseas. And Germany was simply late for the colonial division of the world: almost all territories were divided between other powers - England, France, Holland, Belgium. In addition, Germany had to solve other problems, and there was not enough money for everything. The fleet was in its infancy, and without it it was impossible to control overseas possessions, historian and writer Konstantin Zalessky told RT in an interview.

Fight for Africa

Despite the initial skepticism of the central government, German entrepreneurs considered the seizure of the colonies promising. And in those cases when this did not impose any special obligations on official Berlin, the government supported their initiatives.

"The colonies were withdrawn to the Germans on a residual basis - less populated, less fertile, with more difficult natural conditions," said in an interview with RT an academician of the Academy of Political Sciences of the Russian Federation, head of the department of the PRUE. G. V. Plekhanov Andrey Koshkin.

The company "Society of German Colonization" headed by Karl Peters began in 1884 to seize land in East Africa (the territory of modern Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi). A Hamburg trading company established a colony in Cameroon. The Tana company of brothers Clement and Gustav Dernhart founded the Vitu colony in Kenya. Togoland was under the German protectorate (in our time, its lands belong to Togo and Ghana).

Adolf Lüderitz, a tobacco merchant from Bremen, landed in Namibia in 1883. He purchased from the local mulattoes a strip of coast 40 miles long and 20 miles deep, giving 100 pounds and 250 rifles for all. When the contract was already signed, the merchant explained to his counterparties that the document did not mean English miles (1.8 km), but Prussian miles (7.5 km). Thus, Luderitz for a virtually negligible price received formal property rights to an area of 45 thousand square meters. km (more modern Switzerland).

On April 24, 1884, Luderitz obtained official security guarantees from the German government, turning the purchased land into a German colony. She later received the name German South-West Africa and became the property of the government.

“The attitude towards colonies in Germany changed after Kaiser Wilhelm II came to power in 1888. He viewed them not only as a source of raw materials and a market for sales, but also as a symbol of prestige, a sign that Germany had become a great power. Under him, much more attention was paid to the development of overseas possessions and the development of the ocean-going fleet,”Zalessky said.

To strengthen its presence in Africa, Berlin entered into difficult negotiations with London, culminating in the signing of the Treaty of Zanzibar on July 1, 1890. Having renounced the rights to Vitus, Uganda and attempts to influence Zanzibar, Germany gained recognition for its remaining colonies, additional lands on the borders with Namibia and the Helgoland archipelago in the North Sea. Supporters of the right-wing parties considered the treaty unprofitable, but it was in effect in fact until the First World War.

Colonial politics

“The colonies, including Namibia, were a means of profit for the Germans, and they squeezed everything they could from their possessions. Although, for example, the British have put this process at a higher level, - said Konstantin Zalessky.

According to Andrey Koshkin, unfavorable natural conditions have become a big problem for the Germans in Namibia.

“Southwest Africa was experiencing an acute shortage of water and quality pasture, which African pastoralists so much needed. The Germans began to take land from the local population, thereby depriving them of their livelihood. Such actions by white settlers were encouraged by the administration. And the benefits of civilization brought by the Germans, like modern communications, could not block this, said Koshkin.

In 1885, the Namibian Herero people entered into a protectorate treaty with Germany, which was terminated in 1888 due to the Germans' violation of their obligations to protect the Herero from the raids of neighbors, but in 1890 the agreement was restored. Taking advantage of their position, the Germans put more and more pressure on the local population. White settlers seized the land of the Africans, stole their livestock, and they themselves were treated like slaves. In addition, the Germans regularly raped Herero women and girls, but the colonial administration did not respond in any way to the complaints of local leaders.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, there was talk about attracting new waves of German settlers to Namibia and about the forced resettlement of the Herero on the reservation. In 1903, the colonial authorities announced their intention in a year to forgive the Africans for the debts that German merchants had given them at fraudulent interest. However, this only led to the fact that German creditors began to seize his property from the local population.

Herero uprising

In January 1904, the Herero, led by the leader Samuel Magarero, raised an uprising against the invaders. In the early days of the conflict, insurgents killed about 120 white settlers, including three women and several Boers. The German governor Theodore Leitwein was able to convince one of the Herero clans to lay down their arms, but the rest of the rebels pushed the German colonial forces and even surrounded the capital of the colony Windhoek. At the same time, Magarero officially forbade his soldiers to kill Boers, Englishmen, women, children and missionaries. Leithwein requested reinforcements in Berlin.

