BLACK NAZIS II !

ETHNIC MINORITIES AND FOREIGNERS
IN HITLER’S ARMED FORCES
AN UNBIASED HISTORY

VERONICA CLARK

BLACK NAZIS II!
ETHNIC MINORITIES AND FOREIGNERS IN HITLER’S ARMED FORCES: AN UNBIASED HISTORY

COPYRIGHT 2010 VERONICA CLARK.
TRADE PAPERBACK EDITION APRIL 2012
ISBN-13: 978-1475089660 ISBN-10: 147508966X

P UBLISHED BY VERA ICONA PUBLISHERS. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. NO PORTION OF THIS TEXT MAY BE CITED OR REPRODUCED WITHOUT THE AUTHOR'S PRIOR PERMISSION. PERMISSION IS VERY SELDOM WITHHELD. CONTACT: CLARKVERO@HOTMAIL.COM.

C OVER AND INTERIOR DESIGN BY DAVID G. BARNETT
FAT CAT GRAPHIC DESIGN DAVE@FATCATGRAPHICDESIGN.COM

I would like to thank all those who have donated to me over these past several years. Without your help, this book never would have been possible. Thank you very much to all of you, especially Henry and Fritz. I also want to thank all those who assisted me with gathering photos, translating captions and passages, and gathering information on Germany’s volunteers and conscripts. Thank you, all of you—especially Wilf Heink. This book is dedicated to my mother, who has helped me immeasurably in every possible way.

Ms. Clark earned her master’s degree in Military History and has completed her first year of doctoral studies in Psychology.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction 7
1. The “New” New History of the Third Reich 61
2. Hitler’s Racial Ambivalence 75
3. Victims or Collaborators? 85
4. Diversity Under the Swastika 93
5. The Shaping of the Ethnically Diverse Nazi Military Establishment 109
6. Nazi POWs: Tuskegee Airmen Remember 133
7. Afro-Germans, Africans, and Other Blacks in the German Armed Forces 139
8. Allied Military Conduct and War Crimes 155
9. Conclusion 163
Epilogue 165
Bibliography 185
Appendix 1 : Key excerpts translated from Hitler’s speech at Platterhof (26 May 1944) 174
Appendix 2 : Key excerpts translated from Franz Wimmer-Lamquet’s Balkenkreuz und Halbmond 205

Appendix 3 : Key excerpt translated from Eric Lefevre’s and Jean Mabire’s Sur les pistes de la Russie centrale: Les Français de la LVF 1943 214

End Notes 217

INTRODUCTION

DIVERSITY UNDER THE SWASTIKA: A NEW VIEW OF THE THIRD REICH

Really creative music is composed partly of inspiration and partly of a sense of composition. The inspiration is of a Slavonic origin, the art of composition is of Germanic. It is when these two mingle in one man that the master of genius appears... As regards Beethoven...one glance at his head shows that he comes from a different race. It is not pure chance that the British have never produced a composer of genius; it is because they are a pure Germanic race.

—Adolf Hitler¹
Triumph of diversity: the German armed forces of World War II.

While difficult to accept, this is an accurate description of what happened in Europe in the 1930s and 1940s. Though the NS Germans initiated their war with a “racist” doctrine in mind, one that sought to create a “new order” for Europe, with Germany at the center and German elites at the top of the European political and racial hierarchy (a German version of “white man’s burden”), they nevertheless swapped this doctrine for one that promoted internationalism and tolerated multicultural and interethnic cooperation and intimate relations. Many NS Germans were deeply affected by the non-Germans with whom they fought and worked. For example, Fritz Freitag ended up “throwing” Nazi doctrine “to the wind,” and instead focused on building a Ukrainian liberation army.

We read in National Socialism and Race by Dr. A. J. Gregor:
Dr. Walter Gross, head of the Rassenpolitische Amt of the National Socialist Party, said:

“We appreciate the fact that those of another race are different from us... Whether that other race is ‘better’or ‘worse’ is not possible for us to judge. For this would demand that we transcend our own racial limitations for the duration of the verdict and take on a superhuman, even divine, attitude from which alone an ‘impersonal’ verdict could be formed on the value or lack of such of the many living forms of an inexhaustible nature.”

Less than a year later, in 1939, he defined the official position of mature National Socialist race theory:

“A serious situation arose through the fact that other people and States, because of German race laws...felt themselves attacked and defamed.

...For example the whole world of the Far East remained for a long time under the impression that the Germans...had designated them as non-Aryan, and as non-Aryans inferior rabble. That the Germans had designated them unworthy, second class humanity and that the Germans imagined themselves as the sole bearers of culture... What could we say to those who saw in German racism a fundamental defamation of men of other races? We could do nothing other than, with patience and conviction, repeat that German racism does not evaluate or deprecate other racial groups... It only recognizes, scientifically, that differences exist... We have often been disturbed by the indiscretion or even stupidity in our own land when, just after we had carefully made clear to some people or other that we respected and honored...their racial qualities, some wild fool manufactured his own ideas about race and declared that these same people were racially inferior and stood somewhere below the cow or the ass, and that their characteristics were degrading or impure and lord knows what else! By such idiotic assertions they were repelled and offended, not only alien peoples in distant parts of the world but even our own neighbors in Europe, many times even friends of National Socialist Germany bound to us historically and in destiny.”

Finally, late in the war, even under the gathering shadows of defeat, the headquarters of the Reichsführer SS [Himmler] published the work of Dr. Ludwig Eckstein. He carefully dissected the remains of the Nordicism purchased over a decade before at so high a cost, and concluded:

“While supporting our own race, and if necessary fighting against other races to protect its right to existence, we should not overlook the fact that almost all races display something in themselves that is sound and biologically resolved and therefore beautiful, natural and valuable... Each race carries first of all the measure of worth in itself. When once we understand this then we do not foster feelings of inferiority in others, a consequence that the hitherto existing race theories have too often achieved...”.²

In a telephone interview with German World War II survivor Gunter Anstaett (who passed away in 2011), I was informed for the first time that foreigners who were working under “forced labor” contracts in Germany were essentially as free as Germans themselves. The forced labor characterization, according to Gunter, was misleading. Foreigners were paid for their work and allowed to bring their families to live in Germany with them. Gunter’s testimony is corroborated by others I have spoken with as well as various books. These people enjoyed leisure activities while ethnic Germans were slaughtered by the tens of thousands on the Eastern Front. Theory and reality in the Third Reich differed in fundamental ways, so unless we speak directly with those who lived in Europe at the time, we will never know all of what happened between Germans and non-Germans in their day-to-day lives. This study answers this unknown as best as possible.

We begin with terminology. When I use the NS terms Mischlinge (part-Jews), Volljude (full Jews), and Halbjude (half-Jews) my intent is not “racist”. I use these terms because they were used by the NS Germans, so please do not mistake NS terminology as mine. Secondly, I use the term mulatto (an individual of black and white heritage) in the historical sense. This term is not “racist” in context. Finally, back then the Germans considered many dark-skinned peoples “black,” including East Indians and some Asian groups. The title “Black Nazis” includes these groups.

FIGURE I. A Jewish family passport issued by the Third Reich, 24 February 1939. Source: Private collector.

Contrary to most historians, I offer an objective view of the Third Reich and its leadership. I considered the context as I proceeded in my analysis of the evidence and historiography. Thus I ask readers who have a one-sided (subjective) approach to Hitler and the Third Reich to please refrain from judging my intent or bias until they have read this entire book. There is a reason why I presented my case as I did. Hopefully readers will come away from this ‘war and society’ study with a deeper understanding of:

• racial dynamics in all Western societies before and since World

War II;
• Axis history in general;
• Allied war criminality;
• non-German Wehrmacht and SS service (mainly volunteerism);
• Adolf Hitler’s ambivalent racial views;
• racial changes that occurred in spite of the official NS race ethos

( Weltanschauung) as a result of the war;
• the tolerant or arbitrary treatment of Jews, blacks, Roma, non
Germans and mixed-race people in NS Germany and in Europe. When I use the term “racial ambivalence,” I use it in the literal sense: many NS Germans were literally “of two minds” about race. History relating to the National Socialist era is usually rife with emotion and bias, and this subjectivity has prevented us from seeing what happened in the Third Reich and why. Few historians have asked why so many ethnic minorities and foreigners supported the NS military apparatus. Fewer have asked why Africans like Mohamed Husen chose to stay in the Third Reich when they were allowed, and sometimes encouraged, to emigrate. It is time to ask (and to finally answer) why so many mulattoes, mischlinge, Africans, Jews, Roma and other ethnic minorities survived the war in spite of the discrimination and atrocities that were allegedly committed against these groups. This study therefore focuses on those who collaborated with the Third Reich as well as those who survived the war. (Readers should consult my latest effort, coauthored with Wilfried Heink, hitler & himmler UNCENSORED [2012], to see the latest additions and revisions I have made.)

FIGURE II. Al Jolson, an American Jew, in blackface (left). Mohamed Husen, Black Third Reich actor and lecturer (right). Blacks could not be actors in America, but they were encouraged to act in NS Germany. Photos: Public domain.

Diversity was their strength

The Waffen SS were mostly non-German volunteers. Most historians continue to neglect the motivations of these men and women who fought for Hitler as opposed to the Allies. Historians have generally described this interracial phenomenon as “inexplicable” when there is more than sufficient evidence of diverse motivations. Furthermore Hitler was ambivalent about his own racial and ethnic views, and so too were many prominent ‘Nazis’, such as Franz Wimmer-Lamquet (who married an Arabian woman on the NSDAP’s orders) and Alfred Rosenberg (who supported an independent Ukraine). Unless a penchant for tolerance and acceptance of the “other” is present, then no tolerance or acceptance of the “other” will occur in a genuine way. Many ‘Nazis’ became great friends with nonGermans. Hitler and Himmler both went out of their way to accommodate most of their volunteers. Hitler met the Grand Mufti (putting him up in Germany and paying him RM 130,000 per month), Chinese KMT businessman H. H. Kung and East Indian leader Subhas Chandra Bose, but failed to meet with the “Aryan” leader of the United States, Franklin Roosevelt (or even Winston Churchill). Hitler was willing to contradict his own Weltanschauung to achieve what he needed to achieve politically and militarily. This general attitude of ambivalence was not limited to the military sphere, however. It extended into the realm of Third Reich society both before and during the war. For example, while blacks could not act in America at the time,—only blackface was permitted—they were encouraged to act in NS Germany, and were well paid. Another example: Hitler did not have to allow blacks to compete in the 1936 Olympics. We should ask ourselves whether the Southern United States might have acted as Hitler did had they hosted the 1936 Games.

FIGURE III. H. H. Kung. He traveled to Germany in 1937, attempting to enlist German aid against the Empire of Japan. In 1937 Kung and two other Chinese KMT officials visited Germany and were received by Adolf Hitler on 13 June. Hitler told Kung that “I understand that people in China think the Soviet Union is their friend. But from our talk I understand that you, Herr Doktor, realize the danger of Communist doctrines.” Kung also convinced Hitler to cancel a scheduled speech at a Nazi conference by the Japanese Emperor’s brother. Kung said, “I was able to make Hitler understand that Japan wanted to dominate the world...I was able to make Hitler think twice before getting too close to Japan.” While in Germany Kung stated his “deep satisfaction” with Hitler. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.H._Kung (accessed March 2, 2012).

One study of the SS, entitled Hitler’s Foreign Divisions (edited by Chris Bishop), offers the following explanation of the international character of the SS.

Few people realize just how international were the German forces of World War II. It is estimated that nearly two million foreign nationals served under the Swastika. Although towards the end of the war many were transferred to the SS, large numbers served with the Army, particularly on the Eastern Front. The most committed of the foreign volunteers found a home in the SS, until parts of it were more like a German equivalent of the French Foreign Legion than the elite of the German race.

Although the SS did not welcome non-German volunteers until midway through the conflict in Russia, the idea of recruiting such men dated back to before the war. In his quest for a pan-Germanic Europe, Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler had decreed in 1938 that non-Germans of suitable ‘Nordic’ origin could enlist in the Allgemeine SS.³

Bishop’s conclusion about the character of the future German elite as Himmler envisioned it is nearly identical to my own. We appear to agree that the future German elite were not to be reduced to race alone, but to a combination of “physiognomy, mental and physical tests, character, and spirit.” Bishop concluded that Himmler envisioned an “aristocratic” class that would combine “charismatic authority with bureaucratic discipline.” This then typified “a new human type—warrior, administrator, scholar and leader, all in one— whose messianic mission was to repopulate Europe.” 4 The “superman” notion was a result of Allied propaganda taking hold of, and exploiting, some of the radical ideas put forth by Friedrich Nietzsche, not by Hitler. Hitler discussed a similar vision as Himmler—regarding future German leadership—with Otto Wagener, an early SA leader and one of Hitler’s first economic advisors. However, in contrast to Himmler, Hitler valued character, honor and merit over biology, early and later on.

FIGURE IV. Nazis are capitalizing on the swastika’s traditional meaning among Africans. BLACK NAZIS: Fritz Delfs, leader of the Nazis in Tanganyika, the former German East Africa that Hitler is demanding, softpedals Aryan supremacy credo in propounding Nazi ideology, and capitalizes traditional use of the swastika by the natives as a symbol of fertility. Large percent age of population is half-caste, and half-breeds, quadroons and octoroons are included in the count that is the basis of Berlin’s claim that a third of the white population of Tanganyika is German. Even full-blooded Negroes are sporting swastika symbols and party buttons. Source: Ken Magazine.

Hitler was a ‘merit man’, and this cropped up in many ‘racial conversations’ he had with various subordinates and officials. Hitler exhibited ambivalence when it came to race and heritage: he was willing to make exceptions to his own ideology. He told Wagener at one point that “retainers” (non-Germans) were as common as “heroes” (racial Germans) in early German society. The context and tone of this conversation and others, as far as can be deduced from the English translation, suggests that Hitler was open to the idea of limited foreign blood in the German folk-body (Volkskörper). Even when he seemed adamantly against Jewish blood infusion, he continued to make exceptions. The military and organizational performance and dedication of various ethnic minorities, such as Erhard Milch and Bernhard Rogge (both Jewish), as well as foreigners, such as the Grand Mufti (Arab) and Ante Pavelic (Croatian), affected Hitler’s thinking. In one of Axis Europa’s military history journals Hitler praises Muslims for their reliability. He expressed admiration for many of his foreign allies, including Muslims, Croats and Cossacks. By Lawrence Dennis’s own account, Hitler sat down and spoke with him one-on-one. Dennis was half-black.⁵ Hitler also spoke with African American Dr. S. J. Wright in 1932, which I discuss later.

Between tolerance and racism

As many of us know, Winifred Wagner and others, like Heinrich Hoffmann, convinced Hitler on more than one occasion to treat certain Jews with kindness. Thousands were granted his personal “German” clemency (Deutschblütigkeitserklärung). The fact that Jews could become “German blooded” was an unprecedented display of tolerance for the time period in question. The US did not do this for blacks or Jews at that time. Blacks and Jews were not accepted as ‘WASPs’ until the civil rights movement, and even today the position of African Americans is precarious.

FIGURE V. NS soldiers with French African troops. Public domain.

No historian has more thoroughly examined the NS-Jewish phenomenon than Bryan Mark Rigg. However, Rigg, like many others, failed to adequately answer why Hitler granted Jewish people clemency in the first place. While he affirms that Hitler made exceptions to his own ideology for the sake of military expediency, he does not explain why Hitler granted Milch or other Jews clemency before the war. Nor does he adequately explain why clemency was granted in 1944 and 1945—a time by which Hitler knew he was losing the war. His argument does not go far enough in explaining why Hitler exempted Jews and Roma (Zigeuner) from service in 1944 and 1945, by which time Germany needed every able-bodied man it could summon. Hitler did not allow Russian collaborator Andrei Vlasov independence until 1945. If he was so desperate for manpower, then why did he hold Vlasov’s Russian volunteers back until it was too late, and why did he allow Jewish and Roma exemptions from military service at all?

These are questions that Antonio J. Muñoz, Carlos C. Jurado, Vladimir Baumgarten and Peter Huxley-Blythe answered more adequately and in more depth. However, these historians did not discuss Jewish soldiers, nor did any of them question whether the Russians were reliable. Himmler’s “top secret” Posen speech of 24 October suggests that Russians were not reliable (see hitler & himmler UNCENSORED). These historians also suggest that had Hitler and the ‘Nazis’ been more racially accepting earlier on, they would have won the war. This is speculation. For all we know these foreigners could have caused the Germans to lose the war sooner than they did for any number of reasons—e.g., poor morale, indiscipline, war crimes, etc. The Dirlewanger and Kaminski brigades were predominantly foreign, and included many Roma and Slavs, but their performance was so poor and their war crimes so atrocious that the Germans had to disband them. Kaminski was killed by the SS. Many of the “Asiatic” men in the Niedermayer Division did not perform well under pressure. Too few historians question whether the Russians, or any other nonGermans, were reliable enough to use in a demanding way on the Eastern Front.

FIGURE VI. Hitler with Prince Paul of Yugoslavia. (1939). Source: Bundesarchiv.
Henri Schaub, a French volunteer, told his story to RT’s War Witness and unashamedly recalled,

I arrived at the Eastern Front on the 7th of July 1943. And on the 7th of July 1943 I went AWOL, the same day I arrived at the front. I deserted it. I have evidence to prove my words. I have a German Wehrpass, which has a record Vermisst— Vermisst means missing—because I had decided from the very beginning the first day I arrive at the front I’m going to desert it. We told Russians we wanted to surrender. We explained to them in Russian. [Laughing.] We took off our belts and dropped our rifles.⁶

Schaub and his French comrades deserted the Wehrmacht en masse and rejoined French resistance forces under joint Anglo-French command in Tehran to fight against the Germans in France.

All of this was reported to Hitler. Thus we may safely assume that the poor performance of most Russians factored into his decision to use the Russians under Vlasov politically as opposed to militarily. The fact that Hitler did not aim to liberate Russians also played a part in his decision not to use Vlasov’s men earlier: he said during his table talks that he wanted to “push” the Soviets “back” and fortify the eastern border of the Reich, but obviously his attitude changed by the end of the war when the Soviets broke through and Germany was overrun. The stenographic record proves that Hitler understood that the most he could hope for was to stall the Russian advance and nothing more. He hoped that the Americans, French and British would “come to their senses,” helping him and his men halt and repel the Bolsheviks, which is ultimately what happened during the subsequent Cold War.

FIGURE VII. A rare photo of a mulatto Wehrmacht soldier. Source: F. Adolphus collection.
Warsaw whitewash

As for the Poles, they wrote their history as though they never provoked the Germans or their foreign allies. Antonio Muñoz’s article (in Axis Europa) on the Warsaw Uprising suggests otherwise.⁷ The Polish guerrillas fought doggedly—very well in fact—and even dressed in German uniforms or as civilians. This caused problems for the Germans for obvious reasons. The Poles also used human shields to protect themselves. Numerous women fought in the Communists’ ranks, so not all women killed were “innocent civilians.” Civilian death levels are usually considerable when the inherently weaker side uses civilian shields and cities to neutralize the technological or numerical advantages of the superior side. The guerrillas used Warsaw’s populace and the city itself as their protection. Thomas Hammes characterized this as Fourth-Generation Warfare (4GW), but it was petite guerre. The weaker side targets public opinion because the public generally condemns high civilian death tolls. Using human shields and conducting battle in cities tends to raise the number of civilian deaths to intolerable levels, thereby evoking sympathy for the inferior aggressor and condemnation of the superior aggressor in the press. This is an effective military strategy since public opinion seldom tolerates such “collateral,” regardless of whether or not a war is zero-sum (a war that leads to the unconditional surrender of one side). This was the Polish strategy in the battle for Warsaw—irregular warfare. The guerrillas were counting on Stalin’s assistance, which never arrived. Stalin had ordered the Red Army to halt their advance and allow the Poles to be decimated by the Germans.

FIGURE VIII. Turkestani Wehrmacht soldiers dancing in Northern France. Source: Bundesarchiv.

Analysis of Muñoz’s relative strength chart indicates that Germany had a difficult time suppressing this uprising in spite of its superiority in weapons and numbers. The Poles fought tenaciously and this is indicated by his chart. The Germans had to increase their numbers and bombard Warsaw from afar to stop a poorly armed and poorly trained (in comparison) guerrilla army. One can clearly see that by 15 August there were many more German troops available to fight the Poles than on 1 August. Hitler accepted Guderian’s advice to treat the Poles kindly upon surrender after this insurrection. They were guaranteed full rights as POWs per international law.⁸

Several thousand foreign volunteers and auxiliaries participated in suppressing this uprising. We cannot blame the Germans for all the atrocities that occurred. The truth is that almost all of the atrocities were committed by Polish and Russian volunteer forces—namely, the Dirlewanger and Kaminski brigades. As mentioned before, Kaminski, a Polish-German, was shot by the Germans for committing atrocities against Polish noncombatants. Foreigners and ethnic minorities are not always humane, honorable or decent soldiers. Foreign soldier indiscipline and high desertion rates played a significant role in Hitler’s decision not to employ them en masse within his ranks until the end, but few historians think about this. They are dishonest in saying that all foreign and minority volunteers and conscripts would have been wonderful soldiers had “racist Hitler” just “given them the chance.” This is a baseless assumption. Today’s liberal historians are ridiculous to blast NS Germany’s World War II conduct when many so-called “German war criminals” were not even German.

FIGURE IX. Veterinary Officer Lieutenant Dr. Sayed Ishaq (June 1943). Source: Martin J. Bamber, For Free India: Indian Soldiers in Germany and Italy During the Second World War, ed. Aad Neeven (Netherlands: OskamNeeven v.o.f., 2010), 232.

Nazi Zionists, Zionist Nazis

Switching topics here, one historian compared the Israeli invasion of Gaza to the German suppression of the Warsaw Uprising. That is not a legitimate comparison. Poland refused to give back what it took from Germany under Versailles. The Israelis refuse to give back stolen Palestinian land, and keep occupying more, expanding their apartheid wall meanwhile. Second, upon the initial invasion of Poland Hitler offered to withdraw all of his forces and pay reparations to the Polish government if it signed a peace deal granting him the Corridor and Danzig (which were formerly German). The Poles refused so Hitler occupied Poland (and so did Stalin; why not compare Stalin’s suppression and occupation of Poland to Israel’s siege of Gaza?) Third, the only reason Poland was occupied beyond the original area designated was because Germany had to confront the USSR, which we now know was determined to invade Europe with the aim of reaching Spain or Portugal. Fourth, Germany did not deliberately target civilians in Poland. Hitler’s goal in Warsaw was to quell the uprising and break the Resistance’s ability to wage war, not to commit genocide against Polish people. Why did Hitler give Warsaw POWs full Geneva rights if genocide was his goal? Hitler ordered ‘no attacks’ on Polish noncombatants in 1939: common knowledge revealed by John Toland decades ago. The Germans treated Poles who surrendered humanely. Sixth, the Polish Blue Police, which consisted of 11,000 Poles on paper, including Polish General Zamorski, helped the Germans round up Jews and maintain law and order in the Polish General Government (GG). Seventh, thousands of nonGermans helped the Germans suppress the Poles. Nearly all of them did this voluntarily. Does Israel have international volunteer forces in Gaza? Eighth, Israel did not have to face down a first-class Communist military force composed of four million men and women, with an estimated 14 million more in reserve. Partisan divisions were part of the Red Army, a fact addressed by Wilfried Heink in his studies of anti-German partisan units as well as by Muñoz. And finally, Hitler and Germany cared about public opinion at home and abroad. They adjusted their actions and policies to meet international standards and criticism. Did Stalin, Churchill or Roosevelt do the same? Does Israel today?
The Israelis do not care what anyone thinks either inside or outside of Israel. They do what they wish and lie to cover up the truth, like the Bolsheviks. No one seems to care that Stalin refused to sign the Geneva accords regarding humane treatment of POWs. The Germans were not obliged to treat Soviet POWs humanely since Stalin refused to sign. They did anyway. And contrary to myth, the Germans punished cannibalism amongst Soviet POWs, which is featured on Carlos Porter’s website (as of 2012). Stalin said of his POWs, “There are no prisoners of war, only traitors to the Motherland.” He told the Germans to do whatever they wished with Russian POWs. Also, Stalin possessed half of Poland at the time of the Warsaw Uprising. So the state wasn’t even Poland at that time, but the Soviet Socialist Republic of Poland. Most historians ignore this and that most of the Poles who fought the Germans were Communists. Many were trying to assist the Soviet takeover of the rest of Poland! They didn’t care about Poland or the Polish people; they cared about spreading Communism. The Germans were not perfect, but neither were the Poles; nevertheless neither side acted like Israelis do today.

FIGURE X. An Indian soldier who was captured by the Soviets in Berlin (1945). Source: Bamber, 332.

FIGURE XI. The Jewish Order Police voluntarily worked with the NS Germans in Poland. The three men on the left are Jews. Source: YouTube screenshot.

Über-racists?

Had the ‘Nazis’ been as “ racist” as most historians argue, they could not have garnered the level of support they did. Even after Stalingrad, Spaniards, Slavs, Frenchmen and many thousands of other non-Germans continued to fight for the Germans on a volunteer basis. French and Arab volunteers gave their lives in the final fight for the capital of Berlin in 1945. Hitler continued to allow thousands of Jewish men to serve, and many did so with tenacity and valor. One has to call into question whether all of these Jewish men and other nonGermans were really as opposed to the NS regime as they claimed after the fact. Their tenacity and determination suggests otherwise. Bernhard Rogge, Helmuth Wilberg, Erhard Milch and Ernst Prager come to mind. Hans Hauck, a mulatto, wanted to join the Wehrmacht in order to prove that he was as “German” as an ethnic German. He chose to remain in Soviet captivity even though he was given a chance to leave with his comrades. He did so to “prove that he was German.” Such behavior seems unimaginable given what we are told about NS treatment of blacks and mixed-race individuals in Third Reich society. The truth is that relations were dynamic and more complicated than most historians have led us to believe. Hauck was even promoted to private first class.

Why such a controversial thesis?

When I first saw the books about all of these foreigners and ethnic minorities in NS service I was dumbstruck. Historians should not be comfortable with the fact that even many formally educated people (I was an undergraduate at the time) have no idea that millions of foreigners and ethnic minorities fought for the Axis. I decided to research their motives and thoughts as well as the thoughts and motives of Hitler and other NS Germans to explain this phenomenon: how and why did they serve such an “evil” and “racist” regime? I examined POWs, forced laborers, conscripts and volunteers: to get an honest picture of what these men and women went through and what they thought about the Axis. This is still a largely ignored aspect of World War II. I figured it was time to break new ground. What I found, and which was initially shocking to me, is that the NS Germans were not the “evil racists” we have been told they were.

FIGURE XII. Black Nazi: Horst Sabac el Cher’s Wehrmacht identification card (1940). Source: Gorch Pieken and Cornelia Kruse, Preußisches Liebesglück: Eine deutsche Familie aus Afrika (Berlin: List Taschenbuch, 2008), 175.

Hitler’s ambivalence

Upon seeing part of Hitler’s Platterhof speech of May 26, 1944 in John Lukacs’ biography The Hitler of History, I decided to obtain the speech and translate it into English myself, with Wilfried Heink. No historian had translated this speech, which is remarkable when one sees its content. It is a revealing speech, part of which is included in this book: one in which Hitler admits to having been wrong about race and Volk. While Hitler’s outlook remained “Völkisch nationalist,” he confessed that the strength of the German people was its diverse racial nuclei (multiraciality). He said the German Volk was a “mixed-race” Volk, but resolved to nurture the Nordic race nucleus more than the others, because he felt this nucleus was the most qualified for leadership and state organization. He appears to have attributed more value to individual Germans with highly sought after traits—these traits being the result of their ‘Nordic-ness’ in his view—than the German race as a whole, which he felt should be led by the most talented German citizens. He equated the best traits and talent with Nordicness (i.e. the Nordic nucleus).

In the Platterhof speech Hitler emphasizes merit: he equates Nordic with merit. Here is an example. General Sepp Dietrich, a former chauffeur and Kaiserine private (deridingly referred to as “a village grocer” by some historians), was likely considered a ‘Nordic German’ by Hitler in the light of his leadership talent, whether this was correct or not. Dietrich is talented, so his Nordic genes are predominant; because his Nordic genes are predominant, Dietrich is talented. This view of Germanness was a partial retraction of the official race doctrine, because any individual with the right talent was considered Nordic and thereby became a leader or organizer, regardless of whether he was ‘pure’ German. While blackness and Jewishness were limitations in this respect, neither was a bar.

Hitler was more tolerant of non-German people than was, say, General Heinz Guderian. On at least one occasion Guderian requested “racially pure” divisions (see the stenographic record of Hitler’s military conferences, edited by David Glantz). If a “Jewish soldier” exhibited leadership and organizational talent, then that Jewish individual received Hitler’s personal clemency. In the light of this information we may speculate, as most historians do, that had Hitler won the war, he would have been more racially tolerant. Some of his most talented officers were mixed-race or foreign-blooded (e.g., Admiral Bernhard Rogge, Field Marshal Erhard Milch, and Léon Degrelle of the SS Wallonie Division). The two Sabac el Cher sons, Herbert and Horst, both mulattoes, were presumably exempted by Hitler and allowed to serve in the Wehrmacht. (Horst was also in the Stahlhelm.)

FIGURE XIII: Horst Sabac el Cher in Stahlhelm uniform (1935). Source: Gorch Pieken & Cornelia Kruse, 174.
Primitive biologism

Hitler ridiculed Heinrich Himmler’s and others’ “ primitive biologism” early on. This suggests that Hitler was more tolerant than previously thought. The Otto Wagener memoirs are filled with Hitler’s ambivalent statements on race and ethnicity. Likewise Hitler’s “table talks” are contradictory. Since Hitler seemed to have consistently said contradictory things, we may conclude that he was consistently ‘of two minds’ about certain things, including race. This is a more cogent explanation of his personal acceptance of so many Jewish and foreign soldiers in German ranks than that offered by most historians.

From the aforementioned edition of Axis Europa:

The most notable case was created by the headquarters of the German 2nd Panzer Army, Army Group Center. In the Lokot region (halfway between Moscow and Kiev), it established a Russian self-governing, autonomous zone, complete with its own [anti-Communist] militia.

This unit would end up being known as “ RONA” [Russian People’s Liberation Army], and also as “Brigade Kaminski,” after its commander [Bronislav Kaminski]. But all these cases, including the Kaminski Brigade, were “irregular.” The German High Command had expressly prohibited the enlistment of Russian volunteers. These “experiments” were done; they were done so without the knowledge of the High Command. Fedor von Bock and General von Schenkendorf wanted official approval from the OKW (German Armed Forces High Command) so that these “experiments” could become accepted and expanded upon. The first indication that there was an apparent change in this official policy occurred in March 1942 when a unit of the Abwehr, the [German] Military Intelligence Service, created a unit of Russian volunteers in Osintorff, near Smolensk. Given that the Abwehr was directly accountable to the German OKW Headquarters, the creation of this unit seemed to indicate that the highest levels of authority in Germany had begun to change their political policies towards Russia.

One of the branches of the Abwehr, specifically “Abwehr II” [Department II], was charged with organizing acts of agitation and sabotage behind the enemy lines. Abwehr christened this as “Unternehmen Graukopf”; or “Operation Greyhead,” its military plan to infiltrate anti-Communists behind the Soviet lines.

The specific detachment under Abwehr H that was to help organize and carry out this operation was “Abwehrkommando 203.”

At this stage in the campaign it was formed in the central sector of the front; Russisches Bataillon z.b.V. (Russian Battalion for Special Employment); “Verband Graukopf” (Greyhead Formation); “Ossintorff Einheit” (Unit Ossintorff, after its base of operations); individuals like [Colonel] V. Boyarski, the ex-commander of the Red Army 41st Rifle Division; G. Zhilenkov, the ex-Communist Party Secretary from the Moscow District (both had fallen prisoners of the Germans early in the campaign); and I. Sararov, the son of an exiled Czarist General, whose anti-Communist fanaticism had first led him to fight under Franco during the Spanish Civil War.

Von Lambsdorff and his friend, von Pahlen ended up being assigned to this small, embryonic Russian unit. Naturally, they were delighted. The command was Russian, as well as the uniforms. He again shows me the photo album. In it we see soldiers whose uniforms are indisputably Russian in origin, to which had been added Czarist era insignia (it wasn’t until 1943 that the Red Army reintroduced the shoulder epaulets that were typically Russian). The photos show the use of an oval cockade in the covers, whose colors were the Russian national colors. This cockade was used in place of the Soviet Red Star. In one photograph, we see von Lambsdorff in German uniform, completely surrounded by volunteers...

....The idea to form this unit came from a “ White” Russian [exile] officer, stationed in Berlin, by the name of Ivanov, who was able to obtain the support of the Abwehr and also to obtain the interest of a variety of [important] Nazis. Two other photos show Igor Sararov (at this time, under this same unit). In his jacket I notice medals and decorations that are immediately familiar to me: they are Spanish—won during the [Spanish] Civil War. Other details show that this unit, which at first glance seems purely Russian, formed part of the German Army: The men are armed with German [as well as Russian] arms (like the famous MP41 and MP40 submachine guns), and in one of the photos we see a poster of Hitler next to a group of volunteers.

Grigori von Lambsdorff is quoted as saying:

“We were a Russian unit, of Russian fighters, for the Russian cause. We viewed the Germans not as our masters, but as our allies...We constantly tried to instill the use of Russian military traditions. For this reason, we wished to use the typical gold epaulets that in the old Czarist Army identified the officers. But it was impossible to obtain the proper tailoring thread and Bolshevik propaganda had caused this type of ribbon to be considered negatively, referring to them as the “golden epaulets.” So it was impossible to find it in Russia. We couldn’t find it also in the German military warehouses, due to the fact that German epaulets were so totally different. We finally had to contact a manufacturer [in] Paris. The significance of Hitler’s Platterhof speech

The Platterhof speech is important. Hitler honestly recaps his life’s work out of the public eye. He recollects all that is most important to him. He omits a lot too: as revealing as the topics he discusses. He never mentions the term “Aryan” and fails to discuss German territorial claims, unlike before. He does not discuss Slavic (or Slavonic) inferiority. Instead he talks on the topics of race, folk, nation, German history and the future National Socialist military and educational systems. For the first time Hitler openly says that Jews are ‘biologically superior’ to Nordics, which is why they have to be removed from Europe—“they would have destroyed us bit-by-bit”—and that Bolshevism has a superior educational system to his own. He says the USSR did what he ought to have done: he wished to establish an educational system based on the Soviet model. He wanted to see all young Germans molded by a straight and narrow set of NS parameters—what Americans might characterize as “indoctrination”: for such a system, he thought, would result in a folk that was impenetrable, indestructible, like that of the Soviet Union. The Soviets had apparently won Hitler’s admiration in this respect.

FIGURE XIV. An Indian SS trooper. Source: Bamber, 68.

Hitler talks about race, culture and folk in detail. He says he was previously incorrect about race. He then distinguishes the concepts of folk and race, admitting that the Germans’ multiraciality is their strength. He says he does not wish to dismantle such a united people in spite of its multiraciality, but that such a thing might come to pass regardless. Here his meaning is not apparent, but in the light of the rest of his speech he likely meant that the system of merit would eventually eliminate un-Nordic types because they were not ‘fit’. However he does not suggest the destruction of rival racial traits in Germans, and in fact condemns this “Bolshevik method.” Instead, this was to naturally occur over time, an idea he suggested to Wagener years before. The only aspect of this speech that can be construed as “racist” is his reference to the average “Negro tribe” as “ignorant.” But his reference was with respect to culture, not race. As John Lukacs explained, there is a subtle but profound difference between culturalism and racism. Hitler’s concept of Herrenvolk was nearly identical to the Anglo-Saxon concept of the “white man’s burden”: the “superior” culture, which was more technologically advanced, was ordained to manage those of inferior (i.e., “primitive”) culture. Hitler wanted to eliminate class- and wealth-based privilege from German politics and replace both with what he understood as Nordicness. He believed that the Nordic race nucleus was the most capable of state leadership and organization, so he started cultivating Germany’s future leaders based on this Nordic-talent precept. His focus is aptitude and its importance to good leadership in the future.

There is no mention of a German “ master race” or “extermination of Jews.” But Hitler does defend his anti-Jewish measures. He is not sorry that he removed the Jews from Germany. He justifies his actions by pointing out the necessity for such measures: increased German employment, restoration of native German leadership, improved cultural life, etc. His audience, which consisted of generals and officers, vigorously and repeatedly applauded his remarks throughout (an indication that this speech was recorded). In spite of his anti-Jewish remarks Hitler did not take a firm racist stand: he continued to grant clemency to many of those Jews whose applications slipped past Martin Bormann. Any reading of Rigg’s work makes this clear. Also, pure race Gypsies, as Gilad Margalit and Guenter Lewy confirmed, were protected by the ‘Nazis’. Some even served in the German Armed Forces in April 1945. The ‘Nazis’ did not carry out genocide of Gypsies and never even exhibited any intent to do so. Convicted criminals were given the opportunity to “redeem” themselves via service on the front. About 4,000 men, many of them Gypsies, were recruited for the SS Sonderkommando Dirlewanger (later the 36. Waffen-Grenadier-Division der SS), including Hermann W. and Julius H. Gypsies avoided sterilization required of lifelong “vagabonds” and “asocials,” via active resistance and relocation (to KZs), on account of “social adjustment.” 9

Aryan Christ

I want to digress a moment and talk about Hitler’s “ Aryanization” of Jesus. Rigg provides an irrational explanation of Hitler’s “Aryanization” of Christ. If one examines what Hitler said about Christ early on, one sees that he really did believe that Christ was nonJewish. This is obvious in the Wagener memoirs and Bormann records (Hitler’s Table-Talk, 1941-1944). Hitler was not alone. Many German theologians, who were not ‘Nazis’ or Hitler supporters, also believed that Jesus was non-Jewish. No historian to my knowledge has done a better job of exploring and analyzing this phenomenon than Richard Steigmann-Gall. His study offers a rational explanation of the “Aryanization” of Christ by so many Germans and ‘Nazis’. Rigg fell short in this respect, though his research on Jewish soldier motivations and thoughts is unparalleled.

The context of the time period

While there was racial discrimination in NS Germany, there was racial discrimination in America, Britain, France, Poland, Russia, Japan, China, New Zealand, Australia, Canada and Italy. Gerald Horne (author of Race War!) said that the British, in spite of their propaganda stating otherwise, regularly and secretly discriminated against black soldiers. The English concealed their “racism” while the Germans were open about their views. Blacks were not promoted by the British because they were black. According to Madhusree Mukerjee, British leaders also fooled the Indians with the ‘equality’ facade: Lord Irwin told Amery that the Indians could be appeased via “[...] some facade which will leave the essential mechanism of power still in our hands.” According to Horne the British used conscripted Indian soldiers as ‘cannon fodder’ on numerous occasions in China. White British blood was apparently too precious to be spilled fighting against “inferior” Chinese, who the British despised, abused, wantonly murdered and regularly degraded. Contrast with NS Germany: as mentioned, Sabac el Cher’s two sons, both of whom were ‘mulatto’, served in Hitler’s Wehrmacht, as did Mandenga Ngando (in 1940),¹⁰ a Cameroonian German. Article VII of the First Supplementary Decree made this possible. Numerous blacks served during the Battle for Moscow, and at least one fell there (this was likely Horst). According to Rigg’s book Lives of Hitler’s Jewish Soldiers, 2,000 full Jews, 60,000 half-Jews and 90,000 quarter-Jews served in Hitler’s Wehrmacht and SS. This may even be an underestimate. But the majority of those who died for NS Germany were ethnic Germans, whereas the majority of those who died for England were non-English.

Allied apologists are quick to point out how the Germans wanted to keep uppermost-level control in German hands once they had successfully wooed or subdued the populations of Eastern Europe and West Russia, all the while avoiding the fact that the Allies themselves did this. Hitler was apparently “über-racist” and “evil” because he subjugated white peoples (unacceptable), while the British and Americans subjugated nonwhite peoples (acceptable). Churchill arrogantly said, “We are, therefore, fighting not for the cause of India alone but for humanity as well.” For all of humanity, eh? It is clear from this quote, and countless others, that “humanity” was synonymous with white skin in Churchill’s eyes. British leaders at that time were über-racists whose raison d’etre was to “weld” nonwhites together, by force and fraud, with their superior “knowledge,” “law,” and “higher civilization.” It was, in Elder Churchill’s words, “[their] title to India,” as noted by Mukerjee in Churchill’s Secret War.

FIGURE XV. An unknown African participant in Bremen’s Reich Colonial Day celebration in May 1938. He is wearing an NS armband. Source: Bechhaus-Gerst, 90.

Non-Germans in Hitler’s service: asset or liability?

Hitler’s armed forces were the most culturally, ethnically and religiously diverse in Western history. At least two million non-German foreigners and ethnic minorities served in Hitler’s armed forces at one point or another. Without foreign and non-German help, the Germans might not have had their Western defenses prepared in time for the Allied invasion. They also might have struggled much more than they did with partisans, and their intelligence apparatus would have suffered. Organisation Todt foreign figures numbered around 900,000¹¹; Ostarbeiter figures 1,290,000¹²; Eastern troops 400,000 to 1 million¹³; Waffen SS members numbered 900,000¹⁴; and an untold number of foreigners and ethnic minorities served in the Luftwaffe, Abwehr, police forces (e.g., Gestapo, Ordnungspolizei, and Schuma), Wehrmacht, and Heer. Had all these foreigners and minorities refused to cooperate, the Germans might have been unable to accomplish what they did for so long (they fought a war against four superpowers for nearly six years). Widespread collaboration was essential to their war effort and they knew it. In spite of this we are supposed to believe that Hitler was the world’s most zealous “racist” (an über-racist).

FIGURE XVI. A young African-Italian fascist. Source: YouTube screenshot.

Numerous ‘Nazis’ were not adamant “ racists.” Some ‘played the role’ simply to advance politically and personally. Himmler was apparently one of these types since he was so excited about, and accommodating of, Arabs, Slavic Eastern volunteers and Roma early on. Unlike one of the members of Winston Churchill’s cabinet, Himmler did not experience “physical revulsion” upon simply seeing a black person (see Mukerjee’s Churchill’s Secret War). Himmler’s tolerance causes one to ask whether he was really as racist as he made himself out to be. His Posen speech suggests that he wasn’t. Antonio Muñoz’s findings as well as photographic evidence featured in Borsarello and Palinckx’s Wehrmacht and SS indicate that he was open to recruiting Senegalese and Afro-British POWs to serve Germany in some capacity (not necessarily in combat). Richard Steigmann-Gall exposed Bormann’s anti-Christianity in The Holy Reich: Nazi Conceptions of Christianity, 1919-1945 as disingenuous just as several historians exposed Himmler’s über-racism as disingenuous (as did Himmler himself), though likely inadvertently.

FIGURE XVII. Latvian women (pictured) served in the German L.J.O. (Latvian Youth Organization) and Lithuanian women served as Luftwaffe flak helpers. Source: David Littlejohn, Foreign Legions of the Third Reich Vol. 4: Poland, the Ukraine, Bulgaria, Romania, Free India, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Finland and Russia (San Jose, CA: R. James Bender Publishing, 1987), 200.

We should ask those who believe that Hitler and the ‘Nazis’ were “white supremacists”: how should we account for the stunning level of non-German and ethnic minority collaboration during World War II if the ‘Nazis’ were so racist? Antonio Muñoz’s figures suggest that at least 1.5 million of these volunteers and conscripts were Russians. Can today’s Zionist Jews, as members of an ethnostate, boast of such high levels of foreign and ethnic minority collaboration and volunteerism? How about former Rhodesia? Hundreds of thousands of NS collaborators were volunteers. How many Palestinians, Persians, Jordanians or Syrians volunteer to fight for the IDF and the Israeli ethnostate? Some have, of course, but not two million or more. Foreigners and non-Germans even volunteered for Schuma (security police), SS, and Gestapo service during the Third Reich. Can Israel’s Mossad boast the same? These are comparative questions we should ask ourselves, without emotion, to better understand what happened in NS Germany and why. The ‘Nazis’ were not nearly as racist as historians have claimed. This is an important admission when we consider the historical context vs. apartheid ethnostates today, which are expected to abide by liberal-democratic principles. We revisit these issues and expand on them in the Epilogue.

