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Unique encounters in liberated Limburg A research on the interactions between African American soldiers and Dutch women in the liberation period, 1944-1945 J.L. DRESEN 3912388 RESEARCH MASTER HISTORY THESIS UTRECHT UNIVERSITY SUPERVISOR: PROF. DR. ISMEE TAMES SECOND READER: DR. RACHEL GILLETT 25 JUNE 2019 35,364 WORDS Acknowledgements This thesis and the past two years of the Research Master History would have been different without a number of people whom I am very grateful for and would like to thank here. First of all, I would like to thank my thesis supervisor, Ismee Tames for her guidance and scholarly insights. Her structured ideas and feedback guided me when needed. I am particularly grateful for the assistance given by Mieke Kirkels, who’s books inspired me to write a thesis on this topic and who has shared her knowledge and enthusiasm on the subject with me. My gratitude also goes out to Willemijn Ruberg who has provided feedback on numerous essays throughout the past two years and was always helpful. Moreover, my special thanks are extended to all the fellow students of the RMA for their constructive feedback, not only on this thesis but during the past two years. Further, I would especially like to thank Susan Verstegen, Hans Meulendijks, Eline Kemps and Jan de Jong for their meticulous feedback and taking the time to provide comments. I would like to thank Mark Diederen, for the late night library sessions and our ongoing discussions about nature versus nurture, in which none of us will ever concede. Additionally, I want to thank Lex van Rens, for his straightforward comments, emotional support and for being one of my best friends. I would like to thank my sister, Noor, for being honest on every subject in life and taking me on activities to take my mind of my thesis. Lastly, I would deeply like to thank my parents, Jos and Bea, for their unconditional support in every way possible throughout my studies. I am extremely grateful for your love and support and should express this way more often. Juul Dresen Utrecht, June 2019 1 Abstract This research focuses on the encounters between African American soldiers and Dutch women in the liberation period in the province Limburg in the Netherlands. By exploring a wide variety of primary sources, this thesis identified an absence in government discussions about the presence of African American soldiers in the Netherlands. This absence attributed to the disremembering of the presence of these soldiers in the aftermath of the war. Additionally, this thesis argues that the claim that all liberators were treated or regarded equally in the Netherlands can be criticised. This research uses the concept of the Carnivalesque, as introduced by Mikhail Bakhtin to explain what circumstances facilitated the contacts between African American soldiers and Dutch women, and what made them possible for a particular time period. The issues of ‘race relations,’ ‘inter-racial’ encounters and gender relationships are approached through the methodology of Critical Discourse Analysis and placed within the framework of transfer history. After giving an overview of the context in which these associations took place, a close reading analysis of Limburg newspapers demonstrates that patronising language and the discursive construction of African American soldiers as ‘other’ were present in newspaper articles on African American soldiers. Therefore, this thesis indicates that present racial images about black people in the Netherlands affected the treatment of and interactions with African American soldiers in the liberated south in 1944-1945. However, this research concludes that these racial images did not have a profound impact on the moral panic that erupted almost simultaneously with the arrival of the American army in Limburg. Instead, this moral panic was directed to foreign soldiers in general. The last chapter examines the legacies of these encounters, with a special focus on the children that were born to African American soldiers and Dutch women. This thesis shows that in contrast to other European countries, no government or public debates took place about the existence and upbringing of these children. 2 Figure 1: Map of the Netherlands in early 1945. Image: Studio Christa Jesse. © Ingrid de Zwarte. The image was used with permission of Ingrid de Zwarte. 3 Figure 2: Detailed map of South Limburg, Frank van den Hoven, ‘Op ontdekkingstocht door Zuid- Limburg’, Filatop, no.3 Limburg (version 2019) https://chorusgen.nl/plaatsen.html, [accessed 19 June 2019]. 4 Contents Abbreviations 7 Explanation of Terminology 8 Introduction 10 Unique encounters: a context 11 The practice of racism 16 Methodology: Critical Discourse Analysis 18 Theoretical framework: Transfer history 19 Research questions and relevance 20 Chapter 1: The Liberation 22 Historiography 23 Power structures during the liberation 25 African American soldiers in the Netherlands 27 Moving armies: the 761st Tank Battalion 30 The liberation as a carnivalesque period 31 Possibilities 35 Conclusion 36 Chapter 2: Dutch perceptions of Black people 38 The colour-blind myth 39 Racial images in the Dutch colonies 43 Propaganda 48 Personal narratives 49 Limburg newspapers 53 Conclusion 63 Chapter 3: Moral panic 65 The fear of increasing prostitution 67 Moral panic and the Catholic Church 70 Resentment of local men 73 Discontent in regional newspapers 74 Moral panic in Great Britain and France 78 Conclusion 82 Chapter 4: Legacies 83 Enduring tales? 