Femmes de l'ennemi ou du colonisateur? Les relations entre les soldats colonisés de l'Empire et les Allemandes dans le regard de la hiérarchie militaire française (1944-1945)

In 1945, the French army that participated in the invasion of Germany in the Western coalition presented the face of a colonial and imperial army. In fact, half of its troops were colonized soldiers, mainly from Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco, but also from the Frangese colonies in sub-Saharan Africa. After the occupation of the Rhineland in the 1920s by thousands of colonial subjects, which had provoked the scandal of “black shame”, this was the second time in the 20th century that the French army used colonized soldiers to occupy German civilians. The intimate relationships, whether consensual or not, between colonized and occupied women, are once again at the center of all attention. Crossing the contributions of recent work on sexuality and gender relations at war, and on the other hand in research on masculinities in colonial situations, this article analyzes the way in which the military institution considers relations between conquering colonized soldiers and defeated Germans. Its ambition is to show how a colonial state at war, and more precisely after war, controls the sexuality of Europeans as well as that of the colonized. It is a question of understanding how the military hierarchy manages such relations at a time of weakening colonial power, but also of reaffirming the conqueror manhood of metropolitan men after the humiliation of 1940. [translated from author]