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ABSTRACT
Germany is often praised for its handling of the Holocaust and for its acknowledgment of collective guilt towards that atrocity. At the same time, the absence of a comparable reckoning with colonial atrocities is largely ignored. Even though Germany acknowledged guilt regarding the genocide of the Herero and Nama in 2021, the extent of that acknowledgment differs. This paper therefore offers a comparative analysis explaining why Germany acknowledges guilt to a different extent in relation to the Holocaust and to the genocide of the Herero and Nama. Seven factors are analysed: political will and leadership, international pressure, transitional justice processes, historical evidence and research, international law, historical context and time, and public opinion and societal factors. The analysis shows that in both cases political will, international pressure, historical evidence and research, and historical context and time influenced Germany to acknowledge guilt, while the factors of transitional justice processes, international law, and public opinion and societal factors differ.
KEYWORDS *
Collective guilt, memory politics, Holocaust, Herero and Nama, colonial genocide, Vergangenheitsaufarbeitung, transitional justice, apology, reparations, social identity theory, Namibia, comparative analysis
INTRODUCTION
“It is necessary, yet so difficult, to come here as a German and as Germany’s Federal President. The terrible crimes that Germans committed here fill me with profound shame” (Steinmeier 2023). Those were the words of German Federal President Steinmeier at the commemorative event marking the 80th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. He was the first German president to take part in the event, and by participating he seized the opportunity to re-emphasise Germany’s guilt towards European Jews because of the atrocities committed by Germans in the first half of the 20th century. German politicians have regularly acknowledged and reacknowledged Germany’s guilt regarding the Holocaust. Probably the most memorable such moment was Chancellor Brandt’s genuflection at the memorial to the Warsaw Ghetto on a rainy day in 1970. The photographs travelled around the world; it was a historic moment. In half a minute, Brandt changed Germany’s reputation and its memory policy. It was not an undisputed gesture at the time, with half of Germans not ready to ask for forgiveness for the crimes of the Nazi regime and with Poland not ready to see Germany as a state asking for forgiveness and prepared to make amends. Historians agree that with the genuflection and his Ostpolitik, Brandt opened the way to reconciliation between Germany and Poland (Hille et al. 2020).
Steinmeier and Brandt are not the only high-ranking German politicians to acknowledge and emphasise Germany’s historical guilt for the Holocaust. On the international stage, Germany is often praised for the way it has dealt with its past, as in the opinion essay “Germany faced its horrible past. Can we do the same?” (Norris 2021), which refers to Germany’s Vergangenheitsaufarbeitung as a model that the United States might consider in dealing with the history of slavery and racism.
But even though Germany has a strong reputation for its memory culture, and even though a word as unwieldy as Vergangenheitsaufarbeitung is known internationally, one might wonder why Germany exhibits this extensive memory culture chiefly in relation to the atrocities committed by the Nazi regime during the Second World War. There are, after all, many atrocities committed by Germany in its colonies. Probably the best known is the genocide of the Herero and Nama in what is now Namibia in 1904, which has come to be described as the first genocide of the 20th century (Boehme 2020: 242). Historical reappraisal of the German colonial past is far more contested than the question of guilt in relation to the Holocaust. While the majority of Germans know about the Holocaust and the crimes of the Nazi regime, most Germans do not know much about Germany’s colonial past, let alone about the genocide of the Herero and Nama or other atrocities committed under German rule (Pelz 2021). Over the last few years there have been more discussions about Germany’s dealing with its colonial past. One of the milestones of that debate was the return of the first Benin bronzes to Nigeria in December 2022 (Mücke 2023). Other atrocities are condemned by German politicians without any official acknowledgment of guilt or responsibility, as in the case of the suppression of the Maji Maji rebellion of 1905 to 1907 in what is now Tanzania (Schiwikowski 2023).
The following question therefore arises: why is Germany so forthcoming in dealing with the dark past of the Nazi regime and the Holocaust, but not with its colonial past, even though more and more voices demand reparations or other forms of reconciliation? Or, more generally: what factors determine whether a state acknowledges guilt regarding past atrocities? The question is not about when states feel guilty and thus experience the emotion of guilt because of past atrocities. To address the question, a state of research is given first. A conceptualization of collective guilt follows, which establishes the guilt of Germany regarding past atrocities, acknowledged or not. Then follows an analysis of and comparison between two atrocities committed by Germans: the Holocaust and the genocide of the Herero and Nama. To combine research with the practice of international politics, academic literature, media coverage and speeches by politicians are analysed.