Uncle lynch

Franklin Roosevelt opposed anti-lynching laws against African Americans for the sake of political expediency. In an incredible admission to Walter White, head of the NAACP, he said, “If I come out for the anti-lynching bill now, they will block every bill I ask Congress to pass to keep America from collapsing. I just can’t take that risk.” According to the New World Encyclopedia, “After 1942, when Roosevelt was made aware of the Nazi extermination of the Jews by Rabbi Stephen Wise, the Polish envoy Jan Karski and others, he refused to allow any systematic attempt to rescue European Jewish refugees and bring them to the US.” 15 Roosevelt did not care about Jewish suffering, whether real or imagined, nor did he care that African Americans were being lynched. His actions spoke louder than his words. Today the US public is mostly unaware of Roosevelt’s flagrant racism.

FIGURE XVIII. A 1925 lynching victim. Between 1800 and 1951, at least 3,437 blacks were lynched in acts of vigilante terror. Source: Library of Congress.

Some blacks were literally incinerated to death by hostile white mobs eager to unleash their aggression against an easy target.¹⁶ While many Africans and Afro-Germans were discriminated against in NS Germany, the NS government never advocated or endorsed lynching of blacks, nor was racism against Africans institutionalized. Independent researcher Friedrich Berg, a man born during World War II, said that German children admired Jesse Owens, and looked up to him in spite of his race.¹⁷ This was relayed to Mr. Berg by a man who lived in NS Germany at the time. There is no reason to doubt the veracity of this man’s claim: Germans cheered Owens and repeatedly chanted his name—“Jess-ah O-vens, Jessah O-vens”—at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin. Uniformed SS men watched him race and eagerly applauded his victory. Owens told the press that he was not forced to sit at the back of German buses, nor was he disallowed to stay at the nicest hotels. This was not the case in Britain: prominent black visitors to Britain were barred from high end hotels. Mr. Berg’s acquaintance also mentioned that Owens could have walked into any bar in Germany and been treated as well as a German patron. Contrast this with the fact that in Britain and the US, even prominent blacks were forced to stand in buses and were never allowed to stay in classy areas designated for “whites only”. African American journalist and author Roi Ottley recounted many of the every day horrors of British and US treatment of blacks in his book No Green Pastures. Ottley reported that British boys lit Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s “frizzly hair” on fire “to see if it would burn.” 18 Such crass racism amongst the youth of Britain at the time is largely neglected by today’s historians, because it does not fit today’s whitewashed image of the Allies. Perhaps this is one reason why few historians mention that Cameroonian Louis Brody wrestled for the German Circus Crown throughout the NS years, or that he was the most famous Afro-German actor from the 1920s through 1940s.¹⁹

I made personal contact with a German World War II survivor, Herr L., who told me the following childhood story:

...This discrimination became obvious after I passed my High school entry examination and after my successful passing from Sexta to Quinta level at the Gymnasium. As Heiner was exactly one year, one month, one week and one day younger than I, he entered the Gymnasium a year after me. Unbelievable, but true. Our parents arranged with the school to have me repeat the first high school year Sexta. In other words I had to share the school bench with Heiner [Herr L.’s special needs brother]!

My humiliation and disappointment were understandable and I lost all my school friends who had given me the nickname Jesse, after Jesse Owen [sic] the American Olympic champion, as I had become top sprinter and jumper and general athlete in my class.²⁰

Martin Bormann issued a circular to all Gauleiters (regional leaders) in March 1936 calling for employment protection of Africans and Afro-Germans living and working in Germany. This order flew in the face of the 1935 Nuremberg Laws.²¹ We may presume that Hitler had something to do with this protective measure, as it is doubtful that Bormann himself was concerned about the welfare of blacks. Jochen von Lang argued that Bormann did everything in his personal power to keep Jewish letters of appeal and clemency applications as well as disturbing war information from Hitler. One need not guess how this man’s actions may have adversely affected Afro-Germans and other blacks living and working in Germany, especially in the light of Hitler’s declining health and political activity in the latter years.

FIGURE XVIIII. Louis Brody pictured with fellow ‘Nazi’ wrestlers. Source: Bechhaus-Gerst, 76.

Über -racists do not discard their “master race” doctrine simply because of military setbacks. Israelis have not discarded their racial supremacist doctrines, including apartheid, in spite of antagonistic world opinion and military setbacks. Lebanon 2006 was a PR and military disaster for Israel, but this setback (and others since) did not halt the apartheid wall, Israeli settlement, agitation for war against Iran, or Zionist Americans like Senator Rick Santorum from espousing antiArab racism. Santorum stated that the Palestinian state does not exist. According to the Jewish Week, January 2, 2012, he told a questioner at a campaign event in Iowa,

“ There are no Palestinians...All the people who live in the West Bank are Israelis. There are no Palestinians. This is Israeli land.”

“ The West Bank is part of Israel,” which won it as “part of an aggressive attack by Jordan and others” in 1967. Israel doesn’t have to give it back any more than the United States has to give New Mexico and Texas to Mexico, which were gotten “through a war.” 22

Hitler never even said such a thing about Jews in an era in which “racism” and imperialism were the ‘order of the day’. Israel has yet to allow Palestinians into the highest levels of its government and military. There were Jewish NSDAP members and generals in NS Germany. The US and Britain have yet to allocate top-level military and governmental command to non-whites. Whether or not any of these modern states qualify as über-racist is up to readers to decide. But they must do it without the hysteria normally associated with such controversial inquiries. If historians cannot get past the hysteria so typical of Third Reich historiography, then how are they going to explain phenomena like the Jüdische Ordnungsdienst (Jewish Order Police), which assisted the Germans with policing the main ghettos of Poland? An estimated 2,500 Jewish men served in Warsaw and half that number in the Lodz ghetto during the NS occupation.²³

The ‘Nazis’ were neither über-racists nor uniquely racist. We do not get to decide who was racist based on who won World War II.

FIGURE XX. Henry Crowder, left, said he experienced no racial discrimination in NS Germany. He and Jack Taylor, right, were unharmed by the ‘Nazis’. Public domain.

Raffael Scheck (author of Hitler’s African Victims) produced a thorough study, but he has a misleading thesis that is difficult to accept without challenge. According to his investigation into French and German archives, he concluded that no more than 3,000 Africans were “massacred” by the Germans during the war, an unconfirmed figure according to Scheck himself. (The French had mobilized 200,000 Africans during the course of the war.) This was not genocide, nor was it even a significant war crime by war crimes standards. While massacres are horrible and condemnable, the Allies committed numerous massacres of blacks and other minorities before, during and after World War II. Yet they portray themselves as “benevolent” towards Africans and other non-whites in their history. Most Axis historians parrot this nonsense. And the British: they admitted that German civilians and workers were targets of extermination via air raids. Civilians were bombed, incinerated and strafed to death in their streets and homes. At least 600,000 German civilians were mass murdered in Hamburg alone. 51 million incendiary bombs were dropped on German civilians. The infernos that resulted from those bombs reached temperatures as hot as 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit. Civilians in harm’s way were incinerated to death. This was a literal holocaust, which Catholics used to define as “a burnt offering” until Jewish supremacists declared a monopoly on the term.

Furthermore this was a period of Western history in which Charles Darwin was worshipped, scientists were infallible heroes, eugenics was popular, racism against non-whites was rampant, lynchings were commonplace, and reason and technology were seen as the only markers of higher (“superior”) culture and civilization. Any reading of British history demonstrates the racial and cultural supremacy and arrogance of the British people and nation. To deny this is to deny the context of that time period. Whether wrong or right ‘Nazi’ racism was a product of its time and largely reactionary: The Germans deeply resented Versailles, British hegemony in Europe, and domestic Jewish economic and cultural supremacy.

FIGURE XXI. Erika Ngambi ul Kuo, right, and her family in NS Germany. Source: Showing Our Colors: Afro-German Women Speak Out, ed. May Opitz, Katharina Oguntoye, and Dagmar Schultz, trans. Anne V. Adams (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1986), 71.

Guilt by dissension

For anyone to describe dissenting historical viewpoints as “ relativization of history” is for that person to view history from a modern perspective. How can history be understood outside of its context? The historicist perspective attempts to see all history within context. Two million foreigners and ethnic minorities having fought for the Third Reich, mostly voluntarily, is an unprecedented display of interethnic and interracial tolerance for that era. Tens of thousands of minority and foreign volunteers and conscripts were in fact rejected by the NS Germans, so they were not “used.” There is no way around the fact that many ‘Nazis’ changed their minds about race. This does not mean that NS Germany was a paradise of diversity. What it means is that the allegedly unique racism and gross intolerance of the ‘Nazis’ is ahistorical. This ahistorical image is what most historians want to see; it is not reality. With this in mind one should not be surprised to learn that Erich von Manstein, one of Hitler’s most loyal and trusted generals, was Jewish. His real surname was Lewinski. This is documented in the Bundesarchiv. One may read about this in Wolfram Wette’s The Wehrmacht: History, Myth and Reality. Was every single man and woman who served in Hitler’s ranks a shirker, opportunist, fascist, racist and/or “evil”? If yes, then all the foreigners and minorities who fought for the Allies were too. Historians do not get to paint the allies of one side as “good” and those of the other as “evil”. This black and white thinking belongs in novels, not in history books. The fact that nearly everyone who has portrayed the other side of NS Germany is labeled a “fascist,” “Nazi apologist” or “pseudohistorian” only enhances the case for dissenting viewpoints. Personal attacks and false assumptions are certainly no example of Wissenschaft: the spirit of free, uninhibited academic pursuit. No one has reason to fear a balanced portrayal of the Axis unless the Axis has been lied about.

FIGURE XXII. An Askari wearing an NS armband during a colonial exhibition in 1937. Source: Bechhaus-Gerst, 89.
Axis praxis

Raffael Scheck’s Hitler’s African Victims is misleading. He said that Hitler never ordered a single massacre of African soldiers. So what explains his title? Perhaps he wanted a title that would sell his book, which is acceptable. However the general public should be aware that titles can be misleading. As for Guenter Lewy’s The Nazi Persecution of the Gypsies, this book is riddled with logical fallacies and contradictions. While he is correct that the ‘Nazis’ never exterminated Roma, he failed to apply this to the “Jewish holocaust.” He concluded that supporting evidence for the Roma genocide lacks murderous intent, so they were not targets of genocide. Agreed. However he concurrently argued that the supporting evidence for Jewish genocide lacks murderous intent, but that Jewish people were targets of genocide. He argued that NS statements about Roma were not earnest, but those pertaining to Jews were. One deduces from this juxtaposition that he is deliberately obfuscating the “evidence” of the “Jewish holocaust.” Substandard work like this gets published by prestigious universities because it affirms the “uniqueness of the Jewish holocaust” and by extension “Nazis as uniquely evil.”

Moving on, the ‘Nazis’ allegedly sterilized half of the Rhineland children. Pieken and Kruse wrote, “To preserve the ‘purity’of German blood, an unknown number of children born in the Weimar Republic who had dark-skinned French fathers were forcefully sterilized between 1935 and 1937.” 24 So no one knows how many were sterilized. Assuming that half of them were, why just half and why did sterilization end in 1937? And why didn’t Hitler mobilize his 20,000 African citizens and use them on the front lines as did the Americans and Brits (as ‘cannon fodder’)? Even though Eastern Europe was the focus of “Lebensraum” politics, the African colonial idea, never quite dead, came back to life. The final goal was a large “middle African nation” stretching from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean as “additional territory” following the reorganization of Europe. Those Germans of African origin, still living in the country, were to serve as go-betweens, spreading a positive view of NS Germany in letters and during their journeys to Africa.²⁵ Hitler needed these people, and others, which is why he included Article 7 of the First Supplementary Decree, a stipulation allowing for racial exemptions to the Nuremberg Laws. As a matter of fact the German public was anti-black and the NSDAP knew it.

Pieken and Kruse:

Whether [blacks in Germany] would have been willing to participate, considering the circumstances, we will never know; this new strategy was largely ignored by the populace in any case. Rejection of dark-skinned people developed a dynamic of its own; the short-lived [NS] foreign policy maneuvers could not change this. The foreign office had already determined in 1934 “that Negroes were often insulted and discriminated against, but mostly, because of public opinion, no business dared to employ Negroes. Thus, Negroes are deprived of the possibility to earn a living even inside of Germany.” Officials feared that an “anxiety among Negroes” could be the result and this could have “unsavory repercussions” should “the question of a German mandate in Africa become reality.”

Almost helpless, officials recorded the numerous cases of assaults and discrimination. More and more dark-skinned workers were harassed by their co-workers, or were dismissed because of threats of boycotts by customers. Some of those affected received monthly stipends from the foreign office or were hired by the Berlin Friedrich-Wilhelm University as teachers of oriental languages. But Germans of African origin were unprotected against daily assaults or insults.

The temporary protection changed nothing: contact with Aryans, or “mixing” with them was to be avoided. In 1935 it appeared that a solution could be found when the still popular concept of the “exhibition of peoples” was revived when in the “German Africa Show” all “aboriginals from the former colonies living in Germany” were united in a traveling show with the intent to “give Negroes something to do” and thus be better able to control “discrimination” against them. It was of no consequence to the promoters that the “aboriginals” had never set foot on African soil and were born in Germany. Most of them joined out of economic concerns.

....Nothing official about discrimination was found in [Ilse Sabac el Cher’s] possession, and to imply that she was afraid of the Nazis would be wrong.

....Horst Sabac el Cher was apparently not subjected to any state repression, but he still experienced a downturn in his career at that time.

....We don’t know how Herbert [Sabac el Cher] found out about the fate of his brother [Horst], as the war had come to Germany by now. Herbert, at his wife’s urging, had found a steady job: he was, since 1 November 1942, the lead violinist at the national theater at Mannheim. The family lived in a flat at 7 Lützow St., until they were bombed out the next year, though not for the last time. Herbert and his family experienced all the horrors of aerial warfare in Mannheim: the bombing of entire areas, the trying nights in the shelters. Until the end of the war they often had no place to stay; no contact with relatives or friends for weeks. Herbert’s personal papers show that he was wounded at least once: On 6 September 1943, he was “hit on the head by a falling wooden beam,” according to an official notice, and is “not deployable until further notice.” That night the city suffered the most extensive bombardment of a total of 150. Mannheim was reduced to rubble.

....The follow up performances in Tiengen, Lörrach and Rheinfelden were also praised in the local dailies. Almost every time the four musicians were mentioned and lauded, there was never a remark about the unusual name of the second violinist [Sabac el Cher]. There was never an attempt to Germanize him, and we have no record that Herbert’s origins were ever a problem for him. His career as a musician was not interrupted during the war years. Axel could only vaguely remember that his mother had warned him in Mannheim about the house official because of his unusual name, telling him to stay out of his way.

A paradox detail of this time of racial fanaticism is that Siegfried Hollstein, Herbert’s son before his marriage—blond, blue eyed and athletic—was enrolled in political educational school at the outset of the war, one of those NS elite schools whose students, after having been racially approved, were to form the ideological leadership. A document was found in Herbert’s estate, a letter by Agnes addressed to Siegfried’s mother Elfriede Hoschl in Spandau, about “proof of racial origin,” along with all the applicable documents. “Please find enclosed a list for your information. Heil Hitler.”

....[O]n September 27 when Germany was deploying its last reserves, [Herbert Sabac el Cher] was called not to the “Volkssturm,” but for “active duty in the army” according to a document of the Mannheim hospital. He was only conditionally fit for active duty at 41, and therefore deployed behind the lines at a vehicle spare parts section. “Fit for active duty at home and in the occupied territories, but not in the operational areas”: this according to official jargon. Lucky for Herbert: we have a remark by his adopted son Gunther that if he had been called for active duty, the war would have been lost for him. This was not altogether untrue: If Horst was only conditionally suited for active duty, then this applied doubly so for his older brother.²⁶
As one can see, theory and reality differed in the racially ambivalent Reich.

FIGURE XXIII. Vlasov, Shilenkov and Goebbels talking. Date unknown. Public domain.
Slavic extermination?

Slavs were not earmarked for “ extermination.” The so-called Ostplan is an IMT invention. The Germans captured about four million POWs during Barbarossa. Anyone with a nascent knowledge of logistics and supply understands that feeding, sheltering and clothing four million men and women nearly all at once, especially when unprepared and short on resources, is impossible. The Soviets claimed to have lost three million dead as a result. Even if accurate this was not genocide on the part of the Germans, otherwise the other one million would also have died. Why save any at all when genocide is one’s intent? It was a tragic and horrendous case of the circumstances of war. Tens of millions died in the Thirty Years’ War. Not a single one of those deaths was genocide. About 1.5 million German POWs were killed by Eisenhower. Was his intent genocide? That is debatable. If it was his intent we cannot debate that he was unsuccessful. The same may be said of the forced German expellees, of which 2.25 million died. That was not genocide either. It was an inhuman mass expulsion, the largest in recorded history—but a military act common to American frontier war.

Master racists?

Harry Truman, not Adolf Hitler, said the following: “ I think one man is as good as another so long as he’s honest and decent and not a nigger or a Chinaman. Uncle Will...says that the Lord made a white man out of dust, a nigger from mud, then threw up what was left and it came down a Chinaman.” Had Hitler said this, historians would scream “über-racism!” Even though no such statements ever came out of Hitler’s mouth, not even about Jews in private, historians still argue that he was an über-racist, all the while ignoring or obfuscating the über-racism of both Allied and non-German Axis leaders. The British conducted “bizarre tests of racial purity,” but only Berlin’s ‘racial purity’ tests were subjected to international scrutiny and attack.²⁷ Gerald Horne relayed that “[e]ven as the Empire seemed on the verge of being overrun by predatory Japanese troops, London was unwilling to accept offers of aid by people not of ‘pure European descent’— particularly for posts beyond simple soldiering.” He went on to say, “This applied to ‘Dartmouth Cadetships and direct entry cadetships’ where the ‘practice of the interview committee’ was to ‘reject boys who evidently have a colour stain’.”²⁸ The British deliberately left racial references like this out of official memoranda, just in case these memoranda ended up in anti-British hands. To cite another example: Croatians were intolerant of Serbs during World War II, yet we never read about this in most history books. Is it because Croats and Serbs do not deserve our attention? Are they somehow ‘less important’ than other ethnic groups of that era? Is their racism nonexistent?

FIGURE XXIIII. Louis Brody: Third Reich boxer and actor. Public domain.

Hitler’s über-racism is an ahistorical construct. Historians decided who was “racist” and who was not on the basis of who won World War II. But historians cannot have it both ways: either all Western leaders are portrayed as the “racists” they were, or none of them are. We do not cherry pick our racists. If we do so, then we need to research ever further back in history and condemn Emperor Hadrian as a “genocidal anti-Semite,” Napoleon as an “anti-black racist” and “genocidal madman” (in the light of his actions against Roma and blacks), and the Romans as “racist” towards Greeks and Gauls. Some historians have already started doing this.

FIGURE XXV. Valaida Snow was arrested for drug possession “and sent to an Axis internment camp for alien nationals in Wester-Faengle.” Even though she was black and homosexual she was never harmed by the ‘Nazis’. Source: Irene Monroe, “Black and Queer in Nazi Germany,” Huffington Post, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/irene-monroe/black-and-queer-in-nazig_b_465549.html (accessed March 2, 2012).

The myth of the “master race”

The Germans never had a “ master race” doctrine. Herrenvolk does not mean “master race.” That definition was the result of a combination of Allied misunderstanding of the German Führerprinzip and anti-German war propaganda. It meant ‘elite leadership corps’, and that was in reference to continental Europe, not the world. Hitler did not have world aims. In his secret Posen speech, Himmler defines it as supremacy. Further the German terms folk (Volk) and race (Rasse) are not synonymous. Herrenvolk (“Volk or nation of leaders”) is not akin to Herrenrasse, and as a matter of fact, the ‘Nazis’ never used the term Herrenrasse (“race of leaders”). Even Hitler differentiated the two terms. He said, “Volk und Rasse ist nicht dasselbe.” (“Folk and race is not the same thing.”) It appears that historians influenced by wartime Allied propaganda, and not the ‘Nazis’ themselves, invented this term and its subsequent über-racist connotation. The term “master race” is English and was first used in America. Perhaps this reckless translation and misusage of Herrenvolk explains why so many Western Allied leaders were shocked to see Russians fighting for ‘Nazis’ on the Western Front, Indo-Chinese in the Ostlegionen (Eastern legions), and why historians have been reluctant to describe NS racial dynamics, even today.

Were they just fools, these collaborators?

Gerald Horne described Japanese racial ideology as “ sufficiently flexible to allow for...special appeal [...].”²⁹ This description applies to NS racial ideology too. Antonio Muñoz called into question the rationality of the Spanish volunteers after Franco’s official withdrawal. But the Axis did not see itself as irrational, evil, racist, etc., nor did it see itself as unjustified in its war, aims or conduct. How about the irrationality of American and British soldiers, who were not threatened by the Germans in the least? Countless Spaniards loathed Communism—they had witnessed it first-hand in the Spanish Civil War—and were therefore more than willing to help Germany in her fight against that inhuman philosophy. Yes, they were “true believers” in continued European independence from Soviet imperialism. The majority of Axis soldiers, including those who were conscripted by the ‘Nazis’, were anti-Communist or antiBolshevik. Still others, like the French, were anti-British. Many were “racists” in their own right, yes, but they did not necessarily see themselves this way. The Croats were exterminating ethnic minorities long before the Germans established Croatia as an independent state. Vichy French loyalists continued to defy British and American efforts to “liberate” France in 1943:

The final phase of this war within a war was the invasion of North Africa, where Vichy forces numbered 100,000. Despite a twin assault by US, British and Free French forces on Morocco and Algeria, Vichy garrisons, but especially ships and submarines, proved more determined in their resistance than expected. A French squadron was sunk by the US off the coast of Morocco, with 500 French sailors killed and 1,000 wounded.³⁰
Numerous Frenchmen resisted the Allies until the very end of the war, whereupon they fought and died in the streets of the German capital. Unfortunately, most people today are naïve enough to believe that all these millions were “fooled” by Hitler, thereby suffering so much sacrifice for “Nazi racism and world empire”—in other words, nothing.

FIGURE XXVI. Mohamed Husen with fellow actors on the set (1938). Source: Bechhaus-Gerst, 100.

Unlike European authors, Gerald Horne does not offer an antiGerman screed. The objectivity of African historians like Horne is exceptional considering the racism Africans have experienced throughout their history and lives; they deserve more academic attention from Third Reich historians than they currently receive. Horne basically argues two main themes: (a) that the Germans were the underdogs of the “white race,” who had reacted to Anglo-Saxon supremacy and racism (Horne describes the Anglo-Saxons as having been at the pinnacle of the white hierarchy and thus the most oppressive ethnic group of all); and (b) that the Japanese (not America) inspired and championed the anti-white, anti-colonial sentiment and uprisings of the postwar era.

The implications are as follows. NS Germany became the champion of the so-called “colored” world when it chose an alliance with Japan, a paradox. Second the NS Germans turned to the “colored” world for support after the über-racist Anglo-Saxons rebuffed Hitler’s offer of a German-Anglo alliance—the Germans reacted to AngloSaxon supremacy as blacks reacted to white supremacy. Third Hitler reacted to Jewish supremacy, which manifested as financial and political tyranny in Germany, in the same way that the “colored” world reacted to white colonial administration throughout the Europeandominated “periphery.” Many “third world” nations looked to Germany, Italy and Japan for liberation and support. Rest assured they did not believe they were fighting for “evil” or “Nazi racism.”

FIGURE XXVII. The National Socialist movement in Mexico. Public domain.

Hopefully this study encourages more historians to stop looking at the Third Reich and Axis in rigid formulae, instead examining it with dynamism and transformation in mind. The war affected NS racial views. Many NS Germans cast off their racism as a result of the camaraderie they developed with fellow non-German equals and subordinates. As White Russian exile Grigori von Lambsdorff confirmed, most non-Germans saw themselves as equals, not as ‘racial inferiors’. This calls into question how the ‘Nazis’ treated their non-German comrades-in-arms, in spite of official propaganda. If Lambsdorff and others saw themselves as equals, then NS racial degradation was either nonexistent or less pervasive than historians have claimed it was. The memoirs of Wolf-Dietrich Heike confirm that Himmler and Wächter were more accommodating of Ukrainians than one might assume in the light of the endless barrage of NS-bashing historiography. Himmler, Wächter and Freitag all made generous concessions in order to maintain a steady supply of Ukrainian volunteers. Unfortunately for these idealistic Ukrainian men, the German military situation was so bad in the east that by the time they joined they had to be used in theaters in which they were not qualified to serve. Their units were decimated by ruthless and well-seasoned Red Army troops.³¹

FIGURE XXVIII. An unknown mulatto Wehrmacht soldier. Date and location unknown. Public domain.
Concluding thoughts

I conclude this introduction with a news article that examined the increasing number of neo-Nazis and white supremacists in the US Armed Forces (to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan).³² In spite of America’s official commitment to non-racism and ethnic and social equality, it is knowingly and willingly recruiting racists and thereby tolerating racism in the military sphere. The exigencies of war have caused this to happen, just as the exigencies of war caused the NS Germans to renege on their official race doctrine. War often causes revolutionary changes in societies: those who used to be shunned by society become accepted. Oftentimes these newcomers swing the balance of power into their favor, because the exigencies of war favor those who are “needed” in the light of the declining military situation. The ‘Nazis’ became less racist at a faster rate than did the Allies, because they were forced to speed up the process of interracial cooperation as a result of the war. War became, to use Tina Campt’s phrase, a “vehicle of change” in the Third Reich. The ‘Nazis’ never segregated their troops. Everyone fought shoulder-to-shoulder in German ranks, regardless of their race.

If we look at America today, a fractured society with a racially disparate military, we may confidently assume that the “racists” in the armed forces will be the ones to gain the upper hand, since they are ‘needed’. The balance of power has swung into their favor due to the exigencies of war. This could result in increased racialization, or racial awareness, in the US military and by extension US society, both of which are controlled by whites (including Jews) in spite of America’s official doctrine of non-racism and equality. Facades only last so long. America’s war is a “vehicle of change” in this respect. The point: we must not examine history or modern developments as though they are static. The Third Reich changed and America will too.

—Veronica Clark March 2, 2012
End Notes

1. Martin Bormann and Adolf Hitler, Hitler’s Table-Talk 1941-1944: His Private Conversations, ed. Hugh Trevor-Roper, trans. Norman Cameron and R.H. Stevens (New York, NY: Enigma Books, 2000), 709. 2. A. J. Gregor, National Socialism and Race (London: League Enterprises, 2009), 14-15. First printed in The European in 1958.
3. 3. 1945, ed. Chris Bishop (London, UK: Amber Books, 2005), 8-9. 4. Ibid., 10.

5. Gerald Horne, The Color of Fascism: Lawrence Dennis, Racial Passing, and the Rise of Right-Wing Extremism in the United States (New York, NY: New York University Press, 2006), xv.
6. RT, “War Witness: I deserted Nazi army on day one,”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggb0SbM0sCE&feature=channel (accessed July 28, 2010).
7. Antonio Muñoz, ed., 7. Antonio Muñoz, ed., 1945, no. 18, (Fall 1998): 19-21, 27-43.
8. Heinz Guderian, Panzer Leader: General Heinz Guderian, First Da Capo Press ed. (Cambridge, MA: Perseus Books Group, 2002), 356. 9. Guenter Lewy, The Nazi Persecution of the Gypsies (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2000), 180, 186, 188, 221-228. Lewy concluded that lack of a “clear and traceable chain of orders” (i.e., no written extermination orders), and lack of intent meant that Gypsies were never destined for mass extermination: this in spite of NS public statements and numerous transparent, public orders that might suggest otherwise. The fact that so many Gypsies survived is evidence enough that genocidal intent was lacking. But Lewy did not apply this reasoning to allegations of Jewish mass extermination, which he says had no written order(s), no clear chain of command, and no identifiable intent other than NS public statements. Yehuda Bauer claimed that Jews were mass murdered simply because “they existed.” This is inaccurate given that there were as many as 1,092,000 Jewish “holocaust survivors” in 2003 (evidence that millions survived what Lewy described as “total extermination”). A reasonable statistical analysis of population decline over the past 58 years (using 2003 as a reference) would attest that there were over five million Jewish “holocaust survivors” of “total extermination.” See Sergio DellaPergola, “Review of Relevant Demographic Information on World Jewry,” Jewish People Policy Planning Institute, http://www.icheic.org/pdf/ICHEIC_demography1.pdf (accessed October 11, 2009).
10. Marianne Bechhaus-Gerst, Treu bis in den Tod: Von Deutsch-Afrika nach Sachsenhausen—Ein Lebengeschichte (Berlin, DE: Ch. Links Verlag, 2007), 154.
11. Nigel Thomas, Carlos Caballero Jurado, and Simon McCouaig, Wehrmacht Auxiliary Forces (London, UK: Osprey Publishing, 1992), 16, 17.
12. David Littlejohn, Foreign Legions of the Third Reich Vol. 4: Poland, the Ukraine, Bulgaria, Romania, Free India, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Finland and Russia (San Jose, CA: R. James Bender Publishing, 1987), 359.
13. Hitler and His Generals: Military Conferences 1942-1945, ed. Helmut Heiber and David Glantz, trans. Roland Winter, Krista Smith, and Mary Beth Friedrich (New York, NY: Enigma Books, 2004), 857. The Ministry of the East’s report estimated that 573,850 Eastern troops were serving in German ranks as of 24 January 1945. More may have joined in the nearly four months that followed. According to Muñoz (see Axis Europa, Fall 1998), 30,000 Ukrainians were in NS service by June 1942 (35). 14. Bishop, 8. Bishop estimated that at least 60,000 Soviets served in German ranks.
15. New World Encyclopedia, “Roosevelt, Franklin Delano,” http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Franklin_Delano_Roosevelt (accessed August 29, 2009).
16. Friedrich Berg, interview by author, August 27, 2009.
17. Ibid.
18. The source for this story is the unpublished memoirs of Herr L. whose anonymity is maintained herein.
19. Roi Ottley, No Green Pastures: The Negro in Europe Today (New York, NY: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1951), 27.
20. Bechhaus-Gerst, 76.
21. Ibid.
22. Douglas Bloomfield, “Santorum: ‘There Is No Palestine’,” Jewish Week on the Web, http://www.thejewishweek.com/blogs/political_insider/santorum_there_no_palestine (accessed March 3, 2012).
23. Littlejohn, 27.
24. Gorch Pieken and Cornelia Kruse, Preussisches Liebesglück: Eine deutsche Familie aus Afrika (Berlin: List Taschenbuch, 2008), 167 25. Ibid.
26. Ibid., 168-169, 170, 173, 203, 206-207, 207-208. Translated by Veronica Clark.
27. Gerald Horne, Race War! White Supremacy and the Japanese Attack on the British Empire (New York, NY: New York University Press, 2004), 237.
28. Ibid., 236.
29. Ibid., 147.
30. Christopher Silvester, “England’s Last War Against France: Fighting Vichy, 1940-1942,” The Telegraph on the Web, September 1, 2009, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/bookreviews/6121052/EnglandsLast-War-Against-France-Fighting-Vichy-1940-1942.html (accessed September 3, 2009).
31. See Wolf-Dietrich Heike, The Ukrainian Division ‘Galicia’, 1943-45: A Memoir, ed. Yury Boshyk, trans. Andriy Wynnyckyj (Toronto: Shevchenko Scientific Society, 1988).
32. Matt Kennard, “Neo-Nazis are in the Army Now,” Salon on the Web, June 15, 2009,
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2009/06/15/neo_nazis_army/index.html (accessed July 1, 2009).

CHAPTER I

THE “NEW” NEW HISTORY OF THE THIRD R

EICH

The extremely widespread conviction that the Germans related to other peoples uniformly, is undeniably incorrect. In reality, relations differed greatly. With this premise, we may begin to reach a better understanding.

—Antonio Muñoz and Oleg Romanko¹

Introduction

When British and American forces first confronted Axis forces on Europe’s mainland, the soldiers who viciously attacked and repulsed them included tens-of-thousands of non-German volunteers. Thousands of tenacious foreign soldiers who stalled the Allies on the Western and Eastern fronts in 1944 and 1945 were ethnic Slavs. Several thousand Arab, Spanish, and French volunteer soldiers and commandos gave up their lives in the final fight for Europe—either on the deadly Eastern Front or for the German capital of Berlin in 1945.2 3 Sadly, one Spanish volunteer was believed to have died in a shootout with Red Army soldiers who were attempting to gang-rape a little German girl in front of her father. Young Felipe Vilchez was never seen again by his Spanish comrades after the war.⁴ Kalmyck Buddhists, recruited by Dr. Doll and motivated by Stalin’s purges against their people and priesthood, fought for Germany until 1945.⁵

As many as 150,000 men of Jewish descent fought for the Third Reich, many voluntarily.⁶ Daniel Silver described the story of how a Jewish hospital survived in Berlin until the very end of the war. Soviet troops came upon the fully functioning hospital on 25 April 1945, and found 800 Jews on the hospital’s premises that day. The existence of a Jewish hospital with an all-Jewish staff—in Berlin of all places—is rather remarkable. However, there were at least 6,284 Jews still residing in the capital on 25 February 1945.⁷ Developments like this are astonishing given that Jewry was the stated enemy of the Third Reich. Nazi racial ambivalence is the only possible explanation for this.

In spite of what many historians have argued since the end of the Second World War, numerous top-level Nazi Germans, including Adolf Hitler, remained ambivalent when it came to the issues of race and ethnicity. The Nazis were neither anomalous in their racial-ethnic crimes, nor particularly racist upon comparison with other Western societies before, during, or after World War II. As a matter of fact, voluntary foreign collaboration with the Nazis was widespread. This is, in fact, why this particular “war and society” study was written.

To begin with, many foreign and ethnic minority collaborators and volunteers survived via military service. African American scholar Tina Campt, unlike many historians, has seen the minority Afro-Germans⁸ as survivors and fighters rather than as victims. This view is one of several which constitutes an emerging “new” new history of the Third Reich and Axis. From this perspective, Nazi Germany was not an anomaly; it was a typical Western nation prone to doing both good and terrible things with its armed forces.

Motivation

Several factors led to volunteerism. The most common reason was anti-Communism. Some other reasons for foreign and nonGerman volunteerism included: survival, to prove oneself, antiSlavism, compensation, commitment to Germany (in spite of the racial exclusivity of National Socialism), and the desire to achieve independence from France or Britain via German victory. Most collaboration was mutually beneficial and even amicable. This reciprocal phenomenon was no doubt complex, especially knowing what we do about the Nazis and their racial views. However, many Nazis were ambivalent when it came to the racial-ethnic issue, and their ambivalence tended to increase in light of the chaos and brutal conditions of the Second World War. The exigencies of war and the relationships Nazis fostered through camaraderie forced many of them to reconsider their racial-ethnic views. Many volunteers were in fact more fanatical in their beliefs than were Nazis. For example, Paul Ascher, a Jewish Mischling, returned to Germany in 1941, after he escaped internment in Argentina, to serve as nothing less than a fleet operations officer aboard the Bismarck.⁹

FIGURE 1. Commander Paul Ascher, a “half-Jew.” Courtesy of Bryan Rigg’s Hitler’s Jewish Soldiers.
Third Reich Historiography

This study answers why certain ethnic minorities and foreigners were able to rouse humanitarian and collaborationist sentiments in Nazi Germans. It answers why Hitler was willing to work with Cossacks and Arabs, among others, and generally unwilling to work with Jews and Russians. It likewise answers why Heinrich Himmler changed his mind about Russians and Gypsies. This study is by no means as exhaustive as it could be. In its brevity, it only provides historians with a glimpse of the role that racial ambivalence played in German policymaking during World War II.

European historians’ perceptions and interpretations of Hitler’s and the National Socialists’ racial prejudice have become more comprehensive, and thus more historically accurate, since about the early 1990s. Since racist actions and atrocities of Hitler and the Nazis are already well known, this analysis focuses on the exceptions and ignored aspects of Hitler’s and National Socialism’s ethnic minority and foreign accommodations, especially in the military realm. The Wehrmacht’s and Schutzstaffel’s accommodations in this respect cannot be adequately understood unless one knows how minorities and foreigners were treated in the civilian realm. This is a “war and society” study; therefore, both the military and civil areas of Nazi Germany are covered within a comparative framework (to other Western societies). One also has to understand where Adolf Hitler stood on these issues, since his person and National Socialism were nearly synonymous. Therefore, his personal racial views—how they developed and changed—are likewise covered in the following analysis of the historiography.

Many modern¹⁰ European historians now argue that evidence exists as to a continuous penchant for genocidal policies against particular ethnic groups—namely Africans, Jews, and Gypsies—in Western history. Black historians have long argued that this was the case. Roi Ottley, an African American journalist and author, wrote that France’s “racial liberalism” extended only as far as France’s official borders. France’s African colonial subjects were subjected to prejudice, brutality, cheating, forced labor, and even “decimation of whole populations.”¹¹ Further, “[o]nly one child in twenty-four received elementary schooling in French West Africa” in 1946¹²—a year after the war ended. For Ottley, France’s assimilation of blacks was a lie and a farce. He observed similar levels of anti-black racial discrimination throughout the West, including Germany, England, and Eastern Europe.

Postwar European and American historians have generally ignored Western racism and anti-Semitism unless it occurred in Germany. Since Germany lost the war, and its prejudice and war crimes were publicized almost daily in Allied publications, historians have generally supported this view. Max Domarus wrote that no genocide in human history equated to what the Nazis did. Many held that view until quite recently. However, the newest group of postwar historians (those published from about the mid-1990s to 2000 and beyond) supports a very different picture of Nazi Germany.

Most of this “new” new history of the Third Reich argues that Hitler was no worse than his contemporaries—Churchill, Roosevelt, Tito, Tse-Tung, Kai-shek and Stalin—and that the Germans’ crimes were not unique. This “new” new history is gaining in popularity, especially histories that focus on German civilian suffering at the hands of the Allies, and those that focus on contributions of Axis collaborators.

FIGURE 2. Lieutenant and full Jew Paul-Ludwig Hirschfeld. He was awarded the War Merit Cross Second Class and survived the war. Courtesy of Bryan Rigg’s Hitler’s Jewish Soldiers.

However, this “new” new history has its problems. Some of these historians have made connections, which do not exist or are inconsequential, between Napoleon and Hitler,¹³ and Roman Emperor Hadrian’s mass extermination of Jews in Judea and the ethnic cleansing of Jews during World War II.¹⁴ While these observations tell us a great deal about Western war making and Western civilization, they are not convincing evidence as to actual continuity from Imperial Rome to the Third Reich. These connections are ahistorical and clearly the result of retroactive foreshadowing. Hitler did not express any serious interest in Napoleon nor did he ever mention Napoleon’s exterminations of Haitians or Roma.¹⁵

Likewise, the “new” new history, which this study explores, sees a racially ambivalent Hitler in the Hitler biographies, translations of his memoirs, and speeches. There is no doubt that Hitler was ambivalent about ethnicity, minorities, foreigners, and race—except in his views toward Jews. His racial ambivalence may date back to a much earlier time than even 1944—the year in which he admitted in a semiprivate speech to having been wrong about race. Hitler said privately of the Jews in the early 1930s:

Look here, I have nothing against the Jews as such…It’s a fact that the Jews exist in the world, and the Divine Creator allowed their mothers to bear children as well….What, then, is the true nature of the peculiarly isolated life the Jews live? For they do live a peculiar life. They do not, like other nations, live within the clear borders of one country; rather, they live within other nations—alien plants, as it were, among other plants.¹⁶

Hitler did not appear particularly hostile toward Jews at this time. Brigitte Hamann’s detailed investigation into the obscure development of Hitler’s anti-Jewish sentiment suggests that he became antiJewish for political, non-personal reasons. He preferred Jewish friends and patronization as a young man in Vienna.¹⁷ While his statements about Jews in Mein Kampf were hostile, they were conceived with anti-Jewish German public sentiment in mind. His private statements about Jews were different. Otto Wagener’s recollections indicate that he accepted their way of life. Hitler suggested to Wagener that forced deportation from Europe was the ultimate goal, but that there was no need to hurry this matter along.¹⁸ The war apparently changed his attitude toward Jews. The policy of mandatory emigration did not enter the picture at any point before the 1940s.

FIGURE 3. Obergefreiter Horst Geitner, a “Halbjude.” Courtesy of Rigg’s Hitler’s Jewish Soldiers.

As for Hitler’s ambivalence, few historians have explored this aspect of Hitler as well as Hungarian historian John Lukacs. Lukacs’ study of Hitler is one of the most comprehensive to date. The Hitler of History is an in-depth study of the historiography of Hitler. His study provided one of the best explanations as to how and why Hitler was able to garner so much support from the domestic civil and military realms, as well as ethnic minorities and non-German foreigners—in spite of German mistreatment of many of these non-Germans. Lukacs went into detail about how Hitler’s racial views changed, openly by 1944, and how Hitler never really explained what the terms Aryan, Germanic, or nation meant to him personally. Hitler’s own Mein Kampf failed to clarify any of these terms, probably because he himself was not clear as to what they meant. Finally, Lukacs argued that Hitler’s goal of a “folkish” community (Volksgemeinschaft) was more exclusive in character than racism, which he argued is difficult to define.

Lukacs said,

Hitler’s many—and there were many—statements about races are really statements about what he saw as national characteristics. There was a racist element in his thinking (as is true of almost every nationalist), but his governing obsessions were not biological….National sentiments of superiority, where and when they existed among the German people, were cultural rather than racial. This is a subject of enormous significance and delicacy which lies largely unexplored. There was (and remains) a superficially slight but essentially profound difference between a folkish and racist type of thinking. And that reflected, too, the evolution…of [Hitler’s] own beliefs.¹⁹

The historiography on the Third Reich has changed quite a bit since the 1950s and 1960s. Such sympathetic portrayals of Germany and Adolf Hitler were rare until now. Most of the studies that did exhibit some degree of sympathy for the Third Reich were those written by Hitlerians, White Nationalists, or neo-Nazis. The leading edge of this particular school is the Institute for Historical Review (IHR), which is pro-Nazi, but offers valuable insight nonetheless. Most notable among the IHR historians: Daniel W. Michaels (served the US Department of Defense for 40 years), Léon Degrelle (commanded the Belgian SS Wallonie Division), Ingrid Weckert (after Gymnasium graduation studied in Israel; Judaic Studies and Hebrew), Dr. Anthony Kubek (Ph.D. in American Diplomatic History), and Wolfgang Haenel (the Swiss schoolteacher who exposed the Hermann Rauschning memoirs as a mix of pure imagination and the outpourings of Friedrich Nietzsche and Ernst Jünger²⁰).

A similar school has arisen since the IHR, which consists of a growing body of Axis military historians, many of whom are nonAmericans. Unlike the pro-Nazi school, the pro-Axis school is neither particularly pro-Nazi, nor does it question whether Jews were ethnically cleansed by Germans. This particular school does not address Axis war crimes as much as the traditional body of Western historians, partly because the worst crimes are already quite well known and have had extensive coverage over the past six decades. Though, these historians do appear to be rehabilitators of the Axis, which entails a wide range of subject matter and argumentation. They tend to emphasize the role that minorities and foreigners played in the Axis war, which may or may not be an indirect attempt to rehabilitate National Socialist (NS) Germany’s, Imperial Japan’s, or Fascist Italy’s reputation.

