The eyewitness testimonies of Germany’s brutal attempted extermination of the Herero and Namaqua people remind us that genocide is the norm of European “civilization.”
The appalling response of the German state to the genocide in Gaza — full military support for the zionist entity while arresting, censuring, and banning pro-Palestinian protestors, many of them Jews — recalls Aime Cesaire’s comments on European “civilization.” For Cesaire, European civilization was anything but civilized. Indeed, in his classic anti-colonial tract Discourse on Colonialism (1955), Cesaire argued that European civilization was bound up with European colonialism; the savagery and brutality of European colonialism — in Africa, the Americas, or Asia — was the banal, unremarkable ground on which Europe’s vaunted culture was built. Cesaire argues that the figure of Hitler, and the atrocities committed by the Nazis, were the norm of European civilization. Hitler only appeared as an exceptional figure because his genocidal methods were applied in Europe, to Europeans.
Yet we know that the genocide in Europe was not the first genocide of the twentieth century. Before the genocide perpetrated by the Nazis, there was the German genocide of the Herero and Nama in German Southwest Africa (GSWA), in what is now Namibia. Perpetrated from 1904 to 1908, this was the first genocide of the twentieth century, and its victims were Africans.
German colonization of Africa (of Togoland, the Cameroons, Tanganyika, and Southwest Africa) began soon after Germany hosted the notorious 1885 Berlin Conference. For the next two decades, Germany seized African lands and livestock and displaced the indigenous people, forcing them to work as slaves on plantations and servants for the white settler population. In January, 1904, the Herero population, led by Chief Samuel Maharero, rebelled against the German colonizers. After the initial successes of the insurgency, German military forces slowly began to crush the rebellion. The German counter-insurgency campaign took a decisive turn with the arrival in June 1904 of Lieutenant General Lothar von Trotha, appointed Supreme Commander of GSWA, backed by 14,000 German troops armed with rifles, cannons, and Gatling guns. Von Trotha issued a vernichtungsbefehl -- an “extermination order” – that called for the annihilation of all Hereros:
“I, the great general of the German soldiers, send this letter to the Hereros. The Hereros are German subjects no longer. … The Herero nation must now leave the country. If it refuses, I shall compel it to do so with the ‘long tube’ (cannon). Any Herero found inside the German frontier, with or without a gun or cattle, will be executed. I shall spare neither women nor children. I shall give the order to drive them away and fire on them. Such are my words to the Herero people.”
The execution of von Trotha’s extermination order was happily embraced by the German soldiers. They embarked on a campaign of mass murder and starvation, killing with glee Herero men, women, children, and the elderly. The details are horrific but, again, sadly, not exceptional: they recall a long history of European savagery – from the butchery of the indigenous people of the Americas by the Spanish after 1492 to the massacres of the Palestinians by the US and European-backed zionists in 2024. There are very few years in between when Europe was not embroiled in a bloody, annihilationist frenzy against nonwhite Others. In this case, between 1904 and 1907, somewhere between 50,000 and 65,000 Herero and 10,000 Nama people were slaughtered by the Germans.
Below, we reprint eye-witness testimony of the German attempts to exterminate the Herero. Be forewarned: the testimonies make for grim, disturbing, reading. Yet the testimonies remind us of Aime Cesaire’s words that the civilized European, “has a Hitler inside him, that Hitler inhabits him, that Hitler is his demon.” We can also say that “civilized Europeans also have a Von Trotha inside them.” It is a fact of which the Herero and Nama, like the Palestinians, are all too aware.
How the Hereros Were Exterminated
The following are statements by Hereros as to their treatment during the rising.
Daniel Kariko (Under-Chief of Omaruru):
The result of this war is known to everyone. Our people, men, women and children were shot like dogs and wild animals. Our people have disappeared now. I see only a few left; their cattle and sheep are gone too, and all our land is owned by the Germans … after the fight at Waterberg we asked for peace; but von Trotha said there would only be peace when we were all dead, as he intended to exterminate us. I fled to the desert with a few remnants of my stock and managed more dead than alive to get away far north. I turned to the west and placed myself under the protection of the Ovambo chief Uejulu, who knew that I was a big man among the Hereros … in 1915 they told me that the British were in Hereroland, and I hurried down to meet them… I was allowed to return to Hereroland after 10 years of exile.
