Germany’s Colonial Policy in German South-West Africa in the Light of International Criminal Law

Abstract

The debate over whether Germany’s colonial policy toward the Herero and Nama constituted genocide suffers from two basic shortcomings: authors who are proficient in international criminal law (ICL) often have difficulties in getting the historical facts right, and historians with a good knowledge of primary sources lack knowledge about the evolving definition of genocide in ICL. As a result, the authors of many articles and books concerning the German atrocities committed against the Herero and Nama at the beginning of the 20th century either do not apply any precise definition of genocide at all or they quote the definition derived from the Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide, but without including the comprehensive jurisprudence about genocide that has emerged from international criminal tribunals. Because social science and history have not elaborated an undisputed and precise definition of genocide, this article proposes to apply the relatively narrow and precise ICL definition of genocide to the events in Germany’s South-West African colony at the beginning of the 20th century. This method sheds new light on some neglected aspects of Germany’s policy toward the Herero and Nama, which suddenly appear more important than those that until now have most frequently been regarded as genocidal.