From the herero to the Holocaust? Some remarks on the current debate

The debate over continuities between the atrocities of WWII and the genocide perpetrated against Herero and Nama by German colonial forces from 1904 to 1908, as postulated by Henning Melber (2005) is the focus of this article. This linkage however, does a disservice to both historical periods and reduces the violence of the colonial period to a mere precursor of the violence of National Socialism.…