This weekend, Paris celebrates the 80 years of the 'Liberation of Paris', on 24 and 25 August 1944, by troops who landed in Normandy on 6 June 1944 (known as D Day) then in Provence on 15 August.
From these battles, history remembers heroic interventions from US soldiers, who joined the war quite late... And from a few British soldiers.
France also gained its status of ally again thanks to these battles, and later of victor, which allowed the country to get a seat at the United Nations' Security Council in 1945.
The reality is of course more complex.
Here is a less known part of the story, about soldiers from the French colonies of the time.
The African nations didn't exist as independent states at the time of the creations of UN. They are still very poorly represented among their institutions.
That's why history matters...
I wrote a piece about the Liberation for RFI. Here is a slightly different version.
The liberation of Paris did not seem like a priority for the Allied forces until 19 August 1944, when an uprising erupted against the Germans in the French capital, led by members of the resistance movement.
The crushing of the insurrection and the destruction of the city were then ordered by the German commander of Paris, Lieutenant-General Choltitz, the way the Germans did in Warsaw.
It was to prevent this disaster that General Charles de Gaulle insisted on interfering.
The 2nd French Armoured Division was sent towards Paris and entered Paris on the evening of 24 August.
On 26 August, a huge triumphal parade was held on the Champs-Élysées.
The French army was more than in half constituted of colonial soldiers, but for the final stages of the liberation and the celebrations these fighters were excluded.
“When the resistance triumphantly marched into France,” American author Ken Chen wrote in The Nation earlier this year, “the Free French Army held back its black African soldiers so that the official liberation of Paris would appear to be accomplished only by whites.”
Colonial soldiers
The French army in 1944, commanded by General Jean de Lattre de Tassigny, included 84,000 white French settlers based in Algeria, 12,000 Free French troops and 12,000 Corsicans, but also 130,000 soldiers known as "the Muslims" from Algeria and Morocco, and 12,000 members of the colonial army.
They also included marksmen from Senegal and infantrymen from France's Pacific and West Indies possessions.
The landing in Provence had been a success, but the troops' journey towards Paris was marked by the withdrawal of African fighters from the ranks of the First Army, replaced by resistance fighters from the French Interior Forces (FFI).
By 1944, West Africans and other colonial conscripts made up the vast majority of the Forces françaises libres - or Free French army.
Riflemen had been recruited in the colonies, some voluntarily but others by constraint, an aspect “difficult to measure" because, in the registers, all the soldiers were described volunteers,” according to historian Anthony Guyon, author of a book on African fighters in the French army (Tirailleurs sénégalais. De l’indigène au soldat, de 1857 à nos jours, 2022).
The proportion of then-called “native” African soldiers in these units was more than half of troops, and the mobilisation focused mainly on North Africa, including an amalgamation of French North African troops.
Black fighters were then progressively barred from some of the military operations, and others excluded from the liberation celebrations.
Many of them had to return their uniforms and were sent home, often in brutal conditions, with little to no means.
Some pensions were frozen until 1959.
Racism
Among the black soldiers arriving in Provence was the world-renowned psychiatrist and anti-colonial author Frantz Fanon, who joined the army at only 17 years old, after leaving his homeland of Martinique, to fight against fascism in Europe.
He related how he was constantly confronted with racism, within the French army and in civilian life, in his pioneering book Black Skin, White Masks, published in France in 1952.
Fanon and historians of the period have described what they named an operation of “whitening the Free French Forces”: most of the “people from the colonies” were left in the south, while the white soldiers travelled towards Paris.
After the Liberation of Paris, from late November 1944, around 1300 former Senegalese servicemen started protesting against their poor treatment and lack of pay.
Dozens of them were massacred by French troops, and some of the survivors were subsequently jailed for 10 years.
On 1 December 1944, dozens of African troops at the military camp of Thiaroye near the Senegalese capital Dakar were even shot for protesting.
A 'white' alliance
Evidence shows that the disengagement of some African riflemen had been considered even before the landing in Provence.
General Magnan first asked his superiors that the soldiers of the 6th regiment of African riflemen be relieved on May 22. First he asked in vain, but the idea soon prevailed, according to French historian Claire Miot, author of The First French Army, from Provence to Germany - 1944-1945 (2021).
In 2009, the BBC also uncovered documents revealing how the US and the UK played their role in the removal of these black colonial soldiers from the unit that led the Allied to recapture of Paris.
“Allied Command insisted that all black soldiers be taken out and replaced by white ones from other units," the BBC’s Mike Thompson reported. "When it became clear that there were not enough white soldiers to fill the gaps, soldiers from parts of North Africa and the Middle East were used instead.”
Allied High Command had actually even agreed on De Gaulle’s plan on the condition that the division going to Paris should not contain any black soldiers.
Eisenhower's Chief of Staff, Major General Walter Bedell Smith, wrote in a confidential memo: "It is more desirable that the division mentioned above consist of white personnel. This would indicate the Second Armoured Division, which with only one fourth native personnel, is the only French division operationally available that could be made one hundred percent white.”
British General Frederick Morgan also wrote: “It is unfortunate that the only French formation that is 100 percent white is an armoured division in Morocco. Every other French division is only about 40 percent white. He requested that the French "produce a white infantry division.”
It took French authorities decades to highlight the crucial role of non-white soldiers in the fighting, with political leaders from North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa first invited to commemorate the landings only half a century after the war.