Hosea Mungunda (Headman of the Hereros at Windhuk):
We were crushed and well-nigh exterminated by the Germans in the rising. With the exception of Samuel Maharero, Mutati, Traugott, Tjetjoo, Hosea and Kaijata (who fled to British territory) all our big chiefs and leaders died or were killed in the rising, and also the great majority of our people. All our cattle were lost and all other possessions such as wagons and sheep. At first the Germans took prisoners, but when General von Trotha took command no prisoners were taken. General von Trotha said, “No one is to live; men, women and children must all die.” We can’t say how many were killed.
Samuel Kariko (son of Daniel Kariko, formerly Secretary to time OmaruruChief):
A new General named von Trotha came, and he ordered that all Hereros were to be exterminated, regardless of age or sex. It was then that the wholesale slaughter of our people began. That was towards the end of 1904. Our people had already been defeated in battle, and we had no more ammunition … we saw we were beaten and asked for peace, but the German General refused peace and said all should die. We then fled towards the Sandfeld of the Kalahari Desert. Those of our people who escaped the bullets and bayonets died miserably of hunger and thirst in the desert. A few thousand managed to turn back and sneak through the German lines to where there were water and roots and berries to live on.
A few examples of how the Germans “helped the Hereros to die” now follow
Manuel Timbu (Cape Bastard), at present Court Interpreter in native languages at Omaruru, states under oath:
I was sent to Okahandja and appointed groom to the German commander, General von Trotha. I had to look after his horses and to do odd jobs at his headquarters. We followed the retreating Hereros from Okahandja to Waterberg, and from there to the borders of the Kalahari Desert. When leaving Okahandja, General von Trotha issued orders to his troops that no quarter was to be given to the enemy. No prisoners were to be taken, but all, regardless of age or sex, were to be killed. General von Trotha said, “We must exterminate them, so that we won’t be bothered with rebellions in the future.” As a result of this order the soldiers shot all natives we came across. It did not matter who they were. Some were peaceful people who had not gone into rebellion; others, such as old men and old women, had never left their homes; yet these were all shot. I often saw this done. Once while on the march near Hamakari beyond theWaterberg, we came to some water-holes. It was winter time and very cold. We came on two very old Herero women. They had made a small fire and were warming themselves. They had dropped back from the main body of Hereros owing to exhaustion. Von Trotha and his staff were present. A German soldier dismounted, walked up to the old women and shot them both as they lay there. Riding along we got to a vlei [a shallow minor lake, mostly of a seasonal or intermittent nature], where we camped. While we were there a Herero woman came walking up to us from the bush. I was the Herero interpreter. I was told to take the woman to the General to see if she could give information as to the whereabouts of the enemy.
I took her to General von Trotha; she was quite a young woman and looked tired and hungry. Von Trotha asked her several questions, but she did not seem inclined to give information. She said her people had all gone towards the east, but as she was a weak woman she could not keep up with them. Von Trotha then ordered that she should be taken aside and bayoneted. I took the woman away and a soldier came up with his bayonet in his hand. He offered it to me and said I had better stab the woman. I said I would never dream of doing such a thing and asked why the poor woman could not be allowed to live. The soldier laughed, and said. “If you won t do it, I will show you what a German soldier can do.” He took the woman aside a few paces and drove the bayonet, through her body. He then withdrew the bayonet and brought it. all dripping with blood and poked it under my nose in a jeering way, saying, “You see, I have done it.” Officers and soldiers were standing around looking on, but no one interfered to save the woman. Her body was not buried, but, like all others they killed, simply allowed to lie and rot and be eaten by wild animals.
