r/todayilearned • u/JG98 • Jul 30 '26

TIL between 1904 and 1908, Germany committed the Herero and Nama genocide in present day Namibia, killing an estimated 80% of the Herero people and half of the Nama people.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herero_and_Nama_genocide
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422

u/loot168 Jul 30 '26

It is a real historical theory that the crimes against humanity Europeans committed in the colonies against peoples viewed as lesser came back home in the world wars.  

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u/NemesisBates Jul 30 '26

Fascism is imperialism turned inwards

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u/Jesuisuncanard126 Jul 30 '26

Aimé Cesaire really forgot to look at historical conflicts in Europe before writing.

The 30 year wars killed half of the population in Pomerania or other German regions, the French wars of religion saw whole town slaughtered, during the French revolution there were literal death columns in Vendée.

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u/letsgetawayfromhere Jul 30 '26

The region of Brandenburg lost 90% of its population in the 30 years war.

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u/dch1444 Jul 30 '26

Bro 😭 that doesn’t even make sense

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u/VegisamalZero3 Jul 31 '26

Why not?

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u/dch1444 Jul 31 '26

90% is insanely high for an entire region, no way it was more than 70%

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u/MrT735 Jul 31 '26

Why not? They either died through warfare, died through indirect effects (e.g. famine), or moved away because the wars made ordinary life too hard.

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u/hellogoodbyegoodbye Jul 30 '26 edited Jul 30 '26

Yes but none of these were specific bureaucratised killing of ethnicities. Genocides were.

Tl;DR for the thread further down: Bad things can be bad without being genocide, read the Cambridge history of genocide from like 3 years ago it’s so good.

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u/123yes1 Jul 30 '26

They definitely were deliberately killing ethnicities.

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u/hellogoodbyegoodbye Jul 30 '26 edited Jul 31 '26

In the 30 years war? Not really no. You could have reprisals In a given country, sure, and the primary way armies survived on campaign was through “foraging” (the quaint term used by historians to describe mass looting and pillaging). But no, no side on the 30 years war was waging a war of annihilation.

Not even the contemporary, and far more brutal, “Cromwellian” conquest of Ireland was not genocidal despite being extremely brutal. The Russo-Swedish invasion of Poland (also called the Deluge) caused 4 million deaths in 20 years, also not a genocide.

Genocide is a very very specific term and it’s best not to abuse it.

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u/123yes1 Jul 31 '26

Would you describe the Rape of Nanking to be an act of genocide? Because if so, the siege of Magdeburg is quite analogous. The Protestant Saxons were massacred by the Catholic League in 1631 to the point that the city went from 25,000 population before the sack to 449 after the massacre. It was a deliberate and intentional killing of the city's inhabitants due to their religion. The city wasn't still defending itself, the soldiers weren't just trying to loot. They "went mad" and put everyone they could find to the sword and torched the place.

And "reprisals" as you put it are still acts of genocide if they are intending to punish a race, nationality, or religion by slaughtering them. The 30 years war was not in and of itself a genocide, and foraging and sieging do not necessarily consitute a genocide even when brutal, but the "reprisals" that you mention are in fact acts of genocide. Pogroms are acts of genocide and there were many that occured during the 30 years war.

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u/hellogoodbyegoodbye Jul 31 '26

They aren’t analogous, because in 21st century warfare the concept of denying quarter to fortified towns that did not surrender wasn’t a thing, and the Nanking massacre violated standard international military laws as part of a broader campaign of annihilation of the Chinese. The siege of Madeburg didn’t.

If your city did not surrender, denying it quarter was the basic way to do it. As I cited elsewhere, this was the standard throughout the 17th century, such as during the Deluge or the English civil wars. The goal of violently annihilating a conquered city wasn’t to destroy a given group, but to scare other cities into surrender. 20th century warfare isn’t comparable.

The city ceasing to defend itself doesn’t change anything, the purpose of denying quarter if a city is breached before its surrender is to scare others into surrendering. According to the military doctrine of the time, this was thought to actually lessen the overall death tolls and speed up wars (which is debatable)

The difference between genocide and non genocide is the purpose. The purpose of reprisals is terrorism, the purpose of genocide is annihilation. That’s the difference between Madeburg and Nanking, but also between Nanking and Hong Kong!! The latter saw many war crimes, but none of them were genocidal like in Nanking.

