#herero and namaqua genocide

[raisunii]

Palestine will be free.

Who Remembers the Armenians?, Najwan Darwish / Myth of the Vanishing Indian, Rena Priest / Shadow Procession, William Kentridge / The Wretched of the Earth, Frantz Fanon / Darfur (Jesus Wept), William F. DeVault / Srebrenica, Safet Zec

[pro-prin-prinny]

You know how effed up it is that no one talks about Germany's genocide before the holocaust because it was African people?

[drsonnet]

The Herero and Namaqua Genocide : Photograph showing German forces gathered in GSWA to join in the conflict against the herero people in 1904.

The Herero and Namaqua Genocide was the massacre of approximately 50,000 – 65,000 Herero and 10,000 Nama between 1904 and 1907 by German military forces in German South West Africa (GSWA) – modern-day Namibia.

Background

Germany formally colonised GSWA in 1884. Prior to colonisation , several distinct native groups lived freely in the area, including the Herero, the Nama, the Damara, the San, and the Ovambo. Under German rule, many of these native groups were used as slave labour and had their land confiscated and their cattle stolen. As a result of this treatment, tensions between the native population and the ruling Germans continued to rise.

Uprising

In January 1904, the Herero population, led by Chief Samuel Maharero, carried out a large armed rebellion against the oppressive German colonial rule. The German ruling forces were unprepared for the attack and approximately 123 German colonial settlers were killed by the Herero. Over the following months, however, the Herero were slowly overwhelmed by the more modern, well-equipped German force under the command of Major Theodor Leutwin. By June 1904, Major Leutwin had cornered the Herero forces at the Waterberg Plateau and was attempting to negotiate their surrender.

The German government in Berlin were frustrated by Leutwin’s slow progress in dissipating the uprising, and in May 1904 appointed Lieutenant General Lothar von Trotha Supreme Commander of GSWA. Trotha arrived in GSWA on 11 June 1904.

Genocide

On 11 August 1904, Trotha abandoned negotiations for a surrender and attempted an aggressive encirclement tactic, surrounding the Herero at the Battle of Waterberg  and killing between 3,000 – 5,000 Herero combatants. Yet, despite the brutal tactics of the Germans, most of the Herero managed to escape into the Omaheke desert.

Under Trotha’s command, the Schutztruppe  ruthlessly pursued the thousands of Herero men, women and children who were attempting to cross the desert to reach to British Protectorate of Bechuanaland (modern-day Botswana). Thousands of Herero died from being shot to death, drinking water from poisoned wells, or from thirst and starvation in the desert.

On 2 October 1904, Trotha escalated the violence against the Herero in an order: ‘Within the German borders, every male Herero, armed or unarmed […] will be shot to death. I will no longer take in women or children but will drive them back to their people or have them fired at. These are my words to the Herero people. [From] The great general of the mighty German Kaiser’ [Katharina von Hammerstein, ‘The Herero: Witnessing Germany’s “Other Genocide”’, Contemporary French and Francophone Studies 2016, 20:2, 267-286, 276].

In November 1904, the German government in Berlin overturned General Trotha’s inhumane execution order, and instead commanded that the surviving members of the Herero population be incarcerated in concentration camps, such as the Shark Island Concentration Camp . By this point, however, many thousands of Herero had already been murdered.

The remaining Herero who were incarcerated in the concentration camps were subjected to lethal conditions (with a mortality rate of 47-74%), and prisoners endured poor hygiene, little food, forced labour and medical experiments.

In 1905, the Nama people in the south also rose up against the German rule and engaged the colonisers in guerrilla warfare for the following two years. Any Nama that were caught by the Germans were executed or incarcerated in the same concentration camps as the Herero, with extremely high mortality rates.

In total, by the end of the conflict on 31 March 1907, approximately 50,000 – 65,000 Herero and 10,000 Nama had been murdered by the German ruling forces.

