Samenvatting boek Hitler's Black Victims

Summary of the book Hitler's Black Victims: The historical experiences of blacks in Nazi Germany

By Clarence Lusane, Ph.D.

The presence and experiences of people of African descent in Nazi Germany and the occupied lands has generally been dismissed as insignificant if acknowledged at all. In fact, their lived experiences were extremely varied and touched every aspect of the Nazi phenomena.

The purpose of the study, "Hitler's Black Victims," is to document and analyse that history in all of its complications and implications. This study not only chronicles what happened but also locates that history in the broader context of the global struggle against racism. The Nazis gave significant attention to their black "problem," and to dismiss the anti-blackness character of Nazism and the subjugation of its black victims is a historical whitewashing. The relentless goal of Hitler's National Socialist Workers Party was to create a racial state that was built on the fantasy of breeding "pure" Aryans while eliminating all others including Blacks. Yet, the Nazis never reached agreement on whether to murder all Blacks and how.

This study is a multi-purpose effort to examine the nature and significance of "blackness" and "anti-blackness" in Germany and the occupied lands in the periods preceding and constituting the Nazi era. First, it expands our understanding of the Nazism and all the peoples that were its victims. In the literally thousands of books on the period, Afro-Germans and other Blacks, and their experiences are notable only for their absence. In a similar vein, the wide number of museums dedicated to remembering the Holocaust and the horrors of Nazism also give little exposure, if any, to the black experience.

Second, this study demonstrates that Nazism's racial agenda was complex, fluid, and contradictory as opposed to simple, straightforward, and unproblematic. A perpetual debate in Nazi ruling circles over how to address Germany's black presence extended the entire dozen years of Nazi rule and was never fully resolved.

A third purpose is to deepen our knowledge of the experiences of the African Diaspora. It was not Blacks from Europe who suffered at the hands of the Nazis, but also from the North America, the Caribbean, Africa and Latin America. Too often, these encounters of people of African descent are often forgotten.

Fourth, this study advocates the need to reconceptualize our framework on racism and see it as contingent and intersecting. The contingent nature of racism tells us that during Hitler's rule local preogatives, in some cases, overrode national and general racial orders. This can be viewed in the experiences of many Afro-Germans, who often lived isolated lives, where their individualized status allowed some of them a degree of protection that, in many instances, was enough for their survival.

The study is divided into four parts. In part one, the focus is on a number of the theoretical concerns that are raised by exploring this relatively uncharted land. The purpose here is to examine the distinctiveness of the racialization process as it unfolded in Germany in relation to those of African descent.

Part two looks at the history of contact between the new German nation and people of African descent both in Africa and in Germany prior to Hitler coming to power. This includes reviewing German colonialism, and the European-wide discourse and controversy that arose after World War I regarding the placement of black troops in occupied Germany and the children they left behind. It also presents the unknown political efforts by Blacks to resist rising racism and growing Nazi attacks on working class organizers.

Part three examines in detail the lived experiences of Blacks under Nazism including :
· the policies expressed by Adolph Hitler and other Nazi leaders on the question of Blacks in Germany;
· the Nazi sterilization of Blacks including the ideological, political, and organizational links between eugenicists in Germany and the United States from around the turn of the century through the mid-1940s;
· the experiences of Blacks in the many different types of imprisonment camps - internment, labour, prison, concentration, and extermination - created by the Nazis as well as reports of black massacres by German soldiers and civilians;
· the use of black performers by Nazi propagandists in their films and other entertainment form;
· the Nazi failed but energetic effort at eliminating jazz, which was viewed as both black and Jewish making it totally unacceptable for mass consumption;
· the impact of black sports figures, such as Joe Louis and African American Olympic athletes, on the racial views of Blacks and Whites in both Germany and the US;
· the military and non-military means by which Blacks fought Nazi racism including their participation in the formal resistance movements as well as individualized forms of defiance.

Finally, part four examines the contemporary nature of racism in Europe, in general, and, in Germany, in particular. This sector reviews the status and state of people of African descent in today's Germany, a presence that may number up to 500,000.

As the 2000 UN World Conference Against Racism, attacks on immigrants, and rising Islamophobia deomonstrate, racism remains a global problem. It can only be erased, as many have concluded, by progressive and constructive polices that improve lives and change attitudes. In part, this includes a new and inclusive understanding of history and its legacy on our time. "Hitler's Black Victims" is an effort to contribute to this cause.