1 00:01:42,590 --> 00:01:45,380 Since its first appearance in East Africa, 2 00:01:45,720 --> 00:01:50,390 the human species has been on a long migration first to Asia 3 00:01:50,470 --> 00:01:52,390 and then to central Europe. 4 00:01:54,520 --> 00:01:58,310 This process, lasting for multiple thousands of years, 5 00:01:58,390 --> 00:02:01,730 can be considered as the premise of globalization. 6 00:02:03,610 --> 00:02:04,980 On these roads, 7 00:02:05,070 --> 00:02:09,450 the circulation of the most vital and decisive commodities would permit 8 00:02:09,530 --> 00:02:13,740 the survival of the human race and its adaptation on the planet. 9 00:02:15,540 --> 00:02:18,410 And along these roads, for better or worse, 10 00:02:18,500 --> 00:02:20,830 silk of course would circulate, 11 00:02:20,920 --> 00:02:23,750 but also religion, language, refugees, 12 00:02:23,840 --> 00:02:27,380 artists, technology and pandemics. 13 00:02:33,680 --> 00:02:37,270 People create families, tribes, nations. 14 00:02:37,810 --> 00:02:40,560 Sometimes, they need to protect the family, 15 00:02:40,650 --> 00:02:44,650 defend the tribe, increase the nation's resources. 16 00:02:44,730 --> 00:02:47,610 Sometimes it's just about surviving. 17 00:02:47,820 --> 00:02:50,780 Other times, it's for the wrong reasons. 18 00:02:51,200 --> 00:02:54,080 But, whether for protection or conquest, 19 00:02:54,160 --> 00:02:56,080 for preservation or profit, 20 00:02:56,160 --> 00:02:59,750 these acts might require being armed. 21 00:02:59,830 --> 00:03:02,670 And over the centuries, we lost our purpose, 22 00:03:02,750 --> 00:03:04,670 and then our bearings. 23 00:03:18,470 --> 00:03:23,060 EXTERMINATE ALL THE BRUTES 24 00:03:39,040 --> 00:03:43,420 Part III KILLING AT A DISTANCE 25 00:03:44,330 --> 00:03:46,000 OR... 26 00:03:49,340 --> 00:03:52,260 HOW I THOROUGHLY ENJOYED THE OUTING 27 00:03:55,890 --> 00:03:58,810 At the beginning, the very powerful Moguls, 28 00:03:58,890 --> 00:04:02,690 whose empire was founded in 1526, in India, 29 00:04:02,770 --> 00:04:05,940 were more developed than any European state. 30 00:04:07,150 --> 00:04:10,820 But they had no ships able to withstand artillery fire 31 00:04:10,900 --> 00:04:12,650 or carry heavy guns. 32 00:04:13,030 --> 00:04:15,360 Instead of building up their own fleet, 33 00:04:15,450 --> 00:04:20,450 the Moguls chose to purchase defense services from these European states. 34 00:04:22,370 --> 00:04:26,290 This extremely lucrative commerce would lead to the creation 35 00:04:26,380 --> 00:04:29,590 of the first multinational corporations ever. 36 00:04:30,210 --> 00:04:34,800 The British East India Company and The Dutch East India Company. 37 00:04:36,180 --> 00:04:39,930 Meanwhile the Chinese had already discovered gunpowder 38 00:04:40,010 --> 00:04:44,560 and had already cast the first cannon in the mid thirteenth century. 39 00:04:46,350 --> 00:04:49,150 But they felt so safe in their part of the world 40 00:04:49,230 --> 00:04:53,320 that they refrained from participating in the naval arms race. 41 00:04:55,570 --> 00:05:00,330 So, the backward and poorly resourced Europe of the sixteenth century 42 00:05:00,410 --> 00:05:03,620 would acquire a monopoly on ocean-traveling ships 43 00:05:03,700 --> 00:05:07,000 with guns capable of spreading death and destruction 44 00:05:07,080 --> 00:05:09,340 across huge distances. 45 00:05:10,090 --> 00:05:13,550 Europeans became the masters of cannons that killed 46 00:05:13,630 --> 00:05:17,180 long before the weapons of their opponents could reach them. 47 00:05:23,020 --> 00:05:27,810 The art of killing at a distance became a European specialty. 48 00:05:28,600 --> 00:05:31,400 Meanwhile, in the so-called Third World, 49 00:05:31,480 --> 00:05:35,820 small arms were still able to measure up to those in Europe. 50 00:05:36,360 --> 00:05:38,780 The standard weapon was a muzzle-loaded, 51 00:05:38,860 --> 00:05:41,370 smooth-bored flintlock musket, 52 00:05:41,450 --> 00:05:45,710 which was also manufactured by village blacksmiths in Africa. 53 00:05:45,790 --> 00:05:49,250 But these weapons were slow and difficult to handle. 54 00:05:49,330 --> 00:05:53,880 They emitted puffs of smoke, that revealed where the marksman was. 55 00:05:53,960 --> 00:05:58,550 To say nothing of the fact that he also had to stand up while reloading. 56 00:06:00,010 --> 00:06:01,800 The musket was a frightening weapon 57 00:06:01,930 --> 00:06:04,310 for those who heard it for the first time. 58 00:06:04,720 --> 00:06:07,600 But its range was only a hundred yards. 59 00:06:08,350 --> 00:06:12,440 So the colonial wars of the first half of the nineteenth century 60 00:06:12,730 --> 00:06:15,110 were lengthy and expensive. 61 00:06:16,940 --> 00:06:22,200 Prussia replaced its muzzle loaders with the breech-loaded Dreyse rifle. 62 00:06:22,780 --> 00:06:26,290 This was tested for the first time in 1866 63 00:06:26,370 --> 00:06:30,210 in the Austro-Prussian war over hegemony in Germany. 64 00:06:32,080 --> 00:06:35,300 In 1884, Hiram Stevens Maxim, 65 00:06:35,380 --> 00:06:39,970 who also invented the mouse trap, manufactured an automatic weapon 66 00:06:40,050 --> 00:06:43,930 that was light to carry and fired nine rounds per second. 67 00:06:45,770 --> 00:06:49,890 It was used by the Germans in East Africa in 1888 68 00:06:50,060 --> 00:06:54,570 and by the British in 1893 during the first Matabele War. 69 00:06:55,440 --> 00:06:58,400 At the same time, steel had become so cheap, 70 00:06:58,490 --> 00:07:02,620 it could be used for the manufacture of arms on a large scale. 71 00:07:03,530 --> 00:07:07,620 In Africa and Asia local smiths could no longer make copies 72 00:07:07,700 --> 00:07:10,330 of the new weapons as they did not have access 73 00:07:10,410 --> 00:07:13,210 to industrially-manufactured steel. 74 00:07:13,670 --> 00:07:18,380 At the end of the 1890s, the revolution of the rifle was complete. 