Windhoek concentration camp was a concentration camp in German South West Africa used to contain the indigenous Herero people.
After the battle of Waterberg, the Herero retreated into the Omaheke Desert. German troops prevented them from returning or gaining access to water. Those Herero who did not die in the desert were collected and placed into concentration camps such as the two laager camps setup at Windhoek. The Herero were first placed in the Otjihaenena Collection Camp.
Deaths in the camps were high, about 50% in Windhoek between 1904 and 1908.
"A number of eyewitness accounts do exist and some victim accounts are found in the Blue Book, which recorded accounts of the atrocities committed during the Herero war.Since the British produced the Blue Book during World War I reservations about its objectivity remain. However, the sentiments contained in the 1918 Report were already present in a British report of 1909, which stated:
"The great aim of German policy in German South West Africa, as regards the native, is to reduce him to a state of serfdom, and, where he resists, to destroy him altogether. The native, to the German, is a baboon and nothing more. The war against the Hereros, conducted by General Von Trotha, was one of extermination; hundreds -- men, women and children -- were driven into desert country, where death from thirst was their end; whose [sic] left over are now in great locations near Windhuk [sic] where they eke out a miserable existence; labour is forced upon them and naturally is unwillingly performed.[1]
In August 1912 [pre-dates World War I], another British foreign office official commented:
"In view of the cruelty, treachery [and] commercialism by which the German colonial authorities have gradually reduced their natives to the status of cattle (without so much of a flutter being caused among English peace loving philanthropists) the [Portuguese] S. Thome agitation in its later phases against a weak [and] silly nation without resources is the more sickening. These Herreros were butchered by thousands during the war & have been ruthlessly flogged into subservience since."[2]