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be honorably treated.’ Prisoners had to be humanely treated and taken care of including being given food, shelter, and clothing. Germans signature on the treaty obliged them to protect and take care of the Herero. However, Germany failed to do so. They treated both what they considered the ‘soldiers’ as well as the women and children poorly. Germans imprisoned and killed all who survived the battle. While the Herero did not sign the treaty, they57 were protected under it. The convention was perceived as the international law at the time. As a result, the Germans should have protected the Herero. International law and treaties signed by the German government banned wars of annihilation and the ill treatment of prisoners. Therefore, the German government is responsible for their actions. The same laws and conventions, which made the genocide of the Herero illegal, also made the holocaust illegal. However, because the actions by the Germans against the Herero was not punished the Germans repeated the actions against the Jews. The Herero genocide set the precedent for the Holocaust. A Namibian foundation has sued three German companies in court for allegedly making money off Herero slave labor. Court papers stated that the genocide foreshadowed with chilling precision the irredeemable horror of the European Holocaust only decades later, the defendants and imperial Germany formed a German commercial enterprise which cold-bloodedly employed explicitly-sanctioned extermination, the destruction of tribal culture and social organization, concentration camps, forced labor, medical experimentation and 58the exploitation of women and children in order to advance their common financial interests. Some historians draw a direct lineage between the extermination of the Herero by the German government to the holocaust sponsored by the Nazis. Colonial policies, including the acquisition of Lebensraum, treatment of the Herero as subhuman, and legally institutional59 ized racism were communicated to and borrowed by the Nazis. While these three aspects are important, the annihilation policy and concentration camps had the biggest impact on Nazi Germany. The notion of the acquisition of Lebensraum was used by Hitler based on the Herero genocide to expand German territory. Settlement and expansion60in German South West Africa was based on the desire to obtain Lebensraum or ‘living space’. Germans viewed the Herero as uncivilized and subhuman thus unable to use land appropriately. As a result, the settlers ra-61 tionalized taking Herero land because of inherent German superiority and material necessity. Germans put the theories into practice by violent means in Africa setting the precedent for 62 Nazis to later seize and settle Eastern Europe. Hitler believed that Germans had the right to take territory and destroying the inhabitants because of their racial superiority. After acquiring the territory, Nazis followed the colonial model by brutally subordinating indigenous resourc63 es for their purposes. Just as the indigenous Namibians were beaten, starved, and worked to death for the benefit of the German nation so were all who were deemed subhuman by the Nazis. However, Hitler added an extra aspect those unable to work were exterminated in Nazi death camps as part of the final solution. The treatment of colonized as subhuman was also used by Hitler. Colonists first implemented a Weltanschauung, which ensured that superior Germans ruled over subhumans. Violence was acceptable because Germans were superior and needed to show the Herero their place. The violence was so common that people stopped being shocked and became numb. This led to more violence and feelings of racial superiority. Colonial literature transferred violence and racist concepts to Germany, eroding their resistance to brutality thereby providing
