RACE AS A MILITARY PROPAGANDA THEME

SGM Herbert A. Friedman (Ret.) 

Note: The Willa Cather Foundation has requested and received permission to use images from this article in an exhibition entitled “Telling War Stories: the Rhetoric of the Great War.”  Retro Report, a nonprofit documentary production company wants to tell the story about WWII when Black Americans were fighting abroad in for democracy, yet still faced extreme violence and racism in the United States. They asked permission to use some of the illustrations used in this article. 

The Tuskegee Airmen

During wartime psychological operations, propagandists often search for powerfully emotional themes and vulnerable groups within the enemy military and civilian populations. In other words, they search for a weakness in the enemy society that allows them to exploit and divide their forces.

The Emancipation Proclamation

American society has always carried with it the weakness of an early slave culture. Although in theory slavery has not existed since Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation in 1862 (and that did not free all the slaves regardless of what is widely believed), a form of racism has continued to exist in the United States just as it does in many other countries around the globe.

Lynching

The most visible and extreme example of American racism is the lynching of a black individual. Although I would question the accuracy of any numbers in regard to lynching, one that has been posted is 3,345 blacks killed between 1882 and 1968. Whites were sometimes lynched too. It is believed that there were 4,732 recorded lynchings between 1882 and 1951, although there were certainly many undocumented lynchings before and during that period. Most of the recorded lynchings occurred before 1930. The vast majority of lynchings took place in the South and the Border States, although lynchings were not unknown in the North and Midwest. About three-fourths of the victims were black.

WORLD WAR ONE

Coloured Soldiers of the States!

During WWI, Germany did not produce many propaganda leaflets and those that were produced were disseminated very late in the war. This rare 1918 single-sided WWI leaflet is addressed to American “Coloured” soldiers and promises them a nice heated room and plenty of food in the warm south of Germany if they surrender or are captured. For those that are not aware of the gradual American change in the description of people of color, in the 1940s they were called “colored,” later slowly changed to “Negro.” Later, that description became “black” and more recently “Afro-American,” in the United States. Notice that in this leaflet they used to British spelling of “Coloured.”

Coloured Soldiers…

In November 2019, I watched Episode Two of the Home Box Office series Watchmen. The story takes place in a parallel universe when the United States won the Vietnam War. I was surprised to see a women holding a WWI safe conduct pass from Germans titled “Coloured soldiers of the States” apparently sent by her 100+ years old grandfather who fought in that war. Notice that the word “Colored” is written in the British style with an added “u.”

How Colored People are treated in Germany

This September 1918 leaflet uses the American spelling of “Colored” as it should since it targets Americans. Two black prisoners-of-war are depicted along with a letter they wrote telling of the good treatment in a German POW camp. The leaflet ends with the comment:

There you have the “German atrocities” they keep telling you about, to frighten you from going over to the right side. The want you to make you forget the real atrocities continually committed against the despised colored men in the States.

The back of the leaflet is titled “How Colored People are treated in America,” and quotes a New York World article, “Negroes lynched Wholesale.” It is an excellent “divide and conquer” leaflet.

Sambo

As a boy I remember often hearing the story of “Little Black Sambo.” Curiously it was not about Americans at all. Sambo was the hero of a story about a little Indian boy who tricked a bunch of tigers that wanted to eat him and ended up eating them. An artist who drew the pictures used in the book made the boy seem dark and as a result in the United States he was considered a Negro child. About the 1970s I think, there was outrage at the racial aspect of the story and it gradually disappeared. In fact, one restaurant chain named “Sambos” was forced to close its doors.

But, in 1918 Germany prepared an 8-page comic booklet to tell the story of Sambo. He joins the Army as a good patriot and goes to France to fight. He has various adventures, performs heroically, and at the end goes back home and is lynched. The whole thing is a parody of a Rudyard Kipling novel and it is to be sung to the tune of “Tommy Atkins,” a song that tells of unwanted British soldiers that suddenly become popular when the bullets are flying. It is very innovative and imaginative.

WORLD WAR TWO

During WWII, The United States Army gradually integrated black soldiers into its forces. A word on terminology. I have lived long enough to have seen the use of “negro,” “colored,” “black,” and “Afro-American” to identify people of African descent. In this article I will use the term “black” for simplicity.

The Red Ball Express

With the introduction of black American soldiers onto the battlefield, the Axis powers saw the opportunity for a propaganda campaign. Earlier they had attacked the French because of their treatment of their Colonial Arab forces and the British for their treatment of their colonial Indian troops.

Liberty – Equality – Fraternity

This German image from the newspaper Illustrated Observer depicts a French Army officer sending a black colonial troop to the front while a Jew who might be Maxim Maximovitch Litvinov, Russian ambassador to the United States from November 1941 to August 1943 slyly hides behind him.

The Germans bitterly attacked the French use of black troops in the Rhine and other occupied territories after World War I. In fact, they complained so often and so loudly that an American Senator Hitchcock from Nebraska is quoted in the N.Y. Times of 31 August 1922 charging atrocities by French Negro troops against German women and others in the occupied portion of Germany. He said in part:

I hold in my hand a printed circular called “The Horror of the Rhine.” It purports to be a complaint of the German people living in the German territory occupied by French troops…It is charged that the black African troops of France, whether Negro or Senegalese, were committing unspeakable crimes against German women and children.

So, just as the Germans had successfully attacked French black troops, they would now attack the American treatment of its own black population in an attempt to turn the minority soldiers against their officers and nation was an easy choice. In general, most of the Axis leaflets told the black soldiers that their own people were being attacked in the United States and pointed out that their white officers did not trust them and they were treated far differently from white troops.

