Mapping the Herero and Nama Genocide

From 1904-1907 German colonizers carried out a brutal and calculated destruction of the Herero and Nama peoples in present-day Namibia. War broke out in 1904, after an alleged uprising of the Herero people. The war culminated in an official extermination order by the leader of the German Colonial forces. German soldiers then drove the Herero people into the Omaheke desert with the intent of killing every man, woman, and child. In the following years, the remaining Herero people and the Nama people were captured by German soldiers and put into prison camps. Here, under inhumane conditions, the Herero and Nama people continued to die at alarming rates. This resulted in the annihilation of approximately 80% of the Herero population and 50% of the Nama population, or between 70,000 to 100,000 people  [1] . The actions of the Colonial German forces fully qualify as genocide under the current international laws  [2] . Descendants of surviving Herero and Nama still feel the effects of the genocide today, in their ongoing struggle to demand reparations from Germany.

Existing documentation complicates our understanding of the full extent of the genocide. Many records of deaths and conditions were either not kept or were destroyed. This story was forgotten by the world for many decades. However, it has recently started to receive some of the attention it deserves. In 1985, the Whitaker Report on the Question of the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, a major document produced by the United Nations, determined that the events constituted as genocide  [3] . Germany formally acknowledged the atrocities as a genocide in 2015  [4] .

Throughout this report, GIS mapping will illustrate the way that this genocide was directly influenced by geography. The colonial German forces used genocide as a means to gain valuable, arable land that would benefit the economic development of Germany. This was land that had long sustained the Herero and Nama and were central parts of their community and their cultural and religious traditions. When war and brutality were not enough to bring the land under German control, colonial leadership turned to genocide. In the execution of the genocide, German colonial forces used the geography and topography of Namibia as a tool for extermination. Based on their knowledge of the Namibian landscape, the Germans determined that the harsh conditions of the desert itself could be used to ensure the destruction of Herero and Nama people. In the prison camps, death rates were higher in locations with more extreme conditions along the coast. The forced labor of prisoners was used to develop the land in Namibia, establishing new farmland and railroads that created a network of people and products throughout Namibia that still exists today.

 [1]  UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK v. FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY, Civ. No. 17-0062 (NY, 2018)

 [2]  UN General Assembly, Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, 9 December 1948, United Nations, Treaty Series, vol. 78, p. 277, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/3ae6b3ac0.html [accessed 10 December 2019]

 [3]  “Whitaker Report on Genocide, 1985 - Prevent Genocide International.” Accessed November 20, 2019.  http://www.preventgenocide.org/prevent/UNdocs/whitaker/ .

 [4]  UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK v. FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY, Civ. No. 17-0062 (NY, 2018)

The Herero and Nama peoples were two of many groups occupying the land that is present day Namibia. Hereroland or Damaraland was located in the north and Great Namaqualand to the south, according to a 19th century map . Livestock, in particular cattle herding, was their primary economic base. It also served as the foundation for political, cultural, and social institutions  [1] .

The Herero lived as pastoralists, who would move as the seasons and the needs of their herds changed. They were governed by local leaders who were elected by one central council of elders. Their religion was focused on the all-powerful deity Ndjambi, with whom no direct contact could be made. Instead the Herero communicated their prayers to Ndjambi through their ancestors, and thus knowledge of ancestry was essential to the Herero. In every village, sacred fires were lit and left permanently burning to symbolize the connection between the worlds of the living and the dead  [2] .

The Nama moved north into the territory of what is today known as Namibia from the south in the early 19th century. Their society was the product of the 18th century Dutch Cape Colony. They had rejected the idea of enslavement or indentured servitude in the Boer society, and instead branched out on their own. They brought with them guns and horses and settled along the Orange river. They formed 12 clans under the leadership of Kapiteins, a word borrowed from the Dutch. Many, including Hendrick Witbooi who was the leader of the most powerful clan, were Christian  [3] .

 [1]  Olusoga, David, and Casper W. Erichsen. The Kaiser’s Holocaust: Germany’s Forgotten Genocide and the Colonial Roots of Nazism. London: Faber and Faber, 2010.

 [2]  Olusoga, David, and Casper W. Erichsen. The Kaiser’s Holocaust: Germany’s Forgotten Genocide and the Colonial Roots of Nazism. London: Faber and Faber, 2010 (21).

