Of the countries that participated in World War 2 in some way, shape or form,
many just don't get the exposure they need. In this 5 or even 6 part series, we plan to introduce
pretty much every country that so much as dipped their toes in World War 2 and provide you with
simplified highlights of their involvement and what they were famous -- or infamous -- for.
To reiterate, these are simplified pockets of information. We know that country-specific
political, social, and cultural context will be missing, but this series isn't going for depth;
we're aiming to provide a general view on how countries other than -- but still
including -- the "heavy-weights" like Germany and Great Britain participated
in the war through snippets of information that we hope you will enjoy. Let's get into part 3.
Starting with Africa and its surrounds, Madagascar was a French colony at the kick-off of World War
2. It's native people, the Malagasy, bolstered the French Army in the European theatre,
and some thirty-four thousand Malagasy conscripts were in France when it surrendered. Following
France's surrender, Madagascar pledged allegiance to the Vichy government,
and this was of great concern to the Allies, as, if Madagascar fell into Axis hands,
they could use it as a platform to attack the east coast of Africa and spread into the Indian Ocean.
Churchill responded with Operation Ironclad, seizing the Madagascan port of Diego-Suarez and
inspiring the Battle for Madagascar, a fight which would ultimately win him the island.
Leaving their biltong cabinets behind, South African soldiers helped the Brits
free Madagascar from the Vichy French. But this wasn't their only contribution to the
Allies. South Africans fought on both their own continent, against Erwin "The Desert Fox" Rommel,
and in Europe. While about one hundred and thirty-five thousand members of their white
population were involved in direct combat, South Africa's black and coloured populations were not
enlisted to fight due to its existing racial climate; instead, their manpower was applied
to pioneering and labouring efforts. Some thirty thousand men from the Bechuanaland
Protectorate -- now Botswana -- and Basutoland -- now Lesotho -- also joined ranks with the British.
A British colony, Northern Rhodesia participated in Burma, East Africa,
and -- you guessed it -- Madagascar, while also supplying copper to the British armed forces.
Southern Rhodesia leapt into war following the invasion of Poland, and by the end,
over twenty-five thousand Southern Rhodesians had fought for the Allies on both their home
continent and overseas. But their commitment of flesh to head-on warfare isn't for what
they're most famed. Their greatest gift was the Rhodesian Air Training Group,
a programme in which Allied pilots from around the world learnt to fly, and in which navigators,
bomb aimers, and air gunners learnt to wield the tools of their calamitous trade.
Another source of British colonial troops, over one hundred thousand Tanganyikans joined the
Allies and the war. At the start of the war, some of the German citizens living in this territory
tried to flee it, but they were caught by the dude who wrote Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,
Roald Dahl. Damn, history, you keep on surprising me. Tanganyikan food exports,
particularly under the British Government's "Tanganyikan wheat scheme," were also vital
to the Allies, and some of the Poles who fled Europe ended up in Tanganyikan refugee camps.
Even after Belgium's surrender, and under its exiled government, the colony of the Belgian
Congo continued to fortify the Allies by supplying them with raw materials such as uranium, gold,
and rubber. The colony also contributed the Force Publique, a racially-segmented military
force some forty thousand strong, to the East Africa Campaign; and a medical unit in the
Force Publique, the 10th Belgian Congo Casualty Clearing Station, which was comprised mostly of
native Congolese, tended to the Allies both on the African continent and, most notably, in Burma.
Comprised of eight French colonial territories, French West Africa was the stage for the Battle
of Dakar -- an altercation between the Allies and the Vichy French which the Allies lost -- though
no other large-scale battles erupted there. Among other African colonial forces in the Battle of
France, the presence of the Senegalese Tirailleurs outraged the Nazis, who saw them as racially
inferior opponents and massacred them in droves. If you were wondering, the term "tirailleur" is
a French word from the days of Napoleon, and it essentially translates to "skirmishers."
Occupied by the Vichys, French Somaliland was the stage of only minor strife in World War 2.
Taking Italian East Africa in 1941, the Allies had pretty much surrounded French Somaliland,
so, rather than death, they loosed upon it a barrage of propaganda, intent on encouraging
the colony to switch its allegiance to the Free French. Near the end of 1942,
after two French battalions had heeded the propaganda and crossed into British Somaliland,
the allies marched on in and took the capital.
French Equatorial Africa was a federation of four colonial territories including French Gabon,
French Congo, Ubangi-Shari, and French Chad. Of these,
only Gabon declared allegiance to the Vichy government when the French surrendered;
this ended up proving a poor move by Governor Georges Pierre Masson of Gabon,
who killed himself after the Free French beat the territory to surrender in the Battle of Gabon.
Another British colony, Kenya jumped into the war when the Brits declared it on the Nazis.
While there were a few tussles in the country itself, Kenya's greatest contribution to Allied
efforts was Kenyans. Their soldiers represented some thirty percent of the King's African Rifles,
a multi-battalion British colonial regiment, and served in Madagascar, Burma, and the East
African Campaign under the command of British officers. Kenya was also a vital source of two
things the British Empire couldn't possibly have endured without -- tocabbo and tea.
