Germany’s Genocide of the Herero: Kaiser Wilhelm II, His General, His Settlers, His Soldiers by Jeremy Sarkin (review)

The initial return of twenty skulls from Germany to Namibia in September and October 2011 recalled a dark chapter in the history of both countries. Descendants of the Herero and the Nama (as well as the Damara) brought back the remains of their forefathers killed during what they refer to as the Namibian-German war of 1904–1908. For them, this was an act of genocide committed by the German Schutztruppe, as the colonial army was euphemistically called. For German governments since then, this was a colonial war just like many others.

While Germany has supported Namibia since independence with generous bilateral aid in explicit recognition of historical responsibility, it has never made an official admission of genocide or an apology. This contentious issue remains a political hot iron, with the Namibian government reluctant to support the demands for reparations advanced mainly by the Herero since Namibia’s independence in 1990. Jeremy Sarkin, a professor of law at the South African University of the Western Cape and an attorney in the United States and South Africa, represented the Herero in a hitherto unsuccessful reparation claim initiated in an American court against Germany, and has already published several articles as well as a monograph in support of that claim.

Controversy about the extent to which the charge of genocide is indeed supported by historical evidence fiercely resurfaced in Germany after a public discussion in 2004 marking the centennial anniversary of the outbreak of the war—and even more so in Namibia following the repatriation of the skulls. Many more remains are still expected to be discovered in the basements of German universities, where they were used a century ago to measure alleged biological differences. For this purpose, female Herero and Nama prisoners of war held in concentration camps had to clean the decapitated heads, which were then transported to Germany for so-called research purposes in the field of human anthropology. Not surprisingly, this very emotional issue has resurfaced with unabated verve and keeps the German parliament busy in an exchange between government and opposition about how best to deal with this history. A considerable number among the local group of German speakers in Namibia (and, most likely, in Germany, too) vigorously maintain a culture of denial and object to any suggestion that German colonial practices were in any way morally despicable, given the Zeitgeist.

Sarkin’s book presents little new evidence regarding the conflicts that took place in the German colony then called South West Africa. He explores the extent to which the German emperor Wilhelm II knowingly endorsed and supported the extermination order given by the commander of the colonial troops, General Lothar von Trotha. In this way, Sarkin tries to substantiate the claim that von Trotha’s order was not the result of an individual maniacal mind spinning out of control but rather a conscious and deliberate decision approved by German army headquarters in Berlin with the knowledge of the highest levels of military command and government.

After presenting an etiology of genocide in the first chapter, and after placing the Herero genocide of 1904–1908 into the overall context of violent German colonial practices in the second, Sarkin’s third and main chapter seeks to implicate the German Kaiser directly in the decision to “exterminate the brutes”—a slogan the emperor had coined in his infamous “Hun speech” (Hunnenrede) that led to the dispatching of soldiers to northern China to suppress mercilessly the insurrection of 1901. Sarkin’s arguments are largely based on speculation. They focus mainly on the personality and mindset of the emperor as well as on his general role in the power and decision-making structures of imperial Germany. While all of this supports the idea that it is not too far-fetched to suggest that he might have been directly implicated by personally...