Namibian genocide—a precursor of the Holocaust
A Review of The Kaiser’s Holocaust: Germany’s Forgotten Genocide
and the Colonial Roots of Nazism by David Olusoga and Casper W. Erichsen
Faber and Faber Ltd. London, 2010
reviewed by Marc Ambler
Published: 19 July 2011(GMT+10)
As one reads this fascinating book, one gets the sense that the major theme that
develops was not what the writers intended. That theme is one of Social Darwinistic
scientific racism put into horrifying practice in the German colony of South West
Africa in the final decades of the 19th century and into the 20th
century. Olusoga is an Anglo-Nigerian historian and BBC radio and television producer;
and his co-author Erichsen, a Namibian (formerly South West Africa) double graduate
and director of a Namibian HIV/AIDS NGO.
The book sets out to draw the many parallels between the extermination campaign
against the Herero and Nama people of SWA by the German colonists, and the later
horrors of Nazi Germany and its campaign of Rassenhygiene against Eastern
Europeans, Jews, Gypsies and others they deemed ‘unfit’.1 The parallels provide compelling evidence that the
Nazi genocide and the Holocaust against the Jews was not some strange aberration
invented and perpetrated by Hitler’s National Socialists; it was the outcome
and climax of a program of indoctrination of the German people in Social Darwinism
begun in the second half of the 19th century.2 South West Africa became one of the first major
laboratories where Darwinian theories of race supremacy were experimentally applied.
Due to the relative isolation of the country, the fewer personalities directly involved
and the lesser absolute numbers of lives lost in the campaign, these links are perhaps
clearer to draw than those of WWII which was on a vastly larger and much more complex
scale.
South West Africa became one of the first major laboratories where Darwinian theories
of race supremacy were experimentally applied.
The writers compellingly lay out the direct links between the Herero and Nama genocide
and WWII. Characters, strategies, philosophical justifications and even uniforms
of those involved in the genocide show continuity with what followed under Nazi
Germany on a far greater scale. In all of this, the writers repeatedly document
its Social Darwinist underpinnings with their eugenicist and scientific racist offshoots.
One senses (without judging the writers) that perhaps these links were unwelcome
conclusions, even for the writers, but that they admirably follow the evidence where
it leads. They frequently qualify the Darwinist connection with the words “distorted
view of Social Darwinism” and the like (pp. 3, 74, 111, 294, 361 and elsewhere.).
One wonders from whence a model of ‘undistorted Social Darwinism’ would
come. What criteria can evolution provide to decide on what is morally appropriate
and what is not in the practice of Darwinism? Only ‘survival’, and so
if Hitler had won and the Aryan dream had become a reality, we would today likely
be saying that the SWA genocide was right and admirable.
Their disclaimer is also discredited by the fact that Darwin himself foresaw the
‘extermination’ of the ‘lower races’ as they were increasingly
confronted by the ‘higher’ European races.
Lieutenant-General Lothar von Trotha’s beliefs of racial superiority led him
to contemptuously state: “I wipe out rebellious tribes with streams of blood
and streams of money. Only following this cleansing can something new emerge”.
And “… I find it appropriate that the [Herero] nation perishes instead
of infecting our soldiers”.
Germany’s embrace of Darwin’s theories on race and evolution (p. 74)3
was encouraged most notably by the numerous books on evolution by Ernst Haeckel
(p. 75), many of which became popular best sellers. This took place as the country
was also grappling with considerable political and social problems. Rapid urbanisation
with its associated social problems in the cities led to the development of nationalistic
groups such as the Pan Germanic League (p. 90) calling for Lebensraum—living
space, a theory developed by Friedrich Ratzel in his book Politische Geographie
in 1897. Ratzel was an enthusiastic colonialist who unashamedly promoted the creation
of this living space for the German people by the extermination of colonised people
with the ‘gun and the gallows’ (p. 110). His theories later had a profound
influence on Hitler who read his works as well as those of Gobineau and (Darwin’s
cousin and father of eugenics) Galton while in prison after the Beer Hall Putsch
in 1923. These Darwinist ideas, the philosophy of Nietzsche and the memoirs of Bismarck
crystallized Hitler’s thinking in his book Mein Kampf. The writers
assert that “at the core of the ideology outlined in Mein Kampf was
Hitler’s dedication to the Social Darwinian notion of the struggle for existence”
(p. 294).