75 00:07:18,630 --> 00:07:23,510 All European infantrymen could now fire lying down without being spotted, 76 00:07:23,590 --> 00:07:27,260 in all weathers, fifteen shots in as many seconds, 77 00:07:27,350 --> 00:07:30,680 at targets up to a distance of a thousand yards, 78 00:07:30,770 --> 00:07:34,560 confirming the myth of the white man's invincibility. 79 00:07:41,280 --> 00:07:44,620 Unfortunately, their bullets were not always efficient 80 00:07:44,700 --> 00:07:47,450 against "the savages and fanatical tribesmen", 81 00:07:47,540 --> 00:07:51,870 as they called them, for they often continued their charges 82 00:07:51,960 --> 00:07:55,080 even after being hit four or five times. 83 00:07:56,290 --> 00:08:00,090 The answer was the dumdum bullet, or expanding bullet, 84 00:08:00,170 --> 00:08:04,050 named after the factory in Dum Dum outside Calcutta. 85 00:08:04,430 --> 00:08:08,350 The lead core of the dumdum bullet explodes the casing, 86 00:08:08,430 --> 00:08:12,230 causing large painful wounds that do not heal well. 87 00:08:12,690 --> 00:08:16,190 The use of dumdum bullets between "civilized states" 88 00:08:16,310 --> 00:08:18,520 would soon be prohibited. 89 00:08:18,940 --> 00:08:21,900 They were to be reserved for big-game hunting 90 00:08:22,030 --> 00:08:25,910 and non-white unarmed populations in colonial wars. 91 00:08:29,830 --> 00:08:32,410 At Omdurman, in 1898, 92 00:08:32,500 --> 00:08:35,210 the whole new European arsenal was tested 93 00:08:35,290 --> 00:08:39,210 against a numerically superior and very determined enemy. 94 00:08:41,170 --> 00:08:43,840 One of the most cheerful depicters of war, 95 00:08:43,920 --> 00:08:48,220 Winston Churchill, later winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, 96 00:08:48,720 --> 00:08:52,020 was the war correspondent of The Morning Post. 97 00:08:57,440 --> 00:09:01,860 "Nothing like the battle of Omdurman will ever be seen again," 98 00:09:02,190 --> 00:09:06,160 wrote Churchill in a book published after the experience. 99 00:09:07,200 --> 00:09:12,120 "It was the last link in the long chain of those spectacular conflicts" 100 00:09:12,200 --> 00:09:16,580 "whose vivid and majestic splendor has done so much to invest war" 101 00:09:16,710 --> 00:09:18,580 "with glamour." 102 00:09:19,170 --> 00:09:24,210 "This kind of war was full of fascinating thrills", he wrote. 103 00:09:25,590 --> 00:09:30,890 "The morning of September 2, 1898, the following occurred." 104 00:09:35,350 --> 00:09:38,560 "The white flags were nearly over the crest." 105 00:09:38,730 --> 00:09:42,900 "In another minute, they would become visible to the batteries." 106 00:09:43,530 --> 00:09:47,030 "Did they realize what would come to meet them?" 107 00:09:48,530 --> 00:09:50,530 "They were in a dense mass," 108 00:09:50,620 --> 00:09:55,450 "2800 yards from the 32nd Field Battery and the gunboats." 109 00:09:56,710 --> 00:10:01,210 "The ranges were known. It was a matter of machinery..." 110 00:10:01,750 --> 00:10:05,550 "The mind was fascinated by the impending horror." 111 00:10:05,630 --> 00:10:07,970 "I could see it coming. In a few seconds," 112 00:10:08,050 --> 00:10:11,640 "swift destruction would rush on these brave men." 113 00:10:15,390 --> 00:10:20,020 "They topped the crest and drew out into full view of the whole army." 114 00:10:20,100 --> 00:10:23,520 "Their white banners made them conspicuous above all." 115 00:10:25,070 --> 00:10:27,190 "As they saw the camp of their enemies," 116 00:10:27,280 --> 00:10:31,200 "they discharged their rifles with a great roar of musketry" 117 00:10:31,280 --> 00:10:33,280 "and quickened their pace." 118 00:10:34,280 --> 00:10:35,950 "It was a terrible sight" 119 00:10:36,040 --> 00:10:38,660 "for as yet they had not hurt us at all," 120 00:10:38,750 --> 00:10:42,710 "and it seemed an unfair advantage to strike thus cruelly" 121 00:10:42,790 --> 00:10:44,840 "when they could not reply." 122 00:10:50,260 --> 00:10:55,060 Churchill found the enemy's plan of attack wise and well thought-out, 123 00:10:55,720 --> 00:10:57,930 except for one vital point. 124 00:10:58,180 --> 00:11:00,850 It was based on a fatal underestimation 125 00:11:00,940 --> 00:11:03,860 of the effectiveness of modern weapons. 126 00:11:05,360 --> 00:11:07,320 Within the space of five hours, 127 00:11:07,400 --> 00:11:11,070 the strongest and best-armed savage army yet arrayed 128 00:11:11,150 --> 00:11:15,370 against a modern European power had been destroyed and dispersed, 129 00:11:15,450 --> 00:11:17,200 with hardly any difficulty, 130 00:11:17,290 --> 00:11:22,830 comparatively small risk, and insignificant loss to the victors. 131 00:11:23,290 --> 00:11:26,000 Thus, ended the battle of Omdurman, 132 00:11:26,090 --> 00:11:29,840 the most striking triumph ever gained by the arms of science 133 00:11:29,920 --> 00:11:32,800 over barbarians, wrote Churchill. 134 00:11:33,300 --> 00:11:37,350 At Omdurman, no British soldier expected to be killed, 135 00:11:37,430 --> 00:11:42,060 for this was only a sporting element in a splendid game. 136 00:11:43,480 --> 00:11:47,940 The industrial development of firearms was playing an important role 137 00:11:48,030 --> 00:11:50,570 in US colonization as well. 138 00:11:50,650 --> 00:11:54,410 As a war president, George Washington thought it unreasonable 139 00:11:54,490 --> 00:11:56,660 to rely on foreign weapons. 140 00:11:56,950 --> 00:12:01,040 With generous start-up funds, lucrative long term contracts, 141 00:12:01,120 --> 00:12:03,540 and heavy tariffs on foreign imports, 142 00:12:03,620 --> 00:12:06,920 he literally jump-started the US arms industry 143 00:12:07,000 --> 00:12:10,670 into becoming the world's first arms manufacturer. 144 00:12:14,430 --> 00:12:18,100 The very first corporation established by the United States 145 00:12:18,180 --> 00:12:21,100 was the Springfield Armory in western Massachusetts, 146 00:12:21,180 --> 00:12:24,100 founded in 1777. 