Did the Nazis during WW2 kill black people simply because they were black?

The previous answer mentioned the "Rhineland Bastards", the children of German women and French-African soldiers who were stationed in Germany during the occupation of the Rhineland, and how these mixed-race people became the focus of Nazi propaganda. As we will see, this story is linked to a series of war crimes committed against French African troops by the German Army during the Battle of France, in May and June 1940.

The executions of Tirailleurs Sénégalais during WW2

In 1939, as it had done in the previous World War, the French governement mobilized men from its colonies. About 120,000 soldiers were recruited from subsaharan Africa, and 40,000 to 65,000 were sent to fight in France and in North Africa. The Tirailleurs Sénégalais (TS) (who actually came from many territories other than Senegal) were infantry units. They were mainly used as shock troops in the colonial infantry regiments, which were usually made up of majority of African soldiers, though this varied from one regiment to another. Officers, NCOs, and specialists / technicians were mostly European (Fargettas, 2012).

During the two months of the Battle of France, it has been estimated that German forces executed between 1500 to 3000 Black prisoners, in defiance of the Geneva Convention. That those executions had a racial basis is well established by the circumstances. White and Black prisoners were often separated: the White prisoners were spared while the Black ones were taken away and shot in a field or against a wall. In some cases, German units decided to not take Black prisoners, and shot surrendering Black soldiers on the spot. In some German army corps, the ratio of killed enemy per prisoner was inverted whether the enemy was Black (1000 killed / a dozen of prisoners) or White (a dozen killed / 1000 prisoners) (Scheck, 2007).

Mass executions of African soldiers, immediately or in the days following their surrendering, took place in three successive waves. The first wave happened in the North of France in the last days of May 1940, when more than 50 wounded TS were shot. Early June saw a series of beatings of African POWs followed by executions. A second wave of massacres took place in the Oise area on the 9 and 10 June, and in the East and Centre of France between the 15 and 19 June. Possibly hundreds of TS, in some cases with their officers, were summarily shot right after being captured. The third wave happened on 19 and 20 June in the north of Lyon, in the area surrounding the village of Chasselay: Tirailleurs of the 25th RTS who had put up a strong resistance against advancing German forces were executed on the spot while others were marched to a field and shot, in what was later called the Chasselay Massacre.

These mass executions of African troops remain on the whole poorly documented, despite the efforts of historians, notably Raffael Scheck (Germany/US) and Julien Fargettas (France) to collect information about them. Many took place out of sight, with few witnesses and survivors, and are not recorded in extant German and French archives. The logbooks of many French units did not survive or ended when the unit was disbanded or destroyed. Sometimes, the only trace of slaughters are mentions in city archives of "black individuals" found in mass graves, or stories told by the inhabitants. These events happened during the fast-moving German invasion, and it is not surprising that witnesses had trouble remembering dates, places, and numbers accurately. There are a handful of testimonies given by French officers, by villagers (who were the ones to find the corpses), and by (rare) African survivors, but reliable information about when, how, and why the slaughters took place remain elusive. Even drawing lists of victims is difficult: with no forensics available, it is not easy to tell whether a wounded soldier died of battle wounds or was finished off after surrendering.

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