[st-just]

The destruction of Elam was not the Holocaust, just as the Rwandan Genocide wasn’t the Holocaust or the Cambodian Genocide. The destruction of Elam wasn’t the Rwandan Genocide. The destruction of Elam wasn’t even the Assyrian destruction of Israel a century or so beforehand. The St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, the anti-Huguenot pogrom that killed between 5,000 and 20,000 people in France in 1572, differed meaningfully from the many anti-Jewish pogroms in the later Russian Empire. The Holocaust wasn’t the same as the Herero and Namaqua Genocide, the mass murder of indigenous people in what is now Namibia by the German Empire between 1904 and 1907, despite the fact that both were carried out by German authorities just a generation apart. Each of those incidents and campaigns of mass violence stands on its own. Their logic was different. They proceeded in different ways, with death tolls ranging from the dozens to the millions. Some were straightforward land grabs in which killing was incidental. Others were ideologically motivated campaigns of murder for which the groundwork had been laid for decades or centuries. Still others were the result of sudden explosions of ethnic or religious hatred against a background of oppression or conflict. But what ties them together, aside from the mass violence, is the fact that utterly ordinary people participated in all of them. It doesn’t take all that much for a baker from Aššur or a truck-driver from Hamburg to turn into a willing enslaver and killer, even a mass murderer who pulled a lethal trigger hundreds of times, under the right circumstances. If those in positions of authority tell them that it’s acceptable or even admirable, if they’re given the tools and the opportunity to do so, then even the most average people can commit horrifying acts.

-Patrick Wyman, Ordinary People Do Terrible Things

[lady-byleth]

I'm sitting here, warm and safe in the house I've lived in for 25 years, and yet I have this strong feeling of wanting to go home

If you've ever seen me talk about Germany learning from it's past, about being a steadfast ally of the weak, please disregard every single word of this because Germany has learned jack shit

You'd think we could go 100 years without committing genocide but here we are, 120 on the dot after the Herero and Namaqua Genocide and we're on number fucking 3 because our raison d'état - the defence of Israel - apparently extends to just letting them do whatever

Germany is going to defend Israel in court, sending a frigate into the red sea and I had to learn from fucking twitter that there were protest everywhere in the country in support of Gaza today that the news didn't breathe a single word about

Since before the trial started there hasn't been any coverage of Gaza, any and all criticism of Israel is treated as antisemitism, even just using the word genocide is hate speech now

We're interfering with the red sea completely illegally so Israel can continue killing Palestinians unhindered while our own farmers are being bled dry. We have money to fund a genocide but not to feed our own people, it's incomprehensible

I...I don't even know what to say anymore. I'm so angry and frustrated, this is not what this country should stand for. This is not what it claims to stand for.

Just today I put a "Justice for Gaza" sign into the window. At the rate they're going it's gonna get me arrested.

Sorry, I don't know where I'm going with this, except maybe to say "Boycott the shit out of German products, this is the only language they understand"

They can try to silence us as much as they want but that doesn't mean we'll stay silent

From the River to the Sea Palestine will be Free

[atheostic]

"Stalin was an atheist, so atheism is bad!"

Okay, let's assume for the sake of argument that you're right.

Now let's see a small sample of atrocities by religious people, shall we?

Atrocity - Number of people killed

Warsaw pogrom - 2

Boston Massacre - 5

Częstochowa pogrom - 14

Porvenir Massacre - 15

Brussels Pogrom - 20 (rest of community exiled)

Assassinations over abortion rights - 23 (not a complete number - just what I could find with a quick search)

Salem Witch Trials - 25

Pinsk massacre - 36

Vilna offensive - 65

Basel massacre (pogrom) - 600 (plus 100 kids forced to convert to Christianity)