 [3]  Olusoga, David, and Casper W. Erichsen. The Kaiser’s Holocaust: Germany’s Forgotten Genocide and the Colonial Roots of Nazism. London: Faber and Faber, 2010 (22-24)

In pursuit of power and cultural dominance, the Germans sought out land in present day Namibia to colonize. The first German to land in Namibia was Heinrich Vogelsang, who arrived in 1883 and negotiated with the Bethanie Nama for a small piece of coastal land [1] . By 1885, after the Berlin Conference in which European colonizing powers partitioned Africa, the Germans became the official colonizers of what they called “German South West Africa” [2] . In an attempt to secure land to begin farms and settlements, the Germans entered into several contracts with the Herero and Nama peoples [3] .

However, the Germans were quick to break the treaties, and instead used violence to take more and more land from the Herero and Nama people. From 1885 to 1903 the German colonists took over a quarter of the Herero and Nama land. Soldiars murdered, burned, raped, and stole livestock. By 1903, the Herero and Nama lost hundreds of thousands of livestock along with their land, which caused irreparable harm to their way of life  [4] .

The following is a passage from a song sung by German soldiers called a Reiterlied. These lyrics demonstrate the romanticized way the soldiers viewed the landscape, the wild animals, and their "homeland". It also demonstrates the lack of respect they held for the people through the use of the derogatory term "Hottentot" and the demeaning description of women.

The kudu and the wildbeest, the gemsbok and the ostrich, I shoo them out of the rift and shoot them for a feast. Among the Hottentot, Hereros, I find a thousand women and yet I only long to be with my sweetheart

Through mountain and valley, up and down; I ride away and away; up and down in step and trot; from place to place; even the gallop I don’t avoid; free is [die Pas] in front of me; yet only when the homeland is in sight, will I stop [5]

 [1]  Olusoga, David, and Casper W. Erichsen. The Kaiser’s Holocaust: Germany’s Forgotten Genocide and the Colonial Roots of Nazism. London: Faber and Faber, 2010

 [2]  Reid, Richard J., and Inc ebrary. A History of Modern Africa: 1800 to the Present. Wiley-Blackwell, Malden, MA, 2012.

 [3]  UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK v. FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY, Civ. No. 17-0062 (NY, 2018)

 [4]  UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK v. FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY, Civ. No. 17-0062 (NY, 2018)

 [5]  Dincklage-Campe, Friedrich Freiherr von. Deutsche Reiter in Südwest: Selbsterlebnisse aus den Kämpfen in Deutsch-Südwestafrika: nach Persönlichen Berichten. Berlin; Leipzig; Wien; Stuttgart: Bong, 1908.  http://tinyurl.gale.com/tinyurl/BzJKu0 . (410)

Tensions between the Herero and the Germans came to a boiling point in January of 1904, when the first shots of war were fired in in  Okahandja , just North of the capital city of  Windhoek . The city was considered to be a holy spiritual center by the Herero, but the Germans had also established their own fort in the area. The Germans had barricaded themselves in their fortress and called reinforcements to Okahandja. The Herero saw the actions of the Germans as hostile and provocative and felt that they had to become responsive in order to defend themselves. The Germans saw this as an uprising of the Herero people [1] . 

A new German General, Lothar Von Trotha, was brought to Namibia after several months of sporadic fighting in June where the Herero were often victorious. He stated:

“I know enough tribes in Africa. They have the same mentality insofar as they only yield to force. It was and remains my policy to apply this force by absolute terrorism and even cruelty. I shall destroy the rebellious tribes by shedding rivers of blood and money”.[2]

He established martial law and planned battle against the Herero who he described as non-human [Unmenschen] in his diary. He planned to attack the largest encampment of Herero, around 50,000, at Otjozondjupa or  Waterberg . Waterberg was a place of deep cultural importance: it was the site of the Herero’s creation myth and the last major source of water to the east before large expanses of desert. In August 1904, Von Trotha and an army of 6,000 attacked and the Herero were funneled into the  Omaheke desert  where they fled. Von Trotha then ordered all watering holes to be cut off [3] . Hendrik Fraser later recounted that

“All the water-holes on the desert border were poisoned by the Germans before they returned. The result was that fugitives who came to drink the water either died of poisoning or, if they did not taste the water, they died of thirst”[4].

In this instance, the Germans used their knowledge of the landscape of Namibia to orchestrate their plan. The desert itself became a tool of genocide.

Six weeks after the battle of Waterberg, German troops reached the last waterhole in the desert [5]. Here, General Von Trotha issued an extermination order [vernichtungsbefehl] on October 2, 1904[6]. He wrote:

“Every Herero, with or without a gun, with or without cattle, will be shot. I will no longer accept women and children…These are my words to the Herero people.”

He wrote down the proclamation and tied it to the necks of their prisoners and sent them into the Omaheke. He then sent out “cleansing patrols” [Aufklaerungspatrouillen] to kill any Herero they could find [7].

