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Author Topic: Paris liberation made whites only  (Read 444 times)

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Offline Telesphorus

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Paris liberation made whites only
« on: March 28, 2013, 06:28:12 PM »
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  • http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7984436.stm

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    Allied High Command agreed, but only on one condition: De Gaulle's division must not contain any black soldiers.
    In January 1944 Eisenhower's Chief of Staff, Major General Walter Bedell Smith, was to write in a memo stamped, "confidential": "It is more desirable that the division mentioned above consist of white personnel.
    "This would indicate the Second Armoured Division, which with only one fourth native personnel, is the only French division operationally available that could be made one hundred percent white."


    Then again, blacks or no blacks, "liberated" France was a shambles of communist violence.


    Offline Cato

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    Paris liberation made whites only
    « Reply #1 on: March 30, 2013, 02:05:25 AM »
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  • It might have looked bizarre to see colonials liberating a colonial power.  I didn't realize there were so many non whites in the Free French Forces.  I suppose most of the white French soldiers had been disarmed and were working in arms factories for the Axis war effort.