Even a fair number of Africanist historians, while acknowledging that Second World War was a watershed event in African history, have left the details of African participation in the war largely unexplored. Similarly, popular nostalgic recollections of WWII as a “good war,” to use Stud Terkel’s famous phrase, have largely erased Africans from the grand narrative of the global conflict. John Keegan’s otherwise fine The Second World War devotes a single chapter to the fighting in North and Eastern Africa but otherwise ignores ordinary Africans. This African perspective is largely missing from conventional histories of World War II. ![]() The uncompromising Allied demand for manpower and raw material introduced new products and methods of production, altered labor relations, inspired anti-colonial nationalism, challenged established gender norms, and accelerated environmental change on an unprecedented scale. The impact of the war on the lives of ordinary people throughout the African continent was therefore unquestionably profound and substantial. On the civilian front, even more African women and men produced vast quantities of food and strategic materials for the Allied war effort. Approximately one million sub-Saharan Africans served in some capacity during the Second World War.
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