Peace will spell death for me and my nation, for I know that there is no place for me in your midst. As regards your offers of peace, what else are you doing than lecturing me as you would a schoolchild? You know only too well that I have rendered you many a service in times of peace, but in your peace I can see nothing but a desire to destroy us to the last men.28
A month later and just over a year into the war, Hendrik Witbooi and his men, having recovered some of their strength, were on the offensive again, attacking German convoys and raiding farms across the south. On 29 October 1905 they launched an attack on a German supply convoy near the town of Fahlgras in central-eastern Namaland. During the attack Hendrik Witbooi was hit in the thigh by a shard of shrapnel. The German soldiers who watched through binoculars later described Hendrik staggering to his horse and fleeing the battlefield, accompanied by his men.
With their leader seriously wounded and bleeding profusely, the Witbooi made a dash for the border with British Bechuanaland, but after three days in the saddle, Hendrik collapsed east of Khoes and just 30 miles from British territory. His last words were reported to have been, ‘It is enough now, the children shall have peace.’ Hendrik Witbooi’s body was wrapped in a blanket. A Bible was placed on his chest and he was lowered into an unmarked grave. Fearing that the body would be exhumed by German soldiers, his men drove their cattle over the grave to conceal it.29
The death of Hendrik Witbooi marked the beginning of the slow disintegration of the Nama alliance. A few days after his burial, the Witbooi fighters, along with the members of other Nama clans who had joined them, held a meeting in the desert to debate their next course of action. On his father’s death, leadership of the Witbooi fell to Hendrik’s eldest son Isaak. He and many of the younger Witbooi men wanted to continue the fight. However, Samuel Izaak, for three decades Hendrik’s under-Kaptein and a highly respected elder, favoured negotiations. At dawn the next morning, the young men under Isaak Witbooi rode off to continue the war, alongside Jacob Morenga and the other Nama bands. Samuel Izaak and the majority of the Witbooi clan, along with their allies the Veldschoendragers, set out for the small town of Berseba some 60 miles away. Home to the Khari-Khauan, a community of Nama who had remained loyal to the Germans throughout the war, Berseba was neutral territory.30
On 20 November, having first written to the German authorities to discuss the possibility of surrender, Samuel Izaak and his men handed themselves over to the German Station Commander at Berseba, Lieutenant von Westernhagen. On the date of their capitulation, the Nama force under Samuel Izaak consisted of seventy-four men and sixty-five women and children. Lieutenant von Westernhagen – a junior officer without the authority to accept the Witbooi surrender – telegrammed his superior, Major Ludwig von Estorff. On 21 November von Estorff eagerly accepted Samuel Izaak’s terms, without qualification or delay. To ensure his actions were acceptable to his superiors, von Estorff sent a telegram to his commander, Colonel Dame, who promptly approved.
The undignified haste with which von Estorff and Dame accepted Samuel Izaak’s surrender is an indication of the terrible state of the German army in the south. By November 1905, many of the army’s depots stood practically empty, supplies of ammunition were running low and much of the war material the Germans needed to maintain their force in the field was in transit from Germany. The death of Hendrik Witbooi and the surrender of Samuel Izaak suddenly and unexpectedly offered the Germans a glimmer of hope. It held out the prospect that the Nama alliance might dissolve and that the remaining Nama bands might surrender, bringing the war finally to an end.31
The news of Hendrik Witbooi’s death came too late for von Trotha. On 2 November, the Kaiser had finally approved his request and the general had been relieved of his command. As he arrived in the port of Lüderitz, to board a ship back to Germany, von Trotha received a telegram announcing the death of Hendrik Witbooi. He claimed to have thanked the messenger who brought the telegram with the words, ‘This is the best news you could have brought me.’32
On 19 November 1905, a guard of honour assembled on the Lüderitz harbour and almost the entire white population gathered to say farewell to General von Trotha. In a speech to the assembled crowd, the man who had promised he would vanquish rebellious African tribes with ‘rivers of blood and money’ told the people of Lüderitz, ‘In this land I have lost everything that was dear to me in life.’
