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Holocaust - roots in Africa?
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Message 1.Ìý
Posted by shivfan (U2435266) on Sunday, 27th March 2011
I watched an interesting programme on Channel 5 tonight, entitled 'Western Civilisation'....
Basically, one of the threads of the programme explored the development of eugenics, and how it was applied in the colonisation of western Africa. Apparently, the most brutal of colonial ventures was that of the Germans, especially in Namibia, where they practised an oppressive form of segregation. When the Herrero and Nama tribes eventually rose up in revolt, the military leader at around 1904-5 sent to quell the revolts practised a form of genocide. The tribal populations were reduced by more than half, and in some places, to a mere fraction of the original population, less than a quarter in some areas.
One of the scientists at the time was a Dr Fischer, who conducted experiments on Senegalese soldiers captured during the First World War, and he published a study on racial superiority in 1921. This study was quoted by Hitler in Mein Kampf, and one of Fischer's students was Mengele. Of course, we know what they went on to do....
So, did the Holocaust have its origins in the German genocides in south-west Africa? Was Hitler and his cronies just the end product of a disturbing trend in German colonisation and thought?
He might not have been the abherration that some say he was.... -
Message 2
Posted by TimTrack (U1730472) on Monday, 28th March 2011
I think the programme went too far in claiming how the African genocide led to the Jewish genocide.
The two are linkable, and eugenics and more traditional racism are implicated, but it is more complicated than that.
It is difficult to blame the Holocaust on colonial thinking. The prime target for German anti-semitism, which led to the concept of clearing Germany of these people, were German Jews, not foreigners at all. In fact, that is one of the things that makes the whole thing remarkable. Many Jews were very well assimilated.
Anti-semitic feeling in Europe had its roots in Christian thinking. There was also a deep racism apparent, but to a certain extent this was a reaction against empire. It is clear in 'Mein Kampf' that Hitler personally is deeply affected by being, as he sees it, forced in to the 'mongrel empire' of the Austro-Hungarians.
Eugenics is also seriously implicated in promoting racial thinking. I think it did increase the likelihood of the Holocaust happening. But it did not enter in to things in a vacuum.The racism and anti-semitism was already there. You could claim that eugenics was a product of pre-existing racism.
Just because one thing, in this case the African genocide, occurs before another similar event, that does not mean one led to the other.
History is rarely that straight a road. -
Message 3
Posted by Herewordless (U14549396) on Monday, 28th March 2011
This horrific episode was documented in a Timewatch programme some years on on UK telly.
There were five concentration camps in all in Namibia, then German South-West Africa, between 1904 and 1908. They were called Konzentrationslager in reports and succeeded South African camps by two years.
The anti-colonial struggles of 1904 to 1908 were characterised by two major uprisings: the Herero uprising in northern and central Namibia and the Nama uprising in the south.
In January 1904 war broke out between the Herero nation and the German colonial administration in Namibia. The colonists were caught by surprise and suffered many defeats in the early stages of the sporadic and uncoordinated war.
After about six months the picture changed. The battle at the Waterberg, in the north-east, on August 11 1904, marked the beginning of the end for the Herero, who fled in their thousands into the Omaheke sandveld, perishing in high numbers.
The Herero nation was literally uprooted as an entire people spread across the Kalahari, trying to flee German punitive patrols. Those who did not reach Bechuanaland, now Botswana, either succumbed to the desert or were picked up by German patrols and put in concentration camps.
In 1904 camps had been set up in Windhoek, Okahandja and at the coastal town of Swakopmund. In 1905 two new camps were opened in Karibib and Lüderitz.
In terms of mortality statistics, the Namibian camps were horrific. An official report on the camps in 1908 described the mortality rate as 45,2% of all prisoners held in the five camps.
The prisoners were typically fenced in, either by thorn-bush fences or by barbed wire. As the word concentration implies, thousands of people were crammed into small areas.