147 00:12:24,810 --> 00:12:28,650 It soon introduced standardized, interchangeable parts 148 00:12:28,730 --> 00:12:30,440 and assembly-line production, 149 00:12:30,530 --> 00:12:34,910 key factors in the takeoff of the industrial revolution in the US 150 00:12:34,990 --> 00:12:38,660 and its establishment as a capitalist, imperialist state. 151 00:12:41,580 --> 00:12:44,830 And having more arms allows more expansion. 152 00:12:45,120 --> 00:12:47,750 More expansion means more wars, 153 00:12:48,000 --> 00:12:50,340 for which you then need more arms. 154 00:12:50,670 --> 00:12:53,260 A profitable chicken and egg bonanza, 155 00:12:53,340 --> 00:12:57,390 in a totally incestuous relationship between military industry 156 00:12:57,470 --> 00:12:59,180 and governments. 157 00:13:41,970 --> 00:13:45,770 The so-called Monroe Doctrine became the order of the day. 158 00:13:46,180 --> 00:13:49,810 At its core, in 1850, it was a mere commitment 159 00:13:49,900 --> 00:13:52,900 to keep the Americas North and South safe 160 00:13:52,980 --> 00:13:55,900 from European colonizing ambitions. 161 00:13:56,860 --> 00:14:00,030 Over the years, from President Theodore Roosevelt 162 00:14:00,120 --> 00:14:02,530 to John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan, 163 00:14:02,620 --> 00:14:05,290 the doctrine came to cover any perceived threat 164 00:14:05,370 --> 00:14:08,460 to US interests around the world. 165 00:14:09,790 --> 00:14:13,040 Overseas domination became the goal. 166 00:14:17,630 --> 00:14:22,050 As reverend Josiah Strong argued in 1885 167 00:14:22,140 --> 00:14:25,220 in his best-selling book "Our Country", 168 00:14:25,310 --> 00:14:29,810 "as a superior race, the US had a divine responsibility" 169 00:14:29,900 --> 00:14:32,360 "to control the world." 170 00:14:44,660 --> 00:14:47,200 There is something we need to talk about, 171 00:14:47,410 --> 00:14:49,750 something that keeps bothering me 172 00:14:49,830 --> 00:14:53,080 and that we cannot leave out of the present story. 173 00:14:53,500 --> 00:14:57,510 Especially because it represents, in a troublesome way, 174 00:14:57,590 --> 00:14:59,760 the symbol of all evil. 175 00:15:00,550 --> 00:15:01,930 It is something odd, 176 00:15:02,140 --> 00:15:07,220 hidden deep behind two words: Hiroshima, Nagasaki. 177 00:15:08,520 --> 00:15:11,690 It was said that it was a war against fascism. 178 00:15:11,770 --> 00:15:15,860 It was said that it was to prevent further American deaths. 179 00:15:15,940 --> 00:15:21,280 But hundreds of thousands died. The accounting is irrefutable. 180 00:15:22,570 --> 00:15:27,160 In a chess game, the objective is to checkmate the opponent's king. 181 00:15:27,240 --> 00:15:30,250 All other pieces then become collateral. 182 00:15:30,620 --> 00:15:32,670 Their respective value depends 183 00:15:32,790 --> 00:15:36,540 on the strategic value you assign to them. 184 00:15:36,920 --> 00:15:40,010 In the present case, the King is an emperor. 185 00:15:40,090 --> 00:15:43,550 And Japanese deaths will provide the collateral. 186 00:15:43,970 --> 00:15:45,550 Shock and awe. 187 00:15:45,640 --> 00:15:49,220 A massacre determined by an algorithm. 188 00:15:50,350 --> 00:15:54,850 It came at 8 o'clock on August 6th 1945. 189 00:15:55,310 --> 00:15:59,860 Nobody was expecting it. They were pawns in a sordid game. 190 00:16:00,940 --> 00:16:04,950 Killing at a distance had just taken on a new meaning. 191 00:16:05,280 --> 00:16:09,160 No explanation required. No cries tolerated. 192 00:16:09,240 --> 00:16:12,910 No pity. Surrender or death at best. 193 00:16:31,220 --> 00:16:34,230 An endless wasteland of dead people. 194 00:16:35,810 --> 00:16:39,940 For it is a massacre, not a heroic act. 195 00:16:40,730 --> 00:16:43,990 Why wasn't it ever called a war crime? 196 00:16:44,780 --> 00:16:47,450 Is it because those who dropped the bombs 197 00:16:47,530 --> 00:16:50,620 are those who got to name the deed? 198 00:16:52,450 --> 00:16:55,580 Naming is power, said Trouillot. 199 00:17:04,840 --> 00:17:09,600 Two days after the bombing of Nagasaki, President Truman said: 200 00:17:10,220 --> 00:17:13,430 "The only language they seem to understand" 201 00:17:13,520 --> 00:17:16,140 "is the one we used to bomb them." 202 00:17:16,730 --> 00:17:21,070 "When dealing with an animal, treat it like an animal." 203 00:17:21,980 --> 00:17:26,320 "It's totally unfortunate, but it's still the truth." 204 00:17:28,110 --> 00:17:31,030 Indeed, there is no more to say. 205 00:17:31,530 --> 00:17:34,620 We know now what the task truly is, 206 00:17:35,080 --> 00:17:38,540 for Kurtz in Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness", 207 00:17:38,630 --> 00:17:41,460 as well as at the battle of Omdurman: 208 00:17:41,880 --> 00:17:44,920 "Exterminate all the brutes." 209 00:17:45,550 --> 00:17:47,090 Take the cup! 210 00:17:47,380 --> 00:17:51,640 OK, great! Why don't you take off your shirt? 211 00:17:52,060 --> 00:17:57,520 Not you, Henry! The young man. Can you translate for him? 212 00:17:58,350 --> 00:18:03,190 Good. Make him look more natural. Yeah, native, blending in. 213 00:18:03,570 --> 00:18:04,820 You know what I mean? 214 00:18:05,690 --> 00:18:08,360 Okay. Change position. 215 00:18:09,450 --> 00:18:12,620 Really? You want to just lay down like this? 216 00:18:12,700 --> 00:18:17,750 Well, at least take the cigar. Take the cigar! 217 00:18:18,370 --> 00:18:20,670 Okay. Boy! 218 00:18:20,750 --> 00:18:22,250 Hey you, boy! 219 00:18:22,340 --> 00:18:25,670 Look at him! Mira lo, por favor! 220 00:18:25,760 --> 00:18:28,550 Of course, I know he doesn't speak Spanish. 221 00:18:29,220 --> 00:18:32,720 Put a hand on your hip. Like this. 222 00:18:32,850 --> 00:18:35,010 You see? Perfect! 223 00:18:36,220 --> 00:18:39,520 Change position. Both of you stand up. 224 00:18:40,190 --> 00:18:42,650 Pick up the rifles. Him too. 225 00:18:42,980 --> 00:18:47,610 One each. Okay, and put the gun on your shoulder. 226 00:18:47,780 --> 00:18:49,950 Well, help him with it! Henry... 