The Kaiser's Holocaust

[bushfighter]

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

By Casper Erichsen and David Olusoga

Hardcover: 400 pages

Publisher: Faber and Faber (5 Aug 2010)

ISBN-10: 0571231411

ISBN-13: 978-0571231416

Product Dimensions: 23.6 x 16 x 4 cm

Book Description

The unknown story of the genocide of the Herero and Nama peoples in Germany’s forgotten African Empire – an atrocity that foreshadowed the Nazi genocides forty years later.

Review

'Besides being a rivetingly written, chilling African tragedy, this is a book that makes us see the roots of the Holocaust in a different way. It is amazing that previous writers have paid so little attention to this history, and appalling that some of the Allied nations joined the Germans in trying to cover it up.' --Adam Hochschild, author of King Leopold's Ghost

'A chilling work that lifts the veil on a forgotten genocide, Imperial Germany's slaughter of modern Namibia's early peoples. This is history writing at its most compelling: forensic analysis, authoritative sourcing, courageous conclusions. In any reckoning of the colonial age, The Kaiser's Holocaust must be read.' --Tim Butcher, author of Blood River

If you like to read about the lead-up to the Great War then this is a very interesting book.

If you have a particular interest in German South West Africa from first colonisation to becoming independent Namibia, then I would say that this is a very necessary book.

Von Lettow-Vorbeck's service in GSWA, and his later service in Germany commanding a Freikorps unit, are touched upon.

The authors have not gone emotionally overboard and their descriptions and arguments are precise and compelling.

Because of the subject matter it is not a book to enjoy, but I guess that it will be a standard reference work for years to come.

The Great War details will not tell you anything that you cannot find elsewhere and in more detail, but after reading this explanation you will inderstand how the extensive GSWA rail roads were built.

Harry

[centurion]

I don't know if its referred to in the book but the Kaiser has been quoted as saying that the German forces would come down on the rebel tribes "like the huns of old". Not the first time he'd used the comparison (he made a similar reference to the German contingent that went to China), but it appears to have been the genesis of the use of the epithet throughout WW1.

[Ken S.]

Seems to me as though in recent years leftist academics have been scouring German history looking for anything that can pass for a precursor to the Nazi regime.

[centurion]

Seems to me as though in recent years leftist academics have been scouring German history looking for anything that can pass for a precursor to the Nazi regime.

You don't have to be leftist or an academic to recognise genocide and what was done in GSWA was just that - a deliberate (and documented) policy of wiping out two sizeable well identified ethnic groups - not subduing them, eliminating them man woman and child.

[Ken S.]

I'm not making an issue out of whether or not the Germans engaged in genocide, rather that leftist academics seem to be in the habit recently in making connections between the Nazis and incidents, issues, etc. that predate them. What the Germans did was not inconsistent with what other, large imperial powers (such as Britain) had done during the course of their own global expansion. But to say that it was a direct inspiration for the Nazi's policy of exterminating certain groups, the establishment of a concentration camp system, etc. is a tad disingenuous. I think a much more significant influence was the manner in which German POWs were treated during the Great War; this was something that was written about during the war and the interwar period to a considerable extent (eg. Edwin Dwinger) and was quite controversial.

You don't have to be leftist or an academic to recognise genocide and what was done in GSWA was just that - a deliberate (and documented) policy of wiping out two sizeable well identified ethnic groups - not subduing them, eliminating them man woman and child.

[truthergw]

Perhaps leftist academics are trying to offset the rightist academic claim that Hitler and his third reich were entirely anomalous with no connection to what had gone before.

[Heliographen-Abteilung]

I think - more to the point - they were / are trying to counter those who claim there was no atrocity and Trotha's order was either never given or he didn't mean to kill all the Herero.

I think his own thoughts illustrate his intentions well:

"My intimate knowledge of many central African tribes (Bantu and others) haseverywhere convinced me of the necessity that the Negro does not respect treaties butonly brutal force."

&

"...I find it most appropriate that the nation perishes instead of infecting our soldiersand diminishing their supplies of water and food. Apart from that, mildness on myside would only be interpreted as weakness by the other side. They have to perishin the Sandveld or try to cross the Bechuanaland border"

VR

[trajan]

... You don't have to be leftist or an academic to recognise genocide and what was done in GSWA was just that - a deliberate (and documented) policy of wiping out two sizeable well identified ethnic groups - not subduing them, eliminating them man woman and child.

