Right before Tyler Perry’s inspirational film, “The Six Triple Eight,” starring Kerry Washington, about World War II’s only Black women’s Army Corps, Senegalese soldiers fighting in the same war were finally recognized.
In December, the West African country commemorated the 80th anniversary of a massacre of African soldiers who fought for their colonial master France during World War II. They did so only to return home and be slaughtered by French troops in 1944 for demanding fair treatment and payment for services rendered.
According to a Reuters news agency Dec. 1 article titled “Senegal seeks answers 80 years after French massacre of African soldiers,” the country “has long demanded its former colonizer take responsibility, officially apologize and properly investigate the massacre that took place in Thiaroye, a fishing village on the outskirts of Senegal’s capital Dakar.”
As this massacre reveals, in European and American history, very little has been documented and shared concerning Africa’s contribution to WWII. The same can be said of Hollywood and the film industry’s portrayal of the role of Black American soldiers.
Before the making of the 2012 film “Red Tails” by director Anthony Hemingway, about Black Tuskegee Airman in World War II, Spike Lee in 2007, while filming his movie “Miracle at Santa Anna,” about a group of soldiers with the racially segregated, all-Black 92nd Buffalo Division – said, “Very few Hollywood films deal with Black soldiers.”
As very little has historically been recorded of the history and plight of Africans and soldiers of African descent in World War II, even less has been documented about Africa’s importance in determining the outcome of the war.
In Caroline Elkins’s 2022 book “Legacy of Violence: A History of The British Empire,” she writes that “Cairo, (Egypt)—despite its nominal independence—was the British Empire’s military capital for much of the war.” According to the book, “over 5.5 million imperial combatants and noncombatants served in the war and comprised nearly half of Britain’s overall forces.”
In 1939 France saw a pool of soldiers from which to draw to help in its combat efforts. According to a report by the French Ministry of Armed Forces: National Cemetery and the Cemetery and Deportation Memorial, in March 1940, “some 340,000 colonial subjects were conscripted.
Although not all of them were sent to Europe when the French army was defeated by the Wehrmacht, 70,000 North Africans and 40,000 to 65,000 sub-Saharan Africans fought in the campaign of 1940. Their fate was often tragic: those who were not massacred by the German army spent years in captivity on French soil, guarded by French police.”
In 1942, during Allied North African landings, France began a large-scale mobilization of 134,000 Algerians, 26,000 Tunisians and 73,000 Moroccans.
“Revising its ‘theory of martial races,’ the (French) army gave preference to the recruitment of colonized troops from North Africa, considered inherently better soldiers than sub-Saharan Africans.
That was one of the reasons behind the withdrawal of sub-Saharan African troops from the front (lines) in autumn 1944—termed ‘whitening,’” the French Ministry of Armed Forces noted.
The 2018 book, “Africa and World War II,” further delves into the contributions of the continent by giving an overview of how Africa sustained the Allied effort through its labor, armed soldiers and resources.
The book’s essay contributors offer a macro and micro view of the various levels on which the continent helped shape the war and how it helped shape Africa’s political, economic and social landscape.
Important events included France and Japan’s conquest of South East Asia. These events helped illustrate Africa’s vital role in sustaining the Allied cause, especially after the fall of Southeast Asia.
Adding to that was the focus on certain periods which allowed for more comparative analyses within and across regions. “For example, Britain did not make the recruitment of African soldiers a priority until Japan’s victories in the Far East, and then quickly moved to put 80,000 British West African troops in Burma.
France, on the other hand, relied heavily on West African soldiers in Europe and other parts of the empire, recruiting more than 100,000 men,” noted “Africa and World War II.”
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