The Windhoek camp held about 5 000 prisoners of war in 1906. Rations were minimal, consisting of a daily allowance of a handful of uncooked rice, some salt and water. Rice was an unfamiliar foodstuff to most, and the uncommon diet was the cause of many deaths. Disease was uncontrolled. An almost total lack of medical attention, unhygienic living quarters, insufficient clothing and a high concentration of people meant that diseases such as typhoid spread rapidly. Beatings and maltreatment were also part of life in the camps as the sjambok was often swung over the backs of prisoners who were forced to work.
The concentration camp on Shark Island, in the coastal town of Lüderitz, was the worst of the five Namibian camps. Lüderitz lies in southern Namibia, flanked by desert and ocean. In the harbour lies Shark Island, which then was connected to the mainland only by a small causeway.
The island is now, as it was then, barren and characterised by solid rock carved into surreal formations by the hard ocean winds. The camp was placed on the far tip of the relatively small island, where the prisoners would have suffered complete exposure to the gale-force winds that sweep Lüderitz for most of the year.
The first prisoners to arrive were, according to a missionary called Kuhlman, 487 Herero ordered to work on the railway between Lüderitz and Kubub. The island soon took its toll: in October 1905 Kuhlman reported the appalling conditions and high death rate among the Herero on the island. Throughout 1906 the island had a steady inflow of prisoners, with 1 790 Nama prisoners arriving on September 9 alone. In the annual report for Lüderitz in 1906, an unknown clerk remarked that "the Angel of Death" had come to Shark Island.
German Commander Von Estorff wrote in a report that approximately 1 700 prisoners had died by April 1907, 1 203 of them Nama. In December 1906, four months after their arrival, 291 Nama died (a rate of more than nine people a day). Missionary reports put the death rate at between 12 and 18 a day.
As much as 80% of the prisoners sent to the Shark Island concentration camp never left the island. Fred Cornell, a British aspirant diamond prospector, was in Lüderitz when the Shark Island camp was being used.
Cornell wrote of the camp: "Cold - for the nights are often bitterly cold there - hunger, thirst, exposure, disease and madness claimed scores of victims every day, and cartloads of their bodies were every day carted over to the back beach, buried in a few inches of sand at low tide, and as the tide came in the bodies went out, food for the sharks."
During the war a number of people from the Cape, strapped for money, sought employment as transport riders for German troops in Namibia. Upon their return to the Cape some of these people recounted their stories, causing debate in the local media.
On September 28 1905 an article appeared in the Cape Argus, with the heading: "In German S. W. Africa: Further Startling Allegations: Horrible Cruelty".
In the article, Percival Griffith, "an accountant of profession, who owing to hard times, took up on transport work at Angra Pequena [Lüderitz]", related his experiences.
"There are hundreds of them, mostly women and children and a few old men ... when they fall they are sjamboked by the soldiers in charge of the gang, with full force, until they get up ... On one occasion I saw a woman carrying a child of under a year old slung at her back, and with a heavy sack of grain on her head ... she fell.
The corporal sjamboked her for certainly more than four minutes and sjamboked the baby as well ... the woman struggled slowly to her feet, and went on with her load. She did not utter a sound the whole time, but the baby cried very hard."
These atrocities did not go unnoticed by the Germans, who wrote reports, articles and letters about the camps. Shark Island came up in a German Parliament debate in 1906, when the Social Democrats demanded to know what was going on there.
It seems, however, that generations since then have tried hard to forget this history. The South African camps have memorials and written histories, the Namibian camps do not. On the site where Shark Island once lay now lies a caravan park. Even worse, at the entrance of the park is a monument to the German soldiers who died between 1905 and 1908 a monument to the victor and not the victim.
The centenary of the 1904 war should have perhaps made Namibians take the opportunity to reflect, not so much on what is remembered but rather on what is not. But it seems they were too concerned about the Tourist trade... -
Message 4
Posted by Elkstone (U3836042) on Monday, 28th March 2011
I also heard that what Hitler did was a consequence of what was going on in the western hemisphere for over three centuries, and was the biggest crime against humanity. The altantic slave trade. For the first time humans were reduced to the status as animals. In america, blacks were regarded as animals who could speak. The apologists for slavery said Africans sold their own people to the slave traders. However in America and the rest of the western hemisphere, blacks born on plantations were denied freedom and were treated as slaves even if they had no direct connection with Africa. A large number were born in the Americas and grand parents or great grandparents were shipped from America. The universal laws of the time was to deny human rights based on skin colour.
