Herero Genocide: History and Modernity
The authors analyze German colonial policy toward the Herero and Nama in German South-West Africa as a genocide: an intentional extermination campaign of 1904–1908 conducted through forced expulsions, mass killings and labor camps. They trace Germany's long denial, the reparations negotiations begun in 2015, and the eventual acknowledgment of the crimes, noting that the terms of compensation remain contested. The Herero case is distinctive because General von Trotha openly declared a war of extermination, making genocidal intent explicit in a way rarely documented. The article draws parallels to the Holocaust and to the Armenian Genocide: forced marches into the desert, death by deprivation.