Why AfD is the most important party in Germany

Let me get this straight. The German soldiers expelled Herero, including women and children, into a deadly desert without any supplies and actively stationed soldiers to prevent them from escaping. But that was from your point of view no attempt to kill them? And all of this happened AFTER the fighting was done.

Where did I say that?

Why is it so hard for you to distinguish between a war crime and a genocide???

By "genocide" we mean the destruction of an ethnic group....

It is intended rather to signify a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide_definitions

Germany had no plans whatsoever to eradicate the Herero from Earth, to make sure their language died out or their culture or whatever. They staged an uprising and paid the price, as the Ovamba later under the british rule. I doubt many Germans of that time ever heard of them.

Remember Kitchener? Maybe the british Trotha, his policy of the "scorched Earth" in South Africa...letting thousands of Boer women and children starve to death in concentration camps?

You make the Brits call that a genocide and we can talk again....

All of you, geniuses, overlook the fact that, according to the newthink, only whites can be racists and genocidal killers.
And you, like fools, reinforce this crap with this discussion here.

The list of large scale massacres in human history is endless and the Germans in Africa were hardly an exception.

Fun fact, Germans lived longer in Namibia than the Herero, who went there just few months before they started attacking german farms.

Who cares?

People should get oen thing right, people like Tacistus live from such shi°t. They earn money with it. Its called social / asylum industry and a billion € market.

Depends what we are talking about. ( Sorry, YOU are talking about) Are we talking about:
- legal definitions
- moral issues
- historical context
- present day context.

A sad day if somebody working in an academic environ turns to be more like a preacher. I mean Tacitus.

----

It was exceptional within the context of its' time. Particulary the planning that was behind it.


Which was precisely what the Germans intended. The orders issued made it very clear that the herero as an ethnic group were targeted, and made no difference between fighting men and others.


They actually did all of those things. As already pointed before, there was a concise plan to exterminate all herero they could their hands on. They later somewhat changed the plan by transfering some of them to labour camps, in which they were forbidden to use their language and a large part of them died. A lot of their cultural artifacts were also looted and brought to Germany. Again, I really suggest you read more about it. You are usually a very rational man, and I can only presume that you simply do not know what the Germans did there, or else you would not be claiming what you are claiming. In a way your reaction resembles that of many Germany, myself included, who first hear about it and have next to no knowledge about this. "Well yes, the Germans were brutal, but not genocidal." And after reading about it, most quickly change their opinion.


I could ask you why it is so difficult for you to accept the historical reality? The genocide commited against the herero was not one isolated act, commited in a short time span, but a concerted effort to wipe them out over a relatively long period of time.


It is a sad day indeed when personal preference trump historical evidence. I am doing my best to correct this, but it is admittedly not a fruitful endeavour when other people either have no idea what they are talking about, or refuse it purely on ideological grounds.

I disagree. If you're interested, read about the extermination of the Tasmanian Aboriginals.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_War#Characterisation_as_genocide

@TheOther

He wont read that since he cant make money from it.

Guys like tacitus earn their income from this ****. He said himself that he participated in such projects.

This guy has not worked a single day in his entire life. Their entire income is based on parasitism.

They look for some bogus victim group, be it lesbian inuit or namibian ompah loompas and then look where in history maybe a german pushed them in a row infront cinema. Then push it up and suck off the incoming money.

Yeah...it is this "exceptional" what makes no sense....not for this times.

Maybe you need to read some more about the many other similiar war crimes, with many victims, with real planning behind, you should read about, to be able to put it into perspective...

Just an example...during the second Boer war Kitchener and Roberts killed all the livesstock of the resisting Boers, razing all their houses, sometimes whole towns got burned to the ground, all with the planning behind to scorch the Earth in such way to make the survival of the people impossible. Then the families of the resisters had been put into camps where they were with to low rations slowly starved to death, to force the fighter into submission.

THAT IS PLANNING!

But you know the difference between that war crime / crime against humanity and a genocide? As a historian you should know that!

