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Topic: The myth of German genocide against the Herero Posted: 18-Jun-2007 at 11:50 |
There is still a myth being perpetuated that the Herero people suffered a genocide under the German colonial troops in 1904. Dr Klaus Nordbruch, a South African academic, has written a detailed article to clear this up once and for all. Without wanting to belittle the deaths that did occur during that incident the mythos that 10s of thousands died in the desert was formed as a result of British WW1 propaganda that played up the incident. I highly suggest everyone read the article at this link for the facts: http://www.nordbruch.org/artikel/sacramento.pdf
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Paul
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Posted: 18-Jun-2007 at 13:08 |
Hasn't genicide of the Herero been acknowledge and apoligised for by the German government. A strange thing to do if it is a fiction.
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Theodore Felix
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Posted: 18-Jun-2007 at 13:11 |
A blind apology most likely. In the face of the Holocaust, it would be impossible for Germany to be taken objectively if it denied the genocide. In her mind better to be apologetic then to bring too much attention.
Edited by Theodore Felix - 18-Jun-2007 at 13:12
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Paul
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Posted: 18-Jun-2007 at 13:50 |
If it was 1945 they apologised, but it was in 2004, so there was no pressure from their past.
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Posted: 18-Jun-2007 at 19:29 |
Originally posted by Paul
If it was 1945 they apologised, but it was in 2004, so there was no pressure from their past. |
Not true, they're always under pressure to flagelate to the world at every oppurtune time. The apology was given by their half Jewish "Foreign minister" of the time, Joska Fischer. It's still an occupied country don't you know.
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Maharbbal
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Posted: 19-Jun-2007 at 00:10 |
Where is the point in saying he is half Jewish, as if it has any impact on the rationality of the man. Considering the occupation of Germany, I dread to see how you'll explain it
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Joinville
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Posted: 19-Jun-2007 at 05:37 |
Some people dearly want things like the German campaign against the Herero in German West Africa and the putting down on the Maji-maji rebellion in East Africa (less known; about 150 German dead for 300.000 Africans) to be mythical. Doesn't make it so.
The Herero-war perfectly followed the logic of the British doctrine of "small wars" i.e. since the opponent is deemed too primitive for the categories of "combatant" and "civilian" to apply, everyone man, woman and child is fair game.
In the Herero case, the continued discussion seems to centre on if General von Trotha really gave an order of extermination, which might have been blown out of proportion, and recently whether lessons and ideals from the German military acadmies of always trying to effectuate a decisive Cannae-style "Vernichtungsschlact" (battle of annihilation), might have made the German style of colonial warfare a tad bloodier than what was already the very bloody norm.
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red clay
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Posted: 19-Jun-2007 at 21:29 |
Originally posted by Maharbbal
Where is the point in saying he is half Jewish, as if it has any impact on the rationality of the man. Considering the occupation of Germany, I dread to see how you'll explain it |
M-
He won't attempt to explain. It's fairly obvious where his thinking is going, and should he attempt an explanation he had better choose his words very carefully. I haven't banned an anti semite in at least 3 months, I could use the practice.
Edited by red clay - 19-Jun-2007 at 21:30
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Temujin
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Posted: 24-Jun-2007 at 15:48 |
Originally posted by Paul
Hasn't genicide of the Herero been acknowledge and apoligised for by the German government. A strange thing to do if it is a fiction. |
i think they did, though the government refuses to pay any money to the Hereros (which they want). anyways, considdering the much higher Herero losses, it was still not a genocide, it was the Hereros who attacked German civilian farms first. so it was a regular war, or uprising.
Originally posted by Joinville
The Herero-war perfectly followed the logic of the British doctrine of
"small wars" i.e. since the opponent is deemed too primitive for the
categories of "combatant" and "civilian" to apply, everyone man, woman
and child is fair game. |
as the Herero were a tribal structure without a professional army, the idea that there is no difference between combatant and civilian is not just a western concept but factual reality.
Edited by Temujin - 24-Jun-2007 at 15:49
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Joinville
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Posted: 25-Jun-2007 at 06:25 |
Originally posted by Temujin
as the Herero were a tribal structure without a professional army, the idea that there is no difference between combatant and civilian is not just a western concept but factual reality. |
It's the adaptation of European military logic regarding how wars are supposed to work, which leads to sets of logically predictable massacres of all and sundry, yes.
Provided you first decide to apply a European military logic to a number of situations, which is far from self evident you should, or rather that it is the most appropriate response.
The military logic tended to make sure the European powers could often do feck all but respond militarly (lack of structures and protocol to do anything else), hence they were unable to stop themselves from murdering people in great numbers, never mind if it was actually useful for anything.
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think
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Posted: 02-Jul-2007 at 02:36 |
Some people dearly want things like the German campaign against the
Herero in German West Africa and the putting down on the Maji-maji
rebellion in East Africa (less known; about 150 German dead for 300.000
Africans) to be mythical. Doesn't make it so. |
woh, if many of them casualties were soldiers then thats one hell of a victory.
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Posted: 02-Jul-2007 at 13:01 |
Originally posted by think
Some people dearly want things like the German campaign against the
Herero in German West Africa and the putting down on the Maji-maji
rebellion in East Africa (less known; about 150 German dead for 300.000
Africans) to be mythical. Doesn't make it so. | woh, if many of them casualties were soldiers then thats one hell of a victory.
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What happened was that a diplomatically gifted person came up with a local "medicine" designed to work on all Africans and make the invulnerable in battle.
That was new. Until then each individual tribe had its own specific medicine, which only worked for them. But this "witch-doctor" decided that 1) they all had the Germans as their common problem, and 2) to deal with them he Africans would have to fight them as a unity. First step; design a medicine for battle that would work for all tribes.