A little further ahead we came to a place where the Hereros had abandoned some goats which were too weak to go further. There was no water to be had for miles around. There we found a young Herero, a boy of about 10 years of age. He had apparently lost his people. As we passed he called out to us that he was hungry and very thirsty. I would have given him something. but was forbidden to do so. The Germans discussed the advisability of killing him, and someone said that he would die of thirst in a day or so and it was not worth while bothering, so they passed on and left him there. On our return journey we again halted at Hamakari. There, near a hut, we saw an old Herero woman of about 50 or 60 years digging in the ground for wild onions. Von Trotha and his staff were present. A soldier named Konig jumped off his horse and shot the woman through the forehead at point blank range. Before he shot her, he said, “I am going to kill you,” She simply looked up and said, “ I thank you.” That night we slept at Hamakari. The next day we moved off again and came across another woman of about 30. She was also busy digging for wild onions and took no notice of us. A soldier named Schilling walked up behind her and shot her through the back. I was an eye-witness of everything I have related. In addition I saw the bleeding bodies of hundreds of men, women and children, old and young, lying along the roads as we passed. They had all been killed by our advance guards. I was for nearly two years with the German troops and always with General von Trotha. I know of no instance in which prisoners were spared.
Jan Cloete (Bastard), of Omaruru, states under oath :
I was in Omaruru in 1904. I was commandeered by the Germans to act as a guide for them to the Waterberg district, as I knew the country well. I was with the 4th Field Company under Hauptmann Richardt. The commander of the troops was General von Trotha. I was present at Hamakari, near Waterberg when the Hereros were defeated in a battle. After the battle, all men, women and children, wounded and unwounded, who fell into the hands of the Germans were killed withôut mercy. The Germans then pursued the others, and all stragglers on the roadside and in the veld [a flat grassland] were shot down and bayoneted. The great majority of the Herero men were unarmed and could make no fight. They were merely trying to get away with their cattle. Some distance beyond Hamakari we camped at a water-hole. While there, a German soldier found a little Herero baby boy about nine months old lying in the bush. The child was crying. He brought it into the camp where I was. The soldiers formed a ring and started throwing the child to one another and catching it as if it were a ball. The child was terrified and hurt and was crying very much. After a time they got tired of this and one of the soldiers fixed his bayonet on his rifle and said he would catch the baby. The child was tossed into the air towards him and as it fell he caught it and transfixed the body with the bayonet. The child died in a few minutes and the incident was greeted with roars of laughter by the Germans, who seemed to think it was a great joke. I felt quite ill and turned away in disgust because, although I knew they had orders to kill all, I thought they would have pity on the child. I decided to go no further, as the horrible things I saw upset me, so I pretended that I was ill, and as the Captain got ill too and had to return, I was ordered to go back with him as guide. After I got home I flatly refused to go out with the soldiers again.
Johannes Kruger (appointed by Leutwein as “ chief ” of the Bushmen and Berg- Damaras of Grootfontein area), a Bastard of Ghaub, near Grootfontein, states under oath :
I went with the German troops right through the Herero rebellion. The Afrikaner Hottentots of my werft were with me. We refused to kill Herero women and children, but the Germans spared none. They killed thousands and thousands. I saw this bloody work for days and days and every day. Often, and especially at Waterberg, the young Herero women and girls were violated by the German soldiers before being killed. Two of my Hottentots, Jan Wint and David Swartbooi (who is now dead) were invited by the German soldiers to join them in violating Herero girls. The two Hottentots refused to do so.
Jan Kubas (a Griqua living at Grootfontein), states under oath:
I went with the German troops to Hamakari and beyond. . . . The Germans took no prisoners. They killed thousands and thousands of women and children along the roadsides. They bayoneted them and hit them to death with the butt ends of their guns. Words cannot be found to relate what happened; it was too terrible. They were lying exhausted and harmless along the roads, and as the soldiers passed they simply slaughtered them in cold blood. Mothers holding babies at their breasts, little boys and little girls; old people too old to fight and old grandmothers, none received mercy; they were killed, all of them, and left to lie and rot on the veld for the vultures and wild animals to eat. They slaughtered until there were no more Hereros left to kill. I saw this every day; I was with them. A few Hereros managed to escape in the bush and wandered about, living on roots and wild fruits. Von Trotha was the German General in charge.
