Africans In W.W. II

by C.R. Gibbs

Most of us believe we are familiar with the major participants in the Second World War. We know that this conflict pitted the Axis powers (Germany, Japan, and Italy) against the Allied powers (Great Britain, France, the United States, etc.). What is less familiar, however, are the roles that Africa and Africans played in this colossal struggle.

PRELUDE TO WAR

For the Allied powers, Africa was a reservoir of manpower, a storehouse of raw materials, a treasure chest of vital funds, and an important theater of military operations. In fact, it can be said that although the Spanish Civil War (1936-39) is generally regarded as the "dress rehearsal" for World War II, fascism had actually revealed its ugly hand a year earlier, when Italy invaded Ethiopia.
The Italian dictator Mussolini
(Mussolini seated with Hitler) attacked Ethiopia partly out of desire to avenge the defeat the African country had handed Italy at the battle of Adowa in 1896 and partly out a desire to build a new Roman empire that included an "Italian East Africa." Ethiopia's valiant struggle (1935-1941) against Italy's unprecedented brutality sharply focused the attention of Africans and African Americans on the moves of the Axis powers around the world. For a variety of reasons, historical, cultural, and even biblical, Ethiopia held a special place in the hearts of even the most politically apathetic black person. At the time, the African American writer Roi Ottley observed:
From the beginning the Ethiopian crisis became a fundamental question in Negro life. It was all but impossible for Negro leaders to remain neutral, and the position they took toward the conflict became a fundamenta ltest.The survival of the black nation became the topic of angry debate in pool-rooms, barbershops, and taverns.


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