That if they were going to be this chummy and this friendly with actual Nazis who had been at war with them just months earlier, it really led them to question real commitments to freedom and democracy at home. And that really leads them to question the sincerity of what their fellow white soldiers have been fighting for. And for Black Americans, it it reveals that in many ways Nazi racial policies and American racial policies were just two sides of the same coin. They're allowing them to eat in the same dining facilities, go to the same movie theaters, sit in the same parts of the train cars. These white Americans were treating the Germans infinitely better than they ever treated their fellow Black troops. It's one of the most common stories that Black veterans would tell. On Nazi prisoners of war being treated better than Black American soldiers "But for them, that meant that you also had to demand that America be a country worth fighting and dying for." fought for the country and many of them identified as being deeply, deeply patriotic," Delmont says. Bill of 1944.ĭelmont's new book, Half American, chronicles Black Americans' quest to serve in World War II - and how their experiences in the war ultimately fueled the civil rights movement. After the war, Black veterans were largely left out of the benefits created by the G.I.
"If they stepped even a foot outside of that, they were threatened or attacked by white police or sheriffs," Delmont says.ĭelmont says that Black troops sent to Europe during the war often found that they were treated better there than they were at home. Racial epithets and threats of violence were part of daily life on Southern military bases, and off base, African Americans were restricted to the "Black" sections of town.
"The only reason the military maintained this racial segregation during the war was to appease white racial prejudice."īlack servicemen traveling to the Jim Crow South for training would pull down the shades on their train cars so that white townspeople wouldn't throw rocks at the windows. "There was no strategic or tactical reason to do it," Delmont says. Military segregation was maintained throughout the war, which meant separate barracks and recreation facilities, both at home and abroad. Though more than one million Black Americans served in WWII, their military uniforms couldn't protect them from systematic racism.
Films and stories about World War II create a narrative of Americans united against a common enemy, but historian Matthew Delmont says the truth of the U.S.
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