MAIN CORPUS
State of research
The question of collective guilt is a wide-ranging field in academia. Several books and studies deal with the guilt of nations regarding past atrocities and with intergroup conflict in general (Barkan 2002; Branscombe and Doosje 2004; Gunn and Wilson 2011; Schori-Eyal et al. 2015; Bassan-Nygate and Heimann 2022). Social identity theory is identified as the underlying mechanism that leads members of a former perpetrator group to feel guilty because of their identity and the recognition that their forebears or other members of their ingroup have acted wrongly or harmed others (Branscombe and Doosje 2004: 3). Moral emotions such as guilt are also used as a political instrument (Bassan-Nygate and Heimann 2022: 1).
The literature is most extensive on the Holocaust and Germany’s dealing with its past and the emotion of collective guilt (Janowitz 1946; Jaspers 2001; Merkl 1965; Berger 2012). While some sources note that collective guilt was denied by Germans, especially by perpetrators and in the period shortly after the war (Janowitz 1946; von Kellenbach 2013), surveys and contemporary politics show a general acceptance of collective guilt among Germans in relation to the Holocaust (SPD et al. 2021; Stiftung Erinnerung, Verantwortung und Zukunft 2021). One study shows the influence of the interpretation of time on the feeling of collective guilt (Peetz et al. 2010). To mitigate the threat to self-esteem posed by an atrocity committed by one’s ingroup, people tend to place such atrocities subjectively further in the past, particularly when German resistance and reparations are not mentioned (ibid.: 608).
However, research on Germany’s acknowledgment of guilt regarding atrocities under colonial rule remains thin by comparison (Sarkin 2009 and 2011; Boehme 2020). Boehme (2020: 238) analyses Germany’s attitude of reactive remembrance towards the genocide of the Herero and Nama. A paper reporting two experiments evaluates the collective guilt felt by students in relation to the Holocaust and to the genocide of the Herero and Nama (Imhoff et al. 2013). The study shows that individuals feel greater collective guilt if the victims of an atrocity committed by the forebears of their ingroup still suffer from its consequences (ibid.: 86).
Literature on the guilt of states is extensive, but more studies focus on collective guilt experienced and expressed by individuals than by groups or states. This paper therefore aims to explain why Germany as a state acknowledges collective guilt to a different extent in relation to the Holocaust and to the genocide of the Herero and Nama.
Collective emotions and a conceptualization of collective guilt
Despite the long-standing premise that rationality and emotion contradict each other, research has shown that people need emotions for rational decision-making and for prioritising their wants and needs (Mercer 2005). Emotions influence our values and how we view our social reality, and they connect human beings to each other (Hutchinson 2016: 74). They are therefore needed for political thought and behaviour (ibid.). Even though emotions are defined by and connected to biological experience (Mercer 2014: 516), collective or group emotions are central in international politics as well. The concept of collective emotions rests on social identity theory (Tajfel and Turner 1986) and amounts to more than the sum of the emotions of individual group members (Mercer 2014: 516). Collective emotions are based on the individual’s identification with the group. If a person identifies with a group, such as a nationality, he or she will feel differently about situations and is likely to adopt the collective emotion of the group (Peetz et al. 2010; Mercer 2014). The key term here is identification; merely acknowledging one’s membership of a group does not equal identification and thus does not necessarily lead an individual to feel the collective emotions of that group (Brewer 2001: 20f). If belonging to a group resonates with the member’s self-concept (Hitzler and Honer 1994: 310), the group member identifies with the group rather than simply belonging to it. The individual then feels connected, feels a sense of belonging, and wants to be an active part of the group. This motivation is the basis for an emotional connection to the group, making one open to its collective emotions because one’s self-worth depends on it (Brewer 2001: 21). Generally, a positive evaluation of one’s ingroup is important for individuals. Social identity theory rests on a constructivist approach: emotions, like social groups, are constructed socioculturally and therefore cannot be separated from social context (Hutchinson 2016: 90f). Emotions condition the rationality of groups (ibid.: 92f). Because of the social context of emotions, ingroup members are likely to influence each other’s feelings. Mercer (2014: 524) states that emotion is contagious. But not all group members necessarily feel the same at all times (Koschut 2020: 20f). Ingroup members can feel differently about the same situation. For example, where person A identifies more strongly with the group than person B, person A will likely feel more positive about the group and tend to neglect or downplay its wrongdoings while focusing on positive emotions such as pride, whereas person B might be more willing to accept those wrongdoings and therefore feel negative emotions such as guilt or shame (Mercer 2014: 522).
Guilt, like all other emotions, can be felt at the individual or the collective level. Guilt is a self-conscious emotion, felt when someone feels responsible for a negative outcome that led to harm to others (Branscombe et al. 2004: 16f). The feeling of guilt therefore has moral implications. It can be felt not only by those who actually harmed others but by uninvolved ingroup members as well, through the sheer fact of identification with the ingroup (Branscombe and Doosje 2004: 3f).
“According to self-categorization theory, when the self or others are categorized at the group level, emotional experiences and expectations for others’ emotional responses should also occur at the collective level” (Branscombe et al. 2004: 18).
