The next morning at six o’clock exactly the German guns burst into life. Most of the Herero were asleep in their huts when the first shells and grenades crashed down among them. People were blown apart by shrapnel and their pontoks incinerated. Led by their Nama guides, the Germans crept forward to tighten the noose. When the Herero counter-attacked, they were met by the twelve Maxim guns that had been strategically placed around the encirclement. Throughout the day, wave after wave of Herero fighters struggled to break the stranglehold. Those carrying guns formed lines of attack, and when they fell, a new line of fighters would take the rifles of the dead and launch a fresh assault. Behind the fighting men, the women collected the dead and tended to the wounded as best they could.30
At around three o’clock in the afternoon, after nine hours of constant fighting, the Herero finally managed to punch a hole in the German lines. The breakthrough came when Maharero’s men overran a German position on the south-eastern side of the encirclement. Both contemporaries and historians have speculated as to whether von Trotha left the south-eastern flank of his force deliberately weak, in the hope that if the Herero did break through, they would be forced to retreat into the Omaheke Desert.
The German detachment on the south-eastern edge of the great encirclement, commanded by Major der Heyde, was small compared with the units placed at the disposal of the five other commanders, and General von Trotha had been warned of this disparity before the battle. Chancellor Bernhard von Bülow, writing in his memoirs (published posthumously in 1931), was in no doubt that this had been a deliberate strategy. He stated that, ‘In order to be rid of the Hereros sooner, he [von Trotha] suggested that they be driven into the waterless desert with women and children.’ Paul Leutwein, the son of the governor, also claimed that his father ‘foresaw the breakthrough of the Herero and their resulting flight into the sandveld or across the border. He realised that in both cases the entire people would be lost.’31 Perhaps this aspect of von Trotha’s plan – if it was a deliberate tactic – was a tacit acknowledgement that, despite all the troops and war materials at his disposal, it was still impossible to annihilate fifty thousand people ‘with an instantaneous blow’.
By nightfall on 11 August, the Herero nation, tens of thousands of people, were rushing headlong through the breach in the German lines, funnelled in the direction of the Omaheke. None of this was clear to General von Trotha in his field headquarters 10 miles away: the reports of the battle were confused and contradictory. It was only at dawn on 12 August that the events of the previous day finally became clear. By then most of the Herero had fled into the desert.
To his profound frustration, von Trotha was not able to pursue the Herero immediately on the 12th, due to the utter exhaustion of his men and horses. On the 13th, a small number of German units followed the trail of the Herero into the desert. Captain Maximilian Bayer described the scene that met them in the immediate aftermath of the battle:
The route along which the enemy fled was totally trampled over a width of some 100 metres. Here, the entire people, with its wagons and thousands of animals, all women and children, old people and warriors, had moved in hasty flight. Everywhere there were signs of the desperate, panicky haste in which the Herero had fled intent only on saving their lives … Along the route there lay skins, empty water-bags, leather bags and all kinds of junk which the fleeing people had cast away so as to be able to run faster.32
Within just two weeks, most of the pursuing German units had exhausted their water supplies and were forced to turn back. Yet even by this point, the desert had taken its toll on the Herero. Adolf Fischer, a German private, wrote the following account of the plight of the Herero as they were pushed ever deeper into the Omaheke:
The greater part of the Herero nation and their cattle lay dead in the bush, lining the path of their morbid march. Everyone among us realised what had happened here. To the right and left of us were putrid, swollen cattle carcasses. Vultures and jackals had already filled themselves to their bellies’ content. They had an infinite supply of meat, more than they could possibly consume. Whenever we wanted to wet our burning palates, we had to pull our tired horses by their bridles through the swollen animal carcasses to drink a forbidding, disgusting broth from the puddles of water. Whenever we dismounted, our feet would hit against the human bodies. There was a young woman with wilted breasts, her frozen face covered with flies and curled up next to her hip an aborted birth. There was also an old woman, who had great difficulty walking. Eight or ten leg rings made from rough iron pearls – the sign of her dignity and wealth – had eaten her flesh to the bone … There was a boy. He was still alive; staring into the night with a stupid grin from an empty mind … Whoever took part in the chase through the Sandveld lost his belief in righteousness on Earth.33
It was only after the battle of the Waterberg that the full genocidal scope of von Trotha’s plans became clear. Accounts vary as to when the command was given, but at some point, probably before the battle itself, von Trotha issued orders that no Herero prisoners were to be taken. Although a written version of that command has never come to light, Major von Estorff, a firm critic of von Trotha’s policies, recorded in his journal that orders banning the taking of prisoners were in place soon after the Waterberg. Major Stuhlman, who fought at the Waterberg, also recorded having received the order not to take prisoners. In a diary entry made before the battle, he wrote: ‘We had been explicitly told beforehand that what we were dealing with was the extermination of the whole tribe, nothing living was to be spared.’34
It is clear from accounts given later by both German soldiers and African scouts fighting alongside them that from the start of their pursuit, the Germans began systematically to execute men, women and children. But as von Trotha was no doubt aware, the enormous logistical difficulties of pursuing the Herero into the wastelands of the Omaheke meant that his units were incapable of catching and killing the Herero in numbers that he deemed acceptable. On 16 August, and again on the 26th, he issued orders to his troops to cut off waterholes and set up patrols along the perimeter of the Omaheke in order to prevent parties of Herero from slipping westwards, back into the colony where they could find water and food.
