Other Segregated militaries and challenges of integration

Leftyhunter

Well-Known Member
Joined
Dec 19, 2020
Messages
1,303
Reaction score
302
It did not end well for them... I wonder if any ever got out of the Soviets Gulags...
If you watched the video then you would know what happened to the Russian Battalion and they never had to worry about the Gulags.
Leftyhunter
 

5fish

Well-Known Member
Joined
Jul 28, 2019
Messages
10,619
Reaction score
4,544
If you watched the video then you would know what happened to the Russian Battalion and they never had to worry about the Gulags.
Leftyhunter
I did watch it the ones that survive Japanese reprisals and the war were whisk off to the Gulags...
 

Leftyhunter

Well-Known Member
Joined
Dec 19, 2020
Messages
1,303
Reaction score
302
I did watch it the ones that survive Japanese reprisals and the war were whisk off to the Gulags...
I rewatched the video and it is highly doubtful any of the Russian Brigade survived the Gulags. Apparently some may some spent some time in the Gulags. Many German and Italian POWS did survive the Gulags although maybe less then half.
Leftyhunter
 

Leftyhunter

Well-Known Member
Joined
Dec 19, 2020
Messages
1,303
Reaction score
302
This video is a good overview of the Namibian conflict of 1966-1989It dosent go to much into segregated units but the military units shown are segregated except for one that as a few black troops most likely trackers. Interestingly enough it shows American volunteers in the South African Army.
Leftyhunter
 

rittmeister

trekkie in residence
Staff member
Administrator
Joined
May 12, 2019
Messages
5,185
Reaction score
3,438
This video is a good overview of the Namibian conflict of 1966-1989It dosent go to much into segregated units but the military units shown are segregated except for one that as a few black troops most likely trackers. Interestingly enough it shows American volunteers in the South African Army.
Leftyhunter
that vid doesn't work in here
 

Leftyhunter

Well-Known Member
Joined
Dec 19, 2020
Messages
1,303
Reaction score
302
https://www.washingtonpost.com/arch...ush-war/07acc215-b5ac-438a-97fb-555995a82fc3/
By 1987 of the 10k to 12K men fighting against SWAPO sixty five percent were South African Territorial Force and eighty percent of those forces were Native black Africans. Of the South African Army 21Battalion was Native Black African, Cape Coloured Corps were mixed race and 32 Battalion was Bokcongo tribesman from Anglola.
Leftyhunter
 

Leftyhunter

Well-Known Member
Joined
Dec 19, 2020
Messages
1,303
Reaction score
302
In 1993 as South Africa transitioned to majority rule the segregated units were disbanded. Many of the former 32 Battalion soldiers joined the South African Mercenary firm " Executive Outcomes" and ironically helped the Communist goverment defeat the UNITA movement with a relatively small force vs the much larger Cuban Army that was withdrawen from Anglola in 1989.
Leftyhunter
 

5fish

Well-Known Member
Joined
Jul 28, 2019
Messages
10,619
Reaction score
4,544
@Leftyhunter

News General Franco's Army lead by Moor's

In 1936 General Francisco Franco led an army of Moors and Legionnaires out of Africa to join in the Spanish Civil War that brought him to power. Ever since, lance-bearing, scarlet-robed Moorish cavalrymen have attended the dictator on state occasions.

Here is one unit...

 

5fish

Well-Known Member
Joined
Jul 28, 2019
Messages
10,619
Reaction score
4,544
@Leftyhunter ... I do not know if we done Spanish Civil Units...


Snip.... Army of Africa(Spain)

The Army of Africa was to play a key part during the Spanish Civil War of 1936–1939. Along with other units in the Spanish Army, the Army of Africa rose against the Second Spanish Republic and took part in the Spanish coup of July 1936 on the side of the Nacionales. On 18 July 1936, General Francisco Franco assumed the supreme command over this force.