As far as the majority of historians from the 1950s to 1980s were concerned, the Third Reich was the worst regime in Western history. Historians Richard Evans, Deborah Lipstadt, Ian Kershaw, William Shirer, and Alan Bullock (among many others) argued this case. This school is not without its own problems, though. It has tended to see the Third Reich and its crimes in a vacuum. It has also tended to exaggerate or overemphasize Axis war crimes while excusing or whitewashing Allied war crimes. This school of historians was responsible for selling the Nazi human soap myth to the world. This fabrication was exposed, though many still believe it happened.²¹ While this may be a legitimate perspective of Polish, Gypsy and Jewish war victims, it is not a legitimate perspective for historians to peddle. Western history is riddled with war crimes, persecutions and genocide, none of which is “uniquely evil.”

Furthermore, many present day historians of this school tend to liken radical Islam to NS Germany. David Horowitz (FrontPage Magazine) is a frontrunner in this subject area.²² This historiographical trend is growing for obvious reasons. This connection is often used to rally support for the current “War on Terror.” However, modern Arab states are not at all comparable to the pre-modern Western state of NS Germany—not culturally, militarily, or economically. Modern Pan-Islamism, or what some historians have called “Islamofascism,” has very different goals from those of Germany 70 years ago. Indeed, the two are only similar in the way in which they view Jews. Historians who emphasize this connection are at fault. When one raises the problem with this relationship in a different context, the fundamental flaw is easily exposed. One ought to ask, for example, whether modern historians can seriously attribute postWorld War II Balkan nationalism and Balkanization to Nazi Germany—since Germans and Eastern Europeans collaborated and oftentimes shared goals.

FIGURE 4. Himmler shakes hands with the Grand Mufti. Bundesarchiv.

Even though Max Boot, a modern American historian, described numerous cases of American war criminality and barbarity; he argued that it was all done for the sake of military expediency. He argued that the death of 211,000 Filipinos—11,000 in concentration camps—at the behest of American forces was unintended collateral damage of fierce anti-partisan warfare.²³ He further argued that the Americans did not mean for these deaths to happen. Will Boot extend his argument to the Germans of World War II?

Few people are familiar with the fact that the Warsaw Uprising of 1944 was a massive anti-German partisan campaign. Even fewer are aware of the fact that the worst abuses were committed by the foreign Kaminski Brigade and the penal Dirlewanger Brigade.²⁴ The truth is that the Poles and a handful of tentative Russian Soviet accomplices were waging what modern historian Thomas Hammes would characterize as “Fourth-Generation Warfare”²⁵ against the Germans. It was an insurgency that used the civilian population (and the local forest) as its base area and cover.

The insurgents’ tenacious resistance indicates that they did not care about civilian collateral any more than the Germans did, nor did they care that the Germans were willing to decimate the whole of Warsaw and its civilian population to quell their insurgency.²⁶ (Hitler’s response to the uprising was simply, “Wipe them out.”) In fact, many Poles fought in German uniforms. General Heinz Guderian explained, “Since the Poles were also wearing German uniforms from captured stores, the feeling of insecurity among the Germans increased and with it a tendency towards greater brutality.”²⁷ German losses totaled 10,000 killed, 7,000 missing (KIA?), 9,000 wounded, and 1-2,000 captured. Polish losses totaled 10,200 killed, 7,000 missing (KIA?), 5,000 gravely wounded, and 15,900 taken prisoner.²⁸ Given the overwhelming technical and numerical superiority of the German forces, the Germans paid a heavy price for this victory according to these figures. The point is that because thousands of non-German foreign volunteers and auxiliaries helped quell this insurgency, including Gypsies and the Kalmyck Cavalry Corps, one must be careful not to assign all of the blame for excesses and atrocities unto the Germans themselves. When the uprising finally collapsed, Guderian proposed that the insurgents receive the full rights of POWs as guaranteed by international law. Hitler consented.²⁹

FIGURE 5. A member of the Kalmyck Cavalry Corps. Bundesarchiv.1*

The Kaminski Brigade, which participated at Warsaw, was wiped out by the Germans. SS Brigade Leader Fegelein complained to Hitler that “[i]t is true, my Führer, those men are real scoundrels!”³⁰ SS Major General Borislav Kaminski, who had a Polish father, was arrested and executed for his criminal excesses during this particular insurgency. Guderian confirmed that Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski had Kaminski shot.³¹

The Jewish Virtual Library is accurate with regard to the wartime performance record of the Russian volunteers in the Waffen SS. Their online Waffen SS file states:

[The Dirlewanger and Kaminski] formations, composed mostly of exEinsatzgruppen, released criminals and Russian Prisoners of War…were engaged in numerous atrocities throughout their existence. After their actions in putting down the Warsaw Uprising, Heer complaints resulted in these units being dissolved and several members (including Kaminski) being tried and executed for their role in several incidents….Similarly, the Waffen-Sturm-Brigade RONA [ethnically Russian] has a “combat” record riddled with atrocities as well as abysmal conduct when faced with front line service….While divisions like the Nordland and Nord have virtually spotless records, most Waffen-SS divisions were involved in at least some questionable actions. The debate over the culpability of the organisation is the center of much revisionist thinking.³²

FIGURE 6. Brigade Commander Borislav Kaminski (center) in consultation with German police officers on the use of his RONA forces against Soviet partisans. Bundesarchiv.2*

War victors generally portray their efforts in a favorable light, while emphasizing the criminality and immorality of the vanquished. This was the reason why Axis collaborators were persecuted and exterminated, regardless of their race, religion, or ethnicity, while Allied collaborators were celebrated as heroes, regardless of their wartime records. One may reasonably assume that such duplicity might also have been the case had the Axis won the war.

CHAPTER II

HITLER’S RACIAL A

MBIVALENCE

The total manpower of all units of the Latvian Legion came to nearly 148,000 men during the course of its existence….[On 23 December 1944] [t]he 19th SS Division [Latvian] alone had accounted for the destruction of ten Soviet infantry divisions and an entire armored corps….During the five battles fought for control of the Courland [beginning on 3 February 1945], it is estimated that the Russians lost a total of 320,000 dead, wounded or captured, with the destruction of 2,388 tanks, 695 aircraft, and almost 1,000 artillery pieces!

—Andris J. Kursietis³³

Hitler Changed His Mind about Race

Most historians continue to ignore that Hitler changed his mind about race. The fact that he spent hours upon hours pouring over Jewish clemency applications, allowing over 2,000 “pure” Jewish officers to serve in the Wehrmacht,³⁴ means that he did not resolve to treat all ethnic minorities or Jews inhumanely—in other words, according to prevailing German racial theories that he himself espoused. Both his statements and actions call into question how serious he was about the ethnic cleansing of Jews. While no historian can confirm the exact number of half and full Jews who served in Hitler’s Wehrmacht and SS during World War II, given the lack of records, one may undoubtedly argue that about 60,000 Halbjude (half-Jews), and at least 6,019 full Jews served.³⁵

These numbers cannot but strike historians as odd given that Hitler was accused of having personally ordered the deliberate and systematic extermination of Europe’s Jews—even if that meant diverting precious resources and personnel from the war effort. One problem with this argument is that he had no compelling reason, including military and labor considerations, to have spared a single Jewish person had he truly wanted all of them exterminated before the war was over.

As a matter of fact, Hitler even put off deciding how to handle intermarried Jews for fear of an internal uprising. The Rosenstrasse protest, which occurred from February to March 1943, caused Hitler and the Gestapo to “temporarily defer deporting intermarried Jews, until the war ended.” RSHA director Ernst Kaltenbrunner went so far as to order a stop to “further incarceration of Jews on protective custody cases unless they had committed real offenses.” Thirty-six “intermarried Jews” were released from Auschwitz following the protest, “on orders from a high Reich authority.”³⁶ This indicates that Hitler could be influenced in the face of popular domestic opposition to his anti-Jewish policies. Whether ethnic cleansing might have been eluded had Jews resisted more fervently is open to debate.

Indeed, if Hitler was really the committed genocide advocate most historians have argued he was, then such a protest would not have made much difference to him. He would have risked the political fallout and crushed such a protest (as Stalin did quite regularly). Most historians have concluded that nothing stood in the way of his “extermination program,” including the war itself. But given this Rosenstrasse case, and others like it, it appears that Hitler could be influenced by unyielding domestic political pressure. Henceforth, historians can no longer avoid looking into this matter more deeply, because contradictions are not only obvious, but numerous.

These facts ought to raise questions as to how committed Hitler and the Nazis really were about their genocidal policies. This remains unexplored in spite of Bryan Rigg’s comprehensive study, Hitler’s Jewish Soldiers. Couple this development with the marked change in Hitler’s attitude, as expressed in his semi-private Platterhof speech of 26 May 1944.

He said to his officers and generals:

We have this people of ours that are not to be defined as a race, and that is now clear to millions. However, gentlemen: when I began my apprenticeship twenty-five years ago, this was not so; there I was always told by middle-class bourgeois circles: Yes, people and race are one and the same! No – people and race are not the same. Race is a component of blood, a blood nucleus, but the people are very often composed not of one race but of two, three, four or five different racial nuclei. Even so, it is not possible or even desirable to dismantle such a united body of people, but in the course of political developments such a solution may occur anyway. When one looks at the German people from the purely biological point of view, then we see here, I would say, a society with a common language, united by detour of state-building, but a people of varied racial origins – and that is perhaps the most significant factor: a Nordic racial nucleus, some Mediterranean racial nuclei, even a European core race, a prehistoric race which we cannot define exactly, but which is there, and which was there already with the Greeks; the Helots of Sparta came from this race. That racial core also exists within our people [emphasis added].

We see in our people the existence of various racial nuclei. These racial nuclei contain the details as to the special abilities of this people; since these abilities are not primarily abilities of the German people themselves, but rather, racial abilities. That the German people currently possess a number of racial nuclei, appears, after all, in the wealth of their capabilities, because all these race nuclei carry certain dispositions in themselves: the Nordic race nucleus is more inclined to cold weather; is mathematically inclined; is exceptional with regard to the organizational factor—the factor which has generally organized states around the world up until now. Now in addition, other race nuclei contain a very artistic disposition, with a purely optical talent: the ability to observe and depict; then again, there are race nuclei with very strong musical talents, and also race nuclei with exceptional commercial talents. The strongest of these race nuclei, which possessed commercial talent but lacked creativity, was Jewry; the only difference being that, had it remained with us for a longer period of time, Jewry would have risen not as a race nucleus within the German people, but would have completely decomposed the German people bit by bit….But now it is clear, nevertheless: “race” and “people” are not the same.³⁷

This speech went on for some fifty more pages. Hitler acknowledged that the concepts of race and Volk were not synonymous; he failed to insist upon Nordic preeminence. He simply pointed out his belief that the “Nordic racial nucleus” had an innate aptitude for leadership and organization,³⁸ which he believed was evident in the modern German people. Basically, he argued that within the biological framework of what might best be characterized as the primordial “core race” of Europe, there were numerous racial infusions, which he believed had improved upon this primordial “European core race.” He compared the European racial condition with that of Classical Greece, which consisted of Greeks, Spartans, and Helots. By this time, Hitler publicly recognized and affirmed the idea of a multiVolkish, and thus multiethnic Europe; so long as the Jewish Volk, or rather “antiVolk” (as Hitler saw them), was excluded. Indeed, he publicly declared the inevitability of this social phenomenon.³⁹

That being said, Hitler not surprisingly argued that emulation of Jewish “racial purity” was neither desirable nor proper for the German people (i.e., non-assimilation or racial exclusivity). He viewed the Jewish infusion as purely destructive.⁴⁰ Interestingly, this particular aspect of his 1944 speech reflected how he had already felt in the early 1930s.

He explained to Wagener at that time:

Without a doubt, there are great advantages for Jewry in maintaining such purity…We see how enormous the differences are between the ethics, the philosophy of life, the attitude toward others between the Jews and the settled peoples…They really are two completely different ‘races’. In the same way, the concept of keeping the race pure can never be transferred from the Jewish example to, for example, the Aryan. And what was right and possible there [with Jews] may and can be completely incorrect as well as impossible here [with Germans].⁴¹

Hitler saw the Jewish infusion as the ‘death knell’ of the Germanic Volk. This anti-Jewish attitude leads one to view his leniency toward Mischling Jews, at any point while in power, as all the more surprising; especially since he personally intervened on numerous Jews’ behalf.⁴² To be sure, his sympathy for the Mischling Jews remains puzzling since Jews were forcibly deported, resettled, liquidated, and ethnically cleansed at Hitler’s behest. It seems odd that he “aryanized” any Jews at all. Perhaps he had a difficult time implementing his anti-Jewish measures when he could actually put a face and identity to the victims. Rigg argued that the worse the war got, the fewer Jewish Mischlinge Hitler exempted. Hitler clearly placed the worsening of the war situation squarely upon the shoulders of the Jews. The decline in the numbers of Jews granted clemency reflected the decline he experienced in his leniency towards them as the war worsened.

The Effects of Hitler’s Ambivalence in the Military Sphere

While Hitler adopted a sterner line when it came to ideology in the military by 1943,⁴³ he adopted a more open-minded racial view by 1944 (at the latest). Though his Platterhof speech contained acidic language toward Jews, Hitler nevertheless wanted Jews for labor⁴⁴ and military service and he ordered that Hungarian Jews be used for forced labor and continued to grant clemency to Jewish Mischlinge even after 1944.⁴⁵ There can be no doubt that in Nazi Germany, military service was a means to improved chances of survival and social mobility, even for Jews and Gypsies in many cases. Given the ad hoc nature of the Third Reich throughout its existence, its characteristic “state of permanent improvisation,”⁴⁶ it comes as little surprise that ambiguity with regard to minorities and foreigners existed until the very end.

J.F. Borsarello and W. Palinckx argued that Hitler and Himmler were more willing to accommodate racial and religious diversity in the German Armed Forces than were many Prussian and Waffen SS generals. They offered the following assessment:

Highly paradoxically, Adolph [ sic] Hitler and Heinrich Himmler ended up allowing themselves to be convinced by the sound of university sirens, such as professor Oberländer and promoters of the Orient such as Niedermayer, and even religious men, like the Great Mufti of Jerusalem and finally by independence leaders like Subhas Chandra Bose. However, at the level of “Prussian” and Waffen-SS generals, the message and orders from high were accepted with difficulty, and the new arrivals were also received apprehensively.⁴⁷

Many groups and individuals intended for ethnic cleansing campaigns or forced postwar deportation ended up drafted, volunteered to fight, or worked as compulsory laborers for the German war effort. Still others, due to their reliable service and the dramatic change in Germany’s official Eastern occupation policy in 1942,48 49 were able to command some respect from even the most fervent Nazis. In the civil realm, the Zionist Jews, for instance, were very effective at getting what they wanted from the Hitler government. Ingrid Weckert’s and Lenni Brenner’s research on the transfer agreements is informative in this regard.⁵⁰

FIGURE 7. Blacks and Arabs were recruited by the Nazis (from amongst British POWs). Courtesy of J.F. Borsarello and W. Palinckx.1‡
National Socialist-Zionist Collaboration: Mutually Beneficial

Under the Ha’avara Agreement, in May 1933, the German Reichsbank established Special Accounts I and II, which were synchronized with the Jewish Temple Bank. The accounts were used by Jewish emigrants (who left the Reich); their Reichsmarks were converted to Palestine Pounds. Jews were advised on capital transfer by the Palestine Trusteeship for the Counseling of German Jews, Ltd., which had its headquarters at Friedrichstrasse 218 in Berlin. In 1936, the “Jewish Agency” took over Ha’avara. The amount required for immigration to Palestine was rather expensive: 1,000 Palestine Pounds.⁵¹ However, Ha’avara made possible the emigration of less affluent Jews via “long term credits from the accumulated balances.”⁵²

Weckert asserted, “As befitted their attitude towards Jewish emigration, the SS and the Gestapo were helpful towards the [Mossad le Aliyah Bet] agents in many ways.” She went on to say, “In December 1938 Himmler ordered that Jewish prisoners in concentration camps who desired to emigrate should be released.” Mossad agents were even permitted to enter the camps in order to recruit “Jews willing to go to Palestine in illegal migration ships.” The Gestapo itself chartered suitable ships for this purpose and even covered part of the costs.⁵³

Lenni Brenner, editor of Fifty-One Zionist Documents, discovered that many Zionist Jews were “eager” to work with the Nazis. The Haganah, “the military arm of the Jewish Agency (de facto the Labor Zionist militia),” which Weckert’s study explored, “obtained permission to negotiate directly with the SS.”⁵⁴ In fact, the “State Zionists” were the only non-Nazis granted the right to wear uniforms indoors.⁵⁵ Feivel Polkes, a Haganah agent who arrived in Berlin on 26 February 1937, was assigned Adolf Eichmann as his negotiating partner. Eichmann was a protégé of Jewish sympathizer and SS officer Leopold Edler von Mildenstein—who was “in charge of the Jewish desk in Heydrich’s SD.”⁵⁶ Together, Eichmann and Mildenstein became the SD’s specialists on Zionism.

According to David Yisraeli, the Eichmann-Polkes conversations were recorded in a report prepared by Franz-Albert Six, Eichmann’s superior, which was found in the SS files captured by the American Army at the end of the war. Yisraeli stated,

Polkes [was] a national-Zionist. He [was] against all Jews who [were] opposed to the erection of a Jewish state in Palestine. As a Haganah man he [fought] against Communism and all aims of Arab-British friendship. …He noted that the Haganah’s goal [was] to reach, as soon as possible, a Jewish majority in Palestine. Therefore he worked, as this objective required, with or against the British Intelligence Service, the Sureté Generale, with England and Italy. …He declared himself willing to work for Germany in the form of providing intelligence as long as this [did] not oppose his own political goals. Among other things he [supported] German foreign policy in the Near East. He [offered to try] to find oil sources for the German Reich without affecting British spheres of interest if the German monetary regulations were eased for Jewish emigrants to Palestine.⁵⁷

Dr. Göbbels’ Angriff interviewed Georg Kareski, the Jewish Reich Commissioner for Jewish Cultural Affairs, in 1936. Kareski expressed his willingness to support the Nuremberg Laws as long as they “respected” the alien “other.”⁵⁸ Adolf Eichmann took a trip to Haifa with SS Oberscharführer Herbert Hagen, on 26 September 1937, to investigate the feasibility of a future Jewish state in Palestine.⁵⁹ One may conclude from all of this that even fanatical Nazis were willing to assist Jews with emigration in a peaceful and amicable manner.

FIGURE 8. Jewish Haganah soldiers in Palestine (1940).2†

When America entered the war in 1941, Ha’avara’s London connection was terminated and capital transfer became more difficult. Ha’avara transfer accounts thus remained in the care of two private Jewish banks until the end of the war—M.M. Warburg (in Hamburg) and A.E. Wassermann (in Berlin).⁶⁰ No doubt, both Germany and Jewry benefited from Ha’avara. Germany gained a dependable export market at a time when its economy was somewhat hampered by the various worldwide Jewish boycotts,⁶¹ and 50,000 Jews established new lives in Palestine. About 30,000 Jews were reported to have escaped to Shanghai, China.⁶² Many of these Jews probably immigrated to Shanghai under Ha’avara.

The German Jews did not get the opportunity to benefit from the Rublee-Wohlthat Agreement, which is less well known. George Rublee negotiated with Dr. Hjalmar Schacht and Helmuth Wohlthat (Hermann Göring’s Ministerial Director), with regard to emigration of Jews from Germany. Rublee wrote in his 29 April 1939 memorandum: “American Jewish bankers were prepared to raise sufficient means to guarantee the accomplishment of all resettlement projects.” He went on to note that he received numerous letters from German Jews thanking him for what he had done. Rublee pondered what might have been: “Perhaps if the war had not come, the Jewish Question in Germany might have come to an end.”⁶³

As for Hitler’s position on Zionism and Jewish emigration, Mark Weber offered the following assessment:

Hitler himself personally reviewed this entire issue in early 1938 and, in spite of his long-standing skepticism of Zionist ambitions and misgivings that his policies might contribute to the formation of a Jewish state, decided to support Jewish migration to Palestine even more vigorously. The prospect of ridding Germany of its Jews, he concluded, outweighed the possible dangers.⁶⁴

Upon consideration of the political posture and attitude of the Zionist Jews, one can understand why the Nazis respected them and were willing to work with them. The Zionists were bold and politically astute. Three factors in particular appear to have aroused beneficent Nazi treatment and relations. First of all, ethnic minorities and foreigners had to be demanding of the Nazis; they had to demand equal or fair treatment. Secondly, they had to actively resist Nazi mistreatment. Those who complained to German occupation authorities, protested on their own behalf, petitioned Hitler, or took up arms against the German occupiers tended to receive concessions. Lastly, collaborators had to give something in return for decent treatment. Poles, Ukrainians, Gypsies, Jews, and other persecuted ethnic groups who proactively assisted the Germans, in a forthright and confident manner, tended to survive reprisals and massacres. While the changed tide of the war against Germany eased relations between the Germans and the occupied (since the occupied had the upper hand), there is little doubt that millions of foreigners and ethnic minorities survived the Nazi regime, and the initial years of the war, in these key ways.

CHAPTER III

VICTIMS OR COLLABORATORS?

That in units of the German Army there are also Tartar [ sic] auxiliary units taking part in battle against the Bolsheviks, along with Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians, and Ukrainian legions…Crimean Tartars [sic] always distinguish themselves with valor and a readiness to fight..[i]t is fully understood, that they stand shoulder to shoulder with the soldiers of the German Army in the struggle against Bolshevism.

—Adolf Hitler⁶⁵

Nazi Racial Ambivalence and its Effects on the Military Establishment

At least two million⁶⁶ non-German foreigners and German ethnic minorities were either conscripted or volunteered to fight for Nazi Germany. Nearly 600,000 of these volunteers and conscripts were Eastern Europeans.⁶⁷ Few historians have asked what these men thought of their role in the Axis cause. Instead, most historians have done one of three things: described them as victims of Nazi Germany, as deluded young fools, or as evidence of a miracle (in that they were not victims of systematic ethnic cleansing).

FIGURE 9. Chiang Kai-shek’s adopted son, Chiang Wei-kuo. Courtesy of Wikimedia.1¶

One wonders what these historians might say of the Gypsies who fought and died defending the Oder region as members of the Dirlewanger Brigade,⁶⁸ or about those who voluntarily worked for the Germans in a cement factory.⁶⁹ Gilad Margalit stated, “[Himmler’s policy change] might show that, despite everything, Gypsies, in contrast to Jews, were perceived by Himmler who gave his consent to Dirlewager’s [sic] initiative, to be part of the German fatherland and not its foe.”⁷⁰

Obviously, not all ethnic minorities or foreigners were victims. Some were treated quite well. Even so, few historical works consulted for this study seriously pondered whether the Germans would have remained ethnically exclusive upon their experiences and collaborative efforts on the Eastern Front. Most of the authors of these works assumed that the various collaborators would have been treated like “sub-humans” had the Germans won. This assumption is unfounded given the facts.

First of all, these historians missed the fact that the term, “Untermenschen,” was less ethnic in connotation than political. Hitler had in fact equated “Untermenschentum” with criminality, political indecision, and Communism (which he characterized as a movement that leveled people downward⁷¹); not with any particular race or ethnicity.⁷² In fact, he condemned the German bourgeois that had opposed the NSDAP as an element of this “sub-humanity,” so it was not necessarily purely Jewish in character either. Besides, Hitler wished to grant several Eastern European states postwar autonomy. As one can see, historians are incorrect to associate Untermenschen with any single ethnic group, such as Slavs or Jews, yet historians continue to do so.

Secondly, none of these works critically analyzed Hitler’s racial views, nor did most of them consider the question of collaboration. The truth is that many foreigners and minorities used the Germans as much as the Germans used them. Foreigners held the balance of power in the relationship after Stalingrad, because the Germans grew alarmed by the real prospect of losing the war. Hitler himself admitted during his military conferences that the goal starting in 1943 was to simply halt the Russian advance, nothing more. He wanted to score a few offensive victories to boost morale and alarm the Allies. He never thought he could retake Russian territory that was already lost. Contrary to what many historians believe, Hitler was realistic in his outlook in the latter years of the war and this mostly benefited his foreign and minority collaborators.

Indeed, Alex Alexiev stated that the Germans experienced a marked and sudden change in attitude which cannot be entirely explained by military expediency.⁷³ While the dire military situation influenced this policy change, this factor alone is not an entirely adequate explanation. The fact is: exploitation and gross mistreatment of various polities continued in certain occupation zones, like Ukraine and Lithuania. Léon Degrelle’s “eight hour debate” with Hitler and Himmler may have helped cause this sudden change of heart at the highest level.⁷⁴ For the first time since the commencement of the war, Hitler and Himmler opened Schutzstaffel (SS) recruitment to non-Germans—in 1943. Hitler was especially supportive of the idea of ethnic Russian Hiwis (Hilfswilliger, volunteer helpers) by the summer of 1943.⁷⁵

FIGURE 10. SS Obersturmbannführer Léon Degrelle (saluting). He founded the Rexist movement in Belgium and commanded the SS Wallonie Division. Courtesy of Eddy de Bruyne and Marc Rikmenspoel.3*

Furthermore, Hitler ordered that all volunteer Waffen SS battalions and companies be expanded to division status on 30 January 1945.⁷⁶ It was “too little, too late,” but the notable change in Hitler’s attitude toward non-Germans—indeed, his recognition of their value for the war effort, if nothing else—cannot be denied. One must see this development for what it was: Hitler was forced to admit that Germans needed help. Thus, in this sense, non-Germans were able to prove their racial value by means of military service. It was a means of social mobility for non-Germans; a means of overcoming Nazi racial stereotypes. Just as African Americans proved their equality via service in the US Army Air Corps, so too did German ethnic minorities and foreigners prove their racial equality and competence in Hitler’s eyes via service in the Wehrmacht and SS.

According to Dr. Vladimir Baumgarten, “…there were German leaders who were looking for allies in the East even before Operation Barbarossa was launched. Among them was Nazi ideologist Alfred Rosenberg.” 77 In his memoirs, Rosenberg asserted that he had backed Vlasov since 1942. He also said, “[M]y goal [was] the incorporation of the peoples of Eastern Europe into the fate of the whole continent, a constant fight against the primitivity of [Himmler, Koch, and Bormann].” 78 Upon the annihilation of the Sixth Army at Stalingrad, 31 January 1943, the recommendations of lenient, open-minded German officers “[were] more widely held and received.” These included: Helmuth von Pannwitz (pro-Cossack), Dr. Otto Gustav Wachter (General Governor of Galicia in 1941), General Staff Major Heinz Danko Herre (pro-Russian), Lieutenant Colonel Reinhard Gehlen (pro-Russian), General Kurt Zeitzler, Marshal Erwin von Kleist, Colonel “Papa” Wildner (all pro-Ukrainian and Slovak), and SS Sturmbannführer Friedrich Wittenmeyer (pro-Ukrainian).⁷⁹

According to historian Keith Williams, Russian General Andrei Vlasov told Himmler how disappointed he was with the Germans’ efforts regarding Russian collaboration.⁸⁰ Himmler was sympathetic. However, his telegram of congratulations to Vlasov, upon official Nazi recognition of Vlasov’s KONR (Committee of the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia) as “an independent ally” of Nazi Germany, came too late—on 11 February 1945.⁸¹

Hitler and Himmler both reneged on their strict adherence to maintaining the official racial exclusivity of the SS.⁸² All racial criteria for admission into the Waffen SS was disregarded by 1944.⁸³ Even the Sicherheitsdienst (Security Service, SD) depended heavily on foreign assistance and collaboration. In fact, the German occupation authorities could not have kept the non-annexed Generalgouvernement (GG) region of Poland as pacified as they had without the assistance of the Polish Blue Police.⁸⁴ Some 13,000 Poles, of which only 2,000 were ethnic Germans,⁸⁵ worked closely with SS and SD authorities in the GG. Not only do Polish historians continue to ignore Polish collaboration, including that of Polish General Kazimierz Zamorski (commander of the Blue Police); they also ignore the Polish role in the persecution of Jewry. And yet, there is photographic evidence that proves that the Blue Police rounded up Jews for the German authorities.

Not surprisingly, Polish historians have gone so far as to threaten to charge a Jewish American historian, Jan Tomasz Gross, with “slandering the Polish nation.”⁸⁶ He pointed out the degree of collaboration between Poles and Germans during World War II, which was corroborated in 2005 by historian Klaus-Peter Friedrich. Like Gross, Friedrich addressed the problems with Polish historiography, which continues to ignore, downplay, or excuse Polish collaboration with the Nazis. He found that the Nazis needed Poles as civil servants, religious leaders, and political overseers; the Nazis were also approached by Polish “Pilsudskists,” who were willing to openly collaborate.⁸⁷

Furthermore, “Polish firemen, volunteers of Organisation Todt who were usually engaged in construction work, and Baudienst conscripts orjunacy (as they were often called in Polish) took part in antiJewish crimes as auxiliary staff.” 88 Friedrich concluded that “[i]n the reality of the occupation, the behavior of those willing to cooperate rarely fits today’s black-and-white standards.” Poles who were willing and ready to fight the Germans consisted of just one quarter of the entire Polish population.⁸⁹ Indeed,

Many peasants…enriched themselves at Jews’ expense after the authorities had invited them to do so. A report from a village in the GG where the Germans had murdered the Jewish population says that the villagers attacked those who had fled to the surrounding forests, robbed them, and finally denounced them to the German police who shot all of them.⁹⁰

Most historians continue to miss the importance of the radical change in official Nazi policy that allowed foreign and ethnic minorities to join the SS. Hitler no doubt received a sort of “wake up call” upon receiving reports and reviews of many of his foreign volunteers, especially the Cossacks. Helmuth von Pannwitz told Hitler what he really thought about Nazi racial policy straight to his face and, while Hitler heard him out in silence,⁹¹ his policy changes indicate that he did listen to what Pannwitz and other pro-Russian subordinates had to say.

Given the present historiography, the generous accommodations granted the Nazis’ Muslim volunteer forces in the SS Handschar Division remain inexplicable. Therefore, the historical record needs to be corrected. George Lepre’s study of Muslim volunteers, entitled Himmler’s Bosnian Division, went into elaborate detail in this regard. The Muslims benefited far more than Germans did from this collaborative effort. Yet, most historians continue to miss this crucial detail.

Nazi Abwehr (Military Intelligence) officer Franz WimmerLamquet said of the Arab Muslims:

The Arab security forces were not required to give an oath to Hitler. There was no usual book of military rules of conduct, rather our men were protected and punished on the basis of the Koran and the appropriate Islamic spiritual leaders when necessary. For my European soldiers, the non-Muslims, there was a special punishment code, which was generally far stricter than in the Wehrmacht. Every one of my men knew that, because only volunteers could join our units. They were specially tested and everything was explained to them.

As compensation for the special hardships, there was the extraordinary good care for their needs. In no other units within the Wehrmacht were there such special privileges. For the families there was total protection. If they were bombed out, they would receive new dwellings and everything else was available to a generous degree. The take home pay was extremely high. In this way, all the needs of the family within the homeland were covered and each one of my men could concentrate on fighting at the front without worrying about his family. It was all rather expensive, but it was necessary and brought about the desired result: my men were more confident about their missions. Initially, relations were quite conventional, but after a short time we were all informal (we said “Du,” rather than “Sie”) with each other. We grew into a sworn unity, and therein was my strength. I could demand the most extraordinary things from my men, because they knew their leader was in front of them at the front.⁹²

FIGURE 11. Mohamedi Said (1958) served under Franz Wimmer-Lamquet. Courtesy of Balkenkreuz und Halbmond.1ƒ

The Germans even allowed tens-of-thousands of their foreign volunteers to remain in the war only as long as it threatened their own homelands. The majority were allowed to quit upon German withdrawal. They were invited to defend Germany, but few were forced to do so.

CHAPTER IV

DIVERSITY UNDER THE S

WASTIKA

The entire Muslim world is united in the struggle against Britain and Soviet Russia. This I have assured the Führer…The Muslim world stands united with Germany, which deserves and will achieve victory. The attitude of the Muslim world is clear. Those lands suffering under the British and Bolshevist yoke impatiently await the moment when the Axis (powers) will emerge victorious.

—Haj Amin al-Husseini⁹³

Case Studies in Foreign and Ethnic Minority Collaboration with the Nazis

Carlos Caballero Jurado and Kevin Lyles explained that 30 German divisions consisted of Soviet enlistees. Three of these divisions were Croatian. In addition, about 50,000 Italians volunteered to fight in the Luftwaffe.⁹⁴ The two key factors that motivated the majority of these men to serve the Germans were nationalist aspirations and anti-Communist sentiment. Anti-Communism was “the most significant.” However, nationalism was the most important factor for most Croatians; Germany’s victory over Yugoslavia gave Croatia its newfound political independence.⁹⁵ Croats performed naval security duties “with some courage and resource” for the Germans in the Black Sea and Sea of Asov, against superior and more numerous Soviet naval forces.⁹⁶ Belgian volunteers proved especially tenacious and received 35 Iron Crosses, the respect of their German comrades, and suffered 30 percent casualties.⁹⁷

The Germans formed the French Waffen SS brigade in July 1943. About 3,000 LVF members joined the Germans at the commencement of hostilities. The Milice française (Vichy France’s French Militia under the presidency of Laval), like the LVF, loved France and its way of life and therefore felt threatened by Communism.⁹⁸ Vichy France’s Chief of State Marshal Pétain said, “I do not like Jews, I detest Communists, and I hate Freemasons.”⁹⁹ His attitude undoubtedly influenced France’s posture in favor of Germany and its struggle. Though, many Frenchmen joined the Milice only to avoid deportation to Germany as laborers.¹⁰⁰ Others joined the Germans in direct response to Allied bombing raids over France, which killed numerous civilians. Some thousands were serving in German ranks by 1944 and about 300 Frenchmen helped defend Berlin in its final struggle against the Soviet onslaught in 1945.101 102

The Slovaks were less reliable and less fervent. The Germans had to move them to a quiet part of the front to boost their morale. Eventually the Slovakian Army Group (Slovakische Armeegruppe), formed in June 1941, became a construction unit to prevent desertion. They helped repair sabotaged rail lines.¹⁰³

Russian exile Count Grigori von Lambsdorff fought the Communists in Spain for three years.¹⁰⁴ In spite of the “stunningly extensive” Jewish participation in the Spanish Civil War,¹⁰⁵ most Spanish volunteers, including Lambsdorff, were not known to have been anti-Jewish. Like most Spaniards and Russian exiles, Lambsdorff was wholly opposed to Stalin and Stalinism, and he eventually served as a Russian officer in the Wehrmacht with the blessings of Generals von Schenkendorf and von Bock.¹⁰⁶
In March 1942, the Nazis decidedly changed their politico-military policy concerning the East. The Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW, German Armed Forces High Command) allowed the Abwehr (German Military Intelligence Service) to create a unit of Russian volunteers in Osintorff, near Smolensk. Jurado argued that since the Abwehr answered directly to OKW headquarters, it most certainly attained permission to raise a Russian unit from the highest level of authority (Hitler). The Abwehr used these men to infiltrate the Soviet rear area and had them commit acts of sabotage and agitation behind enemy lines (Unternehmen Graukopf). Lambsdorff, the exiled Russian volunteer, and his comrades did not view the Germans as masters; rather as allies.¹⁰⁷

FIGURE 12. Jewish SS Obergruppenführer and General der Polizei Curt von Gottberg. Courtesy of Antonio Muñoz.2ƒ

The Greeks had a secret police that treated Communists with the utmost brutality long before the Germans.¹⁰⁸ The Germans were able to divide and rule the Greeks relatively easily, since they were already engaged in civil war. The Germans also offered equal pay and rations to Greek and Sandjak Muslim volunteers in Montenegro.¹⁰⁹ Rich Greek farmers had a personal vendetta against Communism, because of collectivization, so they accepted German assistance and helped the Germans. The Macedonian farmers proved especially reliable.¹¹⁰ The triumph of the Communist ELAS over the conservative EKKA drove many Greeks into German ranks. The EKKA was especially anti-ELAS because ELAS guerrillas were responsible for the death of their leader, Ioannis Rallïs, and their movement.¹¹¹ Some 50,000 Greeks assisted the Germans at one time or another. Most of these Greek collaborators were anti-Communist and likewise disaffected with the Metaxas regime.¹¹²

The Germans, for their part, needed Greek militias and anti-terrorist forces to suppress the growing partisan menace in the Balkans.¹¹³ To supplement these Greek volunteers, the Bulgarians formed three additional Greek volunteer battalions in Macedonia. The Bulgarian officers in Kastoria helped the Germans, due to their fear of Communism and nationalist aspirations.¹¹⁴ Macedonia’s Inner Macedonian Revolution Organization (IMRO) was integral to recruitment of volunteers. Hitler and Himmler both approved of IMROs assistance.¹¹⁵ The ultimate goal of IMRO was independence for the state of Macedonia. They sought to try and achieve this via German collaboration.¹¹⁶

The Communists established concentration camps for their avowed enemies in Greece. ELAS was not incompetent. To try and prevent Greek-German collaboration, ELAS, and its companion EAM, terrorized the families of Greek volunteers and collaborators. Its members also killed numerous Germans, so the Germans really put their multiethnic volunteer forces to the test in Greek country. Italians, Arabs, Greeks, and Germans fought partisans in Greece together. There were 3,000 Germans and 1,000 non-Germans in all. The antiCommunist, pro-British Albanian Balisti also helped the Germans in Greece.¹¹⁷ The farmers in Thessaly, organized by the SD in 1944, were fanatically anti-Communist. They were also extreme nationalists,¹¹⁸ so they supported and helped the Germans as well.

FIGURE 13. Greek ELAS partisans.4*

Greek Colonel George Poulos was a fervent anti-Communist. He was also anti-monarchist and a fervent nationalist. Not surprisingly, he volunteered to assist the Germans in rooting out Communist partisans. Poulos and his unit fought in Yugoslavia in 1944 and 1945. With respect to Greece, the Germans succeeded where the Italians had failed. Many Greeks voluntarily withdrew with the Germans in 1945.¹¹⁹

The Serbs claimed they collaborated with the Germans only to avoid persecution. This is partly true. The Croats were exterminating Serbs, so the Serbs sought German protection. At the same time, Tito’s Serb forces deliberately provoked German reprisals against Serbian civilians via deception in order to alienate the German support base.¹²⁰ Serbian leader Milan Nedic, who was granted “limited freedom” by the Germans, raised an indigenous Serbian collaborationist force, which proved “the most effective anti-partisan force in all of Yugoslavia.”¹²¹ The Serbian Chetniks played the Germans off against the Croatian Ustashe, and vice versa. The Germans were reluctantly drawn into their ongoing civil war. About 36,000 Serbs fought for the German side by late 1943.¹²² The Germans and the Chetniks even assisted one another in Uzice against the Communists.¹²³

Additionally, the prewar Serbian nationalist organization Zbor, headed by ultra-nationalist Dimitrije Ljotic, became a German auxiliary military formation.¹²⁴ They joined Germany because they were fervently nationalistic and anti-Communist. They fought in the name of “King, God, and Fatherland.”¹²⁵

The Sandjak Muslims were a persecuted minority in Montenegro.¹²⁶ The Germans quickly learned this and treated them extremely well. German commanders and chiefs of staff were specifically ordered to treat these Muslims as allies.¹²⁷ The Germans organized them into local defense militias and anti-partisan, antiChetnik forces. Between 5,000 and 10,000 Sandjak militiamen participated in Oberst der Polizei and SS Sturmbannführer der Waffen SS Karl von Krempler’s Operation Black, which aimed at clearing out Tito’s fighters in Yugoslavia.¹²⁸ This action was followed up by numerous anti-partisan operations over the next half-year, in which the Sandjak Muslims actively participated. They were granted equal pay and rations as well as a high degree of autonomy by the Germans, and therefore willingly assisted the Germans.

The Swiss government also assisted the Germans in many ways. Swiss authorities demanded that Germans mark Jewish passports with a large red ‘J,’ or a Star of David symbol. The goal was to prevent Jewish immigration to Switzerland, during which time such a policy placed tens-of-thousands of Jews in harm’s way. The Swiss feared what they called “Überjudung” (“over-Judaization”). Even though Switzerland maintained political and military neutrality, it did not prevent individual Swiss from volunteering for the Waffen SS, nor did it fail to assist the Germans with investigations and police work. Reporter Sarah Honig wrote that the red ‘J’ “made it more difficult for [Jewish] refugees to reach safety, and by handing over the refugees caught directly to their persecutors, the Swiss authorities were instrumental in helping the Nazi regime attain its goals.”¹²⁹

Interestingly, Lithuania benefited from the German occupation in spite of its initial brutality. However, the Lithuanians were not pushovers: 11,000 deserted the Germans in 1944, and loud protests over employment of Lithuanians as Wehrmacht replacements convinced the Germans to make concessions that favored Lithuania.¹³⁰ Muñoz’ research indicated that Lithuanian military cooperation with the Germans resulted in the “creation of a pool of officers and men whose goal of an independent Lithuania helped to create and sustain a postwar anti-Communist army.” About 36,800 Lithuanians served the German war effort in some way. Lithuanians alone made up some 35 Schuma police battalions, which assisted the Germans in diverse ways. Lithuanian police forces guarded POW and SS camps; policed part of Danzig (in 1944); served as construction workers; served in the Ukraine from July 1942 into 1943; were employed behind the lines of the German 16th Army; fought partisans; were attached to various divisions and army groups; guarded fixed installations including air fields; and assisted in political activities and persecution of Jews.¹³¹

Latvians received the Germans enthusiastically. When the Germans announced the formation of a Latvian volunteer legion, 30,000 requests were received to join the new SS division. Latvian soldiers distinguished themselves numerous times in battle. They held off eleven Soviet divisions, by themselves, at the strategic points along the Velikaya River in 1944. A major battle ensued between the Latvians and Russians for possession of Hill 228.4. After three suicidal frontal attacks, the Russians finally took this single strategic “center of gravity” (COG). More impressively, the 19th Latvian SS Division held the line intact against further Soviet thrusts further north along this same line of defense. They ceased fighting only upon receiving orders to withdraw on 9 July 1944. The Soviets gained a stretch of land about a mile deep and six miles wide at the cost of four Soviet infantry divisions and two armored brigades—in just 8 days’ fighting against this Latvian division. In another attack against German and Latvian combined forces in December 1944, the Soviets lost another fifty divisions. The Latvian soldiers were responsible for the destruction of ten of these Soviet (infantry) divisions and an entire armored corps.¹³²

The Tatars and Cossacks collaborated with the Germans mainly because they were both victims of Stalinist genocide. The Cossacks were deeply anti-Communist. While Hitler remained reluctant to employ Soviet citizens, mainly because of General Ludendorff’s experience with the Poles, he maintained affection for Muslim, Cossack, Tatar, and Turkish Soviets. Nazi policy granted the Kalmyck Mongols, Tatars, and Cossacks independent statehood in return for serving the German side. There is little reason to doubt German sincerity in these three cases, since Russian Soviets (Slavs) were granted independence of action only by 1945—far too late to have any real chance of success.

