The Kaiser's Holocaust: Germany's Forgotten Genocide and the Colonial Roots of Nazism

by Casper Erichsen

  On 7 April 1904, reluctantly following von Schlieffen’s orders, Theodor Leutwein led a force of just eight hundred men out of Okahandja. The remainder of the enlarged garrison was spread across the colony, protecting German settlers and maintaining a watchful presence in the south, among the Nama. Riding with Leutwein’s Schutztruppe were one hundred African scouts, fifty of them from the Witbooi clan, compelled to fight alongside the Germans under the protection treaty Hendrik Witbooi had signed with Leutwein in 1894.

  At the Herero encampment, near a waterhole at Okanjira, thirty thousand Herero, along with large numbers of cattle (estimates vary between twenty and forty thousand head), had come together under their Paramount Chief. They were protected by Samuel’s four thousand men at arms, of whom two and a half thousand were armed with modern rifles, while the rest carried traditional weapons of clubs and knives. Okanjira offered commanding views over the surrounding scrub and the Herero dug a series of trenches along the escarpments to fortify their camp. On 9 April, Leutwein’s columns approached, throwing a colossal plume of dust in their wake.

  After a cautious advance along narrow valleys, the Witbooi scouts located the Herero encampment, giving Leutwein just enough time to move his artillery pieces into position. The initial ensuing bombardment failed to overwhelm the Herero fighters in their trenches. Rather than panicking, they held their fire until the German troops were in range in order to maximise the impact of their salvos. However, the battle turned when German shells and grenades began to overshoot the trenches and crash down among the women and children camped on the far side of the Okanjira escarpment.

  Shocked by the impact of the German guns and the devastating force of new Pirkin grenades, Samuel Maharero disengaged from battle and ordered an evacuation. When Leutwein’s men finally reached the site of the Herero camp, all that remained were thousands of empty huts and, as Emil Malzahn, an officer under Leutwein’s command, put it, ‘scattered Herero body parts caused by our grenades’.19

  Despite forcing the Herero to retreat, only superior firepower had saved the Germans from defeat. A British correspondent, writing for the South African Review and Daily News, who had witnessed the battle, reported: ‘The Hereros … are better armed, bolder in their attacks, and above all more clever in their tactics than was expected.’

  Four days later Leutwein’s now exhausted men followed the tracks of the Herero to the waterhole of Oviumbo, 12 miles north of Okanjira, and staggered into an ambush. Spread out on the hills above the riverbed, the Herero rained bullets down from concealed positions. When the Germans marked their own positions with red flags, to prevent their units firing upon each other, the Herero made their own flags, creating enormous confusion. For ten hours much of Leutwein’s force was pinned down by rifle fire from several directions. Unable to distinguish friend from foe, and with three-quarters of their ammunition expended, the Germans were saved only by nightfall. That evening many of Leutwein’s most senior and experienced officers pleaded with the governor to retreat. Convinced that if the battle were allowed to continue for another day his positions would be overrun, and in charge of a force that had patently lost its nerve, Leutwein ordered a night-time march back to Okahandja.

  When details of the defeat at Oviumbo became known in Berlin, a storm of criticism was unleashed. Much of it was focused on the governor who, it was claimed, had brought shame on Germany by retreating in the face of racially inferior Africans. In a telegram to the General Staff, Leutwein was forced to defend his actions. With some justification be pointed out that, ‘by ordering the night march from Oviumbo, I saved the military force from disaster’.20

  What Okanjira and Oviumbo demonstrated was that raw conscripts, drawn from the slums of the industrial cities, were at a profound disadvantage when set against men whose entire lives had been spent in the saddle with rifle in hand. They were further hampered by having to fight across a terrain they did not understand and over which they found it extremely difficult to maintain their supply lines. The Herero were excellent marksmen and, like the Boers, highly skilled in the art of concealment. Rather than acknowledge this, the Kaiser and the High Command chose to pour their vitriol on the one man whose knowledge of the colony might have allowed them to bring the war quickly and cheaply to an end. On 9 May, after brief consultations with von Schlieffen and the Head of the Military Cabinet, Hülsen-Haeseler, Kaiser Wilhelm relieved Governor Theodor Leutwein of his military duties.

