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The Kaiser's Holocaust: Germany'S Forgotten Genocide and the Colonial Roots of Nazism
On 12 May 1883, the German flag was raised on the coast of South-West Africa, modern Namibia a the beginnings of Germany's African Empire. As colonial forces moved in, their ruthless punitive raids became an open war of extermination. Thousands of the indigenous people were killed or driven out into the desert to die. By 1905, the survivors were interned in concentration camps, and systematically starved and worked to death.Years later, the people and ideas that drove the ethnic cleansing of German South West Africa would influence the formation of the Nazi party. The Kaiser's Holocaust uncovers extraordinary links between the two regimes: their ideologies, personnel, even symbols and uniform. The Herero and Nama genocide was deliberately concealed for almost a century. Today, as the graves of the victims are uncovered, its re-emergence challenges the belief that Nazism was an aberration in European history. The Kaiser's Holocaust passionately narrates this harrowing story and explores one of the defining episodes of the twentieth century from a new angle. Moving, powerful and unforgettable, it is a story that needs to be told.
394 pages, Hardcover
First published August 25, 2010
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March 4, 2011
In Kigali, the capital of Rwanda, there is a museum dedicated to the mass murder of the Tutsis in April, 1994. The whole thing is terribly well done, terribly moving, particularly the last part, where some of the dead children are identified.
The beginning is also well done, the part where the genocide is put in the context of the other great ethnic tragedies of the previous century: Srebrenica and the Balkan wars is mentioned, as is the Shoah, the Nazi destruction of the Jews, and the massacre of the Armenians by the Turks during the First World War, the one that Hitler said in Mein Kamp would be forgotten. But there is another, one that almost was forgotten, deliberately so - the massacre of the Herero and Nama people of what was once the German colony of South-West Africa, now Namibia.
This is the subject of The Kaiser’s Holocaust: Germany’s Forgotten Genocide and the Colonial Roots of Nazism by David Olusoga and Casper W. Erichsen. It’s an important book, a worthy piece of scholarship that not only explores the tragic fate of the indigenous people of South-West Africa, some eighty per cent of whom were systematically murdered by the Germans, but also puts it in proper context, the context of shifting perceptions over the nature and purpose of imperial expansion.
Take up the white man’s burden, Rudyard Kipling urged, meaning go exercise a paternal mandate over those sullen, non-white, peoples, half-devil and half-child. But by the time the Germans arrived on the colonial stage the older patronising imperialism was giving way to something altogether more sinister: a new racism given validation by the perverse lights of Social Darwinism and the pseudo-science of eugenics. The native people, devil or child, were an inconvenience, destined by the ‘natural’ order of things to vanish altogether. Couple this with a uniquely German neurosis over Lebensraum – yes, the notion does pre-date Hitler and the Nazis – then one has a tragedy in formation.
Just as Germany came late to national unity, it also came late to the imperial feast. With a huge expansion in the population after the emergence of the modern German state in 1871, worries began to grow in nationalist circles over the fate of the Volk, supposedly confined to a limited national territory. The Anglo-Saxons had plenty of space, space in the United States – where much of Germany’s ‘surplus’ population found a home in the latter half of the nineteenth century - , space in Canada, in Australia, in New Zealand and in South Africa.
Germany acquired an overseas empire, some space. The problem was that much of it was far too unhealthy, far too troubled by malaria and other tropical diseases to allow for a manifest destiny. The exception was the huge and sparsely populated territory of South-West Africa, colonised from the 1880s onwards. German immigrants required land, land held by the Herero and Nama peoples, whose economy was based on nomadic cattle-rearing, dependant on space.
And so it began, a steady process of expropriation; and so it ended on facilities like Shark Island near Swakopmund, according to the authors the first extermination facility in history (a contrast is draw here with the concentration camps previously run by the Spanish and the British.) It’s a chilling story and also a remarkable one. It’s a remarkable story of some remarkable people, including that of Hendrik Witbooi, one of the Nama Kapteins, an educated man as far removed from racist and colonial preconceptions of the ‘savage’ as is possible to imagine, and some ghastly ones. It’s the story of General Adrian Dietrich Lothar von Trotha, who issued the world’s first ‘Final Solution’ directive in what he saw as racial struggle, not simply a struggle for land.
The Kaiser’s Holocaust is structured in two parts: the first tells of the Herero and Nama wars; the second explores the ideas on race and conquest that fed into Nazism, ending in an even greater colonial war in Russia, where the same theories and practices used in South-West Africa were deployed, where white people were turned into ‘niggers’, there for exploitation or extermination in the pursuit of Lebensraum. A surprising number of those who were involved in the colonial wars in Africa were also involved in the early Nazi movement. Even the brown shirts used by the SA storm troopers were old colonial uniforms, surplus to requirement after the war.
Although the story of German savagery towards the Herero and Nama was well-publicised after the First World War, principally to ensure that South-West Africa and the other lost colonies were never returned, a new amnesia descended when it was no longer convenient. The Union of South Africa, which acquired a mandate over the former German territory, and was to continue to hold it regardless of world opinion until 1990, was soon in pursuit of its own racist policies, policies that promoted co-operation with the remaining German settlers, policies that the surviving Herero and Nama remained in a subordinate position, their story never told.
Now it has been, and told with style. The Kaiser’s Holocaust is well-researched and well-written, easy to penetrate and easy to digest. There is a slight undercurrent of moral outrage that may not sit particularly well with more sober notions of scholarship, but in the circumstances it seems wholly understandable.
There are also, I have to say, a number of minor irritations, a slightly cavalier treatment of facts. For instance, Henry the Navigator was no more king of Portugal than he was son of John II. Sloppy editing means that Erich Ludendorff, the German general, is sometimes accorded the noble ‘von’ and sometimes not (he wasn’t!) The book also suffers from a lack of decent maps.
No matter; pedantic nit-picking aside, this is an excellent account of a neglected subject. It deserves to be widely read.
The beginning is also well done, the part where the genocide is put in the context of the other great ethnic tragedies of the previous century: Srebrenica and the Balkan wars is mentioned, as is the Shoah, the Nazi destruction of the Jews, and the massacre of the Armenians by the Turks during the First World War, the one that Hitler said in Mein Kamp would be forgotten. But there is another, one that almost was forgotten, deliberately so - the massacre of the Herero and Nama people of what was once the German colony of South-West Africa, now Namibia.
This is the subject of The Kaiser’s Holocaust: Germany’s Forgotten Genocide and the Colonial Roots of Nazism by David Olusoga and Casper W. Erichsen. It’s an important book, a worthy piece of scholarship that not only explores the tragic fate of the indigenous people of South-West Africa, some eighty per cent of whom were systematically murdered by the Germans, but also puts it in proper context, the context of shifting perceptions over the nature and purpose of imperial expansion.
Take up the white man’s burden, Rudyard Kipling urged, meaning go exercise a paternal mandate over those sullen, non-white, peoples, half-devil and half-child. But by the time the Germans arrived on the colonial stage the older patronising imperialism was giving way to something altogether more sinister: a new racism given validation by the perverse lights of Social Darwinism and the pseudo-science of eugenics. The native people, devil or child, were an inconvenience, destined by the ‘natural’ order of things to vanish altogether. Couple this with a uniquely German neurosis over Lebensraum – yes, the notion does pre-date Hitler and the Nazis – then one has a tragedy in formation.
Just as Germany came late to national unity, it also came late to the imperial feast. With a huge expansion in the population after the emergence of the modern German state in 1871, worries began to grow in nationalist circles over the fate of the Volk, supposedly confined to a limited national territory. The Anglo-Saxons had plenty of space, space in the United States – where much of Germany’s ‘surplus’ population found a home in the latter half of the nineteenth century - , space in Canada, in Australia, in New Zealand and in South Africa.
Germany acquired an overseas empire, some space. The problem was that much of it was far too unhealthy, far too troubled by malaria and other tropical diseases to allow for a manifest destiny. The exception was the huge and sparsely populated territory of South-West Africa, colonised from the 1880s onwards. German immigrants required land, land held by the Herero and Nama peoples, whose economy was based on nomadic cattle-rearing, dependant on space.
And so it began, a steady process of expropriation; and so it ended on facilities like Shark Island near Swakopmund, according to the authors the first extermination facility in history (a contrast is draw here with the concentration camps previously run by the Spanish and the British.) It’s a chilling story and also a remarkable one. It’s a remarkable story of some remarkable people, including that of Hendrik Witbooi, one of the Nama Kapteins, an educated man as far removed from racist and colonial preconceptions of the ‘savage’ as is possible to imagine, and some ghastly ones. It’s the story of General Adrian Dietrich Lothar von Trotha, who issued the world’s first ‘Final Solution’ directive in what he saw as racial struggle, not simply a struggle for land.
The Kaiser’s Holocaust is structured in two parts: the first tells of the Herero and Nama wars; the second explores the ideas on race and conquest that fed into Nazism, ending in an even greater colonial war in Russia, where the same theories and practices used in South-West Africa were deployed, where white people were turned into ‘niggers’, there for exploitation or extermination in the pursuit of Lebensraum. A surprising number of those who were involved in the colonial wars in Africa were also involved in the early Nazi movement. Even the brown shirts used by the SA storm troopers were old colonial uniforms, surplus to requirement after the war.
Although the story of German savagery towards the Herero and Nama was well-publicised after the First World War, principally to ensure that South-West Africa and the other lost colonies were never returned, a new amnesia descended when it was no longer convenient. The Union of South Africa, which acquired a mandate over the former German territory, and was to continue to hold it regardless of world opinion until 1990, was soon in pursuit of its own racist policies, policies that promoted co-operation with the remaining German settlers, policies that the surviving Herero and Nama remained in a subordinate position, their story never told.