 [1]  Olusoga, David, and Casper W. Erichsen. The Kaiser’s Holocaust: Germany’s Forgotten Genocide and the Colonial Roots of Nazism. London: Faber and Faber, 2010

 [2]  Silvester, Jeremy, and Jan-Bart Gewald. Words Cannot Be Found: German Colonial Rule in Namibia: An Annotated Reprint of the 1918 Blue Book. Leiden: Brill, 2003.

 [3]  Olusoga, David, and Casper W. Erichsen. The Kaiser’s Holocaust: Germany’s Forgotten Genocide and the Colonial Roots of Nazism. London: Faber and Faber, 2010

 [4]  Silvester, Jeremy, and Jan-Bart Gewald. Words Cannot Be Found: German Colonial Rule in Namibia: An Annotated Reprint of the 1918 Blue Book. Leiden: Brill, 2003.

 [5]  Olusoga, David, and Casper W. Erichsen. The Kaiser’s Holocaust: Germany’s Forgotten Genocide and the Colonial Roots of Nazism. London: Faber and Faber, 2010

 [6]  D. Stone (2001) White men with low moral standards? German anthropology and the Herero genocide, Patterns of Prejudice, 35:2, 33-45, DOI: 10.1080/003132201128811133

 [7]  Olusoga, David, and Casper W. Erichsen. The Kaiser’s Holocaust: Germany’s Forgotten Genocide and the Colonial Roots of Nazism. London: Faber and Faber, 2010

The Nama, who were subject to many of the same abuses as the Herero, were not part of the first uprising. However, when some Nama men witnessed the battle at Waterberg and the German’s unparalleled brutality in the murder of the Herero people, they decided to rise up against the colonial rule in October around the same time as the extermination order was issued. The Nama and Germans had fought each other in the southern regions for seven months before Von Trotha issued a new declaration using a derogatory term for Southern African peoples, “Hottentot”, to refer to the Nama  [1] . On April 23, 1905 he told the Nama soldiers:

“The great and mighty German Emperor is prepared to pardon the Hottentot people and has ordered that all those who surrender voluntarily will be spared… I announce this to you and those few refusing to surrender will suffer the same fate suffered by the Herero people who, in their blindness believed that they could successfully wage war against the mighty German emperor and the great German people. I ask you: where are the Herero people today? Where are their chiefs today?” [2]

However, the Nama did not surrender and that summer, Von Trotha began to lose power and popularity among the German people. In November of 1905, Von Trotha left Namibia and was replaced by General Von Lindequist. Although the Nama had been fighting for a year and had lost their leader, they continued for fear for what had happened to the Herero  [3] .

 [1]  Olusoga, David, and Casper W. Erichsen. The Kaiser’s Holocaust: Germany’s Forgotten Genocide and the Colonial Roots of Nazism. London: Faber and Faber, 2010

 [2]  Olusoga, David, and Casper W. Erichsen. The Kaiser’s Holocaust: Germany’s Forgotten Genocide and the Colonial Roots of Nazism. London: Faber and Faber, 2010

 [3]  Olusoga, David, and Casper W. Erichsen. The Kaiser’s Holocaust: Germany’s Forgotten Genocide and the Colonial Roots of Nazism. London: Faber and Faber, 2010

With the German colonial military under new leadership, policy against Herero and Nama went from one of extermination to one of forced labor in prison camps  [1] . However, this was not the end of the death and suffering of the Herero and Nama. Cleansing patrols had new orders to take Herero as prisoners instead of murdering them. Patrols brought prisoners into collection camps in Omburo and  Otjihaenena   [2] . From there, they shipped prisoners off in open train cars or forced them to march to prison camps  [3] .

In February 1906, just as Herero were being sent to the prison camps, the Germans convinced the last of the Nama who were still fighting to surrender with promises of generous terms and humane treatment. They were told to come to the city of Windhoek in order to receive food provisions, but it was all a ploy by the Germans. Nearly 2,000 Nama marched 200 miles from the city of  Gibeon  in the South to Windhoek in order to claim these provisions. They were unaware that they were actually marching into a trap. German soldiers captured them upon arrival and forced them into a prison camp where they would join 4,000 Herero already there. Upon their capture, Von Lindequist told the Nama that they were being punished alongside the Herero for their “crimes” and that they would be forced to work  [4] . 