  The man chosen to replace Theodor Leutwein as commander in South-West Africa was General Adrian Dietrich Lothar von Trotha, a ten-year veteran of the German colonial army. Between 1894 and 1897, von Trotha had been a commander in German East Africa and had forged a reputation for ruthlessness. During the Wahehe uprising, von Trotha had unflinchingly ordered mass hangings and the summary executions of prisoners of war. He had burned down entire villages, sometimes with their inhabitants still inside. Von Trotha’s treatment of the local peoples was so extreme that it even drew opposition from Hermann Wissmann, the Governor of German East Africa. Wissmann had served alongside Curt von François in the Belgian Congo in the 1880s and had a reputation for cruelty and violence. Yet when he heard of von Trotha’s appointment to South-West Africa, he warned the Colonial Department that von Trotha was ‘a bad leader … and a bad comrade’.21

  By the time von Trotha left German East Africa in 1897 he had become convinced that the rebellions he had helped crush were merely a prelude to a larger racial war that Germany and the white race in general were destined to fight against the ‘lower races’ across the world. Three years later von Trotha had been placed in command of the First East Asiatic Infantry Brigade. In the terrible aftermath of the Boxer Rebellion, he was in charge of a unit that attacked Chinese villages in a series of punitive raids. By 1904 von Trotha was considered a hardened colonial specialist. He was the favoured choice of both the army and the Kaiser, who instructed him to ‘end the war by fair or foul means’, adding, ‘I entrust this command to you with the fullest confidence in your insight, energy and experience’.22 Wilhelm Lorang, a soldier who served under von Trotha in South West Africa, described him as ‘a human shark’ and ‘the most bloodthirsty animal in his [Kaiser Wilhelm’s] war arsenal’.23

  On taking up his new command General von Trotha was in no doubt as to how the Herero should be treated when they dared to oppose the will of their colonial masters. Writing in 1904, he stated:

  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 to apply this force by absolute terrorism and even cruelty. I shall destroy the rebellious tribes by shedding rivers of blood and money. Only then will it be possible to sow the seeds of something new that will endure.24

  Von Trotha landed at Swakopmund on 11 June, his desert-brown colonial uniform draped in medals, including the Iron Cross. On arrival in Windhoek he held a meeting with Governor Leutwein. The two clashed instantly. Seeking assurance that the Herero were not to be annihilated, Leutwein again suggested that a place might still be found for them in the colony after their military defeat. Von Trotha dismissed Leutwein’s ideas, claiming he did not take war seriously.

  In order to prevent Leutwein from interfering with his plans, von Trotha declared a state of martial law, which made him supreme commander in both military and civil affairs. This manoeuvre marked the beginning of a period of effective military dictatorship in South-West Africa that was to last until November 1905.

  Von Trotha’s appointment also short-circuited the command structure in German South-West Africa. Although Leutwein was a soldier, as the governor he answered to the Colonial Department and the civilian government. Von Trotha answered only to the Chief of Staff and the Kaiser, a separate chain of command that bypassed the Reichstag and side-stepped civilian control. This disastrous duality in the command structure, which Imperial Germany had inherited from pre-unification Prussia, allowed von Trotha to sideline Leutwein and the Colonial Department. It was later sev
erely to limit the ability of Chancellor Bernhard von Bülow to exercise control over von Trotha.

  With additional troops and equipment arriving almost weekly, von Trotha set about planning war against the Herero, a people he described in his diary as Unmenschen – non-humans.25 Since the battle at Oviumbo two months earlier there had been little fighting. Out of an estimated Herero population of sixty to eighty thousand, as many as fifty thousand had gathered around Samuel Maharero. This enormous body of people, along with tens of thousands of their cattle, had migrated north and made camp at the foot of a large plateau in north-central Hereroland known in the Dutch as the Waterberg – the Water Mountain.

