Tirailleurs sénégalais

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A lieutenant of the Tirailleurs sénégalais (1889)

The Tirailleurs sénégalais (in German : Senegal Schützen ) were units of the French Army from Senegal and other regions of French West Africa . It had existed since 1857. The last unit of the Tirailleurs sénégalais was dissolved in 1964.

Closed associations were also formed from residents of other French possessions such as Algeria , Morocco and French Indochina .

history

The first units were in 1857, Governor General Louis Faidherbe under Napoleon III. on. It had been found that the soldiers from mainland France were susceptible to malaria , black fever and other tropical diseases . For the first 50 years, the Rachat system was in effect, in which slaves were bought by the state from their "owners". They were commanded by NCOs from the local aristocracy .

In 1870/71 these troops fought in the Franco-German War .

In 1910 the French published General Charles Mangin his book La force noire , in which he for the establishment of a strong, from black Africans formed colonial army entered. The motivation was to compensate for the heavy burden on the demographically stagnant French mother country in the arms race with the more dynamic German Reich .

Senegal Riflemen in World War I (1918)

During the First World War , around 200,000 black African soldiers served on the French side; about 30,000 of them fell. In 1915 there was strong resistance to the drafting of soldiers near Bamako in Mali . Blaise Diagne achieved success by promising French citizenship to former soldiers .

Captured Tirailleurs sénégalais in France 1940

During the Second World War , the Wehrmacht committed crimes against black prisoners of war and the SS Totenkopf division . A Senegalese tata at Chasselay is a reminder of this. Units of the Tirailleurs sénégalais were involved in the 1944 Allied landing in the south of France as part of Operation Dragoon .

In the Indochina War , soldiers of the Tirailleurs sénégalais were last used at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu .

Place du Tirailleur Sénégalais with the Demba et Dupont monument in front of the Dakar train station (2018)

In 2004, August 23rd was proclaimed as journée du tirailleur in Senegal as a national day of remembrance. The day before President had Abdoulaye Wade in the cemetery of de Camp Thiaroye laid a wreath and now revealed the presence of the President and Government of Benin , Burkina Faso , Mali , Mauritania and Niger on the forecourt of the station Dakar, in Place du Tirailleur Sénégalais renamed was the monument Demba et Dupont , which had found a new central location there. August 23 was chosen as the date because on August 23, 1944, the 6e régiment de tirailleurs sénégalais under Colonel Raoul Salan had liberated Toulon from the German Wehrmacht on the front line .

Controversy

After the Second World War, the French army was enlarged to include resistance fighters . To compensate, the Africans were released and repatriated . This also led to mutinies and assaults, as in the Thiaroye massacre .

The dispute within France about the disadvantage of certain veterans found a solution on November 15, 2006, when the pensions of around 84,000 people were increased.

It was not until more than sixty years after the end of the war that it was received by the German public that the Wehrmacht had already committed crimes in France in 1940 that were similar to those committed in the summer of 1941 in the war against the Soviet Union .

Well-known Tirailleurs sénégalais

Movies

literature

  • Myron Echenberg: Colonial Conscripts. The Tirailleurs Sénégalais in French West Africa, 1857-1960. Heinemann et al., Portsmouth NH 1991, ISBN 0-85255-651-9 .
  • Christian Koller : "Massacred by savages of all races". The discussion about the use of colonial troops in Europe between racism, colonial and military policy (1914–1930) (= Contributions to Colonial and Overseas History, Vol. 82). Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart 2001, ISBN 3-515-07765-0 .
  • Raffael Scheck : Hitler's African Victims. The Wehrmacht massacre of black French soldiers. Association A, Berlin et al. 2009, ISBN 978-3-935936-69-9 .
  • Jean Suret-Canale: French Colonism in Tropical Africa, 1900-1945. Pica Press, New York NY 1971, ISBN 0-87663-702-0 .
  • Dorothy Shipley White: Black Africa and de Gaulle. From the French Empire to Independence. Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park PA 1979, ISBN 0-271-00214-X .

Web links

Commons : Senegalese Tirailleurs  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ LDH Toulon of August 26, 2004: Demba et Dupont: le retour ... ( Memento of June 15, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Article of the French League for Human Rights on the dedication of August 23 as a memorial day journée du tirailleur in Senegal