In 1936, Mussolini proclaimed Italian Somaliland, Italian Eritrea, and the Ethiopian Empire "Italian
East Africa," and when the chrome-domed fascist declared war on Britain and France,
the Allies deemed the Italian colony a threat to their own colonies in the Horn of Africa,
to Brittish-occupied Egypt, and to Brittish supply routes, like the Suez Canal. The Free French,
the Belgian Force Publique, and "Imperial Ethiopian irregulars" aided the British and
their colonies in a campaign into Italian East Africa known as the "East African
campaign," which eventuated in the "first strategic victory for the Allies in the war."
Yet another British colony, Nigeria fought for the Allies, boosting the
Brits by some forty-five thousand soldiers throughout the war. Despite their success,
specifically in Burma and India, no Nigerian ever got to be an officer. Surprise, surprise.
No actual fighting went down in the Gold Coast -- now Ghana -- though this British colony,
which was known for its production of gold and cocoa, aided the Allies by contributing over
sixty-five thousand men, contributing resources, and by housing aircraft.
Talk about fashionably late -- Liberia entered the war at the start of 1944,
officially. Before that, it had been participating for two years under an agreement with the U.S.
Like the Belgian Congo, Liberia was a steady source of rubber for the Allies.
At the onset of World War 2, the Indian Ocean island nation of Mauritius was British Mauritius.
Many Mauritians fought for the British in Africa and the Middle East, even though the island itself
was never under any direct threat. It was, however, an important asset to the Royal Navy,
who used it as a base when stalking Axis subs -- no, not subscribers, submarines.
Before the fall of France, Morrocan soldiers fought for the French as part of the Armée
d'Afrique -- the "Army of Africa" -- and after the fall, up until the North African campaign, Morocco
was under Vichy control. During this time, many native Morrocans fought for the French and for
Axis, and the Jewish population, which was already in poverty, suffered even more. After Operation
Torch -- the Ally invasion of French North Africa via a landing Casablanca -- Vichy allegiance in
Morocco shifted in favour of the Allies, as it did with the native Morrocan soldiers,
the "Goumiers," who continued to fight on behalf of the French, though from the opposite end.
Tunisian soldiers, like the Morrocan Goumiers, were also a part of the Army of Africa. As for
Tunisia itself, a series of battles known together as the "Battle of Tunisia" or the
"Tunisian campaign" took place there, resulting, after an initial defeat, in a clean victory for
the Allies, who, impairing their supply lines and with superior numbers, overwhelmed the Axis
forces and bent them to surrender, taking two hundred and thirty thousand as prisoners of war.
Algerians formed another portion of the Army of Africa and fought in
France before its fall in 1940. Under control of the Vichys and the Nazis,
Algeria was another country liberated by the Allies in Operation Torch, and afterwards,
the Algerians fought for the French Army in the Italian campaign and into southern France.
Many of Muslim natives in Italian Libya joined the Italian Army in World War 2, under the command
of -- you guessed it again -- white Italian officers. Libya was a major setting in the
North Africa campaign; in fact, the Italians launched their attack on Egypt from there.
While the British occupied Egypt prior to and during World War 2, it was not a British colony.
During the war, Egypt's army grew to over one hundred thousand, and the British remained in
Egypt, offering the Egyptian's military equipment and expertise, and, of course,
defending the Suez Canal. The British fought off both an Italian and German invasion of Egypt,
on separate occasions, and this particular victory over the latter, by the railway
halt of El Alamein, was the first major victory for Great Britain over the Germans in the war.
A British-led, Sudanese-native military force called the "Sudan Defence Force"
guarded the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan -- now Sudan and South Sudan -- against Italian East Africa,
and were involved in the East Africa and Western Desert campaigns.
Ruanda-Urundi was a Belgian-controlled twin territory until the end of World War 2,
after which it became a United Nations Trust Territory.
To conclude our section on Africa, it was a bad time for many of the African natives in European
colonies. Not only were they killed fighting for foreign officers in a war many of them didn't
want, but they were also starved producing and providing the resources to sustain it.
Taking a dip in the Arabian Sea, an Italian cruiser was sunk off the coast of the Maldives'
southernmost atoll, Addu Atoll, and that was about as much action as the country saw.
Moving now to the Middle East, Saudi Arabia was neutral right up to 1945,
when it declared war on Germany and Japan. Throughout the war, Saudi also sold oil to
Britain and the U.S., and it was ultimately these two Allied countries who convinced Saudi
to pick a side and join the war, into which there was no need for it to send its troops.
Prior to the war, the northern portion of Yemen had an alliance with Italy, it's leader
having actually held meetings with Mussolini, though during it the country remained neutral.
Omar declared war on Germany towards the end of 1949. Recognising the country's
geographical value, Britain built an airfield and other facilities there,
and the former became a Royal Air Force Station onwards of 1943.
Transjordan, a British mandate territory, which is now just "Jordan," fought under British
command in a sixteen-hundred-man army called the "Arab Legion."
To finish up, let's return to Madagascar for a delve into the hypothetical...
In 1940, the Nazis started planning a mass deportation of Jews to Madagascar,
but this plan was ultimately impeded by the British naval
blockade and, following their loss in the Battle for Britain, forsaken.
Had the logistically ridiculous "Madagascar Plan" gone through -- i.e. had the holocaust
occured in a different way, or maybe not at all -- how might the war have
been different? How might our world have been different?