The philosopher Jaspers (2001) states that not all guilt is the same. He conceptualized guilt as a phenomenon that is not only an emotion that can be experienced but a fact, comparable to the judgment: you are guilty, and it does not matter whether you feel guilty about the crime you committed or not. Collective guilt plays a large role in his conceptualization, as two of his four concepts of guilt are placed in a social context: political guilt and metaphysical guilt. Jaspers states that everybody is co-responsible for the way he is governed (ibid.: 25f), meaning that citizens, as members of the national group, bear responsibility for the wrongdoings of their government even though they may not have sanctioned them. The concept of political guilt may be translated into collective guilt. But it does not lead mono-causally to collective guilt, because whereas the concept of collective guilt rests on the experience of emotion, political guilt makes an ethical argument about the responsibility of a state’s citizens. Metaphysical guilt, which is based on the principle of solidarity between human beings (ibid.: 26), can lead individuals to feel guilty about the actions of other ingroup members, which in turn can lead to a stronger sense of collective guilt because of the way group members influence each other. Metaphysical guilt is thus based on the experience of the emotion.
Collective guilt need not be understood as legal guilt; the emotion itself is at the centre of the concept (Branscombe and Doosje 2004: 3f). Guilt as a collective emotion is a particularly interesting phenomenon, as guilt usually comes at a high cost and might therefore appear to contradict rational decision-making, showing once again that emotions influence the priorities of individuals and social groups. As individuals tend to rely on a positive image of their ingroups, collective guilt is rare. The first reaction when confronted with an accusation is defence rather than acceptance of guilt (Jaspers 2001: 41), because guilt poses a threat to identity, since no one wishes to admit to themselves that they acted wrongly (Gunn and Wilson 2011: 1475). People rely on defensive strategies to avoid feeling guilty and to reaffirm their individual and social identity (ibid.). Another strategy for dismissing guilt is justification: if people feel that morally disputed actions were justified for some higher reason, for example to prevent something worse, guilt will probably not be experienced, because the decision can be morally justified. A prominent example is the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where many Americans consider that ending the war outweighed the loss of Japanese lives and therefore do not feel guilt about the use of the bomb (Branscombe et al. 2004: 19). At the same time, group members with a more sensitive moral compass can shape the collective emotion regarding a situation such as an intergroup conflict, and can increase the likelihood that collective guilt is felt as more individuals condemn the actions of other group members (Jaspers 2001: 96).
With all the difficulties that come with collective guilt, its high costs are not incurred for nothing: the experience of guilt has a learning effect and can shape the future attitudes of ingroups towards outgroups and thus lead to a reduction of intergroup conflict (Ashmore et al. 2001). While a positive attitude towards one’s ingroup leads at least to favouring ingroup members over outgroup members, in worse cases pride and love towards the ingroup can lead to rejection and even hatred towards outgroups. Human beings need a sense of belonging and, simultaneously, differentiation from others. These two contradictory needs can explain the positive evaluation of the ingroup and the more negative evaluation of the outgroup (Brewer 2001). But since people, and therefore groups, do not want to feel guilty, working through guilt can lead to the priorities of groups being renegotiated and to a more peaceful future in intergroup relations, as groups and their members may act according to their moral compass in order to avoid feeling guilty.
However, the concept of collective guilt is not undisputed. The legal system deals with guilt only on the premise that individuals, and individuals alone, are responsible for their own actions. Collective guilt therefore cannot stand before a court. That is why individual perpetrators, and not social groups, are tried before the International Criminal Court. Also, condemning a whole social group, such as a nation, for crimes committed by some of its members can prolong or create intergroup conflicts. It is important to restore justice after crimes and to compensate victims, but it can be counterproductive to assign collective guilt unconditionally to a social group over several generations while ignoring that the group may itself be interested in restoring justice and coming to terms with its past. Some scholars (Cribb 2018) argue that collective guilt is not needed where all the perpetrators of the condemned action are convicted and punished as they should be. Furthermore, history shows that attributing collective guilt to whole nations can create new problems. Victor’s justice after wars can be morally flawed as well. The question of guilt for the First World War is an example. Even though guilt should not have been attributed to one state alone, guilt for the war was assigned only to Germany, the loser, by the Allied Powers, the winners (Jaspers 2001: 41f). Just as guilt is a learning process that should lead to future morally acceptable decisions, the admission of guilt should also be handled with morally sound decision-making, so that a healing process can begin: perpetrators receive a just punishment, but they and their social group are not condemned for all time and should rather be encouraged to work at rebuilding their reputation (ibid.). The question of the admission and acceptance of collective guilt is a political one and can even become a political weapon, even though the question remains open whether the admission of guilt helps the victims and opens the way to reappraisal (ibid.: 42).