So what the nazis did was a continuation. Back to the OP Maybe the apartheid regime in nearby South Africa of the Boers (it was not known by that but had similar laws), were similarly influenced, by the treatment of africans in the slave trade, and by the germans in Namibia -
Message 5
Posted by TimTrack (U1730472) on Tuesday, 29th March 2011
Hereword has posted a pretty chilling account of events.
However, a further thought on a key difference between the Herero genocide and the Holocaust.
European colonial activities were founded in un-democratic and racist ideas. Howevere, there was an assumption that might equalled right. The Herero had rebelled against the governing power. Without, from the modern viewpoint, attempting to justify the reaction, the Germans were putting down a rebellion. There was no Jewish rebellion in Germany. This makes the Jewish Holocaust completely arbitrary, whereas the German assault on the Herero was, by contrast, an over-reaction, albeit on a grand and brutal scale.
I find it difficult to trace the Jewish Holocaust to the African slave trade. Germany was relatively un-involved in this. -
Message 6
Posted by Elkstone (U3836042) on Tuesday, 29th March 2011
The germans were relatively un involved in the slave trade. However i have heard of some Black west indians with german sounding names, many with Jewish names as well, so there could be indviduals from there who got involved in that evil but lucrative trade.
There is a connection with the atlantic trade and what was going on in the german colonies. The Germans were no doubt acting similar to other European colonial powers. Many of whom ( British, French, Portuguese, Spanish) were previously involved in the ATlantic slave trade. That trade was based on race, ie if you were black that equalled slave, and loss of all human rights. Africans were no longer called by there natioinal origins, but as 'negroes' who had no history, culture, relighion, language and were not allowed to even use their own names. Colonial based on racist and brutal lines was also a continuation of slave trading nations relationship with Africans. For the first time humans could be traded like animals worked to death, punished to death, or put to sleep if too old or sick to work. That was unprecendented. At the same time there was a near genocide of the indigenous Americans. However it was legal at the time for over 3 centuries. What happened during the nazi holocaust lasted 12 years they were in power
Regarding what the Germans did, however was not King Leopold far worse if not just as bad? The Belgians did did not have slave colonies in the west like the Germans. He carved out a large interior in Africa to give Belgians, a relative small power in Europe a large voice on the world stage along the colonial powers, during the 'Scramble for Africa'. -
Message 7
Posted by Elkstone (U3836042) on Tuesday, 29th March 2011
Another point i forgot to add, (I remember a seminar on this at uni in the 90s) it relates to the point made about the African uprising that was crushed and no comparable Jewish 'rebellion'. The europeans often brutally clamped down on African slave revolts. Well the trade was a major souce of revenue. They did not see the captives as humans, nor would listen to reasoned arguments. Some were treated humanely that others. The british signed a peace treaty with the war like Maroons in Jamaica who remained free and did not have to pay them taxes. However part of the agreement the maroons had to had over other run aways who escaped to join them. They kept their side of the bargain. It was divide and rule which suited them. However in Haiti which was the most successful revolt in the Atlantic trade. The slave owning powers, France, US and Britain demanded they pay them full compensation for loss of revenue. For the next 2 centuries 90% of Haiti's income had to go paying them off, that is why it has always been the most underdeveloped nation in the region.
-
Message 8
Posted by Herewordless (U14549396) on Tuesday, 29th March 2011
I think that the general 'Scramble for Africa' was an avaricious and State-funded grab for land with a racist theme throughout.
