Paris Liberation Made ‘Whites Only’

Papers unearthed by the BBC reveal that British and American commanders ensured that the liberation of Paris on 25 August 1944 was seen as a whites only victory. Many who fought Nazi Germany during World War II did so to defeat the vicious racism that left millions of Jews dead. Yet the BBC’s Document programme has seen evidence that black colonial soldiers — who made up around two-thirds of Free French forces — were deliberately removed from the unit that led the Allied advance into the French capital