227 00:18:50,030 --> 00:18:52,490 Don't tell him, show him! 228 00:18:52,990 --> 00:18:56,120 No. You know what? Put it on the other side. 229 00:18:56,200 --> 00:18:59,710 Yeah. Now, Henry, look at the distance, 230 00:19:00,080 --> 00:19:04,290 you are looking at the Nile river over there. 231 00:19:04,710 --> 00:19:07,420 Be inspired, show some passion. 232 00:19:07,800 --> 00:19:11,090 The whole world has been waiting for you. 233 00:19:11,430 --> 00:19:14,050 That's it! Awesome! 234 00:19:16,510 --> 00:19:18,430 Yep. Classic Stanley. 235 00:19:18,680 --> 00:19:22,350 He tends to over-dramatize every so often. Can't help it. 236 00:19:23,060 --> 00:19:27,360 The man changed my name from Ndugu M'hali to Kalulu, 237 00:19:27,440 --> 00:19:29,320 because it sounded better. 238 00:19:30,190 --> 00:19:33,990 I have never told him how I enjoy his company sometimes. 239 00:19:34,320 --> 00:19:37,580 But occasionally, he can be quite a bully too. 240 00:19:38,450 --> 00:19:43,120 He brought me with him to Europe and America, as his butler, officially. 241 00:19:43,500 --> 00:19:46,090 But when alone, we were just friends. 242 00:19:46,170 --> 00:19:47,550 Go figure. 243 00:19:48,000 --> 00:19:51,510 The fearless explorer and the "Noble savage". 244 00:19:52,050 --> 00:19:55,390 That in the press he called me his "infant cannibal", 245 00:19:55,470 --> 00:19:57,600 should've tipped me off. 246 00:20:05,810 --> 00:20:08,480 I have been a good soldier all my life. 247 00:20:08,860 --> 00:20:13,860 The perfectly well-educated pupil of a Western humanistic civilization. 248 00:20:14,990 --> 00:20:18,240 I thought that to be mature was to be knowledgeable, 249 00:20:18,330 --> 00:20:21,450 smart, sophisticated, and gracious. 250 00:20:22,160 --> 00:20:27,080 I was educated to believe that some types of behavior were acceptable, 251 00:20:27,170 --> 00:20:28,880 and others were not. 252 00:20:29,210 --> 00:20:34,010 And that when I had done wrong, I had to learn from that experience. 253 00:20:35,130 --> 00:20:38,050 My parents taught me that, as a black person, 254 00:20:38,140 --> 00:20:42,020 I should never find myself on the wrong side of the tracks. 255 00:20:42,640 --> 00:20:44,690 I learned to behave. 256 00:20:44,770 --> 00:20:48,440 I learned to be sociable, presentable, congenial. 257 00:20:48,520 --> 00:20:54,240 I had to negotiate daily with an intimate, unnamed, and vulgar enemy, 258 00:20:54,320 --> 00:20:57,620 infatuated with a superiority complex, 259 00:20:57,700 --> 00:21:00,490 let's say, like Frank T.J. Mackey. 260 00:21:00,870 --> 00:21:03,750 I will not apologize for what I need. 261 00:21:03,830 --> 00:21:05,790 Or Jordan Belfort. 262 00:21:10,500 --> 00:21:13,340 I have been a good soldier and a good learner. 263 00:21:13,420 --> 00:21:16,840 But I could never really fathom what it actually means 264 00:21:16,930 --> 00:21:18,340 to be "superior", 265 00:21:18,430 --> 00:21:22,310 logically degrading everybody else as "inferior". 266 00:21:22,600 --> 00:21:26,190 A singular assumption, to say the least. 267 00:21:27,140 --> 00:21:31,110 Visiting Europe, I discovered people who genuinely thought 268 00:21:31,190 --> 00:21:34,780 and were naively convinced that they embodied the world. 269 00:21:35,150 --> 00:21:36,570 The whole world. 270 00:21:36,650 --> 00:21:40,280 And in that world, I was assigned the role of a footnote. 271 00:21:40,370 --> 00:21:44,750 Or at best, like in most Hollywood movies, a supporting role 272 00:21:44,830 --> 00:21:49,330 with guarantied death and careless disposal by some wild beast, 273 00:21:49,420 --> 00:21:51,790 sometime before the third act. 274 00:21:53,250 --> 00:21:54,800 Go back! 275 00:21:55,380 --> 00:21:57,090 Back across the log! 276 00:21:57,170 --> 00:21:59,510 Get Jimmy outta here! 277 00:22:00,050 --> 00:22:01,680 - No! - Gotta run, Jimmy! 278 00:22:03,100 --> 00:22:04,390 Run! 279 00:22:19,860 --> 00:22:23,700 Joseph Conrad's book "Heart of Darkness" was influenced 280 00:22:23,830 --> 00:22:25,910 by the battle of Omdurman. 281 00:22:27,580 --> 00:22:30,670 Conrad starts the novel with what has been called 282 00:22:30,750 --> 00:22:34,090 the toolbox of imperialism, which involves 283 00:22:34,170 --> 00:22:37,090 the ship's guns that fire on a continent, 284 00:22:37,300 --> 00:22:41,260 the railway that facilitates the plundering of the continent, 285 00:22:41,590 --> 00:22:45,140 the river steamer that carries Europeans and their weapons 286 00:22:45,220 --> 00:22:47,390 into the heart of the continent. 287 00:23:12,920 --> 00:23:17,000 This new era in the history of imperialism also became 288 00:23:17,130 --> 00:23:19,970 a new era in the history of racism. 289 00:23:21,050 --> 00:23:24,680 Europeans started mistaking military superiority 290 00:23:24,760 --> 00:23:28,310 for intellectual and even biological superiority. 291 00:23:30,810 --> 00:23:33,730 That's when things turned nasty. 292 00:23:34,270 --> 00:23:36,570 No one had to pretend anymore. 293 00:23:40,990 --> 00:23:43,860 Please, look over here! 294 00:23:44,780 --> 00:23:49,160 You there! Could you move a bit to the right? 295 00:23:50,290 --> 00:23:54,460 And you! Not you! Don't move. You, a little to the left. 296 00:23:55,750 --> 00:23:58,210 Now, give him a hand. 297 00:23:59,300 --> 00:24:02,380 No! You give him "A" hand, I said! 298 00:24:02,880 --> 00:24:08,720 Well, then, you take another hand and you, this one, hand and hand. 299 00:24:10,390 --> 00:24:15,600 Excellent! OK, so the big guy, with the towel head, 300 00:24:15,690 --> 00:24:18,610 you can just move back a bit. 301 00:24:19,440 --> 00:24:20,860 Perfect. 302 00:24:21,530 --> 00:24:24,030 Excellent. I think that's it. 303 00:24:25,820 --> 00:24:27,490 I like that. 304 00:24:30,910 --> 00:24:33,290 Can you just uncross your arms, please? 305 00:24:33,910 --> 00:24:36,540 - Why? - You want to know why? 306 00:24:36,630 --> 00:24:39,500 It makes you look defiant. That's why. 307 00:24:40,750 --> 00:24:42,420 I'm just saying. 308 00:24:43,380 --> 00:24:45,680 Keep it that way, for all I care. 309 00:25:17,920 --> 00:25:22,590 "Does the West have the will to survive?", asked a US president. 