Hitler argued that Ludendorff was promised between 500,000 and 700,000 Polish soldiers if he allowed the creation of a Polish state. The soldiers were never sent to him and he was blamed for the creation of the Polish state.¹³³ Furthermore, creation of independent, autonomous states in the East was not conducive to Hitler’s foreign policy aims, which sought to incorporate most of Eastern Europe and Western Russia into the Greater German Reich. David Schoenbaum described it as a Europe “based politically on German hegemony and economically on the quasi-colonial relationship of German industry and its satellites’ agriculture and raw materials.”¹³⁴ General Zeitzler agreed. He said, “At most we need to find something on the left of the line to give as a reward to the people who serve with us…whether it be [sic] money or a promise that they will get something afterwards.” Only the Cossacks were an exception for both Hitler and Zeitzler.¹³⁵

Hitler, contrary to what most historians have said, did not view Asiatic or Slavic Russians as “Untermenschen.”¹³⁶ He allowed Tatars, Slavs, Ukrainians, and Caucasians to serve in the German Wehrmacht as early as 1942. He told Wagener that the Slavs “might even have some creative content.” He called the Communist movement in Russia “Jewish,” in effect denying that it was a “Russian-Slavic idea.”¹³⁷ Further, Lieutenant General Rudolf Schmundt said that his 47,000 auxiliaries (who built all the railways for him) volunteered “for food and shelter, so they had a living.”¹³⁸ So, the Nazi High Command, including Hitler, acknowledged that it needed non-German assistance, especially against partisans and for rail and rear area security. The problem is that Hitler was unwilling to adjust his foreign policy aims¹³⁹ enough to accommodate the advantages of widespread foreign collaboration and assistance. The High Command, not just Hitler, were still convinced that they could force a military solution.

Indeed, Hitler called for “decent” treatment of Soviet POWs on 8 June 1943. He was referring specifically to Vlasov’s men. He wanted them for propaganda purposes, since the Turkish fighters in the Niedermayer Division “didn’t cope with significant challenges [in the Polish General Government],” and because Vlasov was getting his men “all excited about freedom” in the rear area.¹⁴⁰

Most of the Slavic, Russian, and Polish (Galician) collaborators, like Andrei Vlasov and Borislav Kaminski, were utterly opposed to Stalin and his regime. Both men, and millions of Slavic Russians, had suffered terrible personal losses under Stalin, so much of their motivation was very personal. Vlasov’s entire family was executed by the NKVD. Kaminski did hard labor in Stalin’s gulags. The Nazis were viewed as the only way to overthrow Stalin; thus, Vlasov decided to join the “lesser of the two evils.” He was by no means a National Socialist. He wanted, above all, to liberate Russia from the Bolshevik regime and Stalin.

According to historian Brian Glyn Williams,

In a sharp reversal of Hitler’s genocidal racial policies, the pragmatic German High Command ‘realists’ began recruiting from among the Soviet prisoners in 1942. In this way the German army created several distinct support armies, including a Crimean Tatar legion, from the groups of Soviet prisoners of war. According to the Crimean Tatar writer, Edige Kirimal, as well as Soviet and German sources, this legion eventually consisted of eight battalions with a total of 20,000 soldiers.¹⁴¹

Many Crimean Tatars saw the Germans as liberators. They were fed up with Stalin’s purges, famines, and forced deportations and sought German collaboration to further their own national goals. Indeed, “the nationalists in turn hoped to utilize the situation to advance their own purely Tatar interests, as they saw them.”¹⁴² When the Germans forced the Tatars to work as industrial laborers (Ostarbeiter) in Germany, it marked the end of Tatar support.¹⁴³ The Tatars paid a heavy price at the hands of the NKVD for their collaboration with the Germans.

The most horrific stories of the deportation involve several accounts of sealed wagons full of Crimean Tatars that could not be opened on their way to Central Asia. When these wagons were finally forced open at their destination their occupants were found to have perished from dehydration and starvation and were dumped in ditches to the sound of wailing from family members in neighbouring wagons.

Over 190,000 Crimean Tatars were forcibly deported to Siberia. 7,900 died during the deportation process itself.¹⁴⁴

Germanic volunteers served Germany mainly for racial reasons. Still others were ultra-conservative or anti-Communist. Volunteer soldiers from Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Liechtenstein, Holland, Norway, and Switzerland provided the following reasons for their service.

One soldier declared, “Hitler does not use soldiers as cannon fodder.” Another wrote, “…when the third Asiatic invasion is eliminated and when England is vanquished…[and the] common good goes before the individual good…in the New European Order…then I can rest and relax.” Yet another wrote: “When we set out for our sacred goal, then this time it is not against the interests of our own folk and against our own blood…We resist the death that threatens our folk-life.”

A Norwegian SS volunteer reprimanded those “on vacation” and explained, “[o]ur future is at stake.” He went on to say, “I would like to wish that the Jössinger [pro-English people] would have seen the Russians who are in the prisoner camps here; it would certainly give them other ideas.” A Dutch volunteer condemned the Jews for not having the Dutch people’s interests at heart. He said, “[My father] fell through the fault of the money powers…led by Jews…[t]hank God there are still other people in the world who do not think in money.” A Swedish volunteer spoke of his “much better possibilities in life than [he] could ever get in Sweden” as a German SS officer.¹⁴⁵

The Finnish claim to a “separate war” from that of Germany is a “myth.” Finnish collaborators served in the Einsatzkommando Finnland, established concentration camps (Stalag 309 held Jews and political prisoners), and actively assisted the German Gestapo.¹⁴⁶ The state of Sweden unofficially supported the German war effort as well. The Swedish government is now known to have provided loans and steady streams of exports to Germany during the war.¹⁴⁷ Obviously, Sweden’s and Finland’s leaders felt that Axis victory was important to their respective national security and future sovereignty, against Communism.

Arabs collaborated with the Germans, since Germany was the enemy of Britain. They were also generally anti-Communist, because Communism was atheistic. Many Germans saw Arabs as antiCommunist comrades-in-arms. Hitler saw them as future intermediaries between Germany and “the millions of African, Indian, and yellow peoples.”¹⁴⁸

FIGURE 14. Hitler and Sayid Amin al Husseini, the Grand Mufti, have a warm, meaningful conversation about the future of the Arab countries. Bundesarchiv.5*

Immediately after Hitler’s accession in 1933, “the Britishappointed Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husayni, made contact with the German consul to declare his support and offer his help.”¹⁴⁹ This is quite remarkable, but also understandable, since the relationship between Britain and most of the Middle East was not very pleasant.

When open hostility arose between the Grand Mufti and Iraqi Prime Minster Rashid Ali Al-Gailani, Hitler chose to support the Mufti. Not only did Al-Gailani refuse to cooperate, but Hitler found the Mufti’s political goals more realistic. He reasoned: “Our ally in that region—the Grand Mufti—besides being a fervent defender of his nation, always proceeds from the real interests of the Arabs, and is never ruled by some ridiculous fantasy.”¹⁵⁰ Hitler admired the Mufti’s fervent nationalism and especially his heartfelt honesty when it came to the interests of his people. Hitler saw that he was not the sort of leader who exploited situations for his own personal gain or selfish desires. This was Hitler’s main reason for giving him his complete support.

The Grand Mufti had his own reasons for seeking German support. He said,
Friendship and collaboration must be built on a firm foundation. The necessary ingredients here are common spiritual and material interests as well as the same ideals. The relationship between the Muslims and the Germans is built on this foundation. Never in its history has Germany attacked a Muslim nation. Germany battles world Jewry, Islam’s principal enemy. Germany also battles England and its allies, who have persecuted millions of Muslims, as well as Bolshevism, which subjugates forty million Muslims and threatens the Islamic faith in other lands. Any one of these arguments would be enough of a foundation for a friendly relationship between two peoples….My enemy’s enemy is my friend.¹⁵¹

The Grand Mufti was chosen by General Felmy, head of Special Staff F, and his underlings because he “could find the words necessary for mobilizing Muslim self-awareness. He and his supporters succeeded in creating significant difficulties for the British Protectorate authorities in Palestine.” On 20 January 1941, the Mufti wrote Hitler asking him for financial, material, and moral support in a fight against England. Hitler obliged, and in April 1941, found a means for transporting the materiel to the Mufti’s armies via an alliance with AlGailani. The Iraqi government had requested military assistance and Hitler “emphasized his resolution to enable operations in the Near East by way of military support for Iraq.” In fact, Hitler attached great importance to this alliance. In a conversation with English representatives, Rudolf Hess said: “Hitler would not leave Iraq in a fix, so long as it fights on the German side.”¹⁵²

Hitler’s assistance could not help Iraq, however, and on 29 May 1941, the war was over. The government led by Al-Gailani and the Mufti fled to Berlin. With the assistance of these two Arab leaders, the OKW was able to establish close collaboration with Muslim leaders and clerics in “countries of the Arab East.” Their anti-British sentiments were put to good use. The two Muslim leaders readied an “IraqiArab Army” under the command and leadership of the Wehrmacht. “It was reported to them in Hitler’s name, that in accordance with OKW Directive 30, they could consider the Arab Legion…as the core of a future Iraq-Arabic Army. It [would have] included 1 Syrian, 1 Palestinian/Trans-Jordanian, and 3 Iraqi Divisions.”¹⁵³

On 28 November 1941, Hitler and the Grand Mufti met to discuss formation of an Arab Legion as well as the guaranteed independence of Arab countries upon war’s end.¹⁵⁴ Hitler wanted to create a Legion. The Mufti suggested bringing the Legion up to par by including: Palestinian Arabs who had fallen prisoner to the Germans; Arab officers from Iraq, Palestine, and Syria; Arab POWs from French North Africa; North African Arab emigrants living in France; and lastly, Arabs from Morocco who had direct ties to the Mufti and who could be trusted. German diplomat Dr. Fritz Grobba suggested that only Iraqi, Syrian, and Palestinian students studying in German-occupied regions serve as officers.¹⁵⁵

British and American volunteers were motivated by Hitler’s ideological call. Several among the British political elite supported Hitler’s stance against Communism, including Lord Londonderry, Lord Rothermere, and Lord Astor.¹⁵⁶ Sir Oswald Mosley (founder of the British Union of Fascists) and his wife Diana both befriended Hitler and supported his politics, as did many individuals affiliated with Irish Blueshirt founder Eoin O’Duffy.¹⁵⁷ They found fascism more attractive than liberalism or capitalistic democracy. Still others supported German National Socialism because they were anti-Jewish or anti-Communist.¹⁵⁸ Martin James Monti, an American defector to the German side, was passionately opposed to President Roosevelt. Monti was anti-New Deal and believed that Russia was “the real enemy of the United States.”¹⁵⁹

FIGURE 15. American Martin James Monti confessed to voluntarily joining the German SS. Courtesy of the New York Times.

As far as most Afro-Germans were concerned, they just wanted to fit in. Military service offered them a place in which to do so. At least one, Werner Egiomue, believed he was just as German as white Germans and tried to prove it by means of military service in the Wehrmacht. Other Afro-Germans viewed the military as a safe place to hide from German society. Hans Hauck told Tina Campt in an interview that the Wehrmacht uniform was a mask that hid his blackness. He said, “Only as a soldier did [my Fatherland] treat me as an equal.” Hauck was promoted to private first class after five months. Campt concluded that even in the Third Reich, the armed forces served as a “vehicle of change.”160 Hauck’s experiences were the result of official Nazi race policy regarding blacks. Nazi racial researcher, Dr. Eugen Fischer, saw blacks as “inferior,” but called for their protection as long as they served German interests.¹⁶¹

Yugoslavia contained many ethnic groups. There were Croats, Serbs, Slovenes, Macedonians, Montenegrins, and Bosnians. Ethnic tension, religious war, genocide, and civil war characterized this region before, and during, the German occupation.¹⁶² Thousands of Croats, including Ante Pavelic and his Ustashe militia, were political extremists. Pavelic fought Communism like few others. In fact, his fascist Croats became so vicious toward the Serb minority that even the German occupation authorities protested against their gross-scale massacres!¹⁶³

FIGURE 16. Ante Pavelic. Courtesy of an Internet search.

Pavelic led this Croatian Ustashe, which was harsh at first, but softened towards the Serbs in 1942 upon German prompting. Muñoz confirmed that not all Slavs were “destined for extermination,” but they could not expect a special place in “new Europe.”¹⁶⁴ Eventually, the Serbian Chetniks worked with Pavelic’s Ustashe in order to defeat their common enemy: Josip Tito’s Communist partisans.¹⁶⁵ Not surprisingly, the Ustashe managed its own system of concentration camps in Jasenovac, Laborgrad, Stara Gradisca, Gredjani, and Pag Island.¹⁶⁶

Jean-Pierre Sourd described the Spanish members of the 250th Spanish Azul Division as “true believers.”¹⁶⁷ The Spanish SS volunteers (Blue Division and Blue Squadron) were fanatically antiCommunist. After Generalissimo Francisco Franco officially recalled the Spanish fighters in 1944, in response to Allied pressure, individual Spaniards illegally crossed the Spanish border, went back into Germany, and re-enlisted in the German Wehrmacht. According to Antonio Muñoz, only “true believers” could have done such a thing in 1944 by which time the Germans had little chance of victory. Among these men were Jose Valdeon Ruiz (accompanied by two Spanish teenagers), a veteran of Division Azul, and Miguel Ezquerra, a former lieutenant of the Division Azul. The Falangist Party helped many Spaniards cross the Pyrenees. Some were so determined to get back to the Russian front that they resorted to crossing the border at gunpoint.¹⁶⁸

The volunteer Spanish squadrons flew a total of 1,918 combat missions and their pilots engaged in 277 dogfights. The 3rd Squadron shot down 33 planes in five months with the Me-109s. They shot down 29 enemy planes in just two months’ time with the FW-190s. While their military contributions were negligible overall, the Spaniards proved invaluable to the Germans for political propaganda.¹⁶⁹

FIGURE 17. A German NCO bids his Spanish comrade farewell (1944). Courtesy of Jean-Pierre Sourd.6*

CHAPTER V

THE SHAPING OF THE ETHNICALLY DIVERSE NAZI MILITARY E

STABLISHMENT

If [the Ukrainian Division is] ready for action now, they seem to have weapons again. I don’t want to claim that we can’t do anything with these foreigners. We can certainly do something with them. But we would need time for that. If we had them for 6 or 10 years, and the areas themselves were in our own hands, like in the old monarchy, then they would be good soldiers, of course. But if we get them, and the areas are somewhere over there—why should they still fight at all?

—Adolf Hitler 170

The Radical Change that Came Too Late

The German invasion was welcomed by millions of Russians, Cossacks, and Ukrainians (Galicians). However, this jubilant Eastern reception had less to do with pro-National Socialist sentiment than it did hope for liberation from Stalin. Unfortunately for these millions of potential collaborators, German foreign policy was committed to territorial expansion, not liberation of Slavic peoples.

The German High Command felt certain that Russia would collapse shortly after the commencement of Operation Barbarossa, and so it allowed the SS occupation authorities to treat the ethnic Russians with a heavy hand. This was a political mistake from which the Germans recovered too late. Himmler admitted to Andrei Vlasov, the Soviet General captured at Stalingrad, that “old prejudices were being overcome.”¹⁷¹

Historian Michael Logusz summed up the situation: “Critical military needs, combined with the establishment of the 13th Yugoslavian ‘Handschar’ Division in the spring of 1943, forced the Waffen-SS at last to disregard its ‘Nordic’ theories.”¹⁷² Alfred Rosenberg, the German Minister for Eastern European Affairs, submitted to Hitler a plan to make Galicia the core of a new Ukrainian state on 1 April 1941. By so doing, Rosenberg hoped to tip the balance of power in Europe in Germany’s favor in the postwar years. He apparently believed a sovereign Ukrainian state would side with Germany against the USSR. Hitler, however, remained skeptical of this policy, because Galicia was home to about 55,000 ethnic Germans. Hitler still wanted Ukraine to be part of the Greater German Reich, and so he supported a “policy of postponement.”¹⁷³

Military Contributions of Eastern Volunteers

In the meantime, those Ukrainians who had fled to the German occupation zones in the wake of the Soviet invasion of Poland, which totaled some 30,000, were organized into the UCC (Ukrainian Central Committee). It was an apolitical organization dedicated to Ukrainian culture and humanitarian aid. It coordinated its activities with the International Red Cross. Volodymyr Kubiyovych, a Ukrainian scholar and novice politician, regularly protested the behavior and actions of the German occupation authorities. Surprisingly, no action was taken against him for doing so.¹⁷⁴ He and other Ukrainians, like General Roman Shukhevych, used the Germans for their own ends. Under the guise of their volunteerism, the Ukrainians gathered as much intelligence, equipment, and weaponry as possible, received first class German training, and then deserted to the ranks of the UPA guerrilla army.¹⁷⁵ The Germans accepted 13,000 out of a total of between 53,000 and 80,000 volunteers.¹⁷⁶

The Ukrainians, unlike some other collaborators, played off the Soviets and Nazis one against the other. In spite of their insincere motives, the Galicia Division performed remarkably well—as late as April 1945. For example, the Ukrainians held the front line intact against the Soviet 57th and 27th (Armies) and 3rd Guard Airborne Division—all reinforced with Katyusha rocket launchers (Stalin Organs) and the new 45-ton Stalin tanks—until relief arrived.¹⁷⁷

SS Oberführer Fritz Freitag assumed command of the 14. Galizische Freiwilligen Division on 20 November 1943. While Freitag excelled in the areas of “knowledge, diligence and good intentions, he failed to accommodate Ukrainian psychology.”¹⁷⁸ He never belittled his Ukrainian troops; never called them “Untermenschen”; never insulted their nationality; and never openly loathed them. As a matter of fact, he treated them well and respected them. The problem was that he imposed upon them the mentality, methods, and psychology of a Prussian, which did not always sit well with the Ukrainians. However, he dismissed abusive subordinates when Ukrainian troops complained, and he even agreed with some of their opinions. Eventually, Freitag stopped promoting Nazi ideology and instead focused on creating an elite fighting force. Freitag even spent Christmas with his Ukrainians on 2 January 1944. Their overall trust and level of camaraderie improved.¹⁷⁹

As Germany’s war prospects consistently weakened, Freitag became less concerned with initial war and political aims than with raising a Ukrainian national force that would fight passionately against Communism.¹⁸⁰ He was not alone. Several German officers and generals ignored Nazi ideology, instead raising and training potential national armies. Given this Galician (Ukrainian) case, there is little reason to doubt that many of the German-trained armies in the East formed the postwar paramilitary resistance movements against the Soviet Union.

According to Dr. Vladimir Baumgarten, the Germans alienated supporters initially. However, they adopted a clear policy of accommodation beginning in 1943 after Stalingrad. The “accommodationists” prevailed in almost every sector of military policy from that time on. German accommodation extended to the Cossacks early on, because Hitler supported Cossack independence.¹⁸¹ The Cossacks fought valiantly for the Germans. They protected several railways in the Balkans, infiltrated and attacked the rear of the 9th Red Army, and fought Communist and Croatian guerrilla forces in the German rear.

The Cossacks’ greatest accomplishment, however, was the annihilation of the Stalin Division (133rd Soviet Infantry Division). Baumgarten wrote that Soviet forces had linked up with Tito’s partisans and captured Belgrade, Serbia and threatened the German position. On 25 December 1944, the Stalin Division launched an attack against Pitomaca on the Drava, in order to gain a bridgehead. After intense hand-to-hand combat the 5th (Cossack) Don Regiment, led by Ivan Kononov, routed the entire Stalin Division—all by itself. Just 9,000 Cossacks routed 18,000 Russians and their Titoist helpers!¹⁸²

In an unprecedented display of affection, the Cossacks elected General Helmuth von Pannwitz as their Ataman. It was the first time a non-Cossack ever received such a title.¹⁸³ Sadly, Pannwitz was illegally handed over to the NKVD by the British High Command, since they considered him a Cossack, in 1945. He was hanged for “war crimes,” none of which he ever even committed,¹⁸⁴ in Moscow. Cossack émigré Peter Krasnov, who was not even a Soviet citizen, was also hanged in Moscow in 1947.¹⁸⁵

FIGURE 18. Helmuth von Pannwitz adopted the dress and customs of the Cossack people. He was so beloved; they voted him their Ataman (supreme leader). Hitler said, “The Cossacks are good…It’s wonderful: Cossacks are marching with us.” #

The Kalmyck Mongols were the most exotic volunteers who fought for Nazi Germany. According to Muñoz, the Kalmycks were the only Wehrmacht unit comprised solely of Buddhists. “Like all peoples under Stalinist rule, the Kalmyck way of life was turned upside down by the Communist atheism, collectivization, and other restrictions on the lives of these and other peoples.”¹⁸⁶ Vladimir Lenin made empty promises to these people, claiming that he would allow them more freedom if they helped him and the Bolshevik revolutionaries overthrow the Czarist regime. The Kalmycks refused, forming numerous “republics,” which served as tiny bulwarks against the Bolsheviks. The Kalmycks proved so tough that even the murderous NKVD (Soviet Secret Police) could not control them until 1941.

The Kalmycks lost at least 90,000 dead to the Bolsheviks during their struggle for survival. By 1959, the Kalmyck population had decreased by at least 100,000, due to the genocidal policies of the USSR. The Kalmycks were targeted for two specific reasons before the German invasion. They had refused to abandon Buddhism and resisted Soviet collectivization. No one knows for sure how many more Kalmycks the Bolshevik regime murdered after the war ended. Josef Stalin unleashed a campaign of extermination against the Kalmyck exvolunteers.¹⁸⁷ Unfortunately, Britain and America did not try to help them, nor did they exert any political or military pressure upon the USSR to avoid plotting revenge against Nazi ex-collaborators.

The Kalmycks were extremely brave fighters, and the Nazis heaped praise upon their hardiness and ruthlessness. Their Panje horses proved to be life-savers in the perilous Russian steppes.¹⁸⁸ The story of the Kalmyck volunteers is perplexing. The Kalmycks were ardent followers of their own religion and “The Greater Way,” which was a Buddhist precept. The Kalmycks, along with the Cossacks and Tatars, were respected and given autonomy by the invading Nazi forces. They were all allowed—they were encouraged—to fight for their own selfdefense. The most renowned and steadfast of these self-defense units came to be known as the Kalmyck Cavalry Corps. “It [was] one of the most exotic foreign volunteer units in the Wehrmacht.”¹⁸⁹

When German forces advanced into Russia in the summer of 1942, the Kalmycks decided that this might be their last hope for sovereignty and survival. The Nazis were allowed to “set up shop” in the city of Elista; a city in the Kalmyck Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic established by Stalin in 1935. Long-range reconnaissance patrols were immediately established in the nearby town of Uta. The Soviets immediately responded by sending their partisan squadrons into the Kalmyck ASSR.¹⁹⁰ Soon after the Germans set up camp here, in August 1942, their 16th Motorized Infantry Division experienced guerrilla attacks and destructive raids along their established lines of communication. Major Poltermann, “the Ic of the Division,” requested Hitler’s permission to establish a Kalmyck “volunteer militia” to help guard the German flanks. The Germans were in a race to win over as many of these local Kalmycks as possible, since the Soviets had already won over at least 8,664 for sabotage against incoming German forces.

Remarkably, in January 1943, there were still functioning Kalmyck cavalry squadrons fighting against the Red Army “just east of Salsk.” By February of that same year, the Kalmycks had withdrawn “alongside the 3rd Panzer Division until they reached Taganrog, where they were then attached to Feldkommandantur 200.”¹⁹¹ They ended up defending the coast near the Sea of Azov. In March 1943, Field Marshal von Kleist ordered that Kalmyck and Cossack units be dispatched to “Kherson in the Ukraine” where they could fight side-by-side as a formidable force.¹⁹² According to Muñoz, in actuality, the Kalmycks were mistakenly sent here by the higher authorities and were quickly withdrawn to safety.

Evidently, the Germans did not use their foreign collaborators as cannon fodder, unlike the Soviets. Indeed,

Nearly 1.5 million people were killed during the Rzhev campaign of 1942-43, two thirds of whom were Soviet. This cataclysmic death toll was largely the result of Josef Stalin’s disdain for the lives of his own men and of the atrocious bungling of Soviet commanders.¹⁹³

In March 1943, the Kalmycks received 1,000 Dutch rifles and 35,000 rounds for their new weapons. Before they acquired these, they had to rely on sabers and primitive Russian rifles. Their forces had strengthened to 2,200 men, 79 (Kalmyck) officers, 353 NCOs, and 2,030 horses and Bactrian camels. They were transferred from the coast to the lower Dnieper where they were merged with Oberfeldkommanten 397. They had acquired 700 additional men and about a dozen more NCOs along the way. They even gained over 2,500 horses and camels.¹⁹⁴

Lieutenant Colonel von Freytag-Loringhoven immediately made the necessary phone calls to get a knowledgeable Kalmyck language interpreter at the scene. The officer who heard Freytag-Loringhoven’s call turned out to be Rudolf Vrba. According to Muñoz, he went by Dr. Otto Doll, but his assumed name was Otmar Werva. Vrba was born in Russia and had fought on the side of the White Russians during the Russian Civil War. He was an extremely able officer. He joined the German Abwehr in 1938. At the time of his appointment to the Kalmyck region, he was an Abwehr agent stationed in the Crimea.¹⁹⁵ He was the only person that the Germans could find who spoke fluent Tibetan—the language of the Kalmycks. He was quickly promoted from Lance Corporal to the very respectable rank of Sonderführer. He eventually attained the rank of either Major or Colonel.

Muñoz described how Vrba quickly became the much respected love of the Kalmyck people. He organized the very first pro-Nazi Kalmyck unit—Abwehrtrupp 103—in August 1942. This formidable force consisted of “two cavalry squadrons with about 150 horsemen in each unit.” The Nazis actually offered semi-autonomous rights to the Kalmycks, in return for their help, which they had not offered to many other ethnic groups. They made the same compromise offer to the Caucasians of the region. The Nazis helped them reopen their closed-down Buddhist temples. Local indigenous leaders and authorities exercised almost complete sovereign authority under the temporary Nazi occupation. In December 1942, the Nazis helped them make sweeping agrarian reforms to restore their lost fertile croplands.

“The success and cooperation between the Germans and their benevolent policies netted great accomplishments in recruiting these native nomadic horsemen into [ever] more squadrons.” These included the Caucasian people who suffered heavily under Bolshevism. They lost “4,000 mosques, 2,000 meddressahs (religious schools), and 10,000 mullahs (religious leaders) that existed in the region in 1920.” By 1939, only 150 mosques and 150 mullahs remained.¹⁹⁶ Caucasian religious buildings were decimated; their Islamic leaders were liquidated or simply sent to the gulags to starve, linger, and then die.

The Kalmycks acted so brutally and murderously against their oppressors on the battlefield that even Nazi “sensibilities” were “insulted.” One German officer remarked: “…they launched themselves passionately into their work. Indeed, they set about wiping out groups of Russians in the Steppes with such ardor that the German Army at times had to intervene to prevent atrocities.” Furthermore, the Kalmycks were so effective on horseback that they were able to help defend Nazi troops at Utta, Chalkuta, and Justa, “on both sides of the Elista-Astrakhan road.”¹⁹⁷ The benevolent policies of the Nazi occupation administration paid off. These far-sighted Nazi administrators had proclaimed: “The land is yours. You are free from the oppression of the Czars and Bolsheviks…In order to keep power you must fight against the Soviet authority and its supporters.”¹⁹⁸ The Kalmycks fought fervently, so much so that they drove out the last remnants of the NKVD and established five units of about 40 men each of their own initiative. By December 1942, at least 3,000 Kalmycks were fighting for Hitler. There were about 40 German officers and just as many Kalmyck officers. The Kalmycks even tolerated shootings of Jewish dissidents at the hands of Einsatzgruppe (D). Muñoz believes the Germans killed about 300 Jews in this region.

Sadly, Major Ottmar Rudolf Werba was killed in action in July 1944, along with Kalmyck Major Mukeben Chachlysev. Captain Dordzi Arbakoz became Chief of Staff, and Colonel Eduard Bataev replaced Vrba. Lieutenant Kuskin, the Kalmyck Chief of Field Police, was killed in September 1944. These deaths greatly reduced Kalmyck morale, but they continued to serve “behind the lines” throughout 1944 and into 1945.¹⁹⁹

The German Landser had this to say about the Kalmyck fighters:

These clandestine forces in the inaccessible hiding places of the swamps would have been a serious danger to the German lines but for Senior Sergeant Willi Lilienthal. This man from Hamburg turned up at the end of November 1943 with the Kalmyck Major Abushinov. With him came five cavalry squadrons–1,200 Kalmyck volunteers from the yurt villages of the Kalmyck Steppe. These mortal enemies of the Russians had been fighting on the German side since the summer of 1942. With their wives and families they had followed 16th Panzer Grenadier Division from the wide-open spaces around Elista all the way to the west. There were no better scouts and no better hunters of partisans. They kept the franctireurs of the Plavna in check.²⁰⁰

Around the month of December, 1943, the Kalmycks engaged Russian Major Kirpa’s partisan fighters, killing 50 guerrillas and capturing another 32. They served as the Nazis’ safe-guarders as they passed through the Plavna swamps. In February 1944, the SS decided that special identifying insignia was no longer needed for their Tatar, Kalmyck, and Caucasian volunteers, because they had all proven so reliable and trustworthy. The Slavs, on the contrary, had to continue to wear their special identifying patches.²⁰¹ The Kalmycks were even used as fighters against the Polish underground army in Lublin, Poland. They were able to kill about 900 Poles, while capturing another 700. They also seized numerous weapons and rounds.²⁰²

Many Kalmycks remained loyal, even after the death of Vrba, and continued to fight for Nazi Germany in the Radom district. There, they fought the Soviets as late as January 1945. They withdrew to Austria the following month, 5,000 men strong, continuously fighting the Russians along the way. They reached Austria in March 1945; however, their remaining troops were absorbed into the 600th and 650th Russian ROA Infantry Divisions upon official dissolution of the Kalmyck Cavalry Corps.²⁰³

Military Contributions of Auxiliary Volunteers and Collaborators

In his speech on 18 July 1938, Hitler christened the network of 1,000 private construction firms ‘Organisation Todt’ (OT). Their contribution to Germany’s war effort was “far from negligible.” 204 This construction organization was responsible for “all construction projects behind the front line, and, from August 1943, also in combat zones.” Members were considered Armed Forces Auxiliaries until 1942, whereupon they were “granted full armed forces status.” By November 1944, OT boasted strength of 1,360,000 members. These included: “44,500 Germans and 12,800 foreign personnel, 4,000 German women, 313,000 Germans and 680,700 foreigners in contracted firms, 165,000 [POWs], and 140,000 petty criminals (including Jews).” Men with part-Jewish ancestry were conscripted for OT beginning in April 1944. The OT’s Jewish Battalions (Judenbataillone) “cleared sites” and “built administrative and living quarters for the German occupation forces.”²⁰⁵ There is little doubt that many of these Jews secured their survival by serving in the OT.

OT consisted mainly of foreigners and non-Germans. Men of the “‘Germanic nations’—Dutch, Danes, Flemish, Walloons, Finns, Norwegians, and ethnic Germans—received German pay and conditions.”²⁰⁶ No doubt, many of these men were lured to join by these generous perks. “OT-Legionaires (OT-Legionäre)—Bulgarians, Croats, Estonians, French, Hungarians, Italians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Rumanians, Slovaks and Spaniards; Polish Legionaries (Polnische OT-Legionäre); and Eastern Legionaries (OTOstlegionäre)—Byelorussians, Don, Kuban and Terek Cossacks, Russians and Ukrainians—received progressively inferior treatment.”²⁰⁷ However, given the terrible living conditions to which most of these Easterners became accustomed, survival itself was probably more important than pay or conditions.

OT was crucial to Germany’s overall defense. OT units constructed the Atlantic Wall (Atlantikwall), which was vital to Germany’s Western Front defense. In November 1940, Einsatz Westküste built 56 submarine pens. In March 1942, Einsatz Westküste and Einsatz Kanalküste joined forces to help build the Atlantikwall. Einsatz Luftwaffe, also part of OT, built airfields and V-1 rocket sites, which were repeatedly bombed by the Allies. In October 1943, Einsatzgruppe V, which consisted of 130,000 foreign and 6,000 OT members, refortified the “Westwall against the expected Allied offensive.” Einsatz Finnland joined in 1944. Einsatzgruppe Wiking, with five divisions in Norway and one in Denmark, built coastal artillery emplacements along the coasts of Norway and Jutland, submarine pens, and sustained “vital” aluminum and nickel factory production.²⁰⁸

While never an OT member, Ahmed Al-Akhdary, a Lebanese man who traveled to Germany in 1936, was “touched deeply” during his first contact with Hitler. He decided to remain in Germany until 1938. He gave up his business practice and became a factory worker in Germany. He applied for membership in the Nazi Party, despite his non-German ethnicity, and the owner of the factory at which he worked secured his membership within two days of his request. He was extremely ambitious, as he attended each and every party rally; indeed, he made important connections and eventually secured for himself the position of Nazi Party “official spokesman and representative” at his factory. In 1937, he became friends with the local district’s SS chief, and the two were able to quash a Communist “underground gathering,” for which they received much praise. Together, they formed a 60-man strong militia and Al-Akhdary—nicknamed “Dory”—and his men took on “anti-party” Communists in street battles in 1937. One particular 1937 engagement resulted in the deaths of nine militiamen. Dory was injured.²⁰⁹ He went back to Lebanon in 1938, to recover from his wounds, but missed Nazi Germany so much that he was soon in touch with the Nazi delegate in the Middle East.

Dory organized a small 24-man, pro-Nazi militia in his homeland, and paid regular secret visits to the German embassy. He and his men were questioned by French troops for distributing leaflets. Dory became worried, contacted the necessary delegates, and secured a ship ride to Germany. He and his men were employed at the same factory for which he initially worked, and he promptly reorganized his militia—newcomers inclusive.²¹⁰ Dory attempted to join the German Army, but was rejected, along with his comrades. He then decided to petition the Party, offering to serve in a kind of “political militia.” Dory’s 300-man, multiethnic militia was then trained by a young officer named Schirach. The group consisted of Lebanese, Egyptian, and Syrian volunteers. Dory eventually became the commander of the force.

Once their training was completed, Major Dory and his men were put to the task of recruitment and commando-type operations behind enemy lines in Lebanon. They were given their first mission, which was the destruction of the Palestine-Lebanon-Syria railway. This mission was cancelled and Dory and his men were instead ordered to “create a popular unrest against the French.” Three of Dory’s men dressed up like French soldiers and attacked the local villagers. The civilians became embroiled; subsequently, they attacked and killed all of the French soldiers on patrol in the area. They also ruthlessly attacked the French HQ. Berlin was pleased, as Dory’s men had quickly set the south aflame. The Germans then sent more arms to Dory.

After this successful mission, Dory and his men spent the next five months as German observers. They were then offered the choice of regrouping in Germany or staying—only 27 chose to stay behind. Once Dory and his men got to Berlin, they were dispatched to help out against the Greeks. He and his men drove the BEF (British Expeditionary Force) out of a nearby village when they stormed it. After a few exchanges between the BEF and Dory’s forces, the BEF was ultimately forced to surrender. After this successful campaign, Dory’s men were absorbed into the Afrika Korps. His men served as translators and liaison officers. Major Dory was then granted the opportunity to become a free adviser, which he accepted.²¹¹

National Socialist-Asian Collaboration

According to Muñoz, Heinrich Himmler eventually recruited North Africans, Senegalese, and Indochinese for his SS and police forces.²¹² The Germans captured about 35,000 POWs—from Senegal, North Africa, and Indochina—during their campaign against the French in the summer of 1940. About 20,000 of these POWs were handed over to the French Vichy government, whereupon the French employed them as construction workers and policemen. The Germans wished to appeal to these men’s “nationalistic tendencies,” so the SSHauptamt hired a professor (who was familiar with Thai, Vietnamese, Laotian, and Cambodian peoples) to teach them history. These history lessons “stressed freedom of the local population from French or British colonial rule.” Germany was portrayed as a fellow fighter against these colonial oppressors.

FIGURE 19: Himmler visiting Soviet prisoners of war, probably in order to recruit them.2‡

Most Indochinese POWs were put to work in French factories, or were employed as Hiwis “within…German occupation divisions in southern France.”²¹³ Volunteers from Thailand, Vietnam, and Laos were incorporated into “a small infantry force” that was under the ultimate command of the German 19th Army in southern France. These Indochinese volunteers fought for the Germans as late as 21 August 1944, and may well have been used as Hiwis “within the units of the German 19th Army in Colmar” as late as 1945. The SS and police forces were never able to absorb these Indochinese volunteers, probably because they were needed as frontline or auxiliary troops as the war against Germany worsened.²¹⁴

The Germans and Chinese shared a relatively close wartime relationship, in spite of the German-Japanese alliance. Chinese troops were trained and outfitted by the Germans. Rigg asserted, “After his discharge, [quarter-Jew Klaus von] Schmeling-Diringshofen went to China, where he helped Chiang Kai-shek train his Nationalist Army.” General Ludwig Beck helped discharged “non-Aryan officers” obtain military posts in China as advisers “under the leadership of General Hans von Seeckt, and later, General Alexander von Falkenhausen (himself an adviser to Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek).215 216 Major Robert Borchardt, a half-Jew, had been sent to China shortly before Schmeling-Diringshofen. Borchardt trained the KMT’s first mechanized units and, oddly enough, even saw combat against Japanese troops.²¹⁷

Indeed, NSDAP member John Rabe used his Nazi armband, giant swastika flag, and Party membership to protect Chinese civilians during the Nanjing massacre. He is believed to have saved 200,000 Chinese civilians’ lives. He was appalled at Japanese military indiscipline and his diary lamented the rape of about 1,000 Chinese women and girls by Japanese troops. According to film director Florian Gallenberger, who made a film about Rabe, “At the beginning of the conflict I think [Rabe] [had] great trust in the Japanese as German allies to behave in a disciplined and fair way—but when it turn[ed] out otherwise he [was] shocked. He [felt] it [was] his responsibility to act.”²¹⁸

Chiang Wei-kuo, Chiang Kai-shek’s adopted son, attended the Munich Military Academy in Germany. Upon completing his Alpine warfare training, he received the Gebirgsjäger Edelweiss sleeve insignia. Apparently this was no simple task, since elite mountain warfare troops had to carry a 30 kilogram (66 pound) load through the Bavarian Alps. Wei-kuo was promoted to Unteroffizier and was likely a talented marksman, as the Schützenschnur lanyard on his uniform suggests.²¹⁹ He was recalled to China shortly after he was promoted to Lieutenant,²²⁰ so he unfortunately missed out on his opportunity to fight for the Germans in Poland.

Hitler’s and the Nazis’ Racial Views in Context

Adolf Hitler was not entirely convinced of the correctness of prevailing racial theories. He told Otto Wagener that the categorization of races by color—black, white, yellow—was likely incorrect. He pointed out scientists’ categorical inconsistencies. For example, he noted that within the white “race” there existed “races”—i.e., Semitic, Germanic, and Slavic.²²¹ Hitler thus concluded that science had perhaps another half-century before it could seriously and accurately categorize human beings by race. Hitler also acknowledged that Europeans (including Germans) were already mixed-race people, due to the numerous migrations and wars that had fractured and galvanized Europe throughout the ages. He argued that espousing race “purity” would only fracture German society, resulting in unwanted division. As a matter of fact, Hitler was a fan of French race theorist Arthur de Gobineau, who himself had “recognize[d] a certain need for racial mixing.”²²² ExWaffen SS soldier Ted Junker proved correct in his denunciations of Allied portrayals of Hitler’s supposed “racism.” He said, “Contrary to how Hitler has been portrayed, his being a racist was one of the largest fallacies…They said he was a racist. It’s a lie. He advocated for, he was in favor of these people. He respected other races.”²²³

Hitler did not share Himmler’s or Rosenberg’s Nordic-occult “mysticism”²²⁴; nor Himmler’s “primitive biologism.”²²⁵ Hitler remained consistent about this. In reference to the Nordic cultists in the Party, he told Schemm: “I have expressly and repeatedly forbidden this sort of thing…[a]ll the rubbish…they dredge up from German prehistory! Then they read Nietzsche with 15-year-old-boys and, using incomprehensible quotations, paint a picture of the superman, exhorting the boys: ‘That is you—or that is what you are to become.’” He went on to conclude, “We Germans in particular…must avoid anything that works to create even more divisiveness.”²²⁶ Recent advances in lip reading technology have shown that this was precisely how he felt.²²⁷ Albert Speer also argued that Hitler and Himmler had very different ideas about race and culture.²²⁸

Taking this further, the Nazis were neither anomalous in their racial-ethnic crimes nor particularly racist or anti-Jewish when compared to other Western societies, either before or during World War II. Greeks, Romans, Britons, Russians, Poles, and Spaniards all had pogroms against Jews at one point or another. They also deported or “ghettoized” Jews and other minority ethnic and religious groups. William Tecumseh Sherman and Ulysses S. Grant held anti-Jewish views. Even the highly respected French Philosopher Voltaire said of the Jews: “They are, all of them, born with raging fanaticism in their hearts…I would not be in the least bit surprised if these people would not some day become deadly to the human race.” He singled them out, as did the Nazis later on, as “the very worst of men.”²²⁹ Historian Clarence Lusane addressed both widespread anti-Semitism and antiblack racism throughout the West at the time in his book Hitler’s Black Victims. Corroborating evidence is widespread in this regard. African American journalist, Roi Ottley, traveled through the West to discover just how “racist” it was in the mid- to late 1900s. He documented his startling findings in his book No Green Pastures.

The New York Times quoted George Bernard Shaw as having said, “The amazing thing about [the idea of Nazi “racial pollution”] is that the anti-Semites do not see how intensely Jewish it is. The fault of the Jew is his enormous arrogance, based on his claim to belong to God’s chosen race.” He went on to characterize it as “Nordic nonsense” that attempted to imitate the “posterity of Abraham.” Yet, he looked upon Mein Kampf favorably.²³⁰ Thus, while it is obvious that Shaw did not like some of the Nazis’ racial ideas, instead of opposing them upon scientific or human rights grounds he denigrated them by comparing them to Jews. Shaw’s argument concerning Albert Einstein’s expulsion from Germany was based upon his personal prejudice against the Nazis, not upon concern for Einstein’s personal welfare or human dignity.

The Nazis treated blacks relatively fairly and remained tolerant of the ethnically and culturally diverse armed forces of the SS and Wehrmacht until the end of the war. Heinrich Himmler took an active and personal interest in the Muslim SS formations and referred to these men as “unsere Mujos” (“our Muslims”). There is no evident hatred or exploitation in his words or actions toward this particular religious group. According to Lepre, when the Handschar mutinied, encouraged by Communist infiltrators, German reprisal was minimal. Himmler simply tried again.

Third Reich historians have generally ignored minority and foreign contributions to the Axis. They have also tended to deemphasize Allied war crimes. This may be due to the fact that ethnic minority and foreign Axis contributions fail to align with their preconceived notions regarding Nazi Germany. However, they miss the fact that millions of non-Germans survived the war in Europe by collaborating with the Nazis. Often, their service raised their personal status or the status of their entire ethnic or religious group in the Germans’ eyes. By ignoring this aspect of the Axis one sees only half of what actually happened.

Max Boot and John Grenier are two modern American historians who have provided a realistic picture of American warfare. The socalled “American Way of War” employed: extermination, forced deportation, extirpation, involuntary detainment (in concentration camps), deliberate targeting of noncombatants, biological warfare, and chemical warfare. The American military intentionally gave Native Americans typhus-infected blankets.²³¹ Richard Frank discussed the fact that African American servicemen were murdered upon their return from Europe. I interviewed several Tuskegee Airmen and found that all but one of them was subjected to vitriolic insults and racism before and after their service in World War II.

One learns from Tina Campt that binary racism did not exist in Germany until the postwar American occupation. The Germans saw “mulattoes” and blacks as second or third class citizens in most cases, but there existed no geographical racial segregation in Germany under the Third Reich. The discrimination in Germany was either randomly enforced or purely institutional (i.e., Nuremberg Laws, Jews and blacks were not allowed to join the SS, etc.). During his six-month stay in Germany in 1936, W.E.B. Du Bois said that Germans “did not show any trace of racial hatred” toward any blacks. This was in comparison to the US and Britain,²³² the latter of which he derided.