Never planned the Brits to destroy the Boers, their language, their culture, they didn't sterilize the women or took their babies away to eradicate them as ethnic or religious groupl

Had the Boers not resisted, had they stopped fighting it would had been all over much earlier. They had the chance.

The same with the Herero, do you know that they were given a clear warning by the Germans beforehand? They could have chosen to live like the Ovamba did, they would had been left alone...

As with Kitchener and Roberts so had been Trotha gone overboard, unable or unwilling to chose a better course to handle the resistance. And both' actions were met with distaste and rejection at home ("Chancellor Bülow could only advise Emperor Wilhelm II that Trotha's actions were "contrary to Christian and humanitarian principle, economically devastating and damaging to Germany's international reputation").

It had been actions by war criminals, not the genocidal planning of a government.

But nobody, neither the Germans nor the Brits planned the eradication of this people, but of an enemy at any costs! Compare all that to the Holocaust! A HUGE DIFFERENCE!

PS: I'm convinced that without the later holocaust nobody would call the Herero-uprising and it's aftermath a genocide at all. But the connection to the Germans is to seducing for arm chair historians and even some politicians...that still doesn't make it one.

And if you call that what were done to the Hereros and the Namas a genocide you will find yourself consequentially in a world of genocides, as many many historical war crimes and crimes against humanity would fit that generous bill...cheapening the few real ones.

No wonder that most people/historians shy away from it...with good reason!

A decision has been made this year:

"A U.S. judge on Wednesday dismissed a lawsuit seeking to require Germany to pay damages over genocide and property seizures by colonists in what is now Namibia more than a century ago."

reuters.com/article/us-namibia-genocide-germany/lawsuit-against-germany-over-namibian-genocide-is-dismissed-in-new-york-idUSKCN1QN2SQ

I concur with this handling:

"On 16 August 2004, at the 100th anniversary of the start of the genocide, a member of the German government, Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul, Germany's Minister for Economic Development and Cooperation, officially apologised and expressed grief about the genocide, declaring in a speech that:

We Germans accept our historical and moral responsibility and the guilt incurred by Germans at that time.[88]

She ruled out paying special compensations, but promised continued economic aid for Namibia which currently amounts to $14M a year.[15] "

A kind of ongoing support-reparation which should help the descendants of the victims without cheapening the real genocides.

A good end for this discussion here too....

The Germans certainly did, that is beyond question. Trothas' orders leave no room for interpretation.


That is a lie. There is no longer any dispute among historians that this indeed was a genocide.


Yes, as de facto slaves under unbearable conditions. What a surprise that they rebelled.


The one who is downplaying genocides is you by simply not wanting to admit the Herero genocide fits the bill perfectly. You have quoted twice the definition of genocide and I pointed out twice that the Herero genocide fits them perfectly.

Honestly BB this is really getting silly. I mean it is not your fault that there are no valid arguments herr for your point of view, because there are simply none, but you are trying to reflect from the brutal reality with technicalities (and even those do not hold up). The term genocide is not reserved for the Holocaust, but has some conditions tied to it and can thus applied to other incidents as well. Bycalling things as what they were, we simply give the victims their dignity back.

Oh please, as Weimarer said, the Herero's weren't even natives to this land, they wandered in from Botswana and even further from South Africa...oh, and as you surely know before they decided to ignore all warnings from the Germans and got blasted for it they were in a bitter fight with the Nama...we are not exactly talking about peaceniks here, another huge difference to the Jews.

Again...till all the other examples I gave aren't officially accepted as Genocide's too you have no leg to stand on. These crimes were at least similiar if not worse. To only call it as such because Germans had been involved is at best completely dishonest.

I understand that you have one opinion, but you don't have the arguments!

Tacitus,

If somehow a new generation of Boers arose, the Germans couldn't really have cared less. They wanted to eradicate the Boer language principally in order

to make room for new conquests.

In the case of true genocide, the Armenian Massacre, The Native Americans here in the US, obviously the Shoah (Holocaust against the Jews per se), total

extirpation, "root and branch" (Stumpf und Stiel), in order that not even a next generation would arise, was the only option.

