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were the north-african troops feared by civilians?

posted 16 years ago by fellibylur
19 replies | jump to latest

The have been many stories about the brutality of North-african soldiers, especially during the Italy campaign. They were known to be ferocious soldiers who never took prisoners but the stories about them raping women they had jusy liberated from the Germans is truly unsettling. This text is from Wikipedia, which I'm certainly aware of not being the most reliable of sources:

However, the military achievements of the Goumiers in Italy were accompanied by widespread reports of war crimes: "...exceptional numbers of Moroccans were executed—many without trial—for allegedly murdering, raping, and pillaging their way across the Italian countryside. The French authorities sought to defuse the problem by importing numbers of Berber women to serve as "camp followers" in rear areas set aside exclusively for the Goumiers."[3] According to Italian sources, more than 7,000 people were raped by Goumiers. [4] The victims, later known in Italy as Marocchinate, included women, children and men, including some priests. The mayor of Esperia (a comune in the Province of Frosinone), reported that in his town, 700 women out of 2,500 inhabitants were raped and that some had died as a result. In northern Latium and southern Tuscany, it is alleged that the Goumiers raped and occasionally killed women and young men after the Germans retreated, including members of partisan formations.[5] On the other hand a British journalist commanted, “The Goums have become a legend, a joke… No account of their rapes or their other acts is too eccentric to to be passed off as true.

I will pass no judgement here but I'm curious about if some maybe knows more about this. I am aware that the film is mostly portraying Algerians and Goumiers were predominantly Moroccans.

[–] Vork 16 years ago

My grandfather and grandmother were forced to work in Germany. They used to talk a lot about their time in Germany. They were freed by Moroccan troops. They once told me the Moroccans acted like savages and raped a lot of German women.
That's all I know about this subject.

[–] moffieboi 15 years ago

My grandfather and grandmother were forced to work in Germany. They used to talk a lot about their time in Germany. They were freed by Moroccan troops. They once told me the Moroccans acted like savages and raped a lot of German women.
That's all I know about this subject.

It might as well be hear-say. I doubt your grandparents were actually looking at Moroccans raping German women in front of them. Did rape occur? Very likely but one rape of white woman by a Moroccan would be perceived as much more scandalous than a 1,000 raped by other soldiers. It's the whole "they" come to take our women fear that instills a lot of rumor.

I mean it was a time where Jews living in Europe for generations, speaking the same language and sharing a lot of the same culture in the countries they lived it who where viewed as exotic enough to be targeted by slander and blame. Imagine what one would think of Moroccans even before they set foot anywhere near them. That being said war is dirty and murder and rape are likely but I think their legend and reputation became bigger than their actions. I think it's exaggerated, the same way Moors occupying Spain are portrayed as having a pitch black skin tone in movies. It's to contrast the differences between the clash of two worlds even though North Africans are hardly any darker than Spaniards, Italians or Greek people across the "pond".

[–] doomgen_29 15 years ago

"North Africans are hardly any darker than Spaniards, Italians or Greek people across the "pond"."

You must be joking ! I know Italy an Italians very well, and i can assure you that if you deprive an italian of sun, his skin will be as pale as an English or French men, not to mention the high number of blond people in northern Italy (not as many as in Norway or Sweden, I'll grant you that !). So, blond people in numbers and fair skin...does that sound north African (who are not black off course but have a slightly darker skin than your average European) to you ?! I think not !

[–] moffieboi 15 years ago

You must be joking ! I know Italy an Italians very well, and i can assure you that if you deprive an italian of sun, his skin will be as pale as an English or French men, not to mention the high number of blond people in northern Italy (not as many as in Norway or Sweden, I'll grant you that !). So, blond people in numbers and fair skin...does that sound north African (who are not black off course but have a slightly darker skin than your average European) to you ?! I think not !

I'm not talking about North Italy nor am I talking about the Basque provinces in Spain nor was I pertaining to talk about North Africans who live in the southern regions. You're talking about depriving Italians from sun but you don't talk about doing the same for North Africans. I know Spain and I've seen a lot of Moroccans there and when they speak Spanish I can't tell whether they are Spanish or Moroccan unlike when they live in Northern parts. Italians from the south are hardly darker although they look somewhat more different from North Africans. On average Spaniards, Italians and Greek are lighter but that's why I said "hardly any darker". But if you look at the northern parts of North Africa and compare it with the southern part of Spain and Italy you will find it hard to tell them apart.

There are plenty of red heads in parts of North Africa so if we are talking about fair skin there is plenty in North Africa as well.