310 00:25:24,010 --> 00:25:26,590 The question itself is perplexing. 311 00:25:26,970 --> 00:25:31,390 Clearly, I am not included in his concept of the West. 312 00:25:33,350 --> 00:25:37,690 Unquestionably, to belong to the "right civilization" does bear 313 00:25:37,770 --> 00:25:39,980 some entitlements. 314 00:25:41,270 --> 00:25:44,360 I might be wary of white institutions in general, 315 00:25:44,530 --> 00:25:47,200 and of the religious ones in particular, 316 00:25:47,320 --> 00:25:52,450 but for some reasons I was attracted to the idea of joining the Boy Scouts. 317 00:25:54,700 --> 00:25:57,620 My best friend and neighbor in Leopoldville, 318 00:25:57,710 --> 00:26:01,420 the son of a French doctor, was a boy scout. 319 00:26:02,540 --> 00:26:05,420 Robert knew all the regulatory moves. 320 00:26:05,510 --> 00:26:10,050 He even had a code name, Red Raven. Because he had red hair. 321 00:26:10,510 --> 00:26:15,180 He taught me the signs, the knots, and even tightly kept secrets. 322 00:26:15,270 --> 00:26:19,270 The idea of a brotherhood of the like-minded captivated me. 323 00:26:19,350 --> 00:26:23,570 But not as much as the idea of owning a multi-task pocket knife 324 00:26:23,650 --> 00:26:27,690 and being allowed to dare make unsafe fires in the woods. 325 00:26:29,240 --> 00:26:32,660 Baden-Powell is the founder of the Boy Scouts. 326 00:26:32,740 --> 00:26:36,200 During the 2nd Ashanti War in 1896, 327 00:26:36,290 --> 00:26:39,710 two days march away from the capital, Kumasi, 328 00:26:39,790 --> 00:26:42,210 as the commander of the advance troop, 329 00:26:42,290 --> 00:26:46,630 he received an envoy offering unconditional surrender. 330 00:26:46,710 --> 00:26:52,470 To his disappointment, he did not have to fire a single shot at the natives. 331 00:26:53,640 --> 00:26:55,600 To get hostilities going, 332 00:26:55,680 --> 00:26:59,230 the British then planned extreme provocations. 333 00:26:59,690 --> 00:27:01,940 They arrested the king of Ashanti, 334 00:27:02,150 --> 00:27:05,610 King Prempeh, together with his whole family. 335 00:27:07,570 --> 00:27:11,490 The king and his mother were forced to crawl on all fours 336 00:27:11,570 --> 00:27:16,030 up to the British officers sitting on crates of biscuit tins, 337 00:27:16,120 --> 00:27:19,450 to demonstrate their subjugation. 338 00:27:20,410 --> 00:27:22,750 But still, this time as well, 339 00:27:22,830 --> 00:27:26,630 the British unfortunately found no use for their weapons. 340 00:27:26,710 --> 00:27:29,590 Baden-Powell writes to his mother: 341 00:27:29,670 --> 00:27:32,220 "I thoroughly enjoyed the outing," 342 00:27:32,300 --> 00:27:34,430 "except for the want of a fight," 343 00:27:34,510 --> 00:27:39,180 "which I fear will preclude our getting any medals or decoration." 344 00:31:32,960 --> 00:31:36,040 This is young and ambitious Georges Cuvier. 345 00:31:37,050 --> 00:31:42,760 On January 27, 1796, Georges has just arrived in Paris 346 00:31:42,840 --> 00:31:47,430 to hold his first lecture at the newly opened Institut National de France. 347 00:31:47,850 --> 00:31:49,350 He is 26. 348 00:31:52,730 --> 00:31:54,600 Cuvier was sensational. 349 00:31:54,940 --> 00:31:57,860 He spoke of the mammoth and the mastodon. 350 00:31:58,230 --> 00:32:03,030 Remnants of these huge elephantine animals had recently been found 351 00:32:03,110 --> 00:32:05,870 in Siberia and North America. 352 00:32:06,740 --> 00:32:10,660 Cuvier demonstrated that they did not belong to the same species 353 00:32:10,750 --> 00:32:13,790 as either the Indian or the African elephant, 354 00:32:13,870 --> 00:32:18,210 but constituted species of their own, now extinct. 355 00:32:20,210 --> 00:32:22,090 Now extinct. 356 00:32:22,590 --> 00:32:26,300 Those were the two words that horrified the listeners. 357 00:32:26,640 --> 00:32:28,850 Because in the eighteenth century, 358 00:32:28,930 --> 00:32:31,720 people still believed in a ready-made universe 359 00:32:31,810 --> 00:32:33,770 to which nothing could be added. 360 00:32:33,980 --> 00:32:38,310 And perhaps even more important to mankind's peace of mind, 361 00:32:38,400 --> 00:32:40,900 nothing could be subtracted from it. 362 00:32:42,360 --> 00:32:45,410 All of God's creatures, once created, 363 00:32:45,490 --> 00:32:48,160 could not disappear from his universe. 364 00:32:49,830 --> 00:32:53,120 "What then was the explanation for these gigantic bones" 365 00:32:53,200 --> 00:32:58,330 "and strange animal-like stones that had puzzled man since antiquity", 366 00:32:58,420 --> 00:33:00,210 asked Cuvier. 367 00:33:01,340 --> 00:33:05,340 Cuvier's idea, that there could be species that had died out, 368 00:33:05,430 --> 00:33:07,510 gave rise to such resistance 369 00:33:07,590 --> 00:33:11,100 that it took over a hundred years to become accepted. 370 00:33:11,680 --> 00:33:15,980 But how they had died out and why, he did not explain. 371 00:33:23,070 --> 00:33:27,950 In 1850, the great liberal philosopher Herbert Spencer, 372 00:33:28,030 --> 00:33:31,080 yes, that Spencer, wrote: 373 00:33:31,490 --> 00:33:34,370 "Imperialism has served civilization" 374 00:33:34,450 --> 00:33:37,750 "by clearing the inferior races off the Earth." 375 00:33:39,710 --> 00:33:44,210 "The forces which are working out the great scheme of perfect happiness," 376 00:33:44,300 --> 00:33:47,380 "taking no account of incidental suffering," 377 00:33:47,470 --> 00:33:52,220 "exterminate such sections of mankind as stand in their way." 378 00:33:52,310 --> 00:33:56,560 "Be he human or be he brute, the hindrance must be got rid of." 379 00:33:57,850 --> 00:34:02,190 Here the human being was expressly placed on an equal footing 380 00:34:02,270 --> 00:34:05,320 with the animal, as an object for extermination. 381 00:34:07,610 --> 00:34:11,200 One could take Spencer's fantasies of annihilation 382 00:34:11,280 --> 00:34:13,200 as personal eccentricities, 383 00:34:13,280 --> 00:34:18,290 explained perhaps by the fact that all Spencer's siblings had died 384 00:34:18,370 --> 00:34:20,370 when he was a child. 