Genocide of Hereros

International context

In the last quarter of the 19th century, several European powers, mainly the Great Britain, the France, the Germany and the Italy, launched out in a hard competition in order to extend (France, Great Britain) or to constitute (Germany, Italy) their colonial empire, mainly in Africa, Asia and with the the Middle East. In Asia and in the Middle East it was especially a commercial fight, the positions already being in general acquired; it is in Africa especially that confrontation was hardest, because about 1880, except the Belgian Congo and part of the North Africa and Southern Africa, only the coastal areas was under colonial domination and 80% of the continent were free.

The conquest of Africa

Between 1879 and 1884 several forwardings commercial or military and several missions of explorations allowed the four quoted European countries, France and Great Britain in the highest degree, to quickly extend their domination towards the interior of the grounds, in particular in the African west, in particular the basin of Congo. On the initiative of the king of the Belgians Léopold II, anxious for its possessions in this basin, a International Conference joining together 14 colonial countries was convened with fine Berlin 1885, which led to an agreement (the general act) the February 26th 1885.

The principal points of this agreement were:

Respect of the positions acquired on this date;
Freedom of navigation on the Congo and the Niger;
Freedom of trade in the basin of the Congo;
Freedom of conquest of the free territories (not colonized), and freedom of occupation after notification to the other powers signatories of the act.

The main part of the conquests in continental Africa proceeds in the ten years which follow the signature of this act. The last one dates important is that of the Crise of Fachoda which concludes the March 21st 1899 by an agreement between France and Great Britain and determined the zones of influence of these two States, and which was a premise with the Harmony.

The invention of the concentration camps

This invention is related to the colonial history.

The first country to create concentration camps to the direction where one heard it before the Second world war was the Spain, at the time of the cuban revolt of 1896. They were intended to the only armed insurrectionists, other than the remainder of the population.

The term itself was invented three years later, at the time of the Guerre of Boers, during which Great Britain created the model of the later camps of internment: zone of retention closed by a fence latticed and protected by a second fence formed from barbed iron wire rows. It is as during this war as the principle of the deportation and the internment of whole populations was applied for the first time, the British locking up in these civil camps like combatants, of all sexes and all ages.

At the time of the same conflict of other recurring elements for this type of camps are set up: Malnutrition of the people locked up, sanitary arrangements execrable, forced labor, which induced an important surmortality, in particular in the children.

The programmed massacre of Hereros, five years later, was the last stage in the constitution of the model which will be useful throughout the 20th century, in Europe and Asia mainly, to the constitution of the concentration camps to aiming of extermination, by adding to it the malnutrition of the internees and the forced labor. It was also the first case where a State explicitly planned the extermination of a whole people, crime which one named properly, by afterwards, genocide.

Practices of war of Germany

The war of 1870 where the German army had to face an active opposition of the civil population (levy in masse, appearance of franc-tireurs) led the strategists of this army to plan to act by preventive coercion against the civilians at the time of an operation of war or repression.

Colonial practices, 1891-1911

The first applications of this strategy take place in the German colonies of East Africa (1891-1897) then in China, at the time of the Révolte of the Boxers, finally in the German colonies of West Africa, of 1904 until the beginning of the First World War. The common point between these various events is that repression against the populations is not directly related to conflict situations open:

In East Africa, coercive measures, if they fall under a series of rebellions against the colonizer (as of 1888) which precede them, accompany them and follow them, corresponds to a will of the German government of a resumption in military hand of the colony and of a tender of the refractory populations by the force then, starting from 1894 and of the sending of an important task force under commandemant of Lothar von Trotha, by terror;
In China, repression forces is held after the end of the consequences of the revolt of the Boxers: the coalition of the colonial countries took again Beijing and restored the order in the zones of concessions the August 14th 1900, but German repression begins only in October and is exerted on all the population, without reference of age and sex and which it or not took part in the insurrection;
In West Africa, if the order of execution or deportation of Hereos, without reference of age or sex, made following a revolt of these people, it proceeds afterwards and continues without there being reaction coordinated against it; in same time, this policy of general coercion moves other populations against, in particular with the Tanganyika starting from 1905 (approximately 100.000 died in two years) and in Namibia starting from 1908 (against the Namas).

General considerations

Although Germany had particularly hard practices at the time of the constitution of its colonial empire, they are placed in a broader context of which cases mentioned above from Spain in Cuba and of Great Britain in South Africa are rather representative, and which one has the premises in the first phase of colonization of the 19th century, in particular at the time of the Conquête of Algeria by France, between 1830 and 1847.