Curiously, the Germans had their own history of murdering minorities such as Jews and Gypsies, so this anti-American propaganda was doomed to failure from the start. In fact, Adolf Hitler had made some prejudicial remarks himself, complaining during the 1936 Olympic Games according to Albert Speer, his armaments minister:

…He was highly annoyed by the series of triumphs by the marvelous colored American runner, Jesse Owens. People whose antecedents came from the jungle were primitive, Hitler said with a shrug; their physiques were stronger than those of civilized whites and hence should be excluded from future games.

What is odd is that at the same time the Germans were asking blacks to surrender because of their poor treatment in the American Army, they were pointing out to American soldiers that their black troops were thieves and murderers. One very well-known leaflet shows a black man raping a white woman. Hitler’s Italian Allies depicted American blacks as savages and in one very famous image pictured a black soldier selling the Venus de Milo with a $2 price tag.

So, as we will now show, the Axis played both sides of the divide and conquer argument, telling both blacks and whites that the other was exploiting them.

Rick Atkinson discusses American blacks in WWII in The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944, Macmillon, 2007:

When War II began in September 1939 fewer than 4000 blacks served in the U.S. Army; more than two years later the U.S. Navy had only six black sailors-excluding mess stewards. At the time of the Anzio landings (May 1944), the U.S. Army had 633,000 officers, of whom only 4,500 were black. The U.S. Navy was worse, with 82,000 black enlisted sailors and no black officers; the Marine Corps which had rejected all black enlistments until President Roosevelt intervened, would not commission its first black officer until several months after the war ended…

…blacks were shunted into quartermaster companies for duties such as truck drivers, bakers, launderers, laborers and the like. By January 1944, 775,000 blacks wore Army uniforms - they made up 8.5 percent of the force, but only two in ten served in combat units compared to four in ten whites….

The 92nd Infantry would arrive in Italy in late summer 1944 as the only African-American division to see combat in Europe.

U.S. Fifth Army combat artist Edward Reep briefly mentions the German use of race in their propaganda in A Combat Artist in World War II, University Press of Kentucky; 1987:

The German propagandists turned out predictably consistent pornography and outright lies in an attempt to terrorize Allied soldiers to turn one against another...The German leaflets were suffused with sex, bigotry and deceit; all Allied leaders were corrupt Jews, notably politicians and bankers; Negroes at home were sleeping with our sweethearts and wives while we were engaged in a useless, futile war where we would die in battle…

President Harry Truman

A reader might wonder why there are so few leaflets using race as a theme. I would tender a guess that the most reasonable answer is that the Axis powers simply did not run into that many blacks on the battlefield. It was not until February 1948 that President Harry Truman told Congress that he had:

…instructed the Secretary of Defense to take steps to have the remaining instances of discrimination in the armed services eliminated as rapidly as possible.

In July 1948, President Truman signed Executive Order 9981, which stated:

It is hereby declared to be the policy of the President that there shall be equality of treatment and opportunity for all persons in the armed services without regard to race, color, religion, or national origin.

The movement toward full integration was slow but steady. It was July 1951 before the Army announced that the integration of all its units in Korea, Japan and Okinawa would be completed within six months. In October 1953 the U.S. Army announced that 95% of African-American soldiers were serving in integrated units. Today the armed forces of the United States are fully integrated.

GERMANY ANTI-BLACK

 

White plays, black wins

German Leaflet AW 36 is in the form of a see-through card. When you first look at it you just see some strange shapes and a dead body at the bottom. When held to the light, you suddenly see a black man raping a white woman. The cards were produced by the German Propaganda Company in Paris in July 1944. There were over a half-dozen of these AW leaflets, but only the above item depicted a black man.

The Draft Dodgers at Home…

This October 1944 uncoded German leaflet depicts black soldiers dying at the front while civilian blacks drink and dance. The text is:

The Draft–dodgers on the home front expect every Joe to do his duty

SKW-503/45

We should point out that an almost identical anti-Semitic leaflet was also produced by the Germans in January 1945 that was entitled:

The Kikes expect every Joe to do his duty.

GERMANY ANTI-WHITE

AI-110-9-44

One of the most interesting German leaflets depicts a fleeing black man being chased by a pipe-wielding hooligan. The code “AI” indicates that the leaflet was prepared by the SS-Standarte “Kurt Eggers” for Allied troops fighting in Italy. Text on the front is:

Race War

Fleeing Negro, who is already hurt, is chased by Detroit mobsters. Lead pipe (center) was later used in finishing him off.

Text on the back points out that the blacks are being used as cannon fodder and they get the lousiest jobs and the lousiest pay and the contempt of all the whites in the U.S.A.

ALL MEN

are created free and equal

Yes, that is what the declaration of Independence says.

Well, it's just Ballyhoo, always was. The white bosses want your peace-loving, hard-working colored boys just as

CANNON FODDER

In World War I they promised your father's racial equality as a reward for fighting the war.

What did they get? What did you get?

The lousiest jobs.
The lousiest flats.
The lousiest pay.
The lousiest chances.

Poverty, Unemployment, Race, Riots, Lynching, Hanging and Burning!

and

The general contempt of all Whites in the U.S.A.

    

RICH (WHITE) MAN'S WAR
POOR (COLORED) MAN'S FIGHT
AI-128-10-44

Leaflet AI-128-10-44 was produced by the Sudstern section of the SS-Standare Kurt Eggers organization and aimed at American black soldiers in Italy. The all-text leaflet tells the story of colored workers in Philadelphia who were hired to work on the subways and trolley cars, but were unable to work because white workers went on strike and refused to instruct them. Some of the text is:

Think of your loved ones at home who are praying to the Lord every day that he may send you home uninjured. What good is it to you when a shell tears you to pieces or leaves you bleeding to death? There is only one way of returning home safe and sound.

COME OVER TO US!