Worms massacre - 800

Black War - 878

Lisbon Pogrom - 1,000+

Conquest of the Desert - 1,300

Proskurov pogrom - 1,700

Aragon and Flanders massacres - 2,000

9/11 - 2,996

Erfurt Pogrom - 3,000

Massacre of the French in Sicily - 3,000

Trail of Tears - 3,464

Massacre of Verden - 4,500

Genocide of Native Tasmanians - 6,708

1391 Pogroms - 10,000

Massacre of the Rhineland Jews - 12,000

Iași pogrom - 13,266

Massacre at Béziers - 15,000+

1098 Ma'rra massacre - 20,000

Rintfleisch massacres - 20,000

Australian Frontier Wars - 22,249

Parsley Massacre - 24,393

Reign of Terror - 26,272

Kyrgiz Massacre - 28,460

Witch trials of the early modern period - 44,721

Herero & Namaqua Genocide - 61,156

Decossackization - 70,711

Spanish Repressions of Dutch Protestants (80 Years War) - 100,000

Antisemitic pogroms in the Russian Empire - 115,039

Iceni Revolt - 150,000

Albigensian Crusade - 200,000

Inquisition - 300,000

Cromwelian Conquest of Ireland - 400,000

Kitos War - 440,000

Circassian Genocide - 447,214

Bar Kokhba Revolt - 580,000

Partition of India - 632,456

French Conquest of Algeria - 707,107

Italian Conquest of the Horn of Africa - 1,000,000

Gallic Wars - 1,000,000

Rwandan Genocide - 1,234,190

Punic Wars - 1,850,000

Jewish–Roman Wars - 2,000,000

French Wars of Religion - 2,828,427

30 Years' War - 5,873,670

Holocaust - 17,000,000

Crusades - 20,000,000

Colonization of the Americas - 34,047,026

If I did my calculations right, that's 91,298,812 people in just a small sample.

You still wanna go there?

[renegadeurbanmediasource]

Where do these people come from? Do I have to list every massacre done by Europeans around the world…AGAIN? Do I have to rind you about Von Trotha’s genocide order against the Herero and Namaqua tribes in German South West Afrika? Over 100, 000 DEAD! On Shark Island was a concentration camp where Blacks were used as human guinea pigs! Vivisection without anesthesia! Must I remind you about Black Wall Street, Rosewood, and others? Not one White person served time! How about lynchings when Whites brought picnic baskets and their children to watch a Black man be tortured and murdered? They even made postcards!  This is incredible how Whites attempt to either justify or erase the evil things they’ve done!

[zevranunderstander]

the current genocide happening in palestine so brutally opened my eyes about german politics in terms of antisemitism awareness it kind of makes me sick

the german school curriculum does a lot for antisemitism awareness and for analysis and discussion of WWII and holocaust. i am not jewish so i can't say how much a jewish person would judge the methodology to be effective, but in school we extensively talked about how the fascist regime came to power in germany, why the movement was rooted in antisemitism, and while i think you could have gone into more detail about some aspects of it, i felt like my school at least laid a very solid basis for having an anti-fascist understanding. germany is very much funding a lot of jewish art and projects that are dealing with the holocaust, there are some quite well-known holocaust memorials and visiting a concentration camp is something most school classes do at some point.

and i genuinely think this is a good thing, there is a platform given to jewish people who want to express their indescribable trauma and anger and grief at the holocaust through art and museums and exhibitions and talks and monuments and in my personal opinion it did a lot in terms of creating awareness for antisemitism and the dangers of fascism, and please do not think that i view these things to be bad in any way

but one thing that has always bothered me that this applies to the holocaust ONLY, it is of course one of the worst against humanity commited, but germany never took responsibility in ANY way for the Herero and Namaqua genocide or any other atrocities commited. the most Namibia ever got was a weak apology that amounted to 'we aknowledge it :( sorry :('.

and at the same time germany hails itself as modern and progressive and past all barbarism and is publically atoning for the holocaust in every form they can. so the funding of these projects to me always had that sense of creating an image of atonement, more than actually atoning for a past. funding something good for the wrong reason still creates something good, but if you analyse it a bit, you can clearly see that this atonement is not for actual atonement's sake, but is instead done so that germany can be internationally respected again and is allowed to be in the Important Councils™ again, that france, the uk and the us are in, and so that they can officially be internationally "forgiven" by the other countries

i don't think this is an 'agenda' so to say, i think it's a lot more complex than that, and that politicians often probably actually want to combat antisemitism, but i don't want this post to go on forever, so just right now understand that in germany antisemitism awareness as a talking point has kind of become something that is universally aknowledged as "good", even the really fascist parties aren't stupid enough to have openly antisemitic talking points (they still are mad about every other minority, so idk if you're really supposed to believe that). and i again want to state that that is genuinely very good, that open antisemitism is seen as such a huge political no-go. openly denying the holocaust is a pretty severe crime in germany and you can get in REAL trouble for it and that is also a very very good thing!

