1904–1908: The Herero and Nama Genocide

Germany declared a protectorate over South West Africa in 1884. Through unequal treaties, military campaigns and settler expansion, the colonial government appropriated land and cattle while imposing racialized law. German traders extended credit secured against livestock; settlers fenced grazing land; colonial courts privileged Europeans. The rinderpest epidemic of 1897 killed an estimated 90% of cattle in parts of southern Africa, according to contemporary veterinary reporting synthesized by historian Jan-Bart Gewald, deepening Herero indebtedness and dependence.

By 1903, German South West Africa had approximately 4,682 German settlers, according to German colonial statistics reproduced by historian Jürgen Zimmerer, ruling an African population several dozen times larger. Railway construction, commercial ranching and punitive policing accelerated dispossession. Nama communities had already fought German expansion during the 1893–1894 campaign against Hendrik Witbooi, including the German attack on Hornkranz on 12 April 1893.

“Your peace shall be the peace of the graveyard.” — Hendrik Witbooi, 1894, letter to Governor Theodor Leutwein, in The Hendrik Witbooi Papers.

Witbooi’s warning described a colonial order in which negotiated “protection” meant political subordination. The immediate Herero uprising began in January 1904 after mounting disputes over land, debt, livestock and settler violence.

Herero forces attacked colonial positions on 12 January 1904. Under Samuel Maharero’s orders, fighters generally spared women, children, missionaries and several non-German Europeans. Germany replaced Governor Theodor Leutwein’s containment strategy with General Lothar von Trotha’s annihilation policy. At the Battle of Waterberg on 11 August 1904, German troops drove Herero civilians and fighters eastward toward the waterless Omaheke.

On 2 October 1904, von Trotha issued his extermination order, or Vernichtungsbefehl:

“Within the German borders every Herero, with or without a rifle, with or without cattle, will be shot.” — Lothar von Trotha, 1904, proclamation to the Herero people.

German patrols blocked routes back from the desert and controlled water points. Chancellor Bernhard von Bülow formally countermanded the extermination order in December 1904, but mass death continued through incarceration. Surviving Herero were confined in camps; after Nama resistance expanded under Hendrik Witbooi and Jakob Morenga in October 1904, captured Nama were imprisoned under the same system.

Date	Event	Consequence
24 April 1884	Germany proclaims protection over Lüderitz’s acquisitions	German South West Africa begins as a formal colonial project
12 April 1893	German troops attack Witbooi’s settlement at Hornkranz	Nama civilians are killed and German military coercion intensifies
1897	Rinderpest devastates cattle herds	Herero economic vulnerability and settler land acquisition increase
12 January 1904	Herero uprising begins	German farms, railways and military posts are attacked
11 August 1904	Battle of Waterberg	Herero are driven toward the Omaheke desert
2 October 1904	Von Trotha issues the extermination order	Any Herero found within colonial territory becomes liable to execution
December 1904	Berlin rescinds the order	Survivors are redirected into camps and forced labor rather than freed
22 April 1905	Hendrik Witbooi is wounded at Vaalgras	He dies on 29 October 1905, weakening organized Nama resistance
1905–1907	Shark Island and other camps operate	Prisoners endure forced labor, exposure, starvation and disease
31 March 1907	Germany officially ends the state of war	Nama resistance and colonial repression continue
1908	Major camp system closes	Survivors remain dispossessed and controlled through labor regulations

No complete death register exists. The most widely cited estimate, used by the United Nations’ 1985 Whitaker Report and much subsequent scholarship, is approximately 65,000 Herero—about 80% of an estimated 80,000 population in 1904—and 10,000 Nama—about 50% of an estimated 20,000 population in 1904. Broader historical estimates place Herero deaths between 40,000 and 80,000 during 1904–1908; about 10,000 Nama deaths remains the standard estimate. The ranges reflect uncertain prewar censuses, unrecorded desert deaths and fragmentary camp records.

German official figures cited by Isabel V. Hull recorded 7,682 African prisoners in camps by May 1907. Mortality varied sharply. At Shark Island, Lüderitz, historians including Casper Erichsen and David Olusoga estimate that between 1,000 and 3,000 prisoners died during 1905–1907; surviving German records are incomplete. Prisoners built railways, docks and colonial infrastructure while receiving inadequate food, clothing and shelter.

The genocide secured a settler economy through confiscation. Imperial ordinances issued in 1905 and 1907 expropriated Herero and Nama land and livestock and restricted African movement. Survivors were registered, compelled to carry identification and distributed as laborers to farms, mines, railways and municipalities. German rule ended when South African forces occupied the colony in 1915 during the First World War, but land ownership remained overwhelmingly concentrated among white settlers under South African administration and, after 1948, apartheid.

The camps also became sites of racial science. Physicians and anthropologists shipped human remains to German institutions. Eugen Fischer studied mixed-ancestry families at Rehoboth in 1908 and published his racial study in 1913; his work later influenced German eugenics, although the direct relationship between colonial genocide and the Holocaust remains a matter of historical analysis rather than simple equivalence.

The genocide was not an accidental excess of war: military orders, desert containment, camp administration and expropriation formed a connected system of destruction.

The events helped establish precedents for concentration, forced labor and racial classification within Germany’s colonial empire. Explore their place among other colonial crimes through the archive’s global timeline and the focused genocide case file.

For decades, Herero and Nama communities preserved memory through oral history, commemorations and political organizing while German public narratives often reduced the genocide to a colonial “war.” Namibia became independent in 1990. In 2004, German Development Minister Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul apologized at Waterberg and acknowledged German moral and historical responsibility, but her statement did not create a legal reparations settlement.

In May 2021, Germany officially described the events as genocide and announced a €1.1 billion development program over 30 years following negotiations with Namibia. Herero and Nama traditional authorities criticized both exclusion from direct negotiations and the framing of the money as development aid rather than reparations. As of 2026, the proposed agreement had still faced sustained political and community opposition and had not resolved demands for direct representation, land restitution and legally recognized reparations.

Human remains continue to embody the dispute. German institutions returned remains to Namibia in ceremonies held in 2011, 2014 and 2018, according to German and Namibian government documentation, but further remains and colonial collections remain under investigation. Commemoration therefore concerns not only language but land, archives, ancestors and material repair. See the archive’s full Herero and Nama genocide overview.

• United Nations: Whitaker Report on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1985)
• Encyclopaedia Britannica: Herero and Nama genocide
• United States Holocaust Memorial Museum: German South West Africa
• German Federal Foreign Office: Joint Declaration initialled by Germany and Namibia (2021)
• European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights: The Ovaherero and Nama genocide
• Jürgen Zimmerer and Joachim Zeller, Genocide in German South-West Africa