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JÜRGEN ZIMMERER , Von Windhuk nach Auschwitz? Beiträge zum Verhältnis von Kolonialismus und Holocaust . Berlin : LIT Verlag (pb [euro]34.90 - 978 3 8258 9055 1 ). 2011, 349 pp.
Reviews
The short-lived period of German colonialism (1884 to 1914) was hardly a topical issue after the Nazi dreams of empire ended in the ruins of World War II. While the official discourse in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) was guided by an anti-imperialist (which actually meant anti-Western) doctrine, the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) - thanks to a student generation emerging since the mid-1960s - finally faced the consequences of the Third Reich and the legacy of the Holocaust. But both engagements showed no signs within the dominant circles of self-critical reflections on the long-term effects of the German colonial period, either in the colonies or in the so-called German motherland.
Two published PhD theses produced during the latter half of the 1960s in the GDR (Horst Drechsler) and the FRG (Helmut Bley), both also translated into English, were exceptionally pioneering but for decades largely ignored. They drew attention to the German empire's extermination strategy in what was then called German South West Africa. While Drechsler emphasized the genocidal character of the warfare against the Herero and Nama, mainly between 1904 and 1907, Bley pointed to the links between Hannah Arendt's work on the origins of totalitarian rule and the German colonial mentality and practices....