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‘Morts Pour La France’; The African Soldier in France during the Second World War

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

Myron Echenberg
Myron Echenberg
Affiliation:
McGill University
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Abstract

The involvement of African combatants in France from 1939 to 1945 probably surpassed the large mobilization of an earlier generation during the First World War. Carefully prepared ideologically and well received by the French public, Africans nevertheless paid a heavy price in lives and suffering as soldiers during the Battle of France and as prisoners of the Germans. Liberation brought a new set of tribulations, including discriminatory treatment from French authorities. These hardships culminated in a wave of African soldiers' protests in 1944–5, mainly in France, but including the most serious rising, the so-called mutiny at Thiaroye, outside Dakar, where thirty-five African soldiers were killed.

The war's impact was ambiguous. Tragedies like Thiaroye sent shock waves throughout French West Africa, delegitimizing naked force as a political instrument in post-war politics and sweeping away an older form of paternalism. Yet while a militant minority were attracted to more radical forms of political and trade-union organization, most African veterans reaffirmed their loyalties to the French State, which ultimately paid their pensions.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 26 , Issue 4 , October 1985 , pp. 363 - 380
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1985

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References

1 A few general overviews exist, the best of which is Headrick, Rita, ‘African soldiers in World War II’, Armed Forces and Society, IV (1978), 502–526Google Scholar; see also Crowder, Michael, ‘The 1939–1945 war and West Africa’, in Ajayi, J. F. A. and Crowder, M. (eds.), History of West Africa, vol. 2 (London, 1971) 596–621.Google Scholar

2 There are important gaps, especially of divisions virtually destroyed in 1940, but the reports and regimental diaries (Journaux de marche) that do survive are invaluable. They may be consulted at the Archives Nationales, Service Historique de l'Armée, Château de Vincennes (hereafter ANSHA).

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6 The order of battle in May and June 1940 was as follows (D.I.C. is the abbreviation for Division d'Infanterie Coloniale). Ist and 6th D.I.C.: both were on the Aisne and the Argonne, 15 May to 11 June, and then made an orderly retreat to the Vosges foothills by 22 and 23 June. 4th and 5th D.I.C.: these two divisions bore the brunt of the German attack on the Somme from 23 May on, and were virtually destroyed by the Panzer attack of 5 June. 2nd, 7th and 8th D.I.C.: several regimental units from these divisions were detached from the Armée des Alpes and rushed to the Seine on 5 June: the regiments fought in the major river valleys of central France.

7 Among other considerations, First World War losses and war weariness among the French population had made it politically attractive to substitute large numbers of colonial troops for metropolitan ones. For more on the politics of conscription, see Challener, Richard D., The French Theory of the Nation in Arms, 1866–1939 (New York, 1965).Google Scholar

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20 No issue for 15 June seems ever to have appeared. Very few copies of this periodical now survive. One series can be found in the IFAN library, Dakar, Sénégal.

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25 Interview with Pierre Diémé, Ziguinchor, Sénégal, 15 April 1973.

26 Boisboissel, Général Yves De, ‘Un siècle d'héroisme au service de la France: le centenaire des Tirailleurs Sénégalais’, Tropiques, Revue des Troupes Coloniales, LV, June (1957), 22.Google Scholar

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28 Ibid.

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30 This view was widely current in interviews I conducted in several West African cities: with Léopold Basse, Dakar, 11 April 1973; with Jean Ahui, Abidjan, 24 May 1973; with Paul Vicens, Ouagadougou, 8 June 1973.

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42 The Pommersche Zeitung of 28 July 1940 reported thus on the resistance of Black African troops at Condé-Folie, near Amiens, lower Somme; as quoted in ANSHA, 34N/1081, Rapport du Lieutenant-Colonel Polidori, 53rd RICMS, en captivité 3 July 1940, sur les opérations des 4–5-6 et 7 Juin 1940.

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46 Mail from West Africa could be channelled through the neutral offices of the neighbouring colony of Portuguese Guinea to prisoners in Europe. It is unlikely that very much contact actually took place through such a cumbersome route. AAOF, 4D 31/14; Governor General of FWA to Minister of Colonies, 26 February 1944.

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63 AAOF, 4D 31/14, Minister of Colonies to Governor-General of FWA, 31 October 1944.

64 AAOF, 4D 178/144, Department of Political Affairs, Government General of FWA. undated report, ‘Sur les incidents de Thiaroye du premier Décembre 1944’.

65 AAOF, 4D 178/144, ‘Sur les incidents de Thiaroye’.

66 AAOF, 4D 31/14, ‘Reseignements’, no date, contains a letter translated from Arabic and written by one Ibrahima of Dakar to his friend, Abdurahmane Traoré, stationed in a military camp in the Bouches-de-Rhone département.

67 See, for example, Réveil, 26 August 1946, 2.Google Scholar

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69 AAOF, 4D 31/14, Minister of Colonies to Governor-General of FWA, 31 October 1944.

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71 Echenberg, , ‘Thiaroye’, 121–124Google Scholar, for details of the veterans' political campaign.

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73 The archives are still closed for this period, and newspaper accounts vary considerably, but see Padmore, George in the West African Pilot, 30 August 1945Google Scholar; the Socialist L'Espoir de Nice and the MUR Le Patriote de Nice et du Sud-Est for 20–22 August for the St Raphaël disturbances, and both newspapers again on 6 September 1945 for the Antibes incident.

74 Senghor, Léopold Sédar, Hosties noires (Paris, 1948).Google Scholar

75 My translation from the text to Poème liminaire found in Léopold Sédar Senghor, Poèmes (Paris, 1964)Google Scholar, an edition which contains his complete works of poetry.

76 Interview with a veteran of the uprising at Thiaroye, Dakar, 18 May 1973.