4. The Other Genocide Carried Out by Germans
In the 1880s, Germany established a colony in South West Africa, today’s Namibia. The territory was home to African pastoralists such as the Nama people, numbering about 20,000, and the Herero, a grouping of about 75,000 cattle herders. The German colonists ruled with a heavy hand and deliberate brutality that stood out even amidst the brutal norms of European colonialism. As the German commander in charge of subduing the region put it in 1888: “only uncompromising brutality will lead to victory“.
The African natives’ livestock and best lands were confiscated and given to German settlers, and the Africans themselves were frequently seized and used as slave labor. Racial discrimination was rife, and most German settlers viewed the natives as a source of cheap labor, while others simply called for their extermination. As things turned out, extermination – literal genocide – was what the Germans set out to do, in one of the darkest moments of colonial history.