385 00:34:28,590 --> 00:34:31,800 A calm and comforting conclusion. 386 00:34:34,220 --> 00:34:36,100 Enter Robert Knox. 387 00:34:36,680 --> 00:34:40,770 Knox had studied comparative anatomy with Cuvier in Paris. 388 00:34:41,190 --> 00:34:45,610 He was a Scot, had served as an army doctor in South Africa, 389 00:34:45,690 --> 00:34:49,360 and had founded a school of anatomy in Edinburgh. 390 00:34:50,070 --> 00:34:52,910 Can the dark races become civilized? 391 00:34:52,990 --> 00:34:55,790 "I should say not," says Knox. 392 00:34:56,330 --> 00:34:59,620 "All we know, is that since the beginning of history," 393 00:34:59,710 --> 00:35:04,380 "the dark races have been the slaves of those lighter-skinned." 394 00:35:05,670 --> 00:35:10,880 Of course, what he meant exactly by "dark race" is not easy to answer. 395 00:35:11,510 --> 00:35:14,760 Are the Jews a dark race? The Gypsies? 396 00:35:14,850 --> 00:35:17,350 The Chinese? One could ask. 397 00:35:47,210 --> 00:35:50,720 "I feel disposed to think that there must be a physical," 398 00:35:50,800 --> 00:35:55,300 "and consequently, a psychological inferiority in the dark races", 399 00:35:55,390 --> 00:35:56,850 asserted Knox. 400 00:35:56,930 --> 00:36:01,060 "The texture of the brain is, I think, generally darker," 401 00:36:01,140 --> 00:36:03,890 "and the white part more strongly fibrous," 402 00:36:03,980 --> 00:36:07,400 "but I speak from extremely limited experience." 403 00:36:08,440 --> 00:36:11,780 Indeed, Knox says that he had done an autopsy 404 00:36:11,860 --> 00:36:13,990 on only one colored person, 405 00:36:14,070 --> 00:36:18,660 which somehow does demonstrate the limitations of his experiments. 406 00:36:21,200 --> 00:36:24,080 Thomas Jefferson found it inconceivable 407 00:36:24,170 --> 00:36:27,880 that one single species could disappear from nature. 408 00:36:32,760 --> 00:36:38,760 But nevertheless, more than 99 percent of all species have already died out. 409 00:36:42,270 --> 00:36:47,400 Most of them in a few catastrophes that came close to wiping out all life. 410 00:37:35,320 --> 00:37:38,660 This is the scope of our story. 411 00:38:00,640 --> 00:38:03,060 As a young student, Charles Darwin, 412 00:38:03,140 --> 00:38:06,520 regarded as the father of evolutionary biology, 413 00:38:06,600 --> 00:38:09,520 heard Knox's controversial lectures. 414 00:38:09,940 --> 00:38:15,110 In his book "On the Origins of the Species," published in 1859, 415 00:38:15,190 --> 00:38:17,990 he would demonstrate that all species adapt 416 00:38:18,070 --> 00:38:21,200 to their environment through natural selection. 417 00:38:22,120 --> 00:38:27,120 Darwin argued in favor of a common origin of all human races. 418 00:38:27,830 --> 00:38:32,630 Although his thesis as such neither confirmed nor denied Knox's 419 00:38:32,710 --> 00:38:37,090 and others' ideas regarding any hierarchy within mankind, 420 00:38:37,170 --> 00:38:41,760 his theory of evolution was clearly useful to the racists. 421 00:38:42,340 --> 00:38:47,980 After Darwin, race became the decisive explanation in far wider circles. 422 00:38:48,930 --> 00:38:52,350 Racism was accepted and became a central element 423 00:38:52,440 --> 00:38:54,730 in British imperial ideology. 424 00:38:55,570 --> 00:39:01,030 After Darwin, it also became accepted to shrug your shoulders at genocide. 425 00:39:02,070 --> 00:39:06,450 If you were upset, you were just showing your lack of education. 426 00:39:07,870 --> 00:39:10,040 Genocide began to be regarded 427 00:39:10,120 --> 00:39:13,040 as the inevitable byproduct of progress. 428 00:39:13,130 --> 00:39:17,340 And prejudice against alien peoples, which had always existed, 429 00:39:17,420 --> 00:39:21,840 was now given organized form and apparent scientific validation. 430 00:39:24,180 --> 00:39:26,430 "Meanwhile," added Darwin, 431 00:39:26,890 --> 00:39:31,560 "regarding future life, each person will have to judge for himself." 432 00:39:44,740 --> 00:39:49,410 In just a few years the surface of the Earth will be quite changed. 433 00:39:50,080 --> 00:39:55,630 A new era is dawning that will multiply the undertakings of man. 434 00:39:56,290 --> 00:39:59,210 Light is consuming the darkness. 435 00:40:04,590 --> 00:40:07,850 Let me introduce to you now, my dear colleague Dr. Frederic Farrar, 436 00:40:07,930 --> 00:40:12,100 who has been recently elected a fellow at the Royal Society. 437 00:40:23,280 --> 00:40:26,240 In his major book "Systema Naturae", 438 00:40:26,780 --> 00:40:30,370 the great Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus discriminates, 439 00:40:31,160 --> 00:40:33,120 with his usual acuteness, 440 00:40:33,540 --> 00:40:36,670 the intellectual and moral characteristics 441 00:40:36,750 --> 00:40:38,590 of four great human families. 442 00:40:40,550 --> 00:40:42,130 The Homo Americanus, 443 00:40:42,550 --> 00:40:45,590 the Homo Europeus, the Homo Asiaticus, 444 00:40:46,800 --> 00:40:48,180 the Homo Afer. 445 00:40:48,430 --> 00:40:54,230 Yet, we believe that these and all other races 446 00:40:55,020 --> 00:40:58,980 may be reduced to three great classes or divisions. 447 00:41:01,280 --> 00:41:06,910 Savage, semi civilized and civilized. 448 00:41:08,200 --> 00:41:13,250 Only two races, the Aryan and the Semitic, were civilized. 449 00:41:14,910 --> 00:41:17,790 The Chinese belong to the semi civilized, 450 00:41:17,880 --> 00:41:19,920 as they had once been brilliant, 451 00:41:20,000 --> 00:41:23,630 but suffered from "arrested development". 452 00:41:25,170 --> 00:41:28,390 The savage races have always lived in the same ignorance 453 00:41:28,470 --> 00:41:30,180 and wretchedness. 454 00:41:30,260 --> 00:41:33,560 They are without a past and without a future, 455 00:41:34,730 --> 00:41:38,150 doomed, as races infinitely nobler have been before them, 456 00:41:38,230 --> 00:41:42,150 to a rapid, and inevitable extinction. 