Indigènes after Indigènes: post-war France and its North African troops

K H Adler

doi:10.1080/13507486.2013.770826

Abstract

This article focuses on North African soldiers who served in the French army of occupation in western Germany after its liberation in 1945. Taking as its starting point Rachid Bouchareb's 2006 film, Indigènes, the article contrasts claims the film made about the memorial exclusion of the colonial soldier with his surprising centrality to French accounts of their own military exploits. Using publications issued by the army for its internal readership and archival records of the military occupation's day-to-day activities, the author argues for a modified understanding of the French Republican notion of assimilation that is able to take account of the prolific representation of the North African soldier, and his accommodation, in Cold War Germany.

Highlights

This article focuses on North African soldiers who served in the French army of occupation in western Germany after its liberation in 1945
Using publications issued by the army for its internal readership and archival records of the military occupation’s day-to-day activities, the author argues for a modified understanding of the French Republican notion of assimilation, that is able to take account of the prolific representation of the North African soldier, and his accommodation, in cold war Germany
Towards the end of Rachid Bouchareb’s epic war film, Indigènes (2006), after a long and violent urban battle in which three of the movie’s four North African soldier heroes are killed, a French news cameraman arrives on the cold, wet streets of a wintry Alsace to film civilians who have just been liberated from nazi rule.[1]