Now it has been, and told with style. The Kaiser’s Holocaust is well-researched and well-written, easy to penetrate and easy to digest. There is a slight undercurrent of moral outrage that may not sit particularly well with more sober notions of scholarship, but in the circumstances it seems wholly understandable.
There are also, I have to say, a number of minor irritations, a slightly cavalier treatment of facts. For instance, Henry the Navigator was no more king of Portugal than he was son of John II. Sloppy editing means that Erich Ludendorff, the German general, is sometimes accorded the noble ‘von’ and sometimes not (he wasn’t!) The book also suffers from a lack of decent maps.
No matter; pedantic nit-picking aside, this is an excellent account of a neglected subject. It deserves to be widely read.
September 2, 2011
This book, which documents a seemingly obscure place and time, is in fact the long-lost key to the origins of one of the two great catastrophes of the twentieth century.
Since the end of the Second World War and the revelation of the scale of the criminal obscenity of the so-called Final Solution, the question has been debated, is there a meaningful distinction between Nazis and Germans? Was the German nation in effect the first victim of the Nazi Party, or did the Nazi Party represent authentic aspects of the essence of the Germany of its time?
Let’s just say that THE KAISER’S HOLOCAUST makes it clear that all the essential structures, instruments and procedures of the Holocaust (except for those which had not yet been invented in 1906 – 1907) were road-tested and perfected under Kaiser’s Wilhelm II’s reign in the genocide perpetrated against the Herero and Nama peoples, whose tragic destiny it was to be inhabiting the German colony of South West Africa (modern Namibia).
It is a painful tale, brilliantly and judiciously and calmly recounted, and as such this book is essential reading for anyone with either a specialty in Modern European History or an interest in Twentieth Century History.
THE KAISER’S HOLOCAUST clears up many misconceptions and confirms obscure but essential connections:
- It is widely known that the British under Kitchener were responsible for inventing concentration camps during the Boer War (infamy shared with the Spanish and arguably the Americans), this book demonstrates that Imperial Germans actually liked what the saw happening in the concentration camps and immediately applied the concept to their new colony of South West Africa;
- The idea of luring captive peoples to their doom with false promises, and then forcing them on death marches or transporting them in cattle cars, was applied first by the Germans in South West Africa;
- Insuring the concentration camps turned into death camps by working their inmates to death was first implemented in South West Africa;
- Many of the most infamous killers in South West Africa became senior figures in the Nazi Party, and frequently in the management structure of the Holocaust (Goering’s father, for example, served in South West Africa);
- Even the Brown Shirts of the SA were surplus uniforms from South West Africa.
At a very fundamental level, THE KAISER’S HOLOCAUST reveals the deep racism and violence inherit in the colonial ideal that was central to European global strategy in the 19th century. There are other brilliant studies, like John Ellis’s THE SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE MACHINE GUN and Isabel V. Hull’s ABSOLUTE DESTRUCTION, which show the link between unfettered European supremecist ideas and the tragedy that unfolded in the Second Thirty Year’s War of 1914 – 1945. And there are other great studies that focus on the specifically German pathology, like Fritz Stern’s THE POLITICS OF CULTURAL DESPAIR and Kevin McAleer’s DUELING: THE CULT OF HONOR IN FIN-DE-SIECLE GERMANY, which depict the gathering nihilism and brutality of the mood of Germany’s ruling classes and structures during the Wilhelmine period.
But nowhere else is such a clinical, logical, piece-by-piece connection made between the development of political and military practices in Wilhelmine Germany and their counterparts under National Socialism. It must be said that hanging over the entire period like the smell of a corpse is a mis-application of the new science of evolutionary biology, which begins with Darwin himself, to justify the systematic subjugation and mass murder of what were considered “lesser” races. Once accepted, this concept was easily applied to the Jews and Slavic peoples enveloped by the German armies in their great thrust East under Operation Barbarossa.
Many learned and highly intelligent scholars have focused on National Socialism as something quite distinct from broader German society. Milton Himmelfarb’s formulation “No Hitler, no Holcaust” is a classic attempt to draw a clear distinction between Nazis and the rest of the Germans.
But unfortunately, many books make clear the breadth and depth of the pagan barbarism and cruelty that saturated the culturally sophisticated and highly technological society of 19th and early 20th century Germany. These studies include John C. G. Roehl’s YOUNG WILHELM which shows how cruel and violent German women in the highest levels of aristocratic and royal circles could be, Isabel V. Hull’s THE ENTOURAGE OF KAISER WILHELM II 1888 – 1918, which shows how complex and saturated the psychological and cultural manifestations of pseudo-masculinity and hyper-violence had become in elite German society before the First World War, and Ernst Juenger’s classic memoir of combat in World War I, STORM OF STEEL, which is nothing less that a metaphysical celebration of violence, killing and violent death.
Where in Hell did this culture come from? Who knows, but THE KAISER’S HOLOCAUST proves that all its essential functioning components were already in place a generation before Hitler’s rise to power.
The killing squads and murder factories of the Final Solution were merely the next administrative step in order to apply the playbook perfected in South West Africa under Kaiser Wilhelm II.
THE KAISER’S HOLOCAUST is often heart-breaking, but it is a book that is absolutely essential to read.
Since the end of the Second World War and the revelation of the scale of the criminal obscenity of the so-called Final Solution, the question has been debated, is there a meaningful distinction between Nazis and Germans? Was the German nation in effect the first victim of the Nazi Party, or did the Nazi Party represent authentic aspects of the essence of the Germany of its time?
Let’s just say that THE KAISER’S HOLOCAUST makes it clear that all the essential structures, instruments and procedures of the Holocaust (except for those which had not yet been invented in 1906 – 1907) were road-tested and perfected under Kaiser’s Wilhelm II’s reign in the genocide perpetrated against the Herero and Nama peoples, whose tragic destiny it was to be inhabiting the German colony of South West Africa (modern Namibia).
It is a painful tale, brilliantly and judiciously and calmly recounted, and as such this book is essential reading for anyone with either a specialty in Modern European History or an interest in Twentieth Century History.
THE KAISER’S HOLOCAUST clears up many misconceptions and confirms obscure but essential connections:
- It is widely known that the British under Kitchener were responsible for inventing concentration camps during the Boer War (infamy shared with the Spanish and arguably the Americans), this book demonstrates that Imperial Germans actually liked what the saw happening in the concentration camps and immediately applied the concept to their new colony of South West Africa;
- The idea of luring captive peoples to their doom with false promises, and then forcing them on death marches or transporting them in cattle cars, was applied first by the Germans in South West Africa;
- Insuring the concentration camps turned into death camps by working their inmates to death was first implemented in South West Africa;
- Many of the most infamous killers in South West Africa became senior figures in the Nazi Party, and frequently in the management structure of the Holocaust (Goering’s father, for example, served in South West Africa);
- Even the Brown Shirts of the SA were surplus uniforms from South West Africa.
At a very fundamental level, THE KAISER’S HOLOCAUST reveals the deep racism and violence inherit in the colonial ideal that was central to European global strategy in the 19th century. There are other brilliant studies, like John Ellis’s THE SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE MACHINE GUN and Isabel V. Hull’s ABSOLUTE DESTRUCTION, which show the link between unfettered European supremecist ideas and the tragedy that unfolded in the Second Thirty Year’s War of 1914 – 1945. And there are other great studies that focus on the specifically German pathology, like Fritz Stern’s THE POLITICS OF CULTURAL DESPAIR and Kevin McAleer’s DUELING: THE CULT OF HONOR IN FIN-DE-SIECLE GERMANY, which depict the gathering nihilism and brutality of the mood of Germany’s ruling classes and structures during the Wilhelmine period.
But nowhere else is such a clinical, logical, piece-by-piece connection made between the development of political and military practices in Wilhelmine Germany and their counterparts under National Socialism. It must be said that hanging over the entire period like the smell of a corpse is a mis-application of the new science of evolutionary biology, which begins with Darwin himself, to justify the systematic subjugation and mass murder of what were considered “lesser” races. Once accepted, this concept was easily applied to the Jews and Slavic peoples enveloped by the German armies in their great thrust East under Operation Barbarossa.
Many learned and highly intelligent scholars have focused on National Socialism as something quite distinct from broader German society. Milton Himmelfarb’s formulation “No Hitler, no Holcaust” is a classic attempt to draw a clear distinction between Nazis and the rest of the Germans.
But unfortunately, many books make clear the breadth and depth of the pagan barbarism and cruelty that saturated the culturally sophisticated and highly technological society of 19th and early 20th century Germany. These studies include John C. G. Roehl’s YOUNG WILHELM which shows how cruel and violent German women in the highest levels of aristocratic and royal circles could be, Isabel V. Hull’s THE ENTOURAGE OF KAISER WILHELM II 1888 – 1918, which shows how complex and saturated the psychological and cultural manifestations of pseudo-masculinity and hyper-violence had become in elite German society before the First World War, and Ernst Juenger’s classic memoir of combat in World War I, STORM OF STEEL, which is nothing less that a metaphysical celebration of violence, killing and violent death.
Where in Hell did this culture come from? Who knows, but THE KAISER’S HOLOCAUST proves that all its essential functioning components were already in place a generation before Hitler’s rise to power.
The killing squads and murder factories of the Final Solution were merely the next administrative step in order to apply the playbook perfected in South West Africa under Kaiser Wilhelm II.
