Native Americans in World War IIBy Thomas D. MorganBecause the Choctaw language had befuddled German code-breakers in World War I, the German government feared the likelihood of Indian communications specialists as World War II loomed. During the 1930s, Nazi agents posing as anthropologists and writers on reservations tried to subvert some Indian tribes and learn their language. Pan-Nazi agitators from the German-American Bund tried to persuade Indians not to register for the draft. Third Reich Propaganda Minister Josef Goebbels predicted Indians would revolt rather than fight Germany because the Swastika was similar to an Indian mystical bird symbol depicting good luck.
Goebbels went so far as to declare the Sioux to be "Aryans," but the Indians knew that as a Mongoloid race, they would be enslaved by the Nazis. Fascist attempts to convert Indians to their cause not only met with failure, but it may have encouraged Indians to register for the draft in the large numbers they did. About 20 percent of the Indian population, 80,000 men and women, marched off to fight in the armed forces and at the home front against Adolph Hitler, a man they called, "he who smells his moustache." Benito Mussolini fared little better, as the Indians called him "Gourd Chin."Comment: The nicknames for Hitler and Mussolini must've been in a particular Native language. There's no way Indians from different tribes would agree on a single nickname.
For more on the subject, see
Hitler = Greatest Threat Since Indians?,
Reclaiming the Swastika, and
Adolf Hitler: A True American.
Actually, the reason the Sioux didn't like the Nazis had more to do with the fact that the Sioux have their own history. And being decent human beings and all.
ReplyDeleteThe Nazi idea of the Sioux being misplaced Aryans has a whiff of the Mormon idea about Israelites in the New World.
ReplyDeleteAgreed. I think all civilized (in the 19th century sense of the word) peoples go through a "master race" phase of hating everyone else.
ReplyDelete