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

by Casper Erichsen

  When trying to understand Friedrich von Lindequist’s policies as Governor of German South-West Africa it is difficult not to speculate whether his time in South Africa during the Boer War had had an impact upon his ideas and methods. As German Consul in Cape Town, von Lindequist had a unique insight into the British conduct of the war and Kitchener’s disastrous concentration-camp policy.

  The rationale behind the British decision to intern Boer civilians had been, in part at least, to deny the Boer riflemen the support and succour of the civilian population and thereby undermine their insurgency. Kitchener also hoped that the imprisonment of their families would induce the Boers to surrender, and the British went as far as to give smaller rations to the families of men still in the field.

  Von Lindequist’s promise to the Herero – that their suffering in the concentration camps might come to an end if their ‘compatriots, who are still in the bush’ surrendered – bears the hallmarks of Kitchener’s earlier strategy. Yet there was one crucial difference. In the Boer War the concentration camps had been part of a strategy aimed at ending an ongoing insurgency. In German South-West Africa, the Herero were defeated when von Lindequist took command. As he admitted in mid-1906, they had no ability and no desire to fight. The concentration camps were not part of a military strategy.

  Furthermore, von Lindequist had absolutely no intention of releasing the Herero inmates of the concentration camps, no matter how many of their ‘compatriots’ surrendered. Perhaps von Lindequist hoped that this false promise would seep back to the Herero in the bush, carried by the Damara men employed as guards or by Herero escapees. Another possibility is that by holding out the vague promise of freedom, von Lindequist believed he might induce the Herero in the camps to work harder or suffer their privations without complaint. Whatever his motives, von Lindequist’s speech at Swakopmund was the first in a series of deceptions.

  The Swakopmund speech also marked the beginning of von Lindequist’s attempt to rewrite history. After promising the Herero better treatment if their compatriots surrendered, he went on to demand that the Herero accept blame for the war and supplicate themselves before his authority and that of the Kaiser. ‘Do you admit’, he asked them, ‘that you started this war without reason and that you yourselves carry the blame for your misery?’ To this the assembled prisoners were made to reply in unison, possibly by the missionaries, ‘Yes we know it.’ Von Lindequist then asked, ‘Do you trust that I will govern you justly and benignly from now on?’ The Herero were encouraged to reply, ‘Yes, we trust you.’ Then, von Lindequist concluded, ‘I greet you all in the name of the Kaiser; behave well and your future will be favourable.’7

  Von Lindequist, the career diplomat, understood what von Trotha, the blinkered soldier, had not. He was acutely aware that Germany’s international standing was at a particularly low ebb in the first years of the twentieth century due, in part, to persistent accusations of militarism and ‘excesses’ in the colonies. In such a climate, the overt brutality of the Extermination Order and the continuing horrors of the concentration-camp system risked damaging Germany’s reputation further. Von Lindequist set about creating an alternative history, to conceal both his own policies and the past excesses of General von Trotha.

  Von Lindequist’s speech to the Herero at Swakopmund was the beginning of a much larger process of distortion, which concealed the reality of the wars fought against the Herero and Nama. Under von Lindequist, distortions and falsehoods that had initially emerged in the pro-colonialist propaganda of early 1904 were set down as historical fact. In von Lindequist’s version of recent events, the wars Germany had waged against the Herero and Nama had been fought in self-defence. The German army had simply rushed to the defence of a desperate settler population. In this way von Lindequist became the first architect of South-West Africa’s Official History, a fictional account of the colony’s past that proved so resilient that many aspects of it outlived the German Empire by over seventy years.

  In February 1907, thirteen months into his tenure as governor, von Lindequist was able to boast in a dispatch to Berlin that ‘the northern and central parts of the territory are practically void of Hereros’. Von Lindequist completed the ethnic cleansing of Hereroland with the support of a group General von Trotha had repeatedly marginalised – the missionaries.

  In Windhoek, von Lindequist held a meeting with Friedrich Eich, the head of the mission in Hereroland, and suggested that the missionaries might try to convince the last Herero, still hiding in the bush, to surrender. Von Lindequist was careful to portray the task as peacemaking. After some consultation, Eich and the missionaries agreed.8

  From von Lindequist’s standpoint, the missionaries were ideally suited to the task in hand. The most senior had been in Hereroland for more than three decades, most understood the terrain and some even spoke Otjiherero. They had nurtured personal friendships with various Herero communities, bonds that might now be re-established. The missionaries for their part were eager to play a wider role in the colony and regain their congregations. For the eighteen months of von Trotha’s rule, the mission had stood on the brink of collapse. The war had separated the missionaries from their congregations and after the Waterberg they had become a virtual irrelevance in the north.

  In the second week of December, von Lindequist announced that his administration would provide funds for the restoration of two abandoned mission stations in Hereroland: one at Otjihaënena some 60 miles east of Windhoek, the other in western Hereroland at Omburo. These would be the stations from which the missionaries would begin ‘collecting’ the last of the Herero still at large. To help the missionaries entice them out of the bush, von Lindequist supplied the two collection stations with blankets, food and tobacco. More importantly, he agreed that no soldiers would patrol the bush or appear at the collection points. By leaving the operation entirely in the hands of the missionaries, von Lindequist was able to move more of the army south to fight in the war against Nama.

  The Omburo collection station in western Hereroland was the first to be opened. To run it, the mission appointed the experienced and highly respected missionary August Kuhlmann, who, along with his family and a few Herero faithful, arrived at Omburo on 21 December 1905. The actual task of trekking through the bush, locating and persuading bands of Herero to surrender was not to be carried out by the missionaries themselves, but by Herero specially recruited from the thousands of prisoners working on the railways. The twenty Herero recruited by Kuhlmann were organised into what were called ‘Peace Patrols’. They were equipped with horses, given supplies of food and even issued rifles. Their role was to locate their compatriots hiding in the bush and explain to them that the Germans were now willing to accept their surrender. In the bush the Peace Patrols assured the terrified Herero they encountered that at the collection sites there were no soldiers and that there would be no ambushes or tricks, only food and the chance of reuniting with the missionaries and their faith. To add authority, the Peace Patrols were also issued with copies of a lengthy proclamation, written by Governor von Lindequist, offering food, shelter and security:

  Hereros … General von Trotha, who conducted the German war against you, left for Germany a few days ago. His departure means that the war will come to an end … I call upon all Hereros who move about in the bush and on the mountains and who have to sustain themselves on meagre bush foods and theft: come and put down your weapons. Hereros, thousands of your compatriots have already surrendered and are now being fed and clothed by the government. I have made every precaution that they will be treated well. The same I guarantee you … Come to Otjihaënena and Omburo … Come soon Hereros before it is too late.9

  Only four days after setting up camp at the Omburo collection station, the first of the Peace Patrols disappeared through the heat haze into the bush. Four days later they returned with a human haul of twenty-two emaciated Herero. Over the next months thousands of ghost-like figures staggered out of the bush and, true to von Lindequist
’s promise, they were issued with food, blankets, tobacco and a great deal of proselytising by Kuhlmann and the other missionaries.

  In the initial stages of the collection campaign, the food consisted mainly of standard government rations: flour, rice and canned beef. But as the rainy season set in during February, Kuhlman’s garden by the adjacent River Omaruru began to yield crops of vegetables. Rested and fed, the Herero started to show signs of recovery. It seemed their torment had come to an end. By February, Kuhlmann reported that there were 1,700 Herero at Omburo; by June there were more than four thousand. Such was the success of the missionaries at Omburo and Otjihaënena that two additional collection stations were established, at Otjozongombe near the the Waterberg and Okomitombe near the eastern border with Bechuanaland.

  By April 1906 thousands of Herero were in the collection camps, slowly recovering from their ordeal. However, under the pretext that supplies were running low, they were gradually ushered out of the camps, probably by the Peace Patrols. Many were marched into the main German towns and from there they were transported to the concentration camps or directly to the railway works. The Herero at Omburo were transported to a concentration camp at Omaruru, 30 miles away; those at Otjihaënena were sent directly to the Windhoek concentration camp.10

  The missionaries continued to cooperate with von Lindequist’s government long after it had become clear that Herero collected by the Peace Patrols were destined for the concentration camps or to become forced labour on the railways. While some were privately appalled, there were only muted murmurs of discontent. Publicly the joint venture between the mission and colonial government was lauded as a huge success. In its official newsletter of 1906, the mission expressed its desire to ‘extend our heartfelt thanks to the Lord for employing our mission to bring peace and orderliness in South West Africa.’ Missionary Director Spiecker, who toured South-West Africa at the height of the collection campaign, gave a more honest assessment. During a visit to the Otjihaënena collection station, he wrote, ‘I enjoyed myself in so many ways with these Herero; but again and again my heart was rendered heavy when I thought about what awaited them.’11

  Governor von Lindequist had arrived in South-West Africa the day after Samuel Izaak had surrendered at Berseba and Major von Estorff had formally accepted his surrender terms. Just hours after landing in Swakopmund, von Lindequist had sent an urgent telegram to von Estorff ordering him to withdraw the guarantees he had made to Samuel Izaak and the Witbooi. When von Estorff ignored von Lindequist’s orders, the governor was forced to accept that the terms of surrender were a fait accompli. He agreed that ‘The Nama will be allowed to set up free settlements with directions from the local military authority’, but to appease Berlin he demanded that their ‘settlements will be guarded night and day by the military’.12

  The dispute between von Estorff and von Lindequist over the Witbooi’s surrender revealed that, under the new governor, it was the army who were now the restraining influence over the civilian administration. It also forced von Lindequist, who had promised the Kaiser a complete victory over the Nama nation, to devise an alternative strategy by which the remainder might be induced to surrender, and then broken. In the first week of December 1905 Samuel Izaak and 134 women, old men and children arrived in Gibeon, their former hometown and the location of the ‘free settlement’ in which they were to be permitted to live under the terms of surrender. They were instructed to make camp on a rocky hill opposite the German fortress, in which the white men of Gibeon had taken refuge from Hendrik Witbooi the previous year. Although the occasional German guard stalked their camp, they were largely left alone. No barbed wire surrounded their settlement; they were well treated by the German garrison and even allowed to keep some livestock. Slowly they began to recover from the privations of the war. The children were sent to a local mission school and, to the delight of the local missionary, Christian Spellmeyer, the entire community began to attend Sunday mass at the mission church.13

  After two weeks in Gibeon, Samuel Izaak visited the German fortress, where he met the local officers. The mood was cordial, and men who only weeks earlier had been sworn enemies shared their war stories. To the amazement of the local commander, Major von Maercker, Samuel Izaak was able to read the German war maps, and even pointed out the places where he and Hendrik Witbooi had taken refuge and eluded their pursuers.

