Detailing Africa’s contribution to the post world war economic boom of Americans and Europeans
PART I
Mafunso (Questions)
- Do you know the sacrifices Africa was forced to make when the Europeans decided to tear each others’ throats in World War One (WW1) and World War two WW2?
- Do you know what sacrifice America made to rebuild Europe after WW2?
- Do you know what the Europeans and Americans did to repay Africa for its human and material sacrifices for the two World Wars?
Buckle up, and let me either educate you or remind you.
WORLD WAR ONE (WWI) AFRICAN SACRIFICES TO EUROPEAN SHRINES
In all, over 2,000,000 Africans were mobilized between 1914 and 1918 to fight for the protagonists of this white man’s war. Over 250,000 African soldiers, porters/labourers died directly from the war. Many more were wounded. Over 700,000 African civilians were killed in this fratricidal white man’s war from starvation or disease due to the scorched earth policies of the European adversaries.
Up to 130,000 Africans fought on the Western Front in Europe for France and Belgium. 30,000 were killed! Very few Europeans and Americans know these facts. In Northern Rhodesia, now Zambia, a third of all adult men were conscripted into the WWI war effort.
In the First World War (WW1) of 1914 to 1918, the colonialists tried to occupy one another’s lands in Africa. Africans from the British colony of the Gold Coast and from the then Dahomey, a French colony, fought and killed Africans from Togo. In the same WWI, in East and Central Africa, down to Northern Rhodesia, the Germans, under Paul Von Lettow-Vorbeck fought the Allies. The Europeans used mostly African troops. The fighting was vicious, with Africans from Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland, and others drafted in from the Congo by Belgians, fighting and killing fellow Africans from German East Africa, on behalf of the Europeans. The Germans even resorted to guerrilla tactics and scorched earth tactics destroying whole villages and fields. This fuelled resentment in Africans.
This was clearly a ridiculous situation. Why should Africans fight and kill one another in Africa, on behalf of warring sides who had enslaved and then colonised them?
Then in 1919, immediately after the war, the Spanish Flu reached Africa. Its effect on weakened bodies was that many thousands if Africans died. This was reminiscent of millions of African deaths from smallpox, jiggers, rinderpest etc brought from Europe.
Those Africans who fought in the First and Second World Wars from the colonies were paid a fraction of what the whites got. Then the pensions of African soldiers, if any, where abysmally low compared to European soldiers. This was despite facing the same enemies – the whites enemies to be precise – and the same bullets. Irregardless of skin colour, the result of a bullet to the head was the same.
WORLD WAR TWO (WWII) AFRICAN SACRIFICES TO EUROPEAN SHRINES
In WWII about not less than 2.5 million African soldiers and porters/labourers were gang-pressed into the war effort. The casualties of African combatants, non-combatants and civilians who were killed in WWII was at least 2 million.
Up to 380,000 Africans served in the British Army and many thousands and thousands were killed or injured for the Allies’ sake. The British did not use their African soldiers in Europe but deployed them in Abyssinia, Burma, and other nearby areas in the Asia-Pacific theatre of war. For France, up to 80,000 Africans fought against the Germans in Europe in WWII.
Africans made further sacrifices to the war effort which are generally ignored. The Germans hammered France at the beginning of the Second World War. France split into Vichy France, which supported the Germans and the exiled Free France of Charles de Gaulle. In an irony of fate, Brazzaville was made the capital of Free France for two and a half years. Compare Brazzaville to Paris today.
Similarly, the Belgians, after being overrun by the Germans in WWII, shifted their HQ to London. During this period, 85 percent of funds to run their government from there came from the Belgian Congo – now DRC.
PART II
AFTER WWII — THE BETRAYAL
After the Second World War, America came up with the Marshall Plan, named after the then USA Secretary of State George Marshall. The plan was also known as the European Recovery Program. The plan was to help Europe rebuild. Europe had the secret Modified Morgenthau Plan of the victorious European colonialists to maximise exploitation of Africa. The Modified Morgenthau Plan was a follow up to the first plan hatched after the First World War when the Allies had shared the German territories in Africa among themselves.
Initially, after the Second World War, the plan was for the Europeans to be made to pay their debt to America. Germany was supposed to pay reparations ‘to the greatest extent possible’. Germany was to be demilitarised, stripped of its industrial might and restitution and reparations be effected on them to pay, in part, for the rebuilding of Europe. The latter was the Morgenthau Plan. This was however discarded, and instead, the Marshall Plan was agreed on for Europe. This was because the victorious European Allies did not want to be tied to the dead corpse that would be Germany. The Europeans, led by the British, wanted an economically viable Germany. But there was no such consideration for Africa. Instead, the Europeans machinated to maximise the exploitation of the continent. This was the Morgenthau Plan, which was meant for Germany but was applied instead to Africa in a modified form.
