Constructing Racial Visibility: Biracial "Occupation Children" in the Third Reich, 1933–1937

Abstract:In summer 1937, approximately four hundred to six hundred German descendants of Allied soldiers of color born in post-World War I Rhineland were forcedly sterilized. The Nazis vilified the children, referring to them as Rheinlandbastarde ("Rhineland bastards"). We still know relatively little about the fates of individual victims and the role of local perpetrators. This article uses anthropologist Wolfgang Abel's 1933 study of biracial Besatzungskinder ("occupation children") from Wiesbaden to shed fresh light on the interplay between local and national dynamics in the coming of the 1937 sterilization campaign. Drawing on many hitherto unexplored archival sources, the article traces the lives of several biracial children. The case of the Rhenish children shows that Nazi leaders worried that "racial difference" often was invisible. A key goal thus focused on constructing the children's racial visibility. Officials, physicians, and teachers embedded in local communities often played a crucial role in ferreting out biracial children and marking them as racial "Others." Simultaneously, the case of Wiesbaden suggests that instances where local actors contested important elements of ascriptions of racial "Otherness" to biracial Besatzungskinder may have hardened Nazi leaders' resolve to pursue the children's sterilizations outside existing legal norms and procedures.