“Black Shame” (Schwarze Schmach or Schwarze Schande) is the term Germans used to describe the alleged systematic rape of German women in the Rhineland during the French occupation following World War I. “Black,” because the occupying French army was composed largely of soldiers from the French-African colonies. These troops had the reputation of being particularly brutal and ferocious, as well as of being rapists.

In 1920 the German government initiated a broad propaganda campaign to protest the French use of colonial soldiers. Conducted both at home and abroad, the campaign was unusually successful and benefited from the widespread support of disparate social and political entities, including the socialists, feminists, and the Church. The occupation authorities were thereafter forced to segregate the French-African troops, limiting their contact with the surrounding population, even designating special brothels. France also launched a counter-propaganda campaign, denying that rapes had taken place, but by then the damage was done. Germany had become accustomed to race-based propaganda. From 1930 to 1940, within the context of Nazism and its obsession with racial purity, any mixed race children were sterilized and then sent to concentration camps.

Jean-Yves Le Naour argues that the German government and population became highly race-conscious during the French occupation of the Rhineland, and that before the influence of Nazi concepts of racial purity had become widespread, Germany was already exercising a racial policy, even if in reaction to an occupation force.