Du Bois said of Britain:

[the] British Empire has caused more human misery than Hitler will cause if he lives a hundred years….It is idiotic to talk about a people who brought the slave trade to its greatest development, who are the chief exploiters of Africa and who hold four hundred million Indians in subjection, as the great defenders of democracy.²³³

Gerald Horne quoted African American John Welch, who was interned by the Nazis, as having said, “there is ‘no color problem’ in Germany.”²³⁴ This was partly correct. While there was racial discrimination, as there was everywhere throughout the West at the time, the Nazis were no more prejudiced towards their black population than were other Western countries. Nor was anti-black prejudice introduced by the Nazis. It was carried over from the colonial and Weimar eras, as was anti-Gypsism and anti-Semitism. While Afro-German Erika Ngambi ul Kuo described the Hitler period as “the worst that anyone can imagine,”²³⁵ largely due to her bleak employment opportunities, similar statements were made by blacks living in the US South and Britain at the time. There were no “black only” or “white only” facilities in Germany prior to the American occupation and that is probably what Welch noticed as a POW.

A comparison of Hans Massaquoi’s Destined to Witness and Ika Hügel-Marshall’s postwar Invisible Woman: Growing Up Black in Germany, proves that postwar Germany was as prejudiced towards blacks as Third Reich Germany, if not more so.²³⁶ The primary source collection entitled Showing Our Colors: Afro-German Women Speak Out assists in understanding postwar discrimination of blacks in Germany. For example, Helga Emde, “an occupation baby in postwar Germany,” said, “A white person is beautiful, noble, and perfect. A [b]lack person is inferior. So I tried to be as white as I could be…[w]hen I was about thirteen I started to straighten my ‘horse hair’so that it would be like white people’s hair that I admired so much.”²³⁷ One finds heartrending personal stories like Emde’s throughout this book, and one comes away from these stories with the understanding that life in white countries has never been pleasant or welcoming to black people. Indeed, racial discrimination in Germany was pervasive before and after Hitler.

Exceptions to the Third Reich’s institutional rules did exist. For example, Otto Rahn was a Sturmbannführer in Hitler’s SS. Not only was Rahn Jewish, he was homosexual.²³⁸ Franz Wimmer-Lamquet recruited volunteer female prostitutes and male homosexuals (mainly Arabs) who were willing to fight for Germany. He could not understand why Reinhard Heydrich was opposed to recruitment of homosexuals, since they were willing to fight. Despite his initial protestations, Heydrich eventually backed down after hearing WimmerLamquet defend these men.²³⁹ According to Rigg, General Fritz Bayerlein—commander of the Panzer Lehr Division—was partJewish and bisexual. Regardless of this, he was awarded the Knight’s Cross and Oak Leaves with Swords.²⁴⁰ Women were accepted into the SS, Wehrmacht, and Luftwaffe. Hanna Reitsch, as is well known, was Germany’s most famous World War II test-pilot. German historian Anita Kugler revealed that SS-Offizier Fritz “Eleke” Scherwitz (alias Elke Sirewitz)—overseer of the concentration camp at Riga, Latvia— was also Jewish. He allegedly saved the lives of about 1,000 Latvian Jews.²⁴¹ SA (Sturmabteilung) member Hans Sanders was Jewish, as was SS General Curt von Gottberg.²⁴²

FIGURE 20. Jewish SS Officer Eleke Scherwitz. Bundesarchiv.3ƒ

Furthermore, Africans served in the Abwehr and Wehrmacht. Among those well known blacks who fought for Nazi Germany: Werner Egiomue, Hans Hauck (alias Peter K.), and William Marcus “Willy” Baarn.²⁴³ Horne described how 300 Africans were detained by the Allies at Drancy, in postwar France, as “Fascist intriguers.”²⁴⁴ Africans served under Wimmer-Lamquet, who sympathized with the average Africans’ plight under white rule. He lamented, “It was not easy to be a black person. Seldom could one make out well. The Africans accepted white rule as inevitable, and often endured inconceivable things…the arbitrariness of white rule left the Africans speechless.”²⁴⁵ Africans also voluntarily served in the 950th (Indian) Infantry Regiment and Freies Arabien Legion as well.²⁴⁶

FIGURE 21. These German veterans appear to be attending a colonial conference in Bremen, sometime in 1938 or 1939. One can see that the African officer is wearing a Nazi armband. Courtesy of militaryphotos.net.°

Hitler had also told Otto Wagener, “I know Jewish soldiers and reserve officers who were proper daredevils.”²⁴⁷ Compare this to what he said of some Germans: “…[Y]ou cannot help but wonder about some Germans who, from an ethical standpoint, seem to…be closer to our enemies than they are to their own Volk.”²⁴⁸ Obviously, Hitler did not despair of all Jews, nor did he endorse or support all Germans.

While many of Hitler’s underlings—such as Hans Lammers and Wilhelm Stuckart—wanted half-Jews and quarter-Jews killed, deported, or sterilized, Hitler exhibited a consistent and marked ambivalence toward this policy.²⁴⁹ And even though Keitel wanted half-Jews to be treated as full Jews, in 1941,²⁵⁰ Hitler refused to do so. Many historians believe that Hitler simply used these people; however, he continued to order discharges almost until the end of the war. Several Gypsies and Jews were discharged in 1944 and 1945. Additionally, Hitler did not let loose Vlasov’s men until 1945. He also continued to review Jewish clemency applications up until the very end of the war, in 1945. Given this evidence, such an argument is insubstantial. Rigg concluded, “…[Hitler] practiced what he ultimately condemned and often made exceptions to his own ideology.”²⁵¹ Hitler even exempted many Gypsies and part-Gypsies from internment: a development of which most historians remain completely unaware.²⁵²

Hitler’s Views of Blacks and Black Views of Germany

Hitler did not hate blacks as most Western historians have argued. In fact, he characterized as “criminal” the potential strengthening of the Second Reich by means of “black blood.” His statement (quoted by Lusane) indicates that he felt some level of sympathy for blacks. Whether this sympathy was genuine is up for debate.

He said,

The former German colonial policy, like everything we did, was carried out by halves. It neither increased the settlement area of the German Reich, nor did it undertake any attempt – criminal though it would have been – to strengthen the Reich by the use of black blood. The Askaris in German East Africa were a short, hesitant step in this direction. The idea of bringing black troops into a European battlefield, quite aside from its practical impossibility during the war, never existed even as a design to be realized under more favorable circumstances…²⁵³

According to Raffael Scheck, a member of Josef Göbbels’ ministry looked favorably upon black Moroccans, because they fought Communism in Spain during the Spanish Civil War.²⁵⁴ In 1932, Hitler took time to sit down with a Georgia-born African American scholar, Dr. Milton S.J. Wright,²⁵⁵ who was studying at Heidelberg at the time.²⁵⁶ Ottley reported that Hitler asked what he intended to do with his degree once he returned to America.

FIGURE 22. A photo of Sam, an African American medical student who served under Franz Wimmer-Lamquet in Tanganyika and later on in Greece. Courtesy of the Antonio Muñoz Collection.7*

While Ottley thought Hitler was insensitive toward Wright, Hitler was nevertheless supportive of Wright’s choice to study at a prestigious German university. As Lusane indicated, it is impossible to verify the veracity of Hitler’s actual statements, but it is incredible that this meeting even took place. Since Hitler called Africans “definitely third-class people,” according to Ottley, it seems all the more incredible that he took time to meet with this man. He gave Dr. Wright an autographed picture of himself and told him to “stop in and see him when he next visited Munich.”²⁵⁷ Thus, while Hitler was callous in his words, he seems to have acted differently.

While many historians have argued that Hitler only did this sort of thing in order to accommodate international public opinion, this same argument may be applied to the superficially “good” treatment of blacks and other ethnic minorities in America, France, Britain, Japan, and Italy at the time. Gerald Horne’s research leaves no doubt that Japan, Britain, New Zealand, America, and Australia were guilty of accommodating domestic and international non-white public opinion for the sake of preserving or boosting their international reputations. None of these nations, according to Horne, were entirely genuine about their “goodness.” The real question here is whether any decent treatment of ethnic minorities and non-whites in Western nation-states was genuine, but that is beyond the scope of this study.

Ottley also reported, “[Hitler] offered the opinion that Negroes could not have much backbone, because they consistently allowed the whites to ‘lynch them, beat them, segregate them, without rising up against their oppressors’”!²⁵⁸ Hitler’s contempt for blacks was clearly based on ignorance, prejudice, and the idea that blacks had not earned a favorable racial review due to their supposed subservience. This quote proves Hitler’s ignorance of black resistance as opposed to any personal hatred he may have felt or exhibited, or even racism per se. He never knew any blacks, so he was not in a position to judge them. His views of Wright and other blacks, two of whom he expressed personal admiration,²⁵⁹ were based entirely on German racial stereotypes of blacks.

There was little opportunity for blacks in America at the time, and education did little to improve opportunities for advancement. Hitler might have said all this to jab at American duplicity, since antiGerman sentiment was rampant in America at the time. Then again, Hitler may have used this meeting to expose the truth about racial apartheid in America (while silently excusing his own plan for institutional apartheid against Jews).

Indeed, such a meeting seems unbelievable given that Jesse Owens was allegedly “snubbed” by Hitler at the 1936 Olympic Games. While this particular allegation was finally challenged by some historians, who asserted that Cornelius Johnson was the first black athlete to win a gold medal and thus the only possible one who could have been snubbed by Hitler on the day alleged,²⁶⁰ most historians remain unwilling to acknowledge this; or that on-site reporters witnessed Hitler and Owens exchange waves.²⁶¹ Owens candidly told Ottley: “the Nazis bent [over] backward in making things comfortable for [blacks], even to inviting them to the smartest hotels and restaurants.”²⁶²

FIGURE 23. Jesse Owens receiving oak-sapling trophies and “50 years later.” This cartoon appeared in a commemorative album of the 1936 Olympic Games.2#

Further, Olympic newsreel footage shows Hitler watching Owens race.²⁶³ Owens was invited to Hitler’s chancellery for a festive dinner for champions. Apparently, this was only publicized in the German press,²⁶⁴ as indicated by Heinz Weichardt—who had lived in Germany until 1938. Roosevelt did not attend the Olympic Games, never thanked Owens, never shook his hand, and never congratulated him. Neither Hitler nor Roosevelt shook Owens’ hand, but only Hitler’s alleged “snub” was publicized by the American media. When he returned to America, Owens was “reduced to racing against dogs, horses, buses, and locomotives,” in order to make ends meet.²⁶⁵ One cannot even imagine this kind of treatment of a white Olympic champion at that time.

To be sure, Afro-Germans²⁶⁶ were considered second or third class citizens in the Third Reich (Jews actually had their citizenship revoked), but the Germans were always quick to point at American racism and duplicity when it came to the treatment of its own black population before the war. Jim Crow was the political linchpin around which German anti-American propaganda centered in this regard. The black population of Germany was no doubt quite small in comparison to the black population of America. Only about 20,000 blacks lived in Germany during Hitler’s first year in office.²⁶⁷ However, Ottley, Campt, and Horne, as well as Germans themselves, did not see German society as comparable to American society. Their respective racisms were different, because they had different political cultures. Not surprisingly, some “top German officers in Paris had maintained Negro mistresses.”²⁶⁸

Ottley named his chapter on Nazi Germany “No Schwarze Allergy,” which may be interpreted to mean that Germans did not exhibit an ‘allergic reaction’ to blacks. He reported, “[u]nder the Nazis, few Negroes were victims of day-to-day brutality, as meted out to the Jews. The savage Nuremberg racial laws, which in theory embraced blacks, were never widely applied to Negroes.” However, while blacks living in Nazi Germany informed Ottley of this, that “there was no racial discrimination” against them, Ottley did not believe them.²⁶⁹ Some blacks had informed Ottley that they were not allowed to marry freely, unlike white Germans. Ottley was also told that some blacks were sterilized by the Nazi government, because they were black.²⁷⁰

Rabid anti-black racism was prevalent everywhere throughout the West, save France and perhaps a few other liberally-inclined Western nations. So, it seems rather irresponsible for modern scholars to argue that one was more racist than any others. Mahatma Gandhi, the very voice of tolerance, said of blacks: “Ours is on continual struggle against a degradation sought to be inflicted upon us by the Europeans, who desire to degrade us to the level of the raw Kaffir whose occupation is hunting, and whose sole ambition is to collect a certain number of cattle to buy a wife with and, then, pass his life of indolence and nakedness.” He also said, “We believe as much in the purity of race as we think they do…[w]e believe also that the white race of South Africa should be the predominating race.”²⁷¹

In fact, while serving in East Africa, Wimmer-Lamquet was forced to introduce a “plantation security area” for his black workers, so that Indians would not cheat them out of their hard earned goods (see Appendix II). He was especially sympathetic to the plight of black women. He recalled that they had suffered so much under arbitrary British rule, including sexual exploitation and rape. Oftentimes, black men were murdered with impunity for having any form of contact with white British women.²⁷² Given this horrific colonial experience, one can understand how and why German occupation came as relief to many blacks. The Germans’ fair treatment certainly motivated many of them to work for the Nazis or serve in the Wehrmacht.

Only blacks, like Roi Ottley, who experienced almost every Western region and its racial prejudice first-hand, could make an honest judgment in this regard. Black historians and eyewitnesses generally agree that Nazi German society was no more prejudiced than American society, especially when compared to the American South. English society was also prejudiced against blacks. There they had menial, low-paying jobs and were arbitrarily subjected to beatings and institutional discrimination.²⁷³ In America, blacks were lynched in far greater numbers than whites from the 1920s through 1960s.²⁷⁴ African Americans were sterilized for racial reasons in the US; at least 70,000 black and white Americans were forcibly sterilized between 1929 and 1941.²⁷⁵ Indeed, the Nuremberg Laws were only slightly different than America’s Jim Crow Laws. However, unlike German-Jewish marriages, Gypsy-German and AfricanGerman marriages were never specifically addressed in the Nuremberg Laws.²⁷⁶

Most historians have neglected the Afro-Germans who gave their lives for Nazi Germany. These same historians have also neglected to mention that African Americans were severely mistreated before, during, and after their compulsory service in the Second World War.

Historian Richard Frank stated:

A series of horrifying instances of brutalization or even murder of returning black servicemen provided a key reason for a truly significant, if initially symbolic advance. These episodes proved to be one of the triggers for President Truman’s Executive Order 9981 to desegregate the armed forces in July 1948. Actual desegregation, however, moved at a very measured pace in the face of resistance by the armed services until the Korean War.²⁷⁷

CHAPTER VI

NAZI POWS: TUSKEGEE AIRMEN R

EMEMBER

It would have been impossible for me to have spent a similarly long time in any part of the United States, without some, if not frequent cases of personal insult or discrimination. I cannot record a single instance here [in Nazi Germany].

—W.E.B. Du Bois²⁷⁸

Unfortunately, very little was written about blacks and AfroGermans and their experiences in the Third Reich. Campt’s interviews, a single documentary film about black women in Nazi Germany, and the memoirs of Afro-German Hans Massaquoi are about all that exists. Thus, this study has tried to examine the motivations and experiences of a select group of African American men: what led them to volunteer to serve a racist, apartheid American society during World War II, and what kind of experiences they encountered as Nazi POWs. Since at least one German, WimmerLamquet, and a few Afro-Germans, like Hans Hauck, described the black and Afro-German experience, historians at least have an idea as to the treatment and experiences of blacks and Afro-Germans in the Third Reich. The focus of the following case study is the Tuskegee Airmen, whom the Germans admirably referred to as the “Schwartze Vogelmenschen” [sic] (Black Birdmen).²⁷⁹

Lt. Thurston Gaines was a Tuskegee Airman. He took the aviation examination and passed it on his second attempt in April 1943. Not only did he want to attend college, he wanted to avoid the Army. He graduated as a flight officer, third in his class at the cadet school. The first time he went to the South, he stayed clear of the whites there. He was mistreated at Tuskegee but, in his opinion, “no more than anyone else.”

Gaines flew 15 to 20 missions before he was shot down on 25 April 1945. He remembered the German Lieutenant who interrogated him as “a reasonable man”; neither discourteous nor brutal. The Nazis were surprised at Gaines’ story, since they did not believe blacks could fly aircraft. He was not sure whether his situation affected these Nazis’ attitudes toward blacks. He merely recalled that there was never any animosity toward him personally.

Gaines recalled harsh camp conditions in Austria at Stalag VIIA. There were no bathing facilities and the latrine was a large building built over a cesspool, which obviously, could not flush. In spite of the rough living conditions, Gaines was never abused by his Nazi captors. He was one of 25,000 American POWs at his camp. The only discrimination he recalled was that exhibited by jealous white officers interned at his camp.

Today, Gaines believes that the US government wanted the Tuskegee Airmen to fail. Indeed, he feels that the black airmen were part of an experiment to confirm black inferiority in comparison to whites. He recalled seeing himself as “just another black” at the time. When he said, “Don’t tell me we can’t do it because of skin color,” I believe he saw his service as his way of proving black equality.²⁸⁰

Luther Smith, Jr. was a Lieutenant in World War II. He was subjected to absolute segregation in the USAAF. In spite of this, the pay rate and equipment between blacks and whites was equal, and Smith was determined, like many other blacks, to become an aviator.

When German troops captured Smith, on 13 October 1944, he was sure they were going to kill him. He was injured and his right leg was put into a splint in a hospital in Yugoslavia. The Germans operated on him, and he was confined to a hospital bed for his entire time as a POW of Nazi Germany. He ended up at Stalag 17A in Spittal, Austria.

Smith believes today, the only reason the Nazis did not mistreat him was because they were losing the war.²⁸¹ However, this may not be accurate. A Mexican American ex-Nazi POW, Corporal Anthony Acevedo (a medic for the 275th Infantry Regiment of the 70th Infantry Division), who was captured on 6 January 1945, informed ), who was captured on 6 January 1945, informed hour days and were tortured by German guards. Some were even shot. They were ultimately interned at the Berga an der Elster camp, a satellite camp of Buchenwald. While there, Acevedo and 350 other American POWs were allegedly fed bread consisting of ground glass, barley, and Redwood sawdust. This bread seriously harmed Acevedo’s health.²⁸² Thus, it appears that Smith was fortunate to have been captured and interned by a more lenient group of Nazis than those who captured and held Acevedo.

During our interview, Smith recalled that his interrogation was reasonable. Although, he felt his interrogator was barbaric for questioning him while his leg was being put into a splint—a very painful process. In spite of this, his interrogation consisted only of extended questioning. He was never tortured or abused. Indeed, his German interrogator tried to win him over and talked to him about aircraft to try to get him to divulge all he knew. His interrogator also questioned him as to why he had volunteered to fight for racist America. He told Luther he had been duped by the Americans. Luther told me that he denied this at the time, but later realized it was true. At any rate, he never experienced any racism at the hands of the Nazis and remained bed-ridden and cared for during the entire time he was a POW.

As a POW, Smith was not discriminated against by fellow AngloAmerican POWs in his camp. However, when he came upon many of the white ex-POWs in a hotel after the war, not one of them acknowledged his presence or even said “hello.” White American servicemen were just as discriminatory as they were before the war. Nothing had changed.²⁸³ His service, just as that of the other 450 Tuskegee Airmen,²⁸⁴ remained virtually unknown by the vast majority of Americans until long after the war.

Second Lieutenant Harold Brown’s experience was slightly different from that of most other Tuskegee Airmen. He grew up in a neutral neighborhood that was diverse and non-segregated. Upon hearing about recruitment of blacks for air service, he left for the South, took and passed the exams, and began his career as an Army Air Corps pilot. He graduated in May 1944. It was then that Brown first experienced segregation, in Mississippi. On base there was no segregation, while off base there was plenty.

Brown was shot down over Linz, Austria on 4 March 1945 and interned at Stalag VIIA. During my interview with him, he recalled that he was treated just like everyone else as a Nazi POW. There was no segregation at the camp. The only thing that he believes today could have gotten him shot was escape. He never tried. The Red Cross provided parcels, but most of the time he went hungry. But he explained that this was because Germany had nothing by this point in time. He understood the dire German situation so late in the war. He explained to me, “their own soldiers didn’t even have anything to eat.”

Brown never had to work while he was a Nazi POW. But, unlike fellow airman Lt. Col. Alexander Jefferson,²⁸⁵ Brown’s camp had no library. In fact, it had nothing. Fortunately, he was only there for two months. His interrogation was simple and lasted only two days. The Major that spoke with him spoke English, since he studied at a university in England. The Major threatened to turn him over to angry civilians at one point, perhaps because he had refused to tell the Major what he wanted to know, but it never happened. Their departure was described by Brown as “amicable.” Like Jefferson, he described his POW experience as “reasonably positive.”

After his service in Europe, Brown returned to segregated America. He explained that after the war nothing had changed. He was “just another black man in the South.”²⁸⁶

As for Alexander Jefferson, he had “always wanted to fly.”²⁸⁷ Thus, when he finally received his orders to begin flight training in April 1943, he quit Howard University.²⁸⁸ On 3 June 1944, he was on his way to North Africa and into combat in the European theater.²⁸⁹ After numerous escort missions, Jefferson was finally downed on 12 August 1944 and captured by a German soldier.²⁹⁰

FIGURE 24. African American hero of World War II, Lt. Col. USAF Alexander Jefferson. Courtesy of Alexander Jefferson.8*

For Jefferson, life as a Nazi POW was not too bad. He said, “I was treated better as a Nazi POW than I was back home.” His German guards treated him respectfully: like an officer. Even the enlisted German soldiers, who escorted him on the way to Stalag III, in August 1944, treated him respectfully. He ended up at Stalag VIIA in Moosburg on 3 February 1945.²⁹¹

Jefferson never came into contact with any German guards at either of his camps. The Nazi interrogator he encountered treated him well. In fact, he questioned why Jefferson chose to serve a racist nation like the US. Jefferson was even offered a cigarette and allowed to smoke during his interrogation. The only horror he witnessed were the stacked bodies and warm ovens at the Dachau camp upon Allied liberation of his camp.²⁹² In comparison, Jefferson described America’s segregation and racism at the time as “terrible.”²⁹³ Upon his arrival back to the US, after serving honorably, he was told by a white private, “[w]hites to the right, niggers to the left.”²⁹⁴

Walter McCreary was yet another Tuskegee Airman who experienced decent treatment while interned. According to a Radio Netherlands interview, “[w]hen…Nazi captors interrogated American air force pilot Walter McCreary, shortly after he was shot down over Budapest, Hungary in 1944, he was questioned as to why he would risk his life for a country that treated African-Americans so poorly. He answered, simply, ‘It is our home and we want to be part of it.’”²⁹⁵ Similarly, McCreary told an NBC4 News reporter that during “[t]he nine months that I spent as a POW, I experienced nothing relative to race, and after I was liberated and finally entered the shores of the United States, then I saw a sign for the first time ‘whites only’ and ‘colored’.”²⁹⁶

CHAPTER VII

AFRO-GERMANS, AFRICANS, AND OTHER BLACKS IN THE GERMAN ARMED F

ORCES

…The Negroes…were granted [liberties] only in exceptional cases, when they had made themselves deserving through especially outstanding achievements for the Empire. …I have a similar institution in mind for Germany.

—Adolf Hitler²⁹⁷

Black Exceptions to Nazi Racial Laws

According to Clarence Lusane, “Some blacks were able to enlist” in the German Armed Forces.²⁹⁸ Raffael Scheck, author of Hitler’s African Victims, asserted that “…some Africans were recruited into military units under German command for fighting in Tunisia.”²⁹⁹ Nevertheless, Afro-German Werner Egiomue was originally rejected when he tried to enlist. He protested: “I’m German. I want to fight.”³⁰⁰ Clearly, Egiomue refused to see himself as a non-German, as an “other within”—a Third Reich social phenomenon that Tina Campt explored in depth.³⁰¹ He saw himself as a legitimate German citizen and his protest indicates that he felt compelled to affirm this, to prove his “Germanness,” by means of military service. He was finally enlisted.³⁰²

FIGURE 25. Sam at the swearing-in at Stahnsdorf on 4 May 1943. Courtesy of Franz Wimmer-Lamquet.9*

French authors Eric Lefévre and Jean Mabire, in their book Sur les pistes de la Russie centrale (On the Ways of Central Russia), included a photo of two black Guadeloupian men in German uniform. Their names were Louis Joachim-Eugène and Norbert Désirée. Both men were French LVF legionnaires (Legion des Volontaires Français contre le bolchevisme), which Hitler authorized on 6 July 1941.³⁰³ Most of the LVF men were either anti-Communist or “disgusted with parliamentary democracy”; thousands of them volunteered as an allFrench force of “crusaders for Europe” with the help of French leaders Bucard, Costantini, Doriot (himself in German uniform by December 1941), and Déat. Their presence in the Waffen SS and Wehrmacht benefited the Germans militarily and politically.³⁰⁴ Eugène became the general delegate of the African branch of Germany’s Organisation Todt.³⁰⁵ Désirée served in the 10th company of the 3rd battalion (LVF) from beginning to end. Sergeant Buissonière, who was considered “lost” to the Russian enemy along the bank of the Dessna River on 17 May 1943, was brought back to safety thanks to Désirée’s intervention.³⁰⁶

FIGURE 26. Louis Joachim-Eugène (left) and Norbert Adalbert Henri Désirée (center) pictured with their white LVF comrade in Wehrmacht uniform at camp Deba in 1943. Courtesy of Lefévre and Mabire.2†

Another black man in German uniform was pictured in Les Français sous le casque allemand (French People under the German Helmet) by Pierre-Philippe Lambert and Gérard Le Marec. His name was not provided with his photo. According to a discussion post on the Axis History Forum, “there were almost a dozen of [sic] black people from Antilla [sic] (Guadeloupe, Martinique, and so on). A few died before Moscow.”³⁰⁷ More than likely, these black men were just as committed to destroying Bolshevism as their white French comrades.

According to Lambert and Le Marec, in July 1944, Eastern Front survivors met in Greifenberg, whereupon they marched past astonished onlookers. At this point, the Russians were not far away. These survivors were enjoined with the Waffen SS, though the authors do not mention if blacks were included. Some refused to join for philosophical or religious reasons. About twenty recalcitrants were sent to the Stutthof concentration camp, near Danzig, at which point they were united with fellow legionnaires of the French SS who were being punished for poor morale or indiscipline.

Among the new arrivals was Désirée, a native Guadeloupian from Pointe-à-Pitre, who wanted to join the SS, but whose skin color made him, besides a fellow Jew, the only official case of eviction based on race. Désirée was one of about a dozen blacks, most of whom were Antillean, who had fought for the Nazis since the first winter. One of them was killed in front of Moscow and buried in the snow. Others were conceivably rehabilitated, injured, or hired as Social Inspectors for the Organisation Todt.

Eugène, another Guadeloupian, was born in Port Louis in 1902. He was attached to the headquarters of the German Legion. After undergoing rehabilitation, he joined the Organisation Todt where he became Truppführer. Désirée was the only one who carried on until the end. He eventually became a dock worker, after undergoing his sentence of imprisonment. He died in Bordeaux in May 1968, just 59 years old.

The directors of OT created a special department to deal with Africans who worked on the Atlantic Wall. Eugène headed this service branch. He served as the Managing Director of OT’s African Manpower, which was located at 26 Bayard Street in Paris. There were many blacks in the Organization Todt, some of whom had important responsibilities. Thus, on 5 March 1944, an important meeting was held in Cherbourg. Not surprisingly, El Maadi, the initiator of the North African Brigade, and many Arabs in German uniform were present (presumably along with blacks).³⁰⁸
The Compulsory Service Act of 21 May 1935 allowed for nonAryan blacks and Jews to enlist. Bryan Rigg’s research suggests that Hitler wrote loopholes into his decrees so that exceptions could be made for the sake of military expediency. Afro-German Hans Hauck (alias Peter K.)³⁰⁹ served in Hitler’s Wehrmacht. He was drafted in 1942 and sent to the Russian front. He was captured in 1945 and remained a Soviet POW until 1949.³¹⁰ Lusane believes the Germans drafted him only because the tide of the war turned against Germany, however this fails to account for the fact that the Wehrmacht continued to discharge Jewish Mischlinge during and after 1944. If every able-bodied man was drafted, then Jewish Mischlinge would not have been discharged. Besides, Hans Massaquoi, another Afro-German, was never drafted. He was a citizen just like Hauck and Egiomue, and lived in Germany during the war. Perhaps the recruiters were impressed by Egiomue’s and Hauck’s fortitude, so they overlooked their skin color.

Hans Massaquoi believed the military was not open to “nonAryans.”³¹¹ Rigg’s research and Egiomue’s and Hauck’s experiences suggest otherwise. Massaquoi wrote in his memoir, Destined to Witness, that his half-Chinese friend Ah-Yue Hon Lou was “accepted as a volunteer by the German Luftwaffe and did wartime service in a parachute outfit.”³¹² Massaquoi was likely excluded from the Hitlerjugend (Hitler Youth) and Wehrmacht due to his and his mother’s affiliations with liberal social movements and Jews. His mother held liberal political views,³¹³ and both she and her son befriended Jews.³¹⁴ Wehrmacht authorities may have considered Massaquoi unreliable because of this and refused to enlist him.

FIGURE 27. This photo was likely taken in August 1942. This is one of the Antilleans in the LVF who was permitted to return [to France]. The presence of a [black] soldier of the French Empire amidst other LVF soldiers did not shock anyone; not Germans any more than French. Courtesy of Pierre Philippe Lambert and Gérard Le Marec.3‡

There was at least one African Abwehr spy. “On 11 August 1943, the police apprehended William Marcus “Willy” Baarn in the small Brazilian town of Gargau.”³¹⁵ Baarn confessed, during an interrogation, that he and his German comrade, Ellhelm Heinrick Koepf, drifted in on a “rubber life raft.” He was trained in “codes, ship-spotting and radio telegraphy” at a Nazi training school for spies in Paris.³¹⁶ Their goal was to locate fellow Nazi agents and operatives. A black newspaper read, “It marks the first incident in the New World where a Negro has been apprehended on the charge of being a Nazi agent.”³¹⁷

There were black volunteers in the North African Arab Battalions (including the Freies Arabien Legion), established circa 1942.³¹⁸ Blacks also served in the 950th Infantry Regiment, which was established primarily as an Indian regiment. The regiment itself consisted of “three battalions each of four companies.”³¹⁹ Not all of the commissioned officers in this regiment were German, as a few foreign NCOs were commissioned in October 1943. According to Muñoz, “…the constituent units of the legion were all of mixed religion and regional nationality so that Moslems, Hindus, Sikhs, Jats, Rajputs, Marathas and Garhwalis all served side-by-side. Approximately two-thirds of the Legion’s members were Moslem and one-third Hindu.”³²⁰ This significant degree of ethnic, racial, and religious diversity within the German Armed Forces speaks well of Nazi tolerance.

FIGURE 28. Second from left: A black member of the Indian Legion (while stationed in the Netherlands). Courtesy of the Antonio Muñoz Collection.10*

The DAL, or Deutsche-Arabische Lehr Abteilung, in Vichy French Tunisia, was able to recruit hundreds of Muslim Arabs for the formation of various auxiliary battalions. Vichy France employed these Arabs as builders of fortifications, while the Germans placed their Arab soldiers on coastal, rear area guard, and security duties,³²¹ which was generally less hazardous than front line duty. One may infer from this that foreign volunteers were not used by the Nazis as front line “cannon fodder.” Among these recruits were several men of “obvious [b]lack extraction.”³²² Muñoz observed: “…No doubt [this] reminded some of the older German officers of the [b]lack Askari soldiers which served the Kaiser under von Lettow-Vorbeck in German East Africa during the First World War.”³²³

FIGURE 29. This photograph, taken by Heinrich Hoffmann, depicts Mohamed Husen in Munich. The inscription reads: “To the battles: Munich. A loyal East African fighter. Z.Z. [zur Zeit; “at this time”] Freikorps LetowVorbeck. May 1919.” This highly decorated officer served among the ranks of General Letow-Vorbeck in East Africa and was serving him again as a member of Freikorps Letow-Vorbeck as indicated by the inscription.11*

Franz Wimmer-Lamquet related what he believed characterized the black Africans. In a remarkable recollection for a Nazi officer, he said:

And now to a theme which I see entirely differently from the way it is reported by the media. The native African is not attached to a state as people in the past were attached to the German Reich. He is attached to the person who represents this Reich. He is attached instead to the governor, to the district official, the police chief, the judge, the storekeepers, the doctors, planters, farmers, and the missionaries with whom he deals every day and whom he respects highly because of their behavior. He does not understand abstract concepts like “state.” The behavior of individual Europeans determines how the countries from which they come are regarded.

There is so much more to say but I do not want to write a book about Africa and the souls of its people. I merely wanted to write down my impressions. I often look back to my time in Africa where a man was a man and stood for himself. We all tried our best.³²⁴

Diversity of Experience: Black POWs and Soldiers

Raffael Scheck asserted that all Nazi POWs in France were paid. Among these POWs were ethnic Africans, Indochinese, and Koreans. Scheck explained that

[t]his was part of the Geneva Convention on POWs of 1929. The colonial POWs in France received approximately 8-10 French francs per day. They often had to pay one or two francs for camp fees. This daily pay was very low, but the prisoners accumulated a significant amount over time.³²⁵

The Nazis established at least 119 POW and civilian internment camps in the occupied countries during the course of the war. Besides the 48,000 blacks who went missing, or were killed in action, the Germans took between 15,000 and 16,000 more blacks prisoner, of which half survived. Robert Kestling estimated, based on “[s]cant evidence,” that about 55,000 blacks were victimized or killed by the Nazis.³²⁶ However, according to another scholar, only 2,000 blacks were known to have perished in concentration camps.³²⁷ Clearly, blacks were not targeted for genocide given either of these figures. Since Senegalese soldiers were treated arbitrarily by German troops there is no indication at all that either Hitler or any other high level German official ordered mass liquidations or systematic extermination of blacks.

Indeed, “under the Free French after November 1942, recruitment for the war effort was stepped up, as 100,000 Africans left for the front between 1943 and 1945. At a conservative estimate…the French recruited in excess of 200,000 [b]lack Africans during the Second World War.”³²⁸ Historians ought to ask how many blacks in Free French service were killed in action, since Free France re-entered the war against the Axis in 1942/43. Perhaps Kestling’s estimate was the result of Vichy France’s campaigns and Free France’s re-entry into the war against Germany—as well as the severely declining German camp conditions.

Scheck asserted, “[t]he Wehrmacht had no general order pertaining to the treatment of black POWs.” Hitler’s alleged order for the massacre of all West African troops was merely rumor circulating in France.³²⁹ Scheck also asserted that of approximately 63,300 West African troops who fought for France in 1940, the Germans illegally executed between 1,500 and 3,000 of them.³³⁰ That equates to just 2.4 to 4.7 percent of all West African troops, which cannot be characterized as ethnic cleansing. Scheck confirmed that most massacres were prompted not by skin color alone, but by the combination of Germany’s post-World War I anti-black propaganda, fear of the coupe-coupe, continued or staunch resistance by black troops, French “hedgehog positions,” and the discovery of mutilated German corpses.³³¹ The Nazis did not unleash atrocities against blacks that were comparable to the German genocide of the Herero and Nama in 1904. Lieutenant General Lothar von Trotha exterminated 65,000 Hereros, or 75 to 83 percent of the entire population.³³²

The treatment of black POWs and internees varied depending upon the German officers and units involved. German behavior was inconsistent.³³³ General Heinz Guderian claimed, in May 1940, that French colonial troops acted in bestial fashion toward the German wounded, which he felt justified his mistreatment of his black POWs. Lusane argued that Guderian’s statement was disingenuous.³³⁴ However, some Senegalese admitted to torturing and mutilating German soldiers.³³⁵ Thus, Guderian may have told the truth. French Senegalese soldiers used coupe-coupes (long knives), which German troops feared and abhorred. Fear of the coupe-coupes and the average Germans’ lack of interaction with blacks came together and resulted in unwarranted massacres by many German units and officers.³³⁶ The combination of inexperience with irregular warfare and xenophobia—not anti-black racism per se—was to blame for unwarranted German atrocities against the Senegalese.

In fact, Scheck’s findings support this position—though, he argued that race prejudice played the greatest role.³³⁷ The Senegalese fought doggedly, and oftentimes ambushed German troops, so the Germans came to both fear and respect them.³³⁸ Their non-Western fighting style, with which the Germans were not familiar, earned them German soldiers’ scorn.³³⁹

John Grenier argued that Amerindians’ fighting style earned them similar scorn from American colonists in the late 1600s. The colonists called their style of war making “skulking” warfare.³⁴⁰ The colonists’ inability to engage the Indians in a ‘culturally legitimate’ manner resulted in inhuman massacres that were all-encompassing; the colonists burned Indian villages, exterminated noncombatants, scalped children, forcibly deported entire ethnic tribes (i.e., the Acadians), and burned and decimated croplands. Yet, this was not the result of racism. It was the result of colonial inexperience and frustration with the irregular mode of Amerindian warfare. Similarly, many German troops called the Senegalese troops “savages,”³⁴¹ because they did not conform to European norms of war making to which German soldiers were accustomed. The result was unwarranted massacres.

FIGURE 30. This is another photo of Sam in his Freies Arabien Legion uniform. Courtesy of an Internet search.

In some camps, black soldiers were segregated, but in others they were not. Sometimes black soldiers were fed and treated better than their white counterparts. Ex-POW Hans Haber witnessed that at first blacks were treated very cruelly; many were deprived of water, food, or were shot to death for no apparent reason. He claimed, “flogging was replaced by pampering.” Blacks were “permitted weekly walks in the nearby villages” and provided with “one cake of soap for every four men,” which was a privilege.³⁴² This sudden change in treatment likely reflected the Nazis’ need for these men as laborers in France. Black Senegalese POWs were used for manual labor at some camps. Several of these camps were described by prisoners as “relatively comfortable.”³⁴³

A Guyanese pilot, Cy Grant (who was shot down over Holland in 1943), claimed that the only racism he encountered as a German POW was at the hands of a fellow white American internee. He said, “I got nothing from the Germans.” The Germans had also captured and interned Afro-Briton Ransford Boi, a seaman, at Stalag XB in December 1939. Lusane did not describe how Boi was treated. However, historians do know that Lionel Romney, also black, was forced to do lumberjack work while interned at Mauthausen. He obtained extra food rations for his hard work.³⁴⁴

A report that was submitted to the U.N. War Crimes Commission, on 1 June 1945, claimed that “Negroes” were used for forced labor at the Neuengamme concentration camp.³⁴⁵ Three black women were apparently interned at Ravensbrück. Some blacks were interned at the Lodz camp³⁴⁶ and there were also “black POWs and Afro-Germans” interned at the “Dieuze concentration camp in the Department of Moselle.”³⁴⁷ Documents do not reveal how these particular blacks were treated. Among the most well known African survivors of Nazi concentration camps were: Josef Boholle, Josefa Boholle, Johnny Voste, Joseph Nassy, Johnny Williams, Valaida Snow, Leopold Sedar Senghor, and Charly Mano. Charly Mano was likely released.³⁴⁸

Many African American internees were swapped for German POWs. These included: pianist John Welch, guitarist John Mitchell, horn player Freddy Johnson, as well as other popular musicians. These included: Henry Crowder, Maceo Jefferson, Reginald Berry, Jack Taylor, William Bowman, and George Welch. Fortunately, the Germans allowed the Red Cross to visit their camps. This provided the malnourished internees, many of whom were black, with “cans of corn beef, pork meat, sardines, butter, condensed milk, coffee, cocoa, and prunes, orange powder, hard tack, cheese, cigarettes, and smoking tobacco.”³⁴⁹

FIGURE 31. Greece – A colored soldier [Sam] of the Freies Arabien Legion on a footstool with two German infantrymen. Bundesarchiv.ô

One black woman, Evelyn Anderson Hayman, was able to attain “food and coffee,” as well as “lipstick, perfume, and face powder” through Red Cross visits to her concentration camp.³⁵⁰ Bayume Muhammed Hussein worked many jobs while in Nazi Germany, including: waiter, barman, and language lecturer. He was interned on charges of race defilement, but he was also a repeated troublemaker. Oddly enough, the Nazis ended up using him in films, like Knights of German East Africa. However, he continued to raise his voice against the Nazis, so they interned him in 1941, and he died while interned in 1944.³⁵¹

Jean Johnny Voste was imprisoned at Dachau as punishment for his role in the Belgian resistance movement. He was interned on charges of sabotage in May 1942. In spite of his record, he was able to share vitamins with his fellow inmates, and he survived until the Allied occupation.³⁵²

Joseph Nassy, a Jewish black man, claimed that he talked his way into special treatment. He was arrested by the Nazis in 1942, moved several times from one camp to another, and was likely settled at the Tittmoning camp. Nassy was an artist and acquired art supplies through Red Cross visits to his camp. He completed a total of 277 sketches, drawings, and paintings while interned.³⁵³ At one camp, he was even asked to teach art. There were about twelve blacks and fifty Jews at Laufen concentration camp, in addition to Nassy. The prisoners at Laufen were allowed to send a total of three postcards and four letters to friends and family each month.³⁵⁴ Nassy survived his internment and the war.³⁵⁵

Johnny Williams was interned for sabotaging machines while working at the Sagem factory at Montlucon. He was arrested by the Nazis and allegedly tortured, along with his fellow saboteurs, in 1944. He was ultimately sent to Neuengamme. The Nazi guards at his camp found him fascinating. One of the SS men told him that blacks were good athletes. According to Lusane, he is still alive and receives a pension for his work at Neuengamme from the current German government.³⁵⁶

Jazz trumpeter Valaida Snow was interned by the Nazis, possibly for illicit drug use, at Wester-Faengle camp in Copenhagen. Though, contrary evidence suggests that she may have actually resided at Westerbork, near Copenhagen, or had simply been placed under house arrest. She was not noted as a POW or a civilian internee according to the US National Archives database. Historians do not know how long she remained in bondage.³⁵⁷ According to Snow, prisoners were given “three potatoes a day.” She survived the war and died in 1956.³⁵⁸

FIGURE 32. Jean Johnny Voste (right) at Dachau during the Allied occupation. Courtesy of USHMM Photo Archives.

Leopold Sedar Senghor learned German, studied Goethe, and read all sorts of literature while interned at various Nazi camps. He was somehow able to persuade a French physician to secure his release from internment in 1942, under the guise of having contracted a “colonial disease.”³⁵⁹ He became the president of Senegal in 1961, and passed away in 2001.³⁶⁰

Finally, Johnny Nicholas served as a physician at Camp Dora. He allegedly survived the notorious Night and Fog campaign—a Nazi massacre—but was later found and captured. He was an Allied spy. He served time at Buchenwald, Dora, Rottleberode, and Ravensbrück. He received letters and parcels while interned and was not mistreated due to his skin color. He became a physician’s assistant to Dr. Kahr. The two of them saved countless lives during the latter half of the war. They also helped construct a suitable hospital barracks at Dora. The death toll had reached numbers as high as 850 per month.³⁶¹ Nicholas did not survive the war due to injuries. He died on 4 September 1945.³⁶² Obviously, he and many other blacks were not mistreated by the Nazis.

Gypsy Paradox

As far as Gypsies were concerned, Himmler expressed a favorable attitude toward them unlike many other Nazi functionaries.³⁶³ Gilad Margalit described Himmler’s opinion of Gypsies as “racialmystical.” Himmler issued a decree without first consulting Hitler as to the treatment of “the pure race Sinti”: they were awarded “freedom of movement…to live according to their customs and habits, and to continue with their unique occupations.”³⁶⁴ Gypsy men were earmarked to serve “in a special unit in the Wehrmacht.”³⁶⁵

Margalit’s research has also shown that anti-Gypsy actions did not originate with Hitler.³⁶⁶ The killing of Gypsies was neither systematic nor specifically ordered by the highest authorities.³⁶⁷ In fact, in 1942, Himmler ordered that Gypsies must not be targeted just because of their ethnicity. Only those Gypsies who helped partisans or committed criminal acts were to have measures taken against them.³⁶⁸ Margalit argued that Himmler’s subordinates did not always follow his orders, which proves that the Nazi leadership did not always exercise the kind of unity, subordination to authority, or discipline that they are supposed to have exercised.³⁶⁹ Most historians today allege that the Germans killed 50,000 Gypsies, not 500,000 as originally thought. They also say that 90,000 were murdered by the fascist regimes of Croatia and Romania.³⁷⁰ But these newest claims are not substantiated by any evidence other than hearsay.

