Why were the Nazis so relatively lenient towards black Germans in the Third Reich?

[Mr. Ukucasha]

It is a miracle that black Germans were not systematically targeted to be sent to concentration camps and exterminated. Unfortunately, Jews/Slavs/Romas/Gays/Jehovah's Witnesses/etc. were not so lucky.

A few black Germans were sent to concentration camps and/or forcibly sterilized, but the vast, vast, vast majority of the 25,000 or so black Germans were not. There were no attempts by the Nazis to systematically exterminate black people in the Reich whatsoever.

In addition, this leniency can't be explained by the small number of black people living in the Reich at that time. For example, there were approximately a mere 20,000 Jehovah's Witnesses in Nazi Germany, and unlike Black Germans, they were systematically sent to concentration camps and/or killed.

It's ironic that the Nazis were so eager to exterminate different groups of primarily white-skinned people like Jews, Slavs, Soviets, Poles, and Jehovah's Witnesses while being so relatively lenient towards groups much further away from their "Aryan" ideal, like black and Middle Eastern Germans.

Can anyone please explain why the Nazis were so relatively lenient on black Germans given their ideology? Is there a specific reason for this?

[TheReckoning]

Nazism was, at its core, a German ideology. It’s impossible to understate this- the Nazis had very little to say about things that didn’t pertain to Germany, which distinguishes them strongly from the ideologies they were fighting against, such as communism or liberalism.

Jews and Roma were very much a part of German history, and Slavs were directly to the East, where Germany planned on annexing as a part of its Lebensraum. Black people, meanwhile, were never really a part of German history, and therefore, the Nazis just didn’t have much to say about them. Jehovah’s Witnesses, meanwhile, refused to swear allegiance to the regime, which made them a target for obvious reasons, despite their small number.

Also, you mention “whiteness” in your post, which is not a useful term to use when describing racism in just about any context outside certain settler-colonial states, and especially not when describing German history pre-WW2. “White” was not a real category used to describe people, and therefore the idea that “black” is the opposite of “white” must imply that Nazis would hate black people is just not something the Nazis would’ve thought about at all.

[NewYorkExpress]

They hated literally everyone else more.

[TransfemmeGoreVidal]

This is like asking "Why was the confederacy so lenient towards Jews?" Different types of White Supremacists will pick different groups as their prime targets and black Germans were such a tiny minority that they weren't even on the nazis radar. I've even known black people who lived in Germany in the post war era who spoke of meeting older Nazis who still were rabidly anti-Semitic but not anti-black in the least. I've also met white southerners who were philo-Semitic but viciously anti-Black.

[Agonized-Statism]

They really weren't, they were subjected to the same Nuremberg Laws as everyone else. There were even human zoos and several hundred forced sterilizations in the Rhineland, and their final solution vacillated between deportation and genocide. It's just that they were such a small minority compared to Jews or Roma that they didn't feature as much in propaganda.

[Mr. Ukucasha]

They really weren't, they were subjected to the same Nuremberg Laws as everyone else. There were even human zoos and several hundred forced sterilizations in the Rhineland, and their final solution vacillated between deportation and genocide. It's just that they were such a small minority compared to Jews or Roma that they didn't feature as much in propaganda.

Um, most of this is literally false.

https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/748e8y/til_adolf_hitler_was_the_first_european_leader_to/

Hitler was literally the first European leader to ban human zoos.
Um, Human Zoos were pretty common before 1933 and then Hitler literally banned human zoos in Germany (but only because they brought in people he viewed as inferior into Germany, not for altruistic reasons).

The only black Germans who were sterilized were those who were mixed race. The Nazis had no problem with fully black Germans, they only sterilized those with mixed Aryan and Black ancestry. And it was only 400 people out of 25,000 black Germans.

The vast, vast, vast majority, virtually all, black Germans were not deported nor killed. They were subject to segregation under the Nuremberg Laws, but that's about it. They had it far, far, far better than Jews/Gypsies/Slavs/etc.

[Agonized-Statism]

Um, most of this is literally false.

https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/748e8y/til_adolf_hitler_was_the_first_european_leader_to/

Hitler was literally the first European leader to ban human zoos.
Um, Human Zoos were pretty common before 1933 and then Hitler literally banned human zoos in Germany (but only because they brought in people he viewed as inferior into Germany, not for altruistic reasons).

