Tore’s Tuesday. The genocide at Omaheke – The German South West Africa medal.
Sorry to be so late posting today, life gets in the way sometimes, but at least all is well that ends well, very much unlike the story I will tell today…
Here is a very nice German medal Spange. It has the 1914 Iron Cross second class placed the way it should in the hierarchy of the medals, there is a Mecklenburg-Schwerin honor cross and several other medals, showing that the owner was highly decorated. And, the fact that the owner spent money on having this Spange professionally made, shows that he was proud of his medals and wore them post-WWI to show his achievements. As the Honor cross for front fighters, the Hindenburg cross, is there, this Spange was assembled post-1934, so still a source of pride.
I have known veterans of different wars who proudly wore the medals they had won, and others who regarded their medals as useless trinkets that they did not want to display as they saw no pride in the destruction they had taken part in. I can understand both positions.
Here, the owner obviously was proud, and perhaps rightly so? Well, one might wonder…
My subject today is the Süd-West Africa medal at the end of the Spange, with the Omaheke clasp, and the story behind it. The owner of this Spange clearly took part in the campaign, and one may debate how much pride one can have about participating in such an undertaking.
As you probably all know, Germany wanted her “place in the sun” among the mighty and rich colonial powers. I will not go into detail about how Germany aqquired her smallish and partly barren colonies, the treaties that led to that. suffice it to say that they did get some, though they arrived late in the race for colonies.
In 1884 they acquired south west Africa. That is the area that is today Namibia. Their relationship with the natives of the area was never friendly, and as the aim of colonization was exploitation, that was not to be expected. There were several uprisings.
In 1904 the biggest uprising occurred. Several peoples rebelled, Khaua, Nama, and Not least the Herero people. As the small garrison of colonial troops were not able to handle the revolt, an expeditionary force was dispatched from Germany. From there things got rough.
After the battle of Waterberg, the loosing tribes were forced out into the area known as Omaheke, an arm of the Kalahari desert. The Germans took control of the water in the area. Killing any Herero male they could find. Exactly how many Herero died in the desert is not known, but possibly around 100 000. It is known as the first modern genocide. A few Herero managed to cross the desert and arrive in British owned areas, and the British made a fuss about the treatment of the Herero, but to no avail.
Things were not better for the survivors and prisoners after the revolt, as they were put to work in conditions that were not much better than in the later concentration camps.
Germany lost the area to the British in 1915, but did not acknowledge that before the peace treaty of Versailles in 1919.
So, this little medal has a chilling story behind it.
