Talk:Persecution of black people in Nazi Germany

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OTRS permission?

The author of this article has permission confirmed with OTRS to post material copied from the US Holocaust Memorial Museum under OTRS ticket #2007071910012533. -- But|seriously|folks  22:37, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

See below; permission is not confirmed in that ticket. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 18:39, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

Name

would anybody object if I renamed this article to the more encyclopedic Black people in Nazi Germany and the Holocaust? "History of" adds nothing (obviously it is historical by its very nature), and "Blacks" is not the most encyclopedic term to use when talking about an entire race of people. If there are no objections here, I will make the move next week.--Jackyd101 (talk) 17:18, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

There is hardly anything encyclopedic about this article, really. Hakluyt bean (talk) 23:45, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

yes I have objections. one thoing is talking about a race or an ethnicity of people in a certain country, in a certain period (early 1900s), one thing is talking about the Holocaust, or now known as the Shoah (although this way it sounds like an only jewish matter).

moreover ia gree on changing the term "Blacks" whichs says nothing, into its proper scientific term to describe the black coloured African origined race: "negro" or "negroid" is much better- even the USA army now adopts it — Preceding unsigned comment added by 5.170.96.154 (talk) 09:28, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

References

I demand references for the information in this article stated, to my see, this article is not impartial at all. Nazis din't kill any black people as i know. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 201.242.115.231 (talk) 12:37, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

Article Inconsistency

In the article “Nazism”, I am not sure about what is listed in the article as “exclusionary treatment”, but treatment of Jehovah’s Witness and Homosexuals falls closer to treatment of Jews and Romani. All the above were subject to being placed into concentration camps, while according to this Wikipedia article “Blacks in Nazi Germany”, treatment to Blacks were not nearly as bad nor were they subject to being placed in concentration camps. Possibly more appropriate (in the “Nazism" article) would be to move JW and Romani into the former group, leaving Blacks in the “exclusionary treatment” group. Either way, there is a certain amount of inconsistency between the “Nazism” article and the “Blacks in Nazi Germany” article. I was going to place this posting in the “Nazism” article, but was deterred when I saw the amount of material on the respective Talk page, which is several pages long and needs to be edited in some form or fashion for clarity.([User talk: retrograde62] 12:56, 25 July 2012 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.216.163.102 (talk)

I must make a few objections about the treatment of black prisoners. infact, it is complete bullshit to state that there was social segregation in war camps. that existed in british and American war camps!! in north Africa, Lybia, Rommel put them all together, always!! he even had complaints from british officers lamenting they wanted to be separated from the coloured and indian troops, but Rommel replied: "they fought with you, they will be prisoners with you". source: The Army of the desert", by Arrigo Petacco (a well known Italian historian, with left political views!!) PS. even Jesse Owens said that, in his journey to Berlin for the Oplympics, he never was treated so well: no segregation on buses, no special guest rooms in hotels...he could sit where he wanted and could have the room on the floor he liked most!! in the democratic USA he could not........ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 5.170.96.154 (talk) 09:38, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

Copyright problem

This article was listed for copyright investigation at the copyright problems board on 2 October 2011. The problem is that the OTRS ticket referenced above actually does not confirm that he has permission to post material copied from the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. He only confirms that he works for the museum. He does not mention authorization to license content at all. I have delayed blanking this for weeks as I have written to first the contributor and then the museum (under two different addresses) to try to confirm that he was authorized to license their text. I have now put in a phone call to them and hoping to get a response, but since they have replied to none of my prior efforts to verify, I have some concerns that they may not be any more forthcoming over the phone. Since they have not confirmed license in the past weeks, the content is currently removed (seemed preferable to using the "copyvio" template, since it is one section, although we can do that if others prefer) pending verification of permission. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 18:39, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

Improving references

After this article was thoroughly criticized (and tagged) by askhistorians on reddit, I decided to start going through and removing unsourced and unsupported statements and adding sourced material. I've only examined the first half of the article, but I haven't been very impressed with the quality of Lusane's book so far. Then I found this highly critical review. I'm just going to find higher quality sources and ditch Lusane entirely. Any objections? Laura Scudder | talk 00:07, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

Are you sure that the sources were that unreliable, or was this more motivated by political correctness? Fact is there seems to be a compulsion among people to revise the Third Reich as exclusively evil and ignore its many bureaucratic inconsistencies and curious inner workings of the Reich (Mischlings and incorporation of non-Aryan SS divisions during late periods of WWII, etc. etc.) that paint a more realistic light to it.