This constitutes a critical difference.

It would have been one thing to simply supress the revolt, but deciding to wipe them out completely is something else entirely.


Indeed and that was what the Germans intented. Otherwise von Trotha would not have given the explicite order that women and children should be send into the desert to die. They killed between 60-80% of the Herero, so in a way they were just as succesful (or even more) that 40 years later with the jews.


You mean aside from the historical arguments and the opinion of all the experts who researched the topic? The only argument you seem to have left is trying to deflect it by pointing to crimes that other nations have commited. It is true that other nations with Colonial pasts are still in the process of adressing the truth, but they are slowly and surely adressing them (look e.g at Macron and his statements regarding French Africa) and even than it took the German government until fairly recently to stop denying the undeniable. Some of the examples ( though of course not everyone because surely you admit how ridiculous some of them are) you listed are indeed under discussions among historians, but one problem is that the evidence is not as clear as in the case of the Herero, especially regarding the intention completely eradicate a group. To my knowledge e.g. there is nothing as incriminating as Trothas orders e.g. regarding the Boer.

Of course the debate in this thread reminded me that there is still a gap of recognition between the public perception and the opinion of scholars. This is quite normal and to be expected, it usually takes roughly 30 years until (often painful) historical facts are accepted. Just like the "clean" Wehrmacht myth, which was still publically defended even in the early 90s, even though historians knew since the early 60s just how deeply the Wehrmacht was involved in the Nazi crimes. The same will hopefully happen with the often still romanticed view colonialism ( in many different European countries) in the future. At least the foundations are nowadays laid at the universities for this.

How far back in time do you want to go? Should the Spaniards pay reparations for the crimes of the conquistadors? The Brits for their weekend hunting parties for Tasmania's Aboriginals? The Americans for slavery and the slaughter of the native tribes?

Your only source is Trotha! Yes he was war criminal, he committed crimes against humanity, but that is not the definition of genocide!
For that you need the concerted and planned and ongoing actions of a government with all the means it has available.

As Lyzko pointed out, had the Herero laid down low the Germans wouldn't had cared about them at all. Before Trotha there was commander Leutwein the administrator in the region. It was the Herero themself whose uprising ended his quite lenient rulership.

And as bad as the numbers sound for a group only numbering a few thousands, most of them involved in the fighting, 60% is not real that much. After all this group wandered only a few years back into this region. They were given a warning, decided against it, lost the battle and the survivors looked for a way out through the desert...mistake.

Spot the differences to the Shoa!


So...it is all about ideology, isn't it! It smelled like it, sad for you confirming it....

PS: "The universities" shouldn't try to fit the facts into the definition, they should maybe rework the definition of genocide itself.

But when every war crime becomes a genocide...what becomes then of a real genocide? Do your universities have an answer to that?

The Tutsi massacres during the '90's in Rwanda would certainly qualify, I think.

He was the supreme commander whose orders were followed consequently. If you need prove that the genocide against the Herero was planned, there is no better source than his orders. Or course, he is far from the only military source we have on this case, nvm the ones for the death camps later on.


So let me get this straight. Von Trotha received de facto a Blanko check from Berlin to act as he saw fit. He received an immense amount of ressources (both in terms of men and material, which is yet another reason why he deserves hardly any recognition for ending the revolt).He sent reports repeatedly to Berlin about what he was doing, and made it very clear in his orders that he intented a genocide against the Herero. He was never told that he should cease his actions, some of which continued under his successors. He was afterwards promoted and never faced any official reprimand by his government. The German general staff even praised him for it. Yet his actions should not be linked to the government? (and nvm the death camps that were maintained later on) I mean yeah, we also do not have a written order from Hitler that ordered the Holocaust, does that mean it is also not a genocide?


Lenient on paper perhaps, but as historians have pointed out, the reality for the natives was very different. Aside from rape and murder (often ignored or even actively aided by German soldiers), not even treaties and contract were uphold when it concerned the nativ population. It is by no means suprising that there was eventually an uprising, and certainly does not excuse the genocide against them.