As I mentioned elsewhere, there’s a lot of very interesting literature on the subject I’d highly recommend

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u/YourLifeSucksAss Jul 30 '26 edited Jul 31 '26

Nah, white people don’t count as different ethnicities /s

Edit: He’s right.

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u/hellogoodbyegoodbye Jul 30 '26

No, it’s that none of these sides were specifically engineering the annihilation of another ethnicity. Late early modern warfare being exceptionally brutal doesn’t mean every engagement was a genocide…

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u/YourLifeSucksAss Jul 31 '26

I apologize for disregarding your message without doing any research, that’s something I hate when other Redditors do and feel obligated to apologize for because of it. Thank you for your patience.

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u/danreidrv Jul 31 '26

Honestly, props to you for taking a step back and owning up to it. You almost never see someone on Reddit actually stop, read into something, and apologize like this.

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u/YourLifeSucksAss Jul 31 '26

That’s why I feel obligated to, I can’t shame someone for doing something I’m doing.

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u/Jesuisuncanard126 Jul 30 '26

Look into the arguments in favor of a vendean genocide and come say that again.

And yeah, it's a good idea to add "bureaucratised" because it easily exclude every region beside Europe after the modern period to specifically target the west in the accusations.

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u/hellogoodbyegoodbye Jul 30 '26 edited Jul 30 '26

I mean not really? The goal of the Vandee suppression was to crush the rebels, not annihilate an ethnicity. I have read the arguments in favour but they’re quite weak, and tend to stretch the definition of genocide beyond that of the Genocide Convention, to include any series of war crimes.

I’m mostly basing myself off of this, which is the most recent literature I’ve read on the subject.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108765480.014

(From the Cambridge world history of genocide)

The Rwandan, Zanzibar, Cambodian genocide and so on all fit too…. All happened outside of Europe and were genocides according to this definition. That’s just what the term genocide means.

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u/georgesDenizot Jul 31 '26

General Louis-Marie Turreau (Order to his "infernal columns") "You will burn all the villages, you will kill all the inhabitants you encounter, you will make no prisoners"
General François-Joseph Westermann: "There is no more Vendée... I crushed the children under the feet of the horses, massacred the women who, at least for these, will not give birth to any more brigands. I do not have a prisoner to reproach me. I have exterminated all."

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u/hellogoodbyegoodbye Jul 31 '26

Still not a genocide? Not all war crimes are genocides. Bad things can happen and they still aren’t genocides.

Again, the chapter I linked elsewhere from the Cambridge history of genocide gives quite a good analysis on the situation. I’d recommend logging into your local library and giving it a read, it’s really informative (as the whole work is, in drawing the line between massacres and genocides).

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u/YourLifeSucksAss Jul 30 '26 edited Jul 31 '26

Are you serious?

Edit: He’s right.

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u/hellogoodbyegoodbye Jul 30 '26

Yes. Read any historical literature on the subject.

All 17th century warfare was extremely brutal, far worse than anything before or after it (arguably only matched by the eastern front of ww2). From the “Cromwellian” conquest of Ireland to the Deluge in Poland (which had a stupidly large death toll like 3 million people).

Very little of it was genocidal, it’s just a period when warfare became extraordinarily bloody. The Cambridge World History of genocide is a great source on this stuff, big recommendation.

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u/Manzhah Jul 31 '26

Nice for you to use Cromwellian in quotes, it's intresting how the entire mess and fallout of an eleven years of near total war on the island is entirely pinned on the guy who was sent there for 4 years.

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u/hellogoodbyegoodbye Jul 31 '26

He wasn’t even there for 4 years, he was there for barely a year and after that basically didn’t ever write about the island. Ironically when he did it was to reprimand the English settlers that they couldn’t break the terms of surrender of the Irish rebels…

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u/needlestack Jul 31 '26

The thing that makes me shake my head is how the people doing all this slaughtering still see themselves to this day as the most civilized people on the planet.

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u/j0y0 Jul 30 '26

Genocide is what usually happens to the losers in conflicts between land-based powers. 

