Written by Jehron Muhammad
Right before the release of Tyler Perry’s film, “The Six Triple Eight,” staring Kerry Washington, about the creation of a successful system for the distribution of war time mail by World War II’s only Black women’s Army Corps was released on Netflix, Senegalese soldiers fighting in the same war were finally recognized.
This West African country in December of 2024 commemorated the 80th anniversary of a massacre of African soldiers who fought for their colonial master France during World War Two, only to return home and be slaughtered by French troops in 1944 after demanding fair treatment and payment for services rendered.
Senegal, according to the news service Reuters, “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.”
For European and American history, very little about this massacre has been documented and shared concerning Africa’s contribution to the second world war. The same can be said of Hollywood and the role of Black 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 fighting against Nazi occupation in Italy in 1944-45 – said in an interview in Rome, before going on location in Tuscany, “Very few Hollywood films deal with Black soldiers.”
As very little has historically been recorded of the history and plight of African and soldiers of African descent in World War ll, even less has been documented of Africa’s importance in determining the outcome of the war.
In Caroline Elkins 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 Legacy of Violence, “over 5.5 million imperial combatants and non-combatants served in the war and comprised nearly half of Britain’s overall forces.”
France in 1939 saw a pool of soldiers from which to draw from. In March of 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,” reported the French Ministry of Armed Forces: National Cemetery and the Deportation Memorial.
Add to the ranks that in 1942 during Allied North African landings, France began a large-scale mobilization of 134, 000 Algerians, 26, 000 Tunisians, and 73, 000 Moroccans.
In addition, 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.’ This was the political authorities way of ‘metropolitanizing’ the military forces by incorporating thousands of French Forces of the Interior (FFI)…” noted the French Ministry of Armed Forces.
In the 2015, the 500 page book, “Africa and World War ll” gives a continental overview of how Africa sustained the Allied effort through its labor, armed male and female soldiers, and resources. The books scholarly essays, in addition, 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 the continents vital role in sustaining the Allied cause, especially after the fall of South East Asia. Add to that the focus on certain periods that allowed for more comparative analyses both 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, but on the other hand, they relied heavily on West African soldiers in Europe and other parts of the empire, recruiting more than 100,000 men.”
What has also historically been hidden in plain sight in western narratives concerning World War ll, is the role of African female soldiers and the actual time line of Word War ll. According to Africa and World War ll, in a chapter titled: “Women, Rice, and War: Political and Economic Crisis in Wartime Abeokuta (Nigeria),” “Thus for some Nigerians the beginning of war in Europe on September 3, 1939 was a continuation of military and ideological struggles begun in Ethiopia in 1935.”
In the chapter “Fighting Fascism: Ethiopian Women Patriots 1935-1941,” World War ll began with Italian Prime Minister Mussolini’s invasion of Ethiopia.
“The invasion and subsequent occupation of Ethiopia temporally falls outside Eurocentric views concerning the beginning of the Second World War in Europe; nonetheless, it is critical to include this conflict in an analysis of Africa’s engagement in the war and studies of Fascism,” that both Hitler and Mussolini embraced. Add to that, “the peace treaty concluded after the war acknowledged that for Ethiopia, World War ll began with the Italian invasion on October 3, 1935.”
Concerning the role of Ethiopian female combatants the acclaimed, filmmaker Haile Gerima’s, collection of more than 60 hours of interviews documents both men and women patriots of the war. Zenebeth Woldeyes, who in a photograph, at 80-years of age, standing proudly in her military uniform, displaying her medals, insisted that “in battle there was no gender distinction. We, both men and women, were equally on the battle line. We did not wear dresses, but jackets and trousers just like the men.”
Nonetheless, the women continued to perform many tasks primarily associated with women, such as collecting and caring for wounded soldiers, preparing food, making coffee, and fetching water.
Also hidden in plain sight during World War ll were the narratives of Black radicals like W.E.B. Du Bois and James Padmore. By the time World War ll erupted, said historian Robin D. G. Kelley, in Caroline Elkins’ book Legacy of Violence: A History of British Empire: “Black radicals” including James Padmore, and W.E.B. Du Bois, “understood fascism not as some aberration from the march of progress, an unexpected right-wing turn but a logical development of Western Civilization itself. They viewed fascism as a blood relative of slavery and imperialism, global systems rooted not only in capitalist political economy but racist ideologies that were already in place at the dawn of WW ll’s modernity.”