To be honest, I don't know the subject or the book in question, but if I remember righly, the first use of the word 'holocaust' for what we would now term genocide was in connection with the masacre of the Jews at York in the early 13th century. I think they were burned alive? One does not have to be leftist or an academic to object to sloppy use of language in this case, especially with its obvious (not even a 'nudge, nudge, wink'!) attempt at a correlation with German behaviour in the African colonies and - shall we say - a 'natural' conclusion being what happened in WWII?

Trajan

[truthergw]

I think it is a natural reaction to seek the causes of any horrifying episode in human history such as the German massacre of the Jews and any sections of the German and occupied populations the Nazis deemed to be opponents. I would see it as a duty of historians interested in 20th century history to try to establish the historical roots of the holocaust. There are many documented instances of anti-semitism by the kaiser and his circle. There are the historically documented attempts at genocide in Africa. It is not a great leap to see a connecting link from one to the other culminating in the horror of the camps. If only left wing historians are investigating this idea I have to wonder what is stopping right wing historians from following suit?

[hazelclark]

Genocide and anti-semitism is not peculiar to Germany. Most normal people abhor the holocaust but in fact Jews have been descriminated against for centuries and just prior to the first war the Tsar disposed of large numbers of them in his "pogroms". Most European countries persecuted them to a greater or lesser extent including Poland, where there was such an outcry after the 2nd war. Some countries were more overt than others but one only has to look inside the British cupboard to find a few skeletons.

Hazel C.

I think it is a natural reaction to seek the causes of any horrifying episode in human history such as the German massacre of the Jews and any sections of the German and occupied populations the Nazis deemed to be opponents. I would see it as a duty of historians interested in 20th century history to try to establish the historical roots of the holocaust. There are many documented instances of anti-semitism by the kaiser and his circle. There are the historically documented attempts at genocide in Africa. It is not a great leap to see a connecting link from one to the other culminating in the horror of the camps. If only left wing historians are investigating this idea I have to wonder what is stopping right wing historians from following suit?

[Alan Tucker]

This is an totally rubbish idea. Nazism emerged with an opportunity for power from a particular and unique set of historical circumstances after 1929. Yes we can find roots for extreme nationalism, brutal colonialism (most is whoever it is by), authoritarianism, anti-semitism, stab in the back, imposed Treaty, economic instablity etc. What happened in Africa had nothing to do with a fringe, lunatic extremist group (still only 12 MPs in 1928)being able to convince a third of the German people to vote Nazi in 1932 and take over the state.

Also if consider you Hitler an opportunist rather than an intentionalist the possibilties for extermination only began to emerge during the war irrespective of the ramblings of Mein Kampf and the 1939 threatening speech. It is true that he ratcheted up oppression of German Jews but you cannot say that Africa was a role model as most colonialists in Africa regarded Africans as a lesser species at worst and 'children' at best. Untermenschen (sp??) was specifically Nazi because it applied to some Europeans.Also didn't Hitler say somewhere that the first 'Holocaust' was the Armenians as far as he was concerned.

The existence of anti-semitism in some sections of German society before 1914 and much earlier is pretty irrelevant. It was evident in many societies before 1914, including Britain. France and Russia were probably worse than Germany in this respect. Certainly the Russians were probably the only ones who exalted it as a Government policy. It was the oppression of the Nazi state, the state propaganda and wartime conditions (e.g. hiding the camps in Poland) that made it possible for the targeting of a group to become extermination. Mass murder did not happen simply because there were anti-semites around.

And finally to take Adam Hochschild seriously is a joke. He is just a polemicist as his recent book on the Great War has shown.

By the way as an historian myself I have never heard of any left-wing historians (do we still have any?) trying to find the roots of Nazism pre-1914 in any significant way.

[truthergw]

This is an totally rubbish idea. Nazism emerged with an opportunity for power from a particular and unique set of historical circumstances after 1929. Yes we can find roots for extreme nationalism, brutal colonialism (most is whoever it is by), authoritarianism, anti-semitism, stab in the back, imposed Treaty, economic instablity etc. What happened in Africa had nothing to do with a fringe, lunatic extremist group (still only 12 MPs in 1928)being able to convince a third of the German people to vote Nazi in 1932 and take over the state.