Methods
For the comparative analysis of the two atrocities and the acknowledgments of guilt, a systematic review of literature and media coverage is used, together with a qualitative content analysis of speeches by senior German political actors. The literature, news articles, and speeches were identified using the keywords Holocaust, Herero and Nama, genocide of the Herero and Nama, and guilt.
Emotions are among the aspects most difficult to measure in international politics (Hutchinson 2016: 89). In this paper the question is not whether guilt is actually experienced by those acknowledging it, but rather the expression of guilt is examined. The extent of the guilt admitted is the factor of interest. This is assessed by quantitative means, such as frequency in the literature and the proportion of people admitting collective guilt, and by qualitative means, such as apologies from senior as against junior politicians, the exact wording of an apology, and readiness to pay reparations.
For the independent variable, the factors political will and leadership, international pressure, transitional justice processes, historical evidence and research, international law, historical context and time, and public opinion and societal factors are analysed.
The Holocaust
Arguably the most widely known atrocity committed by Germans, the Holocaust is a powerful example for analysing the question of acknowledging guilt, since it laid the ground for its own research fields: genocide studies and later the narrower field of Holocaust studies. As mentioned in the introduction, Germany is often praised for its Vergangenheitsaufarbeitung (Norris 2021), and this case serves as the positive example in the comparative analysis.
“The Holocaust was the systematic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million Jews by the Nazi regime and its allies and collaborators” (USHMM w.D.a). The aim of the Nazi leadership was the killing of the whole of European Jewry, a strategy for which the euphemism final solution of the Jewish question was used (von Kellenbach 2013: 15). At the conference at Wannsee, Berlin, in 1942, details of the strategy were settled, on the basis of a figure of eleven million Jews living in Europe.
Contemporary Germany expresses a high level of political will in its leadership to deal with Germany’s responsibility and guilt regarding the Holocaust. In the coalition treaty for the government of 2021 to 2025, the word Holocaust is mentioned five times, and responsibility for the care and treatment of Holocaust survivors is stressed (SPD et al. 2021: 110). Federal President Steinmeier’s speech in 2023 at the commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising was referred to in the introduction. Chancellor Scholz gave a speech on International Holocaust Remembrance Day in 2022, warning that the horrors of the Holocaust risk being forgotten as contemporary witnesses die, and insisting that Germany must not allow this to happen (Bundesregierung 2022). These statements show that the German government and state leadership have a strong commitment to remembering and to expressing German guilt towards Holocaust survivors. German politicians also stress that relations between Germany and Israel must be seen in the context of Germany’s guilt regarding the Holocaust. Chancellor Scholz stated that as Germany committed the genocide of European Jews, every German government bears permanent responsibility for the security of the State of Israel and the protection of Jewish life (Strack 2023).
Even though the international community praises Germany today for dealing with its past (Norris 2021), international pressure after the end of the war played a key role. Especially after the mass killings in the concentration and extermination camps became visible to the world through the liberators of those camps and their accounts, through journalists, and through senior political figures such as the Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe and later United States President Eisenhower, international pressure increased. Eisenhower acted with foresight in recognising the importance of eyewitness accounts. “I made the visit deliberately, in order to be in a position to give first-hand evidence of these things if ever, in the future, there develops a tendency to charge these allegations merely to propaganda”, he said after visiting Ohrdruf (USHMM w.D.b). This international pressure contributed to the Potsdam Conference, where the Allied Powers decided on Germany’s future (bpb 2019), and to the Nuremberg trials, the first international military tribunal to prosecute individuals for atrocities.
The Nuremberg trials were therefore a precedent with far-reaching consequences for international criminal law. During the principal trial, three defendants were acquitted, twelve were sentenced to death, and seven received prison sentences (Kirsch 2005: 2). With the verdict, guilt was attributed to individual actors, but with the Potsdam Conference and the goals set for the reconstruction of Germany, where denazification was a declared aim (bpb 2019), individual guilt was extended in the sense that National Socialist ideology was recognised as the cause of the Holocaust and had to be systematically removed from society. Further, through judicial process under the rule of law, future peace was to be strengthened, as changes in international law and especially the strengthening of international human rights were intended to prevent future perpetrators from committing mass atrocities (Kirsch 2005: 3).
The eyewitness accounts of the liberators also played a crucial role in the extensive historical evidence and research: the Holocaust may be considered the best-documented genocide in history. The bureaucracy of the Nazi regime also assisted later understanding of the Holocaust and its dimensions (Palamarchuk et al. 2019). To this day, historical evidence of the Holocaust is collected, archived, and reviewed on a large scale by museums, such as the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and by former camps remodelled as memorials for education and remembrance, such as Auschwitz and Dachau. The academic field of Holocaust studies is dedicated to this genocide alone. Not only academics and large institutions play a role in documenting perpetrators, crimes, and victims; smaller civil associations work on discovering local connections. For example, one association conducts research on the workers of a labour camp at Überlingen on Lake Constance and is dedicated to educating civil society about the camp in that region. Additionally, interviews and testimonies of Holocaust survivors and of others involved, such as the liberators of camps, complement the research and add a moral and emotional dimension to remembrance (Beyer et al. 2020).
