The Second World War
Senior 3 · History and Citizenship
The Second World War
Lesson 3 of 5
25 min
For Ethiopia the Second World War began early. Italian troops entered Addis Ababa on 5 May 1936, at the end of the invasion you studied in Unit 4, and Emperor Haile Selassie went into exile. On 5 May 1941, five years to the day later, he returned to his capital with Ethiopian patriots and British-led forces. Ethiopia was one of the first countries to be conquered by the Axis powers, and one of the first to be freed.
Analysing the source. It is a British official photograph, made for British use, so it puts the Emperor's return at the centre. But the men in it remind us that the war in Africa was not only fought by the European powers. Ethiopian patriots, soldiers from across colonial Africa, and African farmers and miners all played a part, often by force rather than by choice. This lesson follows them.
Definition
Colonial troops: soldiers recruited in a colony and led by officers from the colonial power, such as the King's African Rifles (British East and Central Africa), the Royal West African Frontier Force, the tirailleurs sénégalais (French Africa) and the Force Publique (Belgian Congo and Ruanda-Urundi).
Askari: a Swahili and Arabic word for a soldier, used for African soldiers in East Africa.
War effort (French effort de guerre): everything a country or colony produces and gives to win a war: soldiers, workers, food, raw materials and money.
Free French: the French forces, led by General Charles de Gaulle, that kept fighting Germany after France surrendered in June 1940.
Ex-servicemen (or veterans): people who have served in the armed forces and returned to civilian life.
| Campaign | Dates | Who fought on the Allied side | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| East Africa (Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somaliland) | 1940 to 1941 | Troops of the British Empire from Kenya, Uganda, Nyasaland, the Rhodesias, Sudan, Nigeria, the Gold Coast, South Africa and India; Ethiopian patriots (the Arbegnoch); the Force Publique of the Belgian Congo; a small Free French unit | Italy lost its East African empire; Emperor Haile Selassie returned to Addis Ababa on 5 May 1941 |
| Free French Africa | 1940 to 1943 | Governor Félix Éboué brought Chad over to de Gaulle's Free French on 26 August 1940; most of French Equatorial Africa followed | Brazzaville became the capital of Free France; troops from Chad fought in Libya |
| North Africa (Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco) | 1940 to 1943 | The British Eighth Army, with South African, Indian and other Empire troops; Free French; from November 1942 the United States | The Axis armies in North Africa surrendered in Tunisia in May 1943 |
| Madagascar | 1942 | British Empire forces, with East African and South African troops, against Vichy French forces | The island was kept out of Japanese and Axis hands |
| Burma, in Asia | 1943 to 1945 | The 11th (East Africa) Division and the 81st and 82nd (West Africa) Divisions, with British and Indian troops | Japan was driven out of Burma in 1945 |
Table 1. Where Africans fought. Sources: the Wikipedia articles listed in the credits.
Africa mattered to both sides. Whoever held Egypt held the Suez Canal, the short sea route to India and the oil of the Middle East. West African ports such as Freetown and Takoradi were stops on the Allied routes for ships and aircraft. Africans fought in Africa, in the Middle East and in Asia; the French army that was defeated in 1940 also included tens of thousands of soldiers from its African colonies.
When Germany occupied Belgium in May 1940, the Belgian government escaped to London, and Governor-General Pierre Ryckmans kept the Belgian Congo and Ruanda-Urundi in the war on the Allied side. The Force Publique, the army and police of both territories, grew to over 40,000 men at its peak in 1943. In 1941 its brigades marched more than a thousand kilometres to fight the Italians in south-western Ethiopia, where they besieged the fort of Saïo until the Italian garrison surrendered. Congolese troops later served in Nigeria, Egypt and Palestine, and a Congolese medical unit served in Madagascar and Burma.
The Congo's mines and plantations mattered even more. They sent rubber, copper and tin to Britain and the United States, and the colony's earnings helped to pay for the Belgian government in exile. Uranium ore from the Shinkolobwe mine in Katanga was sold to the United States Army in 1942 and was used in the Manhattan Project that built the first atomic bombs. The number of workers in the Katanga mines of the Union Minière rose from 25,000 in 1938 to 49,000 in 1944. Africans in the countryside were made to gather rubber and build roads, and the pressure led to strikes and to a mutiny of African soldiers at Luluabourg in February 1944, which the colonial authorities repressed.
You met this famine in Senior 2. Here we look at how it was linked to the war. In early 1943 long droughts ruined harvests in Ruanda-Urundi. At the same time, the colonial authorities were sending food and livestock from the territory to the Congo, to feed the mines and towns working for the Allied war effort, and farmers were under pressure to grow export crops and to do compulsory work. When the rains failed, families had no reserves.
The famine, which Rwandans named Ruzagayura, lasted from about October 1943 to December 1944. The historian Dantès Singiza, in a study published by the Royal Museum for Central Africa in 2011, cites estimates of between 36,000 deaths (a Belgian estimate of 1946) and 50,000 (a United Nations estimate of 1948). Several hundred thousand people left, mostly for the Belgian Congo and some for Uganda. The colonial administration and the missions brought food to a supply point at Usumbura (today Bujumbura), and Mwami Mutara III Rudahigwa sent help to the worst-hit areas, but the relief came late.
Figure 1. Africa's war in one picture: what the colonial powers took, and what the war left behind.
Worked example: describing Africa's contribution
Question: Describe four ways in which Africa contributed to the Allied victory in the Second World War. (8 marks)
1. Soldiers. Hundreds of thousands of Africans served (France alone recruited about 179,000 tirailleurs sénégalais), for example in the East African campaign that freed Ethiopia in 1941 and with the 11th, 81st and 82nd Divisions in Burma.
2. Raw materials. The Belgian Congo sent rubber, copper and tin, and Shinkolobwe uranium was used in the first atomic bombs.
3. Bases and routes. Ports such as Freetown and the Suez Canal in Egypt kept Allied supply routes open; Chad gave the Free French a base from August 1940.
4. Food, money and labour. Colonies grew food for the armies and the mines, and paid taxes; the Congo's earnings helped to pay for the Belgian government in exile.
Each point is named, explained and backed by an example: that is how to earn both marks for each.
Tip
Remember Africa's war as "men, metals, meals and money": soldiers and carriers; rubber, copper, tin and uranium; food for armies and mines; taxes, earnings and compulsory labour.
Warning
Don't write that Africans "volunteered to help Europe". Some did volunteer, often for wages, but many soldiers and carriers were conscripted, and the forced labour and compulsory crops were not voluntary at all. Also, Africa's war did not begin in 1939: Italy invaded Ethiopia in 1935.
DW News: "The forgotten role of Africans fighting in the Second World War". Watch for where African soldiers served and how their pay and treatment compared with European soldiers, and ask why their story was "forgotten".
Films and memorials about the Second World War rarely show African soldiers or the famine in Ruanda-Urundi. Why do you think this is? Whose job is it to record these stories, and how could your school help, for example by asking older relatives what their parents told them about the 1940s?
Practice
Sources and credits
This lesson adapts CC BY-SA material and is shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.