Spanish Morocco fell to the rebels without significant opposition. The initial intention was to transport the Army of Africa to mainland Spain by sea. However the crews of the majority of ships in the Spanish Navy had remained loyal to the Republican government[7] in Madrid, overwhelming the officers who had joined the rising.[8] Between 29 July and 5 August 1936 1,500 members of the Army of Africa were accordingly transported to mainland Spain in a bold airlift led by Junkers transport planes supplied by Nazi Germany. The fascist régime of the Kingdom of Italy provided Savoia-Marchetti SM.81 bombers to provide air cover for merchant ships carrying 3,000 soldiers and equipment from Morocco on 5 August. Thereafter daily flights continued until about 8,000 Moroccans and legionaries, with supporting artillery, were gathered at Seville.[9]

After landing in Spain, the Army of Africa was split into two columns, one commanded by General Juan Yagüe and the other commanded by Colonel José Enrique Varela. Yagüe's force advanced north, making remarkably rapid gains, and then turned north-eastwards towards Madrid and Toledo. Varela's force entered Andalusia and took control of the key cities of Seville, Granada, and Córdoba. Thanks mostly to the Army of Africa's advances, almost all of western Spain was in Francoist Nationalist hands by the end of September 1936. By early 1937 the Army of Africa's strength had been increased to 60,000 men. The Legion and Regulares spearheaded the Nacionales' operations for the remainder of the war and played a central role in the Nationalist victory
.
 

5fish

Well-Known Member
Joined
Jul 28, 2019
Messages
10,619
Reaction score
4,544
@Leftyhunter

I found an all Jewish company that fought in the Spanish Civil War for the Republic(Reds)... in the article it list other national units that fought for the Republicans(reds)...


snip...

It has been estimated that almost 8,000 of the volunteers were Jewish. Most fought within their national units. As many as 40 per cent of the 3,000 American volunteers were Jews. There was also one all-Jewish group, the Naftali Botwin Company, comprising at least 200 Yiddish-speaking east European Jews, which served as part of the Dombrowski unit.


snip...

Izaak Naftali Botwin, (Yiddish: יצחק נפתלי באָטווין) born 19 February 1905 in Kamianka-Buzka, Austrian Empire, died 6 August 1925 in Lwów, Poland, was a Polish communist and labour activist who was executed for the murder of a police informant. In the Spanish Civil War the Naftali Botwin Company was named after Botwin.

snip... .

Naftali Botwin Company[edit]
In December 1937 the Jewish volunteers of the Spanish Civil War formed the Naftali Botwin Company.[8] It was a sub-unit of the Palafox Battalion of the International Brigades and of Jews who had completed the short training course but had not yet been placed in a combat force.[9] The company also published a Yiddish newspaper called Botwin.[10][11] 150 Jews from Poland, France, Belgium and the Yishuv region served in the Botwin Company. Among them were two Palestinian Arabs, one of whom spoke Yiddish. The members of the unit spoke Polish, Spanish and Ladino. They designed a flag with the writing "The Naftali Botwin Company", the name of their brigade "Palafox Brigade" and the motto "For our Freedom and your Freedom" in Spanish, Polish and Yiddish on it.[9][12]
 

5fish

Well-Known Member
Joined
Jul 28, 2019
Messages
10,619
Reaction score
4,544
Here is the Canadian unit...


snip...

The Mackenzie–Papineau Battalion or Mac-Paps were a battalion of Canadians who fought as part of the XV International Brigade on the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War in the late 1930s. Except for France, no other country had a greater proportion of its population volunteer in Spain as did Canada.[1] The XV International Brigade, made up also of volunteer battalions from the United States and Britain, was involved in the Battle of Jarama, in which nine Canadians are known to have been killed.
 

5fish

Well-Known Member
Joined
Jul 28, 2019
Messages
10,619
Reaction score
4,544
Here is the Hungarian unit...


