final insult of World War I, and soon thereafter, 92% of them voted in the Nazi
party.
Hundreds of the African Rhineland-based soldiers intermarried with German
women and raised their children as Black Germans. In Mein Kampf, Hitler wrote
about his plans for these "Rhineland Bastards".
When he came to power, one of his first directives was aimed at these mixedrace children. Underscoring Hitler's obsession with racial purity, by 1937, every
identified mixed-race child in the Rhineland had been forcibly sterilized, in
order to prevent further "race polluting", as Hitler termed it. Hans Hauck, a
Black Holocaust survivor and a victim of Hitler's mandatory sterilization
program, explained in the film "Hitler's Forgotten Victims" that, when he was
forced to undergo sterilization as a teenager, he was given no anesthetic.
Once he received his sterilization certificate, he was "free to go", as long as he
agreed to have no sexual relations whatsoever with Germans.
Although most Black Germans attempted to escape their fatherland, heading
for France where people like Josephine Baker were steadily aiding and
supporting the French Underground, many still encountered problems
elsewhere.
Nations shut their doors to Germans, including the Black ones. Some Black
Germans were able to eke out a living during Hitler's reign of terror by
performing in Vaudeville shows, but many Blacks, steadfast in their belief that
they were German first, Black second, opted to remain in Germany.
Some fought with the Nazis (a few even became Luft waffe pilots)!
Unfortunately, many Black Germans were arrested, charged with treason, and
shipped in cattle cars to concentration camps.
Often these trains were so packed with people and (equipped with no
bathroom facilities or food), that, after the four-day journey, box car doors
were opened to piles of the dead and dying. Once inside the concentration
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