[–] mcs-21 15 years ago

It is very well documented that the North African troops did rape on a huge scale in Italy and Germany. Those historians and other 'students' of history who wish to supress this information usually tend to do so by quickly playing the race-card, as some on this board seem to be leaning towards ("the colour of their skin", "fear of the other" etc...)

The fact is that although this topic has been well documented, intelligent and unbiased discussion on it is seldom and is quickly shut-down before it can progress.

Rape and murder in 'enemy territory' was not illegal under the North African troop's Military Statute. The Americans were aware of this before they deployed the North African regiments to Europe. Everywhere that the North Africans fought in Europe there was wide spread rape. After the battle of Monte Cassino (where it is documented that in one village two teenage girls were raped by approximately 400 African troops) the Americans introduced North African women as camp-followers in the hope of preventing more rape. But it does not seem to have had much effect.

The wide spread rapes included women, children, young boys and men.
Once Italy was officially on the allies side, official pleas were made in Rome to the Americans to prevent the North Africans from commiting further rapes. The rapes continued, even though the Americans sought to execute offenders. The North Africans behaved just the same in Germany (where punishment seems to have been seldom if at all). In the Stuttgart and Rhineland regions women and girls were herded in town town squares and mass-raped in full view. One Stuttgart hospital was full with hundreds of pregnant rape victims of North African troops, and the admissions on this scale to the hospital continued until the end of 1945.

Whatever the military heroism of the North Africans in Europe (and I add that the Germans were far less in number, equipment and were in retreat), the fact that their limited war activities involved wide scale rape, murder of civilians, male rape and paedophillia - in my view puts them firmly at the lowest contemptable level of the heap, in what was already a catastrophic war.
Any military achievements of these troops is void.

In answer to the OP's question - yes, the North African troops were feared by by civilians. and for whatever reasons this fear existed, the way the North Africans behaved during their limited war-service proves these fears to have been very well valid.

[–] moffieboi 15 years ago

I think you misunderstood my comments. I'm not denying that there were a lot of rapes committed by Moroccan soldiers but that I don't believe the reputation given their different ethnicity. Being raped by basically as dark of a man as they have ever seen was a greater fear than their occurrence in my view. The same with the rapes committed by Russian soldiers, who also looked different because they had recruits from all over the Soviet Union. If you were to ask in 1940 to women whether they would rather be raped by 1 black man or 10 white men I'd say most would have chosen the latter. That doesn't make it less heinous but I don't see the numbers as reliable because they just are not documented as methodically as you like to believe. It's the same reason why estimates of the rape of women in Berlin by Soviet soldiers ranges from 110,000 to 800,000 (source: BEFREIER UND BEFREITE: KRIEG, VERGEWALTIGUNGEN, KINDER 46 (Helke Sander & Barbara Johr eds., 1992). 110,000 or 800,000 is not what I call accurate and I don't think Russian nor Moroccan soldiers committed more rape than any other nation's soldiers who were not commanded by their own or had no clear command.

The Nuremberg tribunal was constituted by the Allies, so for the most part their own crimes escaped scrutiny. One episode of widescale rape, which went unpunished and even unexamined for many years, occurred in Berlin when Soviet soldiers capturing the city in 1945 were reported to have [End Page 665] raped more than 110,000 women; less conservative estimates put the figure at over 800,000. A recent study of these events finds particularly astonishing the fact that so little has been written on the subject. Lack of documentation is, however, yet another aspect of women's experience in war. Another relatively unexamined episode occurred in Italy in 1943-1944 when Moroccan soldiers of the French army were apparently given license to rape. Many Italian women who did not take shelter in the mountains were raped. Their story is known because the Italian government later offered them a pension.

source: Women, War, and Rape: Challenges Facing The International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia by Catherine N. Niarchos.

[–] Eumenides_0 14 years ago

It is very well documented that the North African troops did rape on a huge scale in Italy and Germany.

I'm finding this matter quite interesting. Since you seem to know so much about it, could you recommend me some books about it?

This world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel.

[–] roach-23 14 years ago

Les archives du S.H.A.T[16] établies à partir de documents émanant du QG de la Ve armée américaine, où furent enregistrées les plaintes des victimes ou des parents des victimes, font état de 160 informations judiciaires concernant 360 individus. Il y eut 125 condamnations pour des affaires de viol, 12 pour attentats à la pudeur et 17 pour homicide volontaire. Les affaires les plus graves furent selon ces archives commises du 29 au 31 mai.

