At the Berlin Conference in 1884 , Germany claimed several colonies including German East Africa , German South West Africa , Togoland , and Kamerun . Later , Germany further expanded its colonial empire to include German New Guinea , German Micronesia and German Samoa in the Pacific , and Kiautschou Bay in China . In what became known as the " First Genocide of the Twentieth-Century " , between 1904 and 1907 , the German colonial government in South West Africa ( present-day Namibia ) ordered the annihilation of the local Herero and Namaqua peoples , as a punitive measure for an uprising against German colonial rule . In total , around 100,000 people — 80 % of the Herero and 50 % of the Namaqua — perished from imprisonment in concentration camps , where the majority died of disease , abuse , and exhaustion , or from dehydration and starvation in the countryside after being deprived of food and water
annihilation of the local Herero and Namaqua peoples
Herero and Namaqua genocide
Germany