Surviving Herero after the escape through the arid desert of
Omaheke.
Herero chained during the 1904 rebellion.
The Herero Genocide occurred in German South-West Africa (modern day Namibia) in 1904-1907 and is considered one of the worst atrocities in the history of the German colonial empire.
Before the genocide
In 1904 the Hereros revolted, led by Chief Samuel Maharero, and killed about 120 Germans, destroying their farms.
In the same year General Lothar von Trotha was dispatched with a force of 14,000 soldiers to resolve the crisis. He issued an appeal to the Hereros:
I, the great general of the German soldiers, send this letter to the Herero nation. The Hereros are no longer German subjects. They have murdered and robbed, they have cut off the ears and noses and privy parts of wounded soldiers, and they are now too cowardly to fight. I say to the nation: Any person who delivers one of the Herero captains as a captive to a military post will receive 1,000 Marks. The one who hands over Samuel will receive 5,000 Marks. All Herero must leave the country. If they do not, I will force them with cannons to do so. Within the German frontier every Herero, with or without a rifle, with or without cattle, will be shot. [Emphasis added] I will not take over any more women and children, but I will either drive them back to your people or have them fired on. These are my words to the nation of the Hereros. The great General of the Mighty Emperor, von Trotha.
The genocide
German forces met the 3000-5000 Herero combatants at the battle of Waterberg and shot them indiscriminately. The survivors retreated with their families towards Bechuanaland, after the British offered the Hereros asylum under the condition not to continue the revolt on British soil.
Some 24,000 Hereros managed to flee through a gap in the netting into the Kalahari Desert in the hope of crossing into Botswana. German patrols later found skeletons around holes (25-50 feet deep) dug up in a vain attempt to find water. Maherero and 1000 men crossed the Kalahari into Bechuanaland.
The German administration never conducted a census before 1904. Only in 1905 did a counting take place which revealed that 25,000 Herero remained in German South-West Africa.
Survivors, mostly women and children, were eventually put in camps, such as that at Shark Island, that many Namibians now compare to Nazi concentration camps, but may well be compared to plain concentration camps like those in British South Africa during both Boer Wars. German authorities attributed to each Herero a number and meticulously recorded every death of a Herero, whether in camps or due to forced labor, and including, unusually enough, the name of each dead person. The skulls of dead Herero people were collected and sent to Germany for use in research of evidence of racial superiority of Germans, which concluded that their race was superior to others. German enterprises were able to rent Herero people for manpower, and death of workers was permitted, and reported to the German authorities. Forced labor, disease and malnutrition killed an estimated 50 to 80 percent of the entire Herero population by 1908, when the camps were closed.
Recognition, denial and compensation
Larissa Förster, a Namibia expert at the Museum for Ethnology in Cologne considers (like many modern historians) the Herero massacre the first genocide of the 20th century : “It was clearly a command to eliminate people belonging to a specific ethnic group and only because they were part of this ethnic group.” (see the link to the Deutsche Welle article below). Critics of the idea prefer the terms "The Herero Wars" while acknowledging massacres. They deem the evidence insufficient to call it a genocide and deride comparisons to Auschwitz as sensationalism.
In 1998, German President Roman Herzog visited Namibia and met Herero leaders. Chief Munjuku Nguvauva demanded a public apology and compensation. Herzog expressed regret but stopped short of an apology. He also pointed out that reparations were out of the question.
On the 100th anniversary in 2004, Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul, Germany's development aid minister officially apologized for the first time and expressed grief about the genocide committed by Germans, but ruled out paying compensation, as the Hereros have demanded in a law suit in the USA.
Fictional representations
One chapter of Thomas Pynchon's novel V. is about the Herero genocide. A group of characters of Herero descent are also present in his Gravity's Rainbow, which hints more than once at the Herero Massacre.
See also
References
External links
