Germany's Black Holocaust: 1890-1945

by Carr, Firpo

  Race distinction equaled social distinction. Most laws were aimed at causing and maintaining the economic impoverishment of the Africans and destroying any remains of African unity. A series of ordinances forbade non-Ovambos from entering Ovamboland. African ownership was prohibited totally, Namibians were stripped of their means of production and prevented from promoting their agriculture and animal husbandry. [Emphasis supplied.]

  Every African above seven years of age was required to carry a pass (identify card) and allowed to work only as a contract laborer. A system of forced labor[222] and forced migrant labor brought total impoverishment; and, for all practical purposes, slavery.

  Africans farm laborers were completely at the mercy of their masters, with punishment by flogging widely used for disobedience and laziness. When the German governor in 1911 called on the settlers to exercise restraint, the farmers objected. The mentality of the German settlers in South-West Africa is reflected in a call for “flogging” as an effective form of punishment for the Africans.[223]

  German South-West Africa made rapid economic development in the following years, accomplished only by a forced labor system. By 1913 about 90 percent of the adult male Africans worked in mining, on farms and in the budding industrial sector. Migrant laborers from the Ovambo area also labored in the southern diamond fields.

  The colonial administration divided the territory, enforcing a police zone and creating large ghettos for the indigenous population. This last stage of German rule was marked by systematic racial oppression, expressed in rigid decrees and legal ordinances which laid the foundation for South Africa’s future Apartheid structure. [Emphasis supplied.]

  For the first time, Germany earned “healthy” profits from its colony, the value of diamond and copper exports reaching unprecedented numbers. Diamond exports in 1912 were valued at 30,414,078 Deutsch Mark (DM) and copper at 6,293,408 DM. Excluding the Ovambo, Okavango and Kaprivi territories, Europeans owned about 80% of all cattle and twice as many small farm animals as Africans.[224] [Emphasis supplied.]

  The railroad system of about 2,100 mines was the longest in the German colonies and played a crucial role in advancing European settlement. By 1913, 14,830 Europeans (mostly Germans) had settled in South-West Africa. by 1935, under control of South Africa, the settler population had more than doubled, the majority of them of German descent….[Emphasis supplied.]

  Weimar and Nazi Colonial Aspirations

  After its defeat in WWI, Germany was stripped of all its colonies (Treat of Versailles, June 6, 1919). The League of Nations, as stated in Article 22 of the League Covenant,[225] designated South Africa to administer South-West Africa (Deutsch Süd West) as “A Sacred Trust of Civilization” and to provide for the well-being and development of its inhabitants.

  The loss of the German colonies, especially the “flourishing” settler colony of South-West Africa, remained controversial throughout the Weimar Republic. Germany’s claim for the return of her colonies was supported by conservatives, by former colonial Germans, and by most of the bourgeois parties. Among other things, it led to increased activity in the colonial movement and to the establishment of a number of local colonial associations.[226]

  By 1922, all local colonial chapters were under supervision of the Reich’s Colonial Association, an umbrella organization which held yearly conferences discussing colonial policy, denouncing the Treaty of Versailles, and keeping the colonial aspirations alive. All forum issues became central to the future NSDAP (Nazi) party platform.

  By June 1933, the local colonial organizations were represented in the Union of Colonial Associations. The Associations’ director was no other than former Freikorps leader General Franz Ritter von Epp, who previously had served with von Trotha in South-West Africa.[227] Colonial propaganda sought to divert attention from the social ills afflicting German society. Germany, it was argued, lacked sufficient living-space (Lebensraum).

  The loss of raw materials from the colonies, causing loss of work for industry at home, was decried in colonial magazines and propaganda speeches. Slogans such as the one coined by Reichpraesident von Hindenburg expressed the simplistic logic: “Without colonies, no security for our raw materials; without raw materials, no industry; without industry, insufficient prosperity. Therefore, Germans, we must have colonies.”[228]

  Hitler and the Nazis recognized early on that they needed to win over the German youth for their ideas, and the image of the colonial hero served that purpose. Characteristics attributed to the young colonial hero were blended with the ideal of the young Hitler Youth (Hitler Jugend, HJ). The colonial Hitler Youth was permitted to wear the Cross of the South on the left lapel of the HJ uniform.[229]

  Hitler’s expansionist goals were directed mainly toward Central and Eastern Europe. His plans for destruction were aimed at the “internal” enemy: European Jewry, other minorities, and his political opponents. He recognized in the colonial mentality qualities he had in mind for his HJ, realizing that racial hatred and supremacist attitudes were common among the white settlers in the former colonies and also among the colonial associations. [Emphasis supplied.]

  The occupation of the local colonial associations, with the figure of the German hero fighting against “uncivilized” or “native,” fit the image of the Aryan youth model. Winning the German youth for the colonial idea also meant winning them as heroes to fight against the uncivilized “unworthy of living,” according to Nazi racial ideology. The same youth heroism could be unleashed to fight in the war to conquer Lebensraum (living space) in Europe.