THE KAISER’S HOLOCAUST is often heart-breaking, but it is a book that is absolutely essential to read.
Read
June 1, 2014This book does a lot in a limited amount of space. It sets up and gives a thorough background on the various Peoples inhabiting what was to become German South-West Africa. Some groups of whom had been strongly influenced by Dutch settlement on the Cape and were very European in their culture.
Then it gives an account of the development of the German colony from a basic trading post operating under the German flag, to an increasingly costly undertaking that was draining German resources and which carried an increasing burden of nationalist and racist assumptions and aspirations.
Finally the authors put the genocide of the Peoples of the future Namibia in the context of the later developments in Germany. Veterans of the genocide were active in ultra nationalist movements and in the Freikorps after WWI and the broader cultural climate that influenced them also influenced Hitler and his contemporaries.
This has the effect of showing you that what was distinctive and new about the later Holocaust of European Jews (& Roma, Sinti & others) was that it was the exercise of practises and habits of thought that were commonplace in European colonial history on the European mainland. The one shortcoming worth mentioning about this book is that it is weak on comparative material with other colonial ventures. However it is a fascinating and disturbing read.
The title is slightly misleading, this is a holocaust that may be largely forgotten beyond the borders of Namibia but issues arising from it - such as the return of human remains from Germany - are still live issues in the politics of the country.
Then it gives an account of the development of the German colony from a basic trading post operating under the German flag, to an increasingly costly undertaking that was draining German resources and which carried an increasing burden of nationalist and racist assumptions and aspirations.
Finally the authors put the genocide of the Peoples of the future Namibia in the context of the later developments in Germany. Veterans of the genocide were active in ultra nationalist movements and in the Freikorps after WWI and the broader cultural climate that influenced them also influenced Hitler and his contemporaries.
This has the effect of showing you that what was distinctive and new about the later Holocaust of European Jews (& Roma, Sinti & others) was that it was the exercise of practises and habits of thought that were commonplace in European colonial history on the European mainland. The one shortcoming worth mentioning about this book is that it is weak on comparative material with other colonial ventures. However it is a fascinating and disturbing read.
The title is slightly misleading, this is a holocaust that may be largely forgotten beyond the borders of Namibia but issues arising from it - such as the return of human remains from Germany - are still live issues in the politics of the country.
June 23, 2012
HOW THE SOUTHWEST WAS WON
One of the great stumbling blocks during the lengthy, eight year process leading up to the Union of South Africa in 1910 was whether or not to give non-Europeans the right to vote, or any political rights at all. In 1909, JBM Hertzog, whilst discussing the draft constitution of the proposed union in the Transvaal Parliament, is recorded as having said that, “the native was undeniably a human being, but he was not yet entitled to political rights because he was still a child, ‘in matters of civilisation … thousands of years behind the whites.’”. Earlier on in that debate, Abraham Fischer had questioned, “whether the people of South Africa had done any act of injustice to the natives”, before adding that, “…the overriding law was ‘the law of self-preservation’” For, he said, “The black man’s rights were not the rights of the white man, who had no intention of acknowledging that they were such now.” (All of these quotes come from The Unification of South Africa 1902-1910, by LM Thompson, published 1960 in Oxford). At least, the most ardent opponents of giving black people the franchise in South Africa recognised that the Africans were human, and were willing to discuss whether they had any rights to self-representation.
This was definitely not the case across the border in German South West Africa (‘SWA’, now ‘Namibia’), as is eloquently described in The Kaiser’s Holocaust, a book written by David Olusoga and Casper Erichsen.
JC Smuts, in his 1952 biography of his father Jan Christian Smuts (South Africa’s Prime Minister from 1939 to 1948), summarises the history of German SWA succinctly: “The German flag was hoisted on the 6th August, 1884, at Lüderitzbucht… Nine years later a ruthless series of wars began which went on till 1908. The German ideal of colonisation was the same as in the old Americas - extermination. Thereafter there was no Red Indian problem. In South-West Africa Germany determined there would be no Herero problem…” (See Jan Christian Smuts: A Biography)
The Kaiser’s Holocaust describes how, to quote Smuts, the Germans ‘determined there would be no Herero problem’ in SWA, and shows effectively how the genocide of the Herero and many of the Nama people can be considered to have been a prototype for the Holocaust orchestrated by the Germans during the Second World War in their quest for Lebensraum and racial purity.
This alone would have made me want to read the book, but I had an additional personal interest in the subject matter.
Newspapers across South Africa noted the discovery of alluvial diamonds in SWA in 1908. In November of that year, The Cape Mercury, published in King Williams Town, carried a detailed report about the extremely rich alluvial diamond field discovered in the immediate vicinity of Lüderitzbucht. The diamonds were easily accessible, lying just beneath the surface of the dust on the floor of the desert. The writer of the article expressed surprise that this remarkable discovery had not been made earlier, as, “… it is understood that during the recent struggle between the German Troops and the Hereros, detachments of troops camped in the immediate vicinity, if not even upon the actual ground where the stones are now being picked…”. It is this ‘struggle’ against the Hereros and also against the other ‘black’ or ‘coloured’ inhabitants of SWA, which is described in detail by Olusoga and Erichsen. This ‘struggle’ that began as an attempt to suppress native attacks on the recently arrived German settlers rapidly deteriorated into blatant genocide.
On the 28th December, 1908, a writer in the Mercury wrote: “Attention is directed to the advertisement appearing in another column regarding the prospectus of the Kolmans-Kop Diamond Mines Ltd., near Lüderitzbucht, German South West Africa … One of the directors is Mr Franz Ginsberg, MLA”. Mr Ginsberg, Member of Parliament for King Williams Town, was one of my ancestors. As I read The Kaiser’s Holocaust, I wondered how much my ancestor knew about what had been going on in SWA until a few months before he trod the diamond-bearing sands near Lüderitzbucht (upon which the Imperial German Army had camped whilst executing their ‘struggle’), and what he thought about it.
The ‘struggle’ alluded to above began in earnest 1904, when the Hereros, fed up with the unfriendly activities and false promises of the recently arrived colonists from Europe, began their attacks on the Germans. At first, they were very successful, but later when Germany sent out reinforcements, their defeat became inevitable. The arrival of General Lothar Von Trotha (1848-1920) in SWA marked the beginning of the ruthless destruction of the Hereros. Von Trotha wrote of the situation in SWA in 1904, “I know enough tribes in Africa. They all have the same mentality insofar as they yield only to force. It was and remains my policy by absolute terrorism and even cruelty I shall destroy the rebellious tribes by shedding rivers of blood and money.” And he did, even employing ‘Cleansing Patrols’ to kill any natives who had managed to escape his murderous forces. This was a forerunner of ‘Ethnic Cleansing’, such as disfigured the Balkans not so long ago.
Many Africans, who were not killed immediately, were herded together and imprisoned in concentration camps (such as were pioneered by the Spanish in Cuba in the late 1890s, and used with devastating effect by the British during the 2nd Boer War of 1899-1902), with the idea of killing them off by exposure to inhospitable living conditions and forced labour. One of these camps was on Shark Island, an island next to the town of Lüderitzbucht, and only 13 kilometres from Kolmanskop, where Mr Ginsberg’s diamond ‘mine’ was to be established in 1908.
Closed in 1907, Shark Island was a forerunner of Auschwitz, Treblinka, and other equally notorious places. It was undoubtedly a concentration camp. However, as is well-described by Olusoga and Erichsen, Shark Island was not simply used to separate the Africans from the Europeans, but it was part of a systematic attempt to exterminate the Africans. Many unfortunates were killed by the cruelty of their captors, starvation, and exposure to the harsh elements. Others were worked to death. Working to death, which was to become a feature of the Nazi concentration camps, was pioneered in the many concentration camps of SWA including Shark Island. The only thing that distinguished these camps from those set up by the Nazis a few years later was the absence of industrialised methods of mass murder (i.e. the use of carbon monoxide and Zyklon B).
According to Martin Gilbert in his book Auschwitz and the Allies: A Devastating Account of How the Allies Responded to the News of Hitler's Mass Murder, very little was known outside the Axis territories about the Nazi’s extermination of the Jews and others before 1944. Even between 1944 and the end of the war, knowledge of the existence of what is now called ‘The Holocaust’ was limited to a very few politicians. The converse was true forty years earlier in German SWA. If my ancestor, Mr Ginsberg, had been a reader of the Cape Argus, a newspaper published in Cape Town, he would have read about the horrific suffering that was happening in camps like Shark Island. Olusoga and Erichsen quote from a series of articles published in 1905 in this paper. These contained reports on the camps supplied by a German trader who had witnessed them first-hand. The excerpts, which they reproduce in the book, are too horrific to be included in this review.
What had the Africans done to inspire such cruelty as was inflicted upon them by the Germans in their colony?
Was it their failure to trust their German invaders and their false promises of protection? Was it the heavy blows that the Africans rained on the initially ill-prepared German military forces? Or, was it the result of a belief in Social Darwinism? All three of these were important in determining the Germans’ behaviour in SWA. However, the authors of The Kaiser’s Holocaust consider that the major driving factor in the genocide in German SWA was strong belief in the concepts of racial supremacy and Social Darwinism. The evidence that they present to support their views is impressive.