Downstream, one can consider that the practices of Germany in the countries which it occupied during the second world war, except for the specific actions to the political project of the Nazi party and of the IIIe Reich (in particular the Final solution), are largely heiresses of the strategy implemented by this country in its colonial conquest.

The genocide of 1904-1911

thumb|Hereros having survived after having flees through the arid desert of Omaheke. thumb|Hereros connected at the time of the rebellion of 1904. In 1904, they were victims of what much estimates to be the first Génocide 20th century, perpetrated by the German in their colony of the South-western African. After tryhaving vainly tried to rejoin with its cause the chiefs of the close tribes, Samuel Maharero raises only his people against the German colonists, the January 11th 1904. It attacks a garrison based with Okahandja and manages to destroy the German lines of communication, railroad and telegraph. He also massacres several hundreds of German colonists. Repression is carried out by the general Lothar von Trotha who unloads with important troops of reinforcement.

It is the June 11th 1904 which von Trotha unloads in African South-west. The war against Hereros has then made rage for five months. In October, at the time of the Battle of Waterberg, it makes encircle Hereros on three sides leaving them only one exit to flee: the Kalahari Desert . Whereas Hereros tried to find refuge there, von Trotha made poison the water points, drew up guardrooms to regular intervals with order to draw without summation with the sight of each Herero, man, woman or child. The official order of extermination ( Vernichtungsbefehl ) of the general von Trotha was: “Each Herero found inside the German borders, armed or not, in possession of cattle or not, will be cut down”.

In a few weeks Hereros died per tens of thousands of thirst and hunger in the desert Omaheke; according to Serge Bile, there was approximately: 60000 dead, but the most current fork locates this number between: 25000 and: 40000.

The survivors were locked up in Concentration camps inspired by those done by the British in South Africa at the time of the revolt of the Boers a few years earlier. Half of the prisoners died in captivity.

The geneticist Eugen Fischer proceeded to medical experiments on the prisoners and to measurements on the corpses in anthropological optics and eugenist of the time. Of return to Berlin, it announces result of its research at the institute of anthropology, human heredity and eugenism.

In 1911, it remains officially 15.130 Hereros in the country.

One finds in background in this massacre all the components of what were the genocides of the XXe century:

a political will deliberated carried out with the agreement on the emperor Guillaume II.
of the racial or ethnic criteria selected: to eliminate Hereros to release the grounds for the German colonists and to prevent the racial mixtures.
a colossal difference in military power between the two involved parts: machine-guns on a side, weapons of jet of the other.
a massive number of victims, civil essentially, with women and children.
rational” and planned organization a “massacre. On the whole one estimates at: 80000 on: 100000 Hereros the number of the victims of which at least: 25000 direct deaths.
a documentation available in files, by the means of the detailed reports of the operations, written by von Trotha and its subordinates.

When the actions of von Trotha were known of the German public opinion, a movement of repulsion seized the population what led the chancellor Bernhard von Bülow to ask for the Kaiser Guillaume II of dislocate von Trotha of its command what was made the November 19th 1905.

A badly recognized genocide

For a few years, the memory of this massacre has returned to weigh on the German conscience: a turned telefilm a few years ago had moved the German opinion, while at the same time this massacre, however one of most important of the colonial time, is large forgotten books of history, not only in Europe, but also in Africa.

In 2004, hundredth birthday, the event remakes surface in the German press and raises a polemic in connection with a possible compensation due to Namibia.

The August 14th 2004, the German federal minister for the Economic cooperation and the Development, Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul, takes part in Namibia in the commemoration of the massacre of several thousands of Hereros by soldiers of Reich the August 11th 1904. The minister asked the Herero people of Namibia to forgive Germany and declared that the Germans accepted their moral and historical responsibility and culpability of the Germans at that time . But the financial compensation is not with the day order. However, the German federal Gouverment continues its development assistance in Namibia with an annual budget of about 11,5 million euro.

See too

International context and German colonialism

1) External bonds:

Report of the book of Isabel V. Hull Absolute Destruction: Military Culture and the Practices off War in Imperial Germany , Cornell University Near, 2004.

2) Internal bonds:

the Revolt of the Boxers;
History of German African South-west;
History of Namibia;
History of Tanzania;
the question of the Genocide S.

Hereros

1) External bonds:

the massacre of Hereros (1904-1908), League of the human rights, section of Toulon.
Herero Genocide, by Tristan Mendès France (for a translation about extermination of the general Von Trotha).

2) Internal bonds:

the Hereros;

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