Also if consider you Hitler an opportunist rather than an intentionalist the possibilties for extermination only began to emerge during the war irrespective of the ramblings of Mein Kampf and the 1939 threatening speech. It is true that he ratcheted up oppression of German Jews but you cannot say that Africa was a role model as most colonialists in Africa regarded Africans as a lesser species at worst and 'children' at best. Untermenschen (sp??) was specifically Nazi because it applied to some Europeans.Also didn't Hitler say somewhere that the first 'Holocaust' was the Armenians as far as he was concerned.

The existence of anti-semitism in some sections of German society before 1914 and much earlier is pretty irrelevant. It was evident in many societies before 1914, including Britain. France and Russia were probably worse than Germany in this respect. Certainly the Russians were probably the only ones who exalted it as a Government policy. It was the oppression of the Nazi state, the state propaganda and wartime conditions (e.g. hiding the camps in Poland) that made it possible for the targeting of a group to become extermination. Mass murder did not happen simply because there were anti-semites around.

And finally to take Adam Hochschild seriously is a joke. He is just a polemicist as his recent book on the Great War has shown.

By the way as an historian myself I have never heard of any left-wing historians (do we still have any?) trying to find the roots of Nazism pre-1914 in any significant way.

So your idea is that suddenly, one day, nazi philosophy sprang forth. Unheralded and with no prior roots, some time after 1929. That all that had gone before, the Great War, the kaiser in exile, the colonial oppression had no affect on what happened after that day in 1929. Unlike you, I am not a historian but I have read a few history books and that notion of dislocation in time ocurring in one country is unique as far as I know. Most histories would suggest the opposite. That to arbitrarily set boundaries of dates is artificial and that a country's history or evolution is a seamless affair.

[Alan Tucker]

I am not arguing that at all - the difference is between Nazi philosophy and Nazism as a successful political movement. Everything I wrote refers to the latter. Of course as a body of ideas there are roots going back to the 19th century. Nowhere in Nazi ideas is there any kind of coherent plan for extermination of the Jews until probably 1941. The war made it possible not some supposed precedent in German colonial Africa.

[centurion]

There is a link between the Nazi's racial and eugenic policies and GSW and the genocides there. Prof. Dr. Eugen Fischer (1874-1967) was the. first director of the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Hereditary Teaching and Eugenics in Berlin-Dahlem. He had been responsible for framing much of the racial policy in GSW. He and the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institute played a major part in framing the racial and eugenic laws for the Nazis when they gained power.

[truthergw]

I am not arguing that at all - the difference is between Nazi philosophy and Nazism as a successful political movement. Everything I wrote refers to the latter. Of course as a body of ideas there are roots going back to the 19th century. Nowhere in Nazi ideas is there any kind of coherent plan for extermination of the Jews until probably 1941. The war made it possible not some supposed precedent in German colonial Africa.

So the philosophy of the nazis was affected by what had gone before but the success(?) of the political party was not. Sorry, I find that hard to understand and even harder to believe.

[bushfighter]

Has anyone on this Book Review thread, besides myself, actually read the book?

Harry

[Alan Tucker]

Irrespective of anything before - Versailles, reparations, hyperinflation etc etc - the outlook for the Nazi Party in 1928 was bleak. Only 12 MPs (2.6% of the vote), no Hitler in the Reichstag. Germany had joined the League of Nations, the Dawes Plan led to a great deal of US investment in Germany, Locarno, Stresemann's policy of 'fulfilment' was winning friends in the West. So in other words the Nazi movement had totally failed to exploit Germany's post-1918 problems.In 1928 the main standard bearer of the German right and sharing many ideas with the Nazis were the German National People's Party of Hugenberg which gained 73 seats (14.2% of the vote).

So the explanation for the success of the Nazis lies with the consequences of the World Economic Depression - and their increasing vote was achieved not on anti-semitic platform (played down by Hitler in Presidential contests), or a desire to tear up the Treaty of Versailles although that drum was banged but by a combination of Hitler's charisma and the 'apparent' dynamism and energy of Nazis compared to the older parties - they offered hope for a better future and simplistic messages in a complex economic situation. Of course some of this appeal resonated with pre-1928 e.g. memories of savings wiped out by hyper-inflation etc. Also the open goal of the failure of German communists and Social Democrats in failing to establish a common front against the common enemy rather than each other.

