Editing Lothar von Trotha (section)

==Herero and Namaqua Genocide==
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 Camp|concentration camps]].