The Kaiser's Holocaust: Germany's Forgotten Genocide and the Colonial Roots of Nazism

''Haunting book ... an unforgettable and unflinching account of a neglected atrocity.' -- Sunday Telegraph >> 'The authors ... seek to show that the Kaiser's Germany displayed an enthusiasm for "social Darwinism" and the imposition of white racial superiority long before Hitler got to work. The first half of their book tells a fascinating story ... a remarkable story, well told here.' -- Max Hastings, Sunday Times >> '(A) provocative and uncomfortably absorbing book. ... Impressively researched, The Kaiser s Holocaust unflinchingly catalogues the abuse of human life in a continent the Kaiser never even visited. Olusoga and Erichsen, with their novelist s flair for narrative, provide a grimly readable history ... the book remains a vitally important addition to the ever-growing literature of atrocity and deserves to be read widely.' -- Ian Thomson, Daily Telegraph >> 'In this powerful book, two historians seek to show that another component of Nazi thinking was the Second Reich s genocidal impulse towards the Herero and Nama peoples of German South-west Africa (now Namibia) in the early 1900s. David Olusoga, an Anglo-Nigerian BBC producer and Casper W Erichsen, a Danish-born historian who runs an NGO in Namibia, write with precision and passion about this chilling episode and its aftermath.' -- Christopher Silvester, Daily Express >> 'The authors powerfully show the crucial role that the bloody colonial period played in the development of the Nazi dogma ... Even more unsettling, the implication of this highly readable book is that the colonial experience of Europe must be re-examined for such unintended consequences. Olusoga and Erichsen have thus succeeded not only in authoritatively reviving a fascinating episode from a neglected past, but also in requiring a reassessment of some of our assumptions about the European colonial legacy.' -- Paddy Docherty, Financial Times >> 'Olusoga and Erichsen have written a vivid, powerful narrative of the Namibian genocide though disputed, the term does seem apt and of the ways it has been forgotten and remembered, concealed and exhumed. They have done some fascinating archival digging, and offer moving evocations of the sites of slaughter today; most especially Shark Island, now a tourist resort, but a century ago the most deadly of the colonial concentration camps. They give a compelling sketch of the multiple connections between Namibia and Nazism.' -- Stephen Howe, Independent >> 'German imperial ambition and theories of nationalism and racial purity were already powerful before the First World War. These combined with the struggle to possess land in Germany's African empire, provoked exterminations as strategies of control. This book focuses particularly on what is now Namibia, where the Herero and Nama peoples were killed, or driven into the desert to die, and finally interned in prototype death camps. This shocking episode is presented as evidence that 20th-century Nazism was not an isolated abberation.' -- The Times, Saturday Review >> 'The Kaiser's Holocaust lifts the veil on a horrific and little-known episode of history.' --Daily Mail

On 12 May 1883, the German flag was raised on the coast of South-West Africa, modern Namibia - the beginnings of Germany's African Empire. As colonial forces moved in , their ruthless punitive raids became an open war of extermination. Thousands of the indigenous people were killed or driven out into the desert to die. By 1905, the survivors were interned in concentration camps, and systematically starved and worked to death. Years later, the people and ideas that drove the ethnic cleansing of German South West Africa would influence the formation of the Nazi party. The Kaiser's Holocaust uncovers extraordinary links between the two regimes: their ideologies, personnel, even symbols and uniform. The Herero and Nama genocide was deliberately concealed for almost a century. Today, as the graves of the victims are uncovered, its re-emergence challenges the belief that Nazism was an aberration in European history. The Kaiser's Holocaust passionately narrates this harrowing story and explores one of the defining episodes of the twentieth century from a new angle. Moving, powerful and unforgettable, it is a story that needs to be told.