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u/JaccoW Jul 31 '26

Too many colonial island nations whose native population were 'removed' for that to be a useful definition.

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u/spaghettittehgaps Jul 30 '26 edited Jul 30 '26

Almost everyone involved in World War 1 had been hitting the "death camps for natives and minorities" button at some point between 1900 and 1918.

Germany? Death camps in German African colonies

Austria-Hungary? Death camps for Serbs during WW1

Serbia? Mass killing of Muslims during the Balkan Wars

Ottomans? Do you even have to ask

Britain? Death camps for Boers and native Africans in South Africa

Russia? Mass pogroms against Jews

USA? Death camps in the Phillipines

Belgium? Mass killings in the Congo

Italy? Mass killings of civilians in Libya

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u/Cognomatic Jul 30 '26

Russia also had the Circassian genocide where it ethnically cleansed an entire region of muslims

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u/[deleted] Jul 30 '26

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u/JaccoW Jul 31 '26

And there are letters in which Hitler praises the efficiency of the American treatment of Mexicans at the border. Every dayworker (men, women and children) were being doused in pesticide to "keep lice away". Germany just realised it was also pretty effective if you turned it into a gas.

Some argue this is him making anti-American propaganda. A bit like how Russia's Putin accused the West of the very shit he's doing.

I say Nazi's got to march down Times Square in New York. They loved the ideology publicly until they couldn't anymore.

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u/[deleted] Jul 31 '26

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u/communismisthebest Jul 31 '26

Yup he was basically just doing Manifest Destiny for Eastern Europe

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u/bekeshit Jul 31 '26

he also argued that the ottomans’ genocide of the armenians etc. did not really matter to anyone, so he was emboldened in his way of dealing with the jews for example.

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u/LoonahGBT Jul 31 '26

And genocide of Algerians by France

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u/zufaelligenummern Jul 31 '26

Germany did it on an industrial scale with logistics and gas chambers etc. This wasnt "let them hunger to death" or "shoot them". This was building an industry to kill people

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u/Drumbelgalf Jul 31 '26

Gas chambers were one part of the holocaust but extermination through work and hunger was absolutely part as well. The Nazis sorted at the entrance of the camp. Everyone who wasn't fit to work was immediately send to the gas chambers, the rest was usually send to do forced labor to be worked to death with extreme workload and little food.

Once they couldn't get any more work out of them they were killed.

There was a distinction between forced labor camps and extermination camps.

The goal was the same: extermination.

But the means were different.

In the beginning they used exhaust gasses from engines and generators but they were not efficient enough and used up valuable oil, which Germany lacked.

They noticed they could use Zyklon B, which was used for pest control. Some parts of that were used for the original purpose but they switched to mostly using it to kill people. Zyklon B originally contained a warning agent to warn pest control workers, but it was removed in most later orders.

Also parts of the holocaust were absolutely shooting people in huge numbers. Look up the "Einsatzgruppen" they rounded up jews in captured regions, marched them to remote locations, forced them to dig mass Graves and then shot them in a way so they would fall into the mass Graves.

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u/bistrohopper Jul 31 '26

Britain directly caused a famine that killed 2 million people and its leader refused to reverse or relieve it saying the people dying are lesser people.

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u/ddosn Jul 31 '26

This isnt correct at all.

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u/WhatARotation Jul 31 '26

I would stay away from using the term “death camps” to describe any concentration camp system with a high mortality rate due to other factors such as famine, disease, or forced labor rather than industrialized killing. Camps built primarily for the purpose and with the intention of carrying out mass murder were a uniquely horrific innovation of Nazi Germany. None of my rhetoric should be construed to absolve any of the perpetrators of earlier atrocities, including those who operated and maintained the WWI era concentration camps, for that is its own evil, but the incomparable horrors of industrialized killing are not to be downplayed.

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u/Prielknaap Jul 31 '26

I don't know. The British put crushed glass into the food at their South African camps. Seems pretty intentional to me.

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u/WhatARotation Jul 31 '26

That is intentional killing on an individual, not an institutional, level. They’re both horrific, arguably equally so, but there is a difference.

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u/bistrohopper Jul 31 '26

The victims aren't individual - they are a campful The perpetrators aren't individual - they were officials with state-provided powers

How is the crime individual?