1. 60-80% does not only sound bad, it is horrific.

2. Most (as in 60-80%) of the casualties happened after the fighting.


Why, when it fits so perfectly to the facts. There are probably few cases in history in which so many factors come together. I am not entirely sure if you are really aware ofwhat happened back then. You know that the Herero genocide (especially when connected to the Hama genocide) was not simply a matter of a few days right (thus something that could maybe be called a war crime)? Some of the death camps were active for more than 2 years.

You are an ideologue, Tacitus...not a historian! You don't care for facts...not even for definitions of facts.

There is no discussion with a zealot!

But you and Weimarer aren't??!
What are you handing us!

Note that Tacitus preferred not to answer my question how far back in time he wants to go with his demand for reparations and mea culpas. It's time to move on. We've got other, more pressing problems on our hands right now.

My mistake, I genuily missed that one, thanks for reminding me. There are two elements to the answer. You have to find a legal and a moral solution cases like this. The first one is to look whether or not if the issue has been legally solved. This is a very broad category, and usually some sort of peace treaty or agreement between the two parties suffices. The second one is morally, and can constitute a significantly smaller amount of money, or political assistance and if necessary the latter can be used as a way to also close the issue legally. The highest amount of development aid from Germany goes e.g. to its' former colonies, the same counts e.g. for. Spain, France and so on. Other ways could be e.g. to giving the victims their dignity back, e.g. by an official apology and sending the remains of the victims back ( which was very necessary in this case. We still have a description about the history of some of the skulls we found at our university. Apparantly some of the children were forces in the camps to boil the heads of their dead parents in hot water, and then to scrap off the flesh with shards ( that is according to the testimony of one of the German scientists who requested the skulls for study). This is of course not a perfect solution, but it solves the dilemma quite neatly in my opinion.


I doubt that this is what you can deduce from the discussion. I was the one who repeatedly pointed out historic details of the genocide, and if needs be, I can go even more in detail. I just would have to refresh my memory a bit during the weekend. Frankly, I do not really see the issue here at all. We are discussing whether or not the Herero (and Nama) suffered a genocide. You posted twice criteria according to which one can judge it so. And in my last post I refuted your argument that there is no evidence for a "planned" genocide, or that von Trotha had supposedly no support from the government by citing historical facts.

No, you exposed yourself here....you are probably working within "the universities" you cited to change the definition of genocide. Definitions and categorizations which had worked perfectly well and were commonly agreed about since decades.

That is re-writing of history, not more, not less!

But you still have a problem, when every war crime becomes now a genocide, a new assessment you want to "lay the foundation for", when you put one Trotha in the same league with the Nazis...the Hereros in the same category like the Jews...what will you call a real genocide then?

Do you guys still talk about this irrelevant nonsense? :D

That said, ews come in today and as usual the institutes start to fake their polls.

Usually tehy poll AfD quite low. And then shortly before elections they put numbers higehr and higher to not get to embarassed.

Newest Forsa polls adds 2% on AfD in just one week. This will continue week after week until election. Its so laughable.

Also another good example for our fake democracy in Germany...in TV show for a regarding topic they brought opinion of evry single party in Bundestag, except AfD. Even so AfD is strongest oppossition party,

Yes, it is rather unfair, but aren't they afraid that letting people know too much about the support for the AfD may be causing some truly disastrous effect on Germany as it did in the year 1933?

Exactly, Ziemowit, another good point!

What the AfD hasn't learned from history could fill a library:-)
That's the Germans, always lookin' for a convenient scapegoat.
Well, bullying is bullying no matter where you come across it.

A tree is known by its fruit, as the old saying goes, and this German oak's
rotten to the core!

Well...the voter for the AfD come from all over the political landscape...most from the CDU, CSU, but also the SPD and even the LINKE....

But it sounds abit curious to say the same about these mainstream parties, but to be correct you should!

PS: The Greens have lost the fewest voter to the AfD....