however, all of this public atonement is fine and good, but what has germany done for the actual families of the victims of the holocaust? well. they paid 3 billion marks in reparations to a state that didn't exist 4 years prior to the agreement, which is, of course, israel. since its founding, germany has at every turn helped legitimize israel's existence and it's representation as the jewish homeland, while barely otherwise aknowledging victims of the holocaust when it comes to reparations

and in the modern day they have absolute gall to use this framing - that germany themselves created that israel is the state that we need to pay our atonements to - against everyone daring to speak up against the genocide in gaza. i know that a lot of western states try to frame support of palestine as antisemitic, but nowhere is it as insidious as in germany. the state that seemingly atones for genocide is calling speaking up against a genocide a hatecrime.

like i said, germany does a lot of things correctly but for the wrong reasons and now those wrong reasons stand in the way of the image they have previously set up as a peace-loving modern nation, and so they just hold up jewish people as a shield against any criticism of their defense politics, claiming that people opposing them are antisemitic, (which, like said before, is pretty much an universally aknowledged "bad thing") running news stories and quotes of zionist jews on the political situation and framing this occupation as "the jewish people of all the world vs. the evil terrorist palestinians", not caring how much actual antisemitism they create in the population, and how much they harm actual jewish communities, when they directly frame them as the enemy of the besieged palestinian population

[culmaer]

Der vermessene Mensch (dir. Lars Kraume, premiered February 2023 at the Berlin International Film Festival), starring Leonard Scheicher as an ethnologist, tells the story of the Herero and Namaqua genocide which was perpetrated in German South-West Africa (present-day Namibia) between 1904 and 1908

I believe this flim has been released in cinemas in Germany ? I'd be curious for reviews if any of you have seen it ?? from the trailer alone it seems to follow the perspective of a 'sympathetic colonist', rather than the Herero, but I don't want to judge or criticise since I've not seen the actual film. and it's still important that these stories are told at all

[mypimpademia]

EXACTLY!

another example is this one time where my english teacher had showed us a presentation she was gonna show her college classmates in an assignment thing, and it was called the trajectory of sin and it was talking about how the first ever genocide was not from the holocaust and how it was weird that the word genocide was only defined after the holocaust when the herero and nama genocide happened before it (keep in mind that this was south-west africa).

her point was that it was rooted in racism because why wasn’t it defined as genocide when the herero and namaqua people got nearly erased from the earth for 4 YEARS? and it was defined three years after the holocaust.

it’s funny because the germans played a huge role in the herero and nama genocide yet it took white people being being in concentration camps for it to be actually called genocide.

the herero and nama people that are still alive today STILL want their reparations from the german government because of what happened to their people and the damages they caused.

Bro... what. 🧍🏾‍♀️

The way I've literally NEVER heard of ts in my life is so insane like omg. And it's especially crazy bc sooo many people praise Germany for banning anything that has to do with Nazis and giving Jewish people their reprimands (which, is fucking stupid and ridiculous, I hate when people get praise for the shit they should be doing anyways, and why are you praising them. If anything it's the fucking least they could do after almost wiping out an entire group of people?). And now learning that it's like... they did that shit before even the holocaust and nobody batted an eye.

Like obviously it's a good thing that the Holocaust was acknowledged as the terrible historical event that it was, but like why do we not talk about all the other shit that happened?? Like why do we act like that's the only horrible thing that's happened due to prejudice and marginalize groups... why do we learn about not even a surface level of slavery like there aren't hundreds of years worth of history? And why don't we talk about how so much damaged was caused even in Africa and its still happening??? Sooo many ppl have been affected by things like this and we act like it didn't even happen

[dayintheproductivelife]

#28 The German genocide before that genocide

Put the words “German” and “genocide” together and we all know what is meant. Except, that’s not what I mean, and those people in the photo aren’t Jews, they are Herero people. 

