14,000 troops were sent from Germany to restore order, but they only succeeded in dispersing the rebels, led by chief Samuel Maharero.
German reinforcements arrive at the German colony
General Lothar von Trotha (1848 - 1920) a Prussian from Magdeburg, in 1904
General Lothar von Trotha and Governor Theodor Leutwein with officers in Windhoek
General Lothar von Trotha with some of his officers
The cities were filled with soldiers...
Last edited by TabsTabs1964; 04-06-2024 at 08:08 AM.
The Herero went on a guerrilla campaign, carrying out rapid hit-and-run operations and then melting back into the terrain they knew well, preventing the Germans from gaining an advantage with their modern artillery and machine guns ....
Herero attack on a detachment of the protection forces
The mobility of the German light cavalry forces allowed them to maintain some control of the territory in the face of constant ambushes and attacks by the Herero guerrillas. Although the trickle of casualties was continuous....
Some portraits of those men and artistic representations in an illustration and a book cover....
The Batlle of Waterberg, August 11, 1904
Bth leaders: Lothar von Trotha and Samuel Maharero
von Trotha and his staff
However, on August 11, 1904, a conclusive battle was fought: the Battle of Waterberg in the mountains of that name. Chief Maharero believed that his six-to-one advantage over the Germans would allow him to win in the final showdown, but the Germans had time to place their artillery and machine guns. Both sides suffered losses, but the Herero scattered, fled, and were pursued.
Waterberg battlefield
On August 11, 1904, some 4,000 soldiers (Germans and Nama auxiliaries) under Trotha attacked the Herero positions from different angles. The Herero were waiting for them in strategically well-located places. The entire Herero people had gathered at the site, a conservative figure of 45,000 people, plus their herds of cattle.
Concentration of von Trotha's troops just before the battle
The Herero gathered there, accustomed to negotiating with Leutwein, hoped to enter into a negotiation with the German colonial government, but von Trotha did not accept any pact and attacked.....
But his plan failed spectacularly (as the "old Africans" such as Leutwein had predicted): the dense forested terrain prevented the German columns from acting in coordination. The fighting lasted almost all day. The column approaching from the west came forward, while the attack from the east lagged behind in the dense thickets, so that Samuel Maharero, his retinue, and some of his men, probably short of ammunition, managed to escape by that way.....
On this map from the time of the battle I have indicated the German columns in blue and the position of the Herero people and their escape routes to the east in red.
Several tens of thousands of men, women, children and the elderly and most of the livestock escaped through the German units heading east. Their only option: cross the Omaheke Desert, reach the border and enter the British protectorate of Bechuanaland (Botswana)....
Trotha ordered the pursuit of the enemy immediately, but had to halt after a few hours because his troops were exhausted and without water or provisions
The German troops were completely unprepared for the chase that was ordered.
By the time the Schutztruppe resumed the chase, the OvaHerero were already 48 hours ahead. German troops pursued them for at least six weeks and were always a step behind....
The pursuit caused more casualties for the Germans than the battle (sunstroke and dehydration decimated the men, to the point of having to stop the operation).
The same thing happened on September 28 at a waterhole on the edge of the Omaheke, a desert area where artillery could only fire at the dispersing clouds of dust. Bitterly, Trotha summed up that same day: "The battle was very beautiful from the point of view of landscape, but militarily null."
The toll of the Battle of Waterberg: 26 German soldiers were killed and 60 wounded in action. The number of casualties of the Herero is unknown.
German and local Schutztruppe soldiers in a bivouac after the Battle of Owikokorero in 1904.
Despite the reinforcements and supplies sent from Germany before the campaign, at the crucial moment everything was lacking. While the general telegraphed Berlin the news of the victory, he opened up a little more in his diary: "It seems that this is too much for me" (he wrote on August 13).
Bremer Nachrichten of August 17, 1904.
von Trotha during the campaign
Every day of persecution, more officers opposed continuing it
His subordinates realized early on how futile the persecution was, especially when hunger, thirst, and disease thinned the German ranks. However, the suffering of the OvaHerero was even greater: beaten militarily and divided into several groups that only fought for their own survival, they died of thousands of fatigue and thirst.....
