Black Horror on the Rhine

[2] Under the terms of the armistice which ended the fighting on the Western Front on 11 November 1918, the Allies had the right to occupy the Rhineland, and during the negotiations the Germans had specifically demanded that no African troops be included in the French occupation force.

[17] Ray Beveridge, a German-American woman living in Germany, had given a series of speeches in Hamburg and Munich in February–March 1920 warning of the dangers of miscegenation to "the purity of the German race" caused by the presence of the Senegalese in the Rhineland.

[28] In an appeal to his female readers, Morel asked the question: "is there no obligation laid upon womenhood as such, in a matter of this kind which goes to the very root of any decent instinct the war may have left alive among the white peoples of the earth?

"[33] Claude McKay, a Jamaican writer and industrial unionist who had arrived in London several months earlier, wrote a letter to The Daily Herald, which was not published, asking:"Why this obscene maniacal outburst about the sex vitality of black men in a proletarian paper?"

I write because I feel that the ultimate result of your propaganda will be further strife and blood-spilling between whites and the many members of my race ... who have been dumped down on the English docks since the ending of the European war ... Bourbons of the United States will thank you, and the proletarian underworld of London will certainly gloat over the scoop of the Christian-Socialist pacifist Daily Herald.

[35] Labour Party politician and former general officer Christopher Thomson published an article in The Daily Herald, which stated that based on his previous service in Africa that he knew about the "sexual proclivities" of Africans "who in default of their own race must have intercourse with European women".

[42] General Henry T. Allen, the commander of the American occupation force in Coblenz, together with the diplomat E.L. Dresel, carried out an investigation and reported on 25 June 1920 that almost all of the stories about the "black horror on the Rhine" were baseless.

Dudley Field Malone, the leader of the Farmer–Labor Party, wrote to President Wilson that: "thoughtful persons in America and throughout the world are horrified by the victimization of German women and girls by half-savage African troops".

[49] The French writer Romain Rolland issued a statement approving of Morel's articles and declared: "The incredible blindness of statesmen who without realizing it are turning Europe over to the black and yellow continents, which they are armed with their own hands, is itself the unconscious instrument of Destiny".

[52] The African-American Reverend John R. Hawkins, representing the African Methodist Episcopal church from Washington D.C. said in response: ""It was most unfortunate ... he should take occasion to drag into this place for high and lofty sentiments the slime and venom of the monster, colour prejudice ...

[49] The Auswärtige Amt seeing that the stories about the "black horror on the Rhine" were effective in gaining international sympathy for the Reich greatly increased its propaganda with pamphlets detailing the alleged war crimes committed by the Senegalese being published in English, Dutch, French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese.

[49] The Auswärtige Amt attached so much importance to the promoting the "Black Horror on the Rhine" stories that the German embassies in Lima and Santiago were ordered to make publicizing Die schwarze Schand their main priority.

[55] An interesting exception was when Canadian newspaper The British Columbia Federationist ran an article in October 1920 titled "France Creates Hell West of the Rhine", accusing the Senegalese soldiers of committing "numberless outrages against women and girls".

"[70] Morel used the alleged massive sexual violence committed against women in the Rhineland as a call for racial togetherness, writing it was in the interests of all white peoples to assist Germany with revising the terms of Versailles which permitted the "black horror on the Rhine".

[73] As part of his critique of Versailles, Nitti wrote that the French had put the most "backward nations" in the Rhineland, declaring some of the "most cultured cities in Europe" that been subjected to "Negro violence" and to "physical and moral trials unknown for centuries in civilized countries".

[77] As part of his call to revise Versailles, Nitti urged that the other European nations together with the United States were under the obligation to "save culture ... from the flood of barbarism" as "Germany's fall" would mean "the downfall of one [of] the largest driving forces of humanity".

Likewise, the völkisch German writer Guido Kreutzer used the "black horror on the Rhine" as a way of attacking both what he saw as the "unjust" Treaty of Versailles and even more so the Weimar Republic, which was too "weak" to stand up to France.

[100] Kreutzer used Die Schwarze Schmach as a way of attacking the Weimar Republic which is portrayed as a weak and ineffective in face of the "black horror on the Rhine", and called for Germans to embrace a "strongman" leader who would rule as a dictator.

[97] The cover of Die Schwarze Schmach featured an ape-like black man wearing the uniform of a French Army private holding a half-naked white woman with a lascivious expression on his face.

[103] The Moroccans serving in the French Army are described as having "a rough-hewn black-brown face; bulging yellowish eyes buried deep under the forehead beneath the steel helmet; the predator teeth dazzlingly bright between the burning red lips".

[105] The Lamprés pere and fils represent the elegantly cosmopolitan and Francophile Catholic middle classes of the Rhineland who often resented Prussian militarism as crude and overbearing, seeing themselves as a more civilized type of German.

[107] Lampré rejects his French lover, a licentious dancer and a "worldly little animal" whose "soulless chirping voices" and overt sexuality he finds repulsive for the more wholesome and German figure of Marlene von Yrsch.

[108] Marlene von Yrsch is a symbol of not only Germany, but also of the white race in general, marking out the all that was beautiful in the world vs. the hideously deformed bodies of the Senegalese, Moroccan and Indonchinese soldiers serving in the French Army.

[111] Finally, Kreutzer used Die Schwarze Schmach as a way of attacking the Social Democrats as group of working class characters in the Rhineland in the novel ultimately abandoned the SPD as they find it is only right-wing leaders like Yrsch who can create the Volksgemeinschaft that will allow Germany to stand up to France.

[114] In one scene, a delegation of workers led by a huge union official respectfully pay a visit to Yrsch's estate to ask him to lead them on a struggle against the French, which was Kreutzer's way of showing that Germans needed to defer to their traditional elites to become great again.

[114] In paternal relationship, aristocrats like Yrsch understand the problems of the working class, and argue for fair treatment of the workers by their employers, which was Kreutzer's way of saying that in the Volksgemeinschaft the German people would all be united together as a one big happy family.

[130] Otto Wiefeldt, the German ambassador in Washington asked that his superiors supply him with "current information preferably with sensational details" as he noted that the stories about the "black horror on the Rhine" were winning over American public opinion to a pro-German position.

[132] After 1921, the Reich government started to downplay the Black Horror propaganda, which had ruined tourism in the Rhineland, causing much resentment in a largely Catholic region that at very least wanted to break away from Protestant majority Prussia.

[133] Despite this, the Canadian feminist Rose Henderson in a 1925 article in The British Columbia Federationist wrote "the power of France rests upon a black basis", which she called "one of the most menacing and sinister facts in history", going to condemn the French for training the Senegalese "to subdue and enslave white people".

[135] The "black horror on the Rhine" story featured prominently in Nazi anti-French propaganda and throughout the Third Reich with a recurring image in posters showing French Army soldiers as a stereotyped Africans molesting blonde Aryan women.