by Carr, Firpo
Power players in Tinseltown, perhaps unwittingly, has for a fact made a mockery of Black lives sacrificed to the Nordic gods.[†††††]
How so? Two words: “Hogan’s Heroes.”
This was an American television show produced by the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS). This very prominent network, one of three major networks (ABC, which stands for the American Broadcasting Company, and NBC, which stands for the National Broadcasting Company, being the other two) aired 168 episodes from 1965-1971.
It was a situation comedy (or, “sitcom”) about Allied POW’s held in a fictitious prisoner of war camp called Stalag 13, which was supposedly located somewhere in Germany during World War II.
While the American public was (perhaps, inadvertently), lulled into taking a cavalier view of the serious nature of World War II by watching comical exchanges between White POWs with their White Nazi guards, Black POWs were being experimented on in diabolically creative ways, and then massacred.[‡‡‡‡‡]
Encouragingly, amid this dismal, depressing, gloomy backdrop, a hopeful ray of light pierces the dreary atmosphere. Inhabitants of the German city of Mannheim had a mostly positive attitude concerning “Soldiers of Color” during World War II.
The results of a survey called “Mannheim Attitudes Toward Negro Troops,” dated October 22, 1946, suggests that certainly not all German civilians responded like uncontrollable mobs whipped into a frenzy by the Gestapo to attack Black troops. The report is quite revealing.
Sample: 226 Mannheim adults (over 18 years of age).
Interviewing dates: 27, September 1946. (7 pp.)
Nearly two-thirds (64%) of the respondents reported having no personal relations with American soldiers. A fifth (20%) reported some relationship with white soldiers, eight per cent with Negro soldiers, and eight per cent with both. Although eight per cent said that they or some member of their family had had a pleasant experience with a Negro, 13 per cent reported an unpleasant experience; and a few (2%) told of both pleasant and unpleasant experiences. When asked about the behavior of Negro soldiers, a substantial number (36%) said that the Negroes were friendlier toward the German populace than white troops[§§§§§] and only 16 per cent said they were less friendly.
Most respondents (45%) reported that they were definitely not afraid of the Negroes in Mannheim, as opposed to 15 per cent who expressed fears.[66]
Paralleling the events outlined above was a campaign launched by the ever-so-diabolically-popular Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels. As he espoused the high morals and exemplary conduct of Nazi leadership, he endeavored to conceal the real story behind…
The Hypocrisy of Hitler
and His Henchmen
On the surface, Adolf Hitler was an example of clean living. He did not smoke, nor did he drink. And, to top it off, he was a vegetarian. In fact, one noted researcher wrote that he “fitted the Mormon view of the ideal leader.”[67]
Be he, as well as some other prominent Nazi leaders, was far from his own rendition of what he considered “ideal.”
In fact, they were hypocritical in that their actions spoke so loudly that one could not hear the virtuous things they were saying about themselves; and about how others should be. A few examples will illustrate the point.
As will be seen in Chapter Five, Adolf Hitler detested what he called the “Rhineland Bastards.” These were children with Black African fathers and White German mothers. Our interest for now is on the designation, “bastards.”
Interestingly, Hitler’s father, Alois Hitler, was a bastard according to the most comprehensive, exhaustive, authoritative, dictionary in the English language, the Oxford English Dictionary’s primary definition.
The World Book Encyclopedia (1988), says that, “Alois Hitler had been born to an unmarried woman named Anna Schicklgruber.”
Of course, this fact does not make Adolf Hitler a hypocrite since he had no control over how or to whom his father was born.
This is not the case, however, with Hitler’s distorted sense of morality. World Book also candidly reveals the incestuous love affair he had for his niece before establishing a long-term relationship with Eva Braun.
In 1925, Hitler’s widowed half-sister, Angela Raubal, became his housekeeper. Hitler, then 36, fell in love with her 17-year-old daughter, Geli. And then suddenly, in 1931, the girl was found shot to death in Hitler’s apartment in Munich.
The official report said she had committed suicide. A year or two later, Eva Braun became Hitler’s mistress. But for years he wept over Geli Raubal. This is certainly not the best example of sexual morality.
In fact, today, by certain American standards, it would not only be called incest, but child molestation—or, at the minimum, unlawful sex with a minor.
Massaquoi had a few things to say about Hitler and other Nazi notables with regard to their hypocrisy. Regarding Hitler’s love affairs, one of which has just been discussed, he writes:
Thus I learned that contrary to the official version, which held that Hitler had no romantic interest in women because he had dedicated his entire existence to the German people, he once had carried on a sizzling, incestuous love affair with his teenage niece Geli Raubal, who killed herself when the affair went sour. I also heard persistent rumors that the Fuhrer and film actress-director Leni Riefenstahl were an item.[68]
And what about that master of spin, Joseph Goebbels? Well, he was portrayed as being a man who emphasized family values. But what was really going on behind the scenes in his movie studios that pumped out propaganda?
Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels, that married paragon of family values, was referred to as der Bock von Babelsberg (the he-goat from Babelsberg), after the German movie capital in Berlin, because of his alleged excessive use of the casting couch and his numerous dalliances with various movie stars.[69]
Moving right along, among the many groups that Hitler despised were homosexuals.[******] Of course, his condemnation of them merely forced certain ones of his own officers and troops to stay in “the closet.”
Plumpish Hitler Youth leader Baldur von Schirach, according to my older colleagues, hid his homosexual tendencies behind the respectability of marriage and fatherhood.[70]
Just as a few adults who worked closely with boys in association with the Boys Scouts of America[††††††], as well as a few priests who supervised altar boys, the zaftig Baldur von Schirach reportedly was gay (with a special interest in young boys) and just relished working closely with those Hitler Youth boys.
And then there was Ernst Rohm, the “supermacho” SA chief who was said to be a homosexual, although gays were targeted for persecuted along with Jews, Gypsies (Romi), the handicapped, and Jehovah’s Witnesses.
After calling him an “Oliver Hardy look-alike,” Massaquoi says that Rohm “had actually been sleeping with his young SA troopers before he was branded a traitor and murdered on Hitler’s orders.”[71]
The hypocrisy of Hitler and his henchmen aside, the one-sided war being waged against Black people in Germany carried on at fever pitch. All of this sprang from how Hitler “intellectualized” or processed his information on Black people.
Just what was his perception of Blacks on specific subjects like art and education? The next subheading answers these questions.
Hitler’s “Intellectual” Assessment of
Blacks—Out of His Own Mouth
In order to get an accurate gauge on exactly how Hitler felt about anything one would have to start with his prodigious two-volume set, Mein Kampf.
Since most people will not likely embark upon such a onerous task, the present author has taken it upon himself to make three selections from Mein Kampf wherein Hitler references Black people.
Though his assessments are, for the most part, limited to African Blacks (as has been illustrated thus far), anyone who descended from Africans, no matter who he was or where on the face of the earth he called home, he was still Black.
The three excerpts below are a sampli
ng of the mind of the man himself. Herewith are “Hitler’s Thoughts.”
Hitler on Black Art
Finally, art and science were German. Aside from the trash of the more modern artistic development, which a nation of Negroes might just as well have produced, the German alone possessed and disseminated a truly artistic attitude.[72]
Hitler on a Nightmarish Worse Case
Scenario Wherein A Black Army
“Accidentally” Conquers Germany[‡‡‡‡‡‡]
In these months I felt for the first time the whole malice of Destiny which kept me at the front in a position where every nigger might accidentally shoot me to bits, while elsewhere I would have been able to perform quite different services for the father![73]
Hitler on Successful Educated Blacks
The boundless sins of present-day humanity in this direction may be shown by one more example. From time to time illustrated papers bring it to the attention of the German petty-bourgeois that some place or other a Negro has for the first time become a lawyer, teacher, even a pastor, in fact a heroic tenor, or something of the sort.
While the idiotic bourgeoisie looks with amazement at such miracles of education, full of respect for this marvelous result of modern educational skill, the Jew shrewdly draws from it a new proof for the soundness of his theory about the equality of men that he is trying to funnel into the minds of the nations.
It doesn’t dawn on this depraved bourgeois world that this is positively a sin against all reason; that it is criminal lunacy to keep on drilling a born half-ape until people think they have made a lawyer out of him, while millions of members of the highest culture-race must remain in entirely unworthy positions; that it is a sin against the will of the Eternal Creator if His most gifted being by the hundreds of thousands are allowed to degenerate in the present proletarian morass, while Hottentots and Zulu Kaffirs are trained for intellectual professions.
For this is training exactly like that of the poodle, and not scientific ‘education.’ The same pains and care employed on intelligent races would a thousand times sooner make every single individual capable of the same achievements.[74] (Emphasis supplied.)
Granted, everyone is entitled to believe whatever it is that he or she wishes to believe. Serious problems emerge, however, when twisted and distorted beliefs are translated into highly reprehensible actions.
No matter how amusing his musings were on occasion, Hitler’s thoughts inevitably spelled death to Black people.
Yes, his mind-numbing antics against Black military personnel were indeed horrendous. But, before it was all over, Blacks, in fighting back, would score some significant blows themselves, as discussed in our next chapter.
Chapter Three
Black War Victories
Over Nazi German!
“The Germans both feared and respected the Tuskegee Airmen, calling them ‘Schwartze Vogelmenschen’ (Black Birdmen). White
U.S. bomber crews reverently referred
to them as ‘The Redtail Angels’ be-
cause of the identifying red paint
on their planes’ tails.”[75]
—Mindy White
Aviation History
Historians as a whole very seldom if ever even mouth the words. Teachers in the main rarely, if they dare, talk about it. Academicians may, if they are brave enough, discuss it in hushed tones.
Most educators are in the same boat. They, too, are reluctant to even broach the subject. And, yes, some timid school administrators are also silent on the matter. What is everyone being so tight-lipped about?
