Thread by @AfricanArchives

On this day in 1904, The Battle of Waterberg known as the Herero and Namaqua Genocide, occured between the Herero people and German imperialists in German Southwest Africa (present-day Namibia), following the Germans occupation to steal their land and resources.

A THREAD

The German colonization of South-West Africa began in 1883, two years before the official Partition of Africa.

Did a thread 🧵 on the partition of Africa ⬇️

https://twitter.com/808806102/status/1592578345182629890

When the German settlers arrived, they expropriated land, cattle, and water rights from local peoples, including the Herero and by 1903, the Herero had ceded over 50,000 square miles of land to the GermansSome resisted the settlers encroachment and engaged in periodic battles.

In one of the largest battles, the Herero killed about 100 German soldiers and farmers near the small northern town of Okahandja.

The Germans used their soldiers’ deaths as an excuse to initiate the military occupation of all of the land. Fourteen thousand troops were dispatched to the German colony under the leadership of Lieutenant General Adrian Dietrich Lothar von Trotha.

By the time the first German troops under von Trotha arrived, the Herero had moved inland away from German settler areas.  They considered their conflict with the Germans to be over and were waiting for them begin a dialogue for peace with Maharero.

In the spring of 1904, nearly 8,000 Herero had gathered on the Plateau of Waterberg at the last big waterhole, expecting to engage in land rights negotiation with von Trotha.

Instead, on August 11, 1904, German military forces surrounded the Herero and forced them to flee down a dried river bed into the Omaheke Desert.  Those not killed by pursuing soldiers perished by thirst.

The German military then constructed a 200-mile fence locking the Herero into the desert.  Samuel Maharero successfully led about 1,000 people into present day Botswana, where he remained as an exiled leader until his death in 1923.

Thousands of remaining people were rounded up and placed in concentration camps where they were used as slave labor. They built the prosperous German shipping ports on the Namibian coast such as Luderitz and Swakopmund.

By 1908, 45 percent of Herero prisoners had perished, mostly due to exhaustion.
The camps were closed in response to a public backlash in Germany, but the survivors were sold as slaves to German farmers.

Shark Island, an isolated camp near Luderitz was used as an extermination center.  An estimated 8,000 Herero perished there, and the camp became the prototype for concentration camps in Nazi Germany three decades later.

Research on corpses was conducted on Shark Island by race scientists including Eugen Fischer, who became known as the father of Nazi eugenic policy.

Because of their interest in evolutionary theory and missing links, they dug up the graves of the Herero's ancestors and stole their skulls. Not surprisingly, localized reactions to this from the Herero led to efforts to drive the Germans out of their land.

110 years later after the Herero genocide, 25 of the possible hundreds of victims' skulls, were returned to Namibia.

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