Mistreatment Of African Americans During Ww2

Mistreatment in the army was justified; the colonized were still technically people. Much of this was due to the poor image posed by the Europeans of the colonized Africans. One of the major aggressors in this instance was the French. “Much has been written about the violent image of Africans in general and, more specifically, on the image of the tirailleurs sénégalais in literature, French and German propaganda, and popular culture (Ginio 60). If the general population thinks well of the treatment, then there will be no changes. The Africans could complain all they wanted and ask for rights of their own as soldiers for the government. No one was going to speak otherwise; the French had already lost so many people in the war at the point that

Yet not matter how much work and good that the soldiers did, they were still never accepted as true citizens. A soldier recounts how “I would take myself off over to the old Africans, who always had their fire by one of the wagons which Sergeant Hansen conducted. Then Hansen would motion to me, for he liked me since I had talked to him in the courtyard of the fort. They always sat by themselves, not entirely out of pride, but also because they were mostly from five to twenty years older than we were” (Tappan). While the write thinks this might be because of pride, many African soldiers never felt welcomed by the rest of the army. Not only did the army never take the time to really get to know the soldiers, they used them as a wall. They were still the first line of defense. Yet without these added bodies, both sides would have taken heavier losses, prolonging the war even longer. Already bloody, having expendables to hold off the opposing side allowed for the mother country to regroup. Yet these actions by the colonized Africans are rarely recognized. Instead, they were continued to be oppressed by Europe after the war, never getting reparations. While the suggestion of citizenship was mentioned, it would not happen until years later, after many of those who made the most impact died. When the acknowledgement came, it was too late. It was also after much

Life was getting so bad for the colonized Africans that a special force had to be created to ensure that the soldiers had some humanity left. The group, called the Pioneer Corp, would look for ways that the British army was shortchanging the soldiers. “During conversations with African elders and potential recruits, members of the Nyanza Manpower Subcommittee also identified and singled out the low wages and general poor terms of service that labor units (compared to regular military units like KAR) were notorious for as potential bottlenecks to the recruitment of men for the proposed unit” (Owino 111). While they were still seen as beneath the European soldiers, thus group allowed for some form of humanity to be brought back to the hardworking soldiers. These men were giving up their lives for the military and were getting nothing in return. The British army could afford to at least pay the soldiers a wage; it was money that would have been spent on European military anyway. The soldiers, even knowing their demoted position, “expected their service to be as respectable and honorable as possible. They wanted to be treated with dignity in terms of wages paid to them, and in the nature of responsibilities and duties allocated to them. They expected to be treated like “real soldiers,” meaning that they expected to be