On his return to Germany von Trotha was awarded the Pour le Mérite, the highest military order of the day, and was thanked personally and wholeheartedly by the Kaiser for his loyal service. The German High Command, in its Official History of the Herero War, stated that the ‘devoted service and self-sacrifice that Lieutenant General von Trotha rendered for Kaiser and Reich deserves the warmest gratitude of the fatherland’.33
Notes – 10 ‘Peace Will Spell Death for Me and My Nation’
1. C. W. Erichsen, ‘The Angel of Death Has Descended Violently among Them’: Concentration Camps and Prisoners-of-War in Namibia, 1904–08 (Leiden: African Studies Centre, 2005); H. Drechsler, Let Us Die Fighting (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1986); Jon M. Bridgeman, The Revolt of the Hereros (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1981); T. Leutwein, Elf Jahre Gouverneur in Deutsch-Suedwestafrika (Berlin: Ernst Siegfried Mittler und Sohn, 1907); W. Nuhn, Feind Ueberall (Bonn: Bernard & Graefe Verlag, 2000); W. Hillebrecht, ‘The Nama and the War in the South’, in 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), pp. 143–59.
2. Leutwein, Elf Jahre.
3. Drechsler, Let Us Die Fighting, pp. 182–3; Union of South Africa, Report on the Natives of South-West Africa and Their Treatment by Germany (London: HMSO, 1918).
4. NAN, Accession 507, Missionary Berger Memoirs: ‘Drie Jare by Hendrik Witbooi’, pp. 14–15.
5. BAB, Colonial Department, File 2133, pp. 32–4.
6. I. Goldblatt, The History of South West Africa: From the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century (Cape Town: Juta and Co. Ltd, 1971), pp. 147–8.
7. South African News, 31 May 1904.
8. Drechsler, Let Us Die Fighting, p. 143.
9. Ibid., p. 184.
10. ELCN, RMS, Missions-berichte January 1905, pp. 25–31, 39–45.
11. Ibid., pp. 39–45.
12. C. W. Erichsen, What the Elders Used to Say (Windhoek: Namibia Institute for Democracy, 2008), pp. 20–31.
13. Kriegsgeschichtlichen Abteilung I des Grossen Generalstabes, Die Kaempfe der deutschen Truppen in Suedwestafrika: Band 2 (Berlin: Ernst Siegfried Mittler und Sohn, 1907), pp. 17–19.
14. A German solider present at Auob remembers how the Nama taunted them mid-battle. ‘Scorning remarks were shouted at us, like “Are Deutschmanns thirsty? Here is plenty of water.” They displayed filled canteens of water in front of us. Again, one of our officers was severely wounded, shot from behind. Another Lieutenant charged the enemy alone. Four bullets struck him down, dead.’ C. Jitschin, Als Reiter in Suedwest (Breslau: Flemmings Verlag, 1937), pp. 89–90.
15. O. Trautmann, Im Herero und Hottentottenland (Oldenburg: Gerhard Stalling, 1913), p. 121.
16. Jitschin, Als Reiter, p. 130.
17. Paul Emil von Lettow-Vorbeck, Mein Leben (Biberach an der Riss: Koehlers, 1957), pp. 87–8.
18. Drechsler, Let Us Die Fighting, p. 187.
19. Cape Times, 29 May 1906.
20. In an official communication to the parents of E. L. Presgrave upon his death at German hands in 1907, he was described in the following manner: ‘Mr. E. L. Presgrave is reported to have acted as “Secretary” and adviser to Marengo, one of the Rebel leaders, and His Majesty’s Government are informed by the German authorities that it has been ascertained that he took part in the fight at Narugas on 11 March and in a patrol fight at Bissiport [aka Pisseport] in April 1905.’ Cape Archives, Correspondence file no. 868, p. 1.
21. Drechsler, Let Us Die Fighting, p. 220 n. 16.
22. Ibid
., p. 193.
23. Ibid., p. 187; M. Bayer, Mit Haputquartier in Suedwestafrika (Berlin: Wilhelm Weicher Marine und Kolonialverlag, 1909), p. 225.
24. NAN, BKE 220, B. II. & 4. a. spec. 1, pp. 7–8.
25. Some sources note that Lieutenant Thilo von Trotha was the general’s son. However, Maximilian Bayer, who travelled through most of the operational areas with the general, claims the younger Trotha was a nephew. Bayer, Mit Haputquartier, p. 261; Kriegsgeschichtlichen Abteilung I, pp. 119–20.
