In short
Was the Herero and Nama killing a genocide?
Yes. Germany's 1904 extermination order against the Herero, and the campaign that followed against the Nama, killed an estimated 80% of the Herero and 50% of the Nama — about 65,000 and 10,000 people. Survivors were held in Konzentrationslager on Shark Island and elsewhere. Germany formally recognised the killings as genocide in 2021.
On 2 October 1904, General Lothar von Trotha addressed the Herero people: "Within the German borders every Herero, with or without a rifle, with or without cattle, will be shot." This sentence is in the German military archives[5].
- Duration
- 1904 – 1908
- Territory
- German South-West Africa (today Namibia)
- Sovereign
- Kaiser Wilhelm II
- Commander
- Lt-Gen Lothar von Trotha
- Herero killed
- ≈65,000 (≈80% of population)
- Nama killed
- ≈10,000 (≈50% of population)
How it began
The Herero uprising of January 1904
German colonisation of South-West Africa from 1884 took Herero land, cattle, water sources, and women. The Herero, led by paramount chief Samuel Maharero, rose against German settlers in January 1904. They killed around 123 German civilians. They explicitly spared women, children, missionaries, English-speaking traders, and the Boers.
Berlin's response was disproportionate even by the standards of colonial warfare. Trotha was dispatched with 14,000 troops and explicit instructions to "destroy" rather than negotiate.
The Vernichtungsbefehl
The extermination order
At the Battle of Waterberg in August 1904 Trotha encircled the Herero on three sides and left the fourth — eastwards into the Omaheke desert — deliberately open. He drove the survivors into it. His soldiers were ordered to poison the waterholes and to shoot any Herero who attempted to return.
“The Herero people must leave this land. If they do not, I will force them with the Groot Rohr (cannon). Within the German borders every Herero, with or without a rifle, with or without cattle, will be shot. I no longer accept women and children.”
The camps
Shark Island, Swakopmund, the Lüderitz works
When the policy of starvation in the Omaheke became internationally embarrassing, Berlin ordered the survivors interned in concentration camps. The largest, on Shark Island in Lüderitz Bay, had a mortality rate above 60%. Survivors worked the harbour, railways, and German settler farms — many in chains.
Medical experimentation on prisoners — including by Eugen Fischer, later a leading Nazi racial theorist — produced the racial-science research that would be cited in Mein Kampf and built into the Nuremberg laws[10].
The through-line
What this had to do with what came after
Historians Jürgen Zimmerer, Benjamin Madley and others have traced what they call the "colonial-genocide continuum" from German South-West Africa to the Holocaust: shared personnel (Hermann Göring's father was governor of South-West Africa; Eugen Fischer trained Josef Mengele), shared techniques (concentration camps, racial classification, extermination orders), shared bureaucratic templates[10].
The argument is not that the Holocaust was a colonial event — it is that the Holocaust did not arrive without precedent. The precedent was practised on Africans first.
Casualty math
How the 75,000 figure is built
Chronology
Key dates
1884
Germany annexes South-West Africa.
1903 Oct
Nama Bondelswarts uprising — initial revolt.
1904 Jan
Herero rise under Samuel Maharero.
1904 Aug
Battle of Waterberg — Herero driven into the Omaheke desert.
1904 Oct
Trotha issues the Vernichtungsbefehl.
1905
Nama rise under Hendrik Witbooi. Extermination order extended.
1905–07
Concentration camps at Shark Island, Swakopmund, Karibib, Windhoek.
1908
Camps closed. Surviving Herero and Nama assigned to forced labour on settler farms.
1948
South African Blue Book on the genocide is recalled and pulped under apartheid government pressure.
2021
Germany formally recognises the genocide; pledges €1.1bn over 30 years. Herero and Nama groups reject the deal.
In short
Why is the Herero and Nama genocide called the first genocide of the twentieth century?
Because it was ordered in writing, executed by a European state army, and completed in camps. On 2 October 1904 Lieutenant-General Lothar von Trotha issued an extermination order (Vernichtungsbefehl) instructing German troops to shoot every Herero found inside the colony, with or without a weapon. Survivors driven into the Omaheke desert were denied the waterholes. Those who came back were put into Konzentrationslager, where roughly half died.
Between 1904 and 1908 an estimated 65,000 of 80,000 Herero and 10,000 of 20,000 Nama were killed — around 80% and 50% of each people. Germany formally recognised the events as genocide in 2021.
The ledger
The four stages of the extermination
| Stage | What was done | Outcome |
|---|---|---|
| Jan–Aug 1904 | Uprising against land seizures and settler violence; German reinforcements shipped in | Herero encircled at Waterberg |
| Waterberg, Aug 1904 | Deliberate gap left in the encirclement toward the Omaheke | Civilians pushed into waterless desert |
| Oct 1904 | Von Trotha's extermination order; waterholes poisoned or guarded | Mass death by thirst and shooting |
| 1905–1908 | Camps at Shark Island, Swakopmund, Windhoek; forced labour | ≈45% mortality inside the camps |
| After 1908 | Herero land and cattle transferred to settlers; pass laws imposed | A people dispossessed, not merely defeated |
Figures from the German Reich's own colonial statistics and the 1918 Blue Book.
Mechanism
The desert as a weapon
The Battle of Waterberg in August 1904 is often written up as a military engagement. It was designed as a filter. German forces surrounded the Herero on three sides and left the fourth — the route into the Omaheke sandveld — open. Patrols then held the waterholes on the desert margin. Fleeing families walked until they died; German officers recorded the trail of bodies without ambiguity about what had produced it.
This matters legally as well as morally. Killing by engineered environment is still killing, and the intent is legible in the orders, the troop dispositions and the after-action reports. There is no version of the record in which the deaths were an accident of war.
The camps
Shark Island
Shark Island, off Lüderitz, was a peninsula of rock swept by cold Atlantic wind, where prisoners slept without shelter on rations that guaranteed decline. Mortality figures kept by the German administration itself run above 50% for some cohorts. Prisoners were leased to private companies to build the railway; medical officers conducted racial-anthropological measurements and shipped skulls to German universities.
Some of those skulls were only repatriated to Namibia between 2011 and 2018. The camp system links this colonial genocide to the later German record not by rhetorical analogy but through shared personnel, shared racial science and shared administrative vocabulary.
Aftermath
Recognition without reparations
In 2021 Germany officially named the killings a genocide and pledged €1.1 billion in development aid over 30 years. It refused to call the money reparations, and negotiated the agreement with the Namibian state rather than with Herero and Nama traditional authorities, who rejected it as settling their claim without them.
The dispute is therefore not about facts. It is about who has standing to accept an apology, and whether aid budgets can discharge a legal obligation.
FAQ
Frequently asked
- How many Herero and Nama were killed?
- Around 65,000 of roughly 80,000 Herero and about 10,000 of 20,000 Nama died between 1904 and 1908 — approximately 80% and 50% of each population.
- Was there a written order to exterminate?
- Yes. Lothar von Trotha's proclamation of 2 October 1904 ordered that every Herero found within German territory be shot, armed or unarmed, with or without cattle.
- Has Germany apologised?
- Germany recognised the genocide in 2021 and offered €1.1 billion in aid over 30 years, but declined to term it reparations. Herero and Nama representative bodies rejected the deal for excluding them from negotiations.
- What happened to the victims' remains?
- Skulls and skeletons were shipped to German universities and museums for racial research. Partial repatriations to Namibia took place in 2011, 2014 and 2018.