Already written in 2002, but gives a good  idea, what it is all about.

D+C Development and Cooperation (No. 6, November/December 2002, p. 28-30)

Rainer Werning

A group of independent German journalists based in Cologne have ventured

into an exciting research project: to work up the unwritten history of the

millions of people in the former colonies who served, suffered and died in

World War Two. Project research began in 1997 and shall be completed in

2004. During various trips, extensive interviews were already conducted

with historians, contemporaries, and war veterans from former colonies in

Africa, the Near & Middle East, Asia, Oceania and in Australia. This

ambitious study shall be complemented by additional research in archives

in Paris, London, Amsterdam and Berlin.

Most standard history books on World War II contain lists of casualties:

They read, for example, „55 million victims“ and proceed to count: „Soviet

Union: 20 million, Germany: 6.5 million, Poland: 5 million, Japan: 2.5

million, Yugoslavia: 1.7 million, France: 635,000, Italy: 500,000, Great

Britain: 386,000, United States: 273,000.“ The only victims who have never

been included are those from Africa, Asia and Oceania. Some statistics

even fail to mention the „approximately 5 million people“ who died in

China during World War II. If civilians were to be included, the number of

Chinese victims alone may even surpass 10 million.

To this date, the number of victims from the Third World that this war

caused has nowhere been investigated systematically, the main reason being

that most of the countries concerned were then still under European,

American, or Japanese tutelage or control. Their casualties were lumped

together with the victims of the colonial powers (and thus reduced

significantly), or they were simply never counted. This is all the more

appalling since World War II was fought in many Third World countries.

European and American historians at best mention black soldiers in World

War II as exotic footnotes – be they „Senegalese bowmen“ from West Africa

or Australian Aborigines. Usually, veterans from the colonies are not

invited to attend V-Day celebrations. And until today, they normally do

not receive veterans‘ pensions, or if they do, they just make up a

fraction of „white“ soldiers‘ pensions. The French government still pays

the equivalent of ten U.S. dollars per month to an ancien combatants from

Dakar, Senegal, who had been fighting for four years in the French army in

Europe.

At the outset of the war, the French colonies in Africa were divided into

four sectors: North Africa, West Africa, Equatorial Africa, and

Madagascar. After the Franco-German armistice in 1940, the collaborators

of the pro-German Vichy Regime controlled these colonies. This meant that

the native troops, commanded by French officers, were not fighting for the

anti-Hitler coalition. Only gradually did they follow General de Gaulle’s

call in 1940 „For a Free France“.

Towards the end of the war, more than half a million Africans from the

French colonies were fighting on de Gaulle’s side. At times, they made up

fifty to sixty per cent of the soldiers in his ranks. But when it came to

marching into Paris, African troops were allegedly replaced by Whites

because the French commanders did not want Africans to free their capital.

320,000 soldiers in the French army came from the North African colonies.

In return for fighting the Germans, Algerians were promised independence.

However, when they demonstrated for that cause, waving Algerian flags, on

May 8, 1945, the French army massacred 45,000 people. Worldwide, May 8,

1945, the day of Germany’s capitulation, came to be known as the day of

liberation from fascism and war. In Algeria, this day was one of the

darkest in the nation’s history.

During World War II, the French army committed another massacre, murdering

soldiers from Senegal. In 1944, at the outskirts of Dakar, „Camp de

Thiaroye“ housed „Senegalese bowmen“ who had come home exhausted from

European battlegrounds. When they were not paid the promised wages, they

revolted. The French swiftly moved in military trucks and fired at the

crowd, killing many Senegalese soldiers. Ousmane SembËne, the most

prominent contemporary Senegalese writer and film director, saved this

incidence from sinking into oblivion by turning it into a movie called

„Camp de Thiaroye.“

The British recruited 372,000 soldiers in their African colonies. Tens of

thousands of them from Ghana, Cameroon and other West African countries

were shipped to Asia (via South Africa) to fight against the Japanese in

the jungles of Burma. After the bombardment of London, the British urged

their African colonies to collect goods for homeless and orphaned children

in England. Africans, themselves lacking basic goods, donated rice and

contributed millet, goats and money. The Masai provided 40,000 heads of

cattle for British soldiers on the frontlines.