 [1]  Olusoga, David, and Casper W. Erichsen. The Kaiser’s Holocaust: Germany’s Forgotten Genocide and the Colonial Roots of Nazism. London: Faber and Faber, 2010

 [2]  UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK v. FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY, Civ. No. 17-0062 (NY, 2018)

 [3]  Many people today choose to refer to these camps as concentration camps, however after reading - Hull, Isabel V.. Absolute Destruction : Military Culture and the Practices of War in Imperial Germany, Cornell University Press, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central,  http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/pitt-ebooks/detail.action?docID=3138447 . Created from pitt-ebooks on 2019-12-10 15:36:47. (73) - I decided to choose the term prison camps. The term “concentration camp” had been used in the colonial context to mean internment camp, but the term took on new meaning during the holocaust. Because of this, I think it is best to use other words to describe what was happening in German South-West Africa.

 [4]  Olusoga, David, and Casper W. Erichsen. The Kaiser’s Holocaust: Germany’s Forgotten Genocide and the Colonial Roots of Nazism. London: Faber and Faber, 2010 (200-203)

The prison camps were set up as sites of forced labor, each placed by a colonial settlement where the need for labor was most pressing. Men, women and children were forced to do intensive hard labor farming and building houses, railroads and seaports for the German people. The Germans did not give them enough food, provided very little clothing, did not provide adequate shelter, and beat the prisoners regularly [1] . Mortality rates were extremely high due to the forced starvation and exhaustion as well as disease. The five main camps were in Karibib, Okjahandja, Windhoek, Swakopmund, and Shark Island. While Windhoek was the largest camp, Swakopmund and Shark Island were the deadliest because the very low costal temperatures caused sickness and disease [2] .

A German missionary named Heinrich Vedder expressed his shock and distress at the conditions created by the German soldiers at the Swakopmund camp when he described the conditions:

“Vast transports of prisoners of war arrived. They were placed behind double rows of barbed wire fencing… and housed in pathetic, structures constructed out of simple sacking and planks, in such a manner that in one structure 30 - 50 people were forced to stay without distinction as to age and sex. From early morning until late at night, on weekdays as well as on Sundays and holidays, they had to work under the clubs of brutal overseers [Knutteln roher Aufseher], until they broke down [zusammenbrachen]… Like cattle hundreds were driven to death and like cattle they were buried.”[3]

The Germans forced many Herero and Nama to work for private companies or farms, which also operated as labor camps [4] . Those who the German’s forced to work on the railways were put into “mobile pens” which were moved along with the progress of the track while they were not working [5] . One company charged with building the railroads admitted that in the course of 18 months, 1,359 of their 2,014 prisoners had died, at a death rate of 67.48% [6] . Of the approximately 14,769 Herero and 2,000 Nama people forcibly trapped in the prison camps, a total of 7,682 died between October 1904 and March 1907, a mortality rate of approximately 50 percent [7] .

 [1]  UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK v. FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY, Civ. No. 17-0062 (NY, 2018)

 [2]  Olusoga, David, and Casper W. Erichsen. The Kaiser’s Holocaust: Germany’s Forgotten Genocide and the Colonial Roots of Nazism. London: Faber and Faber, 2010

 [3]  Silvester, Jeremy, and Jan-Bart Gewald. Words Cannot Be Found: German Colonial Rule in Namibia: An Annotated Reprint of the 1918 Blue Book. Leiden: Brill, 2003.

 [4]  Hull, Isabel V.. Absolute Destruction : Military Culture and the Practices of War in Imperial Germany, Cornell University Press, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central,  http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/pitt-ebooks/detail.action?docID=3138447 . Created from pitt-ebooks on 2019-12-10 15:40:32.(74)

 [5]  Olusoga, David, and Casper W. Erichsen. The Kaiser’s Holocaust: Germany’s Forgotten Genocide and the Colonial Roots of Nazism. London: Faber and Faber, 2010 (204)

 [6]  Olusoga, David, and Casper W. Erichsen. The Kaiser’s Holocaust: Germany’s Forgotten Genocide and the Colonial Roots of Nazism. London: Faber and Faber, 2010

 [7]  UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK v. FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY, Civ. No. 17-0062 (NY, 2018)

The Shark Island prison camp was started by the German colonial government in early 1905. This camp was particularly deadly because prisoners, who were provided with very little shelter or clothing, were surrounded on all sides by harsh sea winds. The prisoners were forced to carry heavy boulders across the island and into the cold water in order to build the necessary foundations for a port. The Germans forced them to spend several hours wading in this freezing water, and no relief in terms of food or warmth was provided at the end of the day  [1] .