Hendrik Campbell (War Commandant of the Bastard tribe of Rehoboth, who commanded the Bastard Contingent called out by the Germans to help them against the Hereros in 1904), states on oath:
At Katjura we had a fight with the Hereros, and drove them from their position. After the fight was over, we discovered eight or nine sick Herero women who had been left behind. Some of them were blind. Water and food had been left with them. The German soldiers burnt them alive in the hut in which they were lying. The Bastard soldiers intervened and tried to prevent this, but when they failed, Hendrik van Wyk reported the matter to me. I immediately went to the German commander and complained. He said to me “ that does not matter, they might have infected us with some disease.” . . . Afterwards at Otjimbende we (the Bastards) captured 70 Hereros. I handed them over to Ober-Leutenants Volkmann and Zelow. I then went on patrol, and returned two days later, to find the Hereros all lying dead in a kraal [an enclosure for cattle and other domestic animals]. My men reported to me that they had all been shot and bayoneted by the German soldiers. Shortly afterwards, General von Trotha and his staff accompanied by two missionaries, visited the camp. He said to me, “You look dissatisfied. Do you already wish to go home?
“No,” I replied, “ the German Government has an agreement with us and I want to have no misunderstandings on the part of the Bastard [aka Baster] Government, otherwise the same may happen to us weak people as has happened to those lying in the kraal yonder.
Lieut. Zelow gave answer: “ The Hereros also do so.” I said, “ but, Lieutenant, as a civilised people you should give us a better example.” To this von Trotha remarked, “The entire Herero people must be exterminated.”
Petrus Diergaard, an under-officer of the Bastard Contingent, who was present, corroborates on oath the foregoing statement of the Commandant Hendrik Campbell.
Evidence of other eye-witnesses
Daniel Esma Dixon (of Omaruru, European, who was a transport driver for the Germans during the rebellion) states under oath:
I was present at the fight at Gross Barmen, near Okahandja, in 1904. After the fight the soldiers (marines from the “warship”) were searching the bush. I went with them out of curiosity. We came across a wounded Herero lying in the shade of a tree. He was a very tall, powerful man and looked like one of their headmen. He had his Bible next to his head and his hat over his face. I walked up to him and saw that he was wounded high up in the left hip. I took the hat off his face and asked him if he felt bad. He replied to me in Herero, “ Yes, I feel I am going to die.” The German marines, whose bayonets were fixed, were looking on. One of them said to me, “ What does he reply? ” I told him. “ Well,” remarked the soldier, “ if he is keen on dying he had better have this also.” With that he stooped down and drove his bayonet into the body of the prostrate Herero, ripping up his stomach and chest and exposing the intestines. I was so horrified that I returned to my wagons at once.
In August 1904, I was taking a convoy of provisions to the troops at the front line. At a place called Ouparakane, in the Waterberg district, we were outspanned for breakfast when two Hereros, a man and his wife, came walking to us out of the bush. Under-officer Wolff and a few German soldiers were escort to the wagons and were with me. The Herero man was a cripple, and walked with difficulty, leaning on a stick and on his wife’s arm. He had a bullet wound through the leg. They came to my wagon, and I spoke to them in Herero. The man said he had decided to return to Omaruru and surrender to the authorities, as he could not possibly keep up with his people who were retreating to the desert, and that his wife had decided to accompany him. He was quite unarmed and famished. I gave them some food and coffee and they sat there for over an hour telling me of their hardships and privations. The German soldiers looked on, but did not interfere. I then gave the two natives a little food for their journey. They thanked me and then started to walk along the road slowly to Omaruru. When they had gone about 60 yards away from us I saw Wolff, the under-officer, and a soldier taking aim at them. I called out, but it was too late. They shot both of them. I said to Wolff, “ How on earth did you have the heart to do such a thing ? It is nothing but cruel murder.” He merely laughed, and said, “ Oh! these swine must all be killed ; we are not going to spare a single one.”