Dehydration was the biggest killer. Herero who had been able to slip cattle through the gap in the German lines quenched their thirst by drinking cows’ blood, leaving a trail of desiccated carcasses in their wake. Those without cattle bore holes, up to 30 feet deep, into the dry riverbeds of the Omaheke. When a little water appeared at the bottom, panic ensued. In the rush to drink, people were crushed, even buried alive, when the walls of these improvised wells collapsed. Katherine Zeraua, a survivor of what was later called ‘the trail of tears’, narrated her experiences to a German missionary:
Like thousands of others, she had fled into the desert. She had lost track of her family members and was accompanied by three orphaned children. Now the misery began. There was nothing to eat and the thirst was even worse … she walked mostly during the nights. During the days she sought shelter by rocks or by thorny bushes. In the course of their journey they kept coming upon many dead bodies. One day they spotted a bushy shelter. They ran to it in the hope of finding anything edible for the children. But what they found were only dead or dying people. They also found a familiar face from Otjimbingwe. She greeted him. Then she said, ‘Come we have to push on!’ He said: ‘Why should I continue? What reason is there for me to live now that I have lost everything, my family, my belongings?’35
The German Official History of the battle of the Waterberg described von Trotha’s strategy as a stunning strategic success:
The hasty exit of the Herero to the southeast, into the waterless Omaheke, would seal his fate; the environment of his own country was to bring about his extermination in a way that no German weapon, even in a most bloody or deadly battle, ever could … [their] death rattle and furious cry of insanity echoed in the exhalted silence of eternity. The Herero indictment had come to an end and they
had ceased to exist as an independent people.36
Notes – 8 ‘Rivers of Blood and Money’
1. G. Pool, Samuel Maharero (Windhoek: Gamsberg Macmillan, 1991); J. Gewald, Herero Heroes (Oxford: James Currey, 1999); H. Drechsler, Let Us Die Fighting (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1986); I. Hull, Absolute Destruction (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005); J. Zimmerer and J. Zeller (eds), Genocide in German South-West Africa: the Colonial War of 1904–1908 and Its Aftermath (Monmouth: Merlin Press Ltd., 2008); C. W. Erichsen, What the Elders Used to Say (Windhoek: Namibia Institute for Democracy, 2008).
2. J. Gewald, Towards Redemption (Leiden: CNWS, 1996), pp. 188–9.
3. Ibid., p. 193.
4. Ibid., pp. 185–6.
5. National Archives of Namibia, Accession 71, ‘Ludwig Conradt’, Erinnerungen aus zwanzigjährigem Händler- und Farmerleben in Deutsch-Südwestafrika, p. 250.
6. A. Zimmerman, ‘Adventures in the Skin Trade’, in H. Glenn Penny and Matti Bunzl (eds), Worldly Provincialism: German Anthropology in the Age of Empire (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2003), p. 175.
7. This official tally is inscribed at the foot of a German colonial monument still standing in the Namibian capital Windhoek.
