Herero and Nama Genocide (1904-1908) in German South West Africa

The Herero and Nama genocide was the destruction of large parts of the Herero and Nama peoples by German colonial troops in German South West Africa, now Namibia, between 1904 and 1908. After the Herero and then the Nama rose against German rule, the army under General Lothar von Trotha drove the Herero into the desert, ordered their extermination and later held survivors in deadly concentration camps. Widely described as the first genocide of the 20th century, it was formally recognised as genocide by Germany in 2021.

Background: a settler colony

Germany claimed the territory in 1884, during the Scramble for Africa and around the time of the Berlin Conference. The land was home to several peoples, including the cattle-herding Herero in the centre and the Nama in the south, as well as the Damara, San and Ovambo.

Under Governor Theodor Leutwein, German rule expanded through treaties, force and the growth of white settlement. Herero and Nama communities steadily lost land and cattle through debt, fraudulent trading, a rinderpest epidemic in 1897 and settler pressure. Plans for reservations and a railway through Herero land, together with routine violence and the courts’ failure to punish settlers who abused or killed Africans, deepened anger.

Resistance had a longer history. In the 1880s and early 1890s the Nama leader Hendrik Witbooi refused to sign a protection treaty, and in April 1893 German troops attacked his settlement at Hornkranz, killing many women and children. After further fighting, Witbooi signed a treaty with Leutwein in 1894 and for the next decade supplied auxiliary soldiers to the Germans. Leutwein’s system relied on such agreements with individual chiefs, playing them against each other while German authority slowly grew.

By 1903 there were roughly 4,000-5,000 white settlers in the colony, a small number compared with the African population but enough to claim much of the best grazing land in the central highlands. Many Herero chiefs, including Samuel Maharero, had sold land to pay debts, and fear of losing the rest was widespread.

The war against the Herero

The uprising

On 12 January 1904 Herero fighters under their paramount chief Samuel Maharero rose up around Okahandja and other settlements. More than 100 German settlers and soldiers were killed in the first days, almost all of them men; Maharero had ordered that women, children, missionaries and British and Boer residents be spared.

Leutwein, who favoured a negotiated end, was soon sidelined. Berlin sent reinforcements and in May 1904 appointed Lieutenant General Lothar von Trotha, an officer with a record of harsh campaigns in East Africa and China, as military commander; he arrived in the colony in June. He held openly racial views of warfare, believing that African peoples would yield only to overwhelming force, and he saw no place for negotiation.

Waterberg and the desert

By mid-1904 most Herero, including women, children and herds, had gathered near the Waterberg plateau. On 11-12 August 1904 von Trotha attacked them at the Battle of Waterberg, known to the Herero as Ohamakari. The encirclement was incomplete, and the Herero broke out towards the south-east, into the dry Omaheke, the western edge of the Kalahari.

German troops pursued them, occupied the waterholes along the desert edge and patrolled to stop people returning. Thousands of Herero died of thirst and starvation, and their cattle perished with them. Some survivors, including Samuel Maharero, crossed the desert into British Bechuanaland (now Botswana).

The extermination order

On 2 October 1904, at Osombo-Windimbe, von Trotha issued a proclamation to the Herero. It declared that they were no longer German subjects, that every Herero found within German borders, with or without a gun, with or without cattle, would be shot, and that women and children would be driven back to their people or fired upon. In a letter at the time he wrote that the Herero nation must be destroyed.

The order caused unease in Berlin. Chancellor Bernhard von Bülow argued that it was contrary to Christian principles, harmful to Germany’s reputation and economically damaging, since the colony needed African labour. In December 1904 Kaiser Wilhelm II had it withdrawn and replaced with a policy of capturing surviving Herero and placing them in camps.

The Nama uprising

In October 1904 the Nama in the south, led by the elderly Hendrik Witbooi, who had earlier fought alongside the Germans, also rose up. Other Nama leaders such as Jakob Morenga and Cornelius Fredericks waged a skilful guerrilla war in the arid south. Witbooi was mortally wounded in October 1905, but fighting continued.