In that way it was the first stirring of a national consciousness, in the form of a sense of a common destiny.
And the rebels started mass-producing weapons too. It caused great consteration at the great Berlin Ethnogrphic Museum when these identical looking spears began streaming in the ethnographers wanted ethnically specific pieces, and now they got standardised mass-production.
So this was a huge uprising. Still, most of the 300.000 killed were probably what we would under normal circumstances coniser women and children, except the logic of Small Wars doesn't recognise the category "civilian".
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Carcharodon
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Posted: 24-Apr-2009 at 21:11 |
One shall not forget that in this war the Germans also isolated the Hereros in the desert (mostly women, children and old people) and let them starv to death. On top of that they built death camps where hereros (once again mostly women, children and old people) where put to death in various ways. The death camps from this time was a sort of small scale blueprint for the death camps of later times.
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Temujin
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Posted: 25-Apr-2009 at 20:23 |
first, militarically the Hereros were encircled close to the desert with least troops at the desert because breaking through to the desert would amount to suicide on part of the hereros. however they've choosen to do exactly this and that's how it happened. it is physically not possible to trap them in the desert without them going there in the first place.
secondly there were no death camps until ww2, what you're talking about are concentration camps what are essentially prisoner camps for non-combatants. any people who died in concentration camps did so through desease, starvation etc. this also happened across the border in the Cape Colony during the Boer War.
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Carcharodon
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Posted: 27-Apr-2009 at 18:00 |
The Germans blocked them so they could not return to more fertile land, that is a kind of entrapment too.
To not call the camps for death camps is just a question of semantics. In fact they where death camps even if there where no gas chambers. To let people succumb because of starvation, deseases and brutal treatment is as much genocide as to gas them to death.
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Temujin
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Posted: 27-Apr-2009 at 20:25 |
Botha was famous for his extermination order, it is less popularly known that Samuel Maherero, also in written form, expressed to kill every German. at the end of the day the Germans got the better of it and suddenly the Herero are the innocent victims? funny. either way he wanted to get the support of other tribes. the Herero by that time were so unpopular with their neighbours that other tribes supported Germans to get ridd of him, like the Witbooi.
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Al Jassas
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Posted: 27-Apr-2009 at 20:47 |
Hello Temu
Based on your argument, there was no genocide to the Armenians or Assyrians either because they began the rebellion and the Turks just responded in a way similar to the Germans.
AL-Jassas
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Carcharodon
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Posted: 27-Apr-2009 at 21:37 |
Hello Temu
Even if Samuel Maherero used strong language when he expressed his hate for the invaders of his country that doesn´t mean that the Germans had the right to commit genocide and indiscriminately exterminate women, children and old people.
And as Al Jassas says many opressed people have started rebellions against their opressors. That doesn´t justify that the opressors answers with genocide.
As in the case of the Herero genocide many colonial opressors have used local disagreements in order to divide and rule.
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ArmenianSurvival
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Posted: 27-Apr-2009 at 22:02 |
Originally posted by Temujin
anyways, considdering the much higher Herero losses, it was still not a genocide, it was the Hereros who attacked German civilian farms first. so it was a regular war, or uprising. |
So the seizure of a few farms thousands of miles from Germany, gives German authority a blank check to round up women and children of an entire ethnic group, put them into camps where almost all of them starved to death or died of disease, poison the wells and water sources of Hereros and prevent them from reaching arable land?
Genocide cannot be justified by a small-scale attack. Genocide simply means you are attempting to destroy a nation through direct extermination. It either took place, or it didn't. It doesn't have pretexts or exceptions which nullify the application of the word to describe a particular situation.
You're employing the logic of someone who, in an act of self-defense, not only kills someone who is threatening him, but then goes off and starts rounding up all members of the person's family, uncles aunts cousins nephews and neices, locks them in his basement, and then says hey, they died of starvation and disease. Gee, you think?
Originally posted by Temujin
as the Herero were a tribal structure without a professional army, the idea that there is no difference between combatant and civilian is not just a western concept but factual reality. |
So genocide is pardoned simply by a paranoid notion that every single member of a national group can be a potential threat? In this instance, you don't seem to be denying a genocide took place, you seem to be trying to justify it.
Originally posted by Temujin
what you're talking about are concentration camps what are essentially prisoner camps for non-combatants. any people who died in concentration camps did so through desease, starvation etc. |
Seeing as death was the fate of the vast majority who were sent to these "prisoner camps for non-combatants", the creation of them in the first place, their evident and obvious result, and the continued use of them, shows the true intention of the creator.
In one comment you're implying that Germany had justification to act on the notion that everyone is a potential threat. But here you imply that many of the deaths occured in camps for non-combatants, and that their deaths were somehow accidental/incidental, without even questioning why non-combatants would be systematically forced into such a dire situation in the first place.
You are blaming the deaths of these people on the symptoms (starvation and disease) rather than the cause (the fact they were forced into such a circumstance by German authority)
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Posted: 28-Apr-2009 at 10:23 |
Originally posted by Al Jassas
Based on your argument, there was no genocide to the Armenians or Assyrians either because they began the rebellion and the Turks just responded in a way similar to the Germans. |
Regardless of who won the conflict there would have been a genocide either way. So should we breathe a sigh of relief for the Germans who avoided that fate, or should we condemn them for inflicting it on their enemies in turn? I guess you could ask the same question about the Turks and the Armenians. It comes down to perspective; a European/Turk will normally be relieved that their ancestors were able to sort out the situation to their advantage, while those on the receiving end will have everything to gain from making themselves out as the victims of a great injustice. Neither side can lay claim to any moral superiority, nor we can from an objective POV condemn any of them. When two ruthless beasts confront each other the loser will be severly mangled, but that alone does not merit any sympathy.
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