Besides Europe, Asia was the second most important battleground in World

War II. Part of the time of the war, Japan occupied Korea and China,

Vietnam and Burma, Thailand and Malaysia (formerly Malaya), Indonesia

(formerly Dutch India), Timor, New Guinea and the Philippines as well as

some of the Pacific islands. In Asia, too, native soldiers fought in

colonial armies on both sides of the front. For example, the Ambonese and

the Minahassians made up 80 per cent of the Dutch Indian army. In Burma,

native Karen, Chin and Kachin troops fought against the Japanese. The

British deployed Indian divisions and the Chinese supported the

anti-Japanese battles with hundreds of thousands of soldiers.

In the Philippines, prior to the Japanese invasion, US General Douglas

MacArthur had at his command ten divisions comprising 19,000 Americans and

160,000 Filipinos. After the US troops had withdrawn, the Filipino

resistance movement Hukbalahap kept fighting alone against the Japanese

occupation from 1942 to 1944. The Japanese, in turn, forced Koreans to

join their ranks for the Philippine campaign. When the U.S. Air Force

„liberated“ Manila, they bombed and destroyed the capital regardless of

the civilians living there. 100,000 people died, one tenth of the city’s

population. Hardly any other city in Asia – except for Hiroshima –

suffered from the war as much as Manila. (In comparison, 60,000 people

died during the bombardment of the German city of Dresden.) Women from the

Philippines and other Asian countries are still demanding an apology and a

compensation from the Japanese – in vain. These so-called „comfort women“

were detained and raped in brothels which the Japanese military authority

had installed for their soldiers‘ „rest & recreation“. At least a million

so-called „romusha“ were drafted by the Japanese Imperial Army as forced

laborers in Indonesia to logistically support its troops. Almost one

fourth of the victims of the atomic bomb inferno of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

on August 6 and 9, 1945 were Koreans, most of them impoverished peasants,

who were made to work in Japanese factories.

In Indochina, native resistance movements kept combating the Japanese army

after the French Vichy Regime had left their former colonies. In Vietnam,

Ho Chi Minh announced national independence in 1945 for the first time.

However, after the War the French returned as a colonial power and

triggered the first Vietnam (or Indochina) war. On the Asian

battlegrounds, the British as well as the French deployed African

soldiers, frequently at the frontlines and in most dangerous and atrocious

combats. Colonies of politically „neutral“ European powers were drawn into

the conflict as well – e.g., the Portuguese colonies Macao and Timor.

Australia’s Aborigines did not enjoy civil rights until 1967. They were

administered by the government’s Department for Natural Resources and

Wildlife and were banned from voting. However, they served as cannon

fodder for the British or Australian army, respectively, from World War I

to the Vietnam War. In World War II, Aborigines fought in North Africa,

Asia and Europe.

In 1994, Australia showed the first exhibition ever dealing with

Aborigines in war times – „from the Somme to Vietnam“ – which carried the

title „Forgotten Heroes.“ In 1992, Jack Davis, the most prominent

Aboriginal author, wrote a play called „In Our Town.“ It tells the story

of a black soldier who returns from the war, decorated as a ‚war hero‘,

but finds that in his white-dominated hometown he is not even allowed to

buy a house; the area needs to be kept „clean and white.“

Many archipelagos in the Pacific were turned into fierce battlegrounds

during World War II. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, martial law was in

effect in Hawaii for eight years. All around the Solomon Islands, decisive

battles between Japanese and US American troops took place. Thousands of

islanders served as scouts or coast guards. In Samoa and Vanuatu, gigantic

military bases were built.