The current article is a completely different one from before, but knowing that Reddit is typically of social justice inclinations, are you sure that the previous article was such complete fabrication or is this just PC gone mad? - 94.156.70.240 (talk) 05:57, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

Since reddit only served as the inspiration to investigate, and everything directly relevant in my University's library has seemed to substantiate the position that the article was significantly downplaying events, I don't think you can really blame any perceived political agenda from reddit. The problem went beyond the reliability of the references and into the reliability of the referencing: Lusane was the only footnoted source, and most of the cited pages didn't actually support the attached statement. Scheck was listed in the bibliography, but the article didn't cover POWs at all, so that can't count as a reference. Massaquoi also wasn't being used so far as I can tell, but, as one man's memoirs, it's a primary source and thus not appropriate as a source for an encyclopedia article anyways.

If you have a problem with any of the sources in the current version of the article, let's discuss it.

So far as inconsistencies in Nazi policy, I'm not attempting to downplay that. In fact, the lack of any official policy and the resulting spectrum of experiences is one of the interesting things about this topic. I was actually reading some relevant books while I was on vacation and have some new material to expand on this. Laura Scudder | talk 21:00, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Ethnic Poles

A recent revert now twice has made me create this section, it is to do with the edit of adding ethnic Poles as "non-Aryans", this is not true. I've already discussed this with the user on their talkpage, see User_talk:Yatzhek#Ethnic_Poles_were_Aryans but the user has again decided to revert the version adding ethnic Poles and created a section on my talk page (which I removed because it was the same reply as the user gave on theirs) voicing their own opinion whilst ignoring facts and accusing me of "manipulating historical facts".

Few problems with the edit, firstly Poles were Aryan like all White Europeans (according to the official definition of it) and the source given to imply they were not and were "racially non-Aryan" does not mention Poles. There is overwhelming evidence that the Nazis regarded Poles as Aryan.

I have given enough evidence that Poles were Aryans and were thus not one the user has decided to try and add into the article. The Jews and Gypsies were also seen as "enemies of the state" along with the blacks (essentially all non-Europeans were).--Windows66 (talk) 09:58, 8 February 2014 (UTC)