So the philosophy of the nazis was affected by what had gone before but the success(?) of the political party was not. Sorry, I find that hard to understand and even harder to believe.

[Alan Tucker]

From a review of this book by Piers Brendon...

By 1908, as David Olusoga and Casper Erichsen show in this horrifying and graphically told account, only 16,000 Hereros and 10,000 Namas were left alive. And it is tempting to see the whole ghastly saga in the terms that these authors propose – as another Aryan seizure of Lebensraum resulting in the final solution to the Namibian problem. As their title and subtitle indicate, they emphasise the continuity between the kaiser and Hitler and suggest that nazism stemmed from colonial roots of evil, themselves long forgotten.

This is highly dubious. In the first place it is nonsense to say that the genocide in south-west Africa is forgotten. Admittedly, it could be better known. Germans did their best to suppress the evidence and to portray their homicidal activities as a triumph of civilisation, and British imperialists, with their own guilt to hide, were sometimes complicit in the obfuscation. But particularly since Horst Drechsler's pioneering study, Let Us Die Fighting (1966), on which the present book draws heavily, academic and popular interest in the subject has been strong.

Secondly, it is misleading to represent the Führer as the kaiser's heir. National Socialism had no time for monarchy and its trappings. To be sure Wilhelm was antisemitic: he once advocated employing gas in a pogrom. But His Impulsive Majesty was as erratic in this as in everything else. Damned by Hitler as an "incorrigible fool", he had rich Jewish friends, disliked nazism and said that Kristallnacht made him ashamed to be German. The kaiser, who died in 1941, would hardly have endorsed Hitler's Holocaust. And since this was an event unique in scale and method, the term should probably not be applied to the genocide in Africa.

Finally, Hitler's drive to secure living-space from Slav untermenschen owed little or nothing to Germany's imperial endeavours in Africa. Indeed, as the authors briefly concede, he regarded them as an outdated diversion from the Third Reich's destiny on the steppes. None of the kaiser's colonies would compare with his eastern empire, he boasted, and the only bit of the "dark continent" he wanted back was the Cameroons. Hitler's malign philosophy was fertilised by much dung, but it did not grow out of African soil.

[trajan]

...From a review of this book by Piers Brendon...Hitler's malign philosophy was fertilised by much dung, but it did not grow out of African soil.

Excellently phrased and well put.

Trajan

[centurion]

Excellently phrased and well put.

Trajan

Doesn't make it true though

[trajan]

.. Doesn't make it true though

Fair enough, but one could just as easily construct a theme that starts with the attitude of the 17th century immigrants to native Americans, to the effective 'genocide' of said native Americans in the 19th century, to the Spanish-American Wars, and so on ad infinitum. The fact is that throughout history there have been times when certain ethnic groups have committed atrocious crimes against other ethnic groups. Think, for example, of Alexander the Great's treatment of citizens in the captured towns and cities of 'Greece' and Phoenicia! Quite simply, I do not buy into this line of thinking that explains the 1941 pogram against the Jews (and many others( as something inately Germanic...

Trajan

[truthergw]

There is a thriving school of historians and political apologists who strive to convince their readers that the nazis were an aberration. Came from nowhere, disappeared in 1945. I don't believe it, it flies in the face of history not to say logic. Incidentally, some of the kaiser's anti-semitic pronouncements, going back to well before the great war, shocked contemporaries even in that age of institutionalised anti-semitism. His congratulatory messages to the nazis are well documented. If you are convinced that all of that is of no account all I can do is respectfully disagree. This is by no means the only book to trace a history leading to nazi crimes. I can recommend that by I.V. Hull. - Absolute Destruction-. Fritz Fischer, Annika Mombauer, Holger Herwig will all repay reading for the curious. J.C.G. Rohl wrote " From Bismarck to Hitler". Not the easiest read in the world but some gems within. His introduction is well worth study as he deals well with this question of denial. It is perhaps not too far a stretch to see this popped up, popped out again syndrome as a replay of the war guilt furor after the Versailles Treaty. In answer to the question, have I read it, I can say I looked at the blurb and a review and felt that it was very much in the same line as many of the books I already have sitting on the shelf. Shortage of space demands draconian criteria for adding to the piles and this time I felt I could afford to pass. I may reconsider that decision.

