Hitler's Non-white soldiers.

Black and Muslim Nazi troops were prevalent in the Eastern Front in 1944, and according to historians they were treated better and respected more than black troops in the U.S army who could not eat in the same tables as whites or sleep in the same tents, black soldiers in the German Army were treated humanely and had all the rights given to white German soldiers.

The German army was the most tolerant and multi-cultural army in Europe at that time. Believe in what you wanna believe, just showing pictures.

Arabs




Chechens



Bosnian muslims






Georgian


Indians




Turkministanis


Koreans


Japanese



Africans

 

Black people? So i can join the Army!!Panther here i come

 

Why am i not shocked are you sure because nazies and yea............

 

History is written by the victor

 

So do this mean i can be a German reenactor? Because i don't want to be the Americans.

 

The Korean army recieved a ton of suplus Wehrmacht and Waffen SS clothing after WWII ended and used it in their own army. There are photos to be seen of Korean soldiers wearing the Waffen SS dot camo tunics that still have the sleave eagles attached. However these are post WWII photos where you can see of Korean army soldiers totally outfitted in surplus wehrmacht and a whole bunch of Korean soldiers in Waffen SS uniforms as well.
Do you know for sure that the photos of the Koreans are from the War or after the war?
Don't forget that the British Army had Indian and Senagalese soldiers as well as quite a few other nations too.

 

So their's no black people?

 

using uniforms in post war korea? Can you post some documentation, I am quite interested in the subject matter.

 

Not in the German Army. They made up such a low percentage of the German population that they were probably never considered for the Army. Unlike the Allies, the Germans didn't have African Colonies or Colonial Troops from such places.

 

Maybe the black soldiers were recruited from the ranks of the Vichy French? Or they were just African-German soldiers (although I thought the Heer wouldn't let them serve)?

 

Chef;
Great photos! But the multicultural view came to the Heer as a matter of necessity, came too late, appealed to too few in the non German populations of the NAZI empire, and was scorned by the political leadership. The German Army of 1944 was indeed a Federal style force-but by then the die had been cast.
JEffinMNUSA

 

Mark;
There probably WERE some black soldiers in the Wehrmacht. French African POWs, natural warriors recognized by the Afrika Korps, British POWs rallied to the Axis cause... strange things happen in war and no war was stranger than the biggest to date.
Catch the Sam Pekinpah film "Cross Of Iron" from 1977 and you will see a presumably Ukrainian soldier fighting in the platoon against the Reds. These "Hiwis" started the war as human mules but...soldiers being soldiers "Steiner's platoon" eventually recognized and accepted the foreigner into the their ranks as a soldier, friend, and brother in arms.
Did such things happen with black troopers? Absolutely they did (and NAZI ideology be damned).
JEffinMNUSA

 

I just found the photo's over time. I had no idea about other things. Shoot Im gonna look into this deeper myself. I do believe though, that there were some very large variety in the German Army

 

Chef;
It would be helpfull to history if some Axis troopers of "other than German" origin were to come forward and tell their stories. The trouble is that the survivors were few. Case in point; I was reading the Blaichmann account of his time in the Moscow supported Armia Ludowa ( Rather Die Fighting, A Memoir of World War II ) and at one time the group captured a band of Soviet Muslims fighting in German uniform. They were all shot on Soviet orders.
Same same with the Soviet Cossacks who fought for independance under the NAZI banner-all shot as "Vlasovites".
JEffinMNUSA

 

There was a picture of Chiang Kai-sheks son in a Wehrmach uniform somewhere, he studied in Germany at one of their war colleges. He returned to China and fought with his father against the Japanese.

Speaking of the Japanese, there was the story of a young Korean captured during the Normandy invaseion, "fighting" for the Nazis. He was originally conscripted by the Japanese, and captured by the Reds in the Mongolian border skirmishs. He joined the Red Army, was shipped west and then captured by the Nazis. Now he joined the Nazis and was captured by the Americans in 1944. Here was a single guy who fought for and against just about every major player in WW2 from 1939-1944. Strange things can indeed happen in the time of a war.

 

I heard once that Allied forces captured a Japanese soldier during the early stages of the Normandy campaign. Could it be that the Korean soldier was mistaken for the Japanese man (whom I always presumed was a military adviser to the Heer)?

Also, I have heard of Jewish (or at least part-Jewish) men fighting in the German army during WWII (even in the SS, no less). The Muslim soldiers, I am not at all shocked about, I kinda thought that tensions between Muslims and British might have led to that sort of thing.

