Herero uprising Social Democratic Party of Germany political communications had circulated the term
Vernichtungskrieg in order to criticize the action against the insurgents during the
Herero Wars. In January 1904, the
Herero and Namaqua genocide began in the German colony
German South West Africa. With a total of about 15,000 men under Lieutenant General
Lothar von Trotha, this uprising was prostrated until August 1904. Most of the Herero fled to the almost waterless
Omaheke, an offshoot of the
Kalahari Desert. Von Trotha had them locked down and the refugees chased away from the few water spots there, so that thousands of Herero along with their families and cattle herds died of thirst. The hunted in the desert, let Trotha in the so-called
Vernichtungsbefehl, "Annihilation Command":) and was supported in particular by
Alfred von Schlieffen and
Kaiser Wilhelm II. His approach is therefore considered to be the first
genocide of the twentieth century. Trotha's action sparked outrage in Germany and abroad; at the instigation of chancellor
Bernhard von Bülow, the Emperor lifted the order of annihilation two months after the events in the Omaheke. Trotha's policy remained largely unchanged until its revocation in November 1905. Ludendorff also dealt with
Carl von Clausewitz and his 1832 posthumously published work
On War, in which he distinguished between 'absolute' and 'limited' wars. But even for Clausewitz absolute war was subject to restrictions, such as the distinction between combatants and non-combatants, between military and civil or between public and private. Ludendorff claimed now that in total war it is no longer a "petty political purpose", not even "big ... national interests", but the sheer
Lebenserhaltung (life-support) of the nation, its identity. This existential threat also justifies the annihilation of the enemy, at least moral, if not physical. Ludendorffs efforts to radicalize the war (for which he was responsible from 1916) met with social, political and military barriers. In the year 1935, his advice was then, as the historian Robert Foley writes, "on fertile ground"; the time seemed ripe for an even more radical delimitation of the war by the
Nazis. According to
Andreas Hillgruber, Hitler had four motives in launching
Operation Barbarossa, namely • The extermination not only of the "
Jewish Bolshevik elite" who supposedly governed the Soviet Union since seizing power in the
Russian Revolution of 1917, but also the extermination of every single Jewish man, woman and child in the Soviet Union. • Providing Germany with
Lebensraum ("living space") by settling millions of German colonists within what was soon to be the former Soviet Union, something that would have required a massive population displacement as millions of Russian
Untermenschen ("sub-humans") would have had to be forced out of homes to make way for the
Herrenvolk ("
master-race") colonists. • Turning the
Russians and other
Slavic peoples not expelled from their homes into slaves who would provide Germany with an ultra-cheap
labor force to be exploited. • Using vast natural resources of the Soviet Union to provide the foundation stone of a German-dominated economic zone in
Eurasia that would be immune to blockade, and provide Germany with the sufficient economic strength to allow the
Reich to
conquer the entire world. Later, Hillgruber explicitly described the character of the Eastern Front as "intended racial-ideological war of annihilation". Operation Barbarossa has also found its way into the historical-political teaching of general education schools as a historical example of an extermination war. The concept of the war of annihilation was intensely discussed in the 1990s with reference to the
Wehrmachtsausstellung of the
Hamburg Institute for Social Research, which carried the word "
Vernichtungskrieg" in the title. That Operation Barbarossa would be a war of annihilation, Adolf Hitler had pronounced openly on March 30, 1941, before the generals of the Wehrmacht: The orientation of Operation Barbarossa as a prior planned war of annihilation proves the commands prepared according to the general guidelines cited by
Adolf Hitler on 30 March 1941 before the start of the campaign, such as the
Barbarossa Decree of 13 May 1941, the
Guidelines for the Conduct of the Troops in Russia of 19 May 1941 and the
Commissar Order of 6 June 1941. The German guidelines for agricultural policy in the Soviet territories to be conquered are one of the most extreme examples of a robbery and annihilation strategy. In a meeting of the secretaries of State on May 2, 1941, the
Hunger Plan prepared: "This will undoubtedly starve tens of millions of people if we get what we need pried out of the country." The German historian
Jochen Böhler regarded the
invasion of Poland as "prelude to the
Vernichtungskrieg" against the Soviet Union in 1941. ==Use of the term ==