  The Waterberg was a place of deep cultural importance to the Herero, a people whose traditions and religion were woven into the landscape itself. On the slopes of the Waterberg plateau grew a forest of large fig trees, some hundreds of years old. According to the Herero creation myth, their ancestors had first descended from heaven by climbing down through the branches of fig trees. For generations the Herero chiefs had held their councils beneath the shade of their broad leaves. The mountain itself was of equal significance. It was the last major source of underground water within the borders of South-West Africa, before the acacia bushes of the scrub-deserts slowly gave way to the utter desolation of the Kalahari – a wilderness the Herero knew as the Omaheke. With its deep underground aquifers and many waterholes, the Waterberg was known to the Herero as Otjozondjupa, named after the calabash gourds in which they stored sour milk, a symbol of wealth.

  In the shadow of the sheer red sandstone cliffs of the Waterberg, rising 650 feet above the desert, and amid the trees of their ancestors, the Herero nation built a city of pontoks – traditional huts made of branches and blankets or cow hide – that stretched along the 30 miles of the Waterberg. Each village housed one of the Herero clans, a wretched imitation of their home settlements. The great encampment at the Waterberg was, in effect, the Herero nation condensed, the vast distances between their settlements erased, and the bonds of kinship and culture heightened by shared hardship and the presence of an external foe.

  Samuel Maharero himself camped near the waterhole of Ohamakari, on the southern side of the pontok city. Either here, or under the fig trees on the slopes of the Waterberg itself, he and his fellow chiefs held their councils and debated their strategy. According to German intelligence, the Herero chiefs had split into three camps of opinion. The first favoured negotiating with the Germans; the second were happy to settle matters on the battlefield; the third, led by Samuel Maharero, believed the Herero should abandon South-West Africa altogether and seek refuge in British-controlled Bechuanaland – modern-day Botswana. To reach Bechuanaland, the Herero would be forced to cross the Omaheke Desert. But such a crossing could only be attempted after the arrival of the summer rains in December, and even then with severe difficulty.26

  In June 1904, from his headquarters in Windhoek, General von Trotha also considered the Herero’s options. If they were to flee into British territory, Hereroland would be abandoned and the rich pastures that the German settlers had coveted for so many years would finally be theirs. The flight of the Herero would also bring the rebellion to an end and render unnecessary the enormously expensive and dangerous military expedition he was preparing against them. However, such an exodus would prevent von Trotha from bringing the retribution of Germany and the Kaiser down upon the heads of ‘the rebellious tribes’. For this reason the strategy he devised was predicated on his determination to destroy the Herero utterly, and to strike before they were able to find refuge across the desert.

  Adopting the concept of concentric deployment, as developed by Germany’s great military strategist Helmuth von Moltke, von Trotha, as he said in his own account, planned to ‘encircle the Herero masses around Waterberg and to annihilate them with an instantaneous blow’.27 By early July he had assembled an army of six thousand men, by far the largest the colony had ever seen. In fact the number of soldiers under von Trotha’s command in August 1904 far exceeded the number of settlers they had ostensibly been sent to defend.

  The abundance of men and equipment at von Trotha’s disposal were the fruits of the 585 million marks raised in extraordinary loans by the Colonial Department to pay for the war. The colony itself – impoverished as ever – was able to contribute only 110 million towards its own defence.28 Economically as well as militarily, the extent to which Germany was willing to stretch herself in order to punish the Herero – a people who had months earlier stopped attacking German settlers – was hugely disproportionate.

  In early August, as his men began to assemble around the Waterberg, General von Trotha issued orders stating that it was imperative that all units avoid alarming or provoking the Herero, who were well aware of the build-up of German forces. Von Trotha could only contemplate the annihilation of fifty thousand people because they were concentrated in an area just 30 miles long and 20 wide. If the Herero were to disperse, not only would they slip the trap, but there was a risk that Germany would be dragged into a protracted and possibly un-winnable war fought over vast distances. One soldier wrote to his parents: ‘We have been lying here for some time now. We will be here until the mousetrap closes if the Herero do us the favour of not escaping.’