So what were the specifics of the Marshall Plan and the Morgenthau Plan?
After WWII, America spent seven (7) percent of its GDP — in forms of loans and free receivables — to rebuild the economies of Europe, including that of Germany. Lest we forget, Germany’s antics had killed countless Americans, including black Americans and of course Africans, hundreds of thousands directly and millions indirectly. The Europeans regarded this act by Americans as one of massive generosity, as indeed it was. This was because to all intents and purposes Britain and France were broke after the Second World War and were unable to pay back their debt to America.
So, America decided to bend over backwards. Contrast this to what the Africans got after WWII: From America nothing but radio silence; from the Europeans, the Modified Morgenthau Plan. The Modified Morgenthau Plan was the speeded-up exploitation of Africa to help rebuild the shattered economies of Europe.
After the Second World War, the Europeans looked at the African continent critically. They started soft and hard infrastructure projects that would allow them to milk Africa as much as possible and help pay part of their debts to America before the wind of change overwhelmed them. This was because they realised that there was a real potential to make money from Africa’s minerals and agricultural resources, and this they proceeded to do. America made a few feeble noises about freedoms for all and all that. But blood really is thicker than water, so history is clear on how effective those noises were.
Millions of Africans died on behalf of the allies as combatants in both World Wars, all over the world, and as collaterals. But despite their sacrifices, Africans got massively shafted after WWII.
No dispute there.
Why did the Allies choose to reward people who killed their young men and women and not those who died for their cause?
A dispute there, somewhere.
The numbers of Africans – soldiers, porters/labourers and civilians – killed fighting for the West in WWI and WWII was about 3 to 4 million. The painful fact was that the average European and American was completely blissfully unaware of the sacrifices that Africa made in the two world wars. Africans sacrificed their lives while Germans and Japanese rained deaths on the Allies and on African combatants.
No dispute there.
Immediately after the war, the Germans and Japan got financial and other help to rebuild, but Africa just got more exploitation.
No dispute there.
Fast forward 70 years: who finds it easier to get a visa to visit Britain, France, or the USA? Is it the grandchildren of Africans who fought and died for the allies or is it the grandchildren of German or Japanese citizens who killed British and American citizens?
The answer to that is obvious. This is blatant racism.
To make matters worse, African applicants who want to visit America or Europe are put through numerous hoops, and made to pay, in total, millions of dollars per year in visa application fees which are non-refundable.
What of citizenship? A German or Japanese descendant has an almost 100 percent chance of getting British, French or American citizenship if he or she so desires. On the other hand, an African grandchild of someone who fought and died for the allies has only a very slim chance of getting British, or American citizenship.
Sure, the German or Japanese grandchild cannot be held responsible for what his grandfather or great grandfather did or did not do. But the sweet that the Brits, the French, and Americans are enjoying was obtained at great cost, a cost that included African lives.
The question is: If it is not a race and kinship thing, then what is it? Apart from great grandparents and grandparents of living Africans fighting and dying for the Western cause what more sacrifice could they have done for their descendants to deserve some respect?
Contrast this behaviour by the Americans and the Europeans to that of the South Koreans. Thousands of Ethiopians, under the Kagnew Battalion, fought and died in the Korea War from 1950 to 1953. After the Ethiopian Commie president Mengistu Haile Mariam stripped the veterans of their pensions, at the behest of North Korea, the South Koreans stepped in to pay these pensions. The South Koreans also pledged to give preferential treatment to the grandchildren of these Kagnew Battalion veterans to attend higher education in South Korea.
THE COLD WAR
And after the two world wars africa suffered the collateral damage of the cold war between america and the Soviet Union. The proxy wars in Angola and Mozambique and civil strife in Ethiopia, to mention but a few were the result of the Cold War between the NATO and Warsaw Pact Blocs.
So, after two world wars and the Cold war too, all Africa has to show for the sacrifices it made was continuing colonialism morphing into neocolonialism and overt racial discrimination from our white brethren. All this after chattel slavery and the colonialism that followed. Those who made us blind now spite us.
Nay, this current scenario is unacceptable and calls for a Jihad-like-response to remove this latest talon.