457 00:41:42,820 --> 00:41:44,610 Out of all their teeming myriads, 458 00:41:44,690 --> 00:41:48,070 never have they produced one single man 459 00:41:48,160 --> 00:41:52,330 whose name is of the slightest importance to the history of our race. 460 00:41:52,740 --> 00:41:56,660 History starts when man starts to write. 461 00:41:57,500 --> 00:42:01,080 Take a specimen from the hundred million of Africans, 462 00:42:01,170 --> 00:42:04,300 not one of the most degenerates such as the Hottentots, 463 00:42:04,380 --> 00:42:07,840 but a real, pure-blooded Negro. 464 00:42:09,720 --> 00:42:13,010 What hope was there that he could be civilized? 465 00:42:13,100 --> 00:42:17,310 How dare you think your heritage is better than mine? Asshole! 466 00:42:20,230 --> 00:42:22,860 The great majority of Negroes will go under in a decline 467 00:42:22,940 --> 00:42:24,820 from which only a few can be saved. 468 00:42:24,900 --> 00:42:27,780 - Many races have disappeared. - You are insane! 469 00:42:28,030 --> 00:42:31,240 Please, gentlemen, ladies, let's be civil. 470 00:42:31,620 --> 00:42:35,330 Show some respect. After all, it's just science. 471 00:42:35,410 --> 00:42:39,370 Fuck you. Fuck you. Two times. 472 00:42:48,510 --> 00:42:51,720 These races, the lowest types of humanity 473 00:42:51,840 --> 00:42:53,800 and presenting its most hideous features 474 00:42:53,890 --> 00:42:58,020 of moral and intellectual degradation, were doomed to go under. 475 00:42:58,180 --> 00:43:01,350 And I call them irreclaimable savages. 476 00:43:02,350 --> 00:43:04,900 Irreclaimable savages! 477 00:43:06,400 --> 00:43:09,820 Irreclaimable savages! 478 00:43:11,990 --> 00:43:15,450 What did actually happen when knowledge, industry, 479 00:43:15,530 --> 00:43:19,290 and enlightenment exterminated the inferior races? 480 00:43:19,790 --> 00:43:24,630 Darwin, who had traveled to South America in his younger years, knew. 481 00:43:26,340 --> 00:43:29,670 He had seen General Rosas' men in Argentina, 482 00:43:29,760 --> 00:43:33,140 butchering Indians, smothered in blood and vomit. 483 00:43:34,300 --> 00:43:37,010 He knew how eyes were gouged out 484 00:43:37,100 --> 00:43:42,140 when an Indian had sunk his teeth into a thumb and refused to let go, 485 00:43:43,600 --> 00:43:47,440 how women were killed, and prisoners made to talk. 486 00:43:48,820 --> 00:43:53,030 He had a name for it. He called it the "struggle for life". 487 00:44:00,910 --> 00:44:03,120 - Last name? - Trouillot. 488 00:44:07,750 --> 00:44:10,630 - First name? - Rolph-Michel. 489 00:44:39,080 --> 00:44:41,410 - Ready? - Sure. 490 00:45:03,770 --> 00:45:06,900 Like Roxanne, Michel-Rolph and Sven, 491 00:45:07,400 --> 00:45:10,230 I too have my nightmares as well. 492 00:45:22,410 --> 00:45:24,700 Churchill said after the war: 493 00:45:25,080 --> 00:45:28,630 "We are in the presence of a crime without a name." 494 00:45:29,290 --> 00:45:33,250 But Raphael Lemkin, a lawyer of Polish-Jewish descent, 495 00:45:33,630 --> 00:45:37,180 had already created that name in 1943. 496 00:45:37,630 --> 00:45:41,930 Combining the ancient Greek "genos", which means race, 497 00:45:42,010 --> 00:45:44,980 tribe, clan and the latin "cide", 498 00:45:45,060 --> 00:45:47,520 which expresses the notion of killing, 499 00:45:47,600 --> 00:45:50,940 Lemkin invented the word genocide. 500 00:45:56,740 --> 00:46:01,120 At the New York Public Library, in the Raphael Lemkin collection, 501 00:46:01,200 --> 00:46:04,910 in Reel 3, Box 2, Folder 1, 502 00:46:05,580 --> 00:46:09,750 there is a list of the world's genocides throughout history. 503 00:49:42,040 --> 00:49:47,050 "Some things are so evil that it's enough that they simply happened," 504 00:49:47,130 --> 00:49:48,720 said the man. 505 00:49:52,310 --> 00:49:56,680 "They don't need to be given a second existence by being retold." 506 00:49:57,230 --> 00:49:59,560 He took a drag on his cigarette. 507 00:49:59,900 --> 00:50:04,190 "That's what I think on some days, anyway," he went on. 508 00:50:04,730 --> 00:50:07,240 "Other days, I think the opposite." 509 00:50:10,160 --> 00:50:13,030 The past has a future we never expect. 510 00:50:38,140 --> 00:50:41,690 One of the fundamental ideas of the nineteenth century 511 00:50:41,770 --> 00:50:45,730 was that there are races, peoples, nations and tribes 512 00:50:46,070 --> 00:50:48,990 that are in the process of dying out. 513 00:50:49,360 --> 00:50:53,410 Or as the Prime Minister of England, Lord Salisbury expressed it 514 00:50:53,490 --> 00:50:57,950 in his famous speech, in Albert Hall, on May 4th, 1898: 515 00:50:59,250 --> 00:51:03,540 "One can roughly divide the nations of the world into the living" 516 00:51:03,630 --> 00:51:05,040 "and the dying." 517 00:51:05,130 --> 00:51:08,170 "The weak nations become increasingly weaker" 518 00:51:08,260 --> 00:51:10,680 "and the strong stronger." 519 00:51:10,760 --> 00:51:12,470 It was in the nature of things 520 00:51:12,550 --> 00:51:15,810 that "the living nations will fraudulently encroach" 521 00:51:15,890 --> 00:51:18,220 "on the territory of the dying". 522 00:51:20,390 --> 00:51:21,980 He spoke the truth. 523 00:51:22,140 --> 00:51:23,900 During the nineteenth century, 524 00:51:23,980 --> 00:51:28,400 Europeans had encroached on vast territories around the world. 525 00:51:29,280 --> 00:51:32,570 The word genocide had not yet been invented. 526 00:51:32,660 --> 00:51:34,620 But the matter existed. 527 00:51:35,030 --> 00:51:39,330 Joseph Conrad may not have heard Lord Salisbury's speech. 528 00:51:39,790 --> 00:51:41,210 He had no need to. 529 00:51:41,830 --> 00:51:45,710 Conrad could no more avoid hearing of the ceaseless genocide 530 00:51:45,790 --> 00:51:50,010 that marked his century than any of his contemporaries could. 531 00:51:50,840 --> 00:51:53,510 It is we who have suppressed it. 532 00:51:53,880 --> 00:51:56,050 We do not want to remember. 533 00:51:56,600 --> 00:52:01,350 We would prefer for genocide to have begun and ended with Nazism. 