  Despite von Trotha’s strict orders, there were a number of minor skirmishes. Just days before the attack, his own nephew, Lieutenant Thilo von Trotha, was involved in two conflicts that led to the shooting of seventy Herero. The younger von Trotha was reprimanded by his uncle, who warned that such premature actions ‘have to be avoided if the aim of the war, annihilation of the whole lot, is to be achieved’.

  The Herero simply allowed the Germans to assemble around them at the Waterberg. Samuel Maharero failed to launch a pre-emptive strike when the Germans were at their most vulnerable. Nor did he attempt to break through the encirclement. Maharero seems to have rejected the idea of attempting flight across the Omaheke in the dry month of August, possibly because the very old and very young would have found the journey nearly impossible and few of the Herero’s precious cattle were likely to survive such an exodus. Furthermore, the Herero were tending a number of their people – including women and children – who had been wounded at the battle of Okanjira.

  Samuel Maharero’s inaction at the Waterberg was most probably a result of his belief that at any moment he could enter negotiations with the Germans and the war would come to an end. Indeed, ever since arriving at the Waterberg, the Herero had been expecting negotiations and had made repeated overtures to the Germans. While von Trotha sought to avoid clashes in order to keep the Herero concentrated at the Waterberg, Samuel Maharero kept his men at arm’s length from the Germans in order to facilitate peace negotiations. He even allowed a German unit to inspect the Waterberg mission and police station, both sacked in the early days of the conflict and both well within the Herero’s lines of defence.

  From the Herero viewpoint, their victory at the battle of Oviumbo four months earlier had been a clear demonstration of their power and determination to fight for their land and traditions. They had not only defeated the Germans, despite their enemy’s advanced weapons, but also inflicted significant casualties. According to all the conventions of warfare recognised by the peoples of South-West Africa, the logical next step was to enter into negotiations and avoid further bloodshed.

  Samuel Maharero could not possibly have realised that his war against the Germans had – in the minds of the Kaiser and the military elite in Berlin – escalated to such a point it was no longer a colonial war in any recognisable sense. By the time of General von Trotha’s appointment, it was clear that nothing but an overwhelming military victory would appease a German public who had been whipped into a frenzy by months of unbridled colonialist propaganda.

  In his own accounts of the war, von Trotha says little of Herero attempts to open negotiations. The German Official History of the campaign, written by the army’s own historians, is equally evasive on the subje
ct. According to surviving German records, some of the main Herero sub-chiefs, including the influential Salatiel Kambazembi, attempted to initiate negotiations in late July. At that time Major Ludwig von Estorff, one of the most experienced and respected officers in the Schutztruppe, strongly recommended that von Trotha enter into talks. Von Trotha refused. Discussing the peace feelers of the Herero chiefs in his diary, he dismissed their attempts to negotiate with the phrase ‘fought together, caught together, hanged together’.29

  On 4 August 1904 General von Trotha issued his ‘Directives for the Attack on the Hereros’. The German force was to be divided into six detachments. Each would approach from a different direction and encircle the Herero encampment. Given the size of the battlefield, the encirclement would be far from watertight. However, the enemy the Germans were seeking to trap were mainly civilians: women, children and the elderly, together with their slow-moving cattle. Once contained, the Herero would be bombarded with artillery and grenades. When the Herero fighters, who still outnumbered the Germans, attempted to break through the encirclement, they would be forced back by the Maxim guns – capable of firing three hundred rounds per minute. The whole battle would be coordinated by a team of scouts who were to scale the sheer cliffs of the Waterberg. There they would track the movements of the Herero and signal their positions to their comrades below using heliographs.

  In the early hours of 10 August 1904, two days shy of seven months since the Herero in Okahandja had risen up, von Trotha emerged from his tent for a final briefing with his most senior officers. They assembled before a large map of the Waterberg, on which the plan of battle had been marked. After the briefing they all posed for a photograph.