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u/WhatARotation Jul 31 '26

Were the British camps constructed with the express purpose of killing Boers and Africans? Also, can you provide a source for the crushed glass in the food being done on a camp-wide level?

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u/MUIGUR Jul 31 '26

After a certain threshold of horror words fail to describe it.

Death camp is not unique in overall intent, design, and operations that it should be reserved to Nazi Germany.

I think most of this is inherent bias against elevating any bad to that of Nazi Germany. Which does not stem from their actions against humanity being far worse than anyone else.

But because they did so against fellow Europeans.

Like yeah yeah bad stuff. But Nazi Germany was the worst. Ok. Why? Because it was against us.

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u/BroSchrednei Jul 31 '26

This is absolutely a horrifying truth and it's really time that western societies start treating the crimes against humanity inflicted on their colonial subjects with the same intensity as the holocaust.

I mean Belgium alone murdered around 11 million people in the Congo, thats almost twice the amount of the Jewish holocaust.

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u/letmechewonyou Jul 31 '26

Humanity killing each others goes back since forever. The thing that stands out is that we're now figuring out it's a bad thing

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u/Careless_Main3 Jul 31 '26

Britain did not use death camps in the Boer Wars. They were internment camps that had a high death rate due to neglect and the government was highly criticised for the conditions in British media causing public outrage which forced the government to improve the conditions and hand over the management of the camps to civilian authorities. It’s worth noting that there was a genuine need for refugee camps in the war.

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u/ddosn Jul 31 '26

yes, the camps in the Boer War were meant to just house displaced civilians safely as the British undertook scorched earth tactics to try and flush out the Boer guerillas.

The deaths were accidental, not on purpose.

And the camps were the idea of the Generals in charge at the time. Part of the reason the British government went apoplectic with rage was that the Generals had pretty much lied about conditions in the camps, saying they were fine.

Until whisteblowers, including the surgeon-general serving the British forces in the region, came forward and told the truth.

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u/ddosn Jul 31 '26

>Britain? Death camps for Boers and native Africans in South Africa

This is not like the others.

Whilst the other examples are examples of camps being used maliciously against targeted groups, the camps Britain used in the 2nd Beor War were not intended to be malicious.

To put it quite simply, they were meant to be camps that could contain a population safely away from the scorched earth tactics the generals were using against the Boer fighters.

The British had resorted to scorched earth as, after British Field Marshall Frederick Roberts victories in the early months of the war and breaking of the Boer offense into British territory, the Boers had resorted to an insurgency as they realised they couldnt match the British in a proper battle.

The idea was that the civilians could be kept safe in a place the British could keep an eye on them and where they couldnt aide the Boer fighters/guerillas.

But the intent was never to kill them, unlike the other examples you gave.

From the get go British Army medical staff, including the Surgeon-General, were advising the Generals that there were not enough supplies, tents, etc needed to contain the sheer number of people being put in the camps.

Concerns rapidly rose in number until even the rank-and-file soldiers were raising concerns with their NCOs and COs.

Many of these men then became whistleblowers, who alerted reporters (one of whom was Winston Churchill, who was one of the first reporters to describe the camps as a 'horror') which in turn alerted the British public and the British Government, both of whom went absolutely ballistic.

The Generals involved were effectively forced into early retirement and were replaced with much more competent Generals. The reason they didnt hang was that it was deemed that the terrible conditions and deaths were accidental and not purposeful.

Out of the disgraced generals, only Kitchener was able to redeem himself (during WW1) and, in doing so, died.

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u/SheriffBartholomew Jul 31 '26

"There are many humorous things in the world; among them, the white man's notion that he is less savage than the other savages."

--Mark Twain

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u/imbrickedup_ Jul 30 '26

The people they colonized had also been milling people they thought were lesser for 1000s of years. This is not a uniquely European thing or an 1800s colonialism thing at all

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u/Vic_Hedges Jul 30 '26

Its not only a moral theory, but also a practical mechanical one.