During the war, genocide was not yet a crime under international criminal law, but the scale of the destruction of a people led to a change in international law. A more general change occurred when classical international law was modernised, restricting the unconditional sovereignty of states (Krell and Schlotter 2018: 112f). But as Sarkin (2009: 11) states, even though not known under the names crimes against humanity or genocide, atrocities were already unlawful under human rights law. The United Nations, and therefore the international community, acknowledged for the first time that citizens should be protected from abuse by their own state. Atrocities were then specifically recognised as crimes under international criminal law (Global Centre R2P 2018). It should be noted that even though sovereignty was not restricted at the time of the Holocaust, Nazi Germany itself disregarded the sovereignty of other nations by starting the war and occupying foreign territory (Smith et al. 1992: 336f).
Historical context and time also play a role in explaining why states do not acknowledge guilt immediately after committing an atrocity. As Jaspers (2001: 41) stated, the first answer to an accusation is defence. Responses after Germans were confronted with evidence of the camps were shock and denial of knowledge, even though some camps were located directly beside German villages (Steinhoff 2001). But events such as the pogroms of November 1938 are indicators of the level of antisemitism in Germany throughout the period of the Nazi regime (Honig 2021). Historians also show that the regime did not conceal the existence of the concentration camps (Steinhoff 2001). There is a statement made by Chancellor Adenauer to parliament in 1951 acknowledging awareness of the suffering imposed by Germans and asking for forgiveness for German crimes. Even though he spoke of a willingness to make reparation payments to Israel, the speech is interpreted in the literature not as an official acknowledgment of guilt but as a first step in shaping a new image for Germany (Löwenheim 2009: 549). In 1951, West Germany had also not yet regained full sovereignty (bpb 2019). Chancellor Brandt’s highly symbolic acknowledgment of guilt in the form of the genuflection in Warsaw in 1970 (Hille et al. 2020) is considered the first acknowledgment of guilt regarding the Holocaust by a senior German politician. It may have been influenced by the trial of Eichmann in Israel in 1961 (Honig 2021) and by the Auschwitz trials in Frankfurt that followed (Wildt 2021).
The debate about guilt at the political and academic level may be important for international politics and conflict management, and will probably help to overcome past conflicts and provide some closure for victims, but for collective emotions the public opinion of Germans regarding guilt for the Holocaust is crucial as well. If one is to feel guilty about something, one must know about it. However, knowledge of the Holocaust is beginning to fade in Germany. In one study, 40 per cent of those aged 18 to 34 said that they knew nothing or little about the Holocaust (Zeit Online 2018). At the same time, people think that antisemitism is on the rise in Europe and consider it a problem (ibid.). These results are striking, as the Holocaust is firmly established in German curricula (KMK 2005). Almost half of Germans think that they discussed the National Socialist past rather a lot or a great deal at school (Stiftung Erinnerung, Verantwortung und Zukunft 2021). According to a study from 2020, 32 per cent of those interviewed acknowledged shame and 82 per cent believe that Germans bear collective guilt regarding the Holocaust and the outbreak of the war. One in four wants to draw a line under the National Socialist past and 6 per cent are not interested in the topic at all (Die Zeit 2020). In conclusion, collective guilt regarding the Holocaust is widely acknowledged in German civil society and only a minority rejects it.
The genocide of the Herero and Nama
In 2021, Germany acknowledged the mass killing of the Herero and Nama in 1904 (Auswärtiges Amt 2021). Even though guilt was acknowledged, the handling of this past atrocity differs greatly from the handling of the Holocaust.
The territory of present-day Namibia was colonised by Germany in 1884. From the beginning of colonisation there were repeated uprisings, but the climax came in 1904, when more German settlers acquired land in the colony and human rights violations and racial segregation became more frequent and more severe. The Herero began to fight back, and after the battle at the Waterberg on 11 and 12 August 1904, the German commander von Trotha issued an extermination order against the Herero. Tens of thousands who fled into the desert died of thirst. Because the Nama also rose in revolt, an extermination order was issued against them as well. In total, about 80 per cent of the Herero were killed; estimates of the number of dead range between 54,000 and 100,000 (bpb 2021).