I spent a great part of my time during the rebellion at Okahandja, loading stores at the depot. There the hanging of natives was a common occurrence. A German officer had the right to order a native to be hanged. No trial or court was necessary. Many were hanged merely on suspicion. One day alone I saw seven Hereros hanged in a row, and on other days twos and threes. The Germans did not worry about rope. They used ordinary fencing wire, and the unfortunate native was hoisted up by the neck and allowed to die of slow strangulation. This was all done in public, and the bodies were always allowed to hang for a day or so as an example to the other natives. Natives who were placed in gaol [jail] at that time never came out alive. Many died of sheer starvation and brutal treatment. . . . The Hereros were far more humane in the field than the Germans. They were once a fine race. Now we have only a miserable remnant left.
Hendrik Fraser (Bastard), of Keetmanshoop, states under oath:
In March 1905 I was sent from Karibib and accompanied the troops of Hauptmann Kuhne to the Waterberg. I then saw that the Germans no longer took any prisoners. They killed all men, women and children whom they came across. Hereros who were exhausted and were unable to go any further were captured and killed. At one place near Waterberg, in the direction of Gobabis, after the fight at Okokadi, a large number (I should say about 50) men, women and children and little babies fell into the hands of the Germans. They killed all the prisoners, bayoneted them.
On one occasion I saw about 25 prisoners placed in a small enclosure of thorn bushes. They were confined in a very small space, and the soldiers cut dry branches and piled dry logs all round them—men, women and children and little girls were there—when dry branches had been thickly piled up all round them the soldiers threw branches also on the top of them. The prisoners were all alive and unwounded, but half starved. Having piled up the branches, lamp oil was sprinkled on the heap and it was set on fire. The prisoners were burnt to a cinder. I saw this personally. The Germans said, “We should burn all these dogs and baboons in this fashion.” The officers saw this and made no attempt to prevent it. From that time to the end of the rising the killing and hanging of Hereros was practically a daily occurrence. There was no more fighting. The Hereros were merely fugitives in the bush. 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.
This gruesome story by eye-witnesses could be continued until the report would probably require several thick volumes. Enough has been placed on record to prove how the Germans waged their war, and how von Trotha’s extermination order was given effect to. Many more statements have been collected, but these as samples are sufficient. Further instances will be quoted when dealing further on with the Hottentot wars. Evidence of violation of women and girls is overwhelming, but so full of filthy and atrocious details as to render publication undesirable.
When viewed from the point of view of civilisation and common humanity, what a comparison there is between this German barbarism and the attitude of the Herero chiefs, who before a shot was fired ordered their people to spare the lives of all German wómen and children and non-combatants!
[Settlements Commissioner Paul] Rohrbach (page 323) says that at the time of the rebellion the Hereros still possessed approximately 50,000 head of cattle and at least 100,000 small stock. He says that a valuation of Herero assets at 500,000?. (10,000,000 marks) before their rising is probably much too low (wohl zu gering), and the practical and quite unsentimental Rohrbach bitterly rebukes von Trotha because, owing to the latter’s senseless extermination policy (Vernichtungs Prinzep), the cattle and sheep of the Hereros shared the fate of their masters. All, with the exception of 3,000 head captured before von Trotha’s time, had perished in the desert. Viewing matters from the economical point of view, Rohrbach cannot find words strong enough to condemn von Trotha.
Writing in 1906, Leutwein (at page 542) says:
At a cost of several hundred millions of marks and several thousand German soldiers, we have, of the three business assets of the Protectorate— mining, farming, and native labour—destroyed the second entirely and two-thirds of the last. What is however more blameworthy is the fact that with all our sacrifices we have up to to-day (March 1906) not been able fully to restore peace again.
Referring to the peace overtures made in August 1904 by the Hereros, Rohrbach (at page 358) says:
In this manner, it would have been possible to have saved considerable quantities of stock and above all things to have ended the Herero war in the year 1904.
Out of between 80,000 and 90,000 souls only about 15,000 starving and fugitive Hereros were alive at the end of 1905, when von Trotha relinquished his task. What happened to the survivors will be told in the concluding parts of this report.
Source: Union of South Africa, Report on the Natives of South-West Africa and Their Treatment by Germany, Prepared in the Administrator’s Office, Windhuk, South-West Africa, January, 1918 (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1918). An annotated version of this document was issued in 2003 as Words Cannot Be Found: German Colonial Rule in Namibia.