Irrespective of such catholic reticence, and the mind-numbing Nazi horrors against Black soldiers and pilots notwithstanding, African American military personnel scored major victories against Nazi Germany and, in so doing, contributed in a major way to Allied victory!
Sadly, however, these victorious soldiers and pilots returned home only to be treated, yet again, as second class citizens. The problem was that, despite their heroism, they were still Black!
The fact that they laid their lives on the line for their country mattered not. And that they did this in the face of having lived in the midst of an oppressive White society that designed its infrastructure, some contend, in such a way so as to prevent any Black person (but, especially Black males) from enjoying the maximum successes that Whites were experiencing in the same society, mattered not. They were still Black.
To add demoralizing insult to indescribable injury, the United States government, through its military, gave preferential treatment to Nazi POWs here on American soil while shunning its Black heroes, as briefly discussed in the previous chapter.
And, given what we considered in Chapter Two wherein we learned that the Nazis conjured up unimaginable ways to dispatch Black military personnel who had the audacity to traverse the sacred soil of the Fatherland, America’s preferential treatment of German POWs could not possibly be more egregious.
Glaring inequities aside, African American military men and women went above and beyond the call of duty during that frightful period of human history known universally as World War II.
Let us begin our discussion of these marginalized heroes with the extraordinary Black men who could rightfully be called, “The Masters of the Sky.”
The Tuskegee Airmen:
Sky Masters Extraordinaire
Up until recently the amazing feats of the now-famed Tuskegee Airmen have been relegated, yet again, to a footnote in history.
Before Hollywood took a modicum of interest by airing an HBO movie entitled The Tuskegee Airmen (1995)[§§§§§§], few people had ever heard of them. It is doubtful that many Americans today, yes, even now, know who they are[*******].
With this in mind, it behooves us to go into some background as to who these brave Black men—and women—were. The review is sure to be illuminating.
A relatively recent, well written Los Angeles Times article gets us started in our quest for more information on the Tuskegee Airmen:
July 1941—In Europe and Asia, World War II raged without letup. Adolf Hitler’s German armies, which had already conquered most of Europe and North Africa, were racing deep into the Soviet Union toward Moscow. In Asia, Japanese forces had conquered large parts of China and were pushing southward and westward into mainland Asia and eastward across the Pacific Ocean. The United States had so far managed to stay out of history’s bloodiest war, but few thought this country could stay out for long.
Far from the fighting, in the sleepy central Alabama town of Tuskegee (tuh-SKEE-gee) the weather, as usual, was hot and muggy. But local residents noticed something new in the sky— something much louder than the normal drone of mosquitoes. The newcomers were single-engine airplanes—fast ones. The planes, propellers whining, swooped out of the sky and zipped above the green fields.
Tuskegee Institute (now called Tuskegee University), founded by Booker T. Washington in 1881, had long been famous for educating and training African Americans in practical skills. One of its best-known instructors was the scientist George Washington Carver. Now, by order of the U.S. president, the nearby Tuskegee Army Air Field had become the home of the first fighter pilot training program for African Americans in U.S. history. …
In December 1941, the United States was plunged into World War II with a jolt. Japanese warplanes attacked the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on Dec. 7. At the same time, Japan attacked the Philippines, a U.S. possession in Asia. On December 8, the United States declared war on Japan. On December 11, the United States declared war on Japan’s allies, Germany and Italy.[76]
On March 7, 1942, three months after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Davis pinned the silver wings of an Army Air Force pilot on himself and 12 other black pilots. The all-black 99th Pursuit squadron, had its first fliers, forever to be known as the Tuskegee Airmen. … In November 1942, the 99th, commanded by Colonel Davis, departed for North Africa. U.S. and British forces had invaded North Africa on Nov. 8 and were fighting German a
nd Italian forces.[77]
These Tuskegee Airmen would eventually do more than ‘swoop out of the sky and zip above the green fields’ of central Alabama. They were destined, some would say, to make a ground-shattering impact on “the War to end all wars”—Part II—better known as World War II,
But there was some reluctance, as has been the case historically in America when it comes to wartime situations, on the part of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to use Blacks in the special capacity as pilots in the war effort.
On the other hand, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, who has a sterling record of trying to right the wrongs of the disenfranchised, once again came to the rescue in a most unusual way.
The account that follows is rich in little known Black and aviation history, let alone American history.
Charles Alfred Anderson earned his pilot’s license in 1929 and became the first African American to receive a commercial pilot’s certificate in 1932, and, subsequently, to make a transcontinental flight. When the Civilian Pilot Training Program (CPTP) was organized at Tuskegee Institute in October of 1939, he served as the first flight instructor. The training program was the predecessor of the pilot training outfit which came to be known as the 99th Pursuit Squadron, established by the War Department and the Army Air Corps on January 16, 1941. The air field officially opened at Tuskegee in July of 1941 and Anderson continued his service there. The group of pilots that trained at the base became known as the Tuskegee Airmen. Among Anderson’s students was the future Air Force general Daniel “Chappie” James.