You are extremely wrong by saying that Poles were pure Aryan! The "ladder/pyramid of races" according the Nazi Germany looked like this, from the bottom to the top: Jews, Gypsies, Poles, Serbs, Blacks, Mulattos, Rusyns and other Slavic peoples (excluding for example some Ukrainians who formed UPA, and some of the Croats who formed Ustasi and were collaborating with the Germans on the same basis as Italians did. Sove Slavs were deemed to have some Germanic Goth blood in them). Sounth-Europeans were in the middle of the pyramid (excluding Italians who were facist collaborants). The Japanese people for example, despite being Asian, were seen as the "honorary Aryans", mostly for political reasons. Apart from that, racially, the Germanic nations were near the top of the "racial pyramid", and ethnic Germans were the top "master race". It's you, who is trying to change the historicalfacts and manipulate them. The fact was that POLES, as well as other European Slavic peoples WERE CALLED "SUBHUMAN" and POLISH PEOPLE WERE CONSIDERED "DIRTY MASSES FROM THE EAST" as Germans called them. What's more, Germans claimed that Poles are "half-Arian mutts" that's why they were put on the "Arian side" of the ghetto! Poles had always been way darker than Germans, but the young Polish children who happened to be blonde were "a good subject for Germanization" according to the Racial policy of Nazi Germany, but most of Poles were not to be exterminated completely, but rather enslaved. The very same situation as in case of Black Africans in the Nazi Germany. Read about it, and then talk about it. And please stop littering my wall with tons of information which you don't understand. Why did you delete "ethnic Poles" as the ones who suffered as Blacks during the German regime, while you left "Gypsies/Romani" untouched? A little did you know, Gypsies were even more "Aryan" than Germans and Scandinavians! Haa! Surprised? http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/gypsies.html Hitler had a big problem with them, so he figured out a story, that Gypsies are in fact from the Aryan tribe, but are not pure enough and were expelled from India with disgrace on them, and that they deserve to die as a betraitors of Aryan blood. You totally consuse "White" with "Aryan" and you produce your own theories. Poles AT THE TIME, as almost all Svals, were regarded as half-Aryan with the West-Asian admixture from the Caucasus, Iran and Afghanistan. "The masses from the East" is what Germans called all Slavic people generally, along with the Jews, Gypsies, Armenians etc. The reason why Poles were not destined to die at first, is that they were considered to have some good portion of Aryan blood but mixed with Asian/Indo-Iranian blood. Only Germans were "Aryans" in terms of GERMAN NAZI rules. I know Poles might have a great part of Aryan genes in them, but this is what science says. And the Nazi Germans said someting different and here is my point. DONT CONFUSE the SCIENTIFIC data with NAZI DOCTRINES! By the way - Why did you start the talk about the Poles as "Aryans", while the article is about Black people in Nazi Germany and ethnic Poles (which means non-Jewish Poles) were given as an example of being persecuted, but not perished completely as Jews? PS - did you know that millions of people died during the Shoa, while 6 milion were Jews, 2 million were ethnic Poles, over half-a-million were Romani (Gypsies), and the rest were other ethnicities? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust#Non-Jewish - How dare you discredit the Polish suffering during the Shoa by saying that Poles were treated as Aryans? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocaust_victims - Hope you read the whole of my message and educate yourself. Thank you. Yatzhek (talk) 13:26, 8 February 2014 (UTC)

I have no reason why you are just copying and pasting what you are posting on your own talk page here.

All White Europeans were regarded as Aryans, not just the Germans. You are wrong.

I have explained to you already, Poles were 'Aryan'. The reason I have left Gypsies in the article is because they were regarded as racial enemies of the state along with Jews, this was not the case with ethnic Poles.

In the case of Poles, ethnic Poles were placed into the 'Aryan side' of the ghettos. The reason we're discussing Poles as Aryans is because you are saying they are "racially non-Aryans" but they were not and the source given does NOT say that.

Please stop lying and continuing to copy and paste text in several different places at once, there is no call for it.

You seem to give a good talk but fail to provide any sources to your text. Also again, stop getting personal, you are personally attacking me, see WP:PA.--Windows66 (talk) 14:29, 8 February 2014 (UTC)

I just can't believe how wrong can a person be and still believe in his personal "truth". If Poles are fully "Arryan", why did you remove "ethnic Poles" but left "Gypsies" untouched? Answer me so you can discredit yourself a little bit more. Yatzhek (talk) 15:09, 8 February 2014 (UTC)

Because Gypsies along with Jews were classified by the Nuremberg Laws as "racial enemies of the state" because of their blood, this was not the case with ethnic Poles.--Windows66 (talk) 16:14, 8 February 2014 (UTC)

Did the Nuremberg Laws say someting about Black African people and their genes? Yatzhek (talk) 17:15, 8 February 2014 (UTC)

Yes. They were considered to be an inferior race of 'alien blood' and on the 26 November 1935, the laws were extended to "Gypsies, Negroes or their bastard offspring".--Windows66 (talk) 17:18, 8 February 2014 (UTC)

Reports of fraternization between Polish women and German soldiers brought about a directive to the press to promulgate that links between Poles and Germans brought about a decline in German blood, and that any connection with Polish extraction was dangerous, and to describe Poles as on the same level as Jews and Gypsies in order to discourage association. The Nazi Germany government on 8 March 1940 issued the Polish decrees with regard to the Polish forced laborer workers in Germany, one of the obligations was that any sexual relations between Poles and Germans would result in the death penalty. .

— Source: Jeffrey Herf, The Jewish Enemy, p58 ISBN 978-0-674-02738-1.

