French Troops Fire on West African Veterans at Thiaroye

On the morning of 1 December 1944, French military forces surrounded and opened fire on West African soldiers quartered at the Thiaroye transit camp outside Dakar. The victims belonged to the Tirailleurs Senegalais, a colonial corps whose members had defended France during the German invasion of 1940. Following years of confinement in European prisoner-of-war camps, these repatriated veterans had gathered near the Senegalese coast, expecting the French authorities to distribute their long-delayed back pay, allowances, and discharge clothing before sending them home.

The friction had begun months earlier during their internment. Tens of thousands of colonial soldiers were captured in the 1940 campaign. Fearing what Nazi ideology defined as racial defilement, German authorities kept colonial prisoners, Black soldiers among them, out of Germany, confining them instead to camps across occupied France known as Frontstalags. Following the Allied liberation in 1944, these veterans were assembled for repatriation. However, French administrative confusion and failure to pay demobilization wages provoked widespread frustration. Before the ships sailed for Dakar, some men refused to embark until they had received the back pay they were owed.