Wrong. The Deutsche Afrika-Schau ran until 1940. Did a little more reading and there was just a lull when the main ethnogenic exposition in Germany was discontinued in 1931 as per Theodor Wonja Michael's Deutsch sein und Schwarz dazu. Erinnerungen eines Afro-Deutschen, not "literally banned".

The only black Germans who were sterilized were those who were mixed race. The Nazis had no problem with fully black Germans, they only sterilized those with mixed Aryan and Black ancestry. And it was only 400 people out of 25,000 black Germans.

The vast, vast, vast majority, virtually all, black Germans were not deported nor killed. They were subject to segregation under the Nuremberg Laws, but that's about it. They had it far, far, far better than Jews/Gypsies/Slavs/etc.

...Because they were too small a group to be considered pressing enough to deal with for the short time Nazi Germany existed. Jehovah's Witnesses, on the other hand, doubled as political dissidents for refusing to participate in the political system or wars. However they would have dealt with them, we can be sure that black Germans would have no place in the Reich based on the reaction to mixed race Germans alone.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

The big issue that hangs over how Nazis felt about black people is the Black Horror of the Rhine; a moral panic that swept through Germany and taken up by foreign observers who disliked Versailles. It claimed that France (and for the Anti-Semites, this meant (((France))) ) was using black (largely Senegalese) colonial soldiers to brutalise the German population of the Rhine while the French were occupying the area. (Funnily enough, even as the Germans pumped out propaganda about evil french using uncivilised soldiers, they simultaneously pumped out propaganda about how super pro german and loyal their own colonial troops were). It goes without saying that the supposed industrial rape going on was nonsense - when people actually went to investigate what was going on, they found the local germans largely preferred the Senegalese to the Moroccan troops, and most disputes were over petty conflicts - but an enormous amount of ink was spilt over it, with an embarrassing amount coming from the official pacifist left, who decided this racist nonsense would be a good way to bolster the anti-versailles cause (the biggest proponent was a british Labour MP who made his name as anti Congo Free State activist).

Anyway, of course the volk right also made its own hay from it, often liberally borrowing from American racial tropes (in particular, an American actress named Ray Beveridge would be a strong campaigner against black troops in the area, and would come to find herself in the orbit of the Beer Hall Putsch Nazis), and a permanent symbol of how evil and also weak France was - it gets a mention in Mein Kampf for example. It seems to have inspired a revenge killing of Senegalese troops by the Wehrmacht, as well as led to the "Rhineland Bastards" who were an early target for Hitler's eugenics program.

[Buffalo Mayor Young Kim]

Because the black German population just wasn’t large enough to a relevant other. They were worried about the traditional European others, Jews, Roma, etc.,
Similarly, fascists in the Americas would be obsessed with racial minorities and probably never even think about Romani.

[If my soul was made of stone]

Because the black German population just wasn’t large enough to a relevant other. They were worried about the traditional European others, Jews, Roma, etc.,
Similarly, fascists in the Americas would be obsessed with racial minorities and probably never even think about Romani.

europeans talking about blm vs europeans talking about roma meme ifunny.jpg

[Meclazine for Israel]

It certainly was not the case in France.

[Georg Ebner]

The german NationalSocialists spoke a lot about race - but neither Aryans (let alone Germans) nor Semites (let alone Jews) were races.
Amusingly a horse/rose-breeding British aristoCrat like Churchill was realiter more aware of its imPact than Hitler.

[Georg Ebner]

The german NationalSocialists spoke a lot about race - but neither Aryans (let alone Germans) nor Semites (let alone Jews) were races.
Amusingly a horse/rose-breeding British aristoCrat like Churchill was realiter more aware of its imPact than Hitler.

Additionally the raceScientists at the universities were - despite representing quasi the official doctrine - quite sidelined by the regime (apart from the "ReichsInstitut für RassenHygiene" around Eugen Fischer, which got deeply involved in the SS-warCrimes): The famous H.F.K.GÜNTHER - a highly gifted autoDidact, whose books had made race popular - was made univ.prof. by the regional government of Thuringia as soon as the NSDAP took over (by the way very welcomed by the students - the avantGarde of Nazism in the late 1920ies...). But as a rather conservative He opposed the regime and stopped to publish anything since 1934. An inFluence of E.v.EICKSTEDT and others was also not really existing.

[longtimelurker]

A review of Nazi attitudes towards blacks and how they developed from their practices in their African colonies.

Phrases such as "untermenschen" and "final solution" were first used in South-West Africa (now Namibia).

https://www.timesofisrael.com/in-germanys-extermination-program-for-black-africans-a-template-for-the-holocaust/