These notions of racial supremacy were beginning to gain popular acceptance at the
very time that Germany was entering their late but enthusiastic colonial race for
Africa. In 1896 the Berlin Colonial Show was held. Its intended propaganda was firstly
to show the German public the backward nature of the native populations of their
colonies, and secondly to impress the natives with the technology and power of Germany,
and therefore impossible to resist. Part of the show was a ‘human zoo’
which would be populated by individuals shipped from the colonies. They were to
be exhibits in an event that “transplanted a piece of natural savagery and
raw culture to the centre of a proud and glamorous metropolis, with its refined
morals and fashion-conscious people” (p.92) as stated by an official report
of the show. Unfortunately for the organizers, many of the participants refused
to play along. Drawn from the elite of the Nama and Herero people, many of whom
had converted to Christianity and adopted much of western culture, most of the Herero
and all the Witbooi (Nama) men arrived in European-style military uniforms, and
the women in elegant dresses. Some were very well educated. The nephew of the leader
of the Witbooi Nama people, Petrus Jod, was typical of those that challenged the
racial stereotypes they were expected to portray. He was a school teacher, spoke
High Dutch and carried a Bible with him at all times. Many refused to go along with
the charade, objecting particularly to wearing the primitive clothing expected by
the German population.
This contradiction of popular mythology is a theme that occurs throughout the book.
In the later campaign against the Nama and Herero by ‘Christian’ Europe,
Western conventions relating to war were felt not to apply to the ‘savages’
(p.71). In contrast, the Nama and Herero repeatedly exhibited high moral standards
in their conflict with the colonists, only attacking military targets and leaving
civilians unharmed (pp. 76, 77, 128, 129, 176). In a letter responding to a threatening
note from the German governor, the Nama leader, Hendrik Witbooi, indicative of his
biblical worldview, wrote, “I have never met the Emperor (Kaiser) and therefore
cannot have offended him by word or by deed. God has given us different realms on
earth, and through that I know and believe that it is neither a sin nor a crime
for me to want to remain the independent chief of my country and people. If you
want to kill me for this without any fault of mine, there is no harm done, nor is
it a disgrace: I shall die honestly for that which is my own” (p.81).
The gaiety of this photo showing the colourful dresses and unusual headwear of today’s
Herero women is in stark contrast to the torment their predecessors went through.
In the late 19th century, German colonists began to push the Herero and
Nama people off their lands; sometimes by treaty, sometimes by force and mostly
by guile. It is said that 64% of Hamburg trade with Africa at this time was paid
for with alcohol. After a provoked minor uprising by the Herero in 1904, the Germans
responded with ruthless cruelty. After some notable setbacks, German General Lothar
von Trotha was sent to SWA. During the campaign he issued an instruction that all
Herero men, woman and children found within the borders of the colony would be killed,
the infamous Extermination Order (p. 152). Over the ensuing years, this instruction
was ruthlessly carried out. Survivors of direct battles against the industrial weapons
of Germany, like the Maxim gun, were forced into the western desert. There, wells
were poisoned and Herero that came crawling out of the desert were bayoneted to
death. Those that survived all this were captured and put into ‘concentration
camps’ in places like Windhoek, Luderitz and Swakopmund. The writers show
that the primary goal of these camps was not work but extermination. Forced labour
for certain projects was a mere by-product; another horrifying portend of the death
camps of Europe 40 years later. The camps were a systematic application of rape,
abuse, malnutrition and sadistic cruelty while ridding the colony of its unwanted
indigenous people. On one railway building project, 67.48% of the workers died (p.
