ABSTRACT

Drawing on interviews with the black survivors of Nazi concentration camps and archival research in North America, Europe, and Africa, this book documents and analyzes the meaning of Nazism's racial policies towards people of African descent, specifically those born in Germany, England, France, the United States, and Africa, and the impact of that legacy on contemporary race relations in Germany, and more generally, in Europe. The book also specifically addresses the concerns of those surviving Afro-Germans who were victims of Nazism, but have not generally been included in or benefited from the compensation agreements that have been developed in recent years.

part I|36 pages

Beyond a White German Past

chapter |16 pages

Introduction

Black in Germany during the Nazi Era

chapter 1|19 pages

“Look, a Negro!”

The Structuring of Black Marginality in Nazi Germany

part II|48 pages

Blackness before Hitler

chapter 2|24 pages

Negrophobia and Nationalism

An Epigrammatic History of African-German Encounters

chapter 3|23 pages

Soldiers of Misfortune, Children of Misfortune

Black Troops and the Race Question in Pre-Nazi Germany

part III|141 pages

“The Worst That You Can Imagine”

chapter 4|32 pages

Hitler's Black Dilemmas

The Face and Fact of Blackness under Nazism

chapter 5|15 pages

Made in America, Perfected in Germany

The Nazi Sterilization Program against Blacks

chapter 6|31 pages

Behind the Wire

Black Captives of Nazism

chapter 7|15 pages

Imagining Blackness

Negrophobia and the Nazi Propaganda Machine

chapter 8|18 pages

“Nigger Music Must Disappear”

Jazz and the Disruption of Cultural Purity

chapter 9|16 pages

Punched Out and Overrun

Black Athleticism Meets Nazi Racism

part IV|20 pages

Black Skins, German Masks

chapter 11|11 pages

European (Dis)union

Racism and Antiracism in Contemporary Europe

chapter 12|8 pages

Breathing while Black

Linking the German Racial Past with the Present