  

RICH (WHITE) MAN'S WAR
POOR (COLORED) MAN'S FIGHT
AI-130-10-44

The above leaflet has the same title and is in the same all-text format. It tells the story of a black dentist and friend who buy a home in a nice white area to get away from the crime and violence. The neighborhood whites are so enraged that they forced the blacks to sell their house and leave the town. Some of the text on the back is:

COLORED SOLDIERS OF THE U.S. FORCES!

The white people in the U.S.A. don’t want you to live near them. But all of a sudden they now remember that you are also American citizens because they want you to fight their wars, to get killed and maimed for them.

THEY NEED YOU AS CANNON FODDER!

Another leaflet from this series is AI-129-10-44. Once again the leaflet is all text on the front and the back. Some of the propaganda message is:

COLORED SOLDIERS OF THE U.S. FORCES!

This is the truth about how you will be treated in a German prisoner-of-war camp.

You will not be shot, You will not starve, You will not be beaten up As your white officers tell you.

The Germans seem to have believed the cliché that the black Americans are simple folk that want to play athletic games. In what is almost insulting by today’s standards, they promise:

If you go in for sports, just join the football or baseball teams or play basketball. All camps have athletic fields and modern sporting equipment.

It is surprising that they don’t offer musical instruments for a jazz band. The leaflet ends:

COME OVER TO US

It is better to be a prisoner of war and return home safe and sound after the war, than to die for your white bosses.

   

AI-131-10-44

This leaflet depicts a smiling black soldier. The text on the front is:

Why is he smiling?

The back explains that he has surrendered to the Germans and he is out of the fight. It says:

He is out of it!

That's why he is smiling. He and his pals have found out that the Germans give the colored man a square deal.

I have been treated very nice by the Germans since I have been captured.

Paul King, Co. F, 370 Infantry.

Thomas E. Carpenter, HQ Co., 2nd Bn., 370th Infantry.

Sept. 23, 1944.

If you should be captured you'll see for yourself. In a POW camp you enjoy PEACE and SAFETY under the supervision of the International Red Cross.

Remember, the most important thing in the war is to get home alive.

This same propaganda message was used on a number of different German leaflets; the only difference being a different black soldier was depicted on the front of the leaflet.

 

 

AI-132a-10-1944

Once again we see a black prisoner-of war smiling and the same text as the message above, “Why is he smiling?” I originally had no interest in adding this because I considered it repetitious, but there are so few leaflets in this genre that perhaps it should be added. Some of the text on the back is:

He is out of it!

That’s why he is smiling. He’s in a camp now waiting for the end of the war.

He has found out that there is no racial discrimination here and that all POW get the same treatment.

 

AI-133a-10-44

This leaflet depicts a black prisoner of war happily eating a big plate of food. Text on the front is:

No starving here!

AF-20-12/44

Like the “AI” coded leaflets, the “AF” leaflets were also produced by the Sudstern section of the SS-Standarte “Kurt Eggers” organization for Allied troops in Italy. There are a number of these vary gaudy and “arty” leaflets showing black soldiers in strange positions with caricatured looks on their faces. It is clear from the codes that the Germans decided to work on getting American and British black troops to surrender in late in 1944. The leaflet shows two happy black POWs smoking a pipe and playing an accordion in the background, while their buddy is killed at the front in the foreground.

Checking my WWII Order of Battle I find that this unit named on the leaflet is identified as the “92nd Infantry Division (Colored).” It arrived in Naples in August 1944. In regard to the battle mentioned above I find the quote:

The German counterattack against the division along the Serchio drove in its outposts on 26 December 1944. The following day part of the infantry abandoned its positions and the division made further withdrawals.

It would appear that having given the division a sound beating the Germans believed that they would be ready to surrender and prepared this tactical leaflet. The leaflet says in part on the back:

BOYS OF THE 92nd DIVISION!

Did you get out of the bloody Hell of the Serchio Valley unhurt: then you were mighty lucky. But how can you know that a worse Hell is not in store for you?  And there are damn few chances that you’ll be as lucky the next time!

GERMANY JUST GETS GOING!

So don’t double dare your fate

SLIP OVER TO JERRY

As long as you have a chance you’ll find lots of your pals over here. As a P.O.W. – no more fighting, no more hell for you!

Remember:

JERRY NEVER SHOOTS COLORED P.O.W.s

Leaflet AF-32-4/45

Leaflet AF-32-4/45 was certainly prepared by the same artist and shows a black family behind a black soldier. Once again the characters are caricatured and the black soldier has bright red lips and large piercing eyes. The text on the front is:

STAY ALIVE FOR YOUR FOLKS

AND DON’T DIE FOR EMPTY PROMISES

The back depicts a letter from his wife:

Now my darling, I beg you to please take care of yourself. Be sure to avoid all danger as much as you can. I’m praying to God every day not to let your return home crippled. Please honey; beware of spots where there is so much shooting going on. You know when you come back we want to have another baby. So darling, answer soon.

Your Loving wife

Hazel

There is a German Translation sheet of this leaflet that says:

For Negroes. Propaganda Unit 614.

The Leaflet is also hand-stamped at the top with the same unit. That indicates that Unit 614 was assigned by responsibility of preparing and disseminating these leaflets.

    

AI-137-10-44

This leaflet is a surrender pass and a radio leaflet allowing a prisoner of war to communicate with American forces. It depicts a black man playing “Swanee River” on a saxophone at the left. It reminds the black soldiers of what a pleasure it would be to safely return home to the American South. It says that the only way to avoid injury and death is to come over to the German side. On the back there is a place for name, rank, serial number, address and a message to be broadcast on Jerry’s Front Radio. The leaflet ends with a safe conduct passierschein.

AI-155-10-44

Another German leaflet to black troops depicts two babies on the front and the text:

Tiny Tots want daddy back

The back is all text. Some of the divisive propaganda text is:

Have you got a wife and cute children or a girl you want to marry?

THEY WANT YOU TO COME BACK ALIVE!