The Rakosi Battalion was a volunteer unit, founded in April 1937,[1] formed predominantly of Hungarians, who fought in the CL International Brigade and the XIII International Brigade during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). The battalion was named after Mátyás Rákosi, then a political prisoner in Miklós Horthy's Hungary, later leader of the Hungarian People's Republic.

snip...


Mátyás Rákosi ([ˈmaːcaːʃ ˈraːkoʃi]; born Mátyás Rosenfeld; 9 March 1892[1][2] – 5 February 1971[3]) was a Hungarian communist politician who was the de facto leader of Hungary from 1947 to 1956. [4][5] He served first as General Secretary of the Hungarian Communist Party (1945–48) and later holding the same post with the Hungarian Working People's Party (1948–56).
 

5fish

Well-Known Member
Joined
Jul 28, 2019
Messages
10,619
Reaction score
4,544
@rittmeister and @Wehrkraftzersetzer

Here the German unit that fought for the Republicans(REDS)... I wonder what Hitler thought about this...


snip...

The Thälmann Battalion was a battalion of the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War.[1][2] It was named after the imprisoned German communist leader Ernst Thälmann[3] (born 16 April 1886, executed 18 August 1944)[4] and included approximately 1,500 people, mainly Germans, Austrians, Swiss and Scandinavians. The battalion fought in the defence of Madrid.[5] Amongst the commanders of the battalion were the German writer, historian and World War I officer Ludwig Renn (later Chief of Staff of the XI International Brigade)[6][7] and Prussian World War I officer Hans Kahle, later promoted to lead the Republican 45th division for a time.[8] The battalion, like the International Brigades in general, also attracted its share of intellectuals, such as the well-known writer Willi Bredel who became its commissar.[

snip...

As Robert G. Colodny writes in The International Brigades:

"The history of the Germans in Spain...is the history of strong men who proved and overproved their courage and endurance, their resistance to pessimism and despair. It is the story of men who died or were broken physically in doing this. They brought to the International Brigades an offensive spirit, a bitter desperate courage at rare intervals in war priceless, essential, but always costly. They set an early example of what shock troops could be like. They tried to do the impossible, and paid for it. And during the early days in Aragon, in the futile fighting around Huesca, at Tardienta, the Germans, in countless bayonet charges against fortified positions, took their objectives, buried their dead, and waited with a caged restlessness for the next day's orders."[


here is this...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Thälmann

snip...

Ernst Johannes Fritz Thälmann (German pronunciation: [ɛʁnst ˈtɛːlman]; 16 April 1886 – 18 August 1944) was a German communist politician, and leader of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) from 1925 to 1933

 

5fish

Well-Known Member
Joined
Jul 28, 2019
Messages
10,619
Reaction score
4,544
Lets add a French one to the mix...


snip...

The Louise Michel Battalion were two unconnected battalions of French-speaking volunteers from France and Belgium in the International Brigades of the Spanish Civil War. They were named after Louise Michel, a heroine of the Paris Commune of 1871 known as the "Red virgin of Montmartre". Both battalions mustered in November and December 1936.


Here a namesake...


snip...

Louise Michel (French pronunciation: [lwiz miʃɛl] (About this soundlisten); 29 May 1830 – 9 January 1905) was a teacher and important figure in the Paris Commune. Following her penal transportation to New Caledonia she embraced anarchism. When returning to France she emerged as an important French anarchist and went on speaking tours across Europe. The journalist Brian Doherty has called her the "French grande dame of anarchy."[1] Her use of a black flag at a demonstration in Paris in March 1883 was also the earliest known of what would become known as the anarchy black flag

Add this one...


snip...

The Henri Vuilleman Battalion was a unit of the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War. It was raised on 12 December 1936, mostly from French and Belgian volunteers, absorbing surviving members of the Louise Michel (I) Battalion. It was first mustered as a battalion of XIII International Brigade. On 5 August 1937, it transferred to the XIV International Brigade. It was dissolved on 23 April 1938 with the remaining troops being redistributed in the XIV International Brigade.[1]
 
Top