205). The death rate in the Shark Island camp off Luderitz was 70% (p. 216). By
1909, only 10% of the Nama who had been imprisoned remained alive (p. 229). About
80% of the Herero nation were killed or forced out of the colony during the 5 year
campaign (p. 230).
Unlike books like Richard Weikart’s From Darwin to Hitler, this work
does not set out to expose the Darwinian roots of its subject matter. Nevertheless
it repeatedly uncovers the Social Darwinist undercurrents that shifted old-fashioned
paternalistic racism to the ‘biological racism’ of the early 20th
century (p. 156). The writers plant the authority for this scientific racism firmly
at the door of Charles Darwin and so ultimately it has the same effect as Weikart’s
book. Race science raises its head in many ways in these pages. Early surreptitious
exhumation of Herero skulls (p. 127) by colonists to send to Germany as scientific
specimens gave way to almost industrial processing of human skulls and body parts
in the concentration camps. The women in the camps were forced to boil the heads
of dead prisoners, strip them of all flesh and then pack them into crates destined
for German universities. Pseudo-scientific eugenic and phrenological measurements
and observations were a constant theme (pp. 96, 127, 224). Among the emerging group
of scientific elites who propagated these ideas was Eugen Fischer. He particularly
focused on the notion that mixing of race groups lead to biological inferiority.
He found the ideal subjects to test his theories in the Baster4 people
in SWA. The mixed-race descendants of white men and Nama women, they had been forced
out of the Cape by the Boers in 1869. They spoke only Afrikaans, were devoutly Christian
and proudly held on to the names, morality and culture of the Boers. Fischer went
to SWA in 1908 to study the Basters and proceeded to attempt degrading examinations
on them. His attempts to examine them naked, including measurement of genitals,
were rebuffed by the deeply religious Basters. He proceeded to undertake work characterized
by “striking methodological lapses” (p. 248). In 1913, Fischer published
The Rehoboth Bastards and the Bastardisation Problem in Man, still in print
in 1961. He was a leading advocate of the German equivalent of ‘eugenics’,5
Rassenhygiene. The motivation behind much of this was “saving our
wonderful German nation”, in the words of Fischer (p. 251). Josef Mengele,
the infamous race scientist at Auschwitz, studied at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute
which had been renamed the Eugen Fischer Institute (p. 310). The Director of the
institute was a close associate of Fischer, and Mengele had been a student of his
at Frankfurt University’s Third Reich Institute of Hereditary Biology and
Race Hygiene (p. 309). There are many other connections highlighted in the book
between the colonial race scientists and later Nazi race science.
While always dangerous to impose one’s current outlook on a historical situation,
it is always disappointing to learn of the muted response to such barbarity by Christians
who were more or less aware of what was going on. The writers acknowledge that old-fashioned
colonialism consisted of the moral duty to spread the Gospel. In the second half
of the 19th century, this increasingly came to be regarded as “unscientific,
sentimental and inexcusably old-fashioned” (p. 104). Christian missionaries
did try and highlight the plight of the Herero and Nama people during this terrible
time, and to lessen their burden in some cases. One cannot help but feel, though,
a terrible sadness that their response was not exponentially more outraged. But
Christian missionaries were increasingly sidelined, and the book highlights instances
of missionary resistance as well as collaboration with the horrors that unfolded
(pp. 63, 197, 210, 218). Hitler later refused to allow missionaries to go to Nazi-occupied
Eastern Europe in case they interfered with his program of ethnic cleansing there
(p. 337). One asks the question whether there are not things going on today that
warrant the response from us that we believe Christians in other times should have
had. The modern-day abortion genocide comes to mind.
The book exposes numerous individuals, features and ideologies of the Herero and
Nama genocide, that signify a steady death march toward the barbarous climax of
racial hatred and cruelty before and during WWII, three decades later. The father
of Hermann Göring, one of Hitler’s ablest and most ruthless administrators,
was the first Governor of SWA. Franz von Epp, one of Hitler’s generals and
coordinator of the Nazi African colonial campaign, was a Schutztruppe officer
in SWA as were many of the leaders of the Nazi Brown Shirts. Even the Brown Shirt
uniforms were colonial army surplus. Forced labour, numbered ID’s, use of
prisoners for labour and pseudo-scientific research and the thinly veiled goal of
annihilation all foreshadowed the Nazi death camps. As was the meticulous administration
and documentation of genocide in the camps. Nazism was enthusiastically embraced
in SWA with Hitler’s birthday still being celebrated by ‘Bush Nazis’
well into the 1990s (p. 351).
