01/24/2025
The Battle of Ohamakari in Namibia, which triggered the first genocide of the 20th century – the genocide of the Herero and Nama peoples.
While it is little known about, in many ways it was the blueprint for the N**i Holocaust. Not only were key tenets of N**i ideology and the annihilation methods they adopted inspired by German colonial rule in Namibia, some of the central architects of the Holocaust were either directly involved in the Herero and Nama genocide, or profoundly inspired by it.
The two driving forces of N**i Germany’s war in Europe, “Lebensraum” (living space) and “Vernichtungskrieg” (war of annihilation) were first developed by Germany in its German South West Africa colony (today Namibia) and deployed later by the N**is on a vaster scale.
While Spain invented concentration camps in colonial Cuba, Germany’s camp at Shark Island, Namibia, was the first “death camp” designed to destroy human life. It would be a model for notorious camps like Auschwitz whose primary purpose was murder.
Also appropriated from colonial Namibia was the N**i’s genocidal public health rhetoric which called their gas chambers “disinfectors.” General von Trotha wrote in 1904: “it is better that the [Herero] nation perish rather than infect our troops and affect our water and food.”
Even N**i eugenics policy was inspired by Eugen Fisher’s work during the Herero and Nama genocide. Fisher, who would later be directly involved in N**i mass murder, travelled to Namibia in 1908 to conduct “experiments” on victims of the genocide, and mixed-race children.
Fisher, who under the N**is would sterilise mixed-race children, claimed those experiments proved that African blood denigrated “superior” European blood. This ideology featured in Hitler’s Mein Kampf and informed the 1935 Nuremberg laws which outlawed in*******al marriages.