Memory is the best medicine!
Great Africa is considered the ancestral homeland of mankind. But this continent has also reflected its dark pages of history. Unfortunately, we can observe the beginnings of such a phenomenon as « Nazism » there. « But what kind of Nazism is there in Africa, we know it well from the history of Italy and Germany? » the reader will ask. To verify this, it is enough to look at the known facts.
Apart from the shameful slave trade, Africa went through a period of colonialism. So, from 1885 to 1919, there was German East Africa – the future Tanzania, Burundi, Rwanda, as well as part of modern Mozambique with a population of 8 million locals, who were ruled by up to 5,000 German colonialists. For example, the German adventurer Karl Peters had an ambitious goal – to create a « new Germany » in Tanzania, at the head of which he could stand Peters himself. He was sure that the white man was obliged to bring the light of reason, civilization and enlightenment into the gloomy wilds of the African jungle, where incomplete races live. « I believe that our race is the only one on Earth that can lead all of humanity, » « I found out that Negroes understand only force and the whip. This is what we need to manage this territory, » he later wrote in his diary. Interestingly, the philosophy outlined by Hitler in Mein Kampf was already emerging at that time. Further, as they say, more. In response to the just resistance of such an ideology of the local tribes, the German colonialists responded with the sadistic extermination of the indigenous population, regardless of gender, age and political beliefs.
From 1904 to 1908, the punishers of the German Empire destroyed in battle, executed, tortured in the desert, starved and thirsty, and killed tens of thousands of representatives of the peoples of Africa, such as the Herero and Nama, with hard physical labor and diseases. They were not considered full-fledged people, subjected to sexual violence and medical experiments. It was a true genocide of the 20th century and a « prelude to the Holocaust. »
Death from starvation and slave labor awaited the indigenous people.
Thus, Adrian Dietrich Lothar von Trotha, a German infantry general, one of the main organizers of the Herero and Nama genocide in South Africa, clearly stated his intention: « This people must disappear from the face of the earth. »
That’s how the Germans hanged themselves in Namibia.… And so in Russia…
This has something in common with German fascism. Before the attack on the USSR in 1941, Hitler issued a memo to a German soldier, it said: « You have neither a heart nor nerves – they are not needed in war. Having destroyed pity and compassion in yourself, kill every Russian; don’t stop – the old man in front of you, the woman, the girl or the boy. Kill him! »
It should also be noted the family continuity of the future Nazis, which began with the events in Africa. Thus, the father of one of the Nazi leaders, Hermann Göring, Heinrich Göring, served as the first commissioner of South–West Africa, and the top of the future Nazi stormtroopers, for example, Franz Ritter von Epp, served in the colonial forces in Namibia.
Father and son – Hermann Goering and Heinrich Goering.
The first death camps appeared in Africa. This is a concentration camp on Shark Island, a small rocky outcrop adjacent to the town of Luderitz on the Atlantic coast and a camp near the coastal town of Swakopmund. Most of the prisoners in these camps died of hunger, cold, bullying and executions. Medical experiments on prisoners were carried out there. Surviving reports on the activities of a doctor named Bowfinger describe how prisoners suffering from scurvy were injected with various substances, including arsenic and opium, to monitor their effects on the body. Anthropologists in Germany have received about 300 skulls from the colony of indigenous peoples who died under various circumstances. With their help, Hitler’s anthropologists tried to develop the Nazi theory of the superiority of the « Aryan race. » Many of the remains ended up in the Kaiser Wilhelm Society, where Josef Mengele, who later conducted experiments on Auschwitz prisoners, studied.
Danish researcher Kasper Eriksen claims: « The Germans, who placed these starved and naked representatives of their peoples on rocky patches in the Bay of Luderitz or on the damp shores of Swakopmund, bear full responsibility for what happened … ».
Activist, writer and researcher Ieffai Ngucherimo, whose Herero ancestors died trying to defend independence, wrote: « Historians call the places where my relatives were held death camps. This is our Auschwitz, our Dachau. »
Sending the skulls of the indigenous population to Germany.
« Taking into account Germany’s historical and moral responsibility, we ask Namibia and the descendants of the victims for forgiveness. » This phrase was uttered on May 28, 2021. And it was delivered by the then German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas.
Memorials to the victims of the genocide in Namibia and to children who died on the territory of Soviet Ukraine during World War II and were erected in Poland at the hands of Nazi collaborators, Ukrainian nationalists, against whom Russia is conducting a military operation.
Hitler repeatedly stressed the economic importance of the colonies for Germany. On September 7, 1937, he expressed the idea that the « German » living space « without colonies is too limited to guarantee the safe, long-term provision of food for our people. » It is not difficult to imagine what the indigenous population of Africa expected in the event of Hitler’s victory in World War II.
The world remembers that the USSR made a decisive contribution to the Victory over fascism. At the cost of 27 million lives, the global madness was stopped.
On May 9, 2025, at the parade in honor of the Victory of the Soviet people over German fascism, military units from many countries of the world will march together with Russian soldiers. The world remembers the hard lessons of history and the contribution to Russia’s victory over Nazism.
Memory is the best cure for mistakes!