8. Pool, Samuel Maharero, p. 211.
9. C. Rust, Krieg und Frieden im Hereroland (Berlin, 1905), pp. 190–5.
10. Cape Times, 23 April 1904.
11. One of very few voices of reason came from Missionary Irle, who wrote to the influential newspaper Der Reichsbote: ‘Certain newspapers report that the Herero have perpetrated terrible atrocities, alleging that they have massacred settler wives as well as castrating many men. With reference to the latter allegation, they have done this with the whites who have raped their women in a most brutal manner. With reference to the [white] women who are supposed to have been butchered and disembowelled, this is pure fabrication. Mrs Pilet and her sister Frauenstein, Mrs Külbel and her children in Oriambo, Mrs Lange and her sister in Klein Barmen, Mrs Bremen and her five children in Otjonjati … all are alive and well, they are not dead.’ Quoted in Drechsler, Let Us Die Fighting, p. 146.
12. See Gesine Kruger, ‘Beasts & Victims’, in Zimmerer and Zeller (eds), Genocide in German South-West Africa.
13. Drechsler, Let Us Die Fighting, p. 142.
14. Quoted ibid., p. 147.
15. J. Krumbach, Franz Ritter von Epp: Ein Leben Fuer Deutschland (Munich: NSDAP, 1940), p. 185.
16. M. Bayer, Der Krieg in Südwestafrika und seine Bedeutung für die Entwicklung der Kolonie (Leipzig: Verlag von Friedrich Engelmann, 1906), p. 9.
17. A. Eckl, S’ist ein uebles Land hier (Cologne: Ruediger Koeppe Verlag, 2005), p. 220.
18. Bundesarchiv Berlin (Lichterfelde-West), Colonial Department, File 2133, pp. 89–90.
19. Pool, Samuel Maharero, pp. 232–9; I. Hull, Absolute Destruction, pp. 13–22; NAN, Accession 510, ‘Tagebuch von Emil Malzahn 1901–1904 (Unteroffizier)’, pp. 20–4.
20. Drechsler, Let Us Die Fighting, p. 149.
21. Hull, Absolute Destruction, pp. 26–7.
22. Drechsler, Let Us Die Fighting, p. 154.
23. G. Pape, Lorang (Göttingen: Klaus Hesse Verlag, 2003), p. 186.
24. H. Kuehne, ‘Die Ausrottungsfeldzuege der “Kaiserlichen Schutztruppen in Afrika” und die sozialdemokratischen Reichstagsfraktion’, Militaergeschichte 18 (1979), p. 211.
25. Quoted in Hull, Absolute Destruction, p. 33, from Otto Dannhauer.
26. NAN, Accession 453, ‘Helene Gathman’s Diary’, Sunday 17 July 1904, p. 69.
27. Pool, Samuel Maharero, p. 251.
28. Helmut Bley, Namibia under German Rule (Hamburg: LIT, 1996), p. 156.
29. J. Gewald, Towards Redemption, p. 205.
30. Eckl, S’ist ein uebles Land hier; NAN, Acession 510, Tagebuch Malzahn; Pape, Lorang; Kriegsgeschichtlichen Abteilung I des Grossen Generalstabes, Die Kaempfe der deutschen Truppen in Suedwestafrika (Berlin, Ernst Siegfried Mittler und Sohn, 1907).
31. B. von Bülow, Denkwürdigkeiten: Band 2 (Berlin: Ullstein, 1930) p. 21; Drechsler, Let Us Die Fighting, p. 155.
32. M. Bayer, Mit Haputquartier in Suedwestafrika (Berlin: Wilhelm Weicher Marine und Kolonialverlag, 1909), p. 161.
33. Adolf Fischer, Menschen und Tiere in Suedwestafrika (Berlin: Safari Verlag, 1914).
34. NAN, Accession 109, ‘Major Stuhlman Diary’.
35. NAN, Accession 569, ‘Memoirs of Pastor Elger’, pp. 38–40.
36. Kriegsgeschichtlichen Abteilung I des Grossen Generalstabes, Die Kaempfe der deutschen Truppen in Suedwestafrika (Berlin: Ernst Siegfried Mittler und Sohn, 1907), pp. 193 and 218.