The book contains some harrowing pictures as well. Photos of mass hangings of Herero
men, the packing of crates of skulls from the concentration camps destined for German
universities, starving men, women and children in the camps and even a severed head
preserved in alcohol by a camp physician. Many of these photos were sent as postcards
by German troops back to Germany, as were pornographic pictures according to the
writers. Perhaps the most harrowing pictures are aerial photographs of vast graveyards
of thousands of unmarked little mounds in the desert on the outskirts of Swakopmund,
one of the concentration camp towns and today a picturesque seaside resort. Outside
Luderitz, winds have blown away the desert sand exposing the remains of victims
of the Shark Island concentration camp.
This is the great post-war myth: The comforting fantasy that the Nazis were a new
order of monsters and that their crimes were without precursor or precedent. They
were not.
The book highlights the fact that the details of this genocide were well known and
publicized at the end of WWI in order to demonize the defeated Germany. By contrast,
at the Nuremberg trials, this grisly history that so poignantly pointed toward the
coming Nazi cruelty, was almost totally ignored. This was possibly to protect the
allies’ own activities in their colonies, or to hide the Social Darwinism,
which many western countries openly supported in the first half of the 20th
century, behind Hitler’s crimes. As the writers point out in their introduction,
“This is the great post-war myth: The comforting fantasy that the Nazis were
a new order of monsters and that their crimes were without precursor or precedent.
They were not. Much of Nazi ideology and many of the crimes committed in its name
were part of a longer trend in European history. Nazism was both a culmination and
a distortion of decades of German and European history and philosophy. It was, in
part, the final homecoming of theories and practices that Europeans had developed
and perfected in far-flung corners of the world during the last phase of imperial
conquest” (p. 3). And towards the end of the book: “But the Herero and
Nama genocides, along with the Nazi vision of race war and settlement in Eastern
Europe, can both be seen as aspects of a larger phenomenon: the emergence from Europe
of a terrible strain of racial colonialism that viewed human history through the
prism of a distorted form of Social Darwinism, and regarded the earth as a racial
battlefield on which the ‘weak’ were destined to be vanquished”
(p. 361).
In spite of the chilling subject matter, the book is an absorbing read. The writers
bring to life their characters and the country itself. I have traveled to Namibia
a few times. On my last trip, in a tiny town off the beaten track by the name of
Warmbad, I came across a bust of Kaptein Hendrik Witbooi, the charismatic, educated
and devoutly Christian Nama leader who became a feared thorn in Germany’s
side. I look forward to my next trip to see some of the many landmarks this book
has unearthed.
While the particularly ugly bathwater of racism has mercifully been substantially
attenuated since the holocaust of WWII, the Darwinian ‘baby’ remains.
It is linked closely to the modern-day abortion genocide. One wonders what future
cruelty and horrors this dehumanizing belief system will yet vomit up? The most
powerful antidote to this process is the biblical truth that all people are made
in the image of God, our blood of great worth in the eyes of our Creator, and every
drop shed to be accounted for before our Judge one day.
Further reading
References
- See also Ambler, M., Herero Genocide, Creation
27(3):52–55, 2002, creation.com/herero-genocide. Return
to text.
- Weikart, R., From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics,
Eugenics, and Racism in Germany, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, USA, 2004. Return to text.
- A letter from Darwin acknowledges the enthusiastic reception
his ideas were receiving in Germany. Return to text.
- A name they continue to hold to. Return
to text.
- A pseudo-scientific discipline, the invention of Francis Galton,
Charles Darwin’s cousin. Return to text.
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