Herero and Namaqua Genocide

Following an uprising by the Herero people of German South West Africa, now Namibia, launched on 12 January 1904 under the chief Samuel Maharero, German colonial forces under General Lothar von Trotha defeated the Herero at the Battle of Waterberg in August 1904 and drove survivors into the waterless Omaheke Desert, where thousands died of thirst and starvation. On 2 October 1904 von Trotha issued an extermination order declaring that any Herero found within German territory, armed or unarmed, would be shot, and captured survivors, along with members of the neighboring Nama people who rose up soon after, were interned in concentration camps where roughly half the prisoners died of disease, malnutrition and forced labor. Historians estimate that between 40,000 and 80,000 Herero, around 80 percent of their pre-war population, and about 10,000 Nama, roughly half their pre-war population, died as a result of the campaign between 1904 and 1908. Germany formally acknowledged in 2015 that the killings constituted genocide, and in 2021 agreed to pay 1.1 billion euros in development assistance to Namibia, a settlement most Herero and Nama organizations rejected as inadequate because Germany continued to deny legal liability.