Lothar von Trotha

Template:Short description Template:Use dmy dates Template:Refimprove Template:Infobox military person Adrian Dietrich Lothar von Trotha (3 July 1848 – 31 March 1920) was a German military commander during the European new colonial era. As a brigade commander of the East Asian Expedition Corps, he was involved in suppressing the Boxer Rebellion in Qing China, commanding troops which made up the German contribution to the Eight-Nation Alliance. He later served as governor of German South West Africa and Commander in Chief of its colonial forces, in which role he suppressed a native rebellion during the Herero Wars. He was widely condemned for his brutality in the Herero Wars, particularly for his role in the genocide of the Nama Khoekhoe and the Herero.

Family

Lothar von Trotha belonged to a prominent Saxon noble family. He was married twice; on 15 October 1872 he married Bertha Neumann, who died in 1905.

On 19 May 1912, following his retirement from the service, he married Lucy Goldstein-Brinckmann (1881–1958), a second marriage for both. Lucy came from a Frankfurt Jewish family which had converted to Christianity. Trotha had two sons, who died without known descendants.

Career

Lothar von Trotha

Born in Magdeburg, the capital of the Province of Saxony, Trotha joined the Prussian Army in 1865 and fought in the Austro-Prussian and Franco-Prussian Wars, for which he was awarded the Iron Cross 2nd Class. He married Bertha Neumann on 15 October 1872.

He was commander of the Lauenburgisches Jäger Bataillon Nr. 9 for two years in Ratzeburg before he was deployed to Africa in 1894.

In 1894 Trotha was appointed commander of the colonial forces in German East Africa and was ruthlessly successful in suppressing uprisings there, including the Wahehe Rebellion. While temporarily posted to Imperial China as Brigade Commander of the East Asian Expedition Corps, he was involved in suppressing the Boxer Rebellion.<ref>Kiernan, Ben. 2007. Blood and soil: a world history of genocide and extermination from Sparta to Darfur Yale University Press. Template:ISBN. p. 382</ref> On 3 May 1904 he was appointed Commander in Chief of German South West Africa and was directed to crush the native Herero rebellion.

Genocide of Herero and Nama

Trotha in South West Africa

Trotha arrived in South West Africa on 11 June 1904, when the war against the Herero had been raging for five months. The German command up to that time had minimal success against the Herero guerrilla tactics. Initially, he too suffered losses. In October 1904 General von Trotha devised a new battle plan to end the uprisings by the Herero. At the Battle of Waterberg, he issued orders to encircle the Herero on three sides so that the only escape route was into the waterless Omaheke-Steppe, a western arm of the Kalahari Desert. The Herero fled into the desert and Trotha ordered his troops to poison water holes, erect guard posts along a Template:Convert line and shoot on sight any Herero, be they man, woman or child, who attempted to escape. To make his attitude to the Herero absolutely clear, Trotha then issued the Vernichtungsbefehl, or extermination order:

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He further gave orders that:

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Trotha defended his policies later in his life. "It was and is my policy to use force with terrorism and even brutality." An undisclosed German soldier was reported to have said of the massacres "...the death rattle of the dying and the shrieks of the mad...they echo in the sublime stillness of infinity." Trotha's tactics were in marked distinction to that of the Herero leaders, who were, in the main, careful to ensure that only soldiers were attacked.<ref>cf. Template:Cite book</ref>

Trotha's methods caused public outcry, which led the Imperial Chancellor Bernhard von Bülow to ask Emperor Wilhelm II to relieve Trotha of his command.<ref name="PPU">Template:Cite web</ref> This, however, was too late to help the Herero, as the few survivors had been herded into concentration camps and used as labour for German businesses, where many died of overwork, malnutrition or disease. Prior to the uprisings, there were estimated to be 80,000 Herero. The 1911 census records 15,000.

Trotha's troops also routed the Nama. On 22 April 1905 he sent a message to the Nama, suggesting they surrender, and mentioning the fate of the Herero:

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Approximately 10,000 Nama died during the fighting, the remaining 9,000 were confined to concentration camps.<ref name="PPU"/>

On 2 November 1905, Trotha was awarded the Pour le Mérite for his services in Africa.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> 17 days later, Lothar von Trotha returned to Germany, and was retired in the next year. In 1910 he was given the character of a General of the Infantry. Trotha died of typhoid fever (bilious fever) on 31 March 1920 in Bonn.

Legacy

Trotha in Hamburg, c. 1905

In 1933, the Nazi authorities had named a street in Munich as "von Trotha Straße". In 2006, the Munich city council officially decided to change the name of this street to "Herero Straße" in honour of the general's victims.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Otjiwarongo, Namibia had a street named after von Trotha, since "long before independence". In 2016, calls to rename this street surfaced, and the municipality promised to initiate the renaming in 2017.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> The renaming would not occur until 2024, where the street was renamed to "Ohamakari".<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

As General von Trotha has no living descendants, some of his distant relations traveled to Omaruru in October 2007 by invitation of the local Herero chiefs and publicly apologised for his actions. Wolf-Thilo von Trotha, a member of the family, said, "We, the von Trotha family, are deeply ashamed of the terrible events that took place 100 years ago. Human rights were grossly abused that time."<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

On 16 August 2004 the German government under Gerhard Schröder officially apologized for the genocide, but rejected calls to pay reparations to the descendants of the Herero and Nama. "We Germans accept our historic and moral responsibility and the guilt incurred by Germans at that time," said Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul, Germany's development aid minister. In addition, she admitted the massacres were equivalent to genocide. The two countries have generally had a good relationship since and Germany has tailored economic and political packages for the people of Namibia.

In May 2021, the German government officially recognized the genocide and agreed to pay €1.1 billion over 30 years to fund projects in communities that were impacted by the genocide.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

The 2023 survival horror video game Ad Infinitum features a semi-fictionalized Trotha, although differing in name: Lother von Schmidt. This version also had a son, Karl, and two grandsons, Johannes and Paul, the latter of whom is the game's protagonist. His roles in the Boxer Rebellion and the Herero Wars are mentioned, including part of his infamous declaration to the Herero.

See also

• German colonial empire

External links

• Newspaper reports following von Trotha's death in March 1920 -The European Library
• Template:Cite news