THE KAISER'S HOLOCAUST, Germany's forgotten genocide

394pp., b/w & colour illus., map, paperback, London, (2010) 2011

On 12 May 1883, the German flag was raised on the coast of South-West Africa, modern Namibia - the beginnings of Germany's African Empire. As colonial forces moved in, their ruthless raids became an open war of extermination. Thousands of the indigenous Herero and Nama people were killed or driven out into the desert to die. By 1905, the survivors were interned in concentration camps, and systematically starved and worked to death.

Years later, the people and ideas that drove the ethnic cleansing of German South West Africa would influence the formation of the Nazi party. The Kaiser's Holocaust uncovers extraordinary links between the two regimes: their ideologies, personnel, even symbols and uniform.