# The Herero and Nama genocide Germany's extermination war in South-West Africa: the 1904 Herero and Nama uprisings, von Trotha's extermination order and the death-march into the Omaheke, the Shark Island death camp, the skulls shipped to Germany for race science and the thread to Nazi eugenics, and the reckoning to the 2021 German recognition. *This story part of: Colonial concentration camps and atrocities across the empires* *This story part of: Military and security* *The Scramble for Africa parallel this story* *Nazi ideology was not unique: race myth, empire, and extermination parallel this story* ## 7 August 1884 — Germany declares South-West Africa a protectorate Otto von Bismarck's government places the territory later known as German South-West Africa (present-day Namibia) under German protection, following claims staked by the trader Adolf Lüderitz. The declaration opens the region to German settlement, land companies, and colonial administration. ## c. 1890 — German colonial administration established at Windhoek Germany sets up a civil colonial government at Windhoek and begins signing so-called protection treaties with Herero and Nama chiefs. Settlers and land companies push into grazing territory, and colonial police and courts begin enforcing German control over indigenous land and labor. ## c. 1897 — Rinderpest epizootic devastates Herero cattle herds A rinderpest outbreak kills most Herero cattle, the basis of their wealth, social structure, and independence from colonial markets. German traders and administrators extend credit and buy land on exploitative terms during the crisis, deepening Herero dependence and dispossession in the years before the uprising. ## c. October 1903 — Bondelswarts Nama uprising The Bondelswarts Nama rise against German rule in the south of the colony, protesting land seizures, taxation, and mistreatment. German forces suppress the revolt, but the unrest signals the grievances that will soon erupt into the larger Herero uprising and, later, a wider Nama rebellion. ## 12 January 1904 — Herero uprising begins under Samuel Maharero Herero fighters under paramount chief Samuel Maharero attack German farms, traders, and soldiers around Okahandja, launching an armed uprising against land seizure, debt bondage, and colonial abuse. Maharero orders that women, children, missionaries, and non-German foreigners be spared, a restraint the German response will not reciprocate. ## c. May 1904 — Kaiser sends Lothar von Trotha to crush the uprising Facing a stalled colonial campaign, Berlin appoints Lieutenant General Lothar von Trotha as supreme commander in German South-West Africa with orders to suppress the Herero uprising by any means necessary. Von Trotha arrives with reinforcements and, according to his own later writings, an intent to annihilate Herero resistance rather than negotiate a settlement. ## 11 August 1904 — Battle of Waterberg German forces under General Lothar von Trotha encircled Herero fighters and civilians at the Waterberg, deliberately leaving one route open toward the waterless Omaheke desert. Tens of thousands of Herero, including noncombatants, fled into the desert, where German patrols were ordered to seal off waterholes. Most of those who fled died of thirst and starvation in the following weeks. ## c. August 1904 — Herero driven into the Omaheke desert German troops pursue Herero survivors of Waterberg into the Omaheke, a waterless stretch of the Kalahari, killing stragglers and driving the main body away from the few waterholes. Thousands of Herero men, women, and children die of thirst and starvation in the weeks that follow. ## c. September 1904 — German troops poison and guard Omaheke waterholes German patrols seal off and, according to multiple contemporary accounts, poison wells along the edge of the Omaheke to prevent Herero survivors from returning for water. Soldiers shoot Herero who approach the waterholes, turning the desert into a killing ground by denial of water rather than direct combat alone. ## 2 October 1904 — Von Trotha issues the Vernichtungsbefehl (extermination order) Lothar von Trotha issues a written proclamation declaring that any Herero found within German territory, armed or not, with or without cattle, will be shot, and that no women or children will be spared but will be driven back to their people or fired upon. The order is read aloud to German troops and posted in Herero-inhabited areas, formalizing a policy of extermination that historians treat as the founding document of the genocide. ## c. October 1904 — Nama uprising begins under Hendrik Witbooi Hendrik Witbooi, leader of the Nama and a longtime signatory of German protection treaties, breaks with the colonial administration and calls Nama groups to arms as news spreads of the treatment of the Herero. The Nama wage an effective guerrilla campaign against German forces across the south of the colony for the next three years. ## c. November 1904 — Herero refugees flee into British Bechuanaland A minority of Herero who survive the Omaheke crossing reach British-controlled Bechuanaland (present-day Botswana), where they are given refuge. Their descendants form Botswana's Herero community, one of the few Herero populations to survive the genocide largely outside German control. ## 8 December 1904 — Kaiser Wilhelm II rescinds the extermination order Under pressure from Chancellor Bernhard von Bülow, who warns of the order's cost to Germany's international reputation and colonial labor supply, Kaiser Wilhelm II instructs von Trotha to end the policy of shooting all Herero on sight. Surviving Herero are instead funneled into forced labor and, soon after, concentration camps rather than being allowed to disperse freely. ## c. January 1905 — German colonial camps holding Herero prisoners established As Herero survivors surrender or are captured, German authorities begin interning them in camps at Windhoek, Swakopmund, Karibib, Okahandja, and elsewhere, putting prisoners to forced labor for the colonial