The blind spot of Germany's dark history | DW News

Published on May 28, 2021
Books, movies, and monuments, Germans have used everything to expose and examine their past and their guilt. But one particularly dark chapter does not get as much attention: The country’s colonial history.
Before World War I, the German empire was the third biggest in the world. The colonies covered regions that are now these countries: Imperial Germany sent troops to control the colonies. They brutalised local people and used them as forced workers and soldiers. They shipped thousands abroad as slaves. And they plundered the colonies, exporting things like ivory, diamonds and cocoa. When the Herero and Nama people in present-day Namibia rebelled, the German occupiers slaughtered them. Estimates suggest German imperial troops killed up to 100,000 people. It was the first genocide of the 20th century.
Most Germans we approached here in Berlin couldn’t find their country’s former colonies on a map.
So why do Germans know so little about their colonial history?