Unknown Ethnic Background on Pre War German Soldier.

[patches]

Been looking at this fantastic photo for literally 42 years that's in the 1977  Brian Davis book on German Army Uniforms and Insignia, and always was intrigued by it. A unknown infantry unit formed up in 1937-39, and even when I first seen it, I says, this isn't a German, to me he looked Hispanic, like a Puerto Rican I always thought, so care to hazard a guess as to his background?

[Old Marine]

I think he might be of Mongolian descent.  In the the 1920s a lot of the Central Asian minorities living in Russia fled to the west to escape communist discrimination and persecution.

[patches]

13 hours ago, Old Marine said:

I think he might be of Mongolian descent.  In the the 1920s a lot of the Central Asian minorities living in Russia fled to the west to escape communist discrimination and persecution.

Interesting, you know if it wasn't for the fact that this a pre war photo and not one say from 1943 say, we would indeed think he was a Asiatic Russian, a HIWI.

[Old Marine]

I am not referring to OST battalions and HIWIS.  During the 1920s there were Kalmyks, and other central Asian miorities that fled Russia and the communists and were resettled European cities.  Some of the Kalmyks went to Bulgaria, Germany, France and were living there and in other countries well before the war.

[patches]

Could he be Chinese????

 

See this in the Han Chinese and Japanese section.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_policy_of_Nazi_Germany#Han_Chinese_and_Japanese

[SARGE]

Don't forget the colonial subjects that were in Germany following the breakup of the Empire at the end of WWI.