Well, what chance have you to survive? Hardly any at all! Remember, back home the colored man always had to do the dirty work. On the front it is the same. Uncle Sam’s colored soldiers are just CANNON FODDER.

The leaflet ends with a German passierschein (safe conduct pass) at the bottom.

SAFE CONDUCT
AI-165-11-44

Some German leaflets were in the form of a safe conduct pass just for the black soldiers. For instance, leaflet AI-165-11-44 depicts an all-text safe conduct pass in both English and German. Some of the text is:

TO ALL MEMBERS OF THE COLORED DIVISION

After they got you into the war they shipped you to a foreign country as CANNON FODDER to fight in the RICH MAN’S WAR…

Slip over to Jerry some night as many other colored boys have done before you. They are now SAFE in a P.O.W. camp waiting for the end of the war.

A very similar uncoded leaflet was produced by the Germans in November 1944 on blue paper that said on the front in part:

SAFE CONDUCT

The American colored soldier who is presenting this certificate has ceased to fight. He is to be well cared for and removed from the danger zone at once.

The back of the leaflet had the same message in both German and Italian. Seeing the message in the foreign languages would give the surrendering soldier more confidence since he would be able to explain his actions to a Fascist soldier although he could not speak the language.

 

AI-173-12-44

This German leaflet depicts two black civilians trying to enter a church to pray. They are blocked by a group of white parishioners. The long text explains that the two men were visiting on a Sunday and just wanted to enter the church but were attacked instead. Text on the back says in part:

In Germany anything like this would be impossible. Colored people living in Germany can always go to any church they like. They have never been a problem to the Germans. There have never been lynchings of colored men in Germany…

A German Parolen der Woche (Slogan of the Week)

The Parole der Woche was the title of a weekly poster issued by the propa­ganda ministry of the German Reich from 1936 to February 1943. A small gummed version of these posters, 100 mm x 73 mm in size, was printed each week from August 1939 until the end of 1942. The stickers were printed by the Zentralverlag der NSDAP in Munich and are numbered at the bottom left. Private Citizens used them for many purposes and they are often found stuck on envelopes like patriotic stamps. The themes of the Parolen are always from the Nazi party and include attacks on Chamberlain, Roosevelt, Churchill, the Jews, the Russians, the French and rarely, blacks. The Parolen above was issued for the week of 11-17 June 1940. It attacks the French use of their northern African troops and says:

“In the Name of Civilization”

France, infiltrated by Jews and Negroes, pushed its black Beasts on us for the third time. It must be that last time. It will be that last time!!

Travelers-Handbook for American Soldiers

The German Sudstern Organization produced an interesting multi-page Travelers-Handbook for American Soldiers coded *149-10-44 in October 1944. It is an illustrated satirical booklet for troops fighting in Italy telling a number of short stories in rhyme about the perils of joining the army to see the world. One of the panels is racially insensitive and depicts a GI sitting by a signpost that reads:

JOIN THE ARMY – SEE THE NIGGER!

The soldier stares at an African and the text is:

On a cactus you may sit,
Water don’t you find a bit,
Where in sunny Africa

Fred the nigger-baby saw,
Rome and Berlin – Ladies curled,
Join the army see the world!

JAPAN

Scene from the Home Front

This full color Japanese leaflet depicts a black foreman with a whip striking a white woman at a factory while a second black worker kisses a white woman and fondles her breast. Since American wives were working in factories for the first time during World War Two in the “Rosie the Riveter” phase of armaments and war material, this leaflet was aimed at the soldiers on the front lines who left working wives at home. Strangely, the Japanese were telling the colored peoples of the colonial powers that they should take power from their white masters, and here they attack the workers and seem to take the side of the white power structure. A mixed message at best. Text at the bottom of the leaflet is:

Is it getting as bad as all this? Yap, Negroes are the boss of the town now.

Japs

The above Japanese leaflet depicts a black sprinter next to a black soldier. The text says that although the black man is a great racer, a great fighter and a good man, to the white man they are nothing but cannon fodder. They are sent to the front while “Whitey” stays behind where he won’t get hurt.

John W. Dower mentions the Japanese race propaganda in War without Mercy – Race and Power in the Pacific War, Pantheon Books, NYC, 1986:

Japanese propaganda directed at the United States during the war did indeed attempt to appeal to nonwhites by emphasizing racial discrimination…In the mid-1930s they established a connection with the radical anti-white Black Muslim movement led by Elijah Muhammad…Before the war, the Japanese also established a relationship with Robert O. Jordan, a charismatic black sometimes called Harlem’s Hitler. They also took over several American magazines, “Living Age” and “North American review” and founded a press service called “Negro News Syndicate.”

Barak Kushner says in The Thought War – Japanese Imperial Propaganda, University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu, 2006:

The Japanese government maneuvered to have favorable articles concerning its movements in Asia and explaining why boycotts against Japan hurt everyone printed in prominent American newspapers. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs targeted Black American newspapers for specific attention in the hope that disenfranchised minorities would seek solace in Japan’s championship of the “colored races.”

Stranded

This Japanese leaflet appears to have been drawn by the same artist as the one above. A black soldier looks down at an image of Africans being sold into slavery. It points out that although slavery may no longer exist, his people are still being treated like slave.

Diggers

This Japanese leaflet attempts to persuade the Australian "Diggers" to abandon New Guinea and go home because their real threat were the American soldiers, to include black soldiers, staged in Australia who were seducing the Australian women while they were dying in the jungle. The leaflet depicts an American soldier kissing an Australian wife while dead bodies are shown in the foreground and background. The text is:

Hey! you Diggers! He came, he saw, he conquered!

Thinking you diggers will never come back alive The BLACKS and the YANKS are raping your wives, your daughters and your sweethearts -- they are helpless without your protection. Your future happiness is at stake! One last Aussie simply means one more Yank safely in the house. Surely you'll not give up your lives to make this possible.

