Bismarck famously refused to engage in colonialism, only to do an about-face in the 1880s to create the third-largest colonial empire of the world. It didn’t do much good. A drain financially, utterly indefensible and diplomatically a heavy burden, it weakened Germany, rather than strengthening it. Nor did it bring any good to the colonized; rather the opposite. The first German genocide was perpetrated on Namibian soil, and it would not be the last. Listen to us discussing this dark topic of history.