V.V. (13) The 1904 Herero Rebellion

[jbor]

A very good essay by Tilman Dedering entitled '"A Certain Rigorous Treatment
of all Parts of the Nation": The Annihilation of the Herero in German
South-West Africa, 1904'; in _The Massacre in  History_, edited by Mark
Levene and Penny Roberts, Berghahn Books, NY, 1999, pp. 205-222:

Dedering takes the first part of his title from a proclamation and
communique sent to the Chief of the General Staff in Berlin, Alfred von
Schlieffen on 4/10/1904, explaining the action he was taking against the
Herero. Apparently von Schlieffen had declared a state of emergency in
Sudwest even before von Trotha left for the colony, and thus "neither the
Colonial Office, nor the governor in South West Africa, had any control over
him" (p. 208). Von Trotha expressed his bottom line as follows:

    "Conquered the colonies have to be, nothing of that can be withdrawn.
    The natives have to give way, see America. Either by the bullet or via
    [the] mission through brandy." (p. 209)

Dedering's essay recounts the public, media and government debate about the
war back in Germany, and the reasons why Kaiser Wilhelm II rescinded von
Trotha's proclamation to annihilate (Vernichtung) the entire race in Dec.
1905 and directed the General to accept the Herero surrender.

Dedering concludes as follows:

      Were, then, the mass killings in South West Africa a crude prequel
    to Nazi industrial extermination? If one searches for similarities,
    instead of a neat line of historical continuity, the German-Herero war
    more closely resembles the actions of German soldiery on its eastern
    front during the Second World War, rather than the specificty of Nazi
    death camps. In South West Africa, as in the Soviet Union, the Germans
    "too often behaved as if the alleged barbarism of their opponents ...
    justified barbaric behaviour." Eric Hobsbawn has pointed out that during
    the twentieth century, "more human beings had been killed or allowed to
    die by human decision than ever before in history", perhaps up to 187
    million people. Though we cannot discard questions about the destructive
    aspects of German history or of its continuity, to focus on it alone
    could impede our analysis of the origins of genocide as a regular
    feature of our 'age of extremes'. (p. 217)

In his notes Dedering cites Andreas Selmeci and Dag Henrichsen, _Thomas
Pynchon und die Geschichte der Herero_, Bielefeld, 1995, which might be of
interest to German speakers.

Many citations from primary and secondary sources (particularly the studies
by Horst Dreschler and Helmut Bley); also see:

Helen Fein, _Genocide: A Sociological Perspective_, 3rd edn. London, 1993.

Eric Hobsbawn, _Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century 1914-1991_,
London, 1994.

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