GO TELL THE JAPANESE SOLDIERS

This Japanese leaflet in Pidgin-English to the natives of Papua-New Guinea may not belong in this article that describes targeting blacks. However, the Japanese dropped these leaflets on the local black natives asking them to act as their eyes and ears in case of an American attack. One individual who knows the Papuans well said in regard to this leaflet:

The Japanese occupiers of northern Papua New Guinea were, for the most part, liked by the Papuans. In general, the Japanese hired the Papuans to work for them; teaching them to drive trucks, perform rudimentary maintenance on vehicles and equipment, etc. and paying wages in the occupation currency. Better treatment than they received from their pre-war Australian administrators. From the Papuans' point of view, they just changed one occupier for another.

At the left of the leaflet an American amphibious force lands on their island. Two natives in the bush watch the landing and one says that he sees the American soldiers and the second says that they need to tell the Japanese so they can come and kill them. The text is:

GO QUICKLY AND TELL THE JAPANESE SOLDIERS

Oh! The American soldiers are very dumb. They do not know that the strong Japanese soldiers are going to kill them.

Halou! [Name of native at left] Run quickly and alert the Japanese soldiers. The [Japanese] soldiers are over there!

A fight Between Two Races

Another leaflet meant to drive a wedge between American black and white fighting men is in the form of a written leaflet without image. Some of the text is:

A Negro youth was lynched in Detroit, Mich. On March 12th for the reason of having raped a white girl…but as his innocence was made clear, the neighboring Negroes raised and attacked the girl’s house for revenge…the nearby army unit had to rush to the scene…There were 172 dead among the Negroes after having been machinegunned…

Whites always seem to be right…When it comes to war Negroes are quite useful…but after it’s over, all colored heroes will have to go back where they belong----Slaves again….

Significance of Army Day

Curiously, like the Germans, at the same time the Japanese were using race as a theme to attack their enemies, they used this same theme to win friendship and admiration from their allies and collaborators. In the leaflet above, the Japanese brag about beating the Russians in 1905 and state that this shows that not only are Asians equal to Europeans, but in fact, better than Europeans. So, at the same time they attack Americans for thinking they are better than blacks, the Japanese brag about the fact that they are clearly superior to whites. The Japanese claim to be fighting the Anglo-Americans for all Asians and ask for Philippine loyalty. A penciled note on this leaflet indicates that the Japanese dropped in on 10 March 1944.

ITALY

The Italians never really went on the offensive against the Americans so there are no leaflets that seek to divide and conquer American forces using minority troops as a major theme. However, the fascist Italian government and its German allies produced several leaflets, posters and propaganda postcards that attacked the American blacks and depicted them as uncultured animals, thieves and rapists. This propaganda targeted the Italian people in an attempt to encourage them to fight on to protect their nation and heritage from the black barbarians who would destroy the culture. I first discussed some of these postcards in an article entitled “German Propaganda Post Cards in Italy during World War II,” The American Philatelist, July 1990.

Venus de Milo

Certainly the most famous of all the anti-black propaganda cards is this 1944 Gino Boccasile vignette showing a black American corporal offering the Venus de Milo for two dollars. A supporter of Benito Mussolini, Boccasile produced propaganda material for the government including several racist and anti-Semitic posters. After the war he was imprisoned and tried for collaborating with the Fascists and although acquitted, he remained an outcast. He did a second vignette called “Negro in Church” where Christ on the Cross was falling over, possibly knocked aside in the rush of the American Negroes to loot the building.

Negroes in Church 

In this postcard we see black troops stealing chalices and precious metal objects from a Catholic Church.

Anglo-American Police…

One of the black and white propaganda postcards produced by the Germans for their Italian allies depicts a caricatured American and black soldier. Text beneath the card is:

Anglo-American police on the streets of Rome

(Sketched by Alberto Cossola and smuggled out of invaded territory)

In order to avoid a similar shame to the cities of Northern Italy, each man must perform his duty at work. That is the only way we can help our soldiers who are fighting against the multicolored army.

North Italy - South Italy

Other such cards mention the difference between the peaceful Fascist north of Italy and the occupied south of Italy. One full-color double-card depicts two Allied soldiers (one a black soldier holding a whip) laughing at a weeping Italian couple amid burning and crumbling ruins. The text is:

In Southern Italy, the occupation troops kill and burn, threaten the population and pillage. Many black troops rape women. The districts completely soiled by the black troops have to be cleaned up by Italians.

The second connected card depicts a female farmer in the north waving to a passing soldier in a tank. The text is:

In Northern Italy there reigns tranquility and order. The new Republican Italy is in full reconstruction. Above all, there dominates a steady faith in the future.

One of Many

This German multi-page leaflet to Italians depicts a number of faces on one page, a black man raping a white girl with the word “Nigger!” on another, and several pages depicting blacks and their victims. The propaganda claims that they are all the same, murderers and rapists.

Blacks in our House?

Another German leaflet to Italians that uses race as a theme is coded 0I/151. It bears four photographs of black faces on one side and four scenes on the back, including a black being mugged, a black hanging from a rope and a vandalized church. The first side has five blocks of text, four of which claim to be reports on black behavior from a private letters, news correspondents, etc. The back has five more, but each of them is just a simple propaganda statement. The title of the leaflet is in larger typeface on the front. It is:

Blacks in our House? Never! We Struggle until Victory!

The text under the lynched person tells the Italians:

The vast majority of Chicago gangster leaders are niggers and the bloodbaths in Chicago can be attributed to them. The American population knows this well and they lynch the niggers because of this.

