The Kaiser's Holocaust: Germany's Forgotten Genocide And The Colonial Roots Of Nazism

On 12 May 1883, the German flag was raised on the coast of South-West Africa, modern Namibia, which marked the beginning of Germany's African Empire. As colonial forces moved in, their ruthless punitive raids became an open war of extermination. Thousands of indigenous people were killed or driven out into the desert to die. By 1905, survivors were interned in concentration camps and systematically starved and worked to death. Years later, the people and ideas that drove the ethnic cleansing of German South West Africa influenced the formation of the Nazi party. The Kaiser's Holocaust uncovers extraordinary links between these regimes: their ideologies, personnel, even symbols and uniforms. The Herero and Nama genocide was deliberately concealed for almost a century. Today, as the graves of the victims are uncovered, its re-emergence challenges the belief that Nazism was an aberration in European history. The book passionately narrates this harrowing story and explores a defining episode of the twentieth century from a new angle.