FIGURE 33. German soldier pictured with Gypsy children, probably in the Soviet Union during the occupation. Courtesy of Gilad Margalit.12*

According to Wehrmacht soldier Walter Winter, a Sinto, at least 500 Gypsy “civil internees” at Auschwitz-Birkenau had served in the Wehrmacht.³⁷¹ Hitler officially called for the discharge of Gypsy soldiers in 1943, in spite of the changing tide of the war.³⁷² As Margalit pointed out, Nazi policy was rather ambiguous with regard to Gypsy treatment. Their treatment was similar to that of Afro-Germans and Senegalese, which was likewise ambiguous or arbitrary. Obviously, the Nazis were not united in their views of Gypsies, since some of them did not hold negative views of Gypsies.

In December 1942, Himmler was able to convince both Hitler and Martin Bormann that Gypsies had valuable racial elements. This minority ethnic group was apparently worth saving in Himmler’s opinion. “In Himmler’s eyes, the willingness of Gypsy soldiers to sacrifice themselves for Germany and the Führer, as well as their social integration carried more weight than their racial classification as determined by [Robert] Ritter.”³⁷³ Ritter was head of the Research Unit for Racial Hygiene and Population Biology, a subdivision of the Reich’s Ministry of Health.³⁷⁴

Upon convincing Hitler and Bormann on this matter, Himmler issued a circular, in January 1943, ordering that the Reich’s Gypsies be deported to the family camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau. The “pure race” Sinti and the Lalleri tribes were exempted from this deportation order.³⁷⁵ Unfortunately, Margalit’s research provides no insight into the attitudes of the Gypsies toward the Wehrmacht or their service. However, he did describe how many were conscripted for the Dirlewanger Brigade and served on the Russian front on the River Oder.³⁷⁶

CHAPTER VIII

ALLIED MILITARY CONDUCT AND WAR C

RIMES

…If every German city that we pass through looks like this one the Hun is going to be busy for centuries rebuilding his country…Peaking in the war’s final three months, it was the first air attack of its kind. Civilian dwellings were struck by—in today’s terms—“weapons of mass destruction,” with a total of 600,000 casualties, including 70,000 children.

—Jörg Friedrich³⁷⁷

Third Reich Military Conduct and War Crimes in Perspective

One may be inclined to ask why such a controversial study is necessary. This study offers an objective and accurate presentation of Third Reich collaboration and volunteerism, which has been lacking up until now. For example, Germans could not have persecuted Jews to the extent that they had without the significant assistance they received, at all levels, from non-Germans throughout Europe. At the same time, Mischlinge (mixed-race Jews) could not have survived the ethnic cleansing campaigns without Hitler’s personal regard for their lives. It cannot be denied that, for whatever reason, he intervened on their behalf more than once. He likewise remained ambivalent about their sterilization and extermination.³⁷⁸

Gerald Horne argued that British and Euro-American overtures directed at disenfranchised African Americans (and other non-whites) were solely a matter of national security. Benevolence did not enter the picture at any time in the 1900s in either of these countries. Many blacks, including Marcus Garvey and W.E.B Du Bois, saw through this militarily convenient duplicity. The British and Euro-Americans needed blacks for military service. But they also needed to diffuse, modify, and redirect African Americans’ and Afro-Britons’ growing anti-white public sentiment: redirecting their hostility away from Washington and London and toward Tokyo. Much of this was simply a matter of military expediency, as neither of these predominantly white countries viewed blacks as equal to whites. They were no different than Nazi Germany. In fact, Horne argued that the British were the worst of these three Western nations when it came to treatment of Asians and Africans.

In fact, on 6 April 2009, the BBC reported that “British and American commanders ensured that the liberation of Paris on 25 August 1944 was seen as a ‘whites only’ victory.” Even though blacks and Syrians constituted 65 percent of Free French forces, they were refused official acknowledgement. Indeed, “after the liberation of the French capital many were simply stripped of their uniforms and sent home. To make matters even worse, in 1959 their pensions were frozen.” Such Allied racial injustice is unconscionable given that the French, US, and British governments marketed and sold the war as a war against racial discrimination and injustice. Blacks who fought for the Allies justifiably felt hurt and betrayed:

Former French colonial soldier, Issa Cisse from Senegal, who is now 87 years-old, looks back on it all with sadness and evident resentment. ‘We, the Senegalese, were commanded by the white French chiefs,’ he said. ‘We were colonised by the French. We were forced to go to war. Forced to follow the orders that said, do this, do that, and we did. France has not been grateful. Not at all.’³⁷⁹

The fact of the matter is that the Nazis are no longer “taboo.” Napoleonic France and the United States are neither taboo nor seen in an entirely negative light, as is Nazi Germany, when they too committed atrocious war crimes (albeit at different times). Historians have finally acknowledged that Napoleon used gas to exterminate Africans. He also ordered mulatto children drowned in sacks and ethnic cleansing of Roma. He even established concentration camps in Haiti. Indeed, he was especially inhumane to the Haitians, since they were seen as non-persons.

The Allies machine-gunned civilians who were simply trying to stay alive in one of the worst military conflagrations in Western history. Lt. Harold Brown, a retired Tuskegee Airman, informed me during our interview that several American POWs were machine-gunned to death by the US Army Air Corps. He said that the American pilot had probably mistaken the POWs for German civilians.³⁸⁰ Strafing of civilians was a common Allied air tactic, which continued into May 1945.

Not surprisingly, Jewishness did not prevent individual Jews or Jewish families from being machine-gunned to death or carpet bombed by their future “liberators.” World War II survivor Ilse Koehn, a “second degree” Jewish Mischling, recalled that her family’s home and farm was the target of Russian strafing and Allied incendiaries sometime between March and April, 1945.³⁸¹ Allied bombers even targeted schools and hospitals, regardless of whether they were marked as civilian structures.

Most World War II historians do not seem to take an interest in the Morgenthau Plan, carefully explained and scrutinized by Giles MacDonogh in After the Reich. This scheme called for a three-part plan of mass sterilization, wide-scale extermination, and collectivization of the German nation.³⁸² Indeed, this plan, conceived by a vengeful Jewish American man, constituted a policy of deliberate genocide. However, historians never presented it as such, because it was an American policy.

Equally horrific was the fact that many Jews who were interned in concentration camps by the Germans went back to their homes in Germany only to be turned away by their American “liberators” at pistol-point.³⁸³ Even Jews’ homes were requisitioned by the Allies— many of whom expressed anger or even committed unwarranted acts of brutality upon failing to be embraced and welcomed by the newly freed German people. Clearly, German war criminality was anything but unique.

The United States was the first country to deliberately exterminate unknowing civilians with nuclear weapons; the only country to have done so. The British High Command was guilty of deceiving and forcibly repatriating both Soviet and non-Soviet citizens, along with thousands of Cossack noncombatant women and children (who accompanied the Cossack soldiers) in the final days of the war. Numerous Cossack émigrés, who left the USSR to escape the terror of the Bolshevik Revolution to live abroad as citizens of other states (like Yugoslavia), were illegally sent to Stalin.³⁸⁴A few British soldiers and a British Lieutenant did what they could to save as many Cossacks from their horrific fate as possible, but the majority of these Cossack collaborators ended up massacred, committed suicide, or were condemned to hard labor until Nikita Khrushchev amnestied those who survived.

Even Winston Churchill oversaw genocide of between six and seven million human beings. A report featured on Media with Conscience News, on 20 January 2009, stated, “In [World War II] Churchill deliberately starved 6-7 million Indians to death, continued to foster MuslimHindu antipathy that led to the horrors of Indian Partition and persuaded his War Cabinet on racist Partition of Palestine.” These particular war crimes were no less serious than those committed by Germans. The difference is one of historical interpretation from one period of history to the next. War crimes are war crimes, regardless of the era or the perpetrators—whether or not historians want to see it this way.

Indeed, when a nation’s most revered political interests and very survival is at stake, that nation tends to see itself as justified in its actions, whether categorically “criminal” or not. This is normally the case when it comes to “zero-sum warfare.” Israel’s siege of Gaza in 2008, which cut power and food to about 1.5 million civilians, is a good example of this.³⁸⁵ Jews are absolutely correct to point out Nazi criminality toward Jewish people during World War II, but they fail to see that their own modern policies are similar to those of their Nazi oppressors of the past. This kind of national behavior is to be expected and will continue to exist well into the future, regardless of condemnation by historians. This historical pattern of national behavior is important to recognize, because there is no doubt Germans viewed their policies as legitimate and justified, just as Israelis do today.

As for the US, white American medical professionals refused to treat African American men with syphilis, in order to observe its effects on the human body over time. The state of California preceded the Nazi Germans with regard to sterilization and euthanasia.³⁸⁶ The US used napalm on North Koreans³⁸⁷ and “okayed” the extermination of about one million Koreans in the Korean War.³⁸⁸ MacArthur suggested using 30 atomic bombs against the Koreans to speed up the outcome of that war. One can hardly fathom the repercussions of such a radical strategy.

And the Soviets: Soviet soldiers systematically raped two million German women, ranging from ages eight to 80,³⁸⁹ during the occupation of Germany. Many were permanently disfigured by these horrific violations of their persons. Many drunken Soviet soldiers used bottles to appalling effect. Countless victims were gang-raped, or raped multiple times on any given day. The systematic rape of German women was part of Stalin’s official policy.³⁹⁰ No less horrific was that one’s Jewishness did not prevent rape. Who knows how many Jewish women were doubly victimized by the Second World War. One point of this study is to encourage people to confront the paradoxes of Western civilization and American exceptionalism—with regard to war and morality.

Clearly, German war crimes were no more grotesque or unique than many other war crimes committed by Western militaries. It should not shock Americans to learn that their own nation exterminated, both directly and indirectly, two and one quarter (2.25) million German POWs and civilians after World War II,³⁹¹ or that America turned a blind eye during the mass deportations and executions of Germans and other Axis collaborators from Eastern European settlements. Few historians consider the criminal aspect of Euro-Americans having used vast numbers of black soldiers against an enemy they believed was very racist.

Furthermore, Jewish refugees were turned away by the United States and Britain. The Allies played an indirect role in the Jewish tragedy of World War II. The British handed many Greek and Slavic Axis collaborators over to Tito: this in spite of the tragic fact that most people in Eastern Europe were just trying to survive the horrors of a zero-sum war. They paid a terrible price for choosing the wrong side at the wrong time. Many were tortured in unbelievable ways by merciless Soviet partisans after the war. To be sure, Nazis were less genocidal than Soviets, who apparently orchestrated a famine in the Ukraine from 1932-1933. As many as seven million perished in what is called the Holodomor (death by starvation).³⁹²

FIGURE 34. Stalin’s son, Jakob Dschugaschwili-Stalin, was one of about three million Soviet POWs who Stalin wrote off as expendable. He declared, “There are no prisoners of war. There are only traitors to the Motherland.” Bundesarchiv.13*

Some Russian historians have argued that the Holodomor was the result of mismanagement—that it was unintended.³⁹³ Whether or not these deaths were deliberate is irrelevant. Seven million human beings still died. Still other Russian historians have tried to whitewash this genocide by asserting that it was just one of a number of Stalin’s mass murder campaigns across the Soviet Empire, which is hardly better. Perhaps one should ask whether these Russian historians are willing to extend their whitewashing to the Nazis.

Shortly after the commencement of Operation Barbarossa, the overwhelmed Nazi occupiers were unable to adequately feed their Soviet POWs. About three million of them died as a result (though many were victims of deliberate mistreatment). While historians continue to condemn the Nazis for their mistreatment of Soviet POWs (even though Stalin refused to sign the Geneva Convention as to fair treatment of POWs), most of them fail to condemn the Soviets for the mass starvation of seven million Ukrainians in the Holodomor. The majority of historians also fail to condemn Stalin for his violation of the fair treatment of POWs. Since the Nazis’ negligent treatment of Soviet POWs remains condemnable (and rightly so), then so too must Soviet handling of Ukrainian collectivization from 1932 to 1933.

FIGURE 35. “Miserable children in Soviet Russia.” Germanische Leithefte, First Year, 1941, Issue 2.14*

Jewish Revenge against Germans

That being said, numerous Jews who suffered under the Nazis in concentration camps were guilty of committing acts of revenge against German civilians living in Polish territory. According to John Sack,

[t]he guards used clubs, bedboards [ sic], crowbars, and the Germans’ own crutches to give the Germans their fifteen blows, and at times they blurred the distinction between corporal and capital punishment by seizing a Germans arms and legs and swinging his head against the wall like a battering ram.³⁹⁴

Solomon Morel, who went by Shlomo at the time, is alleged to have stated the following: “What the Germans couldn’t do in five years at Auschwitz, I’ve done in five months at Schwientochlowitz.” 395 Many of Morel’s and other Jews’ crimes against Germans were later investigated by Polish authorities and a warrant was issued for Morel’s arrest, for killing over 1,500 Germans in his postwar concentration camp in Poland.³⁹⁶ While Jewish revenge is no doubt understandable, the gross abuse of citizens because of their ethnicity, most of whom had nothing to do with Auschwitz or ethnic cleansing, was no less a crime against humanity. A Polish commission, headed by Jerzy Rybakiewicz, discovered that the Schwientochlowitz camp contained non-German citizens: Dutch, Swiss, Polish, and one American.³⁹⁷ Sack estimated that between 60,000 and 80,000 Germans perished in the network of Jewish-run postwar camps and holding facilities of the Polish Office of State Security over the course of about three years.³⁹⁸ None of the key perpetrators were brought to justice.

FIGURE 36. Solomon “Shlomo” Morel. Courtesy of John Sack.15*

CHAPTER IX

C

ONCLUSION

If the order had been to execute offenders and had the Royal Seal been on it, how would the average soldier have reacted? The average tired, frightened and angry soldier might well have followed the order, and subsequently been branded as a criminal by future historians.

—Matthew Herschkowitz³⁹⁹

Axis history has for too long focused on the Germans’ importance to the Axis’ efforts as well as Nazi prejudice. This analysis explored the bigger picture; that is, the important role that ‘others’ played. It examined how and why these ‘others’ were able to challenge Nazi racial views as well as German wartime and domestic policy. These other players continue to receive short shrift by most World War II historians. This study also explored what non-German minorities and foreigners thought of the Third Reich. Few historians have seriously pursued this subject.

History is not about what people want to hear. It is about analysis of evidence. The goal is to understand, quite simply, why and how things happened the way they did. In spite of this simple guideline, most historians continue to argue that Nazi racial open-mindedness was nonexistent or that collaborators were forced to serve against their will. Obviously, this is incorrect. Hitler and many other Nazis were relatively open-minded on the race issue, and the vast majority of collaborators volunteered to fight for Germany; few were forced. The fact that about two million non-Germans and ethnic minorities fought for the Germans proves this. Hopefully, this study encourages more historians to look into the motivations behind foreign and ethnic minority military collaboration in predominantly white, Western societies. Like many Nazis’ racial open-mindedness, this aspect of military history has been ignored for too long.

EPILOGUE

I wanted to have this matter dealt with quickly and appeared at the sisal plantation of Pg Troost just two days after I received his letter. What I saw there left me speechless. Young Germans—only one of whom I got to know in passing—were working on the Shamba (plantation). I stopped and looked, bewildered, at my young compatriots. One of the black workers gathered all his courage and asked me: “Mbwana, will you Wabwana now do our work? And are we going to lose it? Without work our women and children will starve!” I calmly gazed at this old man and explained: “Hapana! (No), nobody will take your work away. Be patient. Everything will be alright.” One could almost hear the people’s sigh of relief.

—Franz Wimmer-Lamquet¹

The conclusions and implications of this study are far reaching. Axis history has focused on the Germans’ importance to Axis efforts for too long. Without the aid of foreigners and ethnic minorities the ‘Nazis’ could not have accomplished what they did for so long. Soviet Hiwis alone numbered 200,000 2: one can hardly quantify to what extent these people assisted the German war effort. Soviet Hiwi assistance with manual labor tasks, cooking, cleaning, soldiering and security duty freed up countless German soldiers for front line duty. In addition to these Soviet Hiwis, 102,195 Armenians, Azerbaijanis, Georgians and North Caucasians assisted the Axis effort. The XV Cossack Corps under General Pannwitz’s command provided the Germans with 21,000 mounted troopers. An estimated 250,000 Cossacks answered the German call against the USSR.³ To put such numbers in perspective: according to the Congressional Research Service, total US troop deployments for Operation Iraqi Freedom in September 2005 numbered 260,000.⁴ Former US president George W. Bush’s international democratic “coalition of the willing” consisted of fewer than 11,000 troops.⁵ Such numbers are an embarrassment given the cause of “freedom and democracy.” The Taliban was able to recruit nearly half the number recruited by the US—an estimated 4,000.⁶

NS German race prejudice has been exaggerated. Numerous ‘Nazis’ were tolerant of other races of men—notably Freitag, Wächter, Heike, Pannwitz, Rosenberg, and even Himmler—and unlike the Allies they did not use foreigners and ethnic minorities as front line ‘cannon fodder’. Africans, Asians, Russians, Indians, Ukrainians and countless others were employed mostly as Hiwis, rear area security officers, laborers, policemen, anti-partisan fighters and home guards. Most were well paid. Furthermore many potential recruits were turned away by the ‘Nazis’, even after Stalingrad. For example, less than half (31,000) out of a pool of 80,000 potential Galician recruits were able to become NS policemen or join the 14th Waffen-SS Grenadier Division. Hitler failed to send an estimated 20,000 blacks living in Germany into combat. Had he wanted them exterminated, he could easily have forced them to serve on the Eastern Front, or face a firing squad. That was the choice Stalin’s commissars offered millions of recruits in the USSR. It is common knowledge that NKVD officers machine-gunned Red Army troops that refused to confront the enemy head on. It is time to discard the taboos and hysteria associated with research on race relations in the Third Reich.

As for Wolfram Wette’s highly praised indictment of the Wehrmacht as the most “evil” military force in history, I offer the following. I find it odd that Wette excused Jewish soldiers of war crimes charges while indicting their ethnic German comrades for war crimes. In so doing he overlooks the complicity of an estimated 150,000 Jewish soldiers (Rigg’s estimate), including Erich von Lewinski (Manstein’s real name), in war crimes (there were in fact dozens of Jewish-German generals and high-ranking officers). Wette argues that all of Germany’s accomplices were guilty except for the Jewish ones, who were “used” and “betrayed.” They weren’t “used” and the wives of many Jews throughout Germany protested the arrest of their husbands by the Gestapo in the famous Rosenstrasse Protest. The Gestapo was pressured not to deport these men after their wives raised a raucous for a week. Jewish soldiers could have also protested en masse: those 150,000 Jewish soldiers and collaborators could have refused to serve. If their ethnic German comrades were “war criminals,” then they were too. Wette also argues that the ethnic Germans in the Wehrmacht who protested in some way were “brave” and “hon

orable ,” but fails to apply this to Hitler’s Jewish soldiers, who rarely if ever protested. This is hypocrisy. He excuses “Jewish Nazis” because they were Jewish. His thesis is dishonest because he wrote it “in fear of the Jews.” He could not write honestly because he would have ended up in prison in Germany. Fortunately I can.

Second, Wette argues that Russians were massacred by NS Germans, while failing to question the legitimacy of the sources of this allegation. The Einsatzberichten, for example, were never authenticated as

German documents: they were fabricated by the Soviets. Russian historians can prove otherwise, if they are willing and able. We have no way of knowing whether any Soviet accusations are true. Also, if the Russians were so threatened by the ‘Nazis’, then why did Stalin refuse to assassinate Hitler when he had the chance (recently revealed in the British press), and why did the Soviets arm, train, and yes, even fund the ‘Nazis’ in the early years? These are unpopular questions that few historians dare to ask and answer due to intimidation by anti-free speech hate groups, such as the Anti-Defamation League and the European Jewish Congress.

Next, Wette overlooks the fact that NS Germany was in a war for its life: a position that is bound to result in excesses. The Allies were adamant about “unconditional surrender.” They did not have to be. And the Russians and Brits committed much worse atrocities than the NS Germans did: the mass rape of two million women, including Jewish women; rape of concentration camp inmates upon “liberation”; crucifixion and indescribable sexual torture of women and girls; involuntary expulsion of an estimated 13 million Germans and

Axis collaborators from the east in the postwar aftermath; the carpet bombing, aerial strafing, and mass murder by fire of millions of European civilians and POWs via air and sea power—all conveniently overlooked by Wette for the sake of making the NS Germans look like the “most evil people in all of history.”

Lastly, in his attempt to utterly smear and demonize the Wehrmacht (the only “untainted” vestige of the ‘Nazi’ era that could be attacked by “historians”), Wette has shown just how biased German scholars are about their own history. War is never pretty or clean no matter how “just” or “benevolent” the intent. We have witnessed ruthless Anglo-perpetrated holocausts in Japan (with atomic weapons, napalm and white phosphor bombs), Korea (with napalm), Vietnam (with Agent Orange and napalm), and Iraq (with white phosphor bombs and uranium), but because these war crimes were perpetrated in the name of “democracy” and “freedom,” and because the victims were not white, these holocausts do not count. What Wette has really demonstrated is just how racist he is for arguing that no crimes are as bad as those of the ‘Nazis’. One supposes that the suffering and mass deaths of tens of millions of non-whites doesn’t matter to most historians. Wette’s argument is absurdly insensitive to the Nama and

Herrero peoples, who were starved to death not by ‘Nazis’, but by Lothar von Trotha. But alas, no German crimes in history could compare to the crimes of the Wehrmacht!

This analysis has explored the big picture: the important role that ‘others’ played in the Axis war effort. More research is still needed, as so few know about the wide range of motivations that caused foreigners and minorities to join the NS war effort, or that many ‘Nazis’ questioned (and even challenged) the ‘correctness’ of their own racial ideology by the end of the war. For any historian to argue that the ‘Nazis’ had the same goals and views in 1945 as they did in 1933, or even 1939, is for that historian to distort history. This analysis examined how and why racial ‘others’ were able to challenge NS racial views as well as German wartime and domestic policy, and why the ‘Nazis’ were willing to accommodate these challenges.

This study also examined what many non-German minorities and foreigners thought of the Third Reich. Few historians have pursued this subject. Antonio Muñoz, Christopher Ailsby, David Littlejohn, Carlos Jurado, Peter Huxley-Blythe and Chris Bishop, among a few others, offer the most in this area; however, few of them offer genuine understanding of, and consideration for, those who gave their lives for the Axis. Ailsby quotes early on in his book: “One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.” This is an historian who understands the value and necessity of historical context. The men and women who fought for Hitler were not Americans; they did not have the gift of hindsight; they were not liberal-democratic; the world was not yet liberal-democratic; and most importantly, they did not view the NS Germans as evil. All of these points became a part of the Third Reich narrative—the historiography—after the Cold War ended. All of sudden historians clamored to produce the book that would most thoroughly demonize the Third Reich and everyone and anyone who was “duped” by it. A similar movement has arisen within the Soviet narrative; neither narrative is acceptable.

What has demonization of the Third Reich done for history? How does it help humanity advance? How does it help humanity become better, to learn from history? Warfare has always been horrific and it always will be. So is ethnic cleansing. Some may argue that these questions result in historical relativization. This is

an incredible statement given that the US was founded on forced deportation, sterilization, concentration camps, slavery and genocide. It is easy for modern historians to view the ‘Nazis’ as especially horrific since their real and imagined crimes are more recent, but recentness does not diminish the horrendous history of the United States or Britain. It does not diminish the horrors that Napoleon or the US Marines visited upon Haitians simply because they were black. It does not diminish the suffering of those Filipinos who lived through US occupation. Does it really matter whether 200,000 or two million died? Are historians going to argue over who experienced the worst genocide? If that is to be the case then they had better start investigating the genocide committed by China against the Zunghar Mongols.

For China’s emperors—both the Ming and Qing—the existence of the Zunghar state, which refused to acknowledge the superiority of the Dynasty, threatened not only Chinese territory but the HanChinese metaphysical world order. “If they were allowed to survive they would seriously endanger the nation,” Perdue wrote.

Thus began the Qing conquest of the west. Military campaigns in the late 17th and early 18th centuries attempted to bring the Zunghars into submission, but truces were broken and rebellions rose. In the 1750s the Qing employed what Perdue calls the “final solution” to the northwest frontier problem. What took place was one of the largest genocidal wars in history, even by today’s standards, and the complete extermination of the Zungharian peoples. An estimated 600,000 people were killed and the steppe depopulated.

The Qing set up Xinjiang as a military camp and later employed Mongolian collaborators to govern the region. In the 1760s HanChinese civilians began to migrate westward, and by 1781 some 20,000 households were established in Xinjiang. Imperial conquest had succeeded and formal colonization had begun.⁷

Simply stated, historians have no right to judge any single war or ethnic cleansing campaign as more horrible than any other. When said historians have actually experienced warfare or genocide first-hand, then perhaps they can make such a judgment. Until then they need to refrain from value judgments and personal bias. It seems the real issue at hand here is that genocides are only horrible—they only count— when the victims are white-skinned. This is not only ahistorical, but preposterous.

***

History is not about what people want to hear. It is about analysis of evidence. The goal is to understand why and how things happened the way they did. In spite of this guideline most historians continue to argue that ‘Nazi’ racial tolerance was nonexistent and that Axis collaborators were evil or forced to serve against

their will. Obviously this is nonsense. Hitler and many other ‘Nazis’ were relatively open about race, and the vast majority of collaborators volunteered to fight for Germany. Few were forced. They had a range of reasons for doing so: good pay, survival, anti-Communism, nationalism, career advancement, desire for adventure, desire for camaraderie, to wear the SS inform, to gain respect, to earn privileges, to prove their racial value, to prove their combat value, to help National Socialism, to support Hitler, to oppose Britain, to defeat capitalism, to quash liberalism (or laicism), to repeal democracy, to further their own goals of national independence, and yes, to fight evil.

Many Volksdeutsche, like Siegfried Fischer, resented the fact that their homelands daily oppressed them. Fischer was one of 3.5 million German minorities oppressed by the “democratic” state of Czechoslovakia prior to NS liberation. “The German occupation in 1938 was not felt to be an occupation at all. We waited in happy anticipation for the German troops finally to liberate us...This was, then as now, the greatest day of my life,” Fischer asserted. In a similar statement Peter Schober said, “I remember when German troops entered the Sudetenland. They were welcomed and greeted as Germans, and that was a big thing for us. We felt that we belonged more to a German-speaking country than to one where the national tongue was Czech. We thought that this was the right solution.” Josef Rampold, a German from South Tyrol (Italy), declared, “Joining the Wehrmacht was—I don’t mind saying this—an emigration to Germany. One was among respectable people.” Eduard Steinberger, another German from South Tyrol recruited into the Brandenburg Division, confessed, “As soldiers, we were totally convinced we were doing the right thing. We didn’t have time to politicize. We were at war, and when we got leave we tried to have fun for a few days...To us there were no two ways about it: We had to protect our home, our people, our Europe.” And Otto Kumm stated, “The SS Viking Division was...made up of actual volunteers, as was our Das Reich Division. When we were stationed in Holland as an occupation force after the Western campaign, so many young Dutch wanted to join us that it was decided to set up a separate division with these foreign volunteers. And these were genuine volunteers.” 8

So there you have it. One nation’s terrorists are another nation’s freedom fighters. As such, no historian has the right to judge whether one side is right or wrong, good or evil. They need only assess the evidence to the best of their ability, offering their honest, personal interpretation of that evidence and what it means to historiography— which is always incomplete, biased, and/or skewed. I like to invoke a Buddhist precept in regards to this problem of history.

The following is a Zen koan, or short poem:
Mountains are mountains, rivers are rivers
Mountains are not mountains, rivers are not rivers
Mountains are mountains, rivers are rivers.

These three lines, authors Adorjan and Kelly argue, offer insight on bias. The first line represents universal human treatment of abstract objects. We all call mountains “mountains,” albeit in different tongues, but a name is only an abstract label with which we describe physical formations we see with our eyes that all look similar—in this case a high and often rocky area of a land mass with steep or sloping sides. The second line provides us with cross-cultural and contextual perspective. The authors argue that we can never truly “know” anything because there is no such thing as truth, but we can all come to some agreement on “truth” nevertheless.⁹ Mountains are only “mountains” if we agree to see and label them as such: our perceptions and labels are limited, biased and culturally nuanced, but they are universal to all human beings and societies nevertheless. The authors argue that by line three, one is supposed to understand that one is rooted in a world that extends way beyond the ‘self’, but that one can only appreciate this impression when one first understands where one comes from (i.e., one’s initial, biased viewpoint as represented in line 1). The last line in the poem reminds us of our own perceptions (those of line 1), and therefore of our cognitive, cultural and human limitations.

Absolute Genocide and Total War

A chapter in the book A World at Total War: Global Conflict and the Politics of Destruction, 1937-1945, entitled “Are We There Yet? World War II and the Theory of Total War,” presented by Roger Chickering and

Stig Förster, debunks the “ ultimate total war” thesis about World War II. It was no more a total war than any other wars before it or since. Totality is subjective. The term total war needs to disappear from military historical lexicon altogether. It is not only inaccurate, but a European conception.

A few words before I proceed: Chickering and Förster acknowledged what most historians consider characteristic standards of “total war,” but went on to explain how and why these standards do not mean that World War II was the “ultimate total war.” While they use World War II as the total war standard, opposing historians also use World War II as their standard.

This analysis focuses solely on Western “total war,” so the implications are limited to the Western conceptualization of total war.

The term “ total war” came about recently: it did not emerge until the interwar period between World War I and World War II. “Total war” was actually a French conceptualization of warfare, which was later adopted by the Germans and could be read in German literature by 1934. “Total war” was (and remains) a European conceptualization of World War I and post-World War I warfare.¹⁰ Historians arguing that World War II was the “ultimate total war” use the Great War as their point of reference, which requires us to ask whether “total war” is an accurate conceptualization of World War I—the Great War—or any other war for that matter.

Numerous military historians view World War II as the ultimate total war. For starters this war was allegedly fully radicalized: industry was mobilized for the war effort; 70 million human beings were mobilized; restraints on conduct were abolished; civilian deaths far outnumbered soldier deaths—45 million compared to 15 million; civilians were now seen as “more important” targets than soldiers which, to many historians, is a key aspect of total war; and it was the most costly war ever fought. However, as pointed out by Chickering and Förster, we find numerous problems amongst these measures, especially in comparison to previous wars. In actual fact World War II was no more “total” than many of its predecessors.¹¹

Viewing World War II as the ultimate total war is problematic. The world has not yet witnessed a nuclear or biological world war. Historians should not posit such a thesis when we do not know how much worse warfare can get. Furthermore the West is not the “world”; there is more to the globe than the Occident and far more to history than the Occident’s many wars.

Neither industry nor civilians were fully mobilized during World War II. The “belligerent” states, except for the USSR, did not produce as many weapons or mobilize as much industrial or scientific manpower as they could have. According to a lecture by Jonathan House, which I attended at Norwich University in June 2009, Albert Speer commented, “It remains odd that Hitler demanded less from his people than Churchill or Roosevelt.” With the exception of the USSR, women were not sent into combat. Poison gas was never used, which is a convincing indication of restraint. The United States was not even close to full mobilization in any sector.¹² The fact that Spain and Switzerland were able to remain officially neutral and isolated from combat indicates that this war was not as total as it could have been. Hitler respected the isolationist sentiments of several of his neighbors. The Wehrmacht and Waffen SS oftentimes rejected thousands of potential foreign and ethnic minority recruits: further indications of restraint.

World War II was never fully radicalized either. For instance, NS POWs were treated well, including blacks, Jews and Roma, in most cases.¹³ Guenter Lewy proved that Roma were treated mildly. “Pure race” Roma earned the Reich’s protection, specifically Himmler’s. Only one nation state, the US, developed and used its atomic weapons. Germany and Japan never realized their atomic potential. Additionally, full mobilization was never earnestly attempted by any side, save the USSR.

At this point I must mention that looting and rapine were common during periods of Greek and Roman warfare. The Gauls enacted total war against Rome. Citizens of Gaul used scorched earth policy, and in so doing burned their homes and crops to evade unconditional surrender as well as thwart the advance of the Romans. The Romans implemented siege warfare, mass murder, mining, fire-setting (e.g., villages, cities and food supplies), and even engaged in civilian mass rape.¹⁴ It was not until after World War II that universal rules of engagement applied to all. If historians were to apply post-World War II standards of war crimes to Greece and Rome, chances are a great number of both Roman and Greek city-states would be guilty of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and ultimate total war.

The issue of unconditional surrender played a significant role in the methods employed during World War II. Had there been realistic options for a negotiated peace, as opposed to ‘absolute’ forms of surrender, then both Germany and Japan would likely have accepted the options offered to them. Zero-sum warfare is generally the result of

unconditional demands. No nation or government can possibly expect a fellow nation or government to negotiate its own demise. The lack of any form of conditional peace terms caused Germany and Japan to resist longer and harder than they might have had they been offered a reasonable postwar option. As such, one may conclude that the stipulation of unconditional surrender on behalf of the Allied powers contributed to the radical qualities of the conduct of World War II, as no Axis power wished to accept such terms. Having said that, have historians forgotten that Julius Caesar demanded unconditional surrender during many of his campaigns? He is viewed as a tyrant by today’s historical standards. Why are the Allies not viewed similarly?

As far as the number of civilian deaths is concerned, the magnitude of death alone is not a sufficient indication of World War II’s totality. Post-industrial population growth and mass concentration of civilians in compact city districts made them vulnerable, especially given the potential effectiveness of aerial attack on national morale. Civilians were viewed as ‘equally dangerous as soldiers’ during this war, since they constituted the means of war production. Civilians were seen as a “deciding factor.” 15 But this has always been the case. Both the Romans and Greeks exterminated civilian men, women and children by means of siege and mass murder in numerous campaigns. The Thirty Years’ War was characterized by its brutality against peasants. Medieval warfare in Europe was nearly always a leading cause of famine, mass rape and needless civilian death. Armies on the move devoured peasant croplands like locusts, invading churches and raping the women holed up inside for protection—the main reason why the Church encouraged the Christian crusades against Islam in the first place. The Church was effectively rescuing Europe’s peasants from military marauding (“better the Muslims than us”). Anyway, the vast numbers of civilian and military dead is not necessarily an accurate measure of the absolute totality of World War II. Depending on how many human beings are concentrated in particular areas in times of war, a few significantly sized bombs can easily eliminate tens of millions at any given time. However, this does not mean that they are victims of “total war.”

The fact that World War II was the most costly war ever fought does not mean that it was a total war. All it means is that both national and international lenders felt secure enough to allocate more money for war than ever before. Thus lender wealth and the willingness to lend that wealth for warfare must be taken into account when making this argument. The war would not have continued on the level it did for as long as it did without the capital to make it possible. This is not necessarily a measure of totality as much as it is a measure of state willingness to accept massive amounts of war debt and international lender willingness to subsidize that debt.

Historians’ measures of total war can just as easily be applied to the Civil War and World War I as to World War II. Chickering and Förster seem to feel that the best ranking is, in order of “most total” to “least total”: World War I, World War II and the Civil War.¹⁶ Even though it is problematic to compare these different wars from such different contexts, this ranking nevertheless seems legitimate if we accept the current standards of what constitutes total war.

World War I is best viewed as a protracted siege.¹⁷ That war saw the stalemate of massive and advanced land armies in the European theater, which resulted in high casualty rates in comparison to previous wars. Airplanes, for the first time, targeted civilians in order to undermine morale. Unlike World War II, poison gas and trench warfare were the norm. Since the authors do not go into much detail one cannot say whether 40 percent or more of the participants’ resources were mobilized during World War I.¹⁸ However, we are certain that World War I exhibited nearly all of the same components of total war as did World War II. In fact World War I had features, such as poison gas, which did not play a role in World War II. A more accurate argument is that World War I and World War II were no more or less total than one another.

The Civil War witnessed a great deal of civilian and industrial mobilization, especially given the time period and context. America was still a largely agricultural nation. Sherman’s scorched earth policy in the South was at least as devastating as that of the Germans against Western portions of the USSR during World War II.¹⁹ Since Chickering and Förster do not offer much detail about the Civil War,

we cannot make as many comparisons as we might like to. Nonetheless one is inclined to agree with the authors that the Civil War discouraged loss of civilian life irrespective of Sherman’s conduct.²⁰ (Incidentally the majority of Civil War soldier deaths were from disease, not combat.) But this is also true of World War II. The initial intent of Germany’s so-called Blitzkrieg (an Italian term later adopted by the Germans) may not have been to spare as much life as possible, but it did in fact spare a massive amount of life due to its speed

and intensity. Furthermore the fact that no side used poison gas; that food and medicine was available in all concentration camps (including Auschwitz); and that camps had hospital barracks and medical personnel, including German ones, means that sparing of life was important to all sides (even the Soviets cared for many POWs and civilians).²¹ Had any side earnestly wished not to spare any life, then there would not have been but a handful of World War II survivors.

Chickering and Förster ponder whether World War II was totality brought to its fulfillment. The evidence they present in favor of such a thesis fails to convince. For example, they quoted that “more than half of the bombing tonnage and civilian deaths occurred during the war’s last two years.” 22 In other words, the war was not “totalized” until late; and even then it still was not “total.” The argument they present concerning “absolute genocide” of Jews in Europe is problematic as well. First of all, over one million Jewish people survived Hitler’s “absolute genocide,” therefore it cannot be called “absolute.” Second, no one can prove that genocide was ever Hitler’s intent. Third, the Ukrainian Holodomor (1932-1933) could just as easily be defined as “absolute genocide,” since an alleged six to seven million victims perished while surplus food was being exported to countries outside the USSR at the time. Soviet intent was

the extermination of a predetermined, select group of people to make them “politically reliable.” This is documented, unlike Hitler’s socalled “holocaust,” which is why Russian historians have been forced to explain it.

Furthermore, historians who ‘believe’ cannot argue that just because the “holocaust” occurred during wartime means that it was more absolute than other genocides. In that case the mass extermination of Amerindians should be characterized as “absolute genocide” as well. Sherman’s “final solution [to] the Indian problem” was “killing” and “segregating” Amerindians.²³ Buffalo were deliberately mass exterminated to annihilate the Plains Indians, down to the last child when deemed necessary. Scalping of Indian women and children and the absolute decimation of their villages by fire was typical of Anglo-Saxon frontier warfare beginning in the 1600s. John Grenier and Russell Weigley both described America’s “first way of war” in all its grotesque, inhuman detail.

Chickering and Förster have said that 40 percent of a country’s resources constitute a good measure of totality. It would be interesting to learn how much of Greece’s, Rome’s or even England’s resources were mobilized for warfare during the classical and colonial periods in Western history. NS Germany, the supposed poster child of “total war,” did not mobilize all of its resources until about 1944, and even

then full mobilization of the economy remained incomplete.

Along these lines, these two historians argue that civilians suffered immensely for the German war effort as slave laborers during World War II. What about civilian and slave suffering during most of Classical Rome’s military campaigns? What about Greek slave suffering or Persia’s slave conscripts?

How about during the Napoleonic era? These two historians also discuss the mobilization of societies during World War II. But Sparta was a war society. In fact every Spartan male was raised to be a soldier.

The same was likely true of ancient Germania, and we already know that Byzantium was a military society.

Finally, these authors argue that material destruction was essential to undermining the morale of the enemy in World War II.²⁴ True, but this applies to numerous military forces prior to World War II, including Caesar, Napoleon and the early American colonists, all of whom regularly implemented scorched earth policy against their declared enemies. To argue that there was a process of total war from 1861 to 1945, which culminated in World War II, is inaccurate: numerous wars defy this pattern at several points on the continuum. The Seven Weeks’ War of 1866 and the Spanish Civil War, from 1936 to 1939, come to mind. In addition numerous “total” wars preceded this time span (1861- on). The Thirty Years’War occurred before 1861

and it had “ total war” traits at numerous points. This particular historiographical argument is easily exposed as an instance of “retroactive foreshadowing.” 25 We see the continuity now, but did we see it then? Is it really there in the first place?

It appears that the major difference between the total war qualities of World War II and most other European wars is one of scale. But the level of destruction and suffering appears to be in proportion to the scale of World War II itself. It was a world war in which about 70 million combatants participated. It was also a technical-industrial war that witnessed the first ever use of nuclear weapons. Machines and WMDs require little effort to inflict the same level of destruction as tens of millions of armed humans. The advent of the industrial-nuclear age necessarily resulted in more destructive modes of warfare. This world may witness something more terrible yet.

World War II was no more “ total” than many other wars before it (and since). To the Vietnamese, the Vietnam War was a “total war.” To the US it was an irregular war. Indeed these two modes of warfare (total and irregular) are interchangeable, if not synonymous. The “total war” concept has everything to do with one’s perception. For instance, when the West fights irregularly it calls it “total.” Hitler fought an irregular war against the numerically and mechanically superior, better prepared USSR. The US and Britain fought an irregular war (an aerial war) against the superior German army. On the other hand when the West fights a conventional (regular) war it identifies the enemy’s warfare as irregular and not total. The bias of this term and the Western point of view that accompanies it is obvious.

Chickering and Förster have succeeded in presenting the case against defining World War II as the “ultimate total war.” The arguments they presented to the contrary are unconvincing. The term ought to be dropped altogether because it does little to enhance one’s understanding of war. Warfare does not proceed along a linear, historical chain according to Western standards; instead, it fluctuates and naturally (like every other human activity) acclimates itself to the particular context and time period in question. Some time periods and contexts have witnessed more “totalized” wars than others. Our modern Western perception of totality in warfare is not the same as that of the past, nor is it shared cross-culturally.

These two authors did not discuss several “ total wars” that happened before World War II. The total war policies of Greece, Rome, America, England and numerous other countries prior to World War II are not mentioned. They also failed to discuss either the Civil War or World War I in detail, both of which were “total wars” according to most Western military historians. Most important, the book appears to absolve the Allied powers of guilt for war crimes, crimes against humanity, totality of conduct or belligerence with respect to World War II—as indicated in the chapter titles in the index. This explains the numerous omissions and bias of this particular study on total war. The idea is to portray the Axis as particularly terrible in that it alone waged the one and only “ultimate total war” in human history.

***

The fact that over two million non-Germans and ethnic minorities fought for the Germans in some capacity—as soldiers, spies, partisans and laborers—proves that the ‘Nazis’ were not the unbending, callous racists most historians have said they were. Like many NS Germans’ tolerance, this aspect of military history has been ignored for too long. Hopefully this study encourages more people to look into the motivations behind foreign and ethnic minority civilian and military collaboration as well as the extent of collaboration and volunteerism in predominantly white, Western societies. One also hopes that this study will help readers understand that their national worldview and historical viewpoint is biased. It is time to be well-rounded consumers of history, especially Axis history, as opposed to programmed passive receptors of historiographical dogma. Students and enthusiasts of history should not have to read about good and evil in history books. That sort of childishness belongs to the realm of religion and mythology.