Yatzhek (talk) 12:58, 9 February 2014 (UTC)

Which was nothing to do with the Aryan race but the "honor of the German people", no such racial theory could be used against the Poles or any Slavs. It was not to do with the Nuremberg Laws neither, also... all sexual relations between Germans and foreign workers (not just Poles) was banned.--Windows66 (talk) 16:56, 9 February 2014 (UTC)

You said here that you would not bother to try and edit the article no more and that I "won", why have you now continued to try and edit something that has been refuted time and time again? There becomes a consensus with things and it is not on your side, I mean your even recent edits on the Racial policy of Nazi Germany which can be found [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] were instantly challenged here by another Wikipedia editor.--Windows66 (talk) 17:03, 9 February 2014 (UTC)

I'm going to have to call you on this Windows: in no way shape or form did the Nazis consider any Slavic peoples Aryan. "Following Gobineau and others, Hitler claimed that the 'Aryans' alone were the 'culture-creating race'. The Chinese and Japanese were merely 'culture-bearing'; the other races, i.e. Black and Slavs, of lesser value, while the 'Jewish race' was the embodiment of evil." (Burleigh 1991, The Racial State: Germany 1933-1945, p. 38) Even in Mein Kampf, Hitler rails at length about how the triumph of Slavic elements over German ones within the Austrian Empire led to its downfall (Book 1, Chapter 2) and generally denigrates Slavs throughout. Like many elements of Nazi racial ideology, the idea that Slavs were a lesser people was not a new current in German thought, just one that was embraced and enlarged upon. In fact, the very idea that the Germans' Lebensraum would come from expansion east at the expense of Slavs can be seen already in 1900. (Evans 2003, The Coming of the Third Reich, p. 34)

Poles were targeted alongside Jews for resettlement out of areas annexed to the Reich to be replaced by ethnic Germans, Polish workers were prohibited from socializing with their German comrades (Burleigh 1991, p. 298), Polish criminals were kept segregated from German criminals in separate camps (Burleigh, p. 224), etc. This is not how the Nazi state treats Aryans.

What the invading and occupying Germans did in Poland from September 1939 was not so much the product of war as of longer-term processes of indoctrination, building on a deep-rooted feeling that Slavs and Eastern Jews were subhumans and that political enemies had no rights of any kind. Typical in this repect was General Gotthard Heinrici, no Nazi fanatic but a dyed-in-the-wool professional soldier, whose letters revealed deep-seated prejudices in their casual association of Slavs, Jews, dirt and vermin.[...] Thus when the German forces took what they conceived of as retaliatory actions against the Polish resistance to the invasion, taking hostages, shooting civilians, burning people alive, razing farms to the ground, and much more, they were not acting out of military necessity, but in the service of an ideology of racial hatred and contempt that was to be largely absent in their invasion of other countries further to the west. (Evans 2008, The Third Reich at War, p. 103-4)

All of that said, Slavs are completely irrelevant to this particular article, and the introduction of them just seems to be in service of an agenda. That agenda, acknowledging that Slavs suffered persecution and genocide under the Nazis, is a totally uncontroversial one in the scholarship - it just doesn't belong here. Laura Scudder | talk 21:13, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

1.152.108.80 (talk) 22:56, 11 June 2018 (UTC) When the war stared, the German military discovered that about 12,000 German civilians had been killed gruesomely, with axes etc. (Bromberg 5,500), which is rarely mentioned. The evil Germans retaliated by killing 2,000 Polish civilians, which is often mentioned. Go figure!

Suggested additions

It occurs to me that there are two topics which could be included in this page, either in full, or by including an outline and a link to other articles:

• Black sportspeople: The famous 1936 Summer Olympics (with Jesse Owens), and other occasions when black competitors from other nations visited Germany
• Black diplomats and Germany's relation with their countries

If you can find sources, please consider adding such content. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 23:02, 15 February 2014 (UTC)

Good suggestions. I'm not really up on Jesse Owens's experience, beyond the standard history. I do know that black diplomats were treated well, in service of Hitler's ultimate goal of restoring Germany as an African colonial power, but the sources I've read only really mention this as an aside rather than discussing it directly. Anyone seen anything that treats this directly? Laura Scudder | talk 03:43, 16 February 2014 (UTC)

Nazis seen Poles as the "inferior race" too, even lower in the "racial hierarchy" than Blacks.