 

There is actually a very famous picture of a Korean soldier shortly after Normandy, he was captured by American forces and was being documented. I will try to find the picture later but there were indeed Koreans in the army, they were often conscripted by the Japanese, captured by the Russians, conscripted, captured by the Germans, conscripted, etc.

The soldier in question actually became a celebrity of sorts after the war, I think he passed away in the 90s but was able to write a book.

Both sides had soldiers from various nations, the role of "non white" (if you want to use that term of course) soldiers on the Axis side (foreigners living in Germany as well) isn't talked about much which is a shame, we are losing so much valuable information and many stories in the process. To a certain extent, the "Allies" have similar issues as well in regards to documentation but it is far worse with the Axis.

Edit: Found this in my bookmarks shortly after posting,

http://thomo.coldie.net/wargaming/korean-soldiers-in-ww2-german-army

Seems the book only has a Korean printing.

Also, the Heer were generally more lenient on the rules put forth by the Nazi's so they would be more willing to let others serve and they did, there was even internal opposition to Nazism but that is a different topic.

Of course, but keep in mind, many of the foreigners living in Germany at the time from colonies like India, China, etc were mostly journalists, university students, etc. I haven't had time to look into it much but from what little I have found of these groups it seems they were treated pretty well when the Nazi's came to power despite their origins.

Germany did not have colonies in Africa at the outbreak of war but they did capture them and they did have them until the end of World War I, people like Letow left an impact so it would be interesting to see where motivations could have come from. Others had also switched sides when given the opportunity to do so by people like Bose.

Bcap: There were about 200,000 German Jews in the German and S.S. army if memory serves right. They all had different reasons for fighting, one of the most decorated German Jewish soldiers was half Jewish IIRC and wanted to show Hitler that a German Jew could do anything an Aryan German could do. At the start of the war restrictions on Jews joining the army were relaxed, the Nazi's later tightened them but many field officers needed all the help they could get so such orders were disregarded.

I think there is basically only one good book on the subject but only the first half of the book is worth reading from what I hear. I think the title was Hitler's Jewish Soldiers or something. I believe the book was also turned into a documentary or movie in the 90s revolving around the decorated soldier I alluded to previously.

It would be interesting to see how these soldiers acted on the field. Did they try to hide their identities if they were hidden, how were they treated by their fellow soldiers, captors, what were their feelings post war, etc.

 

I heard that W.E.B. Du Bois traveled to Nazi Germany before the start of the war, and was treated better by German scholars than by his colleagues back in America.

 

Well, he and Booker T. Washington had taken opposite sides in the "black/white" civil rights argument, and a great many of Du Bois' colleagues in America sided with Mr. Washington.

There is something else to consider here when speaking of W.E.B. Du Bois, he did his post graduate work in Berlin before WW1 (1892?), he also traveled to Soviet Russia in 1927 and came to really appreciate the ideals espressed in Marxist-Leninism.

The fact that he was received well in Berlin by those men, might be because he was a known and old friend from before the first war when he visited again in the thirties. Add to that the fact that his trip to Germany was funded by the Nazi sympathizer Oberlander, perhaps Du Bois used that funding to assure his trip would come off without Nazi interference?

While in Germany his writings didn’t reflect the same position they did when he returned to America and wrote for the Pittsburgh Courier. Those article written in America were much more critical of the Nazi state; "…there is race prejudice in Germany today, and a planned regular propaganda to increase it."
　
Goto:

http://www.ghi-dc.org/files/publications/bu_supp/supp5/supp5_099.pdf

(page 109)

And while Du Bois remained a Germanophile, mostly due to his pre-war experiences in Germany when he had found the German people to be largely; "...a kind folk, good hearted, hating oppression, and widely sympathetic with suffering…", he saw the Nazi state as an aboration in German history.

Goto:

http://www.ghi-dc.org/files/publications/bu_supp/supp5/supp5_099.pdf

(page 110)

Du Bois later writings after his return to the US clearly show he felt the Nazis to be a "murderous mob" that had subjugated the Weimar Republic and built a repugnant oligarchy on the rubble.

It is my personal belief that the man was well treated by the Germans when he visited in the thirties for the same reason all the anti-Semitic signs and regulations were hidden from the world during the 1936 Olympics. Propaganda alone.

 

that really suprised me. thats really all i can say.....