During the First World War, Germany lost the former colony. For decades there were no special relations between Germany and Namibia. It was not until 1990 that Germany began development cooperation, without addressing the genocide (Boehme 2020: 243f). In 2004, at the centenary of the genocide, the then development minister Wieczorek-Zeul issued an apology for the past atrocities, but the government of the day distanced itself from the speech (ibid.: 245). She also attributed guilt to von Trotha alone (Sarkin 2009: 133). A second phase began in 2015, when a Herero delegation visited the Federal President with a petition for comprehensive compensation and reparation (bpb 2021), and the then President of the Bundestag, Lammert, described the crimes against the Herero and Nama as genocide and acknowledged the intent to destroy the two peoples (Tagesschau 2015). Opposition politicians had been demanding an acknowledgment of guilt before that (ibid.; Boehme 2020: 239). Talks with Namibia began, and after five years the then foreign minister Maas formally acknowledged Germany’s guilt regarding the genocide of the Herero and Nama (Auswärtiges Amt 2021). Germany undertook to support Namibia with 1.1 billion euros, framed not as official reparations but as a reconstruction and development programme (ibid.). Generally speaking, German governments acted more reactively than proactively (Boehme 2020: 238). In the coalition treaty of the government of 2021, the word genocide is not used in relation to Namibia, but the parties spoke of a special historical and moral responsibility towards Namibia and planned to work on a reconciliation agreement (SPD et al. 2021: 126).
It is contested whether the British Empire knew about the genocide of the Herero and Nama while it was still ongoing. But the colonies were connected regions and it is probable that the movement of traders carried information from German to British colonial territory. Still, the British did not speak out about the genocide and the mass violence until 1915 (Nielsen 2017: 319f). The Herero had campaigned for an official apology and reparations for a long time, with the success of attracting international media attention and the spread of information in museums (Anderson 2005: 1185). But international media coverage has always been greatest following actions by Germany (Burke 2016; BBC 2021). Before acknowledging the Herero genocide as genocide, German politicians had pressed Türkiye to acknowledge its guilt for the Armenian genocide (Tagesschau 2015).
Regarding transitional justice, there has been no criminal trial comparable to the Nuremberg trials or to later trials of Nazi perpetrators. Reparation payments may be regarded as such a process (Boehme 2020: 240), but Germany is careful to stress that the 1.1 billion euros are not to be understood as reparations but as development assistance (Auswärtiges Amt 2021). There have been only symbolic transitional justice processes in the form of apologies (Boehme 2020: 240). The Herero did attempt to sue German companies for compensation in the United States in 2001 (Sarkin 2009: 148).
Literature on the genocide of the Herero and Nama remains relatively thin, but historical research in the form of oral testimony is extensive. “Unlike any other group that took part in this research, the Herero and Mbanderu respondents were able to track the direct impact of the war on their own families, providing both the names of people who had died and the places where they died” (Erichsen 2008, cited in Sarkin 2011: 28).
European powers also conducted research on the former German colony after the First World War. One of the most important documents is the so-called Blue Book, to which the Germans replied with the White Book (Nielsen 2017: 319f). Both concerned the empires accusing each other of violence in the colonies. As mentioned, connections between the Holocaust and the Herero genocide have been drawn in academic literature, but other research points to the Herero genocide being more similar to general colonial warfare and violence than to the Holocaust (ibid.: 317f). Overall it can be concluded that there is sufficient historical evidence and research to attribute guilt to Germany.
It was a widely used argument among German politicians that there was no need to acknowledge guilt because in 1904 (Sarkin 2009: 1) genocide had not yet been unlawful under international law, while violence against indigenous people in colonial territories was considered a legitimate political instrument by the European empires (Krell and Schlotter 2018: 109). But as already mentioned, other scholars argue that even though the crimes were not known under the terms crimes against humanity and genocide, human rights law already provided protection against such acts in 1904 (Sarkin 2009: 11).
With the issuing of the White Book in response to the Blue Book, it becomes clear in the dimension of historical context and time that states are not ready to acknowledge guilt shortly after an atrocity. In this case Germany produced a document pointing at other empires rather than reflecting on its own conduct (Nielsen 2017: 319f). The racist and imperial interpretation of international law that permitted violence against indigenous people in colonial territory (Krell and Schlotter 2018: 109) arguably also helped to justify violence against the Herero and Nama within Germany. Even though normative pressure for apologies for former atrocities rose in the 21st century (Boehme 2020: 238), Germany was slow to respond. Only a hundred years after the genocide was a first apology issued (Tagesschau 2015), and only after 117 years was there an official acknowledgment of guilt. The reticence of German governments in admitting guilt may also be due to the general colonial context. Not only were there crimes against humanity in German colonies, but the numbers of indigenous people in colonies worldwide declined sharply. The Herero case could thus become a precedent for how former colonial powers deal with their guilt (Sarkin 2009: 155f).