The example of Poles is very good in comparison to the situation of Blacks in Nazi Germany, who at the time were very few. Poles (as Slavs) were considered the "inferior race", usually referred to as "subhumans", "masses from the East" and "the scum of the earth". Hitler used these words mainly to describe Jews, Gypsies, Blacks, Poles, Serbs, Belarusians along with most of other Slavs, mixed-race people, and all other persons of color with some very small exceptions. If you are interested in this topic, you can check the "ladder of races" or the "racial pyramid" and see how the Nazis perceived different ethnic groups: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Racial_policy_of_Nazi_Germany#The_.22Pyramid_of_Races.22_according_to_the_Nazis_during_the_World_War_II

Not only the Jews, but also the Poles were the subject of mass-extermination, the numbers say it all: 6 million Jews died during the War. Those Jews were from ALL ACROSS EUROPE. Ethnic Poles however, were only one small nation. Over 2.5 million ethnic Poles died during the World War II in overall: 1.9 million Polish unarmed men, women, and children were exterminated in the German death camps and slave-labor camps, while the remaining 0.6 up to 0.8 million died of hunger, and during the defensive fights against the Nazis. Yatzhek (talk) 21:45, 19 April 2014 (UTC)

More lies, even more blatant than the rubbish in the article. --105.3.241.70 (talk) 23:35, 10 December 2017 (UTC)

1.152.108.80 (talk) 22:50, 11 June 2018 (UTC) REALITY CHECK: Read Else Loeser's book 'The falsification of Polish history'. Poles were taught to hate their relatives, the Germans, but the Germans were never taught to hate the Poles. The first concentration camps in Europe were created by Poland to hold Germans after WW1. After WW1 Poland systematically ethnically-cleansed Germans and 62,000 were killed. Another 12,000 wire killed in Poland just before Poland declared war on Germany. The evil Germans protested on dozens of occasions to the League of Nations. The 271,301 persons who died in the German camps, according to the International Red Cross, who had representatives in the camps, mainly died from old age, typhus and starvation due to allied bombing of the food/transport infrastructure. Germansoutside of the camps died due to the same causes.

Title still needs attention

Okay, so the article has been renamed, but is it really about what the title says. The tone of the article is more like "Lack of persecution of black people in Nazi Germany." Note in particular the opportunities the article describes for service in the military. It seems that people of African descent were more highly regarded in the Wehrmacht than in the Allied forces. Is there a title more objective per NPOV. That's not to excuse any nefarious behavior in the Nazi state but simply an inquiry on whether another title would come closer to the actual situation. Rammer (talk) 18:38, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

I propose ‘’Discrimination of black people in Nazi Germany’’, ‘’Black people and the Nuremberg laws’’, or simply ‘’Black people in Nazi Germany’’. talk) 19:12, 4 October 2022 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.128.228.11 (talk)

Extermination

The term 'extermination' literally means 'to place outside one's border', that is, a person may be exterminated without being killed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 1.152.108.80 (talk) 22:40, 11 June 2018 (UTC)

Removed off-topic Free Arabian Legion image

I removed this image because it is not of a Black person in or from Germany, and does not depict the persecution of Black people in Nazi Germany. It does not even directly relate to the subtopic it was under (Afro-Germans in the armed forces) but rather a tangent from that: Black people from outside of Germany who served in the Wehrmacht as foreign auxiliaries. It belongs in a different article. As a staged propaganda photo of a happy laughing Black soldier without adequate context, it presents an extremely misleading impression of the actual service experience of Afro-Germans in the Wehrmacht, which was quite miserable according to the sources (Lusane notes that one, Peter K., was forcibly sterilized before being drafted). Famisht (talk) 19:43, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

incorrect reference

reference [8] is an incorrect citation. it says mein kampf vol 1 chapter xiii, which doesn't exist. it should be vol 2 chapter xiii. Valleybish (talk) 12:42, 16 December 2023 (UTC)