French Colonial Soldiers in German Captivity during World War II

Raffael Scheck is Katz Distinguished Teaching Professor of Modern European History at Colby College, Maine. He is the author of five books and more than twenty articles on German history ranging from 1871 to 1945. In 2006, Scheck published the book Hitler's African Victims: The German Army Massacres of Black French Soldiers in 1940 (Cambridge, 2006), which also appeared in French and German. The German edition was selected as the fourth best nonfiction book published in German in 2009 by a group of editors and journalists. He completed a habilitation at the University of Basel in 2003.

'This book makes a great contribution to our understanding of the experiences of colonial POWs during WWII, which had significant repercussions on the postwar political development in the French empire. To date no study has dealt so extensively with the experiences of the French colonial prisoners of war. The fact that Raffael Scheck is also able to present the German perspective of the story is essential to our understanding of the colonial prisoners' experiences. Rarely does one see such a detailed and dedicated work based on so many different archives. This is a remarkable piece of scholarship.' Ruth Ginio, Ben Gurion University of the Negev

• Introduction: a soldier's story; 1. The start of captivity; 2. The colonial prisoners in Franco–German diplomacy; 3. The German treatment of the colonial prisoners in France; 4. French guards for colonial prisoners; 5. German propaganda for Muslim prisoners; 6. The labor of colonial prisoners; 7. The physical and mental state of the prisoners; 8. Human relations: co-prisoners and civilians; 9. Colonial prisoners and the end of the war; Conclusions.