  The treatment the Witbooi received at Gibeon, in stark contrast to the sufferings of the Herero in the concentration camps, was not proof that Governor von Lindequist planned to forgive them for rising up or wished to re-establish the German-Witbooi alliance. What motivated the governor’s apparent generosity was the inability of the army to defeat the Nama militarily. Von Lindequist, it appears, planned to use Samuel Izaak and the Witbooi as a lure, with which he might persuade the other Nama clans to surrender. On 7 December, he made the point clearly to Berlin, promising that ‘the Witbooi will not be granted freedom, but they will, for a period, be treated as prisoners of war’.14

  Samuel Izaak was convinced that the Germans were genuine in their desire to bring the war to an amicable conclusion, and that the good treatment his people had enjoyed at Gibeon would be extended to the whole of the Nama nation. Samuel agreed to send messages to the other Nama Kapteins, urging them to give up the fight and surrender at Gibeon. He assured them they would receive generous surrender terms and humane treatment. The first Nama leader who agreed to surrender was the Witbooi chief Sebulon, another of Hendrik Witbooi’s former lieutenants. As he and a group of around two hundred of his people nervously approached Gibeon, Samuel Izaak rode out to meet them and allay their fears. During the next three months, over a thousand Nama followed suit. In February 1906, the last of the Witbooi, the men who had followed Isaak Witbooi and chosen to fight on after Hendrik Witbooi’s death, surrendered to the Germans. A month later Cornelius Fredericks, leader of the Bethanie Nama, swayed by the encouraging reports from Gibeon, also came in.15

  As the Nama clans surrendered in Gibeon, Governor von Lindequist was already preparing to renege on the terms of their surrender. In January, he and Colonel Dame ordered senior officers in Gibeon to inform the Nama that they were to be sent north to Windhoek. An order issued on 13 January to Major Pierer in Gibeon instructed him to

  Inform Samuel Izaak and the senior leaders that the transfer [to Windhoek] is required for reasons related to provision of food and furthermore that the promises made by Major von Estorff will remain uninfluenced by this move. Samuel Izaak will also be informed that the esteemed Governor wishes to meet up with him later on, to speak about the future of his people.16

  In early February 1906, confident that the reasons for their transfer north were benign, almost two thousand Nama began the 200-mile journey to Windhoek, completely unaware that they were being marched to a concentration camp. An unknown photographer took a single image of the Nama’s trek. It shows a long train of people stretched across the horizon. There are more women than men and, while a few of the elders are on horseback, most are walking, their mouths covered by scarves to protect them against the clouds of dust churned up by their feet. No German guards are visible.17

  In the third week of February (the records do not give an exact date), the Nama arrived at the Windhoek concentration camp. It was located on the slopes of the hill on which the old German fortress stood. In place of barbed wire, the perimeter fencing consisted of a thick layer of felled camel-thorn trees, whose thorns grow several centimetres long and are easily capable of slicing through flesh. Inside the fence of thorns were several rows of closely packed, makeshift huts, formed from the branches of trees and covered with cloth. At the northern entrance of the camp stood a number of large, canvas army tents, which accommodated the hundreds of prisoners unable to find a place within the huts. The whole camp was dirt-ridden and foul-smelling. At that time around four thousand Herero prisoners were housed there.18

  From February 1906 onwards, a steady stream of Nama prisoners flowed into the ca
mp. The Witbooi were among the first to arrive; soon they were joined in captivity by members of the other smaller Nama clans, who one by one surrendered in the south and were marched north. The arriving Nama were housed in a separate part of the camp to the Herero, and just few days after their arrival, Governor von Lindequist came to address them.

  Accompanied by a retinue of journalists, prominent settlers and government functionaries, the governor delivered a speech, blaming the Nama for the war and claiming that they had behaved in a barbaric fashion:

  Your uprising cannot be described as an actual war, but rather as an attack on unsuspecting and defenceless people. This is what is called premeditated murder … Kaptein Hendrik Witbooi is dead and he can therefore no longer be held accountable; but everyone standing here today shares the guilt because you did not have to follow his orders. According to your treaty with the German Government, your principal leader was not Hendrik Witbooi, but the German Kaiser. You have broken this pact without reason and thereby made yourselves guilty of murder. The punishment for this crime is death and you all deserve to be executed. That justice will not take its proper course in this instance, is only due to the assumption that you were not aware of the extent of your actions and because [I] expect that you will try to atone for your crimes … I have confidence that you Samuel Izaak and you Hans Hendrik have enough influence over your people to prevent any further reckless deeds.19