‘Death through Exhaustion’
Early in October 1904, six weeks after the battle of the Waterberg, the men of the German 1st Field Regiment– a unit of Schutztruppe commanded by General von Trotha – arrived at the last known waterhole deep inside the endless expanses of the Omaheke. Von Trotha’s men were exhausted, their supplies almost at an end and their horses on the brink of collapse. They were patently in no condition to venture further into a desert that had not even been properly mapped.
The waterhole where von Trotha and his men halted stood in a small clearing by the dry bed of the Eiseb River. It was known to the Herero as Osombo zoWindimbe. In 1904, it was a desolate backwater, and today Osombo zoWindimbe is so remote that very few Namibians have even heard of it. Nevertheless, it is one of the most important sites in Namibian history and arguably a place of major significance in the wider history of the twentieth century.1
Just after sunrise on 3 October 19042 von Trotha’s men were woken and assembled for the daily roll-call. Once they had been brought to attention, General von Trotha appeared, with several of his most senior officers: Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck, von Epp and most probably Maximilian Bayer. Turning towards his troops, the general read aloud the text of a proclamation that he had drafted the previous day. It was written in a bizarre form of pidgin that von Trotha, considering himself an expert in African affairs, believed was the appropriate language with which to intimidate the Herero:
I, the Great General of the German troops, send this letter to the Herero … The Herero people must leave the land. If they do not do this I will force them with the Groot Rohr [Cannon]. Within the German borders every Herero, with or without a gun, with or without cattle, will be shot. I will no longer accept women and children, I will drive them back to their people or I will let them be shot at. These are my words to the Herero people. Signed: The Great General of the Mighty Kaiser, von Trotha.3
At the end of his speech von Trotha turned his gaze towards thirty-five recently captured Herero, mainly old men, women and children. On the general’s orders, two of their number, both men, were dragged towards a makeshift gallows where they became victims of what Captain von Epp described in his dairy as a ‘theatrical hanging’.4
Copies of von Trotha’s proclamation – translated into Otjiherero and written out on small folded pieces of paper – were attached around the necks of old men, women and children who were then driven into the desert by volleys of gunfire aimed over their heads. The Extermination Order – as the Osombo zoWindimbe proclamation has become known – was the explicit and official confirmation of the policies that most German units had followed ever since the battle of the Waterberg. It ended any pretence that the war was being fought to end the uprising. The aim of the conflict was to eradicate the Herero as an ethnic group from German South-West Africa, either by their extermination or by their wholesale expulsion from the colony. A single copy of the original Extermination Order has survived and is in the Botswana National Archives in Gaberone. It is an almost unique document: an explicit, written declaration of intent to commit genocide.
The day after issuing the Extermination Order, von Trotha wrote to the General Staff explaining the new policy to his superiors.
Since I neither can nor will come to terms with these people without express orders from His Majesty the Emperor and King, it is essentia
l that all sections of the nation be subjected to rather stern treatment … My intimate knowledge of so many Central African tribes, Bantu and others, has made it abundantly clear to me that the Negroes will yield only to brute force, whereas negotiations are quite pointless … They will either meet their doom in the sandveld or try to cross into Bechuanaland.5
In the same report, von Trotha reiterated his belief that the extermination of the Herero was merely a phase in a wider racial war in Africa, a conflict he had long predicted was inevitable: ‘This uprising is and remains the beginning of a racial struggle, which I foresaw as early as 1897 in my reports to the Imperial Chancellor.’6
The actual military plan surrounding the Extermination Order called for the abandonment of the pursuit into the Omaheke. Only one unit, Major von Estorff’s, would continue to operate in the desert. The vast bulk of the army was to be distributed along the border between the Omaheke and the Waterberg itself, forming a cordon to prevent groups of Herero from returning to their former homelands. Any Herero caught on the border between the desert and Hereroland were to be shot on sight.
Von Trotha was aware from the beginning of the potential damage the Extermination Order represented to ‘the good reputation that the German soldier has acquired’. In a supplementary order he stipulated that while he was in ‘no doubt that as a result of this order no more male prisoners will be taken’, he was equally confident that ‘neither will it give rise to atrocities committed on women and children. These will surely run away after two rounds of shots have been fired over their heads.’7 Driven back into the desert, these women and children would simply die of thirst and malnutrition or be forced out of the colony.
The Kaiser's Holocaust: Germany's Forgotten Genocide and the Colonial Roots of Nazism Page 17