railway, harbor works, and settler farms under armed guard. Overcrowding, starvation rations, exposure, and disease produce death rates that contemporary missionaries and officials describe as catastrophic. ## c. March 1905 — Shark Island camp opens at Lüderitz German authorities open a camp on a small, wind-scoured, waterless peninsula at Lüderitz, transferring Herero and later Nama prisoners there for forced labor on harbor and railway construction. Prisoners live in the open with almost no shelter, food, or medical care; the camp becomes known among Herero and Nama survivors as "Death Island." ## 29 October 1905 — Hendrik Witbooi killed in battle Nama leader Hendrik Witbooi died from wounds received while leading an attack on a German supply convoy. His death was a severe blow to organized Nama resistance, though scattered fighting continued for several more years. Witbooi is remembered in Namibia as a national hero of the anti-colonial resistance. ## c. November 1905 — Jacob Morenga leads continued Nama resistance After Witbooi's death, Jacob Morenga, of mixed Nama and Herero descent, takes up leadership of Nama guerrilla resistance, drawing on Cape Colony supply lines and cross-border sanctuary to keep fighting German forces into 1907. His campaign forces Germany to keep large numbers of troops tied down in the south of the colony. ## c. 1906 — Death rates peak in the concentration camp system Mortality in the camp system, above all at Shark Island, reaches its worst point during the southern hemisphere winter of 1906, with missionary and medical reports recording death rates among interned Herero and Nama estimated at 30 to 50 percent annually. German military and colonial reports of the period record the camp populations as women, children, and elderly people far outnumbering able-bodied male prisoners. ## c. 1906 — German researchers begin shipping skulls and remains to Berlin German physicians and colonial officials, including camp doctors, order Herero and Nama prisoners, some still alive, to prepare skulls and other body parts of the dead for shipment to anatomical and anthropological institutes in Germany. Some accounts describe prisoners forced to boil and scrape flesh from skulls of their own dead using shards of glass, sending the remains for study under theories of racial hierarchy. *Source: Handover and repatriation of skulls of deceased members of the Herero and Nama ethnic groups from Namibia* ## 25 January 1907 — German Reichstag election fought over colonial policy Chancellor Bülow dissolves the Reichstag after the Center Party and Social Democrats criticize colonial military spending and the conduct of the war in South-West Africa, and calls a snap election. The vote, remembered as the "Hottentot election," becomes a referendum on German colonial policy and returns a nationalist majority supportive of continued colonial rule. ## c. 31 March 1907 — Colonial administration declares the uprisings over The German colonial government formally declares the Herero and Nama wars ended, after roughly 80 percent of the pre-war Herero population and roughly half of the Nama population have died from combat, exposure in the Omaheke, and camp conditions, according to the scholarly consensus drawn from German census and mission records. Survivors are stripped of land and cattle by decree and required to carry identification passes, restricted from owning livestock or land, and bound into a colonial labor system. ## c. April 1907 — Shark Island camp closed German authorities close the camp at Shark Island after its death toll, documented at several thousand Herero and Nama prisoners, draws criticism even from within the colonial administration. Estimates of deaths at the camp between 1905 and its closure range from roughly 1,000 to 3,000, out of an interned population never much larger than that. ## c. April 1908 — Diamonds discovered near Lüderitz A railway worker finds diamonds in the desert near Lüderitz, triggering a diamond rush that transforms the colonial economy. The mines expand demand for forced and indentured African labor under a colonial pass and contract labor system built directly on the dispossession of Herero and Nama land and livestock. ## c. 1908 — Eugen Fischer studies the Rehoboth Basters German anthropologist Eugen Fischer travels to German South-West Africa to study the Rehoboth Basters, a mixed-descent community, measuring skulls and bodies to develop theories on the biological effects of racial mixing. His 1913 book on the study, "Die Rehobother Bastards," argues that mixed-race populations are biologically inferior and warns against interracial marriage, work later cited directly in Nazi race law. *Source: Eugen Fischer* *Source: In the name of science: The role of biologists in Nazi atrocities: lessons for today's scientists* ## 9 July 1915 — South African forces occupy German South-West Africa During the First World War, Union of South Africa forces fighting for the British Empire invade and occupy German South-West Africa, ending German colonial rule. South Africa administers the territory afterward, first under a League of Nations mandate and later, in defiance of the UN, as a de facto colony. ## c. 1918 — British "Blue Book" documents the atrocities The British government publishes a report, formally titled "Report on the Natives of South-West Africa and Their Treatment by Germany" and known as the Blue Book, compiling sworn testimony from Herero, Nama, and colonial officials on the extermination order, the desert deaths, and the camps. Britain uses the report to argue Germany is unfit to keep its colonies at the postwar peace talks; South Africa later withdraws and destroys most copies in the 1920s as relations with Germany warmed, and the report remains suppressed for decades before surviving copies resurface. ## 17 December 1920 — League of Nations grants South Africa a mandate over the territory The Treaty of Versailles strips Germany of its colonies, and the League of Nations formally awards South Africa a