A terrible drama was begining...
But for Trotha, persecution had become an obsession. He did not want to admit his failure and sacrificed countless lives in an attempt to erase it.
He only agreed to give new orders when operations literally came to nothing: without water and provisions, his troops in the Omaheke Desert could advance no further. "I don't chase anymore." Enough is enough," Trotha said on Sept. 29. "I'm sick. All of our supplies are out of stock." Ending the war on their own was out of the question for the time being. Although the OvaHerero no longer had anything to oppose their pursuers, they avoided any combat.
Hereros after being captured....those who were lucky
This meant that what Leutwein had warned of had happened : a desperate struggle on the part of the OvaHerero, the end of which could not be foreseen. The officers wanted to start peace talks. But Trotha wouldn't allow it. The longer the war dragged on, the more Lonely Trotha felt with his belief that anything short of victory would be a sign of weakness. What is more, he could only imagine a coexistence between Germans and Ovahereros on the basis of a total victory.
By the end of August, Trotha had already announced what that meant. In the event that there was no longer any chance of reaching them, he wanted to expel the OvaHerero from the colony "into English territory and then leave there a strong frontier guard" (he wrote in his diary on August 29).
By the end of September, his own troops were no longer able to continue. So they occupied the last known water points on the western edge of the Omaheke to prevent the OvaHerero from returning.
In desperation, on 3 October 1904, von Trotha issued orders to shoot all Herero males and drive the women and children into the desert; resorting to exemplary acts of cruelty against those he captured, thus signaling to the others that they were no longer German subjects and there was no place for them in the colony.
Without being able to get water from the wells, the Herero people were condemned to an atrocious death....
Women and children were forcibly expelled from water wells. The OvaHerero were declared outlawed and could no longer expect any mercy.
Awasab water well. The Germans took the wells to kill the rebels with thirst
Observation posts and shooting at any Herero who tried to approach the wells
As October progressed, it became clear that many of them would not make it to the border and would not be able to remain in the Omaheke Desert. Tens of thousands of displaced people died of thirst as they fled. That this was clear to Trotha is clear from a letter to Leutwein dated 5 November. In it, he bluntly stated that the entire "nation" of the OvaHerero was being pushed "completely" into an area where it would "no longer exist and would have to perish." He could not defeat them and with his expulsion he wanted to erase the stain of their failure....
Very few Herero survived the escape and those who did (like those in this creepy image) were walking corpses....
When the extermination order was finally lifted in late 1904, survivors of the tribes were crammed into concentration camps, while others were transferred as slave labor to German companies; many Herero died from overwork and malnutrition.
Konzentrationslager - Windhoek
Shark Island, concentration camp, 1907
In the concentration camp on Shark Island, prisoners were worked to death or starved to death.
Explanatory map with concentration camps
When the Nama people saw the fate of their northern Herero neighbors, they understood that they would be next and that the only path left for them was rebellion...
The Nama Uprising
The Nama Uprising
The warriors of the Nama tribe (inhabitants of the south of the colony) fought on the side of the Germans at the Battle of Waterberg, against the OvaHerero.
But their leader Hendrik Witboi, seeing the dramatic end of the OvaHerero tribe, understood that the next to be eliminated were the Nama, so on October 3, 1904, he also rebelled against the German occupiers.
The Chief of the Namas Hendrik Witbooi (1830-1905)
He gave orders to kill all the white men in his power, although he freed the women and children who were taken under the protection of the German troops.
Witboi had experience in the war, having fought against the German protection forces until 1894, when he signed his agreement with Leutwein, with whom he later collaborated for ten years. (see #327, first pic)
Hendrik Witbooi sitting on the chair with fighters of the Nama tribe circa 1904-1905
Witboi was killed in combat with German troops in 1905, but his men continued the fight for another three years, as guerrilla warfare in the south of the country and in the Kalahari Desert would last until 1908.
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