After the war, German civil society was relieved that its colonial past was not under scrutiny as in Britain and France (Boehme 2020: 244), as the guilt of the Holocaust was enough to deal with (ibid.: 249). Knowledge of the German colonial era is generally low in the German population (ibid.), even though according to school curricula German colonialism should be taught (Pelz 2021). Regarding emotional attitudes, only 9 per cent of Germans feel that German colonialism is something to be proud of, and 20 per cent feel it is something to be ashamed of (YouGov 2020), indicating that colonialism is an emotional topic for about three in ten Germans, though viewed more negatively than positively. In international comparison, Germans are the least proud of their colonial past (ibid.). As there is little general knowledge and historical reappraisal of German colonial history, there is no data on the emotional assessment of Germans specifically regarding the genocide of the Herero and Nama. Generally speaking, where there is a debate on colonialism it is a debate conducted among white Germans, neglecting Black Germans as descendants of formerly colonised people (de Wolff 2021: 370). There are, however, civil associations criticising the way Germany deals with its colonial past (DW 2021), which indicates that at least a part of the population is ready to engage with it. Descendants of von Trotha have expressed deep shame over their ancestor’s actions and apologised, but did not wish to become involved in the political process of state acknowledgment (BBC 2007). An experimental study showed that Germans are ready to feel collective guilt regarding the genocide of the Herero and Nama when they believe that the descendants of the victims still suffer because of the past atrocity (Imhoff et al. 2013).
Comparison
The analysis of the two cases shows that the factors examined were influential in both, though under different circumstances. While political will regarding the Holocaust has been driven forward by members of successive governments, political will regarding acknowledgment of guilt for the Herero genocide has also been evident for two decades, though located more among opposition parties. Future research should focus on the reasons for this difference. A more extensive analysis should also investigate resistance among members of parliament and political parties, to give a more detailed picture.
International pressure influenced German politics in both cases. In the case of the Holocaust this pressure came most prominently from the Allied Powers, whereas in the case of the Herero genocide the descendants of the victims played the key role. The role of the international community in pressing Germany to acknowledge guilt should be explored further. The political debate on colonial atrocities in particular requires further analysis, to see how states can be moved to acknowledge guilt for past atrocities. The fact that Britain may have known about the Herero genocide and did not press Germany to stop it during the events or to acknowledge guilt afterwards indicates a fundamental difference in the handling of atrocities in a colonial context and atrocities in Europe.
There is no equivalent to the Nuremberg trials in the case of the Herero genocide, which shows that even in the absence of transitional justice processes, guilt for atrocities can be acknowledged. But following the logic of Cribb (2018), collective guilt should perhaps be felt more intensely where individual perpetrators were never convicted. However, the analysis does not show indicators of collective guilt felt by Germans for the genocide of the Herero and Nama, even though none of the perpetrators were convicted. A possible explanation for the absence of guilt despite the absence of convictions could be the lack of education on the topic among Germans. Even though the literature on the Holocaust is more extensive, historical evidence was sufficient to establish Germany’s guilt in the Herero genocide as well.
In both cases, genocide had not been recognised as a crime at the time it was committed. During the Herero genocide, Germany did not breach international law as then understood, since violence towards indigenous people in colonies was not treated as unlawful; but with the war and the persecution, deportation, and mass killing of foreign citizens, Nazi Germany did breach international law. This may be one explanation why international pressure was greater regarding the Holocaust than regarding the Herero genocide, though it follows only if human rights law is set aside.
Collective amnesia and denial of involvement and guilt played a role in both genocides, but the first acknowledgment of guilt regarding the Holocaust came much earlier than the first acknowledgment regarding the Herero genocide. Some historians see the reason for this in the fact that Germans were occupied with coming to terms with the Holocaust and could not deal simultaneously with atrocities committed under colonial rule.
This is also evident in how Germans deal with the Holocaust. Still today, general knowledge about the Holocaust is much higher than general knowledge about German colonialism, let alone the Herero genocide. While a broad majority of Germans feels collective guilt for the Holocaust, for most people colonialism is not linked to emotion. The acknowledgment of guilt regarding the Herero genocide was almost entirely a political process with little involvement of private individuals. This suggests that states can acknowledge guilt even though their citizens may not feel the same way. But the experimental study suggests that Germans are willing to feel collective guilt provided they are informed about the subject. More research is needed to confirm this tendency.
This research is not exhaustive of the factors that may influence states to acknowledge guilt regarding past atrocities. Rather, the influence of these seven factors was examined as a starting point and should be reviewed in future research in further detail.
SUMMARY *
The article’s comparative design isolates something that a study of either case alone would obscure. Both atrocities were committed by the same state; both are documented beyond dispute; in both cases the act was not a crime under the international law of its day. What differs is everything that came afterwards, and the article’s seven factors sort those differences into two groups. Political will, international pressure, evidence, and the passage of time operated in both cases, though through different actors, since in the Namibian case the pressure came from the descendants of the victims rather than from victorious powers. Transitional justice, international law, and public sentiment did not. The finding that follows is the article’s sharpest: a state acknowledged guilt that its population does not feel, which suggests that official acknowledgment and collective emotion are separable, and that the second does not follow automatically from the first.