Battle of Windhoek © Wikipedia

Lieutenant General Adrian Dietrich Lothar von Trotha was appointed commander-in-chief of the German army in southwestern Africa, who participated in the wars with Austria and France, as well as in suppressing uprisings in Kenya and China. Under his command there was an expeditionary corps numbering 14 thousand people with artillery and machine guns. The punitive operation was financed by Deutsche Bank and provided with Wurmann equipment.

Leitwein hoped to persuade the Herero to negotiate, but von Trotha took an implacable position, saying that the local population understood only brute force. Moreover, the powers of the general were much broader than those of the governor. The commander reported directly to the general staff, and through him directly to the Kaiser.

Von Trotha stated frankly: “I believe that this nation (Herero.- RT) must be destroyed or, if it is tactically impossible, expelled from the country."

To implement this plan, the general proposed to seize all the wells on the Herero lands and gradually destroy their small tribes.

Diagram of the placement of the Herero and the Germans in the Battle of Waterberg © Wikipedia

On August 11, 1904, a German detachment led by von Trot faced the main forces of Samuel Magarero at the Battle of Waterberg. Against about 1,5-2 thousand Germans, the Herero could put up, according to various sources, from 3, 5 to 6 thousand soldiers.

However, the Germans were much better armed - they had 1,625 modern rifles, 30 artillery pieces and 14 machine guns. In turn, only a part of the rebels had firearms, many went into battle with the traditional kirri maces. In addition to the warriors, the rebel families - old men, women and children - were in the Magarero's positions. The total number of Herero in the region reached 25-50 thousand people.

Von Trotha planned to surround the rebels, but one of the detachments did not manage to close the ring. Having a strong fire advantage, the Germans were able to inflict a defeat on the Herero, but the plan of the German command for the total destruction of the enemy was not realized - some of the Herero fled into the desert. All Africans caught in the vicinity of the battle, including women and children, were killed by the German military. And the border with the desert was blocked by patrols and the wells were poisoned. Only from 500 to 1,500 Herero, who were present in the area of the battle at Waterberg, led by Magarero, were able to cross the desert and find refuge in Bechuanaland. The rest were killed. True, there were those who did not take part in the battle.

Concentration camps, executions and experiments on humans

In October, von Trotha issued a new order: “Any Herero found on German borders, armed or unarmed, with or without livestock, will be killed. I will not accept women or children."

Von Trotha explained his actions by racial struggle and the fact that, in his opinion, peaceful Herero could infect the Germans with their diseases. Before killing or driving the Herero girls into the desert, German soldiers raped them. The general staff of von Trot's actions fully supported, but the civil administration condemned them, arguing that the Africans were needed by Germany as a source of free labor.

Therefore, at the end of 1904, concentration camps began to be created for the surviving Herero. Those who were completely exhausted were released by giving them pre-written death certificates, the rest were forced into hard labor. According to historians, the death rate in concentration camps ranged from 45 to 74%. Representatives of the Nama people, who also tried to raise an uprising against the German administration in 1904, soon fell into the number of prisoners.

Herero people who survived the battle with the Germans globallookpress.com © Scherl

Medical experiments were carried out on people held in concentration camps - they were injected with poisons, after which they underwent an autopsy, women were sterilized. Skeletons and tissue samples of the victims were sent as exhibits to German museums. In 1905, only 25,000 Herero remained in Namibia. Researchers estimate the total number of those killed during punitive expeditions and tortured to death in concentration camps from 65 to 100 thousand people. After the liquidation of the Herero concentration camps, they were banned from owning land and livestock, all of them were used for forced labor and forced to wear metal badges with a personal number.

During the First World War, Namibia was occupied by the forces of the Entente, and according to the Treaty of Versailles, it was ceded to the South African Union. The country gained independence only in 1990. The German government provided humanitarian aid to the republic, but recognized the Herero genocide only in 2004. Berlin has not yet made an official apology to the Africans. In addition, Germany refused to pay compensation to the descendants of the victims, which is why the Africans in 2017 filed a lawsuit in a New York court.

“The harbinger of Nazism, the Herero genocide was the first in the twentieth century. In Namibia, the Germans used concentration camps for the first time in their history. Those who experimented with them on humans later taught eugenics at German universities. South-West Africa played the role of a socio-political laboratory in which that which then took shape in Hitlerism was cultivated,”summed up Andrei Koshkin.