Yossi Schwartz ISL (RCIT section in Israel/Occupied Palestine), 26.01.2024
We should not confuse between a regime and a state. The same state can have different regimes. Germany is a clear example that the German state has been the same state during the regime of Chancellor Otto von Bismarck with the formation of the German Empire in 1871 when Germany joined the other powers in colonial expansion in Africa and the Pacific. During Wilhelm II (Friedrich Wilhelm Viktor Albert; 27 January 1859 – 4 June 1941) the last German Emperor and King of Prussia from 1888 until his abdication in 1918. During the Weimar Republic, a parliamentary democracy. During the Nazi totalitarian regime and today as a federal and a parliamentary democracy.
Germany is a hard supporter of Israel, whatever Israel does, and it is not surprising that it sides with Israel in the case of the petition of South Africa in the IIJC in Hauge. It justifies its support for Israel on the ground that it has to atone for the crimes of the Nazi regime against the Jews. During the Chancellor Adenauer he agreed to pay the Zionist state compensation for the genocide of the Jews as if Israel represents all the Jews. Germany initially paid about 3 billion Mark to Israel and about 450 million to personal Claims, although payments continued after that. In the 1930s before Hitler took power Adenauer as Vice-Mayor of Cologne ignored the Nazis and fought against the left. He hoped the Nazis would join the central government. [1] When he was Chancellor, in 1949, he denounced the denazification process, he employed as State Secretary Hans Globke who had played a major role in drafting Anti-Semitic Nuremberg Race Laws in Nazi Germany. Globke also helped fund the Israeli nuclear program. [2] Ben Gurion was happy to white wash the far- right regime of Adenauer for the payment and this was approved by the USA that allowed Germany to be armed against Stalinist Russia.
The Jews were not the only people persecuted by the Nazis. Jews were one of four groups racially targeted for persecution in Nazi Germany and in German-controlled Europe.
“The Nazis also targeted Roma (Gypsies) on racial grounds. The 1935 Nuremberg Laws (which defined Jews by blood) were later applied to Roma. View This Term in the Glossary Drawing on traditional prejudices in German society, the Nazis termed Roma as prone by race to be “work-shy” and “asocial” with an inherited inclination to engage in petty crime. Among the first killed in the mobile gas vans at the Chelimo killing center in German-occupied Poland in early 1942 were Roma deported from the Greater German Reich to the Lodz ghetto. SS and police authorities deported more than 20,000 Roma to the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp, where the camp authorities killed almost all of them in the gas chambers. In the German-occupied parts of the Soviet Union, German military and SS-police officials shot tens of thousands of local Roma, View This Term in the Glossary often on trumped-up justification that the Roma were engaged in espionage for the Soviet authorities. Two of Nazi Germany’s Axis partners also engaged in the mass murder of Roma. The authorities of the so-called Independent State of Croatia killed approximately 25,000 Roma, many of them at the Jasenovac concentration camp complex. In Romania, the government of General Ion Antonescu killed between 13,000 and 36,000 Roma, both in Romania proper and in Transnistria.” [3]
The Nazis also persecuted the Slavic and the Poles.
“The Nazis viewed Poles and the Slavic and so-called Asiatic peoples of the Soviet Union as racially inferior, and slated them for subjugation and forced labor. They implemented a policy of physical annihilation of the political, intellectual, and cultural elites of Poland and the Soviet Union. German occupation authorities murdered tens of thousands of members of the Polish elite classes (including intellectuals and Catholic priests) in an operation known as Ausserordentliche Befriedungsaktion (AB-Extraordinary Pacification Action). The Commissar Order, issued to German military commanders on June 6, 1941, called for shooting captured political commissars serving in the Red Army. View This Term in the Glossary German SS and police units received instructions to kill high-ranking and mid-level officials of the Soviet state and the Soviet Communist Party”
While Israel was paid for the murdered Jews the Roma were not recognized as victims of Nazi Germany until the 1970s.
Thus, anyone who believes that the German capitalists are against racism and this is the reason they join Israel, probably believes in Cinderela. As a matter of fact, Germany committed a genocide already in 1904-7 in Namibia.