Let’s rewind. In 1884, Germany partook in the European scramble to conquer, colonise and exploit Africa. And, after generations of very few memorable attempts to colonise, Germany finally succeeded, earning itself the particularly depressing title of “third-largest colonial empire”. Luckily enough, Germany did not hold these colonies for very long - losing them after WW1.

What happened in those 35 years, however, is bleak. In “German South-West Africa”, todays Namibia, the Herero people were cattle herders who were in a protracted conflict with the Nama, a group of indigenous people. Both were threatened by the Germans, who chose to turn the land into a settler colony. In other words, they took the land from the locals and began the slow process of replacing Africans by Europeans. 

Both the Herero and the Nama people rose up repeatedly against their colonisers. But for the Hereros, the conflict escalated in 1904. Shots fell in the morning - whose shots, we don’t know - and by noon, the Herero had laid siege to a German fort. This went on for weeks, the Herero being able to put up a good fight as they were well-armed and outnumbered the colonisers. After 123 Germans were killed, in came Lieut. Gen. von Trotha, a man now infamous. 

By the time von Trotha arrived, the Herero had retreated to the edge of the Kalahari desert, awaiting negotiations and positioning themselves to flee. Instead, the Germans encircled them, attacked them with artillery and drove them into the desert, where many died of thirst or were killed upon capture.

That’s not what made von Trotha so famous. What did it was this quote:

Within the German boundaries, every Herero, whether found armed or unarmed, with or without cattle, will be shot. I shall not accept any more women and children.

The German government overturned this policy and - it doesn’t get any better - decided to build concentration camps instead, following the British precedent set in South Africa. This is where the Nama landed, too, after their uprising failed. Technically, they were work camps set up wherever labour was most needed. Practically, conditions were so atrocious that half of the prisoners died within the first year - not to mention skulls being sent to Germany for eugenics “research” and other atrocities of the type. In the end, 75% of Hereros and 50% of Namas died at the hands of Germany.

So, any happy thoughts to end on? Well, the German government has admitted to this having been genocide, a word that wasn’t used for a long time. While they are continuing to deny reparations, last month, they promised €1.1 billion in development aid. And that, at least, is something.

Sources:

BBC World Service - The Documentary Podcast (2021). Namibia: The price of genocide. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p09bz9lr

Casper Erichsen (2021). German-Herero conflict of 1904–07. Encyclopedia Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/topic/German-Herero-conflict-of-1904-1907

Wikipedia. Herero and Namaqua genocide. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herero_and_Namaqua_genocide

SWR2 Wissen (2019). Deutschland und der Kolonialismus. https://www.swr.de/swr2/wissen/broadcastcontrib-swr-16784.html

[lightdancer1]

The Maji-Maji War was the greatest rebellion in colonial-era Southern Africa

Also one of the first large-scale anti-colonial wars in Africa. The German Army and German Empire being who and what they were, however, they reacted to the heinous concept to them that African peoples wanted to rule and to be ruled by their own people with a genocidal violence to match that of the Herero and Namaqua Geocide and with a higher death toll.

Again it showed the same pattern that the German Army had an institutional bias moreso than other armies of the time to encouraging war crimes as an official policy, and when unleashed it went precisely where one would expect it to go.

[sartorialadventure]

The Herero, also known as Ovaherero, are a Bantu ethnic group inhabiting parts of Southern Africa. The majority reside in Namibia, with the remainder found in Botswana and Angola. There were an estimated 250,000 Herero people in Namibia in 2013. They speak Otjiherero, a Bantu language.