534 00:52:01,770 --> 00:52:04,600 This would indeed be most comforting. 535 00:52:05,440 --> 00:52:10,110 For sure the nine-year-old Adolf Hitler was not in Albert Hall either 536 00:52:10,190 --> 00:52:12,820 when Lord Salisbury was speaking. 537 00:52:13,110 --> 00:52:16,700 He had no need to. He knew it already. 538 00:52:37,640 --> 00:52:42,730 The air Hitler and all other Western people in his childhood breathed 539 00:52:42,810 --> 00:52:44,600 was soaked in the conviction 540 00:52:44,690 --> 00:52:48,980 that imperialism is a biologically necessary process which, 541 00:52:49,060 --> 00:52:51,030 according to the laws of nature, 542 00:52:51,110 --> 00:52:54,990 leads to the inevitable destruction of the lower races. 543 00:52:57,200 --> 00:53:01,290 It was a conviction that had already cost millions of human lives 544 00:53:01,370 --> 00:53:05,460 before Hitler provided his highly personal application. 545 00:53:06,330 --> 00:53:08,790 But in the mid-nineteenth century, 546 00:53:08,880 --> 00:53:12,250 the Germans had still not exterminated any people. 547 00:53:12,340 --> 00:53:15,670 So they were able to look more critically on the phenomenon 548 00:53:15,760 --> 00:53:18,050 than other Europeans did. 549 00:53:18,550 --> 00:53:21,850 In Southwest Africa in 1904, 550 00:53:21,930 --> 00:53:25,770 the Germans demonstrated that they too could master an art 551 00:53:25,850 --> 00:53:30,480 that Americans, British, and other Europeans had exercised 552 00:53:30,560 --> 00:53:33,400 all through the nineteenth century, 553 00:53:33,940 --> 00:53:38,700 the art of hastening the extermination of a people of "inferior culture". 554 00:53:42,160 --> 00:53:44,750 Following the North American example, 555 00:53:44,830 --> 00:53:48,370 the Herero people were banished to reservations 556 00:53:48,460 --> 00:53:52,290 and their grazing lands were handed over to German immigrants 557 00:53:52,380 --> 00:53:54,300 and colonial companies. 558 00:54:06,810 --> 00:54:10,730 For over two decades, their leader, Samuel Maherero, 559 00:54:10,810 --> 00:54:14,150 had signed one treaty after another with the Germans 560 00:54:14,230 --> 00:54:18,110 and ceded large areas of land to avoid war. 561 00:54:18,950 --> 00:54:21,780 But just as the Americans did not feel bound 562 00:54:21,870 --> 00:54:24,370 by their treaties with the Indians, 563 00:54:24,450 --> 00:54:28,620 the Germans did not think that as a higher race they had any need 564 00:54:28,710 --> 00:54:32,500 to abide by treaties they made with the natives. 565 00:54:33,170 --> 00:54:38,010 As in North America, the German plans for immigration presupposed 566 00:54:38,090 --> 00:54:42,390 that the natives were to be relieved of all land of any value. 567 00:54:45,010 --> 00:54:46,970 When the Hereros resisted, 568 00:54:47,060 --> 00:54:51,900 General Adolf Lebrecht von Trotha ordered their extermination. 569 00:54:51,980 --> 00:54:56,780 Every Herero found within the German borders, with or without weapons, 570 00:54:56,860 --> 00:54:58,820 was to be shot. 571 00:54:59,570 --> 00:55:02,990 But most of them died without direct violence. 572 00:55:03,320 --> 00:55:08,410 The Germans simply drove them into the desert and sealed off the border. 573 00:55:09,460 --> 00:55:12,880 One didn't yet talk about "the final solution", 574 00:55:12,960 --> 00:55:16,000 but that was what one had in mind. 575 00:55:16,420 --> 00:55:20,670 In the official account of the war, the German officers wrote: 576 00:55:21,090 --> 00:55:25,140 "The army earned the gratitude of the whole fatherland." 577 00:55:25,430 --> 00:55:27,600 "The sentence had been carried out," 578 00:55:27,680 --> 00:55:32,140 "and the Hereros had ceased to be an independent people." 579 00:55:33,980 --> 00:55:37,730 Eighty thousand human beings died in the desert. 580 00:55:38,110 --> 00:55:41,490 The few thousand left were sentenced to hard labor 581 00:55:41,570 --> 00:55:43,280 in concentration camps. 582 00:55:43,820 --> 00:55:47,990 A new concept of incarceration invented in 1896 583 00:55:48,080 --> 00:55:50,000 by the Spaniards in Cuba, 584 00:55:50,200 --> 00:55:52,290 anglicized by the Americans, 585 00:55:52,370 --> 00:55:55,210 entered German language and politics. 586 00:56:02,220 --> 00:56:07,300 Paul Rohrbach wrote in his best-seller "German Thought in the World", 587 00:56:07,390 --> 00:56:10,060 published in 1912 that: 588 00:56:10,140 --> 00:56:14,770 "Existences, be they of peoples or individuals who do not produce" 589 00:56:14,900 --> 00:56:19,110 "anything of value, cannot make any claim to the right to exist." 590 00:56:23,400 --> 00:56:28,330 We believe that married people who have transmissible diseases 591 00:56:28,780 --> 00:56:31,200 should not have children. 592 00:56:32,500 --> 00:56:38,090 No couple who has the disease of feeble-mindedness or insanity 593 00:56:38,540 --> 00:56:40,670 or epilepsy should have children. 594 00:57:27,970 --> 00:57:31,180 The over infatuation with genetic purity... 595 00:57:31,760 --> 00:57:36,520 An impressive amount of energy put into the classification of people... 596 00:57:37,980 --> 00:57:41,650 A pathological obsession for the concept of race 597 00:57:42,070 --> 00:57:45,110 that scientifically does not exist. 598 00:58:11,510 --> 00:58:13,510 Despite the careful staging, 599 00:58:13,890 --> 00:58:17,810 one gesture, an unexpected gesture of irritation, 600 00:58:18,190 --> 00:58:22,110 not foreseen by the director of this strange display, 601 00:58:22,190 --> 00:58:25,940 will betray the masquerade and restore dignity. 602 00:58:44,670 --> 00:58:49,340 What is sure, is that their way of life is threatened. 603 00:58:54,430 --> 00:58:57,520 Has he indeed any right to exist? 604 00:58:59,180 --> 00:59:00,850 Does she? 605 00:59:02,520 --> 00:59:04,190 Do they? 606 00:59:06,190 --> 00:59:08,320 But after all we know now, 607 00:59:08,530 --> 00:59:10,990 indeed, who is to judge? 608 00:59:44,400 --> 00:59:47,520 To be continued...