À titre de comparaison, l'historien américain J. Robert Tilly dans son ouvrage La Face cachée des GIs, rend compte de 379 dossiers archivés, de 879 cas dénombrés officiellement, et extrapolant sur ces bases pour tenir compte des affaires n'ayant jamais donné lieu à des plaintes, estime que plus de 17 000 viols auraient été commis par les GIs pendant les campagnes de France et d'Allemagne entre 1942 et 1945[17]. Les viols commis par l'Armée soviétique sont quant à eux estimés à de plus de deux millions de femmes allemandes violées en 1944-1945 (dont 100 000 pendant la seule bataille de Berlin, confer l'ouvrage : Une femme à Berlin)[18].

L'historien Jean-Christophe Notin[19] apporte d'autres explications :

* sorte de « coupables passe-partout », ceux-ci sont loin d'avoir été les auteurs de toutes les atrocités de cette campagne. Certains journalistes anglais ont reconnu que les seuls incidents dont ils se souviennent n'impliquèrent pas des Marocains, mais des GI's[20]. Une enquête de 1946 constatera que le gouvernement italien versait 15 000 lires au plaignant à chaque dépôt de plainte, ce qui a pu encourager certaines dérives ;
* selon le général Guillaume, la campagne de dénigrement est probablement née dans les milieux diplomatiques de l'Axe en poste dans les pays neutres ;
* le Reich avait également tout intérêt à diffuser les pires rumeurs sur le Corps expéditionnaire français. Une grande partie des prisonniers allemands se sont déclarés surpris du bon traitement accordé par les Français après tout ce que leurs chefs leur avaient dit sur la cruauté des alliés. En mettant au pilori les Marocains, les Allemands auraient également tenté de leur faire endosser la responsabilité d'une partie de leurs propres crimes. De nombreux villages ont été massacrés par des éléments de la Wehrmacht ;
* pour les Italiens, faire passer les nouveaux conquérants pour les pires démons permet sans doute d'effacer une part de l'humiliation nationale et de la déchéance du fascisme.

Jean-Claude Notin conclut « que les regrettables exactions avérées, débarrassées des élucubrations de ceux qui ont voulu faire porter aux Marocains le chapeau de leurs propres turpitudes, ne fassent toutefois jamais oublier que ce même idéal guerrier les fera libérer la France et conquérir le Reich. »

[–] x4nt1 12 years ago

On mcs-21's post:

A very bold claim for one not backed up with any official sources and seemingly composed entirely of conjecture made to sound authoritative. Bias, much?

[–] Bluedusk 11 years ago

So obviously you've never met Kabyles/Berbers or Circassians (Muslim Caucasians who spread in many parts of the former Ottoman Empire) from North Africa. Many of them have blue eyes and their skin is only tanned by the sun.

[–] chicago85 14 years ago

I don't know about this period but I saw a film once with, I think, Burt Lancaster. It was a small foreign film with him as the rich father of a girl who became radicalized following WWI. I was surprised they showed black French troops occupying the Ruhr Valley area during worker strikes.

I did a little checking and found the French tried to stir up trouble and backed the "Rhinish Republic" to get people in tghe Rhineland to secede from the rest of Germany. The coup flopped. Then the French claimed the Hermans weren't keeping up reparation payments for causing the 1st WW. They wanted the Germans completely broken. They evicted something like 70,000 Germans from their homes and sent in French and Belgian workers. The German economy collapsed and their money was worthless.

I don't know how the French Moroccan troops behaved 1921-1924 while occupying the Ruhr but Hitler went on and on about it calling them rapists during his rise to power.

Treatment of the Germans after WWI lead to WWII.

[–] DD-931 14 years ago

I guess none of you have ever seen the Italian film TWO WOMEN, starring Sophia Loren.

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[–] italiandvlchic 14 years ago

DD you read my mind. I've seen the movie too, and also have researched the facts of goumiers and marocchinate. It is 100% true, and not exaggerated at all. Being that my family is from Italy and my grandparents and other relatives were there during the war, I'm getting annoyed with people saying that it was exaggerated. (not squeeth, someone from an earlier post) I guess people need to know more about their history before they just start talking like they know everything.
Just look up "Goumiers" from ww2 or "marocchinate" you will find all the correct information there.

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[–] anondragon2012 10 years ago

I will speak for Germany as I am quite knowledgeable about the situation there.
German civilians in towns occupied by the French greatly feared the North African soldiers and the French in general.