They describe, for example, the writings of Friedrich Ratzel (1844-1904), who was inspired by Social Darwinism and ‘invented’ the Lebensraum concept. He believed, according to Olusoga and Erichsen, that, “Colonial peoples disappeared because they were persecuted, enslaved and exterminated” because some “inner cultural weakness of the native races of Africa, America and Asia made them passive, and therefore incapable of withstanding the European assault. All this was acceptable because the people the Europeans were destroying were what he termed ‘inferior races’”. A few years later in 1912, Paul Rohrbach (1869-1956) wrote, “No false philanthropy or race-theory can prove to reasonable people that the preservation of any tribe of nomadic South African Kaffirs… is more important for the future of mankind than the expansion of the European nations, or the white race as a whole.” Horrific as this may sound today, it was perfectly reasonable to those who ordered, and carried out the genocide in SWA. The same kind of reasoning was applied by the Nazis a few decades later in Europe. They believed that Jews, Gypsies, and Slavs, all of whom were to be regarded as being sub-human were suitable only for use as slave labour before being exterminated.
The authors of the Kaiser’s Holocaust devote many pages to describing the genocide of the Africans in German SWA and comparing it with what was to follow later in Nazi Occupied Europe. The comparisons are frightening. They include the use of prisoners in scientifically questionable medical experiments, and their corpses for anthropological studies, whose aims were to attempt to prove scurrilous, pseudo-scientific theories of racial supremacy. However, what is more frightening is the gradual evolution from the Imperial Germans’ justification of genocide to that of the Nazis.
Whilst most of the Kaiser’s Holocaust is dedicated to the German treatment of the Africans in German SWA, a largish part of the second half of the book deals with the development of Nazi ideas, and the regime that resulted from them. Many of the Nazi’s views on race and how to deal with ‘inferior people’ (Untermenschen, the translation of a derogatory term coined by the American eugenicist Lothrop Stoddard in 1922) were, as is well demonstrated by Olusoga and Erichsen, derived from the ideas believed by those whose racial theories justified the African genocide, and also those persons who carried it out in SWA and then later lived in Germany.
Some readers may consider that too much space in the book has been devoted to development of the Nazi’s genocidal plans, everything that is contained in this book is fascinating, and contributes to a greater understanding of the basis of Hitler’s dreams and their ghastly realisation.
Anyone with even the faintest interest in twentieth century history should spend a few hours reading this fascinating, well-written book. And if you don’t have any interest in this aspect of history, this book will certainly change that!
AFTERTHOUGHT
Lest we should become complacent, we must not forget that the German elimination of the ‘natives’ in SWA was not without precedent. Olusoga and Erichsen mention that Ratzel cited the ‘displacement’ of indigenous people in North America, Brazil, Tasmania, and New Zealand, as being models for future colonialism, wars of extermination, and, dare I say it, genocide.
Finally, remember that, "History is written by the victors", or in George Orwell's words, “He, who controls the present, controls the past. He, who controls the past, controls the future.”
One of the great stumbling blocks during the lengthy, eight year process leading up to the Union of South Africa in 1910 was whether or not to give non-Europeans the right to vote, or any political rights at all. In 1909, JBM Hertzog, whilst discussing the draft constitution of the proposed union in the Transvaal Parliament, is recorded as having said that, “the native was undeniably a human being, but he was not yet entitled to political rights because he was still a child, ‘in matters of civilisation … thousands of years behind the whites.’”. Earlier on in that debate, Abraham Fischer had questioned, “whether the people of South Africa had done any act of injustice to the natives”, before adding that, “…the overriding law was ‘the law of self-preservation’” For, he said, “The black man’s rights were not the rights of the white man, who had no intention of acknowledging that they were such now.” (All of these quotes come from The Unification of South Africa 1902-1910, by LM Thompson, published 1960 in Oxford). At least, the most ardent opponents of giving black people the franchise in South Africa recognised that the Africans were human, and were willing to discuss whether they had any rights to self-representation.
This was definitely not the case across the border in German South West Africa (‘SWA’, now ‘Namibia’), as is eloquently described in The Kaiser’s Holocaust, a book written by David Olusoga and Casper Erichsen.
JC Smuts, in his 1952 biography of his father Jan Christian Smuts (South Africa’s Prime Minister from 1939 to 1948), summarises the history of German SWA succinctly: “The German flag was hoisted on the 6th August, 1884, at Lüderitzbucht… Nine years later a ruthless series of wars began which went on till 1908. The German ideal of colonisation was the same as in the old Americas - extermination. Thereafter there was no Red Indian problem. In South-West Africa Germany determined there would be no Herero problem…” (See Jan Christian Smuts: A Biography)
The Kaiser’s Holocaust describes how, to quote Smuts, the Germans ‘determined there would be no Herero problem’ in SWA, and shows effectively how the genocide of the Herero and many of the Nama people can be considered to have been a prototype for the Holocaust orchestrated by the Germans during the Second World War in their quest for Lebensraum and racial purity.
This alone would have made me want to read the book, but I had an additional personal interest in the subject matter.
Newspapers across South Africa noted the discovery of alluvial diamonds in SWA in 1908. In November of that year, The Cape Mercury, published in King Williams Town, carried a detailed report about the extremely rich alluvial diamond field discovered in the immediate vicinity of Lüderitzbucht. The diamonds were easily accessible, lying just beneath the surface of the dust on the floor of the desert. The writer of the article expressed surprise that this remarkable discovery had not been made earlier, as, “… it is understood that during the recent struggle between the German Troops and the Hereros, detachments of troops camped in the immediate vicinity, if not even upon the actual ground where the stones are now being picked…”. It is this ‘struggle’ against the Hereros and also against the other ‘black’ or ‘coloured’ inhabitants of SWA, which is described in detail by Olusoga and Erichsen. This ‘struggle’ that began as an attempt to suppress native attacks on the recently arrived German settlers rapidly deteriorated into blatant genocide.
On the 28th December, 1908, a writer in the Mercury wrote: “Attention is directed to the advertisement appearing in another column regarding the prospectus of the Kolmans-Kop Diamond Mines Ltd., near Lüderitzbucht, German South West Africa … One of the directors is Mr Franz Ginsberg, MLA”. Mr Ginsberg, Member of Parliament for King Williams Town, was one of my ancestors. As I read The Kaiser’s Holocaust, I wondered how much my ancestor knew about what had been going on in SWA until a few months before he trod the diamond-bearing sands near Lüderitzbucht (upon which the Imperial German Army had camped whilst executing their ‘struggle’), and what he thought about it.
The ‘struggle’ alluded to above began in earnest 1904, when the Hereros, fed up with the unfriendly activities and false promises of the recently arrived colonists from Europe, began their attacks on the Germans. At first, they were very successful, but later when Germany sent out reinforcements, their defeat became inevitable. The arrival of General Lothar Von Trotha (1848-1920) in SWA marked the beginning of the ruthless destruction of the Hereros. Von Trotha wrote of the situation in SWA in 1904, “I know enough tribes in Africa. They all have the same mentality insofar as they yield only to force. It was and remains my policy by absolute terrorism and even cruelty I shall destroy the rebellious tribes by shedding rivers of blood and money.” And he did, even employing ‘Cleansing Patrols’ to kill any natives who had managed to escape his murderous forces. This was a forerunner of ‘Ethnic Cleansing’, such as disfigured the Balkans not so long ago.
Many Africans, who were not killed immediately, were herded together and imprisoned in concentration camps (such as were pioneered by the Spanish in Cuba in the late 1890s, and used with devastating effect by the British during the 2nd Boer War of 1899-1902), with the idea of killing them off by exposure to inhospitable living conditions and forced labour. One of these camps was on Shark Island, an island next to the town of Lüderitzbucht, and only 13 kilometres from Kolmanskop, where Mr Ginsberg’s diamond ‘mine’ was to be established in 1908.
Closed in 1907, Shark Island was a forerunner of Auschwitz, Treblinka, and other equally notorious places. It was undoubtedly a concentration camp. However, as is well-described by Olusoga and Erichsen, Shark Island was not simply used to separate the Africans from the Europeans, but it was part of a systematic attempt to exterminate the Africans. Many unfortunates were killed by the cruelty of their captors, starvation, and exposure to the harsh elements. Others were worked to death. Working to death, which was to become a feature of the Nazi concentration camps, was pioneered in the many concentration camps of SWA including Shark Island. The only thing that distinguished these camps from those set up by the Nazis a few years later was the absence of industrialised methods of mass murder (i.e. the use of carbon monoxide and Zyklon B).
According to Martin Gilbert in his book Auschwitz and the Allies: A Devastating Account of How the Allies Responded to the News of Hitler's Mass Murder, very little was known outside the Axis territories about the Nazi’s extermination of the Jews and others before 1944. Even between 1944 and the end of the war, knowledge of the existence of what is now called ‘The Holocaust’ was limited to a very few politicians. The converse was true forty years earlier in German SWA. If my ancestor, Mr Ginsberg, had been a reader of the Cape Argus, a newspaper published in Cape Town, he would have read about the horrific suffering that was happening in camps like Shark Island. Olusoga and Erichsen quote from a series of articles published in 1905 in this paper. These contained reports on the camps supplied by a German trader who had witnessed them first-hand. The excerpts, which they reproduce in the book, are too horrific to be included in this review.
What had the Africans done to inspire such cruelty as was inflicted upon them by the Germans in their colony?
Was it their failure to trust their German invaders and their false promises of protection? Was it the heavy blows that the Africans rained on the initially ill-prepared German military forces? Or, was it the result of a belief in Social Darwinism? All three of these were important in determining the Germans’ behaviour in SWA. However, the authors of The Kaiser’s Holocaust consider that the major driving factor in the genocide in German SWA was strong belief in the concepts of racial supremacy and Social Darwinism. The evidence that they present to support their views is impressive.
