French African Soldiers in German POW Camps, 1940–1945

Abstract

World War II scholarship is moving beyond an exclusive focus on the United States, Europe, and Japan to examine the experience of people in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Australia. The war initiated important economic, social, and ideological changes in their communities as the result of the participation of millions of Africans and Asians as soldiers and laborers. Not least, the ideological aspect of fighting a war for democracy and self-determination against a tyrannical opponent strengthened aspirations for self-determination and independence. The foreign occupation of part of the French empire undermined colonial order and caused widespread administrative disruption. This chapter focuses on one group of people, whose experience connected the African and European sides of the war, including the experience of fighting for France and of being captive of Nazi Germany. How did captivity affect African soldiers, and how might it have shaped their postwar mindset? After the western campaign in May and June 1940, the German army held nearly 1.8 million French prisoners of war (POWs) including 100,000 soldiers from the French empire, the vast majority of them from Africa. Forty thousand of these POWs were sent to Germany in the summer of 1940, but almost all returned to camps in occupied France by the end of the year following a decision by Adolf Hitler not to hold nonwhite POWs on German soil. After some escapes and dismissals, there were still more than 70,000 colonial POWs in German-occupied France in July 1941. Their number declined to 30,000 three years later due to dismissals because of disease or political reasons and some 5,000 escapes. By the fall of 1944, the Allies had liberated at least half of the soldiers remaining in captivity, but the German army transferred the remaining 10,000 to 15,000 POWs to Germany. In the literature, these soldiers are usually called “colonial prisoners,” whereas documents from the war itself call them “indigenous prisoners,” “prisoners of color,” or, in official French parlance, “North African and colonial prisoners” (because the French North African territories were not considered colonies).