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World War Two: Armed Forces - Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe)
Image right Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery inspects a Royal Rhodesia Regiment guard of honour during a visit to the territory in 1947Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery inspects a Royal Rhodesia Regiment guard of honour during a visit to the territory in 1947
This project aims to honour the Rhodesians who fought and/or died during or as a consequence the war. Please assist by linking the GENi profiles of Rhodesian WW2 armed forces to this project
Southern Rhodesia was a self-governing colony of the United Kingdom at the outset of World War II and entered the conflict with Britain shortly after the invasion of Poland in 1939. By the end of the war in 1945, 26,121 Southern Rhodesians of all races had served in the armed forces, 8,390 of them overseas, operating in the European theatre, the Mediterranean and Middle East theatre, East Africa, Burma and elsewhere.
The most important contribution made to the war by Rhodesia was possibly to the Empire Air Training Scheme (EATS), involving 8,235 British, Commonwealth and Allied airmen being trained in Southern Rhodesian flight schools. Rhodesia's operational casualties were 916 killed and 483 wounded of all races.
Rhodesian officers and soldiers were distributed in small groups throughout the British and South African forces in an attempt to prevent high losses. Most of the men served in Britain, East Africa and the Mediterranean at first with a broader dispersal from 1942 onwards.
Rhodesian servicemen in operational areas were mostly from the country's white minority. The Rhodesian African Rifles which was made up of black troops and white officers, was the exception, fighting in Burma from late 1944. Other non-white soldiers and white servicewomen served in East Africa and on the home front within Southern Rhodesia. Tens of thousands of black men were conscripted from rural communities to on the aerodromes and later on white-owned farms.
The participation in EATS led to the post-war immigration of many former airmen, contributing to the increase to nearly double its pre-war size by 1951. Since the country's reconstitution as Zimbabwe in 1980, the modern government has removed many references to the World Wars, such as memorial monuments and plaques, from public view, considering them to be unwelcome emblems of white minority rule and colonialism.
Southern Rhodesia's dead of the war today have no official commemoration, either in Zimbabwe or overseas.
References and Sources
- http://rhodesiaandtheraf.blogspot.co.uk/
- https://en.wiki2.org/wiki/Southern_Rhodesia_in_World_War_II
- http://www.raf.mod.uk/history/bombercommandno44squadron.cfm
List of Notable Rhodesian soldiers in alphabetical order
Rhodesian WWII Regiments
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