Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

To: zimdog
You know the title of Kamian's book. You can also consult Myron Echenberg's "Colonial Conscripts" if you're still curious.

And yet still no numbers from you.

Of course, the unit was formed only in the spring of 1943 and the mutiny occurred before they were out of training

You're mistaken as usual. The regimental history of the 13th Waffen-SS shows them seeing their first action in the Balkans in the spring of 1943. They were sent on a training exercise in France in July 1943, which is where the "mutiny" you mentioned happened in September. Before you make much more of it, you should probably know that there were only 14 mutineers out of the entire 20,000 muslim division, and all of them were promptly executed. In fact, the mutiny itself was quashed by other muslims in the division. It was so inconsequential that it didn't even alter the division's assignment. When the division formed in 1943 it had 21,065 soldiers. Over a year later in June 1944 they still had 19,136. The mutiny had a virtually negligible impact on their numbers, and in fact they lost more members to combat than to its morale toll.

Within days of the mutiny they went right back to the training exercise, and remained in France until January 1944.

Next they shipped to a base in Neuhammer, Germany thru March.

They transferred back to Bosnia and ran a counter-guerilla campaign from March-September 1944.

In September they moved to the front in Hungary to counter the advance of the Russians.

Like most German units on the eastern front they were slaughtered, and by early 1945 mass desertions were underway. Even so, the January 1945 muster still put them at 12,000 men. In April 1945 they pulled back into Austria with the 2nd Panzer army, and finally surrendered to the Brits on May 8th near Kaernten.

I gave you my sources and my estimate of the number of Muslims based on the numbers at hand.

Both your estimates and sources are vague and unspecific. Barring further information they cannot be evaluated as credible at this time. Your extreme reluctance to provide better numbers also suggests that you are using this vagueness to hide something.

That would be all of them, once the Vichyists were rousted from AOF posts in November 1942.

Even with the fall of Vichy, the largest and most important FFL African forces were already formed. They came from the aforementioned non-Muslim colonies where De Gualle based his operations.

Let me call to your attention that you are quoting present figures (probably from the CIA World Factbook) with regards to the religious demography of these countries.

The CIA factbook is the only readily available source with reliable estimates of these figures. You are correct that they are from 60 years later, but they nonetheless indicate the approximate breakdowns of the countries in question. You can rest assured that Gabon did not change from 95% to less than 1% muslim in only half a century, so as approximations they are valid. If anything did change in the last 60 though, I would wager it is probably an increase in the muslim population of coastal Africa due to migratory workers and population displacements in regional wars there. So it's probably safe to say that places like Ivory Coast and Senegal have become more muslim today than they were six decades ago under Vichy France.

Also, you'd be hard pressed to produce a more than a handful of practitioners of "voodoo"

As several of my prior posts indicated, I chose the term "voodoo" to signify the hundreds of small tribal and pagan religions that are practiced in sub-saharan west africa. There isn't really any single name that fits them all, though their followers collectively outnumber muslims in all of the original Free French colonies except Chad.

The voodoo designation itself derives from the fact that modern Voodoo proper - if it can even be called such a thing - of the type they practice in Haiti derived directly from the various practices of those same tribal and pagan religions in west Africa, where the slave ships to Haiti originated.

214 posted on 01/09/2007 11:59:05 PM PST by lqclamar
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 203 | View Replies ]


To: lqclamar
And yet still no numbers from you.

That's because I am still looking for my copies of these books. However, I did read them, which is more than you can honestly say.

Both your estimates and sources are vague and unspecific.

We'll get back to this point later.

Your extreme reluctance to provide better numbers also suggests that you are using this vagueness to hide something.

Or it suggests that I can't find the books in question. But if you want to be a jerk about it, I could say that your reluctance to check the citations I gave you suggests that you don't care about the truth.

Even with the fall of Vichy, the largest and most important FFL African forces were already formed. They came from the aforementioned non-Muslim colonies where De Gualle based his operations.

Since you're making claims about the number of troops recruited from specific colonies, you must have some sources about the FFL's African troop strength. What are they?

You are correct that they are from 60 years later, but they nonetheless indicate the approximate breakdowns of the countries in question.

I gave a citation and an approximate breakdown and you derided both as "vague and unspecific". I can say the same thing about your use of contemporary CIA Factbook data in a discussion of WW2. In addition to being a "vague and unspecific" source and estimate with regards to demographics two generations past, your "approximate breakdown" is also ahistorical.

As several of my prior posts indicated, I chose the term "voodoo" to signify the hundreds of small tribal and pagan religions that are practiced in sub-saharan west africa. There isn't really any single name that fits them all,

The CIA Factbook uses "animist" or "indigenous beliefs" and you use the CIA Factbook's numbers. Why are the numbers good enough for you (ahistorical as they are) but the categories they describe aren't? You're playing fast and loose with the facts.

You're also playing fast and loose with the numbers. In your post #200 you said that Cameroon's Muslim population "is in the 15% range" -- a phrase that you don't use in any other citations from the CIA Factbook. Why is that? Well, perhaps it's because the CIA Factbook doesn't give those numbers it puts the number of Cameroonian Muslims at 20% of the total population. You've got some 'splainin to do.

The voodoo designation itself derives from the fact that modern Voodoo proper - if it can even be called such a thing - of the type they practice in Haiti derived directly from the various practices of those same tribal and pagan religions in west Africa, where the slave ships to Haiti originated.

All the more reason why you shouldn't use the term to describe non-Vodoun (or "voodoo," if you insist) faiths that are not in West Africa. Just because you would prefer that a word have different meaning doesn't mean it does. I believe we went over this issue before and you have yet to produce any sources that are "reliable by any academic standard" that agree with your definition of the term in question being a religious slur but not a racial one.

220 posted on 01/10/2007 7:07:46 PM PST by zimdog
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 214 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson