The Second World War (1939-1945)
Senior 6 · History
The Second World War (1939-1945)
Lesson 4 of 5
25 min
In August 1941, before the United States had entered the war, President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill met on warships off Newfoundland and issued a joint statement of their aims, the Atlantic Charter. One clause was read with special attention in Africa and Asia. Study it, then follow how Africa fought, worked and suffered in a war that ended with that promise still to be claimed.
Important
Source: the Atlantic Charter, 14 August 1941, third clause
"Third, they respect the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live; and they wish to see sovereign rights and self government restored to those who have been forcibly deprived of them;"
Joint declaration by the President of the United States and the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 14 August 1941.
"All peoples" seemed to include colonised Africans. In September 1941 Churchill told the House of Commons that the clause referred mainly to the nations of Europe under Nazi occupation, not to the British Empire. African and Asian nationalists rejected that reading: if the Allies were fighting for self-determination, it had to apply to them. The gap between the words and Churchill's interpretation became one of the arguments of decolonisation.
Definition
Decolonisation: the process by which colonies became independent states, mostly between 1945 and the 1970s.
War effort: the mobilisation of a country's people, production and resources to fight a war.
Free French: the French forces and territories that rejected the 1940 armistice and fought on under General Charles de Gaulle; much of French Equatorial Africa joined them in 1940.
Pan-Africanism: the movement for the unity, dignity and liberation of Africans and people of African descent.
| Campaign | Events |
|---|---|
| East Africa, 1940–41 | Italy took British Somaliland (August 1940). In 1941 British, South African, Indian, East and West African, Belgian Congolese and Ethiopian patriot forces defeated the Italians. Emperor Haile Selassie re-entered Addis Ababa on 5 May 1941, five years to the day after the Italians had taken it. The Force Publique of the Belgian Congo took the Italian surrender at Saïo, in south-west Ethiopia, in July 1941. |
| North Africa, 1940–43 | Italian and then German forces fought British and Commonwealth armies across Libya and Egypt; the British victory at El Alamein (October–November 1942) and the Anglo-American landings in Morocco and Algeria (November 1942) led to the Axis surrender in Tunisia in May 1943. |
| Free French Africa | In August 1940 Félix Éboué, the Guyanese-born governor of Chad, rallied his colony to de Gaulle; Brazzaville became the capital of Free France, and African troops fought for it from Libya to Italy and France. |
Belgium itself was occupied by Germany from May 1940, but the Belgian Congo and Ruanda-Urundi stayed on the Allied side under the Belgian government in exile in London. The colonial administration increased its demands: more compulsory crops, more food and labour for the war effort, and more workers for the mines of the Congo. When drought struck in 1943, these demands left little in reserve. The famine called Ruzagayura spread across Rwanda from late 1943 into 1944. Tens of thousands of people are estimated to have died, and many more left to seek food and work in the Belgian Congo and Uganda. Mwami Mutara III Rudahigwa and the administration organised relief, and food was brought from the Congo, but it came late. As with Rumanura in 1916–18, a European war, fought far away, reached Rwandan farms through colonial demands.
| How the war weakened colonial rule | Evidence |
|---|---|
| European powers were weakened | France, Belgium and the Netherlands had been defeated and occupied; Britain was exhausted and in debt |
| Ideas | The Atlantic Charter and the UN Charter spoke of self-determination and human rights |
| Ex-servicemen | African soldiers had fought beside Europeans, seen Asia and Europe, and came home expecting change; ex-servicemen's grievances helped spark the Accra riots in the Gold Coast in 1948 |
| Organisation | The Pan-African Congress in Manchester (October 1945), with Kwame Nkrumah, Jomo Kenyatta and W. E. B. Du Bois, demanded independence |
| New superpowers | The USA and the USSR both opposed the old European empires, for their own reasons |
Unit 7 follows how African nationalism used these openings to win independence.
Warning
Don't treat Africa as a supplier only. Africans were soldiers, workers, farmers, nurses and organisers, and their experience changed African politics. When you give numbers, say they are estimates: records of African soldiers and especially of labourers and famine deaths are incomplete.
Tip
Link the two world wars in Rwanda. A strong essay can compare 1916–18 and 1943–44: in both wars, colonial demands for food and labour, combined with poor rains, produced famines (Rumanura and Ruzagayura). The comparison shows how colonial economies left people vulnerable to shocks they did not create.
Important
Discuss. Churchill said the Atlantic Charter's third clause was mainly about Europe. Africans who had fought for the Allies disagreed. Which reading do you find more convincing, and why did the difference matter so much after 1945?
Practice
Sources and credits
Written by Ganzaa: the analysis, the tables, the definitions and the exercises.