The Nama fought in small, mobile bands that knew the dry mountains and riverbeds of the south well. Jakob Morenga, who had worked in the Cape copper mines, became famous for his raids and for treating captured German soldiers humanely; he was killed in 1907 by a Cape police patrol after crossing into British territory. Some Nama groups surrendered on promises of fair treatment, only to be deported to camps or to other colonies such as Togo and Cameroon. The state of war was officially lifted on 31 March 1907, though small-scale clashes continued until about 1908.

The concentration camps

Captured Herero and Nama, including women and children, were held in camps that the Germans themselves called Konzentrationslager. They were forced to work for the military, government and private companies, building railways and harbours, often on minimal rations. Camps existed at Windhoek, Okahandja, Swakopmund and Lüderitz, among other places, and some prisoners were hired out to settlers and firms as labour.

Missionaries of the Rhenish Missionary Society, who ran collection points for surrendering Herero, reported on the hunger, disease and death they witnessed. Their accounts, along with official German statistics on deaths in custody, are among the main sources historians use today.

The worst was on Shark Island at the port of Lüderitz, where prisoners were exposed to cold Atlantic winds. Cornelius Fredericks died there in 1907. Overall mortality in the camps is estimated at around 45-50 percent. Skulls and remains of the dead were sent to Germany for so-called racial science, a practice that later became a focus of demands for restitution.

By the numbers

Key people

• Samuel Maharero (c. 1856-1923): Herero paramount chief who led the 1904 uprising and died in exile in Bechuanaland.
• Hendrik Witbooi (c. 1830-1905): Nama leader whose rising in 1904 opened the southern war; he appears today on Namibian banknotes.
• Lothar von Trotha (1848-1920): German commander who issued the extermination order.
• Theodor Leutwein (1849-1921): governor who favoured negotiation and was replaced in the field by von Trotha.

Aftermath and recognition

When the camps were closed in 1908, survivors faced a new order. Ordinances issued in 1907 barred Africans in the colony from owning land or large livestock without the governor’s permission, required them to carry identity passes and effectively forced them to work for white employers. Herero and Nama lands were confiscated by the state and much of it was sold or granted to settlers.

German rule ended in 1915, when South African forces conquered the colony during the First World War. A British “Blue Book” of 1918 documented German atrocities, though it was later withdrawn and was partly shaped by wartime propaganda. Namibia remained under South African rule until independence in 1990.

For decades the killings were largely forgotten in Germany. The 1985 Whitaker report to the United Nations cited them as an example of genocide. On the centenary in 2004, German minister Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul apologised at Ohamakari. In 2015 the president of the Bundestag publicly called the events genocide, and from 2011 skulls and other remains were returned to Namibia.

In May 2021 Germany formally recognised the events as genocide and agreed in a joint declaration with Namibia to fund development projects worth 1.1 billion euros over 30 years, while avoiding the term reparations. Many Herero and Nama leaders rejected the deal for excluding them from the talks, and negotiations continued afterwards.

Legacy and debates

Historians widely agree that the events meet the definition of genocide. They continue to debate the links between colonial violence in Africa and later German crimes, including the Holocaust; some stress continuities in ideas of race and in practices such as camps, while others warn against drawing a direct line. The figures for the dead also remain contested because of the lack of reliable population data.

Timeline

• 1884: Germany claims South West Africa as a protectorate.
• 1904, 12 January: the Herero uprising begins.
• 1904, June: Lothar von Trotha takes command.
• 1904, 11-12 August: Battle of Waterberg (Ohamakari); the Herero flee into the Omaheke.
• 1904, 2 October: von Trotha issues the extermination order.
• 1904, October: the Nama under Hendrik Witbooi rise up.
• 1904, December: Berlin orders the extermination order withdrawn; camps are set up.
• 1907, 31 March: the state of war is officially ended.
• 2021, May: Germany formally recognises the genocide.

Why it matters

The Herero and Nama genocide is one of the darkest episodes of European colonialism in Africa. It devastated two peoples whose land and cattle were taken, and it remains central to Namibian memory and to debates in Germany about colonial responsibility, restitution and the place of colonial history in national memory.