The Battle of Waterberg on August 11, 1904 in German South-West Africa (Namibia), triggered the annihilation decree by German military of the Herero people, the indigenous nomadic inhabitants of the area.  An estimated 60,000 to 100,000 people perished during and after The Battle of Waterberg which marked the beginning of Germanys extermination campaign which continued until 1908.

The German colonization of South-West Africa began in 1883, two years before the official Partition of Africa, when settlers arrived and expropriated land, cattle, and water rights from local peoples, including the Hereros.  By 1903, the Herero had ceded over 50,000 square miles of land to the Germans. Some Herero resisted German settler encroachment and engaged in periodic battles with the settlers. In one of the largest of these battles, the Herero led Samuel Maharere, killed about 100 German soldiers and farmers near the small northern town of Okahandja.

The Okahandja deaths were used by Imperial Germany as a pretext to initiate the military occupation of all of South-West Africa. Fourteen thousand troops were dispatched to the German colony under the leadership of Lieutenant General Adrian Dietrich Lothar von Trotha. This proved to be the costliest military campaign prior to World War I ever undertaken by Germany.

By the time the first German troops under von Trotha arrived, the Herero had moved inland away from German settler areas.  They considered their conflict with the Germans to be over and were now waiting under Maharero to begin a dialogue for peace.  

In the spring of 1904, nearly 8,000 Herero had gathered on the Plateau of Waterberg at the last big waterhole before the Omaheke Desert, expecting to engage in land rights negotiation with von Trotha. Instead, German military forces, on August 11, 1904 surrounded the Hereros forcing them to flee down a dried river bed into the Omaheke Desert.  Those not killed by pursuing soldiers perished by thirst.  

The German military then constructed a 200 mile fence locking the