RE: What do you know today that you didn't know yesterday?
August 3, 2023 at 10:19 am
(This post was last modified: August 3, 2023 at 10:52 am by Anomalocaris.)
20th century’s first major policy driven genocide was perpetrated by Imperial Germany upon the Herero and Namaqualand peoples of German East Africa in 1906. The German colonial government not only carried out to near completion a policy of extermination against these peoples, but publicly announced their intentions both to the natives and to the world before they started. This act of genocide is often said to presage Germany’s infamous conduct under the Nazis in wwii.
Yet immediately afterwards the Germany reversed course and instituted a new colonial policy in africa that was by far the most liberal and enlightened towards the African natives of any European colonial powers. Physical punishment of Africans different from those that can be applied to Europeans were abolished. African labors must be paid at the same rate as European labors. Sufficient schools were to be built in German African colonies to achieve universal literacy, and infrastructure were to be built to enable economic development for which “Africans were the end, not a means”.
The effects of the policy reversal bore fruit less than 10 years later. The German general Paul Von Lettow-verbeck was able to command such dedication and loyalty from his mainly native african troops, who were trained and equipped like the germans troops, and who were treated equally with small number of german troops who fought along side them, that they fought off British, New Zealand, South African and Portuguese troops who sometimes outnumbered them 20 to 1 for the entire 4 year length of the First World War, and even took the war into British colonies, becoming the only German troops to invade British possession during WWI.
After Germany lost WWI, she was compelled to give up the colonies von Lettow-verbeck’s African troops successfully defended for 4 years. When forced to dismiss them, von Lettow-verbeck issued them with certificates of service and promised one day Germany will pay them back. It took 46 years, and the occasion of von Lettow-verbeck’s own death at age 92, for Germany to remember that promise. In 1964 Germany offered all surviving African soldiers all their back pay from the start of their service to then.
Yet immediately afterwards the Germany reversed course and instituted a new colonial policy in africa that was by far the most liberal and enlightened towards the African natives of any European colonial powers. Physical punishment of Africans different from those that can be applied to Europeans were abolished. African labors must be paid at the same rate as European labors. Sufficient schools were to be built in German African colonies to achieve universal literacy, and infrastructure were to be built to enable economic development for which “Africans were the end, not a means”.
The effects of the policy reversal bore fruit less than 10 years later. The German general Paul Von Lettow-verbeck was able to command such dedication and loyalty from his mainly native african troops, who were trained and equipped like the germans troops, and who were treated equally with small number of german troops who fought along side them, that they fought off British, New Zealand, South African and Portuguese troops who sometimes outnumbered them 20 to 1 for the entire 4 year length of the First World War, and even took the war into British colonies, becoming the only German troops to invade British possession during WWI.
After Germany lost WWI, she was compelled to give up the colonies von Lettow-verbeck’s African troops successfully defended for 4 years. When forced to dismiss them, von Lettow-verbeck issued them with certificates of service and promised one day Germany will pay them back. It took 46 years, and the occasion of von Lettow-verbeck’s own death at age 92, for Germany to remember that promise. In 1964 Germany offered all surviving African soldiers all their back pay from the start of their service to then.
