The Kaisers Holocaust

Posted on 18 August 2017 by David Olusoga

On 12 May 1883, the German flag was raised on the coast of South West Africa, modern Namibia a the beginnings of Germany s African Empire As colonial forces moved in, their ruthless punitive raids became an open war of extermination Thousands of the indigenous people were killed or driven out into the desert to die By 1905, the survivors were interned in concentration camps, and systematically starved and worked to death.Years later, the people and ideas that drove the ethnic cleansing of German South West Africa would influence the formation of the Nazi party The Kaiser s Holocaust uncovers extraordinary links between the two regimes their ideologies, personnel, even symbols and uniform The Herero and Nama genocide was deliberately concealed for almost a century Today, as the graves of the victims are uncovered, its re emergence challenges the belief that Nazism was an aberration in European history The Kaiser s Holocaust passionately narrates this harrowing story and explores one of the defining episodes of the twentieth century from a new angle Moving, powerful and unforgettable, it is a story that needs to be told. Read The Kaisers Holocaust by David Olusoga – kino-fada.fr In Kigali, the capital of Rwanda, there is a museum dedicated to the mass murder of the Tutsis in April, 1994 The whole thing is terribly well done, terribly moving, particularly the last part, where some of the dead children are identified The beginning is also well done, the part where the genocide is put in the context of the other great ethnic tragedies of the previous century Srebrenica and the Balkan wars is mentioned, as is the Shoah, the Nazi destruction of the Jews, and the massacre In Kigali, the capital of Rwanda, there is a museum dedicated to the mass murder of the Tutsis in April, 1994 The whole thing is terribly well done, terribly moving, particularly the last part, where some of the dead children are identified The beginning is also well done, the part where the genocide is put in the context of the other great ethnic tragedies of the previous century Srebrenica and the Balkan wars is mentioned, as is the Shoah, the Nazi destruction of the Jews, and the massacre of the Armenians by the Turks during the First World War, the one that Hitler said in Mein Kamp would be forgotten But there is another, one that almost was forgotten, deliberately so the massacre of the Herero and Nama people of what was once the German colony of South West Africa, now Namibia This is the subject of The Kaiser s Holocaust Germany s Forgotten Genocide and the Colonial Roots of Nazism by David Olusoga and Casper W Erichsen It s an important book, a wor...This book does a lot in a limited amount of space It sets up and gives a thorough background on the various Peoples inhabiting what was to become German South West Africa Some groups of whom had been strongly influenced by Dutch settlement on the Cape and were very European in their culture Then it gives an account of the development of the German colony from a basic trading post operating under the German flag, to an increasingl...HOW THE SOUTHWEST WAS WONOne of the great stumbling blocks during the lengthy, eight year process leading up to the Union of South Africa in 1910 was whether or not to give non Europeans the right to vote, or any political rights at all In 1909, JBM Hertzog, whilst discussing the draft constitution of the proposed union in the Transvaal Parliament, is recorded as having said that, the native was undeniably a human being, but he was not yet entitled to political rights because he was still a ch HOW THE SOUTHWEST WAS WONOne of the great stumbling blocks during the lengthy, eight year process leading up to the Union of South Africa in 1910 was whether or not to give non Europeans the right to vote, or any political rights at all In 1909, JBM Hertzog, whilst discussing the draft constitution of the proposed union in the Transvaal Parliament, is recorded as having said that, the native was undeniably a human being, but he was not yet entitled to political rights because he was still a child, in matters of civilisation thousands of years behind the whitesEarlier on in that debate, Abraham Fischer had questioned, whether the people of South Africa had ...This carefully researched and well written book argues that the Nazi death camps were descended directly from the Nambian death camps of Kaiser Wilhelm II The memory of Germany s empire has become separated from European history But Hitler s statement that he would treat the Slavs like colonial people was a shorthand understood by a generation of Germans who were children when the Kaiser was on a mission to eradicate Africans This book is the fascinating of German racial ideologies and the This carefully researched and well written book argues that the Nazi death camps were descended directly from the Nambian death camps of Kaiser Wilhelm II The memory of Germany s empire has become separated from European history But Hitler s statement that he would treat the Slavs like colonial people was a shorthand understood by a generation of Germans who were children when the Kaiser was on a mission to eradicate Africans This book is the fascinating of German racial ideologies and the doomed resistance of the Herero a...This book, which documents a seemingly obscure place and time, is in fact the long lost key to the origins of one of the two great catastrophes of the twentieth century.Since the end of the Second World War and the revelation of the scale of the criminal obscenity of the so called Final Solution, the question has been debated, is there a meaningful distinction between Nazis and Germans Was the German nation in effect the first victim of the Nazi Party, or did the Nazi Party represent authentic This book, which documents a seemingly obscure place and time, is in fact the long...The Namibian part of this book deserves a four or five star rating Unfortunately too much of the last half of the book is devoted to a retelling of the rise of Nazism, covering well trodden history with only occasional and often tenuous links to the ostensible topic of the book.Actually, this straying into later history is prefigured in the opening pages, describing the death of Goering and the Nuremberg trials Even though it was...I thought the arguments set out in this book were really well done It was an expose of the inhuman treatment that the Germany of the Kaiser meted out to the African population in their sole African colony of South West Africa now Namibia , which included the birth of death camps, later refined by the Nazis, but set in the historical context of general European colonialist attitudes It then threw this forward to the impact the period had on the development of Nazi racial theories after the Firs I thought the arguments set out in this book were really well done It was an expose of the inhuman treatment that the Germany of the Kaiser meted out to the African population in their sole African colony of South West Africa now Namibia , which included the birth of death camps, later refined by the Nazis, but set in the historical context of general European colonialist attitudes It then threw this..., V , , , ,, V , , , , , 21As someone with a passing interest in Europes colonial adventures this book was a real eye opener.Rather than a story of German expansion in Western Africa it told the story of how entire native populations were al...There is much covered in this detailed history of Germany s colony in South West Africa As well as the genocide that occurred at the beginning of the twentieth century, this book looks at how many of the policies and ideas used in the colony were adopted by the Nazi party when it cam...

18 August 2017

David Olusoga