The main reason is Germany was occupied by the French in 1923 (Ruhr Occupation), and the French brought Black and North African troops which was a shock to Germans who for the most part saw African people for the first time in their life on German soil.

Also lots of rumors were circulated that these troops were rapists and murderers. Modern sources say this was Nazi propaganda, so I cannot say.

What I can say however is that in 1945 the French, both white and African, committed a number of atrocities including mass rape in towns like Freudenstadt, Karlsruhe, Stuttgart, and others...Where women of all ages were mass raped.
This is well known in the towns' history but not easily discussed. The main reason is that most German women either died of shock when raped, or simply went for a discrete "non-medical" abortion without informing authorities, as the shame was too great. Thousands secretly aborted the result from these rapes and never talked about it until their deaths. But hospital and unofficial records still show a dreadful picture.
Another fact is that since these rapes appeared in open view in small towns, often in the main square or in subway stations generally where other civilians congregated, basically the whole town knew what was happening.
So essentially the rumors spread like wildfire all over southern Germany. And when Africans came into town everyone locked themselves in cellars.

Overall the reason why rape statistics all over Germany are not exact, is due to this phenomenon I mentioned of the German Woman's attitude of being silent about it. Somehow these German women did not feel support from the rest of German society to openly admit they were raped. It was very conservative society back then and taboo. Same with Russian rapes. German women usually put this in the "This was wartime" drawyer in their memories and then moved on in civilian life without ever mentioning it again.

There was usually a big sigh of relief when Americans replaced the French in some towns, as order was quickly brought back.

If one wants to know more about subject. Go to Freudenstadt, Karlsruhe, or any German city in French occupation zone. And talk about it with any old local person you see. You can bet 99% that this old person witnessed such a rape when he was there in 1945. Such widespread it was. Of course I do not advocate you push these people to speak as many will not appreciate such memories!!!

- One more point: Apart from rapes, there were also great fears on the military side by German military personnel.
I recount a number of testimonies from Wehrmacht personnel who dreaded the North African troops, as captured Germans were found by their comrades without ears and missing teeth, as North Africans regularely kept trophies removed from living Germans by knife. Also the German captured were almost always found their bellies slit, with genitalia in their mouth.

This sort of behavior greatly excited the Germans who never gave pity to captured North Africans and Africans, who were generally executed on the spot if they were found carrying a machete or knife.

Such stories are typical in Italy campaign where the Wehrmacht encountered these troops. Although on the genitalia part, I hear this atrocity was common among all partisans both French and others upon Germans.

What a terrible war.

[–] syphaxilicious 9 years ago

What I find disturbing is that this war was waged mostly by European troops, yet somehow Moroccan troops are used as scapegoats for the rapes. Were the Goumiers mean? Yes. Did they rape? Yes. were they the worst? No.

Soviet troops rapes were calculated in the millions. Drunken American and Brit troops rapes were in the hundred thousands, and so on.

In war, the worst of humanity comes out. Atrocities tend to happen where the battlefield is. When Spain and France colonized Morocco and Algeria, women were not just raped, their husbands were executed. When the Moroccans mounted the slightest resistance in the 20s with horses and swords, Spain and France dropped chemical weapons on the whole north. This is what made the Moroccan troops mean and hardened, and they took it out on the Italians and the rest.

[–] Guildion 8 years ago

Frenchman here,

I don't know if the arabs of the French army (the Goumiers) raped in France, but I'm sure they did it massively in Italy, I've heard stories, I've read stories, I know the state of mind of a north africa arab. The campaign in Italy was very tough. Arabs want loot when they do war. French army was weak, and at that time there were so much troubles that nobody could control the troops to prevent rapes or murders.
You know, Americans, and especially black americans, raped massively in France after the Normandie landings. Even more than the nazis who stayed much longer... Newspapers in USA felt obliged to report it, and US army generals feared the spread of anti-american sentiment in French population. Guildty black soldiers were hanged by US army, but many avoided the sentence, and thousands of French women were raped by allied soldiers.
Nazis wanted to gain the French people's hearts, because they knew they couldn't deal with massive Resistance, so they had the order to act "civilized". Of course they didn't stay civilized with jews, resistants, political prisoners, etc... and in the last months of the occupation of France they killed entire villages to make the Resistance movements stop their activities.

So yes, the arabs of the French army raped massively in Italy, maybe in France too after the Provence landings, but much less than in Italy. And we can explain this by the trouble of the time, no order, no police. By the mentality of the arabs, they have a different culture, an islamic one, and a tribal one, when they make war they loot, they rape and their prisoners are slaves.