The Race to Forget? Bi-racial Descendants of the First Rhineland Occupation in 1950s West German Debates about the Children of African American GIs*

Abstract

Abstract After the First World War, the German children of colonial French soldiers stationed in the Rhineland became a focal point of nationalist anxieties over ‘racial pollution’. In 1937, the Nazis subjected hundreds of biracial Rhenish children to compulsory sterilization. After 1945, colonial French soldiers and African American GIs participating in the occupation of West Germany left behind thousands of out-of-wedlock children. In striking contrast to the open vilification of the first (1920s) generation of biracial occupation children, post-1945 commentators emphasized the need for the racial integration of the children of black GIs. Government agencies implemented new programmes protecting the post-1945 cohort against racial discrimination, yet refused restitution to biracial Rhenish Germans sterilized by the Nazis. The contrasts between the experiences of the two generations of German descendants of occupation soldiers of colour underline the complicated ways in which postwar ruptures in racial discourse coexisted with certain long-term continuities in antiblack racism, complicating historians’ claims of ‘Americanization’ of post-1945 German racial attitudes.