Let's not forget that in the [Belgian] Congo, if the slave men weren't doing enough to please their masters, ie. being driven into the grave, then their wives and children had arms severed off! Maybe 10 million died in all of the Colonial rule. -
Message 9
Posted by cloudyj (U1773646) on Tuesday, 29th March 2011
For the first time humans could be traded like animals worked to death, punished to death, or put to sleep if too old or sick to work. That was unprecendented.Ìý
Just to be a historical pedant, all of these things could happen to slaves in ancient Rome. -
Message 10
Posted by Sambista (U4068266) on Tuesday, 29th March 2011
However in Haiti which was the most successful revolt in the Atlantic trade. The slave owning powers, France, US and Britain demanded they pay them full compensation for loss of revenue. For the next 2 centuries 90% of Haiti's income had to go paying them off, that is why it has always been the most underdeveloped nation in the region.Ìý
Can you cite some authority for this? My understanding was that the French alone demanded, and received, compensation for the land lost rather than the revenues, and that the last payments were made c. 1890 -
Message 11
Posted by Elkstone (U3836042) on Wednesday, 30th March 2011
The major plantation owning powers, (well all the countries in the Americas!) did not want runaways to head for Haiti, or for that Island to export its revolution. So the cuban embargo under Castro happened two centuries earlier with Haiti. That is why it has always been under developed and seen as the most backward isolated place in the region.
Back to the OP. Isnt this another case of German bashing? Why point the finger at them when far worse was going on for centuries involving Africans in Africa and on plantations in the west, under the hands of other European nations? Britain and US was just as complicent or just as bad, they made huge profits out of it, resisted banning that evil trade for centuries before hypocritically portraying themselves as paragons of freedom against the evil slave trade, when they made steps to stamp it out and prevent slave ships from sailing -
Message 12
Posted by Mikestone8 (U13249270) on Saturday, 2nd April 2011
The treatment of the Hereros was ghastly, but at least they survived and eventually rebuilt their numbers, which is more than the Tasmanian aborigines did.
The story of the Belgian Congo is also well known, but neither Australia nor Belgium ever produced a Hitler. For my money, anyone dragging him into it is just being sensationalist. The "age of empire" was quite bad enough without irrelevances of that kind. -
Message 13
Posted by Elkstone (U3836042) on Saturday, 2nd April 2011
Re the age of empire and associated attrocities. Did the perpetrators ever had to explain their actions, when it was over? Was the Nuremburg trials the first time in history, the question of why or how could it be done was asked? Did it set the precedent that 'just following orders' is no defence? I would imagine what happened in Namibia, Belgian Congo, they would have used that line if asked. Or was it different because the victims were kith and kin, ie fellow white europeans? so the attocities of the holocaust would be considered more serious to what happend a generation earlier to African natives?
-
Message 14
Posted by Mikestone8 (U13249270) on Wednesday, 6th April 2011
The Nuremburg trials were the first time it was done for serious. The Treaty of Versailles included a provision for the trial of "war criminals" but it was never carried out.
I suppose the 1865 hanging of the Commandant of Andersonville Prison might be viewed as a kind of precedent, but it had no legal standing outside the United States. -
Message 15
Posted by Nattydread777 (U14903917) on Sunday, 12th June 2011
Jamaican Runnaways/Maroons/Escapees
I would like to register my disappointment with the continued use of the term "Runnaways" for "I" African Brethren & Sistren ancestors. Even the term "Maroon" may be misleading, given previous comments from other contributers.
At the point the British took control of the island now known as Jamaica, the Spanish ran away.
My ancesstors escaped, so should be more appropriately be termed Escapees.
Otherwise the Escapees from Colditz in the Second World War should also be termed Runnaways. The period was dominated by the theft of African labour by well organised sets of Crime Syndicates. As usual the "Authorities" turned a blind "eye" as the huge sums of money rolled in. They managed to convince themselves by any manner of psycological contortions of the acceptability of their activities. They made so much money they did not know what to do with it, and so used it to build monuments to themselves (e.g. The Great Houses, monuments etc.) all over Britain. A few of them were actually embarrassed for people to know where the money came from.