They describe, for example, the writings of Friedrich Ratzel (1844-1904), who was inspired by Social Darwinism and ‘invented’ the Lebensraum concept. He believed, according to Olusoga and Erichsen, that, “Colonial peoples disappeared because they were persecuted, enslaved and exterminated” because some “inner cultural weakness of the native races of Africa, America and Asia made them passive, and therefore incapable of withstanding the European assault. All this was acceptable because the people the Europeans were destroying were what he termed ‘inferior races’”. A few years later in 1912, Paul Rohrbach (1869-1956) wrote, “No false philanthropy or race-theory can prove to reasonable people that the preservation of any tribe of nomadic South African Kaffirs… is more important for the future of mankind than the expansion of the European nations, or the white race as a whole.” Horrific as this may sound today, it was perfectly reasonable to those who ordered, and carried out the genocide in SWA. The same kind of reasoning was applied by the Nazis a few decades later in Europe. They believed that Jews, Gypsies, and Slavs, all of whom were to be regarded as being sub-human were suitable only for use as slave labour before being exterminated.
The authors of the Kaiser’s Holocaust devote many pages to describing the genocide of the Africans in German SWA and comparing it with what was to follow later in Nazi Occupied Europe. The comparisons are frightening. They include the use of prisoners in scientifically questionable medical experiments, and their corpses for anthropological studies, whose aims were to attempt to prove scurrilous, pseudo-scientific theories of racial supremacy. However, what is more frightening is the gradual evolution from the Imperial Germans’ justification of genocide to that of the Nazis.
Whilst most of the Kaiser’s Holocaust is dedicated to the German treatment of the Africans in German SWA, a largish part of the second half of the book deals with the development of Nazi ideas, and the regime that resulted from them. Many of the Nazi’s views on race and how to deal with ‘inferior people’ (Untermenschen, the translation of a derogatory term coined by the American eugenicist Lothrop Stoddard in 1922) were, as is well demonstrated by Olusoga and Erichsen, derived from the ideas believed by those whose racial theories justified the African genocide, and also those persons who carried it out in SWA and then later lived in Germany.
Some readers may consider that too much space in the book has been devoted to development of the Nazi’s genocidal plans, everything that is contained in this book is fascinating, and contributes to a greater understanding of the basis of Hitler’s dreams and their ghastly realisation.
Anyone with even the faintest interest in twentieth century history should spend a few hours reading this fascinating, well-written book. And if you don’t have any interest in this aspect of history, this book will certainly change that!
AFTERTHOUGHT
Lest we should become complacent, we must not forget that the German elimination of the ‘natives’ in SWA was not without precedent. Olusoga and Erichsen mention that Ratzel cited the ‘displacement’ of indigenous people in North America, Brazil, Tasmania, and New Zealand, as being models for future colonialism, wars of extermination, and, dare I say it, genocide.
Finally, remember that, "History is written by the victors", or in George Orwell's words, “He, who controls the present, controls the past. He, who controls the past, controls the future.”
February 28, 2017
This carefully researched and well written book argues that the Nazi death camps were descended directly from the Nambian death camps of Kaiser Wilhelm II. The memory of Germany's empire has become separated from European history. But Hitler's statement that he would treat the Slavs like 'colonial people' was a shorthand understood by a generation of Germans who were children when the Kaiser was on a mission to eradicate Africans. This book is the fascinating of German racial ideologies and the doomed resistance of the Herero and Nama people's. The Lebensraum theory that the German people needed to expand their living spaces at the expense of "lower races" originated in 19th century Africa and became extended to 20th Europe.
Despite the frequently horrifying subject matter, the book is easy, and even exciting, to read. David Olusoga is a journalist and takes an almost thriller-like approach to the subject matter. There are haunting photographs of the tribal people and a modern arial shot of the sandy coast of Namibia, with the bleached bones of the concentration camp victims poking out of the sand.
The book works well alongside Kendi's "A definitive history of racist ideas".
Thank you Andrew for yet another excellent recommendation.
Despite the frequently horrifying subject matter, the book is easy, and even exciting, to read. David Olusoga is a journalist and takes an almost thriller-like approach to the subject matter. There are haunting photographs of the tribal people and a modern arial shot of the sandy coast of Namibia, with the bleached bones of the concentration camp victims poking out of the sand.
The book works well alongside Kendi's "A definitive history of racist ideas".
Thank you Andrew for yet another excellent recommendation.
January 31, 2025
I read this book back in 2012 and, though I thought I was reasonably knowledgeable the story this book related was a revelation. Also the use of the term genocide, by this author and others, caused a lot of controversy because it was felt to lessen the holocaust against the Jews in world war II but to be honest most people wanted to keep that level of inhumanity unique to the Germans. Way to many people did not want to admit that all of us in Europe had presaged the horrors that were brought home in first WWI and then WWII by inflicting them elsewhere. Thus the farce of Belgian children supposedly having their hands cut off when in fact the only children without hands were in the Congo having had them removed during the Belgian king's time bringing civilization to the Congo.
Mr. Olusoga was not the first to make the connection, Sven Lindquist had done so nearly twenty years before in his book 'Exterminate All the Brutes', but this book built and expanded that thesis. I doubt anyone today would have the impertinence to dismiss the theory with the glib assurance displayed by Piers Brendan when he reviewed the book for the Guardian (see: https://www.theguardian.com/books/201...).
One of the most fascinating things this book brought to wider attention was the way the UK was complicit in concealing the massacre's that they had uncovered and published details in a Blue Book in 1918. Part of the reason this report was ignored and then buried was reconciliation with Germany but just as potent was racism - to call out one colonial power for abusing natives was to open all colonial powers to questioning. So like powerful men throughout history, they stuck together - all white men good, all Black men unreliable savages not to be believed.
There have been many books since on this subject but I do not believe there is a better introduction to this painful tale.
Mr. Olusoga was not the first to make the connection, Sven Lindquist had done so nearly twenty years before in his book 'Exterminate All the Brutes', but this book built and expanded that thesis. I doubt anyone today would have the impertinence to dismiss the theory with the glib assurance displayed by Piers Brendan when he reviewed the book for the Guardian (see: https://www.theguardian.com/books/201...).
One of the most fascinating things this book brought to wider attention was the way the UK was complicit in concealing the massacre's that they had uncovered and published details in a Blue Book in 1918. Part of the reason this report was ignored and then buried was reconciliation with Germany but just as potent was racism - to call out one colonial power for abusing natives was to open all colonial powers to questioning. So like powerful men throughout history, they stuck together - all white men good, all Black men unreliable savages not to be believed.
There have been many books since on this subject but I do not believe there is a better introduction to this painful tale.
April 23, 2025
Dla mnie świetny i odkrywczy reportaż. Autorzy prowadzą przez historię niemieckich kolonii w Afryce (głównie Afryce Południowo Zachodniej) od wieku 19 aż do czasów po II wojnie światowej. Krok po kroku widzimy jak budziła się ambicja niemiecka do posiadania własnych kolonii, potem jak ta ambicja zmieniła się w tak wielkie pożądanie ziemi, że musieli opracować strategię wytępienia całej dotychczasowej ludności kolonizowanych terenów. To właśnie w obecnej Namibii nauczyli się jak prowadzić obozy koncentracyjne i to tam po raz pierwszy wprowadzili prawo czystości rasowej, które potem, w latach 30' 20 wieku doprowadzili do ekstremum.
A potem autorzy tłumaczą jak to się stało, że te niemieckie zbrodnie w Afryce zostały zapomniane - ano po prostu, zbyt przypominały zbrodnie innych krajów w ich koloniach. Lepiej było nie karać Niemiec, żeby nie dostać rykoszetem.
A potem autorzy tłumaczą jak to się stało, że te niemieckie zbrodnie w Afryce zostały zapomniane - ano po prostu, zbyt przypominały zbrodnie innych krajów w ich koloniach. Lepiej było nie karać Niemiec, żeby nie dostać rykoszetem.
July 24, 2013
The Namibian part of this book deserves a four or five-star rating. Unfortunately too much of the last half of the book is devoted to a retelling of the rise of Nazism, covering well-trodden history with only occasional and often tenuous links to the ostensible topic of the book.
Actually, this straying into later history is prefigured in the opening pages, describing the death of Goering and the Nuremberg trials. Even though it was too long in the context of the book, this section does effectively introduce the central thesis, that aspects of Nazism can be traced back to events in Namibia in the first decade of the 20th Century, especially the founding of the century's first death camp and the Herero and Nama holocaust.
With all of this said, the part of the book that deals with events in Namibia is gripping and well presented. I have to admit that the content made it hard for me to read, especially as a born Namibian with continuing emotional ties to that dramatic land.
I strongly recommend this book, at least to the point where the Germans in Namibia surrender in World War One. After that... your choice to continue or not. Perhaps just the last few pages is very worthwhile again, where the argument is completed.
Actually, this straying into later history is prefigured in the opening pages, describing the death of Goering and the Nuremberg trials. Even though it was too long in the context of the book, this section does effectively introduce the central thesis, that aspects of Nazism can be traced back to events in Namibia in the first decade of the 20th Century, especially the founding of the century's first death camp and the Herero and Nama holocaust.
With all of this said, the part of the book that deals with events in Namibia is gripping and well presented. I have to admit that the content made it hard for me to read, especially as a born Namibian with continuing emotional ties to that dramatic land.
I strongly recommend this book, at least to the point where the Germans in Namibia surrender in World War One. After that... your choice to continue or not. Perhaps just the last few pages is very worthwhile again, where the argument is completed.
July 5, 2022
Extraordinary research on the atrocities in Namibia at the hands of German colonialists. I honestly had not known any of this history but so glad I read it.
