During World War II, there was such a force in the French army of the Allied Powers, and they paid a huge price for the victory in World War II. But after the war, due to their "special status" and skin color, their exploits were artificially forgotten, and it was not until 70 years later that their descendants received the honors that their parents deserved. They were the Black French Corps of World War II, a bloody warrior who had dedicated themselves to their country.
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > First, patriots who are not afraid of danger</h1>
Historically, the French army was a traditional continental national army, and since military modernization, the French army has been the most powerful military force on the European continent. Moreover, many advanced military construction cultures were derived from the French army and began to spread to all countries in the world.
However, this military power has a relatively headache in the social problem - the number of people of the right age to join the military is small. During the most powerful Napoleonic period, France had a population of more than 20 million people, and no one in Europe had a larger population than Tsarist Russia. But since then, France has begun to fall into a situation of low population growth, coupled with the huge casualties of the First World War, the French population began to gradually decrease, and the number of enlisted soldiers also decreased accordingly.
In order to solve the problem of insufficient military personnel, the French government decided to follow the British method of conscription: recruiting young people of age from colonial countries and joining the French army as ordinary soldiers. Soon after, in the French army, a large number of new recruits from colonial and other countries began to appear, mainly from Africa, such as Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco in North Africa, and senegal, Guinea, Mali and other countries in West Africa. Such a conscription method did solve the problem of insufficient resources of the French army to a certain extent.
Among them, the combat strength of black soldiers cannot be ignored. As early as the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, the French army began to establish the Senegalese colonial infantry regiment, and later the black corps, mainly black Senegalese soldiers, began to show great power in the war. In 1940, after the end of the "Dunkirk Evacuation", the German army began to launch a comprehensive offensive against the French mainland, and the French Marshal Henri Philippe Pétain, who had been a hero of the First World War, became a puppet of the German army and gave up the resistance to the German army. In this way, France resisted for only more than 40 days before announcing its complete surrender.
After the fall of France, there was a puppet regime of "Vichy France" and a "Free France" regime led by de Gaulle. The two sides then engaged in a fierce confrontation in mainland France, with the lesser-fledged Free France deciding to recruit soldiers from the African colonies and declare war on the Nazi and puppet regimes. Soldiers from Senegal became the main members of the Black Legion, and their most obvious feature was the "chechia" cylindrical flannel hat on their heads.
According to the operational requirements, these black corps were often sent by the French high command to fight on the most dangerous and arduous fronts. The weapons and equipment and strategic supplies they received were still obviously different from those of the traditional French soldiers, but these black legions did not flinch in the actual battle, but showed a "different" heroism.
<h1 class = "pgc-h-arrow-right" > Second, the mighty and indomitable legion</h1>
Beginning in 1940, the Negro Legion, along with other fraternal units, began to fight Nazi and minions on major battlefields on the Western Front. From the earliest Battle of Cassino, the Normandy landings, the liberation of France... In almost all battles in which the French army participated, the Black Legion would appear in the sequence of combatants.
The most representative of these was the battle against Lyon, in order to stop the Nazi attack, the 25th Senegalese Infantry Regiment of the French 8th Colonial Infantry Division was the main force. The regiment's orders were also concise: hold their positions and not give way.
After 3 days of uninterrupted resistance, the available strength of the French army became stretched. In order to retain the only military strength, the French high command decided to allow the 25th Senegalese Infantry Regiment to withdraw in time. However, a 600-man infantry battalion responsible for the defense of St. Joseph's Abbey was unaware of this. Faced with the artillery fire of the German panzer division, the black soldiers could only return fire on the enemy with their old-fashioned rifles and light machine guns, staging a real version of the French "assembly number". In the end, the Germans, armoured with an armored brigade and two Panzergrenadier regiments, took the defensive position at night after a full day of fighting.
After the war, many captured black soldiers were brutally executed by the Nazis, and the 600-man infantry battalion was almost completely destroyed. When local soldiers and civilians buried the remains of soldiers after the war, they found that at least 188 people had been executed en masse after the battle, and the burial time had exceeded two years.
Such situations were not uncommon in World War II, where most black soldiers were almost certainly killed after being captured due to the radical racial policies pursued by the Nazis. In June 1940, at the Battle of the Royal River, a group of black soldiers was captured, including a soldier named Leopold Sedar Senghor. The Nazi officers were so disgusted with these black captives that they decided to execute them on the spot, and when they were about to be executed, Senghor and his comrades suddenly shouted: "Long live France, long live black Africans!" "
This astonishing move shocked the Germans, and a French officer said at this point: "As a high-race Aryan, the execution of these inferior races is in itself a sign of cowardice, and there is no glory to speak of." Eventually, the German soldiers abandoned the killings and imprisoned the black soldiers. The surviving Leopold Senghor was among them, and the surviving soldier became the founding president of Senegal in Africa, writing his own legendary story.
<h1 class = "pgc-h-arrow-right" > third, belated final justice</h1>
On August 25, 1944, Paris was officially liberated. At the later ceremony of entering the city, people were surprised to find that the black legions that were supposed to walk through the Champs Elysées with other French soldiers had inexplicably disappeared, and the honorary titles that should have belonged to them had disappeared.
It turned out that on the eve of the liberation of Paris, these hard-working black soldiers were forcibly returned to their country, and their exploits were deliberately concealed by the French government, and no one knew what they did in World War II. And on the issue of post-war pensions, these black veterans did not receive the pension they deserved, even less than half of the normal French soldiers, and from time to time there were cases of arrears.
On November 30, 1944, hundreds of black soldiers clashed with the camp defenders in Tia Royer on the outskirts of Dakar, the capital of Sergar, and more than 30 people were killed, resulting in the "Tia Royer Massacre" that shocked France. In order to quell the incident, the French army had to quickly take safeguard measures to compensate for the arrears of wages.
In the decades that followed, France completely wiped out the exploits of the Negro Legion in World War II, and hardly praised the exploits of the Negro Legion on any official occasion. It wasn't until 2017 that then-French President François Hollande publicly expressed his shame at discriminating against black soldiers in World War II, saying that "the French owe you a blood debt." The 28 surviving black soldiers were honored 70 years late and were granted French citizenship.
One veteran said at the ceremony: "The president did something that the previous president never imagined, and that repaired a lot of scars. "For these 28 veterans, they were fortunate to receive the honors that should have been theirs in their lifetime; but for the black soldiers who were buried in France and the rest of Europe, their exploits were forever preserved in history."
Although these black soldiers received the final praise, did these belated justices represent true justice? We don't know, but the great contributions made by these black soldiers will not be indelible, as the surviving black soldiers in Battlefield 5 put it: "But I know what we did and what we paid, and I am proud of it."
< h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > concluding remarks</h1>
Looking back at the combat experience of the French Black Legion in World War II, we are not only touched by their great dedication, but also lament their unfortunate encounter. Although we have won the final victory in the end, we also hope that this "belated justice" will be as little as possible in the future, and we hope that those who survived the Heroes of World War II will not be destroyed forever.
Resources
1. "The French Army in World War II"
2. Chronicles of the Second World War 1939-1945
3. The Foreign Legion in World War II