26. Nuhn, Feind Ueberall, p. 175.
27. ZBU 465, D. IV. m.3. vol. 1, p 30; BKE 305, G. A. 10/2 ‘Secret Files: Uprising 1904–05’, pp. 77–86; Kriegsgeschichtlichen Abteilung I, pp. 180–83.
28. BKE 305, G. A. 10/2 ‘Secret Files: Uprising 1904–05’, p. 79.
29. NAN, Accession 507, Missionary Berger, p. 37.
30. BKE 305, G. A. 10/2 ‘Secret Files: Uprising 1904–05’, pp. 77–86; Kriegsgeschichtlichen Abteilung I, pp. 180–83.
31 See, for example, von Estorff’s dire assessment of the situation facing the German army. L. von Estorff, ‘Kriegserlebnisse in Suedwestafrika’, Militaer-wochenblatt 3 (1911), p. 95.
32. Nuhn, Feind Ueberall, p. 176.
33. Kriegsgeschichtlichen Abteilung I, p. 185.
11
‘You Yourselves Carry the Blame for Your Misery’
Just after noon on 22 November 1905, the twin funnels of a Woermann Line steamer appeared on the horizon, near the port of Swakopmund. On board was German South-West Africa’s first civilian governor, Friedrich von Lindequist. When the ship dropped anchor, the upper echelons of Swakopmund society assembled expectantly at the harbour side. The men wore top hats and black frock-coats, the women pristine ankle-length dresses.1
As von Lindequist stepped onto the rickety wooden jetty, a staccato click from the boot-heels of the senior army officers who lined his path in full dress uniform echoed over the cheers of the small crowd. After a few words of welcome and a brief address by the leading members of Swakopmund’s Jewish community, barely audible above the roar of the waves, the new governor was whisked away.
Friedrich von Lindequist was to rule over German South-West Africa for just one and a half years. In that time he brought peace (of a sort), oversaw rapid economic development, helped increase rates of settlement and captained an enormous programme of public works. Von Lindequist achieved all this while continuing the extermination of the Herero and Nama peoples begun by General von Trotha. To understand why and how this was possible, it is necessary to know something of the man himself.
Von Lindequist was a product of the German Colonial Department. He had served his apprenticeship in German South-West Africa itself. In 1894 – the year after the Hoornkrans massacre – von Lindequist’s uncle, a chief aide to Kaiser Wilhelm, had helped ease his nephew into the position of Deputy Governor. For four years, von Lindequist had served under Governor Leutwein in Windhoek, forging many lasting friendships with the settlers. Photographs from the period show him side by side with the settlers, drinking beer from ornate Bavarian mugs in Windhoek’s many improvised Biergärten. He was, as one historian observed, ‘a settler favourite’.
Despite his image as a man of the people, von Lindequist was a deeply ambitious man. In June 1899, his determination was rewarded when he was appointed Imperial Consul to the Cape Colony, an extremely auspicious promotion for a young man of only thirty-eight. Just months after arriving in Cape Town, the potential of von Lindequist’s posting increased exponentially. On 12 October 1899, the army of the Boer Republic attacked a British armoured train at a small station north of the Kimberley diamond mines, beginning the Boer War. The German government’s official position was that the war was an unfortunate conflict fought ‘between two Christian and white races, that were of the same Germanic stock’.2 Among the German public, however, there was considerable, often vocal support for the Boers, a small republic confronting the army of the mightiest empire on earth. For the next three years, Cape Town became the best possible posting for a young, ambitious German diplomat, and von Lindequist thrust himself into the centre of the diplomatic maelstrom, travelling across frontlines and holding meetings with key British officers, including Lord Kitchener.
