Black history in Nazi Germany- Very Deep Peace of History For Those Who Did Not Know!

(For those who either love to forget or who don't need to know.)

Black German girl 1930's

January 30, 1933

The Nazis seized power on January 30, of that year with Adolph

Hitler's appointment as chancellor. Following the Reichstag fire on

February 27 basic civil rights were suspended. On February 28 the

Nazis took control of the state apparatus. Leftist political parties

were banned, Germany is declared a one-party state, Jews and

leftists  including Blacks are eliminated from the bureaucracy, and

trade unions are dissolved and replaced with Nazi organizations.

Police rounded up thousands of political opponents, detaining them

without trial in concentration camps. The Nazi regime also put into

practice racial policies that aimed to "purify" and strengthen the

Germanic "Aryan" population. Hitler had a vision of a Master Race of

Aryans that would control Europe. He used powerful propaganda

techniques to convince not only the German people, but countless

others, that if they eliminated the people who stood in their way and

the degenerates and racially inferior, they "the great Germans" would

prosper. This included mandatory Sterilization for Black Youth.

Prior to World War I, there were very few dark-skinned people of

African descent in Germany. But, during World War I, the French

brought in Black African soldiers during the Allied occupation. Most

of the Germans, who were very race conscious, despised the

dark-skinned "invasion". Some of these Black soldiers married White

German women that bore children referred to as "Rhineland
Bastards" or the "Black Disgrace". On May 13, 1931, the International

Olympic Committee, headed by Count Henri Baillet-Latour of Belgium,

awarded the 1936 Summer Olympics to Berlin. The choice signaled

Germany's return to the world community after defeat in World War I.

In the months and years that followed, Germany proceeded to oppress

and murder Blacks and other non-Aryans. On July 14th 1933, they

enacted a new law providing a basis for forced sterilization of
handicapped persons, Gypsies, and Blacks. After the International

Olympic Committee put concerns about the safety of Black athletes in

Nazi Germany to rest, most African American newspapers opposed a

boycott of the 1936 Olympics. Black journalists often underscored the

hypocrisy of pro-boycotters who did not first address the problem of

discrimination against Black athletes in the United States. Writers for

such papers as The Philadelphia Tribune and The Chicago Defender

argued that athletic victories by Blacks would undermine Nazi racial

views of "Aryan" supremacy and foster a new sense of Black pride at

home.

In the end, 18 African Americans 16 men and 2 women went to Berlin;

triple the number who had competed for the United States in the 1932

Los Angeles Games. That all of these athletes came from predominantly

white universities demonstrated to many Black journalists the inferiority

of training equipment and facilities at Black colleges where the vast majority

of African American students were educated in the 1930s.

In his book Mein Kampf, Hitler wrote that he would eliminate all the children

born of African-German descent because he considered them an "insult"

to the German nation. "The mulatto children came about through rape or

the white mother was a whore," Hitler wrote. "In both cases, there is not

the slightest moral duty regarding these offspring of a foreign race."

The Nazis set up a secret group, Commission Number 3, to organize

the sterilization of these offspring to keep intact the purity of the

Aryan race. In 1937, all local authorities in Germany were to submit a

list of all the children of African descent. Then, these children were

taken from their homes or schools without parental permission and

put before the commission. Once a child was decided to be of Black

descent, the child was taken immediately to a hospital and sterilized.

About 400 children were medically sterilized many times without their
parents' knowledge.

The Black experience during the Third Reich is a missing one, mainly

due to the comparatively small number of casualties compared to the

Jewish loss. Many stories of what happened during the Nazi regime

are brought out by author Hans Massaquoi (Child photo shown) in his

book Destined to Witness: Growing Up Black in Nazi Germany 1999.

Yet the Black history of these times also includes the brutal treatment

of the Herero people before WW II in the (then) German colony of

southwest Namibia.

Additionally when African-American allied soldiers were caught

behind enemy lines during the war racial abuse was inflicted on top of

their prisoner-of-war status. In 1937, nearly 385 Black German children

disappeared with out a trace. In Europe the memory of the Third

Reich still induces pain. Annually on Veterans Day millions of families

all over Europe still mourn lost loved ones, many of whom were Black.

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