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The fate of Hitler’s Black victims–whether Afro-German or African-American soldiers and citizens–is often overlooked in studies of World War II.  The genocide of six million Jews is the central tragedy of the Holocaust and more recent studies point to the persecution of the disabled and homosexuals. Yet there is much more to be learned about Nazism from research on Nazi racial policies, particularly regarding Afro-Germans.  Racial prejudices in Germany grew dramatically after World War I, as did anti-Semitism. Those who had lived in German colonies in Africa lost their positions under the 1919 Treaty of Versailles and brought back racist ideologies. Racial hysteria erupted with the occupation of the Rhineland by African and South Asian soldiers in the French colonial army, who were enforcing the reparations. The Nazis tragically built on this pre-existing German and Anglo-Saxon fear, distrust, and hatred of Blacks to justify even greater persecution.  By 1937, the sterilization of and then murder of hundreds of Afro-Germans, as well as black soldiers, became an important, tragic, and still misunderstood component of Nazi policy.

 

The “Black Horror: on the Rhine: German and U.S. Race Propaganda

Interracial relationships between German women in the Rhineland and Senegalese or other African soldiers from the French army led to the birth of several hundred mixed-race Afro-German children. These families and their children brought a new identity to interwar Germany.

However, some Germans, as well as Americans and British journalists and activists, used these relationships for their racist propaganda. They made films (such as “Black Horror on the Rhine”) and posters depicting Black soldiers as rapists who were a threat to the “purity” of white women and carriers of deadly venereal diseases. This racist propaganda was amplified by racist white Americans, as had been the case with the 1915 film Birth Of A Nation. That film was shown by the racist President Woodrow Wilson in the White House during his presidency and led to a rebirth of the KKK. White American racists influenced German and Nazi scientists, politicians, and others, and vice versa. America’s one-drop rule and laws against intermarriage between the races influenced the Nazis when they drafted the Nuremberg Laws (German laws that discriminated against Blacks, Jews, and other minorities). Additionally, Hitler blamed the Jews for African soldiers being stationed and reproducing in Germany with German women. Afro-German children who were a product of these relationships, were referred to as “Rhineland Bastards’’ and were seen as a threat to the “racial purity” of Germany. 

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Afro-German during the Third Reich. Photo: Propaganda-Pravada.

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Click the link below for the article:

https://wagner.edu

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