Abstract
Beginning in the mid-2000s, a historiographical debate centering on the relationship between German colonialism in Southwest Africa and Nazism arose on both sides of the Atlantic. Those revisionist scholars who see continuity between German Southwest Africa and Nazi Germany belong to the so-called “Southwest Africa to Auschwitz Continuity Thesis School.” Using structural analyses and direct personal linkages as proof, these scholars make the claim that the German colonial experience in Southwest Africa greatly influenced the development of Nazism and of the Holocaust. The debate—which still continues today—covers a wide variety of topics, such as German colonial violence, ideology, economics, and social and racial relations. Those individuals advancing the Southwest Africa to Auschwitz Continuity Thesis identify the Social Darwinist theory of Lebensraum, or “living space,” as one of the central structural similarities between German colonialism in Southwest Africa and Nazism in Germany. By analyzing settlement patterns and violence in Southwest Africa from 1894 until 1907, this thesis presents a challenge to the Southwest Africa to Auschwitz Continuity Thesis and suggests that Lebensraum was—unlike in Nazi Germany—irrelevant to the German colonization of Southwest Africa.