Another message by a “Franco B” claims that three drunken niggers came to the garden and two of them attacked and killed an uncle while the third one held him. One then ran after Lisetta. She ran away screaming. Franco got out of his hiding place and I followed her. He would not leave her to her fate. Other texts mention black music and morality, the same sort of thing we hear today about “rappers.” The Germans say that President Roosevelt has spoken about the black artists and their nightclubs. The “art” of these clubs consists of obscene actions, wild nude dancing and dancing to the sounds of jungle music. Another block of text warns of gangs of noisy blacks that loiter along the roads leading into cities, and how they get women pregnant and infect them with venereal diseases. In all, your usual German propaganda trying to motivate the Italians to continue the fight to protect their homeland and women from the black murderers and rapists.

Curiously, some American officers worried about the black VD rate too. John Costello mentions this in Love, Sex and War:Changing Values, 1939-45, William Collins, London, 1985:

The all-Negro regiments, which made up sixteen per cent of the theatre strength, proved to be the most sexually active with ninety-six per cent of black troops admitting to intercourse, compared to eighty-two per cent of white soldiers. Consequently VD rates amongst black soldiers averaged five times the rate for white ones, and in some units infections were being contracted by every second man. “Just why the Negro has more sexual intercourse is a matter of speculation,” noted the survey, but other statistics collected by the army during the war showed that black GIs admitted to earlier and more frequent sexual activity as adolescents. When overseas, most of these troops were in supply and quartermaster regiments behind the front lines – so they had more opportunity for sexual activity. Although black troops were more likely to use a condom and take prophylactic measures than whites (sixty-two per cent compared to forty-three per cent), their far higher VD rates, the report pointed out, was because “women to whom they have access are much more likely to be diseased on the average than the white enlisted male contact.”

Violated Christmas
Courtesy of Hans Moonen – www.ww2propaganda.eu

This German leaflet to Italians coded ĝI-179 depicts a black American soldier on the front. The text reads:

If the opposition protests against the employment of black soldiers in combat, I can answer to the Congress that I have particular and good reasons to employ them.

Roosevelt to Congress 16 June 1944

The back is all text and a long propaganda message discusses the barbarity of black soldiers in Italy and their violations of the Italian people during the Christmas season.

Fratricide!

In this Fascist Italian image a British “Tommy” and an American black soldier laugh at the sight of an Italian soldier apparently fighting against his brother who stayed loyal to Mussolini.

Liberator

This final image shows a black American airman holding his fist over a destroyed Italian city.

In regard to the German use of race as a propaganda theme in Italy, Pradeep Kanthan told me:

My Dad was in the 8th Army and was in Italy from 1943 to 1945. As a sapper he had to stay behind to remove the mines he had laid. He spoke of being in Bari, and spoke Italian fluently by the time he came back to India. He told me that the Germans had spread leaflets to the Italian population that Indians were barbarians and would pillage and rape at will. It was very hard for Indians to get close to locals or get any support from them for this reason. My Dad learnt of this when he had to employ locals in clearing minefields.

KOREAN WAR

 

American Negro Soldiers!

This North Korean leaflet depicts a black lynching victim being removed from the scene of the crime by police. The text is:

American Negro soldiers! Look at this heart-breaking picture! It shows what happened to John Craft, Negro veteran of World War II, when he stood up for his rights in Magee, Mississippi.

The back is all text. Some of the message is:

LOOK AT THIS PICTURE AND THINK!

Why are you in Korea? The Chinese and Koreans are for equality and mutual respect among all races. They do not regard Negroes as inferior. In fact, they are fighting against the attempt to impose Jim Crow on them…

Sing-song in a P.O.W. Camp

The Communist Chinese produced a brown monotone leaflet that depicts a group of black prisoners of war. One plays an accordion, a second plays a guitar. The leaflet is signed by the “Central Political Bureau of the Korean People’s Army.”

Surprisingly, very few Korean War Communist leaflets targeted African-American troops. The Chinese and North Vietnamese would later produce dozens of racially divisive leaflets in the 1960s, but the North Koreans showed little interest in attacking that “soft underbelly” of America. There is one known case of six American prisoners released on 7 January 1951 and sent back to their own lines carrying three North Korean leaflets. The very odd text is:

COLORED MEN OF U.S. FORCES. FIND THE ONLY WAY TO LIVE!

YOU MUST LIVE. YOU MUST GO HOME AGAIN. Your family is awaiting your return. How sad were it when your death be informed to them. Who will support your family’s lives after your death? You are now defeated on every front and are surrounded in many areas by brave Korea People’s Army and voluntary Army of China. You continuous fight brings nothing else but worthless death in a strange land.

YOU MUST HAVE YOUR JUST RIGHT TO ENJOY FREEDOM AND EQUALITY.

You certainly remember that you have been mistreated with racist discrimination and in slave life. American capitalists are plotting to colonize Korea by military intervention. We should cut this chain.

HATE WAR AND COME OVER TO KOREAN’S PEOPLE’S ARMY. IF YOU WANT TO FIND THE ONLY WAY TO LIVE.

Korean People’s Army will treat you very well and send you home soon.

Negro Soldiers!

Another leaflet that uses race as a theme is folds out into six pages and is signed by the Korean People’s Army and the Chinese People’s Volunteers. A picture on the cover depicts Private First Class James Wilson shaking hands with his Communist captors. Some of the text is:

Did you ever stop to think why you should be in Korea, fighting other colored people, while lynchings, murders and insults pile up against the Negro people at home?

We say: No U.S. soldiers have any business in Korea. Korea for the Koreans. China for the Chinese. America for the Americans, Negro and white.

…We didn’t come 5,000 miles across the sea to fight. We didn’t come to America with guns and bombs and we never will. Don’t risk your lives here. Ask to go home where you can fight for your own rights as a human being. Leave us in peace in our homes here.

The leaflet goes on to report lynchings and crimes against black men both in the United States and in the U.S. Army in Korea. It discusses politics in the United States and points out how few black Congressmen and Senators hold office. It reminds the black soldiers of how few black officers have been commissioned in the military.

