Black people experienced persecution and discrimination before, during and after the Third Reich in Germany and elsewhere. The persecution of black people by the Nazi regime was not straightforward and followed a different timeline to the persecution of other groups. Nazi policies towards black people varied in different places (for example, black people in occupied France, although subject to some restrictions and discrimination, did not face same intensity of actions that black people in Germany did in the period).

At the time of the Nazi rise to power, approximately 20,000 black people lived in Germany. During the Nazi era, Nazi policies reduced the rights and living conditions of black people in Germany. This was because the Nazis had false ideas about race, and believed that black people were racially inferior non-‘ Aryan’s ’ and therefore a danger to the health of the German ‘ Aryan ’ population.

Employment

Nazi employment regulations discriminated against black Germans. For example, the 1933 Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service meant that anyone deemed non-’ Aryan ’ lost their position working for the government.

Many black Germans were employed in the music and entertainment industry. From 1933, anyone wanting to pursue a career in this industry had to be a member of the Reich Music Chamber. Membership was subject to a variety of conditions and was often refused on the basis of race or political views – only one black person was ever known to have gained membership. As a result of these laws, many black Germans and black people living in Germany lost their jobs and careers, and had to resort to finding new work, or working illegally.

Education

Black people living in Nazi Germany also faced increased persecution in schools and education. This persecution initially occurred as part of the Nazis’ efforts to control education more widely, for example with the introduction of race science as a compulsory subject in schools in 1935. Race science promoted the false and racist idea that some people, such as Jews and Black people, were biologically inferior to white Aryan children.

In June 1939, the oppression escalated as black children in Austria were excluded from attending school. On 22 March 1941, this law was extended to cover the whole of the Third Reich.

Sterilisation and imprisonment

One of the most extreme actions taken against black Germans by the Nazi authorities was the mass sterilisation of the Rhineland Children in 1937. The Rhineland Children were 600-800 children who were the offspring of German women and black French soldiers who had occupied the Rhineland following Germany’s defeat in the First World War. The children were seen by the Nazis as a particular biological threat to the German ‘Aryan’ race due to their mixed heritage. In order to prevent the children having children of their own, 385 children were secretly sterilised, shortly before most of them reached adulthood.

Some black people were also imprisoned in concentration camps and forced labour camps during the Nazi era.

Although, as the historians Robbie Aitken and Eve Rosenhaft explain: ‘the nominal grounds on which Blacks were held make it difficult to assess whether and under what circumstances someone could be arrested for simply being Black’ [Robbie Aitiken and Eve Rosenhaft, Black Germany: The Making and Unmaking of a Disapora Community 1884-1960 (United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 274], some concentration camp records indicate that race was, at the very least, a significant reason why people were incarcerated. Conditions inside the camps were inhumane, and several black inmates died while imprisoned at the hands of the Nazis.

End of war

Although never singled out for genocide or mass murder in the same way that the Jews and Roma were, there is some evidence to suggest that, had Nazi Germany not been defeated, black people would have faced complete removal from the Third Reich, likely by the methods used to remove Jews and Roma: that is, mass murder. For example, on 10 October 1942, Himmler issued an order to register all black people in Germany and the occupied territories.

Although most black people living in Germany survived life in the Third Reich, they were subjected to serious persecution, discrimination and deteriorating living conditions during this era.