Black Soldiers in Bundeswehr

[Landserstudent]

When I was visiting Germany in the early 1970s I saw a black man wearing the walking-out dress uniform of the Bundeswehr on the Hauptstrasse of Heidelberg.

I've since assumed situations like these stem from children born from fraternization between African-American servicemen and German women.
Also could it be possible these are men from former German colonies, or nationals from other countries joining the Bundeswehr?

Appreciate all input.

-Landserstudent

[Mario Mirarchi]

Back in 2007 I saw a bunch of visiting Fallschirmjaeger in Washington, DC. One of them was of Thai/Laotian extraction.

[fridgeman]

Soldiers from another part of the world are nothing unusual in the Bundeswehr, during my
service we had a few Russlanddeutsche (people from russia with german ancestors), 2 turks,
a hungarian and a bosnian guy in our company. Of course all had german citizenship.

[HeinrichFrey]

Germany lost its colonies 1918. The "Askaris" and so on never had the German nationality. The German wifes with "halfblack" children had a bad life in postwar Germany and naturally their children too. Nevertheless it could have been possible that their by law German sons served in the army. I never had seen any and I served late 70`s. But let me say that I grew up in Erlangen near Nuremberg where I met several of those typical boys and girls and it was so astonishing and amusing for us to hear them speaking the typical franconian dialect. So far so good. I think they had a bad childhood. In my age (51) I have seen none making career.