But von Trotha has not finished yet. He remains utterly unmoved by all reports of such suffering. In fact, he wants the extermination to be even more thorough. On one occasion, when he accompanies one of the pursuit patrols, they find two elderly Herero women, exhausted by an old waterhole – von Trotha promptly orders both to be shot. On another occasion he questions a young woman survivor and then orders her to be killed. There are other eyewitness accounts of German soldiers tossing a baby Herero boy on the bayonets of their rifles, of women and children packed into a thorn enclosure, doused with lamp oil and then burnt alive.
Seven weeks after the Battle of Waterberg, von Trotha is still urging the German 1st Field Regiment through the Omaheke in pursuit of the last remnants of the fleeing Herero. Almost one hundred miles south-east of the Waterberg, he and his soldiers pause at the last known waterhole, deep inside the desert, at a clearing called Osombo zo Windimbe. Just after dawn on 3 October 1904, von Trotha reads out a proclamation to all his troops, including Franz von Epp. It remains one of the most disturbing statements in the entire history of genocide. The proclamation was written down and subsequently translated into Otjiherero and distributed widely. A single copy of the original proclamation has survived, and is held today in the Botswana National Archives in Gaberone. It is titled Vernichtungsbefehl (‘Extermination Order’):
I the great general of the German troops, send this letter to the Herero people. Hereros are no longer German subjects. They have murdered, stolen, they have cut off the noses, ears and other bodily parts of wounded soldiers and now, because of cowardice, they will fight no more. I say to the people: anyone who delivers one of the Herero captains to my station as a prisoner will receive 1,000 marks. He who brings Samuel Maharero will receive 5,000 marks. All the Hereros must leave their land. If the people do not do this I will force them to do it with the great guns. Any Herero found within the German borders with or without a gun, with or without cattle, will be shot. I shall no longer receive any women or children; I will drive them back … or I will shoot them, this is my decision for the Herero people.
The Great General of the Mighty Kaiser
As von Trotha finishes reading this proclamation, two captured Herero men are dragged towards an improvised gallows and hanged. The women and children captured with them are then driven back into the desert, with volleys of gunfire over their heads; around their necks each of them carries a ‘necklace’ containing a piece of paper – von Trotha’s Extermination Order. The next day von Trotha writes to his superiors in Berlin, justifying this order, saying it is ‘abundantly clear to me that the Negroes will yield only to brute force’ and that he sees this revolt in a wider context: ‘This uprising is and remains the beginning of a racial struggle.’
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Everyone who has written about Germany in South-West Africa sees the central importance of von Trotha’s Extermination Order. Lindqvist, Cocker, Olusoga and Erichsen all write eloquently of the importance of what is represented by these words – the idea that the Herero ‘must vanish from the face of the earth’ is understandably terrifying, not just in its own terms, but also in the light of what we know followed forty years later. Some also write about the effect the eventual publication of this order had on European public opinion – the German chancellor was horrified, not so much by the destruction of the Herero but by the potential of the written extermination order ‘to demolish Germany’s reputation among civilised nations’. Indeed, on 8 December von Trotha was finally forced to withdraw the order, specifically relating to Herero who voluntarily surrendered – not that this affected the ongoing killing operations on the ground to any great degree.
The chancellor was right to be worried – though the full impact on Germany’s reputation wasn’t felt until the publication of the ‘Blue Book’ by South Africa at the end of 1918. This was a remarkably detailed account of German atrocities against the Herero and Nama, including photographs and many eyewitness statements, which had a dramatic impact on European opinion at the end of the First World War, especially in the period before the Versailles Conference, and which contributed significantly (together with accounts of German atrocities in Belguim) to the harshness of the Versailles peace terms. Even The Times, rarely known as a beacon of anti-colonialism, thundered in an editorial in September 1918: ‘It had been widely supposed that in the oppression of Belgium the German capacity for wickedness had reached its limit. That was a foolish delusion. The inhuman outrages committed in Europe are insignificant compared to the savage abominations which were the foundation of German rule in Africa’.
But in all that has been written about the aftermath of the Herero and Nama genocide, the Extermination Order and its impact on European opinion, nobody, to my knowledge, has ever investigated the direct effect it must have had on Hitler’s organisation of the Jewish Holocaust. An entire book by the eminent historian Peter Longerich investigates the precise nature of Hitler’s relationship to the giving of orders for this genocide – his central thesis being that ‘Hitler treated the murder of the Jews as a matter of extreme secrecy and was careful not to leave behind any written orders about the extermination. And in the cases where his instructions on this matter were recorded, he always used codified language.’ Longerich’s book is called The Unwritten Order, yet nowhere here does he consider whether Hitler may have been influenced by the furore over von Trotha’s Vernichtungsbefehl, and the critically important fact that it had been written down – the intent for extermination made explicit. Not a mistake the government of the Third Reich was likely to repeat.
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August 2018, Pen Llŷn
After this hottest summer for forty years, the weather has broken today. Rain is sweeping in from the sea, falling in Welsh diagonals outside my window. I’m waiting for the phone to ring. I’ve been expecting a call this afternoon – from a woman I’ve never spoken to before. We’ve been put in touch by a mutual friend.
As I wait I look online for any information about this woman. She’s a barrister, well known for her work on prominent human rights cases. I’m interested to see if anything comes up if I search her name together with ‘Namibia’ ‘Herero’. No, nothing seems to be in the public domain yet. Eventually the phone trills, I leave it for a couple of rings, then answer. She’s apologetic that she’s been so elusive – a big trial, more indiscriminate street violence in a summer of madness, has overrun, so much so that she’s had to put the family holiday on hold. But that’s just the life of litigation lawyers, she says. Soon we’re talking about the case she’s helping with – 114 years after von Trotha’s Extermination Order was given, she’s working with a team to explore bringing an action against the German government for the genocide of the Herero and Nama in South-West Africa.
There are so many questions that I want to ask, but at the outset of our conversation she warns me that – because of lawyer/client confidentiality – there may be subjects which she cannot speak about. Yes, I understand. We start by discussing the legal cases which have been brought against Germany so far over the last year or so. These have all been filed in New York and Washington under what is known as the ATS (Alien Tort Statute) – a part of civil law in America which allows foreign citizens to seek redress in US courts for human rights violations committed outside the United States. But all of these have failed. She isn’t surprised; the US action was flawed, bound to founder and fail as it has. But along with a team of British lawyers, she is thinking of legal mechanisms to find a way forward. I hope she’s right, as I’ve been tracking these other cases as well, and have been disappointed at their failures so far. Printouts of various articles are spread across my desk – ‘Herero and Nama groups sue Germany over Namibian genocide’ (BBC website, 6 January 2017), ‘Descendents of Namibia genocide victims seek reparations in New York’ (Guardian, 16 March 2017), ‘Why the Herero of Namibia are suing Germany for reparations’ (NPR website, 6 May 2018). But none of these have gained any traction in the American legal system – as she predicted.