| |
Contributions from
the Column
Media
Economic myths:
A book worth reading
Africa:
State of the debate
Second World War:
A forgotten chapter
UN reform needs to promote global governance
8-9/2005 |
|
Second World War:
A forgotten chapte
The 60th anniversary of the end of the war underlined it yet again: the Second World War is still perceived in Germany as a European conflict. The fact that the world war did not end in Asia until the Japanese surrendered on August 15,1945 is largely ignored. Yet the killing fields of Asia claimed millions of lives.
Across the Middle East, Africa and Oceania, nearly every country was affected by the war. Even Latin America felt the impact of this global battle. Millions of Africans and Asians were drafted in by both sides – as soldiers, bearers and forced labour – and then forgotten after the war ended.
Now, that gap in public perception has been finally plugged, and the credit goes to a group of journalists in Cologne. After a decade of research, they have published a book documenting the role and plight of the Third World in the Second World War. The team of authors has suceeded in giving a voice to the forgotten victims.
Many contemporary witnesses tell their stories. They recount battlefield experiences, describe the rigours of slave labour in the jungles of Burma, report the humiliating treatment meted out by officers of the colonial powers and tell of the broken freedom promises after the war was over. In Algeria, for example, on the day the war ended in Europe, French troops mowed down as many as 45,000 people who had taken to the streets to demonstrate for independence.
From the viewpoint of the colonised, it was sometimes hard to define the fronts between friend and foe. The French colonies in Africa, for instance, started out fighting the Germans but when the Vichy government was installed, most of them switched to the side of the Axis Powers. Only the Central African territories took orders from de Gaulle from the outset.
In the Middle East, many Arabs sympathised with Germany because of Hitler's anti-jewish progromes. Prominent leaders like the Mufti of Jerusalem conspired with Berlin against England. In Iraq, a coup was staged in 1941 to oust the pro-British government and clear the way to India for the Nazis.
In India, there was the colourful story of Bengali freedom fighter Subhas Chandra Bose. This was a former president of the National Congress, who made a pact with Germany and Japan in the hope of thus liberating the subcontinent from the yoke of British rule.
This book does a great deal to improve Germans’ understanding of the colonial history of Asia and Africa. It shows how the desire for independence and equality grew from the experience of war and how the war economy created economic structures that still hinder development today.
But most of all, this important book shows the history of the world war from the perspective of the colonised nations – nations whose war dead have still not been paid the respect they deserve.
Dieter Brauer
|