VIETNAM WAR

The Communists produced a great number of divide and conquer leaflets during the Vietnam War. Some showed the American people marching in anti-war protests; others mentioned the treatment of black civilians and troops. Most were very well done, printed in Hanoi and shipped to both the battle front and the United States where they would be distributed by fellow-travelers and anti-war activists. A very few were printed in the South by the Viet Cong and they are crude on poor quality paper. One must always beware the crude leaflets though, since they could have purposely been printed in the North in a crude manner to make them appear to be battle-front leaflets.

Whereas most American leaflets were dropped from the air over selected targets, the Communists never had that ability. Therefore, Communist leaflets were usually left where it was thought that Americans would pass by; along trails, near base camps, and of course in bars or other places that American troops might congregate.

The previously classified Confidential MACV Combined Intelligence Center VC PROPAGANDA FACTBOOK dated 29 March 1969 says about the Viet Cong’s use of race in part:

The purpose of enemy propaganda directed against US soldiers is to lower their morale and to lessen their desire to fight. The most common method of dissemination of this propaganda is the leaflet. Radio Hanoi and Liberation Radio also direct propaganda broadcasts at the US soldier. The VC has often chosen particular target groups within the US forces; for example, the Negro servicemen or the men of a particular division are likely targets. Most of the propaganda, however, is directed at the US soldier in general…

A parallel is often drawn between the American Revolution, which is lauded as a just war of which the world approved, and the present struggle in Vietnam… There are three slogans which appear most frequently in large type at the bottom of the various leaflets directed at the US soldier: “Oppose the US aggressive war in South Vietnam”, “Peace for Vietnam,” and “Repatriate the US Expeditionary Corps.” Propaganda aimed at the Negro soldier portrays the US “aggressors” as the common enemy of both the Negro and the Vietnamese. These leaflets stress racial injustices in the US in an effort to get the Negro soldier to empathize with the VC cause and to question his support of the American effort.

Jerry Berry says in Psychological Warfare Leaflets of the Vietnam War:

Another popular theme of Communist leaflets was the existing racial prejudice against African Americans in the United States. The Communist propagandist used this advantage to specifically target the Black GIs fighting in South Vietnam. Messages on leaflets attempted to convince them that they were being used unfairly by their superiors and forced to suffer the brunt of the fighting and casualties on the battlefield. Black GIs were often described in Communist leaflets as “cannon fodder for the American aggressors in South Vietnam”. Photos of African Americans depicting racial injustice against them were favorite choices of Communist propaganda writers.

If the reader wants to see more examples of Communist leaflets from the Vietnam War I recommend he read my article on this subject.

Black Men Should Not Fight in Vietnam for Racist America

Some of the text on the back of the leaflet is:

EVER HEARD THIS LITTLE DITTY?

I wish I were an Alabama trooper,

that is what I would truly like to be.

I wish I was an Alabama trooper,

cause then I could kill the niggers legally.

Anti-war Protestors

A similar leaflet depicts another anti-War crowd carrying signs such as “Weapons cannot win the people” and "Bring the troops home now.” Some of the text on the back is:

AFRO-AMERICANS!

The Vietnamese are not exploiting you nor discriminating against you. No Vietnamese shoots and kills Black freedom-fighters in the streets of America. The Vietnamese are fighting for their own independence and freedom.

Your true enemy is not the Vietnamese people. Your true enemies are those who are calling you niggers.

Unite with your Vietnamese brothers to fight our common enemy: the ruling clique in the United States who are carrying out an extremely cruel war of aggression in Vietnam and an extremely barbarous policy of exploitation and racial discrimination in the United States!

The Viet Cong also cleverly used the war protestors in the United States, those that Vladimir Lenin called “useful idiots of the west” to further their political aims. For instance, in the fall of 1967 a black civil rights demonstration in Washington, DC was viewed by the Communists as an opportune time to play the race card for their own propaganda purpose. They prepared two black Prisoners-of-War along with white Master Sergeant Dan Pitzer, a Special Forces medic, for release. It took the three Americans about a month to reach Phnom Penh, Cambodia walking and traveling on sampans along the many canals in the Mekong Delta area bordering Cambodia. Anti-war activist Tom Hayden was their escort on the final leg of the trip home. They reached safety on Veteran's Day, 11 November 1967. Dan Pitzer recalls:

In October, we were told we had been selected for release as part of an arrangement worked out with a "peace committee" in the United States. All we had to do, the Viet Cong said, was to write letter asking to be allowed to go home to our families. Disbelieving, we took a chance and wrote the letters. At the end of October, Staff Sergeant James Jackson, Mater Sergeant Edward Johnson and I set out.

Weapons cannot win the people

A similar leaflet depicts the same crowd holding the same signs in a different part of their march. Some of the text on the back is:

AFRO-AMERICANS!

In conflict in Vietnam you are forced to:

1. Go first.
2. Withdraw last.
3. Stay in the outer ring.
4. Do the hardest and most dangerous jobs.

In Vietnam, casualty rates of black GIs are much higher than for whites.

In the States you are called niggers!

The Vietnamese people are not your enemy!

Your enemies are those who are carrying out harsh exploitation and extremely barbarous racial discrimination against American blacks, and have forced you to serve in this war of American aggression against Vietnam…

 

The Vietnam War is a Hell Hole…

Another leaflet shows a black man being arrested by a club-bearing white police officer. A picture on the back depicts a black soldier crawling in a swamp. Some of the text on the back is:

The Vietnam is 'a hell hole of racism for the Negroes GIs over and above the usual hell of war' (Philadelphia Independent). Your real enemies are those who call you “Niggers.” Your genuine struggle is on your native land. Go home now and alive!