4 stars. The writing is dry in spots which detracts a little from the incredible scholarship.
4 stars. The writing is dry in spots which detracts a little from the incredible scholarship.
September 28, 2024
A really important but difficult book to read, as the authors David Olusoga and Caspar W Erichson, present the story of one of the last Colonial conquests in Africa, the Germans rape of South West Africa, the country now known as Namibia. The German colonial authorities, it turns out were not satisfied with taking all the arable land from the indigenous people, they planned, almost from the start, to wipe them all out entirely as peoples, and completely destroy their culture. The means they used, from traditional military conquest with the latest 19th and 20th Century weapons, to tireless pursuit, to mass forced migrations, to concentration and death camps to the eventual attempts at secret burials of almost every single Herero and Nama tribemember, are a horrifying prequel to the War Against the Jews of 1941-1945, actions that claimed most of my family. But then the authors go even further, to show how this colonial experience, from soldiers to settlers to scientists, culturally and scientifically led to the later world view of the Nazis and their enablers. They prove it effectively using "intellectual" threads and language, damning this colonial episode like the Belgian Congolese horror it followed so closely.
The Desert that we think of in Namibia is a coastal phenomenon, 75 miles inland past a mountain range, the land is more veldt-like. The Herero in the North and the Nama in the southern interior were Boer-like pasturalists- with a Western Boer-like lifestyle and using a Dutch derived language that was quite comparable. The German settlers were horrified to find their "subjects" were as "civilised" as themselves- and angered when they realized the locals were not prepared to be a menial servant underclass. The whole "adventure" was supposed to give them "living Room" and hegemony over cheap labour - a crisis! When neither tribe would budge, the obvious answer was a German army- the SchutzTruppen (Colonial Troops- known for their horrific atrocities in China during the Boxer Rebellion). The result was the outrageous massacre of women and children at a number of "Battles" -although the German proved relatively poor at actual fighting with the Indigenous warriors. The end is inevitable- and all too hard to read. The bones of several hundred thousand Herero/Nama litter the desert and the worst camp of all- Shark Island- off the coast, where almost all inmates died horrible deaths. It's a difficult read- but it's important to know about this historical cesspool.
This book is well written enough to explain this disgusting episode of man's inhumanity to man to a junior reader- but it will be the rare kid under 13 who can stomach this tale. The lessons are all too real- and its an important book for all readers. The Gamer/Modeller/Military enthusiast, will find information to inform Scenario and dioramas about this struggle- but may lose the appetite to portray this one. They will however be rewarded with information about the role of the Colony in WWI (a rapid conquest by South African/British forces)- and a lot of really cool background on the effect of this vile campaign- and then the loss of the colonies on the brittle German psyche between the wars. The amount of faux-science/trash philosophy content derived from their stunted colonial experience rivals WWI itself in its echoes in Nazi philosophy/propaganda. This campaign of atrocity STILL has an outsize effect on the other White Nationalist movements it helped spawn- way back in the 1890s and 1900s!
The Desert that we think of in Namibia is a coastal phenomenon, 75 miles inland past a mountain range, the land is more veldt-like. The Herero in the North and the Nama in the southern interior were Boer-like pasturalists- with a Western Boer-like lifestyle and using a Dutch derived language that was quite comparable. The German settlers were horrified to find their "subjects" were as "civilised" as themselves- and angered when they realized the locals were not prepared to be a menial servant underclass. The whole "adventure" was supposed to give them "living Room" and hegemony over cheap labour - a crisis! When neither tribe would budge, the obvious answer was a German army- the SchutzTruppen (Colonial Troops- known for their horrific atrocities in China during the Boxer Rebellion). The result was the outrageous massacre of women and children at a number of "Battles" -although the German proved relatively poor at actual fighting with the Indigenous warriors. The end is inevitable- and all too hard to read. The bones of several hundred thousand Herero/Nama litter the desert and the worst camp of all- Shark Island- off the coast, where almost all inmates died horrible deaths. It's a difficult read- but it's important to know about this historical cesspool.
This book is well written enough to explain this disgusting episode of man's inhumanity to man to a junior reader- but it will be the rare kid under 13 who can stomach this tale. The lessons are all too real- and its an important book for all readers. The Gamer/Modeller/Military enthusiast, will find information to inform Scenario and dioramas about this struggle- but may lose the appetite to portray this one. They will however be rewarded with information about the role of the Colony in WWI (a rapid conquest by South African/British forces)- and a lot of really cool background on the effect of this vile campaign- and then the loss of the colonies on the brittle German psyche between the wars. The amount of faux-science/trash philosophy content derived from their stunted colonial experience rivals WWI itself in its echoes in Nazi philosophy/propaganda. This campaign of atrocity STILL has an outsize effect on the other White Nationalist movements it helped spawn- way back in the 1890s and 1900s!
February 8, 2023
There is much covered in this detailed history of Germany's colony in South West Africa. As well as the genocide that occurred at the beginning of the twentieth century, this book looks at how many of the policies and ideas used in the colony were adopted by the Nazi party when it came to power in Germany. Overall it is a well-researched book which I would highly recommend.
May 18, 2024
This nonfiction account of Germany’s colonization of what is now Namibia fills in some history of events that ended up being a dress rehearsal for the Holocaust. It’s a dark book documenting atrocities that we, as humanity, should not be repeating over and over and over again. But we avoid learning from the past by avoiding reading about the past. This book has been on my TBR list for a while - I think since I first read Trevor Noah’s Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood. That’s when I first learned of the genocides committed against the Herero and Nama peoples. It was a hard read; I paced myself at a chapter/day because there was a lot to digest.
This is my book for Namibia in my around the world reading journey. It is a good pick for anyone else on this adventure.
This is my book for Namibia in my around the world reading journey. It is a good pick for anyone else on this adventure.
January 29, 2014
помимо того, что это важная маргиналия к Пинчону (V. и Радуга тяготения), читать "Холокост кайзера" будет невредно тем, чьи представления об Африке ограничиваются Луи Буссенаром и Ганзелкой с Зикмундом. боковые сюжетные линии - краткая история расизма от Чарлза Дарвина и краткий исторический очерк возникновения нацизма. из массы полезных сведений можно также почерпнуть, что концлагерь придумали никакие не англичане, а и вовсе испанцы. ну и более общий урок - до чего отвратительны любые инсектоидные нации. утешительно видеть, как русские - "народ колониальный" - в 21 веке превращаются как раз в такую.
December 9, 2021
As African History enthusiast, this is a remarkable book. It's not too lengthy and it's lucidly written. What is presented in this book will make one unlearn European colonialism in africa. Its a MUST READ.
November 6, 2023
What does the re-emergence of the dead from the Namib Desert, and the unearthing of documents and human remains from the archives and universities, mean for modern, liberal Germany? What is the significance of the fact that thirty years before Hitler came to power, in a forgotten German colony, her soldiers and bureaucrats attempted to exterminate two indigenous peoples, ultimately in concentration camps, and in the name of a Kaiser rather than a Führer? The images held in the Namibian National Archives of healthy jackbooted soldiers guarding concentration camps or posing amid emaciated, skeletal prisoners have a resonance that today is all too obvious and all too powerful.
The history of the conquest of lands in South West Africa by the Germans has long been forgotten and buried by collective history. In this book, Olusoga unearths a wealth of documentation and pieces together evidence from a variety of archival information to bring to light a genocide of two peoples, the Nama and the Herero at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th. He talks to the descendants, he travels to distant lands, he seeks out long forgotten personal histories and weaves a narrative that is lucid, linear and damning of the European conqueror. It is a long read, and one that is at times extremely complex but always honest and utterly devastating for the reader. It is most certainly a book that needs to be read to have a complete picture of the horrors of European colonialism in this part of the African continent. It informs and adds to the re-emergence of this painful chapter of history. An absolute must read.
The history of the conquest of lands in South West Africa by the Germans has long been forgotten and buried by collective history. In this book, Olusoga unearths a wealth of documentation and pieces together evidence from a variety of archival information to bring to light a genocide of two peoples, the Nama and the Herero at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th. He talks to the descendants, he travels to distant lands, he seeks out long forgotten personal histories and weaves a narrative that is lucid, linear and damning of the European conqueror. It is a long read, and one that is at times extremely complex but always honest and utterly devastating for the reader. It is most certainly a book that needs to be read to have a complete picture of the horrors of European colonialism in this part of the African continent. It informs and adds to the re-emergence of this painful chapter of history. An absolute must read.
November 12, 2012
I thought the arguments set out in this book were really well done. It was an expose of the inhuman treatment that the Germany of the Kaiser meted out to the African population in their sole African colony of South-West Africa(now Namibia), which included the birth of death camps, later refined by the Nazis, but set in the historical context of general European colonialist attitudes. It then threw this forward to the impact the period had on the development of Nazi racial theories after the First World War and also which was new for me, the link between the German "lebensraum/(living space)" imperative and the colonial past. It was fascinating to see described the correlation between the 20th Century Nazi attempt to colonize Eastern Europe and Central Asia by exterminating the millions of sitting native and "racially inferior" populations, with the earlier colonial efforts of the Spanish in Latin America, the British in Australasia and the creation of the USA by white Europeans in general.
March 7, 2012
I love early Namibian history, having read other accounts. This book is unfortunately full of contradiction. The author clearly sets out to make a point- that the fact that Hermann Goring's father was 1st administrator of the colony, it convinced Goring jnr to suggest Nazi Germany's final solution. Odd considering young Hermann was only born after his fathers return to Germany.