  In Hitler’s earliest propaganda speeches, German humiliation by the Treaty of Versailles played a central role.[230] Moreover, Nazi propaganda effectively combined the loss of the colonies with the humiliation suffered by Germany from the Rhineland occupation by black soldiers. The occupation by African soldiers serving in the French Army was portrayed by Hitler in racist terminology.

  Hitler promoted the idea that France had deliberately stationed “Soldiers of Color” in the Rhine area, thus attributing perversion and vengeance to the hereditary enemy: France. He claimed France sought to infect the white race with the blood of an inferior race,[231] and that French colonial policy even committed the ultimate sin of permitting Negroes to migrate to the cities. He accused France of pursuing a policy of mixing races, a policy abhorrent to the principles of Nazi ideology.

  In Mein Kampf Hitler emphatically exclaimed that if the French had their way, colored barbaric hordes would rule from the Rhine to the Congo. He also charged that French colonial policy, in fostering the mixture of races, was entirely contrary to the racial policy pursued in the former German colonies. It seems worth noting that French colonial policies, in actuality, were far from guided by the principles of “liberté…egalité…fraternité.”

  Many conservative and bourgeois Germans found Hitler’s propaganda tirades appealing and easy to follow. Such claims as “treason committed against the white race” or the “black curse of the Rhineland bastards” were widespread in Nazi publications and speeches.[232] Of particular significance, Hitler’s propaganda goal was to increase the German desires to reclaim their colonies.

  To seek legitimacy for his claims and accusations against the French and to promote Nazi ideology, Hitler looked to scholarly disciplines such as anthropology, biology, genetics, eugenics, social hygiene, medicine, law and the social sciences.

  The Nazis also recruited from historians, philosophers and writers to claim support for the theory of inequality between the human races, dividing the races into those of a higher or lower order. A series of books and articles addressing various aspects of racial theory and colonial politics was published in the late twenties and all through the thirties. [Emphasis supplied.]

  Pseudoscientific authors such as Eugen Fischer, who previously had served the German colonial administration, stated: “Without exception, every European people has accepted blood from inferior races: and the fact that Negroes, Hottentot and many others are i
nferior can be denied only by dreamers.”[233]

  These pseudo-scientific studies in support of Nazi racial ideology challenged the principle of equality among all human beings, thus helping to condition Nazi bureaucrats and the general public to the “Law for the Protection of German Blood and the German Honor” (Nuremberg Racial Laws) of September, 1935.

  Hitler had clearly stated in 1927 in Mein Kampf: “A people that fails to preserve the purity of its racial blood destroys the unity of the soul of the nation in all its manifestations. The most accursed of all crimes is crossbreeding. What we have to fight for is … our race and nation … and purity of its blood.”[234]

  Nazi Racial Laws and Policies

  Nazi racial theory was central to Nazi totalitarian rule. Hitler’s racial theory was used to support the exclusion of large numbers of people as “undesirables.” This applied not only within Germany, but was also used to subdue and control populations in the territories Germany occupied and administered in Europe after successful invasion or annexation.

  Racial theory was central to the Nazi blueprint for Europe and the plan to extend the Third Reich to colonial territories in Africa.[235] This blueprint was able to fuse and magnify existing antisemitism and racism by making radical charges together with previous strains of religious, social and racial antisemitism.[236] In so doing, Nazism built upon the racial and anthropological theories that sought to justify European colonialism in mastering the populations of Asia, the Americas and Africa.

  Nazi racist talk charged that Africans were of “lesser racial value,” uncivilized, ugly, and of lower intelligence. The claimed superiority of the Germanic Peoples sought to justify German rule over peoples of color and the Slavs. The stereotypes used to describe indigenous peoples of Africa were also used to characterize Jews.[237] [Emphasis supplied.]

  As power politics increasingly required, added to the list were such “unworthy” groups as Gypsies, the work-shy, homosexuals, the mentally and physically handicapped, communists, political [dissenters] and all opponents of the Nazi totalitarian regime.

  Nazi racism introduced as a new element the hereditary nature of race. According to Nazi theoreticians, one race distinguishes itself from another by many elements determined by hereditary factors.

  Walter Gross, the director of the National Socialist (NS) Nazi Office of Racial Politics, wrote in 1936: “The reason for this difference between humanity on this earth is based upon the racial element, upon the hereditary factors. …”[238] Five main elements of Hitler’s racism can be distinguished:

  Human races are given different values.

  The Aryan race is the most valuable race and needs to be preserved.

  In cases where the Aryan race interbreeds with a less valuable race, the Aryan race faces decline and eventual extinction. Therefore the Aryan race is engaged in a racial fight.

  The purity and “health” of the Aryan race has to be maintained and improved. The reproduction of unhealthy and criminal elements of the society needs to be prevented at all cost.

  Jews, the main enemies and subverters of the Aryan race, must be excluded from the body of the German Volk (folk, or Nation) by either physical isolation or extinction.

