Whileblack people inNazi Germany were never subject to an organized mass extermination program, as in the cases ofJews,homosexuals,Romani, andSlavs, they were stillconsidered by the Nazis to be a "non-Aryan" andinferior race. Racially discriminatory policies, such as theNuremberg Laws, were enforced against black people under supplementary decrees detailing that such laws not only applied to Jewish people, but also other certain ethnic minorities.[1] Due to theNazi Party's rhetoric and racial laws regarding black people, they experienced significant discrimination in civilian life. Under aGestapo program, an estimated 500Afro-Germans weresterilized, including children. Artistic creations by black people, such asjazz music, were subject tocensorship in Nazi Germany.
Before the events ofWorld War II, Germany struggled with the idea of African mixed-race German citizens. While interracial marriage was legal under German law at the time, beginning in 1890, some colonial officials started refusing to register them, usingeugenics arguments about the supposed inferiority of mixed-race children to support their decision.[2] By 1912, this had become official policy in many German colonies, anda debate in the Reichstag over the legality of the interracial marriage bans ensued. A major concern brought up in debate was that mixed-race children born in such marriages would have German citizenship, and could therefore return to Germany with the same rights to vote, serve in the military, and could also hold public office as full-blooded ethnic Germans.[3]
AfterWorld War I,French occupation forces in theRhineland included black troops from France's colonies in Africa, some of whom fathered children with German women. Newspaper campaigns against the use of these troops focused on these children, dubbed "Rhineland bastards", often with lurid stories of uncivilized African soldiers raping innocent German women, the so-called "Black Horror on the Rhine". In the Rhineland itself, local opinion of the troops was very different, and the soldiers were described as "courteous and often popular", possibly because French colonial soldiers harbored less ill will towards Germans than war-weary ethnic French occupiers.[4] While subsequent discussions of Afro-German children revolved around these "Rhineland Bastards", only 400–600 children were born to such unions,[5] compared to a total Black population of 20,000–25,000 in Germany at the time.[6]
InMein Kampf,Adolf Hitler described children resulting from marriages to African occupation soldiers as a contamination of the white race "by negro blood on the Rhine in the heart of Europe."[7] He thought that "Jews were responsible for bringing Negroes into the Rhineland, with the ultimate idea of bastardizing the White race which they hate and thus lowering its cultural and political level so that the Jew might dominate."[8] He also implied that this was a plot on the part of the French since the population of France was being increasingly "negrified".[9]
Race alone was not sufficient criteria for forced sterilization, underThird Reich eugenics laws. Anyone could request sterilization for themselves or a minor under their care.[10] The cohort of mixed-race children born during the occupation were approaching adulthood when, in 1937, with Hitler's approval, a special Gestapo commission was created and charged with "the discrete sterilization of the Rhineland bastards."[11] It is unclear how much these minors were told about the procedures, or how many parents only consented under pressure from the Gestapo.[12] An estimated 500 children were sterilized under this program, including girls as young as eleven years old.[13]
Beyond the compulsory sterilization program in the Rhineland, there was no coherent Nazi policy towards African Germans.[14] In one instance, when local officials petitioned for guidance on how to handle an Afro-German who could not find employment because he was a repeat criminal offender, they were told the population was too small to warrant the formulation of any official policy and to settle the case as they saw fit.[15] Due to the rhetoric at the time, Black Germans experienced discrimination in employment, welfare, and housing, and were also banned from pursuing higher education;[16] they were socially isolated and forbidden to have sexual relations and marriages withAryans by the racial laws.[17][18] Jazz, considered "negro music", (negermusik) and an "inner crisis" to the white race by Nazi cultural theorists was also banned from the radio.[19] Black people were placed at the bottom of the racial scale of non-Aryans along withJews,Slavs, andRomani/Roma people.[20] Some Black people managed to work as actors in films about theAfrican colonies. Others were hired for theGerman Africa Show, ahuman zoo touring between 1937 and 1940.[21]
The Compulsory Service Act of 21 May 1935 restricted military service to "Aryans" only, but there are several documented cases ofAfro-Germans who served in theWehrmacht, or were temporarily allowed into theHitler Youth. In one case, an Afro-German man named Peter K. was forcibly sterilized before being drafted.[22]
The French Army made extensive use of African soldiers during theBattle of France in May–June 1940 and 120,000 becameprisoners of war. Most of them came fromFrench West Africa andMadagascar. While no government orders were issued regarding black prisoners of war, some German commanders separated black people from captured French units forsummary execution on their initiative.[23] There are alsodocumented cases of captured African American soldiers in theUnited States Army suffering the same fate.[24]
In the absence of any official policy, the treatment of black prisoners of war varied widely, and most captured black soldiers were taken prisoner rather than executed.[25] However, violence against black prisoners of war was also never prosecuted by Nazi authorities.[26] In prisoner-of-war camps, black soldiers were kept segregated from white and generally experienced worse conditions than their white comrades. Their conditions deteriorated further in the last days of the war.[24] Roughly half of the French colonial prisoners of war did not survive captivity.[27] Groups such as North Africans were sometimes treated as black and sometimes as white.[28]
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