21. The Holocaust Was Not the First Time that Germans Set Out to Exterminate an Entire People
Unsurprisingly, the German colonists’ abuses alienated the natives of South West Africa. When the Herero and Nama learned that the Germans planned to further divide their lands and herd them into reservations, they rose up in rebellion. In January 1904, they launched a surprise attack that killed about 125 Germans. In response, the Germans sent an expeditionary force of about 14,000 soldiers, led by General Lothar von Trotha. He stated his intent to end the rebellion with a horrific expedient: the extermination of the Herero.
As he put it: “I believe that the nation as such should be annihilated, or, if this was not possible by tactical measures, have to be expelled from the country“. In August, 1904, Trotha’s men defeated about 3000 Herero combatants. As a guide employed by the Germans described what happened next: “After the battle all men, women, and children who fell into German hands, wounded or otherwise, were mercilessly put to death. Then the Germans set off in pursuit of the rest, and all those found by the wayside and in the sandveld were shot down and bayoneted to death. The mass of the Herero men were unarmed and thus unable to offer resistance“.