The islanders in the Pacific region, too, fought on opposite sides. Most

joined the U.S. Army, others were forcefully drafted by the Japanese. In

New Caledonia and Polynesia, the French recruited soldiers whom they

lumped together into a special „Bataillon du Pacifique.“ As had been the

case during World War I, this battalion was deployed to other continents

as well. New Caledonia was an island with merely 50,000 inhabitants. In

1943, after the defeat of Vichy France, 200,000 US soldiers were stationed

here.

After the war, when the Pacific islands were liberated from Japanese

occupation, the United States took over many of these islands and turned

them into military bases or test areas for nuclear weapons, e.g.

Kwajalein, Johnson or the Marshall Islands. Most of these islands were

given to the US as trust territories by the United Nations immediately

after the war. The UN, however, had issued explicit orders to grant the

islands independence as soon as possible. But these areas remained US

colonies for decades, due to their strategic location and military

importance to the US during the Korean and Indochina wars.

After the World War, the French government also secured control over „her“

colonies in Polynesia (including the nuclear test site on Mururoa) and New

Caledonia.

Most of the countries of South and Central America had gained their (at

least formal) independence much earlier than other parts of the world. By

1945, the majority of the Latin American governments had officially

declared war on Germany, partly out of conviction, partly under pressure

from the United States. As early as in the Spanish Civil War, a Mexican

brigade supported the Republicans against rising fascism. And in World War

II as well, soldiers from Mexico and Brazil stood by the Allies.

The French recruited soldiers from their colonies (Guadeloupe, Martinique

etc.) for the war in Europe, as they had done earlier during World War I.

In Jamaica, the British hired volunteers for jobs essential to the

armament industry. The British naval bases on the Falkland Islands

(Malvinas) off Argentina’s coast were of crucial importance to maritime

warfare in the Atlantic. At the mouth of the Rio de la Plata River close

to Montevideo, a naval battle took place in the course of which the German

battleship „Graf Spee“ was sunk. The „Graf Spee“ had endangered the

commercial shipping routes off the Latin American coasts. At this time,

Uruguay was politically „neutral“ which explained why German battle ships

were still admitted to anchor in its harbors and to stock up supplies.

Research into the history of the „Third World during World War II“ is

still going on and could be aided by D+C readers. While historians in the

North have neglected the subject, written and oral information may be

available in former colonial countries which needs to be tapped before the

participants in and victims of the War may have passed away.

The project team, recherche international e.V., the core-group undertaking

the research, which in turn is assisted by the collective of

the Cologne-based Rheinisches JournalistInnenbuero, therefore invites

readers to make comments, suggestions, and send informations,

bibliographical or otherwise. You may contact us under the following

address:

recherche international e.V.
c/o Karl Rössel

Kuenstr. 35

D – 50733 Köln

Germany

Tel: + 49 (0)221 23 97 14

Email: karl.roessel@rjb-koeln.de

Though scientific accuracy and historic verification are indispensable,

our main focus is on presenting the findings in a way most attractive to

as large a public as possible. Lecture tours will be arranged once the

book is out in print in 2005.

This project is an undertaking of recherche international e.V. which was

founded in 1999 and actively encourages the dialogue between Europe and

countries of the so-called Third World in all fields of life. The bulk of

the work already completed was done by the free-lance journalists and

authors of Rheinisches JournalistInnenbuero which, in turn, spans two

decades of in-depth reporting. Their work is broadcast on public radio

stations and occasionally on TV.

D+C Development and Cooperation,

published by: InWEnt – Internationale Weiterbildung und Entwicklung gGmbH,

Capacity Building International, Germany

Editorial office, postal address:

D+C Development and Cooperation, P.O. Box, D-60268 Frankfurt, Germany.

E-Mail:  HDBrauer@cs.com

Copyright © 2002, InWEnt, November 3, 2002