With that I offer the following concluding thought from a pro-NS historian. A.V. Schaerffenberg: “Of the 16 million men who served in the U.S. armed forces during World War II, less than 60,000 were volunteers (by comparison, one million Europeans volunteered for the Waffen-SS), and most of them had joined to avoid being drafted into some less desirable branch of the services. Once in uniform, many did whatever they could to get out. A favored tactic was bed-wetting, which Army officials decided was sufficient cause for discharge. As soon as their regulation came into effect, the incidence of bed-wetting at one Texas camp skyrocketed to 1,200 percent. Bed-wetting so depleted the numbers of servicemen that the War Department had to revoke the Army’s regulation.” 26

The truth about World War II and the “Greatest Generation” does not quite match up with what we’ve been told by historians, does it?
End Notes

1. Muñoz, ed., Soviet Nationals, 116.
2. Ailsby, 118. By 1942, they may have numbered 1 million (118).
3. Ibid., 124, 129, 130.
4. Winslow Wheeler, “How Many Troops are Really in Iraq,” Information Clearing House, April 29, 2006,
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article12878.htm (accessed October 13, 2009).
5. “Non-Coalition Troops in Iraq,” About.com, September 14, 2007, http://uspolitics.about.com/od/wariniraq/l/bl_coalition_troops_iraq.htm (accessed October 13, 2009).
6. Associated Press, “4,000 Foreigners Join Taliban, Minister Says,” MSNBC on the Web, October 10, 2009,
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33256784/ns/world_news-south_and_central_asia (accessed October 13, 2009).
7. Macabe Keliher, China as Imperialist; China as Colonist,” review of China Marches West: The Qing Conquest of Central Eurasia, by Peter Perdue, Asia Times on the Web, August 6, 2005,
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/GH06Ad03.html (accessed October
13, 2009).
8. Voices from the Third Reich: An Oral History, Johannes Steinhoff, Peter Pechel, and Dennis Showalter, eds., First Da Capo Press ed. (New York, NY: Perseus Books Group, 1994), 107, 106, 110, 117.
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11. Ibid., 8.
12. Ibid., 7-8.
13. Lusane, 149, 153, 157; Rigg, 163-165.
14. Julius Caesar, “De Bello Gallico” & Other Commentaries: of Caius

Julius Caesar , ed. Ernest Rhys, trans. W.A. Macdevitt (Everyman’s Library, 1929), 3, 5, 12-13, 15, 18-19, 27.
15. Chickering and Förster, 4.
16. Ibid., 8.
17. Ibid., 6.
18. Ibid., 15.
19. Ibid.
20. Ibid., 6.
21. Lusane 240-242.
22. Chickering and Förster, 12.
23. Michael Fellman, Citizen Sherman: A Life of William Tecumseh Sherman (New York: Random House, 1995), 264.
24. Chickering and Förster, 15.
25. Ibid., 5.
26. See A.V. Schaerffenberg, Hitler: Bungling Amateur or Military Genius? (Preuss, 2003).

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APPENDIX I

Key excerpts from Hitler’s speech at Platterhof 26 May 1944

… Damit war dann eine Frage zu entscheiden, nämlich: war der Zusammenbruch im Jahre 1918 das Ende der deutschen Nation oder
– das war die Auffassung von vielen – war er nicht, und das war meine Überzeugung, der Anfang eines neuen Volkskörpers? Musste nicht dieser Zusammenbruch überhaupt kommen, um einen Zustand zu liquidieren, der so oder so auf die Dauer untragbar war?

Ich werde über die Gründe ganz kurz sprechen müssen. Sie liegen nämlich auch etwas tiefer, als das im allgemeinen gesehen wird, und auch das sind Probleme, die sich nicht zur Besprechung vor der breiten Masse eignen. Wir haben bei uns ein Volk, das nicht gleich zu setzen ist einer Rasse, etwa, was heute schon millionen Menschen ganz klar ist. Aber, meine Herren (26):

als ich vor jetzt bald 25 Jahren mit meiner Lehre anfing, war das nicht so, sondern da wurde mir von bürgerlichen Kreisen immer entgegengehalten: Ja, Volk und Rasse ist doch eines und dasselbe! Nein – Volk und Rasse ist nicht dasselbe. Die Rasse ist ein Blutsbestandteil, ist der Blutmässige Kern, aber das Volk setzt sich sehr oft nicht aus einer Rasse, sondern aus zwei, drei, vier oder fünf verschiedenen Rassekernen zusammen. Trotzdem ist es nicht möglich und nicht wünschenswert, solch einen Volkskörper aufzulösen, wohl aber kann es im Zuge von politischen Entwicklungen passieren dass eine solche Lösung eintritt.

Wenn man das deutsche Volk von diesem Gesichtspunkt aus rein biologisch betrachtet, dann sehen wir hier einen, ich möchte sagen, über den Umweg der Staatsbildung zusammengeschlossenen Menschenverein einheitlicher Sprache – das ist hier vielleicht das Entsheidende—, aber verschiedenartiger rassischer Herkunft: ein nordischer Rassekern, es sind vorhanden meditarrane Rassekerne, und es ist noch eine europäische Grundrasse darin, eine vorgeschichtliche Rasse, die wir nicht genau au defenieren vermögen, die aber da ist, schon bei den Griechen da war; die Heloten der Spartaner bestanden aus ihr. Auch dieser Rassekern steckt in unserem Volk drin (27).

Wir sehen also ein Volk, das aus verschiedenen Rassekernen besteht. Diese Rassekerne besitzen im einzelnen ihre besonderen Fähigkeiten; denn die Fähigkeiten liegen an sich nicht primär im Volk, sondern sie liegen primär in der Rasse begründet. Dass das deutsche Volk nun sehr viele Rassekerne besitzt, zeigt sich letzten Endes an dem Reichtum seiner Befähigungen, denn all diese Rassekerne tragen in sich bestimmte Veranlagungen: der nordische Rassekern ein mehr kühl veranlagter, mathematisch veranlagter, organisatorisch ausserordentlich befähigter Faktor, der Faktor, der überhaupt bisher auf der Erde Staaten organisiert hat, im wesentlichen organisiert hat. Dazu kommen nun andere Rassekerne mit einer stark musischen Veranlagung, mit einer Begabung für das rein Optische, das Schauen, das Bild; dann wieder Rassekerne mit einer sehr starken musikalischen Begabung, und auch Rassekerne mit einer sehr stark kommerziellen Begabung. Der stärkste dieser Rassekerne, der eine kommerzielle Begabung ohne schöpferische Tätigkeit besass, wäre bei uns bei längerer Dauer das Judentum geworden, nur mit dem einen Unterschied, dass dieses Judentum nicht als Rassekern im deutschen Volk aufgegangen wäre, sondern dass er das deutsche Volk allmählich völlig zersetzt haben würde (27-28).

Wir haben nun diese Rassekerne in unseren Volk vereinigt. Es ist aber nun entscheidend, dass ich, so reich nun das Fähigkeitsbild des deutschen Volkes ist, bei den verschiedenen Fähigkeiten führend die Rassekerne herausbringe, die ursprünglich die Träger dieser Fähigkeiten sind; das heisst also: ich muss sehen, dass bei der musischen Begabung derjenige Rassekern allmählich überall im deutschen Volk zum Tragen kommt, der musisch begabt ist. Nun, meine Herren, tritt das nicht etwa durch eine Auslese ein, indem ich sage: Wer sieht musisch aus?, sondern hier tritt das Wunder in Erscheinung, dass der Ton letzten Endes seinen Repräsentanten findet. Das heisst mit anderen worten: wenn ich einen bestimmten Ton anschlage, dann meldet sich zum Beispiel im Klavier die Saite, die auf diesen Ton gestimmt ist, und wenn ich einen bestimmten Fähigkeitsnachweis benötige, und hier die freie Entwicklung einschalte, so melden sich die Elemente, die letzten Endes von Natur aus, das heisst auf Grund ihrer rassischen Veranlagung wirklich bestimmt sind (28-29).

Das ist nun deswegen entscheidend, weil für die Führung eines Volkes ersichtlich primär nur der nordische Rassebestandteil einen wirklichen Wert hat. In der gesamten Auslese wird das am Ende immer ein einheitliches Bild ergeben. Man darf aber nicht vom einheitlichen Bild ausgehen, denn die Natur zeigt uns hier, dass bei Kreuzungen zweier vershiedener Eltern die Talente oder die Fähigkeiten nicht immer beim Jungen vom Vater oder bei der Tochter von der Mutter stammen müssen, sondern im Gegenteil, dass hier Querverbindungen eintreten müssen, dass also, wenn ein nordischer Mensch sich mit einer, sagen wir, ostischen Frau verheiratet, das Kind männlichen Geschlechts nicht nordisch zu sein braucht, sondern völlig ostisch sein kann, dass es also zum Beispiel bei irgendeiner Rassenkreuzung sehr leicht möglich ist, dass das organisatorische Talent völlig zugunsten irgendeines anderen in den Hintergrund gedrängt wird (29).

Wenn ich nun aber eine Gesellschaftsorganisation habe, die auf Grund einer reinen kapitalistischen Entwicklung, die nichts zu tun hat mit nordischen Führungstalenten, eine Oberschichte aufbaut, dann kann es passieren, dass sich allmählich die Oberschichte aus völlig anordischen Menschen und im Innern jedenfalls gänzlich anführungsmässig veranlagten Elementen darstellt. Das war die Tragik des alten Deutschen Reiches. Hier konnte man folgendes erleben, und ich habe das so oft gesehen: schon auf der Landstrasse an irgendeiner Baustelle, an der man halten musste; vor mir zwei andere Wagen, in dem einen ein reicher sächsischer industrieller, im andern irgendein anderer reicher Mensch, bei dem man aber sofort auf den ersten Blick sehen konnte: natürlich überhaupt nicht die geringste nordische Beimischung. Und die Strassenarbeiter nebenan, sagen wir irgendwo in Nordwestdeutschland: phantastische Erscheinungen, und absolute Verachtung dieser Strassenarbeiter gegenüber den Insassen eines solchen Wagens, völlige Verachtung! – Dieser Strassenarbeiter ist in sich mehr zum Führen geboren als der, der in dem Wagen drin sitzt.

Wenn ich es politisch betrachte: Wenn ich das natürlich vom rein materiellen Standpunkt meinetwegen eines Apothekers ansehe oder eines Zwirnfabrikanten oder vom Standpunkt eines Musikers oder eines Dichters oder eines Malers, dann ergibt sich natürlich ein ganz anderes Bild, dann allerdings sind das selbstverstandlich die führenden Köpfe (30).

Aber eins war ja doch nun klar: “Volk” und “Volk” ist nicht dasselbe. Ich kann mir ein Volk vorstellen mit einer dünnen Herrenschicht und einer vollkommen verelendeten Masse, verkommen, verlaust, verdreckt, aber zum blinden Gehorsam erzogen, die eben pariert. Das kann ich mir vorstellen. Diese Vorstellung erweckt bei mir aber keine Befriedigung; sie ist in meinen Augen abscheulich. Das, was ich glaube als erstrebenswertes Ideal ansehen zu müssen, ist ein Volk, das in der Gesamtheit ein gesundes Bild bietet. Denn auf die Dauer werde ich mit einem solchen anderen Körper das Staatsinteresse nicht vertreten können: eines Tages wird er zerfallen, spätestens dann, wenn ein Katalysator eintritt, der diese linke Masse plötzlich vereint und mobilisiert, und das ist der Fremdkörper des Judentums ja gewesen (49).

… Then with it a question was to be decided, namely: was the breakdown in 1918 the end of the German nation or – this was the view of many – was it not, and this was my conviction, the beginning of a new national body? Generally, doesn’t a breakdown have to come in order to liquidate, by hook or by crook, a state which is unbearable in the long term? I will have to speak rather briefly as to the reasons for this; because they lie a bit deeper than commonly seen, but also because these are problems that are not suitable for discussion before the masses. We have this people of ours that are not to be defined as a race, and that is now clear to millions.

However, gentlemen: when I began my apprenticeship twenty-five years ago, this was not so; there I was always told by middle-class bourgeois circles: Yes, people and race are one and the same! No – people and race are not the same. Race is a component of blood, a blood nucleus, but the people are very often composed not of one race but of two, three, four or five different racial nuclei. Even so, it is not possible or even desirable to dismantle such a united body of people, but in the course of political developments such a solution may occur anyway.

When one looks at the German people from the purely biological point of view, then we see here, I would say, a society with a common language, united by detour of state-building, but a people – and that is perhaps the most significant factor – of varied racial origins: a Nordic racial nucleus, some Mediterranean racial nuclei, even a European core race, a prehistoric race which we cannot define exactly, but which is there, and which was there already with the Greeks; the Helots of Sparta came from this race. That racial core also exists within our people.

We see in our people the existence of various racial nuclei. These racial nuclei contain the details as to the special abilities of this Volk; since these abilities are not primarily abilities of the German people themselves, but rather, racial abilities. That the German people currently possess a number of racial nuclei, appears, after all, in the wealth of their capabilities, because all these race nuclei carry certain dispositions in themselves: the Nordic race nucleus is more inclined to cold weather; is mathematically inclined; is exceptional with regard to the organizational factor—the factor which has generally organized states around the world up until now. Now in addition, other race nuclei contain a very artistic disposition, with a purely optical talent: the ability to observe and depict; then again, there are race nuclei with very strong musical talents, and also race nuclei with exceptional commercial talents. The strongest of these race nuclei, which possessed commercial talent but lacked creativity, was Jewry; the only difference being that, had it remained with us for a longer period of time, Jewry would have risen not as a race nucleus within the German people, but would have completely decomposed the German people bit by bit.

We now have a combination of these racial nuclei within our people. However, it is now crucial, because of the multitude of abilities in the German people, that I encourage those racial nuclei to emerge, which are the original carriers of these abilities; in other words: I must see to it that the talents of a particular racial nucleus gradually emerge throughout the entire German people.

Well, gentlemen, this does not come about by simply asking: “Who appears to be talented?”—rather, the miracle reveals itself when the call is finally answered. In other words: if I hit a certain piano key, a corresponding string responds by virtue of the design of the piano—and if I look for a certain talent and am allowed the freedom to choose, those people will respond who by their very nature, due to the talent inherent in their race, are best suited.

This is now crucial for the leadership of the nation, because, as is apparent, only the Nordic racial component has real value [due to its organizational ability]. Throughout the process of selection this will, in the end, always be the picture that emerges. However, one should not assume that this was the picture from the start, because nature shows us that in crossings of two parents with a variety of talents and abilities, those talents and abilities do not always come to the boy from the father or to the daughter from the mother, but on the contrary: a cross occurs, so that if a Nordic man married, shall we say, an Eastern woman, the child would not necessarily be a Nordic male, but completely Eastern-oriented instead. For example, in any cross-breeding it can easily happen that the organizational talent [of the Nordic nucleus] is forced into the background in favor of another talent.

Now, if I have a society organized on the basis of purely capitalistic development, which has nothing to do with Nordic leadership talent, it will [still] form an upper class and it will then be possible that, over time, this upper class will consist not of Nordic peoples, but of [racial] elements that have a penchant for being led. That was the tragedy of the old German Reich.

In this case, one could experience the following, and I [myself] have seen it often: at any road-construction site where one had to stop out on the road, I could see in front of me two other cars: in one, a rich Saxon industrialist; in the other, some other rich person with a noticeably un-Nordic appearance—apparent immediately, at first glance. And the road workers—let’s say this happened somewhere in northwest Germany: they had fantastic appearances and [naturally] expressed absolute contempt for the occupants of said vehicles, complete contempt! – Those road workers were more suited for leadership than the ones sitting in the cars.

If I consider it politically: when I look at this from a purely materialistic standpoint, perhaps from that of a pharmacist or a manufacturer of twine, or from the standpoint of a musician or a poet or a painter, then of course a very different picture emerges, then of course they represent the leaders.

… But now it is clear, nevertheless: “race” and “people” are not the same. I can imagine a nation with a small upper class and a totally impoverished public mass: dilapidated, lice-ridden, and filthy, but trained to blind obedience, as followers. I can imagine this. This image, however, brings me no satisfaction; it is hideous in my eyes. That which I believe to be the ideal worthy of pursuit is a people that as a whole present an image of healthiness. For in the long run, I will not be able to represent the interests of the state with a body other than that [which is healthy]: for that other body will one day disintegrate, at the latest when a catalyst enters, which is suddenly able to unite and mobilize this leftist mass, and that would be the foreign body of Judaism [emphasis added].⁴⁰⁰

[Editor’s note: Here, Hitler admitted that the German Volk exhibited vulnerability when it came to the subversive nature of the Jewish “antiVolk.” Hitler believed Jews were, collectively speaking, a subversive “catalyst.” In other words, he believed that Jews, and Jews alone, harbored an innate ability to cause the German Volk to rip itself apart. His conversations with Otto Wagener in the early 1930s, and those with Martin Bormann throughout the 1940s, indicate that he felt that Jews had done this very thing to the Americans and Russians.]

Above : Nazi soldiers sit and converse with their Spanish comrades. Below: German athlete Lutz Long talks to Olympic superstar Jesse Owens. With Hitler watching, Lutz held up Jesse’s hand, shouting to the gigantic crowd, “Jesse Ow-ens! Jes-se Ow-ens!” In fact, the entire stadium started chanting too: “Jessah O-vens, Jess-ah O-vens!” Owens recalled, “My hair stood on end.”

APPENDIX II

Key excerpts from Franz Wimmer-Lamquet’s Balkenkreuz und Halbmond

… The Arab security forces were not required to give an oath to Hitler. There was no usual book of military rules of conduct, rather our men were protected and punished on the basis of the Koran and the appropriate Islamic spiritual leaders when necessary. For my European soldiers, the non-Muslims, there was a special punishment code, which was generally far stricter than in the Wehrmacht. Every one of my men knew that, because only volunteers could join our units. They were specially tested and everything was explained to them. As compensation for the special hardships, there was the extraordinary good care for their needs.

In no other units within the Wehrmacht were there such special privileges. For the families there was total protection. If they were bombed out, they would receive new dwellings and everything else was available to a generous degree. The take home pay was extremely high. In this way, all the needs of the family within the homeland were covered and each one of my men could concentrate on fighting at the front without worrying about his family. It was all rather expensive, but it was necessary and brought the desired result: my men were more confident about their missions.

Initially, relations were quite conventional, but after a short time we were all informal (we said “du,” rather than “Sie”) with each other. We grew into a sworn unity, and therein was my strength. I could demand the most extraordinary things from my men, because they knew their leader was in front of them at the front (117).

… Since most of the Arab volunteers had already been soldiers, only a limited amount of training was necessary. Important was their religion and their belief that they were fighting in an Arab unit against the English and the French. For that reason, it was a grave mistake, and even a breach of the recruiting agreement, that these volunteers were not used against the English and the French; but rather, due to a shortage of soldiers, were used temporarily in Greece to protect the railroad line between Salonica and Athens, and to fight partisans. The volunteers became restless; there were unusual tensions, which finally even led one entire company (the third) under the leadership of First Lieutenant Brouard, from Lorraine, to join the partisans. Two of Brouard’s planned attacks on the battalion were repelled at great expense to the partisans, and finally, even the First Lieutenant and his white officers were killed. The Arabs were turned over to the Allies after the liberation of Greece; most of them were later executed by the French.

The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and I protested against the use of the Arabs in Greece, because their use violated the agreement we had. I led many discussions on this subject with higher offices; with Air General Felmy (the chief of the LXVIII army corps in Athens), with the home office for foreign affairs, and with various high-ranking persons. They did not take any of it seriously and promised to correct the situation “in the near future” – and that is how things remained. Finally, the 845th Battalion marched into Yugoslavia and surrendered. This was where our battalion commander, Major Paul Hermann, also disappeared.

Among the Arabs there was great interest in the Arab security forces – the volunteers came from the villages often after having been ordered to do so by their local tribal leaders, the Kaids. In addition, there was a recruiting office in France. Unfortunately, many of these efforts were not very useful. For that reason, Colonel I.G. Hermann Meyer-Ricks, the chief of staff to General Felmy, started his own recruiting office in Tunisia where he quickly gathered enough volunteers to establish three battalions. He wanted to employ these volunteers quickly after insufficient training and having equipped them with old weapons. For the propaganda this was a feast, the PK-photographers took pictures of him and his Arabs.

The Death of Colonel Meyer-Ricks and Major Schober

The two battalions of the German-Arab Training Unit – “Tunis” and “Algeria” – and the establishment of a third battalion were under way by the beginning of 1943, and were finally based in Bou Ficha.

Colonel G. Meyer-Ricks and Major Schober even had in mind the establishment of a dromedary unit, and had gone as far as raising a large sum of money – nearly 800,000 Reichsmark in Tunisian currency (124-125).⁴⁰¹

Die Weisse Oberschicht Und Die Lage Der Afrikaner

In Ostafrika haben sich damals die meisten Europäer damit begnügt, die eigene Sprache den Afrikanern nicht beizubringen. Man war so viel besser bei Tisch unter sich. Nur ist anzunehmen, dass dies Boys die Sprache ihres Herrn zumeist verstanden, und oft besser, als es den Anschein hatte! Die Arroganz der Briten liess sie nicht im entferntesten daran denken, die Sprache der Eingeborenen, Kisuaheli, zu lernen. Sie waren die Herren, ergo musste sich alles nach ihnen richten.

Damals lebten die Europäer in Ostafrika ziemlich unbehelligt von den politischen Ereignissen in Europa. Sie arbeiteten oft hart, aber lebten doch im Wohlstand. Einige von ihnen waren unermesslich reich und führten ein angenehmes „Herrenleben“ – oder was sie eben darunter verstanden. In den Ortschaften, den Städten, langweilte man sich abends. Alkohol floss in den Clubs der weissen Oberschicht in Strömen. Und man legte sich wenig oder gar keinen Zwang auf. Selten schlief man mit der eigenen Frau, sondern nahm, aus dem Schlüsselkorb einen x-beliebigen Schlüssel und „beglückte“ dann die in dem Haus wartende Frau. Diese reichen Frauen hatten oft keine Aufgabe. Man klatschte über alles, was Man hörte und sah und was einen gerade bewegte, und schlug oft die Zeit, den langen Abend, mit Sexspielen tot. So wie ihre Männer suchten auch die Frauen nach Abwechslung vom eintönigen Eheleben; also vergnügte man sich anderwärtig. Man war keineswegs prüde (46).

All dies blieb natürlich den Afrikanern, den Boys, nicht verborgen. Ihre Achtung vor diesen Herrschaften war auf den Nullpunkt gesunken! Oft kam es auch vor, dass ein Junggeselle seine Boys beauftragte, ihm junge, unberührte eingeborene Mädchen zu bringen. Diese schlichen dann aus dem Haus ihrer Herrschaft, wohl bezahlt, aber oft geschockt von abwegigen erotischen Handlungsweissen der Weissen. Wenn der neue Tag begann, war der „Herr“ dann wieder der unnahbare, gestrenge Gebieter über viele eingeborene Arbeiter. Für jene begann der Morgen trotz strahlender Sonne als grauer Alltag. Die Eltern junger Mädchen aber zitterten und flehten ihre Götter an, ihre Töchter vor der Wahl des „Herrn“ beschützen.

Es war nicht einfach, ein Schwarzer zu sein. Selten konnte man es allen recht machen. Die Afrikaner nahmen die Herrschaft der Weissen als unabwendbar hin und erduldeten oft Unvorstellbares. Es gab damals weder Not noch Hunger, wie es heute oft in den unabhängigen Staaten Afrikas der Fall ist. Aber die Willkür der Weissen hielt die Afrikaner in Atem. Einige Beispiele mögen dies illustrieren.

Die Tochter eines entfernt von mir lebenden Nachbarn hatte sich, mangels anderer Gesellschaft Weisser, einen Afrikaner zum Liebhaber erwählt. Es kam natürlich bald heraus. Der erzürnte Vater schickte seine Tochter, die nun von allen Weissen gemieden wurde, nach Europa. Denn was den Herren der Schöpfung erlaubt war, galt nicht für die Weisse Frau. Sie war für alle Afrikaner tabu. Den schwarzen Liebhaber liess der Vater auspeitschen und nahm ihn im Wagen mit in die Steppe. Bei der Distriktverwaltung meldete der Farmer diesen Man dann ab mit der Begründung, er wäre in sein Dorf zurückgekehrt. Dort aber traf er nie ein; er blieb verschwunden, und man vermutete nicht zu Unrecht, dass der erboste Vater den schwarzen Liebhaber seiner Tochter umgebracht habe. Er hatte jedoch die Sympathie und das Mitleid fast aller Europäern auf seiner Seite, und da für den Mord keine Zeugen vorhanden waren, wurde er lediglich verwarnt (46-47).

Im Allgemeinen geschah den Europäern in Ostafrika nichts, wenn sie unbotmässig Farbige mit dem Kiboko, der Nilpferdpeitsche, züchtigten. In einem Fall jedoch hatte ein baltischer Adliger im Zorn seinen Boy mit der Peitsche totgeschlagen. Was geschah? Das Gericht verurteilte den Baron zu einigen Jahren Freiheitsverlust. Er kam jedoch nicht ins Gefängnis, denn man hatte keine Zelle für Europäer, sondern verfrachtete ihn in ein Hotel, wo er dann auf Kosten der britischen Krone längere Zeit festsass. Es war ein fideler Aufenthalt, da der Mann sich frei im Hotel bewegen konnte und Freunde und Bekannte ihn besuchten und ohne Hemmungen abends miteinander Saufgelage veranstalteten. Bald liess man ihn wieder frei und er kehrte auf seine Farm zurück, da man die Existenz eines Weissen nicht vernichten wollte.

Weisse durften sich damals vieles erlauben, wenn nicht gar alles. Man war Herr über Leben and Tod der Schwarzen, und es kam nur auf die richtige Präsentatierung des Falles vor Gericht an. Was zählte schon ein Negerleben? Freilich war der Afrikaner ein Wertgegenstand. In den Tropen arbeiteten die Weissen nicht physisch auf den Plantagen oder Farmen. Das Klima machte es fast unmöglich. So brauchte man also wohl oder übel den Eingeborenen. Der schwarze Mensch war ihnen als Arbeiter wertvoll. Aber zuweilen ging den weissen Herren ihr Temperament durch und dann „passierte“ es eben. Was konnte schon eingeklagt werden? Der Weisse bekam damals fast immer Recht.

Das war die Situation, die ich bei meiner Ankunft in Ostafrika 1936 vorfand. Es gab hier genug Zündstoff für mich, der sich verwenden und vergrössern liess. Es gärte unter den Eingeborenen. Sie fühlten sich überfordert, ausgespielt, verraten. Preisgegeben der rohen Willkür der Weissen.

Nur der Weissen? – Beileibe nicht!

Eines der grössten Probleme schienen mir die eingewanderten Inder zu sein. Für die geleistete Waffenhilfe im Ersten Weltkrieg hatte England ihnen die Einwanderung nach Ostafrika zugestanden. Viele Inder hatten diese Möglichkeit genutzt und hatten zu der Zeit, als ich nach Afrika kam, fast den gesamten Kleinhandel und fast alle subalternen Beamtenstellen inne. Zäh, genügsam und äusserst zielbewusst verfolgten sie ihre Ziele. Bald war der Gross – und Kleinhandel fest in indischer Hand und sie erwarben oftmals für wenig Geld ehemalige deutsche Besitztümer. Zwischen Indern und Schwarzen bestanden gewisse Spannungen. Aber man brauchte diese eingewanderten Inder, die Händler, die selbstgenügsam unter der Duka, dem Ladentisch ihres Verkaufsstandes, der oft primitiv aus Wellblechabfall errichtet war, schliefen und den Afrikanern alles verkauften, was sie zum Leben benötigten, meistens sogar auf Kredit. Das sah aber oft sehr merkwürdig aus.

So eröffneten Kontraktarbeiter aus der Provinz bei einem solchen indischen Händler eine „Einkaufs-Kreditmöglichkeit“. Der Afrikaner kaufte nun als erstes einen Koffer mit Schloss. Den Schlüssel bewahrte er selbst auf. Dann kaufte er im Laufe der vielen Monate seines Arbeits-Kontraktes – diese hatten oft eine Laufzeit von bis zu drei Jahren – Geschenke, Kleider, etc. für Frau und Kinder ein, aber auch Kleidung für sich und Dinge, die er selbst brauchte (47-48).

Wenn der Kontrakt beendet war, kehrte er mit der Kiste oder dem Koffer voller Sachen zu seiner Familie zurück. So weit, so gut. Aber es gab immer wieder gerissene indische Händler, die es ausnutzten, dass der Schwarze mit der Zeit die Übersicht verlor. Er kaufte, legte die Sachen in den Koffer und vergass, was er alles bereits gekauft hatte. Der betrügerische Händler nützte das aus und öffnete mit einem Zweitschlüssel, den der nicht angegeben hatte, den Koffer seiner Kunden und entnahm dieses oder jenes bei ihm gekaufte Stück, um es an Dritte erneut zu verkaufen. So war immer genügend Platz im Koffer des Eingeborenen für neue Käufe. Dass der Schwarze bei diesem System schamlos ausgebeutet, ausgenutzt und betrogen wurde, kam selten ans Tageslicht.

Ich beschäftigte auf meiner Pflanzung viele Afrikaner und fühlte mich als ihr Chef für meine Leute verantwortlich. So hielt ich es auch später im Kriege, als ich arabische Freiwillige kommandierte. Viele meine Arbeiter waren von indischen Händlern betrogen worden. Es waren nicht alle, aber meine Leute wurden immer unruhiger, als sie trotz vieler Einkäufe für ihre Familien in mehreren Monaten immer wieder feststellten, dass ihre Koffer nicht wesentlich schwerer wurden. Ich war von Mr. Kohly auf dieses Problem aufmerksam gemacht worden, das in gewissem Masse auch die Arbeit meiner Leute beeinträchtigte. Es musste etwas geschehen. Ich kam schliesslich auf die Idee, auf meinem Besitz und für meine Arbeiter eine eigene „Pflanzungswährung“ einzuführen (49).

The White Upper-class and the Status of the Africans

In those days in East Africa, most Europeans did not bother to teach the Africans their own European language. One felt so much better at the dinner table with one’s own people. One can assume that the “boys” understood the language of their masters, and sometimes better than it appeared. The arrogance of the British was such that it was unthinkable for them to learn the native language, Kisuaheli. They were the masters and, therefore, everything had to adapt to them.

At that time, the Europeans in East Africa lived rather isolated from the political developments in Europe. They worked hard sometimes, but lived extremely well. Some were fabulously rich and lived like lords, or what they understood to be the way lords lived. In the villages and cities one led a boring existence in the evenings. Alcohol flowed freely in the clubs of the white upper-class. And one knew little or no self-restraint. One only rarely slept with one’s own wife, but took instead a favorite key from the key basket and then visited the lucky woman waiting in the house. The rich wives often had nothing to do. One clapped with delight at everything one heard and saw, which seemed important; and knocked oneself out in the long evenings with sex games. Just as with the men, the wives also wanted variety from their monotonous marriages; they looked outside of their marriages. They were not prudish in any way.

This was obvious enough to the Africans, the “boys.” Their respect for these lords shrank to zero! It often happened that a young boy would be ordered to find and bring some young, native virgins. They would then sneak out of the house of their master, well paid, but often shocked by the scandalous erotic dealings of the whites. When the next day dawned, the lord was once again the unapproachable master over many native workers. For the young ladies, the morning in spite of the sunshine was gray and dreary. The parents of young girls shuddered and begged their gods to protect their daughters from being chosen by the lords.

It was not easy to be black. Rarely could one do everything properly. The Africans saw white rule as inescapable and often endured the unimaginable. At that time there was neither poverty nor hunger, unlike it often is today in the independent states of Africa. But the capriciousness of the whites seemed breathtaking to the Africans. Some examples will illustrate this.

The daughter of a neighbor, who lived some distance from me and lacked other white companions, chose a black lover for herself. The relationship soon became known. The outraged father sent his daughter, now shunned by all of the whites, to Europe. What was permitted for the lords of creation did not apply to the white woman. She was taboo for all Africans. The father had the black lover whipped and then took him in a truck into the steppes. The farmer then notified the district administration that the man had returned to his village. But he never arrived there; he remained missing and one suspected with good reason that the angry father had simply killed the black lover of his daughter. Nonetheless, he had the sympathies of nearly all Europeans. Since there were no witnesses to the murder, he was merely given a warning.

In general, nothing happened to the Europeans in East Africa when they abused coloreds with the Kiboko, the hippopotamus whip. In one case a Baltic aristocrat in a fit of rage whipped his boy to death. What happened? The court ruled that the baron must be imprisoned for several years. However, he was not sent to prison, since there were no prison cells for Europeans. One simply shipped him to a hotel where he spent some time at cost to the British crown. It was jolly stay because he could move about freely in the hotel and friends and acquaintances could visit him and join him without any restrictions for drinking get-togethers. Soon, he was let go and returned to his farm, since one did not want to end the livelihood of any white man.

For whites, almost anything was permitted. One had the power of life and death over the blacks, and if there ever was a case in court, the outcome simply depended on how well the case was handled. What was a Negro life worth anyway? Granted, an African was worth something. In the tropics, whites could not do physical work on the plantations or farms. The climate made it almost impossible. Thus, for better or worse, one needed the natives. The black was valuable as a worker. But out of boredom, the white masters’ temperament inevitably caused things to happen. What good did it do to complain? The whites were almost always exonerated.

That was the situation I found as I arrived in East Africa in 1936. There was more than enough discontent and anger brewing below the surface. The blacks saw themselves as abused, betrayed and abandoned to the raw capriciousness of the whites.

But, were the whites the only ones who did this? By no means!

One of the greatest problems arose with the introduction of Indians. In return for their military role in the World War, England allowed them to settle in East Africa. Many Indians used the opportunity and had already, by the time I arrived in Africa, taken over nearly all retail trade and all subordinate government positions. Tenacious, modest and extremely focused, they pursued their goals. Soon, wholesale trade as well as retail trade was firmly in Indian hands and they acquired, sometimes for little money, former German properties. Tensions arose between the Indians and the blacks. But, one needed the immigrant Indians, the merchants, who were extremely resourceful and even slept under the Duka, the merchandise table of their selling stand, which was often nothing more than a piece of corrugated scrap metal. They sold the blacks everything needed to sustain their lives, sometimes even with credit. But very strange things happened sometimes.

Contract laborers from the provinces would open a credit line. The African would immediately buy a suitcase with a lock, and he would keep the key. Then over the many months of his labor contract—these contracts lasted as long as three years—he would buy presents, clothing, etc., for his wife and children, including clothing and things he needed for himself.

When the contract period came to its end, he would take the box or suitcase full of merchandise back to his family. So far, so good. However, there were always some wily Indian merchants who took advantage of the fact that, sooner or later, the black would not be watching too carefully. He would buy merchandise and put it in the suitcase, but forget all the other things he had already purchased. The dishonest merchant took advantage of the situation and opened the suitcase with a second key, which was unknown to the owner of the suitcase, and simply took this or that item to sell again to a third party. As a result, there was always enough room in the suitcase for new purchases by the native. That blacks were shamelessly abused and swindled by this scheme was rarely discovered.

I employed many Africans on my plantation and felt responsible for them. I felt the same way later during the war when I commanded Arab volunteers. Many of my workers had been cheated by Indian merchants. Not all, but many people became restless as their suitcases, in spite of many purchases for their families, did not seem to get significantly heavier. I was alerted to this problem by Mr. Kohly. The problem had an adverse effect on my workers. Something had to be done. For my workers, I eventually established a “plantation security area” on my property.⁴⁰²

APPENDIX III

Key excerpt from Eric Lefevre’s and Jean Mabire’s Sur les pistes de la Russie centrale: Les Français de la LVF 1943

… Sert toujours à cette époque à la 10e compagnie un Guadelopéen de 33 ans natif de Point- à-Pitre, Norbert-AdalbertHenri Désirée. Brave garçon et soldat brave, comme écrit Labat, c’est un ancien qui combat depuis le début dans les rangs du IIIe bataillon. Il a même eu les pieds gelés dans la forêt de Mamjewka au début de l’année, lors des si pénibles opérations de l’hiver. Antillais, il souffre du froid plus qu’un autre mais a toujours refuse de se laisser évacuer.

Mais il possède une ouïe extraordinaire qui a toujours étonné ses camarades. Ceux-ci ne peuvent qu’admirer ce garçon tout d’instinct et de volonté.

De garde le 22 mai au milieu de la nuit, six jours après le retour de la patrouille tragique, Désirée distingue un appel lointain venant de l’autre rive de la rivière. C’est bien du français! Il avertit aussitôt le lieutenant Alinot:

— Mon lieutenant, j’ai entendu appeler au secours! Ça venait d’en face, du milieu du marais.
— C’est impossible, voyons! C’est à plus de 500 mètres de la rivière. Vous avez rêvé, mon vieux.
— Je suis certain, mon lieutenant. Je vous en supplie, il faut y aller!

Le lieutenant, par acquit de conscience, organise une nouvelle patrouille qui ne réussit à nouveau qu’à s’égarer dans le marais et revient bredouille avant l’aube.

Désespéré Désirée en parle à quelques anciens de son groupe. Ils seront trois à le suivre la nuit suivante, dont le célèbre André Oberlé, un des légionnaires les plus intrépides de la compagnie (116-117). La petite équipe quitte clandestinement les postes de la 10e compagnie, traverse la Dessna et commence à peigner méthodiquement le marécage, guidée par Désirée. Les légionnaires doivent progresser très prudemment, pour ne pas s’exposer au feu de leurs camarades qui, sur l’autre rive, pourraient les prendre pour des Rousses. Pourtant, il leur faut bien appeler les deux sous-officiers disparus. Et soudain, on leur répond.

C’est le sergent Buissonière. Il tremble de fièvre et d’épuisement. Sa jambe brisée est enflée. Ses yeux brillent. Mais il a ramené son arme. Il peut seulement dire, essayant de sourire en dépit de sa douleur:

— Les gars, il faut plus jamais abandonner les copains comme ça…
Il peut seulement ajouter:
— Avez-vous retrouvé l’adjudant?

Le blessé est ramené jusqu’aux positions de la 10e compagnie, evacuee sur le poste de secours du bataillon à Ostraja Luka, d’où on le transportera à l’hôpital.

Le retour de Désirée et de camarades a prouvé au lieutenant Alinot que le légionnaire guadelopéen avait raison. Mais l’officier ne songera même pas à demander une citation pour lui, car il a agi sans orders. Il aurait même demandé une punition naturellement refusée par le chef du bataillon (117-118)!

… Norbert-Adalbert-Henri Désirée was always of use to the 10th Company at this time. He was a 33-year-old Guadeloupian native from Point-à-Pitre. Labat, a former fighter who started among the ranks of the Third Battalion, wrote that he was a brave man and soldier. His feet got frozen in the Mamjewka Forest earlier in the year, during the harsh winter operations. As a black man from the Caribbean, it seemed that he suffered from the cold more than the others, but he still refused to evacuate (his position).

Though, he had an extraordinary sense of hearing, which always amazed his comrades. They could only admire this boy’s sense of instinct and willpower.

While on midnight guard duty on May 22nd, six days since the tragedy [the loss of Sergeant Buissonière], Désirée (who was on patrol at the time) heard a distinct cry in the distance—from the opposite

216 | BLACK NAZIS II! : APPENDIX III
bank of the river. Désirée identified the distant call from the other side of the river. That’s French! He immediately warned Lieutenant Alinot:
— My lieutenant, I heard cries for help! It came from across the middle of the marsh.
— See here, that is impossible! That is more than 500 meters from the river. You’re dreaming.
— I am sure, my lieutenant. I implore you, go look into it!

The first lieutenant, to put his mind at rest, organized a new patrol, which succeeded only in getting lost in the marsh and came back empty-handed before dawn. Desperate, Désirée informed some of the men from his former group (about what he had heard). The following night, three of them followed him: among them André Oberlé—one of the boldest legionaries of the company.

This small clandestine group of the 10th Company abandoned their positions and began methodically combing the Dessna swamp, guided by Désirée. The legionaries had to move very carefully, so that their comrades on the other side of the swamp would not mistake them for Russians and accidentally fire upon them. However, it was necessary to call out the names of both of the missing noncommissioned officers.

And suddenly, they were answered. It was Sergeant Buissonière. He was trembling, due to fever and exhaustion. He had a swollen, broken leg, but his eyes shone brightly. He lowered his weapon. Attempting to smile in spite of his pain, he could only say:

— Guys, never abandon your friends like this…
He could only add:
— Did you find the warrant officer?

