The German War in Southwest: On the Linkage between Colonialism and Memory after 1918

Postcolonial German writing on the former protectorate German-Southwest is integrated in a variety of ways into post-war narratives of the Weimar period: it is ideologically affiliated on the one hand to a heroic war narrative based on the tropes of betrayal and resilience, on the other hand it reaffirms a unique German relationship to colonial space, one that casts Germans as better, more deserving colonizers than the victors. The article also attempts to demonstrate how seamlessly national-socialist propaganda could build on the tropes of colonial-revisionist narratives.