1904: Herero prisoners, at the command of Lothar von Trotha

ExecutedToday.com ^ | October 3rd, 2013 | Headsman

[CheshireTheCat]

....On this date in 1904, von Trotha did a little of that executing bit, further to doing a whole lot of genocide. It was the very day after von Trotha’s Vernichtungsbefehl, or extermination order, against the Herero people.

We give the narrative here to Jan-Bart Gewald’s “Colonization, Genocide and Resurgence: The Herero of Namibia 1890-1933”, from a collection of papers at a German symposium. Gewald’s complete text is available in scanned pdf form here.....Pocketed by the desert and the German patrols the Herero chiefs and their followers congregated along the Eiseb river. Around the first of October 1904, General Lothar von Trotha, who was actively taking part in the pursuit, and his retinue had reached the waterhole Osombo-Windimbe. During the afternoon of the following day, Sunday 2 October 1904, after the holding of a field service, General von Trotha, addressed his officers. In his address Trotha declared that the war against the Herero would be continued in all earnestness, and read out the following proclamation:

I the great General of the German troops send this letter to the Herero people.

The Herero are no longer German subjects. They have murdered and stolen, they have cut off the ears, noses and other bodyparts of wounded soldiers, now out of cowardice they no longer wish to fight. I say to the people anyone who delivers a captain will receive 1000 Mark, whoever delivers Samuel will receive 5000 Mark. The Herero people must however leave the land. If the populace does not do this I will force them with the Groot Rohr [cannon]. Within the German borders everyHerero, with or without a gun, with or without cattle, will be shot. I will no longer accept women and children, I will drive them back to their people or I will let them be......

[Boogieman]

I remember reading about this in “Gravity’s Rainbow”.

[pierrem15]

"Whether this uprising was caused by poor treatment [of the Africans] remains irrelevant to its suppression."

By that point he was completely correct. The main difference between the Germans and our wars against the plains tribes was that the US simply wanted them brought to heel and we were willing to do whatever was necessary to accomplish that goal until eliminating their food supply (the buffalo), disease, and the introduction of repeating arms made further resistance futile.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comanche_campaign