As in a drop in a bucket, and Aryan White Supremacy as in actual Nazis.

I usually don’t bring you recommendations for war related books partly because I don’t have any academic authority or meaningful experience in that area, but this one title struck my interest and I’m inclined to read it: The Lost Eleven: The Forgotten Story of Black American Soldiers Brutally Massacred in World War II by Denise George and Robert Child.

The “Lost 11” were part of a segregated artillery unit, all African Americans, that became trapped behind German lines in a part of Belgium that was long part of Germany, and in which many strong sympathizers of Germany and the Nazi regime lived. So, naturally, they were turned over to the Schutzstaffel (the SS), tortured, disfigured, and murdered.

My point here is not to be morbid, but to suggest a touchstone to the history of both racism and white supremacy with direct connections to the present. How many times do we say “our parents/grandparents fought to end facism in Europe so therefore Trump is a ninny” or words to that effect? It is a common memish trope of the day. Its repetition almost makes is ahistorical and trite. Well, let’s un-trite that idea for a moment.

The bloody and torturous massacre of these black men was a nexus for centuries of racism that denigrated and murdered Native Americans in the Spanish colonies, produced the Inquisition, the increasingly strident isolation and repression of Jews from the Atlantic to the Urals, colonialism everywhere, and the ultimate rise of highly organized white supremacy in the form of a Nazi nation with laws and practices intent on wiping out, killing, or enslaving all bipoc people. All bipoc people. If we asked, at the moment these SS troops, informed of the black soldiers’ whereabouts in the home of Mathias Langer, and were closing in on that home, what was to happen next, there would be no uncertainty. The German sympathizers and the Nazi soldiers were true to form. All white supremacists and fascists will be true to form unless they are stopped. That is the lesson of this history.

Have you read the breakthrough novel of the year? When you are done with that, try:

In Search of Sungudogo by Greg Laden, now in Kindle or Paperback
*Please note:
Links to books and other items on this page and elsewhere on Greg Ladens' blog may send you to Amazon, where I am a registered affiliate. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases, which helps to fund this site.