It was later reported by an eyewitness that:

“The women who are captured and not executed are set to work for the military as prisoners. They saw numbers of them at Angra Pequena [Luderitzbucht] put to the hardest work, and so starved that they were nothing but skin and bones. You will see them carrying very heavy loads on their heads along the shore in connection with the harbour works, and they are made to work until they fall down. While I was there, there were five or six deaths every day. The other women have to bury them. They are made to work till they die. All they have on is a blanket. If one falls down of sheer exhaustion as they constantly do, they are sjambokked.”[2]

*The sjambok was a whip that the Germans used to punish prisoners in the camp  [3] .

Shark Island was also the site of medical experimentation and eugenics research. At this point in time, the body parts trade had become increasingly common and postcards were even made showing bones being shipped off to Europe. In June 1905, anthropologist Felix von Lushan requested more skulls for his research into race. After this, the shipment of skulls and dissection of bodies at Shark Island became a scientific enterprise for those studying eugenics, race, anthropology and evolution. Dr. Eugen Fisher, who was one of the most influential racial scientists in Germany also used the heads of the Herero and Nama for his research in Germany. Dr. Bofinger was the doctor who worked at the Shark Island camp infirmary. His primary work there involved dissecting bodies of prisoners in order to research scurvy. All the prisoners feared him and the infirmary where he worked  [4] . A total of 778 Herero and Nama bodies were dissected in post-mortems for medical research  [5] . It was unclear in my research how many heads from shark island were sent abroad for research.

 [1]  Olusoga, David, and Casper W. Erichsen. The Kaiser’s Holocaust: Germany’s Forgotten Genocide and the Colonial Roots of Nazism. London: Faber and Faber, 2010

 [2]  Silvester, Jeremy, and Jan-Bart Gewald. Words Cannot Be Found: German Colonial Rule in Namibia: An Annotated Reprint of the 1918 Blue Book. Leiden: Brill, 2003. (333)

 [3]  Silvester, Jeremy, and Jan-Bart Gewald. Words Cannot Be Found: German Colonial Rule in Namibia: An Annotated Reprint of the 1918 Blue Book. Leiden: Brill, 2003.

 [4]  Olusoga, David, and Casper W. Erichsen. The Kaiser’s Holocaust: Germany’s Forgotten Genocide and the Colonial Roots of Nazism. London: Faber and Faber, 2010

 [5] UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK v. FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY, Civ. No. 17-0062 (NY, 2018)

[Bley, Helmut. Namibia under German Rule. Hamburg: LIT, 1996 (xxiv, xxv)]

When Shark Island was closed in April 1907, only 573 of thousands of prisoners survived, 123 of whom were fatally ill  [1] . The last prisoners were formally released on the Kaisers birthday in January 1908  [2] . The surviving Herero and Nama were forced into indentured servitude and slavery and sent to German settlers, merchants, farmers, the military, shipping companies, mining companies, and railroad companies in Namibia. The Herero and Nama people were also prohibited from owning land or livestock, both of which were necessary for survival. Other survivors had escaped to Botswana during the war.

 [1]  Bachmann, Klaus. Genocidal Empires: German Colonialism in Africa and the Third Reich, 2018.  http://public.eblib.com/choice/publicfullrecord.aspx?p=5415310 .

 [2]  Olusoga, David, and Casper W. Erichsen. The Kaiser’s Holocaust: Germany’s Forgotten Genocide and the Colonial Roots of Nazism. London: Faber and Faber, 2010

Today, there are still Herero and Nama people living in Namibia and around the world. Several Herero groups both in Namibia and abroad have recently been involved in legal battles with Germany in an attempt to get reparations for the Genocide. Skulls that were exported for research purposes have become key point of tension because of their symbolic representation of violence. Museums in Berlin, Hamburg, and New York still hold the skulls of the Herero and Nama people. The Herero and Nama are seeking repatriation of these skulls. The Berlin Museum of Medical History of the Charité has repatriated 20 skulls to Namibia, but the rest remain abroad. A ceremony was held in Windhoek for the repatriated skulls, which are now on display in the National Museum of Namibia. They were not buried because it is against Herero tradition to bury and incomplete skeleton [1] . 

 [1]  The National. “Namibian Skulls, More than a Century Old, Repatriated.” Accessed December 1, 2019.  https://www.thenational.ae/world/europe/namibian-skulls-more-than-a-century-old-repatriated-1.468421 

Many decedents of the surviving Herero and Nama people have been deeply committed to seeking reparations from the German government and to making the world aware of the suffering that their ancestors endured at the hand of German colonizers. This recognition is important both to honor the memory of those who died, and because it exposes the truth of the brutality of colonization which continues to effect the world today.

Below is a trailer for the film Skulls of My People, which tells the story of the Genocide. It was created by South African director, Vincent Moloi.