Its easier to understand the mentality, given the ongoing bizarre activities in The Middle East. What exactly is Israel's role in the control of and stealing (if necessary) of oil wealth? Surpise, surprise, an ongoing saga with their neighbours , and the dispossessed "Palestinians". Somehow I do not see the warmongers messing with the Russians in the same way for their natural gas. -
Message 16
Posted by suvorovetz (U12273591) on Sunday, 12th June 2011
Otherwise the Escapees from Colditz in the Second World War should also be termed Runnaways. The period was dominated by the theft of African labour by well organised sets of Crime Syndicates.Ìý
The [Second World War] period was dominated by much worse atrocities around the globe. As for 'crime syndicates' involved in labor trafficking, particularly slave trade, everybody keeps conveniently forgetting the Barbary Pirates off of North Africa and below. Yet, this is whereabout it STILL goes on. -
Message 17
Posted by Elkstone (U3836042) on Sunday, 12th June 2011
Jamaican Runnaways/Maroons/Escapees
I would like to register my disappointment with the continued use of the term "Runnaways" for "I" African Brethren & Sistren ancestors. Even the term "Maroon" may be misleading, given previous comments from other contributers.
At the point the British took control of the island now known as Jamaica, the Spanish ran away.
My ancesstors escaped, so should be more appropriately be termed Escapees.
Otherwise the Escapees from Colditz in the Second World War should also be termed Runnaways. The period was dominated by the theft of African labour by well organised sets of Crime Syndicates. As usual the "Authorities" turned a blind "eye" as the huge sums of money rolled in. They managed to convince themselves by any manner of psycological contortions of the acceptability of their activities. They made so much money they did not know what to do with it, and so used it to build monuments to themselves (e.g. The Great Houses, monuments etc.) all over Britain. A few of them were actually embarrassed for people to know where the money came from.
Its easier to understand the mentality, given the ongoing bizarre activities in The Middle East. What exactly is Israel's role in the control of and stealing (if necessary) of oil wealth? Surpise, surprise, an ongoing saga with their neighbours , and the dispossessed "Palestinians". Somehow I do not see the warmongers messing with the Russians in the same way for their natural gas.Ìý My understanding of events in Jamaica vis a vis the Spanish and Britain, is that the said two powers were at war, (was it the time of the Armada or before?) the spanish were defeated and left the island. The enslaved Africans and indigenous people were left alone in relative peace and freedom for around 60 years, when Britian tried to re intorduce plantation slavery throughout the old island. The now free Africans who became known as the maroons, naturally resisted. They were mainly from Angola and Spanish west African slave trading ports. The Btitish brought Africans mainly from Ghana and Nigeria regions. So there was a culture of rebellioness already deeply emplanted in Jamaica which culminated in the said succesful Maroon rebellion which was a few years before similar events in haiti. -
Message 18
Posted by PaulRyckier (U1753522) on Sunday, 12th June 2011
Re: Message 2.
TimTrack,
that's the way I am thinking too about the two events and their linking.
Kind regards,
Paul. -
Message 19
Posted by PaulRyckier (U1753522) on Sunday, 12th June 2011
However in Haiti which was the most successful revolt in the Atlantic trade. The slave owning powers, France, US and Britain demanded they pay them full compensation for loss of revenue. For the next 2 centuries 90% of Haiti's income had to go paying them off, that is why it has always been the most underdeveloped nation in the region.Ìý
Can you cite some authority for this? My understanding was that the French alone demanded, and received, compensation for the land lost rather than the revenues, and that the last payments were made c. 1890Ìý Re: Message 10.
Gil,
all this pushed me to read more about the Haitian history:
And about the compensations I found this:
(Mods it is completely in English)
I give it for what it is worth. I have not done yet further research.
Kind regards and with esteem,
Paul. -
Message 20
Posted by PaulRyckier (U1753522) on Sunday, 12th June 2011
I think that the general 'Scramble for Africa' was an avaricious and State-funded grab for land with a racist theme throughout.
Let's not forget that in the [Belgian] Congo, if the slave men weren't doing enough to please their masters, ie. being driven into the grave, then their wives and children had arms severed off! Maybe 10 million died in all of the Colonial rule.Ìý Hereword,
some more details and rectifications about the Congo Free State of Leopold II:
Kind regards,
Paul.
PS. In the meantime I did a lot more research for French history messageboards. Nevertheless, I don't say I am an expert... -
Message 21
Posted by Herewordless (U14549396) on Sunday, 12th June 2011
Thanks, Paul- shocking and sad?
