The German commander Lothar von Trotha ordered the genocide of the Herero in German South West Africa in 1904, and his legacy has now been published. Where did all this hate come from? The historian Matthias Häussler on the escalation of cruelty – and an actually unplanned genocide.
120 years ago, the Herero or Ovaherero dared to rebel against German colonial rule in what was then the so-called German Protected Area of German South West Africa, today’s Namibia. Locals burned farms and murdered settlers. The Germans then allowed tens of thousands of people to die of thirst and starvation in the Omaheke Desert; historians speak of it as the first genocide of the 20th century. The diaries of the person primarily responsible for this, the commander Lothar von Trotha, are now being published. The historian Matthias Häussler published it with his colleague Andreas Eckl from the Ruhr University Bochum.