CONCLUSION
Collective guilt plays an important role in international politics and relations. Intergroup conflict remains one of the challenges in intergroup communication and relations. Social identity theory shows that emotions connected to social identity can cause, intensify, and prolong intergroup conflicts because of the need for a positive image of one’s ingroup, often connected to the devaluation of the outgroup.
Furthermore, this paper has stressed not only the influence of collective guilt on international politics and relations, but also that Germany may be viewed as a model regarding its Vergangenheitsaufarbeitung of the Holocaust while not serving as a general model for historical reappraisal. German politics shows that the Holocaust is viewed in a different light from colonial atrocities such as the genocide of the Herero and Nama. This may have several explanations which require further research. International pressure, historical evidence and research, and historical time and context appear to have had the greatest influence on the acknowledgment of guilt in this analysis, and possibly political will and leadership as well, even though the leading actors in the process differed. Further research is needed to explore the influence of the seven factors. This paper can serve as a starting point.
Further research is especially needed regarding the acknowledgment of colonial atrocities by the former European empires in general. With research showing that the Herero genocide was more similar to other colonial atrocities than to the Holocaust, comparative analyses of how former empires deal with colonial history and guilt are needed to identify the factors influencing acknowledgment. Like Holocaust studies, the study of colonial atrocities could form its own academic field, helping victims and their descendants to be heard in their demands for acknowledgment by their former colonisers. Acknowledging guilt for colonial atrocities, provided that it and any accompanying request for forgiveness are sincere, is likely to improve bilateral relations and to help overcome colonial structures in the international community.
POTENTIAL SOLUTION *
The article’s central finding, that a state acknowledged guilt which its population does not feel, is the point at which this analysis becomes useful beyond its own case, and it deserves to be stated as a general proposition. Official acknowledgment and public sentiment are separable, they move at different speeds, and an acknowledgment that runs ahead of public understanding is fragile in a specific way: it can be reversed by a later government at little political cost, because no constituency has formed to defend it.
That points toward the variable the article identifies without quite naming as decisive, which is knowledge. The experimental finding it cites, that Germans are willing to feel collective guilt where they believe descendants still suffer, combines with the survey data showing that most Germans know little about the colonial period to produce a straightforward conclusion: the absence of collective emotion here is not a refusal but an absence of information. Curriculum is therefore not a secondary recommendation but the primary one, and the comparison the article draws demonstrates the point, since Holocaust education is extensive, taught in every federal state, and the corresponding public acknowledgment is near universal.
Three observations about the 2021 agreement bear on the article’s account. It was described by the German government as a gesture rather than as reparations, a formulation adopted precisely because the legal term would carry consequences, and it is the principal reason significant parts of the Herero and Nama leadership rejected it. Those representatives were also not directly party to the negotiations, which were conducted between two states, and the descendant communities are minorities within Namibia whose government did not straightforwardly speak for them. And the funds are disbursed as development projects over thirty years rather than as payments to the affected communities. Each of these is a design choice rather than an inevitability, and together they explain why an acknowledgment that took 117 years to arrive did not settle the matter. For a journal concerned with mediation, the lesson is the one this field returns to repeatedly: an agreement about a group, negotiated without that group, is unlikely to be received as the acknowledgment it was intended to be.
Two additions would extend the article’s contribution. Its argument applies to every former colonial power and the comparative material is now available: the Belgian expression of regret over the Congo, French acknowledgments regarding Algeria and Rwanda, British settlements over the Mau Mau detentions, and Dutch apologies for Indonesia and for slavery. What distinguishes the cases that produced durable settlements is not the wording of the apology but whether an enforceable claim existed. The Mau Mau case reached an English court and produced compensation to named individuals; nothing comparable exists in the German and Namibian case, and the Herero attempt to litigate in the United States failed on jurisdictional grounds. And the article’s observation that the debate is conducted among white Germans identifies a gap that is itself part of the problem: descendants of colonised peoples living in Germany are participants in this history rather than an audience for it, and a memory culture constructed without them reproduces the structure it is meant to address.
Finally, the article’s framing invites one reflection that its own material supports. Germany’s reckoning with the Holocaust is presented internationally as a model and is understood domestically as a moral achievement. The colonial case shows what that reckoning actually required: defeat, occupation, an imposed tribunal, sustained external pressure, and then a generation of domestic conflict driven by the children of those involved. Where those conditions are absent, as they are for every colonial atrocity, acknowledgment has depended on the persistence of the victims’ descendants and on very little else. That is the more sobering finding of this comparison, and it is the one most worth carrying to other cases.
* Added by the WMO Editorial Team
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