GERMANY’S FIRST GENOCIDE: 100,000 PEOPLE EXTERMINATED IN THE DESERT

Added: 2026-05-28

[00:00:00]Germany tested the methods they'd later use in the Holocaust on African people first and almost nobody knows about it.

[00:00:08]In 1904, [music] in present-day Namibia, the Herero and Nama people rose against brutal German [music] colonial rule after their land, cattle, and livelihoods were stolen. Led by Chief Samuel Maharero and Hendrik Witbooi, they fought back against years of forced labor and violent oppression.

[00:00:28]Germany's response was extermination.

[00:00:32]Kaiser Wilhelm II sent General Lothar von Trotha, who ordered that every Herero [music] man, woman, and child be killed or driven into the desert [music] to die.

[00:00:44]After the Battle of Waterberg, German troops sealed off water sources in the Omaheke Desert and shot anyone trying to escape.

[00:00:53]Tens of thousands died from thirst [music] and starvation.

[00:00:57]Those who survived were sent to concentration camps, forced into slave labor, starved, >> [music] >> beaten, and used for racial experiments.

[00:01:07]German scientist [music] Eugen Fischer studied prisoners there, developing eugenics theories [music] that would later influence Nazi ideology.

[00:01:15]By 1908, around 80% of the Herero [music] population and half of the Nama population had been wiped out. Human skulls were even shipped to Germany for racist scientific [music] research.

[00:01:30]Germany's first genocide tested in Namibia decades before the Holocaust.