Hitler’s African Victims: The German Army Massacres of Black French Soldiers in 1940

During its campaign against France in 1940, the German army massacred several thousand black POWs belonging to units drafted in France’s West African colonies. This book, first published in 2006, documents these war crimes on the basis of extensive research in French and German archives. A massive Nazi propaganda offensive approved by Hitler, reviving traditional images of black soldiers as mutilating savages, formed the background for the massacres. The book shows, however, that the treatment of black French POWs was highly inconsistent and that abuses were often triggered by certain combat situations. It connects the massacres of black French soldiers to the debates on the Nazification of the German army during World War II and places them in the context of the treatment of non-white ‘illegitimate combatants’ in colonial wars.