How Democracy Operates

Another National Liberation Front leaflet featured the myth that minority troops were dying in greater numbers than their white comrades. The leaflet has a cartoon on the front where a staff sergeant says to his assembled frightened black troops:

Back home in the States, negroes are at the end of the line, but here in Vietnam it's different - we put you right up front.

The leaflet is very crude and was probably designed to look that way so finders would think that it was printed in the field. It was certainly printed in Hanoi in a modern printing shop.

False claims are made on the back that:

HOW DEMOCRACY OPERATES

11 percent of the U.S. population are Negroes.

30 percent of the G.I.s in Vietnam are Negroes.

40% of G.I. deaths in Vietnam are Negroes.

If you’re reading this, you’re one of the 30 percent.

Stay out of the 40 percent column!

GO HOME!

In reality, in Vietnam white deaths were about 86 percent of the total losses while black deaths were about 12.5 percent.

Black GI in the U.S. Army!

Some leaflets are all text. One such leaflet says in part:

20 million of your fellow-countrymen in the U.S.A. are being abused, oppressed, exploited, manhandled, murdered by racist authorities. You know it well, don’t you?

Although this is not the leaflet mentioned by retired Master Sergeant Gregory H. Murry in his book Content with my Wages – A Sergeant’s Story - Vietnam, No End to Publishing Co., Austin, Texas, 2013, the message is similar. He says:

One day when we were clearing the sides of Highway 13 I found a red piece of paper on the ground near the road. It was printed in English and the message was aimed at the black soldiers. It asked them why they were fighting and dying in Vietnam when the country that sent them here wouldn’t let them enjoy the same rights as the white soldiers. It mentioned the lynchings, bombings and murders that were a regular occurrence in the south during the civil rights struggle that was taking place at this time.

Another all text leaflet found in Binh Thuan Province in 1968 bears a long message that says in part:

AFRO AMERICANS!

Over the past two months, more than a million of Black men in your Homeland, armed with weapons, have risen up against U.S. racial administration’s terrorism and cruel suppression. This movement of struggle has been becoming ever more fierce and wider; prevailing throughout over 90 cities and provincial towns in 28 states of U.S.A. Detroit of Michigan was especially considered the theatre of combat. Being afraid of this resolute and powerful struggle, the U.S. racial capitalist authorities sent ten of thousand policemen and soldiers to Detroit, tanks and helicopters were applied to suppress it. Blood is shedding. The Black casualties were about one hundred killed and wounded, thousands arrested. But the endless shots were heard and their struggle for the rights of EQUALITY and FREEDOM kept on going stronger all over U.S.A.

YOU, BLACK MEN HAVE BEEN DECEPTIVELY SENT TO SOUTH VIET-NAM. HOW DO YOU THINK ABOUT YOUR AFRO AMERICAN PEOPLE’S STRUGGLE AT HOME?

U.S. Colored Armymen

I like the fact that during the decade of war the Viet Cong used every term for Afro-Americans that existed in American history. I am old enough to remember when the term “Colored” was in use. In a railway station in the old south I was once warned by an elderly gentleman not to drink from a water fountain with the overhead sign, “Colored only.” I was so disappointed, I was sure the water would be brightly colored. When Joe Louis was the American heavyweight boxing champion he was a “Negro.” When the “liberation” movement got stronger after WWII we had “Black Panthers” and “Black Muslims.” These days of course, the popular term is “Afro-Americans.” In the above South Vietnam Front for National Liberation leaflet, colored soldiers are told that they are committing the same atrocities that the Ku Klux Klan did to their families in the old South. One Marine stated that he found a copy of this leaflet hung on a bush in Quang Nam Province in 1968. The text on the back says in part:

Those who are killing and shooting at our people and those who have caused bloody repression against negro people in the U.S.A. are the same; They are the U.S. Imperialists.

How can you stand on their side against our people!

US ARMYMEN – NEGRO ARMYMEN

This all-text Viet Cong leaflet uses the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King to try and convince black troops that they should refuse to fight in Vietnam. The leaflet is signed by the Central Trung Bo Revolutionary Armed Forces. Some of the text on the back is:

Do support the Negro people’s struggle.

Do act according to Mr. King’s teaching: We fight against racial discrimination not against the combatants of freedom and independence in Vietnam.

Don’t die in vain in Vietnam

U.S NEGRO ARMYMEN

This Viet Cong leaflet has an interesting line where it compares U.S. soldiers in Vietnam to Klu Klux Klan members in the American South.

US BLACKMEN!

This large leaflet is in the form of a “Bill for special Fair Treatment” that promises good treatment for any soldier who defects to the Communists. The back has the same message in Vietnamese. Some of the text is:

The US Blackman’s killed and wounded rate are now higher than that of the white!

It is clear that you have been pushed to deadly dangerous places to serve as cannon fodder for US imperialists and racist authorities….

American Negro Soldiers

This is a very interesting Viet Cong leaflet that mentions race as a major theme. It has wonderful bona fides, and I have reports from military personnel who found them on the ground. However, I am suspicious. The paper is excellent, the printing is very professional. The vocabulary is college level and they spell “laboring” in the British way; “Labouring.” So, although this has been vetted as a genuine Viet Cong leaflet, I still wonder. The finders told me:

In December 1967 at Phu Bai we received a bunch of “incoming” and they had the mortars set to explode in the air and all these leaflets came down. They were full of that same stuff! I ran out during the attack and grabbed the leaflets and shoved them in my shirt, and sent many home...

I have one. They were left along trails the Viet Cong, North Vietnam Army and American troops traveled. I was 5th Cavalry, Bong Son, late in 1967.

This ends our brief look at the use of race as a propaganda theme. There are certainly dozens more such leaflets. Readers with additional leaflets or questions about this story are encouraged to write to the author at Sgmbert@hotmail.com.

End: 13 January 2017