This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 4/18/2024
[WWI]. Papers Relating to German Atrocities, and Breaches of the Rules of War, in Africa. London: Darling and Son, 1916. 4to. Illustrated with two leaves of photographic plates of evidence of war atrocities, including graphic images of tortured indigenous people. 86pp. Complete. Approximately 337 x 209 mm. Original string-bound blue wrappers (wrappers worn, tattered, chipped, torn, binding nearly disbound (remaining string-binding may be later), text and wrappers with horizontal crease at center). FIRST EDITION. From the Tasmanian newspaper, The Mercury, Friday August 4, 1916, describing this blue book: “GERMANY’S CRIMES. THOUSANDS OF ATROCITIES AND MURDERS. SHOCKING REVELATIONS.”“... LONDON, August 2: A British Blue Book which has been published contains 86 pages of details of German atrocities in Africa, based on reports from the Cameroons and German East and German South-West Africa. The book includes shocking photographs of the hands of natives practically severed, and bodies covered with great gashes. Another photograph shows awful floggings with an elephant hide whip on the bare back. The Blue Book contains hundreds of affidavits of eye-witnesses, covering thousands of atrocities and murders, which are all the worse because they were committed in a country the Germans ruled for many years, and not by an invading army.’ The atrocities include a man being beaten to death and women in a pitiable condition from deep machete wounds on the shoulders, hands, and legs. Scores of cases are given of deliberate mutilations and of women being killed by axes and bayonets. It is evident that German Europeans and native troops alike carried out a policy of murder and rapine. General C. M. Dobell, the Inspector-General of the West African forces, encloses a German army order of October, 1914, accusing the Bushman tribesmen of attacking the Germans, and ordering the destruction of all their villages. The order continued:-“Pris-oners must only be taken when caught red-handed, and can be legally tried and condemned to death.” Another order issued in the same month instructed the troops to kill every native at sight. The German authorities explained in writing that the British might conquer the country, but would find no inhabitants. In all cases the atrocities were committed against unarmed non-combatants and many innocent women and children. The Blue Book also contains General Botha’s correspondence relating to the placing of arsenic in the wells in South-West Africa.”