Concentration camps were firth documented being used by the British against the Boers. Genocide and maltreatment of the indigenous populations in the colonies of the world were common place.
It could have been a fantastic read sadly it wasnt.
Concentration camps were firth documented being used by the British against the Boers. Genocide and maltreatment of the indigenous populations in the colonies of the world were common place.
It could have been a fantastic read sadly it wasnt.
August 15, 2012
As someone with a passing interest in Europes colonial adventures this book was a real eye opener.Rather than a story of German expansion in Western Africa it told the story of how entire native populations were almost wiped out with little pity and how the road to Nazi Germany began.The ideas of racial purity so central to Nazi ideology began in German South West Africa and culminated in Hitlers final solution.A fascinating if disturbing read.
July 17, 2015
In a word, this book is simply brilliant. It is a terrifically engaging and well-written historical text. But more importantly, it fills a tremendous lacunae in both African history as well as Nazi holocaust history. Anyone who ignores this book who wants to engage with the aspects that brought about the Third Reich without reading Olusoga's masterpiece should be entirely discounted. This is the context that deepens our understanding of World War II as well as colonialism and imperialism.
August 21, 2011
Want to write a full review, but in the mean time I highly recommend this book. Very interesting exploration of Germany's colonial exploits in Africa, including genocide in what is now Namibia. The second half of the book traces connections between the colonial leadership's motives and tactics, and the rise of Nazism's expansionist, murderous regime. Sheds light on a largely forgotten tragedy.
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August 7, 2011The relatively unknown story of the pre WWI genocide of the bushmen of German South West Africa and how this prefigured the Holocaust. Grim, very well told and with some truly shocking stories and illustrations. A book of the year, for sure.
January 11, 2013
Very well written and well researched book about atrocities committed in Namibia at the start of the 20th century that I had never even heard about before I came across this book. A very interesting read!
March 18, 2011
This is well researched and well-written. For non-fiction it is engrossing,
September 21, 2025
Aspects of the book: very engaging making reading 350 pages with small fonts enjoyable.
But no, the whole story is not something to be enjoyed. It's a history that has been deliberately forgotten so the west can claim morality when they did this twice in a span of 50 years and pretending not to see as another is happening in Palestine.
The book describes about the genocide of Nama and Herero people of South West Africa and how it relates with the use of the ideology that Germans are of a superior race, and based on twisted interpretation of Darwinism, the fittest and so they can subject others seen as inferior as people that can be colonized and worse obliterated.
It tells a lot about so many things. Back then, the germans were so keen to SETTLE in foreign lands, taking over African lands. Oh there are people there? Let's just get rid of them. So the germans were so keen on EMIGRATION to South West Africa and bring havoc into it.
The Nama and Herero fought hard, just like any other colonized people (reminded me of Indonesian independence heroes). But the germans used divide and conquer, advanced arm supplies and eventually, what they did when they feel arms can't get rid thousands of the local tribes? Let's put them in concentration camps, let's subject them to FAMINE, let's expose them to forced labor and let them die on their own. Sounds familiar? Like the third time you hear this? Yes, the depravity and the cruelty of these people is beyond belief. And then they'll be 'morality police' telling the whole world they're immoral while they are the exemplary.
God I feel nauseous.
There's a part where the germans brought the Nama and Herero (and other Africans subjected by german colonialism) people to be shown like animals in zoos in Berlin. So vomit enducing. I'm glad for the honourable Nama and Herero people refused to wear 'tribal clothes' and demand that they were given respect.
Tha last part of the book connects to the rise of nazism and how the idea of Lebensraum and 'the purity of aryan race' caused the ethnic cleansing of european jews and slavs. The crazy thing, as written in the book, this feels wrong by europeans bcs now the subject of this horrible crime...are people of the same skin color. Racism is a sickness.
I'll be reading Fanon next bcs I need to find people of honor and real morality. I feel sick and angry reading these racist mentality, and the audacity to claim higher morality. If the last two years hasn't decolonize your mind, I hope this will because oh God our world never changed. We're just living in a neocolonial world now.
My heart goes to the Nama and Herero people, forgotten, and even germany didn't recognize their genocide until 2020s. Horrible. I pray for their souls, and I hope the people of Namibia continue to thrive against this unfair world. And may all those subjected their ancestors to this crime rot in hell.
But no, the whole story is not something to be enjoyed. It's a history that has been deliberately forgotten so the west can claim morality when they did this twice in a span of 50 years and pretending not to see as another is happening in Palestine.
The book describes about the genocide of Nama and Herero people of South West Africa and how it relates with the use of the ideology that Germans are of a superior race, and based on twisted interpretation of Darwinism, the fittest and so they can subject others seen as inferior as people that can be colonized and worse obliterated.
It tells a lot about so many things. Back then, the germans were so keen to SETTLE in foreign lands, taking over African lands. Oh there are people there? Let's just get rid of them. So the germans were so keen on EMIGRATION to South West Africa and bring havoc into it.
The Nama and Herero fought hard, just like any other colonized people (reminded me of Indonesian independence heroes). But the germans used divide and conquer, advanced arm supplies and eventually, what they did when they feel arms can't get rid thousands of the local tribes? Let's put them in concentration camps, let's subject them to FAMINE, let's expose them to forced labor and let them die on their own. Sounds familiar? Like the third time you hear this? Yes, the depravity and the cruelty of these people is beyond belief. And then they'll be 'morality police' telling the whole world they're immoral while they are the exemplary.
God I feel nauseous.
There's a part where the germans brought the Nama and Herero (and other Africans subjected by german colonialism) people to be shown like animals in zoos in Berlin. So vomit enducing. I'm glad for the honourable Nama and Herero people refused to wear 'tribal clothes' and demand that they were given respect.
Tha last part of the book connects to the rise of nazism and how the idea of Lebensraum and 'the purity of aryan race' caused the ethnic cleansing of european jews and slavs. The crazy thing, as written in the book, this feels wrong by europeans bcs now the subject of this horrible crime...are people of the same skin color. Racism is a sickness.
I'll be reading Fanon next bcs I need to find people of honor and real morality. I feel sick and angry reading these racist mentality, and the audacity to claim higher morality. If the last two years hasn't decolonize your mind, I hope this will because oh God our world never changed. We're just living in a neocolonial world now.
My heart goes to the Nama and Herero people, forgotten, and even germany didn't recognize their genocide until 2020s. Horrible. I pray for their souls, and I hope the people of Namibia continue to thrive against this unfair world. And may all those subjected their ancestors to this crime rot in hell.
October 23, 2017
Very good analysis of the long-term context that gave rise to Nazism in Germany in the 1920's - 1930's. Olusoga makes the very convincing case that Nazism was simply an extreme permutation that arose out of the beliefs widespread in Europe that underpinned colonialism - Europeans had a right to expand into other countries and take land / resources, 'white man's burden', etc. Olusoga highlights that it is often lost but that Nazi expansion into Eastern Europe had the same goals as Germany's earlier efforts to colonize Namibia and other parts of Africa.
This book specifically zooms in on Germany's colonial exploits in Namibia. Germany was relatively late to the colonial game - it was only in the late 1800's that they felt a strong need to catch up with other European powers and realize colonial supremacy. Germans first arrived in Namibia in 1883 and were not able to really develop a foothold in the region until after 1900.
The history of German colonization in Namibia consists of deception of and brutality against native tribes, that were in many cases more sophisticated than the Germans (western dress, well read, better military, etc.). Germany really struggled to develop and maintain the colony, which helped lead to excessive brutality in dealing with the adversarial native tribes. Germany was also well on its way towards laying the 'scientific' groundwork for their racial superiority, which further justified their behavior against the Africans. The peak of this was the establishment of what is arguably the world's first concentration camp on Shark Island off the coast of Luderitz in 1904, over 30 years before Nazism started to catch the eye of the international community.
Germany lost their colony in Namibia with the end of the first World War, but a lot of the leaders of the colony would go on to play leading roles in the Nazi party. When tracking the backgrounds of a lot of the Nazi leadership, you see strong links from their prior careers to the work done in the Nazi party.
Very relevant read for anyone looking to understand not only the history of Namibia but also the rise of Nazism. As Olusoga points out, the Nuremberg trials cemented the record of WWII and largely protratyed the actions of the Nazi party as having started in the 1930's and needing to be admonished. However, the real story is that Nazism didn't rise in a vacuum - it built on a long history of belief in racial superiority and belief that Germany was being cramped on 'living space' that traces back to the 1870's.
This book specifically zooms in on Germany's colonial exploits in Namibia. Germany was relatively late to the colonial game - it was only in the late 1800's that they felt a strong need to catch up with other European powers and realize colonial supremacy. Germans first arrived in Namibia in 1883 and were not able to really develop a foothold in the region until after 1900.
The history of German colonization in Namibia consists of deception of and brutality against native tribes, that were in many cases more sophisticated than the Germans (western dress, well read, better military, etc.). Germany really struggled to develop and maintain the colony, which helped lead to excessive brutality in dealing with the adversarial native tribes. Germany was also well on its way towards laying the 'scientific' groundwork for their racial superiority, which further justified their behavior against the Africans. The peak of this was the establishment of what is arguably the world's first concentration camp on Shark Island off the coast of Luderitz in 1904, over 30 years before Nazism started to catch the eye of the international community.
Germany lost their colony in Namibia with the end of the first World War, but a lot of the leaders of the colony would go on to play leading roles in the Nazi party. When tracking the backgrounds of a lot of the Nazi leadership, you see strong links from their prior careers to the work done in the Nazi party.