The injured man was brought back to the 10th company and evacuated to the first-aid post of the battalion at Ostraja Luka, wherefrom he was transported to the hospital. The return of Désirée and his friends proved to First Lieutenant Alinot that the Guadeloupian was right. But the officer did not even consider asking him for a report, because he acted without orders. Désirée even asked for a punishment, which was naturally denied by the head of the battalion!⁴⁰³

END NOTES

1. Antonio Muñoz and Oleg Romanko, Hitler’s White Russians: Collaboration, Extermination, and Anti-Partisan Warfare in Byelorussia,
1941-1945 (Bayside, NY: Europa Books, 2003), 13.
2. Jean-Pierre Sourd, True Believers: Spanish Volunteers in the Heer and Waffen-SS, 1944-1945 (Bayside, NY: Europe Books, 2004), 50-51.
3. Antonio Muñoz, Hitler’s Muslims: Muslim Volunteers in Hitler’s Armies,
1941-1945 (Bayside, NY: Europa Books, 2007), 47.
4. Sourd, 42-43.
5. Antonio Muñoz, ed., The East Came West: Muslim, Hindu, and Buddhist Volunteers in the German Armed Forces 1941-1945 (Bayside, NY: Europa Books, 2001), 150, 152-153, 165.
6. Bryan Mark Rigg, Hitler’s Jewish Soldiers: The Untold Story of Nazi Racial Laws and the Men of Jewish Descent in the German Military (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2002), I. Rigg argued that it was possible that about 150,000 Jewish Mischlinge served under Hitler in World War II.
7. Daniel B. Silver, Refuge in Hell: How Berlin’s Jewish Hospital Outlasted the Nazis (New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2003), 1-3.
8. The Rhineland children, whose fathers were post-World War I black occupation soldiers, are described herein as Afro-Germans.
9. Rigg, Hitler’s Jewish Soldiers, 125.
10. When I use the term “modern,” I am referring to the year 1990 and beyond.
11. Roi Ottley, No Green Pastures: The Negro in Europe Today (New York, NY: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1951), 105.
12. Ibid., 106.
13. Christopher Hudson, “The French Fuhrer: Genocidal Napoleon was as barbaric as Hitler, historian claims,” The Daily Mail on the Web, July 24,
2008, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1038453/The-FrenchFuhrer-Genocidal-Napoleon-barbaric-Hitler-historian-claims.html (accessed July 26, 2008).
14. William Napier, “Emperor of the first holocaust: How the death of his male lover left Hadrian a tyrant,” The Daily Mail on the Web, July 21,
2008, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1037131/Emperor-holocaust-How-death-male-lover-left-Hadrian-tyrant.html (accessed September
5, 2008).
15. Hudson, “The French Fuhrer.”
16. Otto Wagener, Hitler—Memoirs of a Confidant, ed. Henry Ashby Turner, Jr, trans. Ruth Hein (London: Yale University Press, 1985), 61. 17. Brigitte Hamann, Hitler’s Vienna: A Dictator’s Apprenticeship (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1999), 164-168.
18. Wagener, 186.
19. John Lukacs, The Hitler of History (New York, NY: Random House, 1997), 122-123. Max Domarus wrote a strikingly similar assessment of Hitler: “The Germans were a Volk, as were the other peoples of Europe and the world. Each Volk had unique qualities that differentiated it from any other Volk. When a Volk recognized and emphasized these qualities, it was successful and prosperous; when a Volk neglected these qualities, it broke up into smaller unsuccessful groups. The blood that is the nexus between members of a Volk is not a simple biological fact but is a spiritual connection that transcends the mere material.” For further reading, see: Max Domarus, The Essential Hitler: Speeches and Commentary, ed. Patrick Romane (Wauconda, IL: Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers, 2007), 133-134. 20. Mark Weber, “Swiss Historian Exposes Anti-Hitler Rauschning Memoir as Fraudulent,” The Journal of Historical Review 4, no. 3 (Fall 1983): 379-380, http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v04/v04p378_Weber.html (accessed January 13, 2009). 21. University of Minnesota, “Some Essential Definitions and Myths Associated with the Holocaust,” Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, http://www.chgs.umn.edu/histories/myths.html (accessed November 10, 2008).
22. See, for example, Serge Trifkovic, “Islam’s Nazi Connections,” FrontPage Magazine, December 5, 2002,
, December 5, 2002,
45DD-48C3-8EEF-E1ECA1DA52A8 (accessed September 18, 2008). 23. Max Boot, The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power (New York, NY: Basic Books, 2003), 115-116, 122-124, 125-127.
24. Antonio Muñoz, “German, SS, Police, and Auxiliary Forces in Poland Part V-1944 and the Warsaw Uprising,” Axis Europa: The Journal of the Axis Forces, 1939-1945 (Fall 1998): 38.
25. For more on “4GW” theory, see Thomas Hammes, The Sling and the Stone: On War in the 21st Century (St. Paul, MN: Zenith Press, 2006). 26. Muñoz, “German, SS, Police, and Auxiliary Forces in Poland,” 41. 27. Heinz Guderian, Panzer Leader: General Heinz Guderian, First Da Capo Press ed. (Cambridge, MA: Perseus Books Group, 2002), 356. 28. Muñoz, “German, SS, Police, and Auxiliary Forces in Poland,” 41. 29. Guderian, 356.
1* Muñoz, ed., The East Came West, 153.
30. Guderian, 356.
31. Ibid.
32. The American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise, “Waffen SS,” Jewish Virtual Library, The American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise, http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/waffenss.html (accessed November 11, 2008). Note: This Waffen SS summary was taken by the JVL from Wikipedia. It may not be entirely reliable; however, the information on Kaminski and Dirlewanger is correct.
2* Wehmeyer, Sowjetunion-Mitte. - Brigadekommandeur Borislaw Kaminski (Mitte) bei Beratung mit deutschen Polizeioffizieren über den Einsatz seines landeseigenen Verbandes (RONA) gegen sowjetische Partisanen; PK 697 (image), Picture database, available from: Das Bundesarchiv, <http://www.bild.bundesarchiv.de/cross
search/search/_1224187836/> (accessed August 23, 2008).
33. Antonio Muñoz, ed., Soviet Nationals in German Wartime Service
1941-1945 (Bayside, NY: Europa Books, n.d.), 50, 52, 54.
34. Rigg, Hitler’s Jewish Soldiers, 192, 199.
35. Ibid., 65.
36. Robert Gellately and Nathan Stoltzfus, eds., Social Outsiders in Nazi Germany (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), 134-136.
37. Institut für Zeitgeschichte, MA 316, Ansprache des Fuhrers vor Generalen und Offizieren am 26.5.1944 im Platterhof, 26-28, 50.
38. Ibid., 29. Hitler went on to explain that the Nordic racial factor contributed to Germans’ exceptional organizational capabilities [“organisatorisch ausserordentlich befähigter Faktor”] as well as their leadership talent [“mit nordischen Führungstalenten”] (29, 31).
39. Ibid., 28.
40. He said, “...mit dem einen Unterschied, dass dieses Judentum nicht als Rassekern im deutschen Volk aufgegangen wäre, sondern dass er das deutsche Volk allmählich völlig zersetzt haben würde” (29).
41. Wagener, 207, 208.
42. Brigitte Hamann, Winifred Wagner: A Life at the Heart of Hitler’s Bayreuth, trans. Alan Bance (London: Granta Publications, 2005), 207-208. On 18 October 1935, Hitler handwrote two identical letters addressed to Melanie and Esther Chrambach, which stated that Esther could remain in the NSDAP regardless of her Jewish ethnicity. Further, he told Winifred Wagner that he “intended to deal with the Jewish Problem generously, and give half and quarter-Jews [Mischlinge] the same status as Aryans” (249). Also see Heinrich Hoffmann, Hitler Was My Friend (London: Burke Publishing Company, 1955), 213-214. Hoffmann related how Hitler personally intervened on two Jewish men’s behalf.
43. Helmut Heiber and David M. Glantz, eds., Hitler and His Generals: Military Conferences 1942-1945, trans. Roland Winter, Krista Smith and Mary Beth Friedrich, First English-language ed. (New York: Enigma Books, 2004), 386-399; 457, 459. Hitler ordered the formation of a National Socialist Operations Staff in the Armed Forces High Command (NSFO) on 22 December 1943. Hermann Reinecke, chief of the new staff, reported his plans to Hitler in a meeting on 7 January 1944. In this meeting, Hitler emphasized two things: unity and common (political and military) goals. He insisted that all officers be ideologically committed to National Socialism. He likewise ordered that all officers, regardless of upbringing or social status, receive promotion based upon merit and politico-ideological commitment. He cited Marshal Tito as justification for this. He said, “It is absolutely correct when they call Tito a marshal. A man who, with nothing, keeps an entire enemy war force constantly on the jump and recovers again, deserves the title of marshal more than anyone here deserves the title of Colonel General or field marshal” (459). 44. Mark Spoerer and Jochen Fleischhacker, “Forced Laborers in Nazi Germany: Categories, Numbers, and Survivors,” Journal of
Interdisciplinary History 33, no. 2 (Autumn, 2002): 181,
http://www.jstor.org/stable/3656586 (accessed June 26, 2008). 45. Rigg, Hitler’s Jewish Soldiers, 193, 271, 272.
46. David Schoenbaum, Hitler’s Social Revolution: Class and Status in Nazi Germany 1933-1939, Anchor Books ed. (Garden City, NY: Double Day and Company, 1967), 221, 199. Schoenbaum accurately characterized the Third Reich not as centralist, but as polycentrist. Such a description helps explain why numerous Nazis were able to circumvent or ignore Hitler’s orders with regard to treatment of non-German minorities and foreigners, without fear of retaliation or disciplinary action.
47. J.F. Borsarello and W. Palinckx, Wehrmacht and SS: CaucasianMuslim-Asian Troops (France: Heimdal, 2007), 24.
48. Muñoz, ed., Soviet Nationals, 26-28. Alexiev has shown that Germany’s Eastern military and political policies underwent significant changes during the campaign in the Caucasus in the summer of 1942, as evidenced by its notably benevolent occupation policy in the Volga-DonKuban-Kalmyck region (26).
49. Heiber and Glantz, eds., 53, 75, 86, 775, 856. About 400,000 “Eastern troops” were in German service by early 1943 (856).
50. See Lenni Brenner, ed., Fifty One Zionist Documents: Zionist Collaboration with the Nazis (Fort Lee, NJ: Barricade Books, 2002) and Ingrid Weckert, Jewish Emigration from the Third Reich (Chicago, IL: Theses and Dissertations Press, 2004).
1‡ Borsarello and Palinckx, 23.
51. Ingrid Weckert, Flashpoint: Kristallnacht 1938 Instigators, Victims and Beneficiaries, trans. Institute for Historical Review, First English language ed. (Costa Mesa, CA: Institute for Historical Review, 1991), 114-115. 52. Ibid., 115. See also Heritage Civilization and the Jews, “Out of the Ashes 1919-1947: Ha’avara (Transfer) Agreement Documents,” Public Broadcasting Service, http://www.pbs.org/wnet/heritage/episode8/documents/documents_11.html (accessed January 10, 2009).

53. Weckert, Jewish Emigration, 49.
54. Brenner, ed., 111.
55. Ibid., 155.
56. J. Duncan, “SS Officer von Mildenstein,” posting to Axis History forum, December 18, 2008,
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=38&p=1276777 (accessed March 10, 2009).
57. David Yisraeli, The Palestine Problem in German Politics 1889-1945 (Ramat-Gan: Bar-Ilan University, 1974), 301-302.
58. Weckert, Flashpoint, 115.
59. Ibid., 116-120.
1† The Real Blaze, “Jüdischer Widerstand gegen das Haavaraabkommen,” posting to Post Scriptum Info Board discussion forum, August 26, 2006, http://www.nexusboard.net/showthread.php?siteid=6365&threadid=296556 (accessed March 10, 2009).
60. Weckert, Flashpoint, 115.
61. Sharon Gewirtz, “Anglo-Jewish Responses to Nazi Germany 1933-39: The Anti-Nazi Boycott and the Board of Deputies of British Jews,” Journal of Contemporary History 26, no. 2 (Apr., 1991): 258-259,
http://www.jstor.org/stable/260791 (accessed May 26, 2008).
62. Elaine Kurtenbach, “‘Shanghai Jews’ database to keep legacy of WWII refugees,” The China Post on the Web, June 7, 2008, http://www.chinapost.com.tw/china/local
news/shanghai/2008/06/07/159951/%E2%80%9CShanghai
Jews%E2%80%9D.htm (accessed January 17, 2009).
63. Weckert, Flashpoint, 125.
64. Mark Weber, “Zionism and the Third Reich,” The Journal of Historical Review 13, no. 4 (July-August 1993): 29-37,
http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v13/v13n4p29_Weber.html (accessed March 10,
2009).
65. Muñoz, ed., East Came West, 93.
66. Muñoz, ed., Soviet Nationals, 32.
67. Heiber and Glantz, eds., 856.
1ƒ Multi.User, Posting to HK Golden forum, October 17, 2008, http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4b/Chiang_Weikuo_Nazi_1.jpg (accessed February 25, 2009).
68. Gilad Margalit, Germany and Its Gypsies: A Post-Auschwitz Ordeal (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2002), 53.
69. Alexander Ramati, And the Violins Stopped Playing (London, England: Coronet Books, 1986), 50. This is a fiction novel based on the memoirs of Gypsy survivor Roman Mirga.
70. Margalit, 53.
71. Hitler told Otto Wagener, “Communism results in a welfare state where the standards are averaged downward” (115).
72. Domarus, 167.
73. Muñoz, ed., Soviet Nationals, 30.
74. Léon Degrelle, Epic: The Story of the Waffen SS, trans. Institute for Historical Review (Newport Beach, CA: Institute for Historical Review, 1983), 34. Note: This is the published version of Léon Degrelle’s live speech he gave at a meeting of the Institute for Historical Review in 1982. 75. Heiber and Glantz, eds., 155.
3* Eddy de Bruyne and Marc Rikmenspoel, For Rex and for Belgium: Léon Degrelle and Walloon Political and Military Collaboration 1940-45 (West Midlands, England: Helion and Company, 2004), 126. 76. Heiber and Glantz, eds., 950. The 29th and 30th Waffen SS Infantry Divisions were both ethnically Russian. The 29th was ultimately turned over to the supreme command of Andrei Vlasov (950).
77. Vladimir Baumgarten, “The Patriotic Traitors: Germany’s Soviet Allies in the War Against Stalin, 1941-1945,” Axis Europa: The Journal of the Axis Forces, 1939-1945, no. 18 (1999): 3.
78. Alfred Rosenberg, Memoirs of Alfred Rosenberg, First edition (New York, NY: Ziff Davis Publishing, 1949; Internet Archive, 2007), 96, 100, http://www.archive.org/details/NoneRosenbergMemoirs (accessed January 20, 2009).
79. Baumgarten, 3, 4, 5, 7, 13.
80. Ibid., 10.
81. Peter J. Huxley-Blythe, Under the St. Andrew’s Cross: Russian and Cossack Volunteers in World War II 1941-1945 (Bayside, NY: Europa Books, 2003), 37.
82. Baumgarten, 4; Heiber and Glantz, eds., 155. Hitler stated, “All this is quite all right” in reference to the decent treatment of Soviet defectors and Vlasovites during a military conference with Field Marshal Keitel, General Zeitzler, and Lieutenant Colonel Schmundt, on 8 June 1943 (155). It is difficult to imagine such a level of openness toward Russian collaborators, on Hitler’s behalf, so early on if he was as anti-Slavic as most historians have argued. 83. Muñoz, ed., Soviet Nationals, 36.
84. Antonio Muñoz, Generalgouvernement: Internal Security in the Eastern Occupied Polish Territories 1939-1945 (Bayside, NY: Europa Books, n.d.), 28-29.
85. Ibid., 28.
86. Siobhán Dowling, “Anti-Semitism Book Could Land Historian in Jail,” Spiegel International on the Web, January 18, 2008,
http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,529320,00.html (accessed January 2, 2009).
87. Klaus-Peter Friedrich, “Collaboration in a ‘Land without a Quisling’: Patterns of Cooperation with the Nazi German Occupation Regime in Poland during World War II,” Slavic ReviewSlavic Review 716, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3649910 (accessed August 23, 2008).
88. Ibid., 721.
89. Ibid., 743, 744.
90. Ibid., 733.
91. Baumgarten, 7.
92. Franz Wimmer-Lamquet, Balkenkreuz und Halbmond: Als Abwehroffizier in Afrika und im Vorderen Orient (Graz: Ares Verlag, 2005), 117.
1∫ Ibid., photo appendix.
93. George Lepre, Himmler’s Bosnian Division: The Waffen-SS Handschar Division 1943-1945 (Atglen, PA: Schiffer Military History, 1997), 33.
94. Carlos Caballero Jurado and Kevin Lyles, Foreign Volunteers of the Wehrmacht 1941-1945 (London, England: Osprey Publishing, 1983), 3.
95. Ibid., 4.
96. Ibid., 11.
97. Ibid., 5.
98. Robert Forbes, For Europe: The French Volunteers of the Waffen-SS (England: Helion and Company, 2006), 41.
99. Ibid., 35.
100. Ibid., 41.
101. Antonio Muñoz, “33rd Waffen-Grenadier Division der SS Charlemagne,” Axis Europa: The Journal of the Axis Forces, 1939-1945 3 (n.d.): 26.
102. Heiber and Glantz, eds., 738.
103. Jason Pipes, “Slovakia! A History of the Slovak Units on the Eastern Front in World War II,” Axis Europa: The Journal of the Axis Forces,
1939-1945 (Summer 1998): 21.
104. Carlos Caballero Jurado, “Against Stalin and Stalinism, Count Grigori von Lambsdorff, 1936-1945,” trans. Antonio Muñoz, Axis Europa: The Journal of the Axis Forces, 1939-1945 (Summer 1998): 9.
105. Ervin Birnbaum, “A prologue to WWII,” The Jerusalem Post on the Web, May 14, 2008,
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1210668636842&pagename=JP ost%2FJPArticle%2FPrinter (accessed May 18, 2008).
106. Carlos Caballero Jurado, “Against Stalin and Stalinism, Count Grigori von Lambsdorff, 1936-1945 (part II),” trans. Antonio Muñoz, Axis Europa: The Journal of the Axis Forces, 1939-1945 (Fall 1998): 15.
2ƒ Muñoz and Romanko, Hitler’s White Russians, 436.
107. Jurado, “Against Stalin and Stalinism (part II),” 16.
108. Antonio Muñoz, Herakles and the Swastika: Greek Volunteers in the German Army, SS and Police 1943-1944 (Bayside, NY: Europa Books,
2002), 5-6.
109. Ibid., 25, 83.
110. Ibid., 23.
111. Ibid., 4.
112. Ibid., 36-41.
113. Ibid., 6.
114. Ibid., 24.
115. Ibid., 25.
116. Ibid., 9.
117. Ibid., 16, 14-15, 69.
118. Ibid., 27.
4* Borsarello and Palinckx, 93.
119. Muñoz, Herakles and the Swastika, 29.
120. Ibid., 50.
121. Momcilo Dobrich, Belgrade’s Best: The Serbian Volunteer Corps 1941-1945 (Bayside, NY: Axis Europa Books, 2000), 5, 6.
122. Muñoz, Herakles and the Swastika, 50-51.
123. Ibid., 58.
124. Dobrich, 5, 6.
125. Ibid., 7.
126. Muñoz, Herakles and the Swastika, 77.
127. Ibid., 79.
128. Ibid., 78.
129. Sarah Honig, “Switzerland’s neutrality - like its cheese - is full of holes,” The Jewish News Weekly of Northern California on the Web, April , April
/module/displaystory/story_id/34950/format/html/displaystory.html (accessed April 10, 2008).
130. Muñoz, ed., Soviet Nationals, 67-68.
131. Ibid., 68-73.
132. Ibid., 47-50.
133. Heiber and Glantz, eds., 160-161.
134. Schoenbaum, 154-155.
135. Heiber and Glantz, eds., 161, 162.
136. Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, First Mariner Books ed. (New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1999), 326. In Mein Kampf, Hitler called the Russians “a great people.” He said, “The most frightful example of this kind is offered by Russia, where [the Jew] killed or starved about thirty million people...in order to give a gang of Jewish journalists and stock exchange bandits domination over a great people [emphasis added].” 137. Wagener, 169.
138. Heiber and Glantz, eds., 162.
139. Hitler’s foreign policy aims remained consistent. Wagener recalled Hitler saying: “...I look to the East for work and bread for the excess millions living in Germany...There are opportunities in the East! The danger of Bolshevism even requires us to man the front to the East. A Central Europe, a Ukraine, all under German [dominion], [would] solve all the problems of the plight of the peoples of Europe. Who could reject such an idea? What objection could England have to it? Even the Near East is secured by German influence along the coast of the Aegean and the Black Sea” (53).
140. Heiber and Glantz, eds., 163, 164.
141. Brian Glyn Williams, “The Hidden Ethnic Cleansing of Muslims in the Soviet Union: The Exile and Repatriation of the Crimean Tatars,” Journal of Contemporary History 37, no. 3 (Jul., 2002): 328.
142. Ibid., 326, 328.
143. Ibid., 330.
144. Ibid., 334.
145. Reichsführer SS, Awakening: Letters of Germanic Volunteers of the SS-Division Wiking, trans. Preuss (Lincoln, NE: Preuss Publications, 2006),
8, 9, 11, 14, 15.
146. Ilkka Ahtiainen, “Finland and Germany in WW II: Brothers in arms— and partners in crime?” Helsingin Sanomat International Edition on the Web, September 28, 2008,
http://www.hs.fi/english/article/Finland+and+Germany+Brothers+in+arms+
-+and+partners+in+crime/1135239859383 (accessed October 12, 2008).
147. “Swedes Approved Secret Nazi Loan,” The Local on the Web, February 15, 2009, http://www.thelocal.se/17604/20090215/ (accessed February 20, 2009).
148. Wagener, 227-228.
5* Heinrich Hoffmann, Der Grossmufti von Palästina vom Führer empfangen (image), Picture database, available from: Das Bundesarchiv, <http://www.bild.bundesarchiv.de/cross-search/search/_1224187316/> (accessed August 23, 2008).
149. Bernard Lewis, The Middle East: A Brief History of the Last 2,000 Years (New York, NY: Simon and Schuster, 1997), 348.
150. Muñoz, ed., East Came West, 20.
151. Lepre, 75.
152. Muñoz, ed., East Came West, 20.
153. Ibid., 22.
154. Hitler told Wagener, “...The Semites seem to recognize their racial compatriots. Furthermore, it seems to me that they understand and know more about race than Europe does...Let us not lose sight of an alliance with the Arab League” (227).
155. Muñoz, ed., East Came West, 22-23.
156. Ferdinand Kuhn, Jr., “Friends of Hitler Strong in Britain,” New York Times, April 17, 1938, http://proquest.umi.com.library.norwich.edu/ (accessed August 8, 2008).
157. John Newsinger, “Blueshirts, Blackshirts, and the Spanish Civil War,” The Historical Journal 44, no. 3 (Sep., 2001): 825, 827,
http://www.jstor.org/stable/3133586 (accessed August 16, 2008).
158. Ibid., 828.
159. “Ex-Flier Confesses to 21 Acts of Treason,” New York Times, January
18, 1949, http://proquest.umi.com.library.norwich.edu/ (accessed January 11, 2009). See also Rand, “Picture of American Waffen SS Member,” posting to Axis History Forum, September 4, 2004, http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=51&t=58686 (accessed June 23, 2008). 160. Tina Campt, Other Germans: Black Germans and the Politics of Race, Gender, and Memory in the Third Reich (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2005), 121-122, 123.
161. Firpo W. Carr, Germany’s Black Holocaust 1890-1945 (Kearney, NE: Scholar Technological Institute of Research, 2003), 208.
162. Antonio Muñoz, For Croatia and Christ: The Croatian Army in World War II 1941-1945 (Bayside, NY: Europa Books, 2003), 10-11. 163. Ibid., 11.
164. Ibid.
165. Ibid.
166. Ibid., 41.
167. Sourd, 5.
168. Ibid., 9.
169. Carlos Caballero Jurado, “Iberian Condors: The Spanish Blue Squadrons in Russia, 1941-1944,” Axis Europa: The Journal of the Axis Forces, 1939-1945 (Spring 1999): 39-40.
6* Sourd, 1.
170. Heiber and Glantz, eds., 713.
171. Baumgarten, 10.
172. Michael Logusz, Galicia Division: The Waffen-SS 14th Grenadier Division 1943-1945 (Atglen, PA: Schiffer Military History, 1997), 26. 173. Ibid., 27.
174. Ibid., 59-60.
175. Ibid., 65.
176. Ibid., 75.
177. Muñoz, ed., Soviet Nationals, 103.
178. Logusz, 127, 128.
179. Ibid., 131, 133.
180. Ibid., 134.
181. Muñoz, ed., Soviet Nationals, 81, 87.
182. Ibid., 88, 98.
183. Huxley-Blythe, 142.
184. Muñoz, ed., Soviet Nationals, 104. Baumgarten stated, “Pannwitz certainly did not qualify for repatriation, and could not be considered guilty of treason to a country to which he never belonged. Nor was there anything in his service record to suggest he had ever been a war criminal” (104). 185. Ibid., 104-105.
# Heiber and Glantz, eds., 650. General Burgdorf commented, “The commander of the Cossack Division, General von Pannwitz, always visits his troops in Cossack uniform. I saw a photo of him. He looks very wild—he put the scimitar in front” (650).
186. Muñoz, ed., East Came West, 150.
187. Ibid.
188. Ibid., 153.
189. Ibid., 149.
190. Ibid.
191. Ibid., 159.
192. Ibid., 159-160.
193. Adrian Blomfield, “Re-examining Rzhev,” The Moscow News Weekly on the Web, March 5, 2009, http://www.mnweekly.ru/com
ment/20090305/55369706.html (accessed March 12, 2009).
194. Muñoz, ed., East Came West, 160.
195. Ibid., 151.
196. Ibid., 154, 152-153.
197. Ibid., 154.
198. Ibid., 155.
199. Ibid., 165.
200. Ibid., 160.
201. Ibid., 162.
202. Ibid., 163.
203. Ibid., 165, 166.
204. Nigel Thomas, Carlos Caballero Jurado, and Simon McCouaig, Wehrmacht Auxiliary Forces (London, UK: Osprey Publishing, 1992), 3.
205. Ibid., 16, 17.
206. Ibid., 17.
207. Ibid.
208. Ibid., 17-18.
209. Muñoz, ed., East Came West, 239.
210. Ibid., 240.
211. Ibid., 240-241.
212. Ibid., 145.
2‡ Borsarello and Palinckx, 25.
213. Muñoz, ed., East Came West, 145.
214. Ibid., 146.
215. Rigg, Hitler’s Jewish Soldiers, 83-84.
216. Joseph Göbbels, The Goebbels Diaries, 1942-1943, ed. and trans. Louis P. Lochner (New York, NY: Doubleday and Company, 1948), 164.
217. Rigg, Hitler’s Jewish Soldiers, 84.
218. “‘Good Nazi of Nanjing’ sparks debate,” BBC News on the Web, March 19, 2009, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7907437.stm (accessed March 21, 2009).
219. Wikipedia, “Chiang Wei-kuo,”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiang_Wei-kuo (accessed February 26, 2009).
220. Ibid.
221. Wagener, 204-205.
222. Laura Rice, “African Conscripts/European Conflicts: Race, Memory, and the Lessons of War,” Cultural Critique, no. 45 (Spring, 2000): 119, http://www.jstor.org/stable/1354369 (accessed June 26, 2008). See also Arthur de Gobineau’s The Inequality of the Human Races (New York, NY: Howard Fertig, 1999), 182-183. Gobineau confessed, “Artistic genius...arose only after the intermarriage of white and black...from the union of white and yellow, certain intermediary peoples have sprung, who are superior to the purely Finnish tribes as well as to the negroes. I do not deny that these [hybrids] are good results” (208-209). Gobineau’s work clearly influenced Hitler’s thoughts on race. While both men expressed reluctance to accept “hybrids,” both of them acknowledged some degree of “hybridization” as acceptable (if not desirable) nevertheless.
223. Ted Junker, interview by Donna Lenz Wright, The Week on the Web, June 9, 2006, http://hitlerresearch.org/index8_files/TJunker_Hitler_memorial.html (accessed January 20, 2009).
224. Domarus, 158-161.
225. Lukacs, 122. Hitler told Wagener, “What is important is not regulations for breeding in the form of a studbook, as those idiots—and we have a few of them in our ranks as well—want to impose” (225). More than likely, Hitler was referring to individuals like Richard Walther Darré and Heinrich Himmler, both of whom were undeniably racist. Himmler was responsible for masterminding the Lebensborn program, which sought to create a new European aristocracy based on race as opposed to class. See The Telegraph, “Man kidnapped by SS discovers true identity,” The Telegraph on the Web, January 7, 2009, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/4142453/Man-kidnapped-by-SS-discovers-true-identity.html (accessed January 10, 2009); and see Domarus, 133-134. Domarus said of Hitler’s Weltanschauung (worldview): “The blood that is the nexus between members of a Volk is not a simple biological fact but is a spiritual connection that transcends the mere material. Hitler used the word Volksgenossen, to address his fellow Germans: the term has the force of ‘blood-related comrades in life.’ True Volksgenossen dealt with each other in a manner Hitler described as Volksgemeinschaft indicating an open, cooperative, selfless family, with loving ways...However, Hitler saw a further factor influencing human development: there was a corrupting antiVolk force, an explicit evil...Hitler saw this force as the Jew.” Domarus’ assessment is supported by Hitler’s own words. He told Dietrich Eckart: “The truth...is...one can only understand the Jew when one knows what his ultimate goal is. And that goal is, beyond world domination, the annihilation of the world...To be obliged to try to annihilate us with all his might, but at the same time to sense that that must lead inevitably to his own ruin, therein lies the crux of the matter. If you will: the tragedy of Lucifer.” See Dietrich Eckart’s Bolshevism from Moses to Lenin: A Conversation between Adolf Hitler and Me (Hillsboro, WV: National Vanguard Books, 1999), 72-73.
226. Wagener, 277.
227. Hitler’s Private World, Google Video, directed by David Howard (2005; Monster Films, Ltd. in cooperation with The History Channel, 2009), http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2763127556620650689&q=hitler +speaks+duration%3Along&total=36&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=searc h&plindex=0 (accessed January 13, 2009). See also: “Hitler’s Private World,” Military History, The History Channel, http://www.thehistorychannel.co.uk/site/tv_guide/MH_Listings/prog_info_MH.php?TV_Link= HITLER’S%20PRIVATE%20WORLD&id=8 (accessed January 13, 2009). Eva Braun’s video footage shows Hitler complaining to an adjutant about Himmler’s Aryan expeditions: “These expeditions, to what end? Like looking for ghosts in the attic. What culture is there in a clay jug I ask you?”
228. Albert Speer, Inside the Third Reich: Memoirs by Albert Speer, trans. Richard and Clara Winston (New York, NY: The Macmillan Company,
1970), 141-144. Speer wrote: “Hitler believed that the culture of the Greeks had reached the peak of perfection in every field” (143).
229. Arthur Hertzberg, The French Enlightenment and the Jews: The Origins of Modern Anti-Semitism (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1990), 300.
230. “Nazi Racial Ideas Assailed by Shaw,” New York Times, July 10, 1938, http://proquest.umi.com.library.norwich.edu/ (accessed January 11, 2009).
231. John Grenier, The First Way of War: American War Making on the Frontier, 1607-1814 (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2005),
10, 13, 15, 144-145, 171.
232. Clarence Lusane, Hitler’s Black Victims: The Historical Experiences of Afro-Germans, European Blacks, Africans, and African Americans in the Nazi Era (New York, NY: Routledge, 2003), 66, 125.
233. Gerald Horne, Race War: White Supremacy and the Japanese Attack on the British Empire (New York, NY: New York University Press, 2003), 122.
234. Ibid., 105.
235. Showing Our Colors: Afro-German Women Speak Out, ed. May Opitz, Katharina Oguntoye, and Dagmar Schultz, trans. Anne V. Adams (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1986), 62.
236. See Ika Hügel-Marshall, Invisible Woman: Growing Up Black in Germany, trans. Elizabeth Gaffney (New York: NY: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2001).
237. Showing Our Colors, 101, 103.
238. “The original Indiana Jones: Otto Rahn and the temple of doom,” The Telegraph on the Web, May 22, 2008,
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2008/05/22/sv_rahn1
25.xml&page=2 (accessed November 11, 2008).
239. Wimmer-Lamquet, 147-149.
240. Bryan Mark Rigg, Lives of Hitler’s Jewish Soldiers: Untold Tales of Men of Jewish Descent Who Fought for the Third Reich (Lawrence, KS:

University Press of Kansas, 2009), 7. Rigg’s latest study has confirmed that many Jewish soldiers were as anti-Communist as the majority of Nazis. This was one reason why some of them served the Third Reich, in spite of its anti-Jewish “racism” (3). The fact of the matter is that the Third Reich’s institutional racial discrimination against Jews failed to prevent tens-ofthousands of Jews from serving in the German Armed Forces. 241. Jody K. Biehl, “A Jew in the SS,” Spiegel International on the Web, September 15, 2004, http://www.spiegel.de/interna
tional/0,1518,327936,00.html (accessed January 12, 2009).
242. Rigg, Hitler’s Jewish Soldiers, 200, 213.
3ƒ Anita Kugler, Scherwitz: Der jüdische SS-Offizier (Cologne: Verlag Kiepenheuer and Witsch, 2004), photo index.
243. Lusane, 111-113; Campt, 118-119.
244. Horne, 126-127.
245. Wimmer-Lamquet, 47. In German: “Es war nicht einfach, ein Schwarzer zu sein. Selten konnte man es allen recht machen. Die Afrikaner nahmen die Herrschaft der Weissen als unabwendbar hin und erduldeten oft Unvorstellbares... die Willkür der Weissen hielt die Afrikaner in Atem.” 246. Muñoz, ed., East Came West, 117, 118, 133.
° BigBaribal, posting to militaryphotos.net forum, April 12, 2005, http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums/archive/index.php/t-40888.html (accessed June 26, 2008).
247. Wagener, 280.
248. Martin Bormann and Adolf Hitler, Hitler’s Table-Talk 1941-1944: His Private Conversations, ed. Hugh Trevor-Roper, trans. Norman Cameron and R.H. Stevens (New York, NY: Enigma Books, 2000), 140. Note: Henry Picker, Heinrich Heim, and François Genoud also contributed to this stenographic record. Its authenticity is disputed.
249. Rigg, Hitler’s Jewish Soldiers, 148-150.
250. Ibid., 143.
251. Ibid., 171.
252. Ibid., 165.
253. Lusane, 72.
254. Raffael Scheck, Hitler’s African Victims: The German Army Massacres of Black French Soldiers in 1940 (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 103.
255. Horne, 106.
256. Ottley, 160-161.
7* Muñoz, Hitler’s Muslims, 119.
257. Ottley, 161.
258. Ibid.
259. Ottley reported that Hitler told Wright he admired Booker T. Washington and Paul Robeson (161).
261. Peter Ephross, “Jesse Owens, Man and Myth at the 1936 Olympics,” The Jewish Daily Forward on the Web, January 19, 2007, http://www.forward.com/article/jesse-owens-man-and-myth-at-the-1936-olympics/ (accessed September 13, 2008).
262. Horne, 106.
2# Steven Kasher, “The Art of Hitler,” October 59 (Winter, 1992): 66, http://www.jstor.org/stable/778831 (accessed April 4, 2009).
263. Afzal1710, “Jesse Owens Vs Adolf Hitler,” video clip upload to YouTube, February 15, 2007,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdcxfYP62ZE&feature=related (accessed January 23, 2009).
264. Heinz Weichardt, Nazi Terror: A Short Autobiography of a Jewish National Socialist (Yorkshire, UK: The Heretical Press, 2004), 24. 265. See Donald McRae’s Heroes without a Country: America’s Betrayal of Joe Louis and Jesse Owens (New York, NY: Ecco-HarperCollins, 2003). 266. Tina Campt and Clarence Lusane seem to agree that African Americans and Africans from Africa were treated better by Nazi society than were Afro-German citizens of the Third Reich. However, AfroGermans were not treated worse under Hitler than they were in the postwar period, as evidenced by Ika Hügel-Marshall’s horrific experiences growing up in postwar Germany. Afro-Germans did not have their citizenship revoked either, unlike Jews.
267. Lusane, 98.
268. Horne, 127.
269. Ottley, 153.
270. Ibid., 154-155.
271. “Gandhi was anti-black, charges new biography,” World Net Daily on the Web, May 11, 2008,
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=63906 (accessed May 14, 2008).
272. Wimmer-Lamquet, 46-49.
273. Ottley, 24, 25, 27. Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, an Afro-British composer, had his “frizzly” hair set on fire by English boys “to see if it would burn” (27). 274. “Lynchings: By State and Race, 1882-1968,” The Trial of Sheriff Joseph Shipp et al., University of Missouri-Kansas School of Law, http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/shipp/shipp.html (accessed November 13, 2008).
275. Lusane, 135-136.
276. Ibid., 267-270.
277. Richard Frank, “Seminar 5, Lecture 6: The American Military Experience Part V—The Role of Military Medicine and the Long Road to Integration,” 13, Angel Learning, Norwich University,
https://norwich.angellearning.com/ (accessed June 26, 2008). 279. Carr, 64.
280. Thurston Gaines, interview by author, November 8, 2008. 281. Luther Smith, Jr., interview by author, October 16, 2008. 282. Anthony Acevedo, interview by Wayne Drash, Thelma Gutierrez, and Sara Weisfeldt, WW II vet held in Nazi slave camp breaks silence: ‘Let it be known’, CNN, November 11, 2008,
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/11/11/acevedo.pow/?iref=mpstoryview#cnnSTCText (accessed November 13, 2008).
283. Luther Smith, Jr., interview by author, October 16, 2008. 284. Alexander Jefferson, Red Tail Captured, Red Tail Free: The Memoirs of a Tuskegee Airman and POW (New York, NY: Fordham University Press, 2005), xvii.
285. Alexander Jefferson, interview by author, October 3, 2008. 286. Harold Brown, interview by author, November 6, 2008. 287. Jefferson, Red Tail, 23.
288. Ibid., 25.
289. Ibid., 38.
290. Ibid., 55.
8* From the front cover of Jefferson’s Red Tail Captured, Red Tail Free. 291. Ibid., 64, 101.
292. Alexander Jefferson, interview by author, October 3, 2008. 293. Ibid.
294. Jefferson, Red Tail, 107.
295. Walter McCreary, interview by Jamie van Wagtendonk, Radio Netherlands, June 13, 2008, http://www.radionetherlands.nl/thestatewerein/otherstates/tswi-080613-tuskegee-airman (accessed June 20, 2008). 296. Walter McCreary, interview by NBC4 News, NBC4 News, February 26, 2008, http://www.nbc4.com/news/15418442/detail.html (accessed February 28, 2008).
297. Wagener, 289.
298. Lusane, 113.
299. Raffael Scheck, e-mail communication with author, October 21, 2008. 300. Lusane, 113.
301. Campt, 129-132. Campt characterized this Afro-German social phenomenon during the Third Reich as “other within.”
302. Lusane, 113.
9* From the front cover of Wimmer-Lamquet’s Balkenkreuz und Halbmond. 303. Forbes, 115.
304. Ibid., 22, 25, 115, 116.
305. Eric Lefévre and Jean Mabire, Sur les pistes de la Russie centrale: Les Français de la LVF, 1943 (Paris, France: Grancher, 2003), 117. 306. English translation: “...On the left undoubtedly appears Louis Joachim-Eugène, the future general delegate of the African labor branch of the Todt Organisation. The tallest man, in the center, is undoubtedly Norbert Adalbert Henri Désirée, who was of use to the battalion from beginning to end: it was thanks to his intervention that sergeant Buissonière, considered lost to the [Russian] enemy on the bank of the Dessna River on 17 May 1943, was brought back [to safety]” (Ibid.). 2† Ibid.
307. Malbret17, “Black men in german army,” posting to Axis History Forum, July 16, 2007,
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=51&t=12739&st=0&sk=t&sd =a&sid=c390fec502526ed08b30e4c7e7fd84e5&start=15 (accessed July 23, 2008).
308. Pierre Philippe Lambert and Gérard le Marec, Les Francais Sous Le Casque Allemand: Europe 1941-1945 Casque Allemand: Europe 1941-1945 25, 142-143.
309. Campt referred to Hauck by his real name while Lusane referred to him as “Peter K.”
310. Lusane, 113.
311. Ibid.
312. Hans Massaquoi, Destined to Witness: Growing Up Black in Nazi Germany (New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers, 1999), 308. 313. Ibid., 55.
314. Lusane, 35.
3‡ Lambert and Le Marec, 24.
315. Lusane, 113.
316. Ibid.
317. Ibid., 114.
318. Muñoz, ed., East Came West, 208.
319. Ibid., 117.
320. Ibid.
10* Muñoz, Hitler’s Muslims, 123.
321. Muñoz, ed., East Came West, 216.
322. Ibid., 217.
323. Ibid.
11* Kasher, 64.
324. Wimmer-Lamquet, 70.
325. Raffael Scheck, e-mail communication with author, October 21, 2008. 326. Robert W. Kestling, “Blacks Under the Swastika: A Research Note,” The Journal of Negro History 83, no. 1 (Winter, 1998): 84,
http://www.jstor.org/stable/2668561 (accessed June 26, 2008). 327. Lusane, 155.
328. Myron Echenberg, “‘Morts Pour la France’: The African Soldier in France During the Second World War,” The Journal of African History 26, no. 4, World War II and Africa (1985): 365, http://www.jstor.org/stable/181655 (accessed June 26, 2008). Echenberg estimated that as many as 25,000 blacks died serving both Vichy and Free France.
329. Scheck, 62, 128.
330. Ibid., 17, 100, 113, 165.
331. Ibid., 72-73, 142.
332. Ibid., 82-83.
333. Ibid., 118-119.
334. Lusane, 149.
335. Scheck, 127. Scheck stated, “[o]ccasionally white French officers admitted in their reports that they had needed to prevent the abuse of German POWs by black soldiers” (127).
336. Ibid., 72-73.
337. Ibid., 148.
338. Ibid., 137, 138, 141.
339. Ibid., 133.
340. Grenier, 32.
341. Scheck, 68.
342. Lusane, 149.
343. Ibid., 152, 153.
344. Ibid., 153.
345. Ibid., 156.
346. Ibid., 157, 158.
347. Ibid., 152.
348. Ibid., 157.
349. Ibid., 158.
ô Schlikum, Griechenland. - Farbiger Soldat der Legion “Freies Arabien” auf einem Schemel auf einem Anhänger sitzend, Muli oder Esel, zwei Infanteristen; PK 690 (image), Picture database, available from: Das Bundesarchiv, <http://www.bild.bundesarchiv.de/cross
search/search/_1238438831/?search[view]=detail&search[focus]=2> (accessed March 30, 2009).
350. Lusane, 158.
351. Ibid., 159-160.
352. Ibid., 160-161.
353. Ibid., 161-162, 163.
354. Ibid., 163.
355. Ibid., 163-164.
356. Ibid., 164.
357. Ibid., 169.
358. Ibid., 170, 171.
359. Ibid., 174.
360. Ibid., 172.
361. Ibid., 238-240.
362. Ibid., 243.
363. Gilad Margalit, Germany and Its Gypsies: A Post-Auschwitz Ordeal (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2002), 43, 47. 364. Ibid., 50.
365. Ibid., 48.
366. Ibid., 213, 44.
367. Ibid., 44.
368. Ibid., 47.
369. Ibid., 50.
370. Ibid., 54, 165.
12* Ibid., 45.
371. Ibid., 39.
372. Ibid., 40, 52.
373. Ibid., 50.
374. Ibid., 34.
375. Ibid., 49.
376. Ibid., 53.
377. Jörg Friedrich, The Fire: The Bombing of Germany 1940-1945, trans. Allison Brown (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2006). 378. Rigg, Hitler’s Jewish Soldiers, 150.
379. Mike Thomson, “Paris liberation made ‘whites only,’” BBC News on the Web, April 6, 2009, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7984436.stm (accessed April 14, 2009).
380. Harold Brown, interview by author, November 6, 2008. 381. Ilse Koehn, Mischling Second Degree: My Childhood in Nazi Germany (New York, NY: Puffin Books, 1977), 206-208.
382. Giles MacDonogh, After the Reich: The Brutal History of the Allied Occupation (New York, NY: Basic Books, 2007), 7-8, 229, 238, 251, 274, 402, 431, 479.
383. Ibid., 118.
384. Huxley-Blythe, 149-150, 160-164.
385. Patrick J. Buchanan, “Bush, Obama, and the Gaza Blitz,” Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture on the Web, December 30, 2008, http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/?p=833 (accessed January 4, 2009). 386. Lusane, 135.
387. Bruce Cumings, “Korea: forgotten nuclear threats,” Le Monde diplomatique on the Web, December 2004,
http://mondediplo.com/2004/12/08korea (accessed September 3, 2008). 388. “AP: U.S. Okayed Korean War Massacres,” Associated Press on the Web, July 5, 2008,
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/AP_U.S._Okayed_Korean_War_Massacres_ 0705.html (accessed July 10, 2008).
389. Antony Beevor, “They raped every German female from eight to 80,” The Guardian on the Web, May 1, 2002,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2002/may/01/news.features11 (accessed June 17, 2008).
390. Andrew Roberts, “Stalin’s army of rapists: The brutal war crime that Russia and Germany tried to ignore,” The Daily Mail on the Web, October 24, 2008, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1080493/Stalins-armyrapists-The-brutal-war-crime-Russia-Germany-tried-ignore.html (accessed November 3, 2008).
391. MacDonogh, I.
392. Richard C. Dujardin, “At CCRI, documenting Stalin’s genocide,” The Providence Journal on the Web, November 9, 2008,
, November 9, 2008,

08_3QC75DP_v14.2c2579c.html (accessed November 10, 2008). 13* Stalins Sohn - in deutscher Kriegsgefangenschaft (image), Picture database, available from: Das Bundesarchiv,
<http://www.bundesarchiv.de/aktuelles/aus_dem_archiv/galerie/00194/inde x.html?index=0&id=0&nr=2#> (accessed March 25, 2009).
393. See, for example, David Clarke’s “Great Ukrainian Famine,” The Hon. David C. Clarke MLC, Parliament of New South Wales, http://www.davidclarkemlc.com.au/Pages/Article.aspx?ID=237 (accessed February 1, 2009).
14* Photo from SS Creed Volume Four: Jews, trans. Preuss (Lincoln, NE: Preuss Publications, 2005), 40.
394. John Sack, An Eye for an Eye: The Story of Jews Who Sought Revenge for the Holocaust, Fourth ed. (New York, NY: BasicBooks, 2000), 106.
395. Ibid., 107.
396. Ibid., 164, 171.
397. Ibid., 222. See also: The Institute of National Remembrance, Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation, “Salomon Morel and the camp at Schwientochlowitz-Zgoda,” http://www.ipn.gov.pl/portal/en/2/71/Response_by_the_State_of_Israel_to_t he_application_for_the_extradition_of_Salomo.html (accessed January 3, 2009).
398. Ibid., 114.
15* Ibid., photo appendix.
399. Muñoz, ed., Soviet Nationals, 116.
400. Translated by Veronica Clark, Friedrich Berg, and Wilf Heink; edited by Veronica Clark.
401. Translated by Friedrich Berg and edited by Veronica Clark. 402. Translated by Friedrich Berg and edited by Veronica Clark. 403. Translated and edited by Veronica Clark.