Despite the importance of his position and the arduous nature of his schedule, von Lindequist maintained close ties with his friends in German South-West Africa throughout his time in Cape Town. He also used his growing influence in Berlin to lobby in support of their interests. In April 1904, for example, he threw his weight behind settlers’ demands for a pre-emptive military strike against the Nama, despite the fact that the Nama had honoured their military treaties and had not shown any inclination to rise up against German rule. Von Lindequist’s uncompromising attitude towards the Africans, on this and other occasions, won him yet more admirers in both Windhoek and Berlin. When the Colonial Department began its search for a civilian governor to take over from von Trotha, Friedrich von Lindequist was the obvious choice.3
Von Lindequist’s arrival in Swakopmund in November 1905 marked the end of what had been effectively a military dictatorship under General von Trotha. For a year and a half, ever since he had sidelined former Governor Leutwein, the general’s writ had run unchallenged. His narrow-minded, militaristic strategies – although supported at first by the settlers – had left German South-West Africa in a chaotic state. While the war had allowed certain sectors of the economy to expand out of all proportion, others had stagnated.
The central fertile areas of Hereroland, where hundreds of Germans had built their farms, were almost empty of both Herero and settlers. After two years of war many farmers had not dared return to the land they had abandoned in January 1904, let alone establish new farms. Most had remained in the larger towns, where the garrisons afforded them some sense of security. With the farms empty and the Herero decimated, cattle-rearing – the economic raison d’être of the colony – had essentially collapsed. The revival of the civil economy was high on von Lindequist’s list of priorities in 1905. However, neither this nor any of his other ambitions could be realised until the wars against the Herero and the Nama were brought to a final conclusion.4
As von Lindequist took command, around thirteen thousand Herero were in German captivity. Of these, 8,478 were held in the concentration camps; the rest had been put to work on various projects around the colony, the construction of the railways absorbing the bulk of them.5 Thousands more remained in the bush, hiding in the semi-desert areas on the fringes of the Omaheke. There they avoided German patrols and, against all expectations, continued to survive by foraging for roots.
In the south, General von Trotha had left an even more serious and seemingly intractable crisis in his wake. Although Hendrik Witbooi lay in an unmarked grave somewhere in the southern Kalahari, the Nama War was far from over. Those Witbooi who had yielded to the leadership of sub-Kaptein Samuel Izaak had surrendered, but the rest of the Witbooi clan, along with the militias of the other rebellious Nama nations, had not. The Bethanie Nama of Cornelius Fredericks, the Franzmann Nama of Simon Kopper, the Bondelswarts of Johannes Christian and the band of men who rode with Jacob Morenga all continued to wage a war of ambushes and lightning commando raids.
Ranged against them were ten thousand German troops. Ill equipped and inexperienced, they struggled to maintain their own vulnerable supply lines, let alone suppress the Nama insurgency. Although the Witbooi had lost their most inspirational leader, their tactics were so effective and the landscape so inhospitable that, by the time von Lindequist took charge, many of his most senior commanders had come to the conclusion that the war was un-winnable.
Von Lindequist first turned his attention to the Herero and the north. In December 1905, just a month after von Lindequist arrived, Kaiser Wilhelm signed an Imperial Decree expropriating all land previously owned by the Herero. Vast tracts of Herero pasture were now available to current and future settlers, and the funds needed to expand and develop the colony’s infrastructure were
in place. On the day of his arrival in Swakopmund, von Lindequist began the task of inducing the last of the Herero in the bush to surrender.
In one of his first tasks as governor, von Lindequist visited the Swakopmund concentration camp. Escorted by the camp’s military staff and members of the press, he was ushered through the barbed-wire fencing and onto a podium. From there von Lindequist surveyed the eight hundred Herero, most of them women. Despite having only a day’s warning, Missionary Vedder had done his best to disguise the true state of the prisoners by distributing some second-hand clothing. Looking down through a pair of tiny rimless glasses that sat precariously on the ridge of his nose, von Lindequist delivered a speech to the Herero:
Hereros! The great German Kaiser has sent me as the replacement of Governor Leutwein to take over the government of the land. I was filled with a deep pain when I heard about your uprising; you had no reason to do this … That the majority of your chiefs and leaders are now dead or exiled in another country; that your entire nation has been destroyed and that you are now held in captivity; that is entirely your own fault. But you will be free again, except for those who took part in the killing of farmers and traders – they will get their just deserts. I will not be able to lighten your burden until your compatriots, who are still in the bush, desist and report to us … The sooner they present themselves, the sooner your captivity will come to an end. I cannot at this moment make any particular promises for the future; this however I say to you: anyone who behaves well will also be treated well.6
The Kaiser's Holocaust: Germany's Forgotten Genocide and the Colonial Roots of Nazism Page 22