“The Herero and Namaqua Genocide was the massacre of approximately 50,000 – 65,000 Herero and 10,000 Nama between 1904 and 1907 by German military forces in German South West Africa (GSWA) – modern-day Namibia.
“Germany formally colonized GSWA in 1884. Prior to colonization, several distinct native groups lived freely in the area, including the Herero, the Nama, the Damara, the San, and the Ovambo. Under German rule, many of these native groups were used as slave labor and had their land confiscated and their cattle stolen. As a result of this treatment, tensions between the native population and the ruling Germans continued to rise.”
Uprising
In January 1904, the Herero population, led by Chief Samuel Maharero, carried out a large armed rebellion against the oppressive German colonial rule. The German ruling forces were unprepared for the attack and approximately 123 German colonial settlers were killed by the Herero. Over the following months, however, the Herero were slowly overwhelmed by the more modern, well-equipped German force under the command of Major Theodor Leutwin. By June 1904, Major Leutwin had cornered the Herero forces at the Waterberg Plateau and was attempting to negotiate their surrender.
The German government in Berlin was frustrated by Leutwin’s slow progress in dissipating the uprising, and in May 1904 appointed Lieutenant General Lothar von Trotha Supreme Commander of GSWA. Trotha arrived in GSWA on 11 June 1904.
Genocide
On 11 August 1904, Trotha abandoned negotiations for a surrender and attempted an aggressive encirclement tactic, surrounding the Herero at the Battle of Waterberg and killing between 3,000 – 5,000 Herero combatants. Yet, despite the brutal tactics of the Germans, most of the Herero managed to escape into the Omaheke desert.
Under Trotha’s command, the Schutztruppe ruthlessly pursued the thousands of Herero men, women and children who were attempting to cross the desert to reach the British Protectorate of Bechuanaland (modern-day Botswana). Thousands of Herero died from being shot to death, drinking water from poisoned wells, or from thirst and starvation in the desert.
On 2 October 1904, Trotha escalated the violence against the Herero in an order: ‘Within the German borders, every male Herero, armed or unarmed […] will be shot to death. I will no longer take in women or children but will drive them back to their people or have them fired at. These are my words to the Herero people. [From] The great general of the mighty German Kaiser’ [Katharina von Hammerstein, ‘The Herero: Witnessing Germany’s “Other Genocide”’, Contemporary French and Francophone Studies 2016, 20:2, 267-286, 276].
In November 1904, the German government in Berlin overturned General Trotha’s inhumane execution order, and instead commanded that the surviving members of the Herero population be incarcerated in concentration camps, such as the Shark Island Concentration Camp. By this point, however, many thousands of Herero had already been murdered.
The remaining Herero who were incarcerated in the concentration camps were subjected to lethal conditions (with a mortality rate of 47-74%), and prisoners endured poor hygiene, little food, forced labor and medical experiments.
In 1905, the Nama people in the south also rose up against German rule and engaged the colonizers in guerrilla warfare for the following two years. Any Nama that were caught by the Germans were executed or incarcerated in the same concentration camps as the Herero, with extremely high mortality rates.
In total, by the end of the conflict on 31 March 1907, approximately 50,000 – 65,000 Herero and 10,000 Nama had been murdered by the German ruling forces” [4]
Thus, we should not be surprised by the fact that Germany supports the genocide of the Palestinians. It is in the nature of imperialism to commit genocides as part of the robbery of the colonies and the semi colonies.
For Humanity to live, Imperialism must die!
Endnotes:
[1] Williams, Charles (2001). Konrad Adenauer: The Father of the New Germany. Wiley. ISBN 978-0-471-40737-9.i
[2] https://www.timesofisrael.com/report-official-at-heart-of-nazis-racial-laws-worked-to-help-israel-go-nuclear/
[3] The Holocaust Encyclopedia Mosaic of victims: In depth
[4] The Wiener Holocaust Library: What is Genocide? https://www.theholocaustexplained.org/what-was-the-holocaust/what-was-genocide/the-herero-and-namaqua-genocide/