Class C mandate over South-West Africa. The change of administration brings no restitution for Herero and Nama survivors, whose land remains in settler hands under the new government. ## c. 1927 — Eugen Fischer appointed director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology Eugen Fischer becomes founding director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics in Berlin, the leading German institution for race science research. He goes on to teach and influence a generation of Nazi-era physicians and, in 1933, becomes rector of the University of Berlin, carrying his South-West Africa research directly into the scientific apparatus of the Third Reich. *Source: Eugen Fischer* *Source: In the name of science: The role of biologists in Nazi atrocities: lessons for today's scientists* ## c. September 1935 — Fischer's race theories cited in drafting the Nuremberg Laws Nazi legal drafters and race theorists cite Eugen Fischer's earlier work, including his 1908 study of the Rehoboth Basters, as scientific grounding for the Nuremberg Laws banning marriage and sexual relations between Jews and non-Jewish Germans. Historians treat this as a documented, direct intellectual line from German colonial race science in South-West Africa to Nazi racial law. *Source: The Nuremberg Race Laws* *Source: Eugen Fischer* ## c. 1985 — UN Whitaker Report names the events a genocide A United Nations report by Special Rapporteur Benjamin Whitaker, reviewing the history of genocide for the UN Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities, lists the German campaign against the Herero as one of the earliest attempts at genocide in the twentieth century. The report is among the first formal international documents to apply the term to the events of 1904 to 1908. ## c. September 2001 — Herero groups file US lawsuit against Germany and companies The Herero People's Reparations Corporation, backed by paramount chief Kuaima Riruako, files suit in US federal court against the German government and companies including Deutsche Bank and Woermann Line, seeking reparations for the genocide under the Alien Tort Claims Act. US courts eventually dismiss the claims on jurisdictional grounds, but the suit puts direct reparations, rather than general development aid, onto the international agenda. ## 14 August 2004 — Germany apologizes on the genocide's centenary At a ceremony marking the centenary of the Battle of Waterberg, German Minister for Economic Cooperation and Development Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul becomes the first German official to apologize directly for the genocide, stating that Germany accepts moral and historical responsibility. She stops short of using the word "reparations" and Germany does not concede legal liability, a distinction that shapes the following two decades of negotiation. ## 30 September 2011 — First return of skulls and remains to Namibia The Charité hospital in Berlin formally hands over 20 skulls of Herero and Nama origin, held in German anatomical collections since the colonial period, to a Namibian delegation. A public repatriation ceremony follows in Namibia on 5 October 2011, though some Herero and Nama representatives criticize the German government for treating the return as primarily a scientific and diplomatic matter rather than an act of restitution tied to broader reparations. ## c. 2015 — Germany and Namibia begin formal negotiations The German and Namibian governments open formal, government-to-government talks on acknowledging the genocide and agreeing a financial settlement, following years of pressure from Namibian civil society and the Namibian parliament's 2006 motion calling for reparations. Herero and Nama traditional authorities are not included as direct parties to the negotiations, a decision that becomes a lasting point of contention. ## 29 August 2018 — Second major return of skulls and remains to Namibia German institutions hand over a further batch of human remains, including skulls, to a Namibian delegation in Berlin, the third and largest such handover since 2011. Namibian representatives at the ceremony renew calls for direct reparations negotiations with Herero and Nama traditional leaders, criticizing the German government for continuing to negotiate financial terms only with the Namibian state. ## 28 May 2021 — Germany and Namibia sign joint declaration recognizing the genocide After more than five years of negotiation, Germany's government formally recognizes the killings of the Herero and Nama as genocide and pledges 1.1 billion euros over 30 years for infrastructure, land reform, and development projects in affected communities, in what it calls a gesture of recognition of the suffering caused. Germany explicitly rejects the term "reparations" and legal liability, using the language of development aid instead, and the money is to be channeled through the Namibian government rather than paid directly to Herero and Nama descendants. ## c. June 2021 — Herero and Nama leaders reject exclusion from the agreement Ovaherero and Nama traditional authorities, along with descendant organizations, publicly reject the joint declaration, arguing they were excluded from negotiations that concerned their own ancestors and that routing funds through the Namibian state, rather than directly to affected communities, repeats the exclusion of 1904. Namibia's parliament debates but does not ratify the agreement in the years that follow, and legal challenges continue. ## c. 2023 — Namibia seeks to renegotiate the 2021 agreement Namibian President Hage Geingob's government tells Germany the 2021 joint declaration needs to be renegotiated, citing continued objections from Herero and Nama groups over the amount, the "aid not reparations" framing, and their exclusion from direct talks. The agreement remains unratified by Namibia's parliament as of the mid-2020s, leaving the dispute over recognition, compensation, and who has standing to negotiate on behalf of the descendants unresolved.