Now, before anyone thinks the worst, this is purely hypothetical. I recently watched a documentary on the Herero and Nama massacres in German Sudwestafrika, and it got me thinking; is there a point where ethnically cleansing an area could actually succeed without drawing the ire of the international community?
Africa is the obvious choice, because Africans have always suffered at the hands of European colonists, and it wasn't just the Germans that had some iffy policies regarding racial science. But could Germany have gotten away with it, if, say, WWI hadn't interrupted the process? The doco I watched suggested that the German Empire succeeded in their efforts, but I'm thinking about total annhiliation. I know German public opinion at the time wasn't really in favour of it, even if it did take a lot of public pressure for the Kaiser to finally get the colonial military to bring the Herero back from the desert (at which point they were stuffed into concentration camps, a la the British model only worse).
The Herero were then enslaved, and later the Nama were too after their attempted rebellion, but the impression I got was that the initiation of WWI and the eventual occupation of Sudwestafrika by South Africa sort of put a stop to this.
If WWI had somehow been avoided, could the Germans have succeeded in eventually wiping out the Herero and Nama peoples, to a point where the colony was a white nation?
Could this have happened for any other nation in the world (not just Africa)?
I know the Third Reich is going to be the obvious go-to. If the Nazis win, they'll rid Europe of the Jews and other undesiribles, right? But in reality, could they have actually done it, assuming everything else goes right?
Africa is the obvious choice, because Africans have always suffered at the hands of European colonists, and it wasn't just the Germans that had some iffy policies regarding racial science. But could Germany have gotten away with it, if, say, WWI hadn't interrupted the process? The doco I watched suggested that the German Empire succeeded in their efforts, but I'm thinking about total annhiliation. I know German public opinion at the time wasn't really in favour of it, even if it did take a lot of public pressure for the Kaiser to finally get the colonial military to bring the Herero back from the desert (at which point they were stuffed into concentration camps, a la the British model only worse).
The Herero were then enslaved, and later the Nama were too after their attempted rebellion, but the impression I got was that the initiation of WWI and the eventual occupation of Sudwestafrika by South Africa sort of put a stop to this.
If WWI had somehow been avoided, could the Germans have succeeded in eventually wiping out the Herero and Nama peoples, to a point where the colony was a white nation?
Could this have happened for any other nation in the world (not just Africa)?
I know the Third Reich is going to be the obvious go-to. If the Nazis win, they'll rid Europe of the Jews and other undesiribles, right? But in reality, could they have actually done it, assuming everything else goes right?