Genocide: - DIIS

Henrik Lundtofte
superfl uous. 81 Once again it must be emphasised that this statement was
made after the war.
It is doubtful whether Trotha intended the physical elimination of the
Herero at Waterberg; neither German strategy in battle nor the establishment
of a prison camp seems to suggest any intention of physically
exterminating all the Herero without regard to sex or age. Furthermore
the tactics of the German forces in the days immediately after the battle
at Waterberg suggest that their plan was to infl ict a new crushing defeat,
the aim of total warfare being subjugation. Therefore German intentions
at this stage did not presumably include the physical elimination of all the
Herero.
In Gesine Krüger’s view the German plan of action was more broadly
based. Trotha’s plan was not only to crush the Herero militarily, but also
to seek their complete political, social and economic subjugation. Thus
Trotha conducted total warfare from the start, and thus ostensibly continued
it though the Herero had suffered military defeat at Waterberg. 82
There may very well have been a political agenda in addition to military
goals. In the fi nal analysis the total military destruction and the capture of
Herero warriors constituted African subjugation. However Krüger does
not give suffi cient weight to the difference between total subjugation
and genocide because she uses Bauman’s defi nition of genocide in which
actual physical extermination is not a predeterminate of the defi nition of
genocide. If one defi nes genocide as physical extermination then genocide
is ultimative – a totalitarian insistence on control and subjugation however
is not. In actual fact Krüger herself illustrates the difference between total
subjugation and genocide in her account of how Herero survivors in South
West Africa apparently succeeded in retaining a certain autonomy despite
the totalitarian efforts of the German administration. 83
81 Krüger (1999), p. 65-66.
82 Ibid., p. 62-69.
83 Ibid., p. 67-68, 184-88.
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