The short-lived period of German colonialism (1884 to 1914) was hardly a topical issue after the Nazi dreams of empire ended in the ruins of World War II. While the official discourse in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) was guided by an anti-imperialist (which actually meant anti-Western) doctrine, the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) – thanks to a student generation emerging since the mid-1960s – finally faced the consequences of the Third Reich and the legacy of the Holocaust. But both engagements showed no signs within the dominant circles of self-critical reflections on the long-term effects of the German colonial period, either in the colonies or in the so-called German motherland.

Two published PhD theses produced during the latter half of the 1960s in the GDR (Horst Drechsler) and the FRG (Helmut Bley), both also translated into English, were exceptionally pioneering but for decades largely ignored. They drew attention to the German empire's extermination strategy in what was then called German South West Africa. While Drechsler emphasized the genocidal character of the warfare against the Herero and Nama, mainly between 1904 and 1907, Bley pointed to the links between Hannah Arendt's work on the origins of totalitarian rule and the German colonial mentality and practices. An obvious combination of both approaches, however, gained significant momentum over and above isolated earlier initiatives only in the late 1990s, when historical studies following German unification explored anew the German colonial past.

Jürgen Zimmerer emerged as a prominent advocate among the younger generation of German scholars, offering new reflections on German overseas expansion. This expansion had devastating effects for the colonized people, who were subjugated as ‘uncivilized natives’ or ‘brutes’ by a policy guided by the Prussian military totalitarian mindset that had deadly consequences for many, be it in Tsingtao, then South West Africa, or German East Africa, or in the West African plantation colonies of Togo and Cameroon. After the brutal response to the so-called Boxer rebellion, the anti-colonial resistance by Herero and Nama resulted in a strategy that culminated in the Vernichtungsbefehl (extermination order) issued by General von Trotha, while the policy of scorched earth in response to the Maji Maji rebellion resulted soon afterwards in even more and larger killing fields.

The German empire's rule in South West Africa combined settler colonialism with a military strategy of mass violence. After the subjugation of resisting cattle-herders in the eastern, central and southern parts of the territory, this approach resulted in the establishment of a system that represented the first form of apartheid. German South West Africa remained the most prominent reference point not only during the Nazi era but also for generations of subsequent colonial apologetic or romanticizing narratives. The equestrian monument or Reiterdenkmal, which was erected to commemorate the sacrifices of the German Schutztruppe in its annihilation warfare against the ‘natives’, was only removed from the heart of Windhoek twenty-three years into Namibia's independence on 25 December 2013 in an almost clandestine action. The surprise move testified to the ideological relevance the German colonial era still retained a century after its end.

Since the turn of the century, Jürgen Zimmerer's PhD thesis (‘Deutsche Herrschaft über Afrikaner’/‘German rule over Africans’) and his numerous subsequent texts have contributed to a new discourse about the German colonial era and its lasting effects on the people of today's Namibia. Revitalizing a combination of Drechsler's and Bley's original approaches and enriched by further archival studies, Zimmerer has reinforced the notion that the colonial practices of the German empire were a significant step towards the ideology of Nazism, and later contributed to German warfare in Eastern Europe as well as the extermination of Jews and other groups of people. Resonating with the earlier work of the historian Fritz Fischer, who was stigmatized for challenging a taboo by emphasizing the violent nature of the German empire, Zimmerer's contributions have provoked strong reactions and an ongoing debate in Germany.

Zimmerer maintains that there is a link between the ideology and practice of German colonialism and the latter's escalation in the Nazi regime's strategy of warfare and extermination. His hypotheses remain contested, but often in a far too simplistic or simplifying manner, bordering on an unfair misrepresentation of his arguments. Critics conveniently imply that, according to Zimmerer, there is a direct connection between the South West African concentration camps and Auschwitz – almost like a historically predetermined linearity or German Sonderweg. However, a careful reading of Zimmerer's arguments shows that he is more nuanced than this crude reduction suggests.

This volume compiles a dozen texts published in journals and books between 2003 and 2009. They offer access to his reasoning and the evidence he presents to substantiate his claims and they remain an important marker for necessary debate. This debate helps to demystify the ‘good old days’ and reminds us that critical engagement with a dark German past cannot be confined to the Nazi era but needs to go further back in time. That German colonialism played its part in the destruction of people is known to those whose ancestors in colonial Namibia (or in any other German colony) were the victims of German expansion, but it should also be known today in Germany and elsewhere. This awareness might also invite second thoughts on the brutal nature of colonialism as practised by other European countries in a similar fashion. After all, such practices were far from unique to Germany. It is therefore good news that this collection will also be published in English in 2014 as From Windhoek to Auschwitz? On the relationship between colonialism and the Holocaust (New York: Routledge).