Despite sharing a language and pastoral traditions, the Herero are not a homogeneous people. Traditional leather garments are worn by northwestern groups, such as the Himba, Kuvale, and Tjimba, who also conserve pre-colonial traditions in other aspects: for example, they do not buy bedding, but rather sleep in bedding made of cow skin. The Kaokoland Herero and those in Angola have remained isolated and are still pastoral nomads, practising limited horticulture.

However, the main Herero group in central Namibia (sometimes called Herero proper) was heavily influenced by Western culture during the colonial period, creating a whole new identity. The dress of the Herero proper, and their southern counterparts the Mbanderu, incorporates and appropriates the styles of clothing worn by their German colonisers. Though the attire was initially forced upon the Herero, it now operates as a new tradition and a point of pride.

During the 1904-07 war, Herero warriors would steal and wear the uniforms of German soldiers they had killed, believing that this transferred the dead soldiers' power to them. Today, on ceremonial occasions, Herero men wear military-style garb, including peaked caps, berets, epaulettes, aiguilettes and gaiters, "to honour the fallen ancestors and to keep the memories alive."

Herero women adopted the floor-length gowns worn by German missionaries in the late 19th century, but now make them in vivid colours and prints. Married and older Herero women wear the dresses, locally known as ohorokova, every day, while younger and unmarried women wear them mainly for special occasions. Ohorokova dresses are high-necked and have voluminous skirts lavishly gathered from a high waist or below the bust, incorporating multiple petticoats and up to ten metres of fabric. The long sleeves display sculptural volume: puffed from the shoulders or frilled at the wrists. Coordinating neckerchiefs are knotted around the neck. For everyday wear, dresses are ingeniously patchworked together from smaller pieces of fabric, which may be salvaged from older garments. Dresses made from a single material are reserved for special occasions.

The most distinctive feature of Herero women's dress is their horizontal horned headdress, the otjikaiva, which is a symbol of respect, worn to pay homage to the cows that have historically sustained the Herero. The headdresses can be formed from rolled-up newspaper covered in fabric. They are made to match or coordinate with dresses, and decorative brooches and pins attached to the centre front. Anthropologist Dr Lutz Marten writes: "A correctly worn long dress induces in the wearer a slow and majestic gait." The overall intended effect is for the woman to resemble a plump, slow-moving cow.

2. Listeners at the Herero and Namaqua genocide trial 3. Ovambo and Herero

[renegadeurbanmediasource]

(via Jason Köhne: No One Has 'Honored The People They've Conquered' As White People Have)

Really? Was it “honorable” for King Leopold II to chop hands of off the Congolese who didn’t fill their rubber quota? Was it “honorable” for von Trotha to order the GENOCIDE of the Herero and Namaqua tribes in German South West Afrika? Blacks were the FIRST victims of CONCENTRATION camps! On Shark Island men, women, and children were worked to death. Some women were raped and then murdered and many prisoners were used as human guinea pigs, some were tortured with vivisection! Was it “honorable” for Columbus to do half the shit he did? In the Americas, his crew fell ill as did he. The Arawaks nursed them back to health. How did he repay their kindness? When he saw an Arawak man cut his hand on a sword he knew they'd never seen one and didn't know its purpose. So he plotted on them. He wanted their gold so he tortured them. Women he raped and men he either murdered or sent back to Europe as slaves. The European has spread nothing but DISEASE, MISERY, SLAVERY, RAPE, LIES, MURDER, and CONFUSION!

[menalez]

Austria is discount Germany, Azerbaijan is discount Turkey. "One nation, Two states." Both have a strongly mythologized history & nationalistic identity where their intellectuals and political leaders are (or were) placed on a pedestal. Both are (or were) committing war crimes/genocides (Herero, Namaqua, Jewish, & Roma people) & (Armenians, Assyrians, Pontics/Greeks). both have ripples that carry over today (Fascism, massacres, ethnocentrism, denialism). Azerbaijan is wilding Nagomo-Karbakh RN.

hey theres a lot to criticise germans over BUT theyre like among the best when it comes to acknowledging their horrific history and crimes at least during nazi germany 😩 not at all comparable to turkey for example, which afaik completely denies the genocide even happening