We are not them! Self-presentation of North African Muslim soldiers in the German captivity in 1914–1918

Abstract

ABSTRACT During 1914–1918, the French Army deployed almost 270,000 Muslims from Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco. As early as August 1914, the Germans captured the first of them. For the Germans, the POWs were Muslims who should show solidarity with Muslim Ottoman Empire and, therefore, join the Turkish Army. Such stigmatization of the captives’ identity provoked unexpected reactions. Some prisoners declared that ties linking them with the territory in North Africa from which they came and communities living there were more significant than religious links. This article stresses that the identity of the captives was multi-layered and the subject of a game played by both sides. The Germans had specific goals for the prisoners, and recognition of the religious layer of the soldiers’ identity was directed towards these goals. The captives had their own plans and did everything they could to achieve them. Qualitative analysis of French documents explains the intentions that prisoners of war from Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia had in emphasizing selected layers of their identity. Choosing one layer of their identity for self-presentation at the expense of another was a means to that end.