Heritage Florida Jewish News - Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice

As we again approach U.N. sponsored International Holocaust Remembrance Day on Jan.27, it is fitting for all peoples, not just Jews, to reflect on its significance. The threat to the world is as present today as it was in the 1930s.

Humanity didn’t succeed very well when confronted then by the so-called master race, so we all get to take teacher’s test again to see if we have learned anything ‘in class.’ Today, everyone is called to struggle against a new form of regime evil and totalitarianism threatening the world—master jihad, an aberration of Islam, with its center in Ayatollah Iran, an axis through North Korea, and reaching out worldwide through various terror networks.

 On Jan. 27, too many loose-thinking people will be asking, “What is so ‘international’ about the Holocaust?” They may even accuse the Jews of incessant crying over “their” Holocaust (Shoah) even after 70 years. “Enough is Enough!”, they would say, “Millions have since died in one genocide or another—in Cambodia, in Rwanda, etc.—but no one cries more than the Jews!” What these detractors too easily forget is that the hate and evil that go around, come around, that unlike other genocides, the industrial extermination of the majority of European Jewry was conceived to be total and cross-borders as part of a master German Nazi plan for world domination. And woe to all who say that such horror was only the concern of Jews and will not again overtake one and all.

All those who did not see this in 1939 paid the ultimate price. And yet much more evil would still have come internationally to all had Nazi Germany achieved total victory in the World War II. Yes, Jews continue to cry—we cry also for all of humanity so that history does not repeat itself.

Discussion of the German onslaught during World War II occasionally mentions the more than 40 million killed and murdered on European soil. But such discussion rarely touches on what would have happened elsewhere in the world had the Third Reich been victorious. What would have been the logical consequences of German racism after such victory?

Several novels in the “What If” genre have appeared over the years. One of the most searing is Philip Roth’s 2004 novel, “The Plot Against America,” in which the author postulates victory of renowned aviator Lindbergh over Roosevelt in the 1940 U.S. presidential elections. And the logical consequences follow—“President” Lindbergh makes his first trip abroad to confer with his friend Hitler. This genre is a telling way to present issues for today.

In dealing with the aftermath of a postulated German victory, some have dealt with the results in Europe and America—a fascist-leaning Britain and Ukraine, an enslaved Poland, and German alliance with a virulently segregationist United States. The millions of Jews murdered would be only a footnote in rewritten European history.

Few, however, have dealt at any length with the fate of black Africa, as well as blacks around the world, under a 1,000-year German Nazi Reich and its racist allies.

The successful application of Nazi ideology during World War II would then seek new frontiers. Most important, that ideology of superiority would appear to have been vindicated in the minds of tens of millions of whites around the world—something to be declared from every podium and taught in every school—something to be advanced under imported and home-grown Nazi guidance in other frameworks for the “noble goal of improving the human race.” Yes, even in America.

But Africa and blacks? During WW II there were very few blacks living under German occupation in Europe and therefore of little concern. This is not to belittle the premonitionary tie-in between Jews and blacks made by Nazi paranoia as witnessed by the evil poster for the 1938 German “Degenerate Music” exhibition held in Dusseldorf.

This evil would have been of little practical concern until a German victory. With such victory, one of the first acts dealing with Nazi repartitioning of the world would be Hitler’s convening of a Berlin Conference to deal with the return of all of Germany’s colonies that had been lost to Britain, France and Belgium in the aftermath of World War I, plus large colonial “rectifications” that would be deemed necessary.

Following is a listing of these colonies for Africa alone: Tanganyika (Tanzania), Ruanda-Urundi (Rwanda and Burundi), Wituland (in Kenya), Kionga Triangle (in Mozambique), Southwest Africa (Namibia and part of Botswana), Kamerun (Cameroon and part of Nigeria), and Togoland (Togo and part of Ghana). To these could logically be added all the rest of Kenya, Nigeria and Ghana. Expansions to Vichy France’s enslaved colonies might also result. Fascist Italy’s colonial possessions would be consolidated around a subjugated Ethiopia. Belgium’s cruel rule in the Congo (Zaire-DRC) would reach a new low under racist fascism. Soon, thereafter, Nazi collaboration would follow with Apartheid Dutch South Africa and the erstwhile British colonies of Northern Rhodesia (Zambia), Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) and Nyasaland (Malawi).

Once Germany’s colonial administrations would have been restored and consolidated, Africans would be reduced to mostly slave labor and, in case of revolt, to genocide, tribe by tribe. Genocide? Yes. The first German genocide on a large scale took place in 1904-07, not in Europe, but in today’s Namibia. The Herero and the Nama peoples had taken up arms against Imperial Germany and in the subsequent massacre, 10,000 Nama (half their population) and approximately 65,000 Hereros (about 80 percent of their population) were murdered. The survivors suffered dispossession, deportation, forced labor and racial segregation.

Restoration and expansion of German and Italian oppressive rule in Africa under a projected 1,000-year Nazi Reich.

What starts with attacks on Jews never ends with the Jews. A few countries have already declared Jan. 27 as also their national day of remembrance—remembrance that, but for the grace of God, they too would have sunk into the racist mire. More countries should follow their example for their own sake.

Aaron Braunstein is a retired U.S. Foreign Service officer, resident in Jerusalem, who served eight years in black Africa among several other postings in Washington, D.C., and abroad. He is a board member of the Israel-Africa Friendship Association and the founding president of the Jewish Covenant Alliance, R.A., championing a Jewish mission to the nations in the spiritual struggle against regime evil in the world.