The Herero Genocide: War, Emotion, and Extreme Violence in Colonial Namibia By Matthias Häussler,. Translated from the German by Elizabeth Janik,. New York and Oxford: Berghahn, 2021. Pp. 306. Hardback $179.00. ISBN: 978-1800730236 .

The Herero Genocide: War, Emotion, and Extreme Violence in Colonial Namibia By Matthias Häussler. Translated from the German by Elizabeth Janik. New York and Oxford: Berghahn, 2021. Pp. 306. Hardback $179.00. ISBN: 978-1800730236.

So much research has been done on the German colonial wars against the Herero and Nama in German South-West Africa (present-day Namibia) that one might think everything has been said on the topic. But in 2018, Matthias Häussler's reinterpretation of the German genocide against the Herero proved this notion wrong and earned him much praise and recognition amongst the scholarly community. Using an innovative approach and with the help of new sources, the author was able to provide fresh insights into this supposedly explored issue. Now, his study, which was based on his dissertation, is newly available in English translation. This seems overdue, as Häussler's remarkable arguments are likely to be received even more widely in Namibia and the English-speaking world than they have been in Germany. The study focuses on the 1904 war against the Herero, while subsequent events and the war with German South-West Africa's other ethnic groups are deliberately left out.

In his introduction, Häussler clarifies an important point of his research: its aim is not to answer the question of whether the colonial war in German South-West Africa actually resulted in genocide but instead to examine how and why the war escalated into a war of physical extermination. The author describes Germany's policy and tactics as...