Kaiser's Holocaust (65 page)

Friedrich von Lindequist, the young Deputy Governor photographed here in the 1890s in a Windhoek beer garden (seated, right with a beer tankard). Popular among the settlers, Lindequist was an early advocate of
Lebensraum
theory.

Cattle and ox-drawn wagons traversing the long trade route to the Cape, through the vast, arid interior of South-West Africa.

Governor Theodor Leutwein’s first meeting with his successor, General von Trotha, Windhoek June 1904.

In October 1904, Hendrik Witbooi and his mounted Nama fighters joined the war against the Germans.

German volunteers are cheered as they march off to war against the ‘Negro King’ Maharero, amid the feverish atmosphere of Berlin in late January 1904.

A reprisal against the Herero. Hangings were common both during and after the anticolonial wars. Several postcards were printed depicting similar public executions.

Von Trotha’s army preparing to march on the Herero encampment at the Waterberg on the edge of the Kalahari Desert.

A German reconnaissance patrol guided through the Waterberg escarpments by a Witbooi Nama scout. The Nama fought alongside the Germans at the Waterberg, but after witnessing the brutal aftermath, they decided to rise up as well.

General Lothar von Trotha who ordered the extermination of the Herero nation.

The work of the ‘collection patrols’. Starving Herero were captured in the bush and sent to the newly opened concentration camps.

Herero prisoners being transported to the Swakopmund concentration camp in cattle trucks.

The largest of the concentration camps, beside the German fort in the capital Windhoek. At its height, this camp held 7,000 prisoners.

A group of Nama women and children, captured by a German patrol and forced to pose for the camera.

Herero women in the Swakopmund camp used to pull railcars loaded with ammunition and provisions. The majority of prisoners in all the camps were women and children.