Racist insanity in America and Germany during WWII
Some notes from lectures on world war II, I've been listening to:
Blacks were barred from any of the higher offices of the army, kept mostly in basic service units , but largely kept back even from those, at a time of great labor shortage for essential military industry. Once a black fighting units were created they were led only by whites, and perversely, by mostly southern officers. Stopping at a restaurant in America, a unit of black soldiers was told to go around back and ask the kitcken, while German prisoners of war were supping with beer and merriment in the restaurant. A race right in Detroit in 1943 led to 29 blacks, 9 whites, dying and 900 injured, and began when white transportation employees began violent protests against the promotion of 9 blacks to driver positions. Similar occurences, of smaller scale occured repeatedly, with an actual shootings between black and white soldiers at in a Texas army base leading to 4 dead. Blacks and whites were segregated completely through the war.
120,000 Japanese Americans (anyone with ONE JAPANESE GREATGRANDFATHER!!) imprisoned. Once freed in 1944, the American Japanese army units which fought in Europe would be THE most decorated units in the army.
While Hilter's monstrous genocide is well documented, what struck me is his final statement before commiting suicide in the summer of 1945:
It is untrue that I or anybody else in Germany wanted war in 1939...those who carry the real guilt for the murderous struggle, this people will also be held responsible: the Jews! ... But before everything else I call upon the leadership of the nation and those who follow it to observe the racial laws most carefully, to fight mercilessly against the poisoners of all the peoples of the world, international Jewry.
Blacks were barred from any of the higher offices of the army, kept mostly in basic service units , but largely kept back even from those, at a time of great labor shortage for essential military industry. Once a black fighting units were created they were led only by whites, and perversely, by mostly southern officers. Stopping at a restaurant in America, a unit of black soldiers was told to go around back and ask the kitcken, while German prisoners of war were supping with beer and merriment in the restaurant. A race right in Detroit in 1943 led to 29 blacks, 9 whites, dying and 900 injured, and began when white transportation employees began violent protests against the promotion of 9 blacks to driver positions. Similar occurences, of smaller scale occured repeatedly, with an actual shootings between black and white soldiers at in a Texas army base leading to 4 dead. Blacks and whites were segregated completely through the war.
120,000 Japanese Americans (anyone with ONE JAPANESE GREATGRANDFATHER!!) imprisoned. Once freed in 1944, the American Japanese army units which fought in Europe would be THE most decorated units in the army.
While Hilter's monstrous genocide is well documented, what struck me is his final statement before commiting suicide in the summer of 1945:
It is untrue that I or anybody else in Germany wanted war in 1939...those who carry the real guilt for the murderous struggle, this people will also be held responsible: the Jews! ... But before everything else I call upon the leadership of the nation and those who follow it to observe the racial laws most carefully, to fight mercilessly against the poisoners of all the peoples of the world, international Jewry.


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