Lothar von Trotha
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| “ | The Herero nation must now leave the country. If it refuses, I shall compel it to do so using cannons. Any Herero found inside the German frontier, with or without a gun, with or without cattle, will be shot. I shall spare neither women nor children. I shall give the order to drive them away and fire on them. Such are my words to the Herero people. | „ |
| ~ Von Trotha's extermination order |
Lothar von Trotha (July 3rd, 1848 – March 31th, 1920) was an Imperial German general notorious for attempts to exterminate the Herero and the Nama, two ethnic groups in Namibia. He served as governor of German Southwest Africa and Commander in Chief of its colonial forces, in which role he suppressed a native rebellion during the Herero Wars. He was widely condemned for his brutality in the Herero Wars, particularly for his role in the genocide that led to the near-extermination of the Herero.
Early Life edit
Von Trotha was born in Magdeburg on July 3, 1848, to a prominent Saxon noble family. He was married twice; on 15 October 1872 he married Bertha Neumann, who died in 1905. Following his retirement from the service, on 19 May 1912, he married Lucy Goldstein-Brinckmann (1881–1958), a second marriage for both, Lucy came from a family of converted Jews living in Frankfurt; in London. Trotha had two sons, who died without descendants.
Career Before the Genocide edit
He joined the Prussian Army in 1865, and served with distinction in the Austro-Prussian war a year later, for which he was awarded the Iron Cross 2nd Class.
He was commander of the Lauenburgisches Jäger Bataillon Nr. 9 for two years in Ratzeburg before he was deployed to Africa in 1894.
Herero and Namaqua Genocide edit
On May 3, 1904, he was appointed commander in chief of the armed forces in German Southwest Africa (now Namibia). The German command up to that time had not had much success against the Herero guerrilla tactics. Initially, he too suffered losses.
In October 1904 General von Trotha devised a new battle plan to end the uprisings. At the Battle of Waterberg, he issued orders to encircle the Herero on three sides so that the only escape route was into the waterless Omaheke-Steppe, a western arm of the Kalahari Desert. The Herero fled into the desert and Trotha ordered his troops to poison water holes, erect guard posts along a 150-mile line and shoot on sight any Herero, be they man, woman or child, who attempted to escape.
Trotha's methods caused a public outcry which led the Imperial Chancellor Bernhard von Bülow to ask Wilhelm II, German Emperor, to relieve Trotha of his command. This, however, was too late to help the Herero, as the few survivors had been herded into camps and used as labour for German businesses, where many died of overwork, malnutrition or disease. Prior to the uprisings, there were estimated to be 80,000 Herero. The 1911 census records 15,000.
Trotha's troops also routed the Nama. Approximately 10,000 Nama died during the fighting, the remaining 9,000 were confined to concentration camps.
After the Genocide edit
He served in World War I as an infantry general, and is suspected of perpetrating some serious atrocities.
He died of typhoid fever (bilious fever) on 31 March 1920 in Bonn.
Legacy edit
On August 16, 2004, the German government officially apologized for the genocide and its complicity in it.
Trivia edit
- Lothar von Trotha and other German colonials based their oppression towards the Herero on the US colonial ideology of Manifest Destiny, which was used to justify the US genocide against Native Americans. As a matter of fact, Southwest Africa served as Imperial Germany's only settler colony and von Trotha justified his extermination policy by siting the Native American genocide in his diary ("The natives must give way [weichen]--look at America. Either via the bullet or the mission, with alcohol.").