  Nazism combined a theory of folk and nation, supposedly rooted together biologically, into a military racism aimed at the alleged enemy: world Jewry. … The passing of the Nuremberg Racial Laws in September 1935 had been aimed at providing “scientific” and “legal” justification for the concerted actions unleashed against the alleged enemy and in support of the Nazi power structure. …

  In the years following the passage of the Nuremberg Laws, new legislation was established, listing racial hygienic conditions and detailing who was to be included in the category of alien races or peoples unworthy of living. It is important to note that the definitions of the “alien” and “unworthy” were given great importance.

  By contrast, Nazi racial policies for Africa never defined the black race as thoroughly as the white race. The African was defined in contrast to the image of the “superior race.” In the African colonies the racial structures had basically two dimensions: black and white. However, African Blacks there had never thought of themselves as belonging to a single Black race but in fact identified with their individual tribes. … [Emphasis supplied.]

  [Heinrich] Krieger’s commentary is written in pompous, emotionally charged language typical of Nazi pseudo-scientific literature. His views offer further proof of the central role Nazi ideology gave to the idea of race. Krieger distinguishes clearly between the situation in the German Reich and the colonial African situation, giving a separate formula for each.

  In the colony, he advocated total separateness of the race (as also applied later by South Africa’s apartheid regime, until 1994). The native Africans were to live in assigned areas suitable for their traditional ways. The paths of the master race and the inferior race were never to cross, with the exception, of course, that the inferior race was to serve as forced labor for the economic profit of Germany.

  Such information found in Appendixes A and B is far too valuable to leave in the bowels of any organization. It has dutifully been dusted off and presented herewith.

  Appendix B

  Shocking Revelations: Part II

  The information here has been extracted from undated and untitled documents acquired from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

  Hitler’s book Mein Kampf (My Struggle, Part I, first published in 1925, and Part II, 1926), filled with racial hatred, had become the bible of the Nazi party. The racial theories described in Hitler’s book also followed and gained support from a worldwide white supremacy movement which existed prior to World War I (1914-1918) and provided further rationale for the victimization of blacks and mulattoes. In the United States, after the First World War there was a rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan with membership reaching millions by the mid-1920s. [Emphasis supplied.]

  Hitler was also influenced by Social-Darwinism and it propagandists. In 1859 Charles Darwin introduced his theory of evolution in the famous work, The Origin of Species. As Darwin’s work gained increasing acceptance, others used these ideas in more speculative economic and social theories. Drawing upon Social-Darwinism which emphasized the “survival of the fittest,” Hitler exploited the idea and—as his propaganda machine built up—spewed out the claims of certain anthropologists and pseudoscientific eugenicists (“race scientists”) to promote his idea of a master Aryan race.

  The pseudo-scientists under Nazi rule not only devised “scientific” explanations for the doctrine of “racial purity” but also provided pseudo-moral, ethical, and legal “justifications” for the selective elimination of inferiors. These pseudo-scientists proved the “scientific” reasoning for euthanasia, medical experiments and sterilization programs; actions which affected not only Jews but also some Gypsies, political dissidents, German nationals suffering mental or physical maladies, and a number of blacks and mulattoes.[239] [Emphasis supplied.]

  A “Master Race” for a Demoralized Nation

  Hitler’s theory of a “master race” and of inferior “race polluters,” at first accepted by only a minority of Germans, soon began to take hold among a German public humiliated, demoralized and devastated after the loss of World War I, and amid the political and economic chaos that followed. During a painful worldwide Depression in the early 1930s, conditions were especially harsh in Germany. After its unconditional surrender in WWI, the nation struggled to meet heavy reparations payments dictated (under terms of the Versailles Treaty) by the victorious—yet war-torn and devastated—Allies.

  African Germans and the “Rhineland Mulattoes”

  After Germany was stripped of its African colonies under the Treaty of Versailles at the end of World War I, German colonials returned to Germany. They maintained white supremacist attitudes. The meetings and activities initiated by newly arrived white supremacists contributed further to the disturbances in Germany. Blacks from the colonies were
known to live in Germany prior to World War I. …

  Following Germany’s surrender, Allied armies—including a number of black African troops—occupied the Rhineland (the material rich, highly industrialized German area west of the Rhine River). The presence of these black troops on German soil in visible positions of authority, and also the presence of interracial couples (black men from the occupying forces and white German women), was met with increasing resentment in Germany. The German state, exploiting the presence of blacks in the Rhineland to further the racist propaganda, described black soldiers as rapists of German women and carriers of venereal and other diseases.

  As a result of the interracial relationships that came about after the war and because of the Rhineland occupation, mulattoes were born; and these “Rhineland Bastard” offspring were considered a threat to the purity of the Germans. In Mein Kampf, Hitler charged that “Jews had brought the Negroes into the Rhineland with the clear aim of ruining the hated white race by the necessarily resulting bastardization.”[240]

  Under Nazi rule there was no central plan to eliminate African Germans and other blacks from Germany and the occupied territories, since their population posed no immediate threat. The exception [was] the hundreds of foreign mulattoes from the occupied Rhineland. … In 1927, the Bavarian Ministry of the Interior recommended sterilization of “Rhineland Bastards,” but the suggestion was turned down at the higher Reich level because of the anticipated demoralizing effects upon the children’s German mothers.