“It was common during World War II for the U.S. Army to treat German Prisoners of War better than Black American soldiers.”
In Jim Crow South, as African American soldiers sat in the restaurant’s kitchen eating their meals, about two dozen German prisoners of war who entered with their American guards “sat at the tables, had their meals served, talked, smoked, in fact had quite a swell time.”
In an April 1944 letter to Yank, a weekly Army magazine, Trimmingham, a Black soldier, asked the obvious: “Are these men”— Nazi prisoners who’d been captured while fighting on Hitler’s behalf—“sworn enemies of this country? Are we not American soldiers, sworn to fight for and die if need be for this our country? Then why are they treated better than we are?”
It was common during World War II for the U.S. Army to treat German Prisoners of War better than Black American soldiers. Segregation was official U.S. military policy during the Second World War
African American soldiers were often relegated to less desirable roles and excluded from promises of patriotic camaraderie. This particular brand of discrimination, however—the preferential treatment of imprisoned Nazi combatants—was especially offensive to many Black troops. It told them, loud and clear, that they were fighting for a country even as that country fought against them. For many white military personnel, there was no point in even pretending otherwise.
This preferential treatment of white German POWs by the U.S. Army on army bases across America seemed during the Second World War, at times, specifically designed to humiliate Black soldiers.
To learn more about this topic and the African American experience during World War II, read: African American Experience During World War II
“History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, however, if faced with courage, need not be lived again.” ~ MAYA ANGELOU
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