Very relevant read for anyone looking to understand not only the history of Namibia but also the rise of Nazism. As Olusoga points out, the Nuremberg trials cemented the record of WWII and largely protratyed the actions of the Nazi party as having started in the 1930's and needing to be admonished. However, the real story is that Nazism didn't rise in a vacuum - it built on a long history of belief in racial superiority and belief that Germany was being cramped on 'living space' that traces back to the 1870's.
June 14, 2023
Written by David Olusoga and Casper W. Erichsen, Kaiser’s Holocaust is split into two halves. The first part details the arrival of the Germans in South West Africa (modern-day Namibia) and all the atrocities they committed against the Nama-Herero people, whereas the second part is focused on drawing connections between the Second Reich’s activities in its colonies and the Nazism of the Third Reich. The book is well-researched, and it makes a compelling argument for the influence of the events that happened in the German colonies and the beliefs that inspired them on the development of Nazi dogma.
Personally, I really enjoyed reading this book. It kept me captivated throughout, but also left me with a feeling of sadness because not only did a majority of the Nama and Herero perish at the hands of the Germans, but I did not even learn about this at school. What is our school system teaching? I have asked several people around me whether they learned about it in school and very few say that they did. In fact, the overwhelming majority say that they did not. I understand that the older generation, who grew up during Apartheid, did not learn about it because the Apartheid regime operated under very similar beliefs as the Germans, but what about the younger generation? Why do we not learn about this? Why do I only hear about it in connection with money and reparations? Why can we not learn about it for its own sake? It is an important part of our history, and it should not be hidden.
I also felt a sense of pride reading about Henrik Witbooi, Jacob Morenga, Samuel Maharero, and many others. They were leaders who proved that the paternalistic justification for imperialism is a sham. Africans are not children who need to be coddled. Africa is a continent with many tribes and languages – a place with history and culture. Africa is potential – a land of milk and honey, but it is also a land that has been ravaged and pilfered. These Namibian heroes were tricked into thinking that they were fighting against fellow humans. They were tricked into thinking that their values in warfare would be the same values that their enemy would abide by. They did not know that they were fighting against Social Darwinists, who believed that weaker races had to be eliminated. One question that remains seared in my mind is what would have happened if they only knew who they were fighting? Could they have defeated the Germans or would Germany have applied all its military might to quench a resistance in land that was not their own? What would have happened? Unfortunately, this question will remain unanswered. The story has already been written – innocent blood was shed and the murderers were unpunished in this lifetime.
I think this book is a must-read for all Namibians, as it is a history of our people. Not only that, I think the authors formed a solid argument that this book should be read by readers from all nations. What happened in South West Africa is not an isolated incident, but it had a profound effect on the story of the 20th century. The book does not argue that without German South West Africa and the other colonies, the atrocities committed by the Nazis would not have happened. Instead, it argues that we cannot talk about the development of Nazi dogma and its conclusion in the Holocaust without mentioning the colonies of the Second Reich, and it is for this reason that I think this book is a must-read.
Personally, I really enjoyed reading this book. It kept me captivated throughout, but also left me with a feeling of sadness because not only did a majority of the Nama and Herero perish at the hands of the Germans, but I did not even learn about this at school. What is our school system teaching? I have asked several people around me whether they learned about it in school and very few say that they did. In fact, the overwhelming majority say that they did not. I understand that the older generation, who grew up during Apartheid, did not learn about it because the Apartheid regime operated under very similar beliefs as the Germans, but what about the younger generation? Why do we not learn about this? Why do I only hear about it in connection with money and reparations? Why can we not learn about it for its own sake? It is an important part of our history, and it should not be hidden.
I also felt a sense of pride reading about Henrik Witbooi, Jacob Morenga, Samuel Maharero, and many others. They were leaders who proved that the paternalistic justification for imperialism is a sham. Africans are not children who need to be coddled. Africa is a continent with many tribes and languages – a place with history and culture. Africa is potential – a land of milk and honey, but it is also a land that has been ravaged and pilfered. These Namibian heroes were tricked into thinking that they were fighting against fellow humans. They were tricked into thinking that their values in warfare would be the same values that their enemy would abide by. They did not know that they were fighting against Social Darwinists, who believed that weaker races had to be eliminated. One question that remains seared in my mind is what would have happened if they only knew who they were fighting? Could they have defeated the Germans or would Germany have applied all its military might to quench a resistance in land that was not their own? What would have happened? Unfortunately, this question will remain unanswered. The story has already been written – innocent blood was shed and the murderers were unpunished in this lifetime.
I think this book is a must-read for all Namibians, as it is a history of our people. Not only that, I think the authors formed a solid argument that this book should be read by readers from all nations. What happened in South West Africa is not an isolated incident, but it had a profound effect on the story of the 20th century. The book does not argue that without German South West Africa and the other colonies, the atrocities committed by the Nazis would not have happened. Instead, it argues that we cannot talk about the development of Nazi dogma and its conclusion in the Holocaust without mentioning the colonies of the Second Reich, and it is for this reason that I think this book is a must-read.
April 4, 2018
Reading "The Kaiser's Holocaust" was one of the most enriching literary experiences I have ever had. This was probably because I read it during a 10-day trip through Namibia, so I could actually visit a lot of the places referenced in the book and could also get a feel of the indelible marks that German colonialism has left on the country and its people.
I found out so much about a period of history that I knew next to nothing about and was stunned to see how the heinous Second Reich colonial regime in South-West Africa was at the origin of practices and theories that are now almost exclusively associated with the Nazi Third Reich (e.g. concentration camps, the Lebensraum concept, white supremacy, anti-miscegenation laws). I shuddered to read how the Schutztruppe casually decided to eliminate an entire people with the utmost cruelty; the Vernichtungsbefehl given by General Lothar von Trotha in 1904 stated that: "I believe that the nation as such should be annihilated . . . I find it most appropriate that the nation perishes instead of infecting our soldiers and diminishing their supplies of water and food". A forgotten genocide indeed.
This as much a book about little-known monsters such as Curt von François and Lothar von Trotha, as it is about little-known heroes like Nama leader Hendrik Witbooi and Herero leader Samuel Maharero. Their stories should be better know by non-Namibians and I am grateful to the authors for this book that aims to ensure precisely that.
I found out so much about a period of history that I knew next to nothing about and was stunned to see how the heinous Second Reich colonial regime in South-West Africa was at the origin of practices and theories that are now almost exclusively associated with the Nazi Third Reich (e.g. concentration camps, the Lebensraum concept, white supremacy, anti-miscegenation laws). I shuddered to read how the Schutztruppe casually decided to eliminate an entire people with the utmost cruelty; the Vernichtungsbefehl given by General Lothar von Trotha in 1904 stated that: "I believe that the nation as such should be annihilated . . . I find it most appropriate that the nation perishes instead of infecting our soldiers and diminishing their supplies of water and food". A forgotten genocide indeed.
This as much a book about little-known monsters such as Curt von François and Lothar von Trotha, as it is about little-known heroes like Nama leader Hendrik Witbooi and Herero leader Samuel Maharero. Their stories should be better know by non-Namibians and I am grateful to the authors for this book that aims to ensure precisely that.
October 29, 2018
Informative and at times alarming read of an oft-overlooked episode in colonial history. The events in Namibia in the early 1900s were eventually whitewashed from much of the official history and record-keeping of the era, but clearly the colonial experience in Namibia was a precursor of what followed during WWII.
To quote one of the final passages from the book:
'So much of what took place in German South-West Africa at the beginning of the twentieth century horribly prefigures the events of the 1940s: concentration camps, the bureaucratisation of killing, meticulous record-keeping of death tolls and death rates, the use of work as a means of extermination, civilians transported in cattle trucks then worked to death, their remains experimented upon by race scientists, and the identification of ethnic groups who had a future as slaves and those who had no future of any sort. All were features of the German South-West African genocides that were replicated in different forms and on a much vaster scale in Europe in the 1940s.'
To quote one of the final passages from the book:
'So much of what took place in German South-West Africa at the beginning of the twentieth century horribly prefigures the events of the 1940s: concentration camps, the bureaucratisation of killing, meticulous record-keeping of death tolls and death rates, the use of work as a means of extermination, civilians transported in cattle trucks then worked to death, their remains experimented upon by race scientists, and the identification of ethnic groups who had a future as slaves and those who had no future of any sort. All were features of the German South-West African genocides that were replicated in different forms and on a much vaster scale in Europe in the 1940s.'
May 15, 2025
I was really impressed by the first part of this book and the level of detail the authors gave to helping readers understand southwest Africa before the Germans arrived and then the brutal tactics they used to rob the Herero, Nama, and others of their livelihoods, leading up to the Germans use of concentration camps and other methods to eliminate any African presence to create 'lebensraum' decades before Hitler's use of the term. The authors then do an excellent job of connecting these colonial endeavors to the Holocaust and Nazi occupation of eastern Europe, not just philosophically, but also through the people involved in both movements and the longing that Nazi leaders had to recover their 'lost' colonial holdings.
August 17, 2025
The first use of the German word for concentration camp, "Konzentrationslager", was not during the 1930s, but in the early 20th century in Namibia. This book uses eyewitness accounts and archival material to learn how the German Kaiser's colonisation project in West Africa had at its heart a genocidal project rooted in a racist ideology that informed and inspired Hitler's vision of Lebensraum in Eastern Europe. Some of those who organised death camps in Namibia, went on to play key roles in the rise of the Nazis and fascist rule. It's a brilliantly written book that places the Namibian Herero people and Nama people at the centre of the story, including their brave and powerful resistance to the German military.
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