-
Message 22
Posted by Sambista (U4068266) on Sunday, 12th June 2011
Paul:
Thanks for that. I've had a quick look, and will delve further later.
Regards
Gil -
Message 23
Posted by baz (U14258304) on Friday, 17th June 2011
The people responsible for this anti-western garbage were also responsible for the equally embarrassing The Power Of Nightmares, a program that said terrorism was a figment of our imagination...then came the 7/7 atrocities.
It has never been - nor will it ever be - repeated. -
Message 24
Posted by cloudyj (U1773646) on Friday, 17th June 2011
Apologies for the risk of derailing this discussion, but...
Its easier to understand the mentality, given the ongoing bizarre activities in The Middle East. What exactly is Israel's role in the control of and stealing (if necessary) of oil wealth? Surpise, surprise, an ongoing saga with their neighbours , and the dispossessed "Palestinians". Somehow I do not see the warmongers messing with the Russians in the same way for their natural gas.
Ìý
I'd always understood that Palestine had no oil reserves. Where are the oil wells Israel has stolen? -
Message 25
Posted by Patrick Wallace (U196685) on Friday, 17th June 2011
I never understood The Power of Nightmares as saying that terrorism didn't exist or wasn't important or terrible - or indeed that it was anti-Western, whatever that is. Simply that threads of ideas in both Western and Middle Eastern politics fed off each other and to some extent fuelled each other's worst aspects - which is a point worth considering to this day.
-
Message 26
Posted by hotmousemat (U2388917) on Friday, 17th June 2011
I would suggest the root of the Holocaust (and similar massacres) is democracy and 'self determination'.
In the age of kings and emperors, there was nothing odd in being a member of a social community which did not include your head of state. You paid your taxes, the King provided an army and that was about it; the rest was worked out on a local level.
But once you bring in democracy and a modern state with a mass army and national politicians who need to keep popularity by 'doing stuff' for 'their' people, then people are less willing to tolerate factions whose interests and loyalties may be elsewhere. In 'Mein Kampf', much space is taken up with describing the hopelessness of democracy within a multi-ethnic state like Austro-Hungary.
So I would suggest that although the particular Nazi target of the Jews was dictated by racial ideas, it was only part of the same vast 20th century racial and religious 'sorting out' process that took place in India, in the old Ottoman, Russian and Austro-Hungarian Empires and continues today in Africa.
And in Britain! Should Scotland go its own way? Must immigrants become 'British' or can Britain work as a 'multi-cultural' society? We can express horror at murderous ethnic cleansing, but I don't think people are necessarily against the idea in principle! -
Message 27
Posted by cloudyj (U1773646) on Friday, 17th June 2011
In the age of kings and emperors, there was nothing odd in being a member of a social community which did not include your head of state. You paid your taxes, the King provided an army and that was about it; the rest was worked out on a local level.Ìý
What about the examples of ethnic cleansing from those eras? How do you explain, for instance, Spain expelling her Jews in 1492? -
Message 28
Posted by hotmousemat (U2388917) on Friday, 17th June 2011
What about the examples of ethnic cleansing from those eras? How do you explain, for instance, Spain expelling her Jews in 1492?Ìý
I don't say that 'ethnic cleansing' (or more usually 'religious cleansing') never occurred before democracies, but you could argue that when it did it generally for the same sort of reasons. By that I mean that picking on 'the other' was often a way the ruler of a new and fragmented society - like Spain after its reconquest from the Moors - could make a claim to broad leadership.
In other words, a King is most likely to persecute some of their subjects when they are insecure - when (like a democratic politician) they need to cultivate a constituency.
But of course I am only making a broad generalisation, as you always have to do when you are looking for 'causes' of complex events. I only wished to make the point that explaining events like the Holocaust in terms of racial theories and suchlike may make us neglect the broader socio-political factors that make nations liable to turn against their own members. -
Message 29
Posted by PaulRyckier (U1753522) on Friday, 17th June 2011
Hereword,
thank you for your reply. Shocking and sad indeed. But as I suppose you haven't read in the thread of Tim Acleah I mentioned about the "rectifications" I pointed to?
Kind regards,
Paul.
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