85 Children born of war 87 5 The ‘brown babies’ of Europe 88 The Dutch case 93 Conclusion 96 Conclusion 99 Bibliography 105 Primary sources 105 Secondary sources 108 List of figures 115 Appendix 114 6 Abbreviations • CDA Critical Discourse Analysis • COOGENT Commissie tot Ontspanning en Ontwikkeling van Geallieerde en Nederlandse troepen • ETO European Theater of Operations • FIOM Federatie van Instellingen voor de Ongehuwde Moeder en haar Kind • JAG Judge Advocate General • KDC Katholiek Documentatie Centrum, Nijmegen • KKK Ku Klux Klan • KNIL Koninklijk Nederlands-Indisch Leger • MG Militair Gezag • MP Military Police • NA Nationaal Archief, The Hague • NIOD Instituut voor Oorlogs-, Holocaust en Genocide Studies, Amsterdam • NSB Nationaal Socialistische Beweging • QMSC Quarter Masters Service Company • RHCL Regionaal Historisch Centrum Limburg, Maastricht • SHAEF Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force • SHCL Sociaal Historisch Centrum Limburg, Maastricht • SS Schutzstaffel 7 Explanation of terminology This thesis uses the words African American or Afro-American as, in my opinion, these are accurate and describing terms. These words indicate the African origin and heritage of someone, while at the same time recognising someone’s American-ness.1 The words ‘negro’ and ‘coloured’ are stated in between quotation marks to indicate that these words are no longer used today, however, in the 1940s these were generally acceptable terms in the United States to describe African Americans. When these words do appear, it is to provide a text or quote as original as possible. Moreover, cultural differences exist in the use of certain words. While ‘mixed-race’ is a common term to describe someone’s heritage in the United States, the Dutch equivalent ‘half-bloed’ (‘half-blood’), is in my opinion, less objective and has a negative undertone as it suggests that someone is only partially something.2 Even more, this thesis employs the word ‘black’ to describe people of African American and African descent although I do want to note that ‘black’ is not an accurately describing word, as the people who are indicated with this term are people who have a wide range of skin-complexions, which actually never is black. In the same way, people who are described as ‘white’ have a broad range of skin-complexions which is never truly white. Furthermore, the boundaries of who belongs to the labels ‘black’ and ‘white’ have changed throughout history and are thus human constructs that tend to reflect power relations. The ideas of ‘blackness’ and ‘whiteness’ moreover assume that a racial order exists, in which there is also a racial ‘other.’3 This idea of ‘us’ and ‘them’ is vital in this thesis to understand the dynamics of and reactions to the encounters between African American soldiers and Dutch women. The words used to describe the children of African American soldiers in Europe vary per country. In the aftermath of the war, the term ‘brown babies’ became acceptable in Great Britain and Germany. The African-American press popularised this word in the late 1940s. Other more denigrating terms like ‘half-caste’ or ‘Mischlingskinder’ were also commonly used in Great Britain and Germany. In current publications on these children in Germany, the name 1 For an elaborated explanation of the word ‘African American’ see, Neil A. Wynn, The African American Experience during World War II (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2010) p.viii. 2 For an elaboration on the word ‘half-blood’ and its historical connotation see, Dienke Hondius, Gemengde Huwelijken, Gemengde Gevoelens: Aanvaarding en Ontwijking van Etnisch en Religieus Verschil Sinds 1945, (Den Haag: Sdu Uitgevers, 1999) p.25. 3 Stephen Middleton, David R. Roediger and Donald M. Shaffer (ed.), The Construction of Whiteness: An Interdisciplinary Analysis of Race Formation and the Meaning of a White Identity (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2016) p.4. 8 ‘Afro-German’ is regularly employed. The Dutch equivalent of this term would be ‘Afro- Dutch,’ however, this word has not been used hitherto and in my opinion, it should be the descendants of African American soldiers themselves to decide whether this is a correct describing term for them, or if this word fails to account for what they identify with. Lastly, personally, I do not agree with ‘race’ as a biological category, but this thesis uses the concept as a political and cultural category constructed by humans to classify people. In other words, ‘race’ and racial differences are socially constructed, but a social and political reality.4 The word ‘race’ is therefore used within quotation marks to indicate that this word has a disputed history and is used in different countries with various purposes.

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