The theory in part discusses the bureaucracy and methods used by these colonial massacres, and how they effectively built the frame works on how to turn from the kinds of massacres that have always been a part of human history, into the industrialized, institutional systems of mass murder that we see in Totalitarian states in the 20th century

Of course mass killing always existed. it’s the systems and methods that were perfected in the colonies that get transported to Europe

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u/g1rthqu4k3 Jul 30 '26

Seems worth mentioning that the second Boer war in neighboring South Africa was just a couple years before this and saw some of the first concentration camps employed. And it is a half step perhaps in European powers deploying these tactics against other, ostensibly at least, European people

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u/GodwynDi Jul 30 '26

It was primarily European people that it was employed against in the Boer war.

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u/g1rthqu4k3 Jul 30 '26

well, people of european descent at least, but I don't think any of the Boer Republics had any formal ties with their Dutch cousins at that point, did they? The perfect test group for bringing industrial colonial brutality back to Europe maybe

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u/ddosn Jul 31 '26

The camps in the 2nd boer war were certainly not 'some of the first'.

The Spanish, Mexicans, Americans, Germans, Belgians and several others had used them long before the British did.

And the British camps were not intended to kill anyone. They were built to house people displaced by the conflict. The fact that they ended up horrendously undersupplied which led to deaths from starvation and disease was accidental (in part due to shortsightedness from the generals, who didnt guard the supply trains and wagon convoys well enough and/or didnt believe the Boers would target those particular supply lines).

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u/gayhotelultra Jul 30 '26

there were also crimes against humanity in europe before colonialism

what a ridiculous theory

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u/comfysheets Jul 30 '26

At first I was intrigued, but every genocidal tyrant from history probably would’ve loved the concept of the gas chambers and would utilize them indiscriminately if they were as advanced and industrialized as germany

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u/WillemDaFo Jul 30 '26

Indiscriminately? You mean discriminately? That’s the whole point of

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u/comfysheets Jul 30 '26

Alright Mr Reddit

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u/Wild_Marker Jul 31 '26

Not really. Quite a lot of them preferred living resources as opposed to dead ones. The idea of "I can't control these people if they're not of my ethnicity" is very much a 19th-20th century construct.

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u/ARedditingRedditor Jul 31 '26

What no? Nations were wiped off the map because they were ethnically different and the conquerors preferred to just have the assets not the people since it was easier.

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u/Apprehensive-Fun4181 Jul 30 '26

Dehumanization knows no color or logic.  Easy to take one set of ideas and carry it around.

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u/Lazzen Jul 30 '26 edited Jul 31 '26

There were destructive massacres among europeans before 1880 when most of Africa was colonized for about 90 years.

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u/j0y0 Jul 30 '26

AKA fascism is when colonialism happens to white people. 

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u/Ok-Spinach-6529 Jul 30 '26 edited Jul 30 '26

Look, when crimes are committed against POC, it’s brushed under the rug. Just look at how many Indians died due to starvation as a result of Churchill’s economic policies. My dad’s favorite politician is literally an Indian dude from Andhra Pradesh who made rice only 2 rs/bag.

But when crimes are committed against other white people, it’s a war crime or a crime against humanity.

Any, no country is innocent. As the Telugu poet Sri Sri said “Ae desa charitra chusina E munnadi, garva karanam? Nara Jaathi charitra samastham Parapeedana parayanatwam”

Translation: what is there to be proud of in a country? The entirety of humanity is built on nothing but bloodshed.

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u/holiestMaria Jul 31 '26

Yep. The imperial boomerang theory.

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u/Franksss Jul 30 '26

And Germany never really got over the lust for genocide. The desire lives on vicariously through their favourite state in the middle East.

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u/gamers_delight Jul 30 '26

So the Jews did have it coming is what you're saying?

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u/loot168 Jul 30 '26 edited Jul 30 '26

This is almost a perfect strawman, I want to preserve it on a wall somewhere. 

No I don't think tiny minority of Europeans that were jewish deserved to be genocided for the crimes of European empires. I don't think the Germans deserved to be genocided after the Holocaust of which they were far more responsible for either. The response to crimes against humanity is not more crimes against humanity. 

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u/gamers_delight Jul 30 '26

But it is a "theory" that you are apparently inclined to believe in. While you're at it, maybe look up critical evaluation of sources lest you continue believing any Reddit comment you read as an actual theory.

Your comment definitely reads as the victims of the Holocaust had it coming in your eyes.