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

The pre WWI history of the German colonisation of Southwest Africa (current Namibia) is interesting and not dealt with in modern texts, although the authors state that there is ample contemporary documentation that was instrumental in relieving Germany of her colonies in the 1918 Versailles settlements. That many of the colonists should have lived through to the Nazi era is no surprise, but the link between colonial policies and personalities, a significant component of the book seem tenuous and contrived: the authors' statement of the facts is impeccable, and they acknowledge that many repatriated colonists were not in fact supporters of the Nazis. However the selection of material for the book, and the overall layout seems to imply that attitudes and experiences gained in the colonies were central to the development of Nazi race policies and the conduct of WWII.

The book reads well as a narrative and some of the 'forgotten' facts, such as the role of the deranged Kaiser Wilhelm II in genocidal policies in Africa makes fascinating reading. However I was left disappointed by the lack of focus on Africa and the fate of the displaced tribes, and the undue attention given to subsequent Nazi history which really seems to have little orno part in this tale.

Olusoga and Erichsen's book is really in two parts. The first tells the story of German colonialism in South West Africa, showing how German policy towards the native Herero and Nama peoples developed into one of genocide. In chapters that are crucial reading to all who seek to understand the motives behind 19th century colonialism and imperialism the authors show how a philosophy of white racial supremacy emerged out of the ideas of Charles Darwin and was put into practice. Survival of the fittest becomes justification for white dominance over "inferior" indigenous peoples and genocide an acceptable option. This process is shown though as not just a German process and the German experience is placed in a global context: with British colonists in Tasmania, the US frontier wars, the Argentine wars of the desert all showing the same features.

In the German genocide against Herero and Nama we read of extermination orders, forced labour and concentration camps designed to kill off indigenous peoples who were articulate, politically able and well resourced, but ultimately doomed as the Kaiser's troops introduce a policy of "absolute terror and cruelty... by shedding rivers of blood and money" (General von Trotha) in which the missionary churches were actively complicit.

This alone is a story that needs telling widely, but the second part of the work shows the significance of this colonial experience for future nazism. The colonies first Governor was the father of Hermann Göring, the uniform of the SA was that of the Wilhelm II's brown shirted colonial army. More significantly, the colonial period saw the emergence of the pseudo science of eugenics and the legal framework to protect the purity of German settlers from racial contamination. Terms appear that are to be more infamously used later: Rassenschande (Racial shame), Rassenreinheit (Racial purity). Interracial marriage is made illegal. This was all to make the colony racially safe for emigration for a Volk that needed Lebensraum (living space) to expand into and escape population pressure at home. In the final chapters Olusoga and Erichsen skillfully show how these ideas survive the collapse of 1918 and become a core element of the politics of the right. Hitler uses his Landsberg imprisonment to read much of the work on race that emerged out of the Wilhelmine colonial experience. After 1933 races considered impure, German Jews and Gypsies, are subjected to the treatment first employed in South West Africa: Nuremberg Laws to end racial mixing; control and internment in concentration camps, forced labour, extermination. One chilling story is that of the 400 "Rhineland Bastards", children fathered by French colonial troops occupying the Rhineland after 1918. By 1937 all are sterilised.

There is a final twist in the argument. Hitler's war, it is argued, was ultimately one for colonial Lebensraum in the east. The German treatment of the eastern populations and Red Army was different to the western conflict as Hitler considered the eastern peoples to be similar to uncivilised indigenous colonial peoples. Fighting was more brutal, civilians were treated with even less regard. Necessary he believed to ensure Lebensaum and civilisation. The nazis compared this push East to how Wilhelm's troops had fought the Herero, or the British the Sudanese & Tasmanians, the US the Native Indians, or the Argentines with the tribes of the south.

Thought provoking, this is an important, thorough and well written work. It ranks with Hochschild's "King Leopold's Ghost" as an indictment of European colonialism but develops its arguments beyond normally considered confines to place the events of a short-lived German colony in a far wider context.

This devastating and hugely important book deserves to be in every public and university library. It describes the first major genocide of the twentieth century, a precursor of the Armenian genocide and the Jewish Holocaust which until now has been known only to scholars and a few people with a particular interest.
It is well-written and reads easily, but the events described beggar imagination. Unfortunately the behaviour described is of a kind the human race remains vulnerable to, so the importance of the book goes enormously beyond the destruction of the Herero and Nama peoples of German South West Africa (now Namibia) in a few years from 1904.
The proofreaders have failed to spot a few obvious misspellings and minor errors, but my main suggestion for a second edition is to insert a few decent maps.