“They Are Just Savages”: German Massacres of Black Soldiers from the French Army in 1940

Scheck, Raffael

doi:10.1086/431817

Cited by 15 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 4 publications

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“…"Attitude hostile to the state." Leo Alexander, in his 1949 article "Medical Science Under Dictatorship" (NEJM), suggested that, "Science under dictatorship becomes subordinated to the guiding philosophy of the dictatorship (28)." I am proposing the inverse, that Politics under Science becomes subordinated to the guiding philosophy of that Science.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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German science and black racism—roots of the Nazi Holocaust

Haas

2008

FASEB j.

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The Nazi's cornerstone precept of "racial hygiene" gave birth to their policy of "racial cleansing" that led to the murders of millions. It was developed by German physicians and scientists in the late 19th century and is rooted in the period's Social Darwinism that placed blacks at the bottom of the racial ladder. This program was first manifested in the near-extermination of the African Herero people during the German colonial period. After WWI, the fear among the German populace that occupying African troops and their Afro-German children would lead to "bastardization" of the German people formed a unifying racial principle that the Nazis exploited. They extended this mind-set to a variety of "unworthy" groups, leading to the physician-administered racial Nuremberg laws, the Sterilization laws, the secret sterilization of Afro-Germans, and the German euthanasia program. This culminated in the extermination camps.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Although relatively few Blacks were deported to concentration camps, the German SS military units (which, with some notable exceptions, treated white POWs according to the Geneva Convention) victimized Black POWs, initially French colonial soldiers, and then African-Americans once the U.S. entered the war (24,28).…”

Section: Aa Of German Nationality Bornmentioning

confidence: 99%

German science and black racism—roots of the Nazi Holocaust

Haas

2008

FASEB j.

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“…Rafael Scheck points to this image and its revival in Nazi propaganda during the 1930s as one of the major motives for the massacres of African prisoners-of-war by German soldiers in the early stages of World War II. 25 Encouraging the image of the bloodthirsty and savage African indeed achieved its aim and affected German soldiers. During the war, German troops were reported to be terrifi ed of the African soldiers' "aboriginal ferocity" and rumors spread even among Allied soldiers that the Senegalese often returned from a fi ght with a "pocketful of white men's ears."…”

Section: The Violent Image Of African Soldiers During World War Imentioning

confidence: 99%

French Officers, African Officers, and the Violent Image of African Colonial Soldiers

Ginio¹

2010

Historical Reflections/Reflexions Historiques

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The article examines the ways in which French offi cers manipulated the image of the "savage and violent" African colonial soldier. While the background for the development of this image was the general European perception of Africa as a violent space, during World War I, offi cers, as well as parts of the French public, began to see Africans as "grown children" rather than savages. However, as this image served French military purposes and made the soldiers useful on the battlefi elds, it was not rejected outright. I look at the debate around recruiting Africans to serve in Europe on the eve of World War I, and the French attempts to refute the German accusations around the deployment of African soldiers in the Rhineland during the 1920s. Finally I examine how, thirty years later, during the Indochina War, African offi cers dealt with these confl icting images in reports about violent incidents in which African soldiers had been involved.

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“…From such dichotomies, an ideology also emerged according to which it was allowable or even necessary, when fighting ‘savage’ enemies, to adopt their methods, to some extent imitating the savagery imputed to them and reciprocating it (Canny 1973; Scheck 2005; Taussig 1987: 122–26). A well-known example of this was the rapid and widespread adoption of the practice of scalping by European colonists in North America (Axtell 1981; Slotkin 1973: 183).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Skulls and Scientific Collecting in the Victorian Military: Keeping the Enemy Dead in British Frontier Warfare

Harrison

2008

Comp Stud Soc Hist

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As a result of colonial wars with indigenous peoples, especially in Africa and North America, a distinction seems to have arisen in Western military culture between ‘civilized’ and ‘savage’ enemies. The behavior of civilized enemies in battle appeared rational and constrained by rules. Savage enemies, on the other hand, evinced emotional and unregulated violence. Above all, they were distinguished by an excessive brutality they seemed to display towards their enemies in customs such as cannibalism and the taking of body parts as trophies (see, for example, Marks 1970: 246). In short, the differences between civilized people and savages in warfare were especially evident in their behavior toward enemy dead.

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“They Are Just Savages”: German Massacres of Black Soldiers from the French Army in 1940

Cited by 15 publications

References 4 publications

German science and black racism—roots of the Nazi Holocaust

German science and black racism—roots of the Nazi Holocaust

French Officers, African Officers, and the Violent Image of African Colonial Soldiers

Skulls and Scientific Collecting in the Victorian Military: Keeping the Enemy Dead in British Frontier Warfare

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