[trajan]

... There is a thriving school of historians and political apologists who strive to convince their readers that the nazis were an aberration. Came from nowhere, disappeared in 1945. I don't believe it, it flies in the face of history not to say logic.

Well, I'm an archaeologist rather than a historian (and least of all a modern historian), but would not care to be classed as a political apologist (although I confess to being a Germanophile)!

Tom (and others), I don't want to start any heated exchange. But, i have to disagree. As I understand it, the Hitler regime and its expresed ideology as in the 'Final Solution' process re: the Jews and other 'undesireable' groups was very much a 1941 fact - i.e., not a pre-1941 policy. To be blunt, it was a war-time expedient. And of course the Nazis were certainly not an aberration - think Mosely, Franco, Turkey's treatment of the Jews in the 1940's, and even the present day attitudes of some immigrant citizens of an artificial state towards the people who have lived in that land for thouands of years! I just think that any nation or ethnic group ruled the way Germany was in 1941 would have taken a similar course of action in specific circumstances - but only if they thought they could get away with it (e.g., most recently, the Serbs).

Trajan

[Alan Tucker]

The Holocaust was a unique event when the power of a modern industrialised state was used to mobilise all the resources of the state to exterminate not only a section of its own people but of a continent - people defined on a 'racial basis'. There are other genocides of course - the Germans SW Africa, Armenia, Cambodia, Rwanda. the Spanish civil war (Franco) according to Paul Preston's new book.

[centurion]

Well, I'm an archaeologist rather than a historian (and least of all a modern historian), but would not care to be classed as a political apologist (although I confess to being a Germanophile)!

Tom (and others), I don't want to start any heated exchange. But, i have to disagree. As I understand it, the Hitler regime and its expresed ideology as in the 'Final Solution' process re: the Jews and other 'undesireable' groups was very much a 1941 fact - i.e., not a pre-1941 policy. To be blunt, it was a war-time expedient. And of course the Nazis were certainly not an aberration - think Mosely, Franco, Turkey's treatment of the Jews in the 1940's, and even the present day attitudes of some immigrant citizens of an artificial state towards the people who have lived in that land for thouands of years! I just think that any nation or ethnic group ruled the way Germany was in 1941 would have taken a similar course of action in specific circumstances - but only if they thought they could get away with it (e.g., most recently, the Serbs).

Trajan

Let me set up the connections.

In 1904 the Shark Island Vernichtungslager (extermination camp) was set up (yes that was its original official name). Whilst many ethnic and/or religious groups had been persecuted before this was the first time extermination had been an official policy. One of the Camp 'doctors' was a Dr. P. Bartels who conducted experiments on the inmates and supplied results and research items (mainly fresh heads) to interested parties in Berlin.Two of these were Christian Fetzer and Eugen Fischer (who was already carrying out studies on heads supplied from Kaiser Wilhelmsland. - Papua New Guinea) Namibian sources today believe that over 300 heads were "harvested" for research.. Fischer then visited German South West Africa. As well as propounding some extreme racialy based views (which the authorities there adopted as law) he used 'evidence' from his visit to write "The Principles of Human Heredity and Race Hygiene." This advocated both enforced sterilisation and euthanasia. It is known that Hitler read this whilst writing Mein Kampf as he wrote a review and an essay based on it whilst in jail. Fischer had been friendly with many of the early Nazis and in 1922 was described by one of them as essentially "one of us" He attended various party meetings and rallies and was photographed with Hitler giving the Nazi salute before they came to power. He co authored "Foundations of Human Hereditary Teaching and Racial Hygiene"which served as the 'official' foundation for Nazism's attitude toward other races.He identified Jews an Gipsies as being other races. He officially became a party member in 1939 - his sponsors were Himmler and Boreman. In 1933 Hitler had appointed him Rector of the Frederick William University of Berlin. He is associated with the initial programs of sterilisation and euthanasia.

I think this establishes a chain going back to GSWA