A
propaganda slide depicting friendship between an Aryan woman and a
black woman as a loss of racial pride. The caption reads, "The result:
racial pride fades."
Black Germans
Around
5,000 Black people, mainly men, lived in Germany in 1933. Most of them
came from German colonies in Africa. Some were married to German women
and had children with them.
The Nazis were unsure how to
treat their Black residents. Although they were considered to be
inferior, they only formed a very small group of people. But Nazi
propaganda was also aimed at Black people. Germans were told that
marrying a black person was betraying one’s race.
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Eventually, more than three
thousand Black Germans were put into concentration camps. Most of them
were not arrested because of the color of their skin, but because they
were Communists or Jehovah’s Witnesses, or because they played forbidden
jazz music.
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The so-called « Rhineland bastards »
France occupied the German
Rhineland after the First World War. The French occupation army included
Black soldiers from the French colonies. Some of these men had children
with German women. These children were known as the "Rhineland
bastards." The Nazis thought it was scandalous that White German woman
could have children with Black soldiers from an enemy army. In 1937, 385
of these children were rounded up and sterilized in clinics. They would
never be able to have children.
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1936 Olympic games
The 1936 Olympic Games in
Berlin were supposed to be a showcase for German "Aryan" racial
superiority. Open racism towards Jews, Gypsies and Blacks was hidden for
a short time. Germany did win the most Gold medals during the games,
but many Black athletes performed extremely well. Among them were
eighteen African-Americans. The most famous was Jesse Owens, who
unpleasantly surprised Hitler and the Nazis by winning some of the most
important track and field events. He embarrassed famous Nazi athletes by
winning four gold medals, including the 100 meter dash.
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