(I was watching Casablanca on DVD this morning.)
France has a long colonial presence in Africa, centuries. There are and were a lot of blacks in France for a long time.
So what happened to blacks in Vichy France? After all they shiped off French Jews to the gas chambers, where did blacks fit into the scheme of things?
I would have to search for some figures to be sure, but as far as I know there actually was very few blacks in France at this time, apart from a limited number of students. I doubt there were any significant number of say, african workers. But I could be wrong.
However, in 1940, a significant number of african soldiers were conscripted. Those who weren’t taken prisonners were rapatriated, AFAIK. The only thing I clearly remember on this topic is there were some german propaganda footages about the black soldiers, depicting them as primitives.
AFAIK, no legal provisions were made for blacks under the Vichy regime - unlike Jews.
I remember an anecdote, though, concerning the great African poet, Léopold Sédar Senghor. Having joined the French army, he was captured by the Germans. He, and all the African POW’s captured that day were slated for execution. They narrowly escaped death when a French officer managed to convince their captors that killing them wasn’t a good idea.
Some little facts I just gathered :
-In 1940, there were 8 african divisions in France, 2/3 of the soldiers being blacks
-There has been summary executions of africans soldiers taken prisonner by the Germans. Apparently, these executions have been known by the french military authorities, since in consequence, retreating African units were instructed to split up in little groups (30-50), which had to include a white officer and NCO , who were ordered not to abandon black soldiers under any circumstance.
-After the capitulation, these african units were either dissolved or stationned in the french colonies (middle-east, north africa or, of course, sub-saharian Africa), except for one regiment which stayed in france as part of the limited “Armistice Army” Vichy France was allowed to maintain.
-According to a site, approximatively 4000 black soldiers would have later joined the resistance. This would imply that part of the African soldiers stayed in france, logically demobilized.
Sorry, it doesn’t really answer your question, but I found several interesting things to read on this topic, and I thought I would share…
I didn’t find anything about the 30’s, but I dug up some figures for the 20’s :
The african population in France was indeed limited. In 1926, there were officially only 2580 black african from the french colonies living in mainland France :
-800 sailors
-255 servants
-1450 white and blue collars
-75 (!) students
Adding the illegal workers , the whole african community would have totalled only 3000-5000 persons, plus the african soldiers from colonial units, some thousands of former soldiers who stayed in mainland France after the end of their contract, and some african people who were french citizens for historical reasons, being born in the oldest french coastal colonies in Africa (locals living in the french colonies weren’t citizens, as a rule).
I’ve no clue what the total could be, (10 000 ???) but obviously, there were very few African people living in France, on the overall.
Actually, it was a deliberate policy to limit the number of workers from french colonies, and in particular of black Africans, who, according to an official “…escape more easily than any others the controls they’re subjected to, due to the solidarity amongst them”.
These figures refer only to African blacks, but there was also black people from the french Indies (which weren’t colonies) living in France. I didn’t find any figures about these.
As for the laws which could have been passed by the Vichy government concerning black people, I didn’t find anything. I previously never hear or read anything about this topic, either. And I must admit that I never even wondered…
It seems this testimony confirms the references I found about summary executions of black prisonners.
The book Colonial Conscripts:The Tirailleurs Senegalais in French West Africa, 1857-1960 by Myron Echenberg ( 1991, Heinemann Educational Books, Inc. ) devotes a chapter to this subject. Unfortunately I’ve only quickly skimmed it as I this was a fairly recent purchase and I haven’t gotten around to it yet.
But Echenberg does note that this is a neglected topic, in part because the military archives for this period were only opened up to the public in the 1980’s, but also he attributes a French academic reluctance to investigate this painful period, though he thinks this is now fading. Some numbers snatched at semi-random to add to clairobscure’s:
However in 1940 they represented 9% of total French forces engaged in Europe ( in contrast to clairobscure’s cite, he notes seven, rather than eight African, plus three Colonial divisions, out of a total of 80 French divisions ). After 1940 they represented an even larger proportion of the Free French rank and file until late in the war, including fully 20% of de Lattre’s landing force of 100,000 as late as 1944. He estimates some 200,000+ were recruited during the course of the war, with casualty figures of 20-25,000. Very late De Gaulle’s 250,000 man cap on Free French forces reulted in many African units being pulled off the frontline and replaced with Europeans ( a process referred to as blanchissment, literally “whitening” ).
As POW’s they do seem to have been treated fairly cavalierly by the Germans. However one dodge used was that French doctors were allowed to inspect the POW’s to remove the sick from camps to Paris or even Vichy France, to prevent the spread of disease. A number of Africans escaped the camps this way and apparently this was exactly how Leopold Senghour achieved release in 1942 - Released to Paris he resumed his old profession of schoolteacher in the Joinville district of Paris.
After liberation some 5,000-10,000 freed POW’s were rounded up and languished in six camps, supposedly in preparation for shipment home. They were soon joined in late '44 by 20,000 abruptly decommisioned Free French African troops, victims of the blanchissment. Lack of transport left them sitting in these camps through 1945. This led to some ugliness due to harsh conditions ( with lack of adequate food, a problem everywhere in France at that point, but also a lack of adequate shelter ) and the continued maintainence of military discipline, despite the severe conditions and a failure to provide timely back pay or other benefits promised them ( African soldiers attempting to buy blankets from black G.I.'s had them confiscated and were reprimanded ). There were at least 15 recorded instances of mutiny, with just one of them resulting in dozens killed and hundreds wounded. The primary motivation for thses revolts seeming to be “…indignation at the unequal and inferior treatment in comparison to other soldiers that were European.”
This rather shabby French treatment, basically from one POW camp to virtually another, seems to have spawned a growing political awareness that fed into the growth of post-WW II restlessness ( though not necessarily yet the independence movements, but rather an assimillationist mantra of ‘equal sacrifices=equal rights’ ) in French West Africa, especially in and around Dakar.
Tamerlane
Thank you all so much for your super posts!