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No African American GIs?


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On 12/27/2014 at 7:46 PM, Badger73 said:

Stumbled accross this old thread SEARCHing for something else.

To those still interested in the original topic, there was subsequently developed a US non-caucasian "faces" and uniform Mod for specific US Infantry units comprising the US 92nd ID, 100th Inf, and 442nd RCT available since version 2 campaigns and scenarios.  The 92nd (Colored) Infantry Division saw combat as a unit in Northern Italy.  Later in the ETO, as the war's horrific appetite for consuming infantry created a shortage of replacements, several US divisions approaching Germany augmented their infantry companies with a "5th" platoon of all-black ("negro") soldiers after the Market Garden campaign.  The "faces" folder in this Mod allows for such.

Mod Name = updated ez_&_vein_US_infantry_distinct_units_uniform (CMBN version2)
URL = http://www.battlefront.com/index.php?option=com_remository&Itemid=314&func=fileinfo&id=2627

Does anybody have this mod still?

It doesn't appear to be up on either of the CMMODS yet.

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A can of worms worth opening. To me it isn’t about political correctness or even recognizing historical performance. I just like more personalized views of my pixeltruppen. One of the things I like about modern is the ability to see a leader and sometimes visually distinctly identify and maybe build a virtual persona. Hard to do when everyone looks so uniform. Be nice to have more general variation in soldier faces. I get that the models limit physical variations like build and height aren’t there, but faces could be 

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On ‎7‎/‎21‎/‎2019 at 11:49 PM, Erwin said:

If it comes to that, what about female troops?   Certainly need em in the modern titles, and IIRC the Soviets had them as well.  (They did in "Cross of Iron" with James Coburn, so it must be true.)

a bit more difficult as visually the only thing that you can do is the face.  Be cool if there were variations in body types but that would require so much extra animation and model work BF will never do it.

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My my, a 2011 topic still active! I didn't think any had survived that long.

Modded to resemble a woman, current models would look more like Allison Janney than Kate Beckinsale. The generic soldier model appears to be a lanky 6 foot tall (above average for a WWII soldier). Women soldiers in the game would need their own models, perhaps even their own animations. BFC has the same issue with shorter ethnic groups. The soldiers in the 'Vietnam' mod pack don't look particularly Vietnamese. Adding Nepalese Ghurkas to the CMFI module was nixed because the generic soldier model is just too tall and lanky to represent them.

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2 hours ago, MikeyD said:

 Adding Nepalese Ghurkas to the CMFI module was nixed because the generic soldier model is just too tall and lanky to represent them.

That is very true. We have a lot of Ghurkas in my home town and very few of them are taller than me, and I'm only 5ft8. Although what they lack in inches they make up for in politeness.

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On 6/17/2011 at 11:55 AM, Loaf said:

I would not be surprised if the desire for an all-white Free French formation was politically rather than racially motivated, and stemmed from De Gaulle's desire to present his Free French forces as the true liberators of France. De Gaulle's political campaigning ensured that the Free French 2nd Armored got to liberate Paris, after all...

 

De Gaulle wanted to create a myth that Free French forces and partisans were instrumental in France's liberation - essentially, he wanted (and seems to have succeeded to a remarkable extent) to convince the French that they more or less liberated themselves from the Germans. This involved massively over-playing the numbers and significance of both partisan and FF formations. At the same time, French collaboration with the German occupiers was under-stated.

 

I don't think it would have fit the De Gaulle spin to have a bunch of non-white colonial soldiers roll into Paris - he didn't want the French to think they were saved by their colonies. For obvious reasons, even white FF units were disproportionately made up of men from the colonies, and I don't think that fact got highlighted much by De Gaulle either. He wanted people to think that the FF forces were made up largely of people like him - men who refused to accept Vichy France and fled to Britain to carry on the fight.

 

De Gaulle was thinking ahead to post-war France and his desired role as its leader. The US and Brit leadership saw De Gaulle as a pest, but he got a lot of what he wanted from them.

 

Anyhow, my larger point is that Ike's interest in any Free French formation would be marginal and his goals would be A) appeasing De Gaulle; B) maximizing the propaganda value of French participation in the Normandy invasion; and C) maximizing the benefits of the limited manpower available from Free French forces. Probably in that order... So I very much doubt you could get to the bottom of the whole decision to ban black French colonials from Normandy without considering the behind-the-scenes political wrangling between De Gaulle and the Allied leadership. The decision could have been a result of straightforward US institutional racism, but I would be willing to bet there was more to it...

This French view has persisted and become fact to the French themselves.

Look at Quora answers.  They get REALLY PISSY if you mention that most the partisans were communist and the partisans all preferred to fight eachother after the Germans were kicked out by Allies

They also dont want to hear about the Vichy gunning down US troops and throwing their weapons down when the US troops finally got close - or the yacht full of high ranking allies who demanded to their superiors to be able to sail in and talk - they knew a lot of the French officers and they had been allies! Yeah that yacht got lit up.

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On 8/6/2019 at 5:11 AM, Sublime said:

This French view has persisted and become fact to the French themselves.

Look at Quora answers.  They get REALLY PISSY if you mention that most the partisans were communist and the partisans all preferred to fight eachother after the Germans were kicked out by Allies

They also dont want to hear about the Vichy gunning down US troops and throwing their weapons down when the US troops finally got close - or the yacht full of high ranking allies who demanded to their superiors to be able to sail in and talk - they knew a lot of the French officers and they had been allies! Yeah that yacht got lit up.

You are responding to something posted 8 years ago........  I think you are a bit low on coffee. 😁

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Communist resistants (Francs-tireurs et partisans) did not make up most of the French resistance, even if that's what they claimed. They overinflated their contribution as much as the Germans, who were glad to be getting rid of communists, though it isn't tiny either. Just the fact that they only started resisting after the 22nd of June 1941 should tell you that. Before that they were almost favorable to the Germans due to their relations with the Soviet Union at that time.

Vichy French troops in North Africa did not exactly know if they should have responded to Operation Torch by throwing down their weapons and greeting US troops with open arms or by shooting at them, since it was still technically an invasion of French soil by a faction that is neither friend or foe to them, keep in mind what we call Vichy France today was just the official French government to the average French soldier, and knowing that their British allies bombed the fleet in Mers-el-Kebir among other attacks in French colonies might have made him lean towards the 'shooting at them' part, however he may have not forgotten that Germany was the cause of it all. Some commanders decided to fight for the opening days, others changed sides immediately. At the end of the day Vichy French troops in North Africa fought the Germans alongside the Allies.

Also, be careful with the name "Free French". For example the Vichy French who fought the Axis in North Africa did not immediately become "Free French". Quite a few French military units which fought the Axis were not actually Free French and did not answer to de Gaulle, they in fact leaned more towards the Vichy government.

As for the colonial troops, let's just say France has a habit of rewarding their colonial war heroes with... well, nothing. (I say "has" because some of them are still alive and have barely gotten even a slight amount of concern from the French government)

Edited by Frenchy56
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  • 1 month later...
On 7/30/2019 at 4:37 PM, MikeyD said:

The soldiers in the 'Vietnam' mod pack don't look particularly Vietnamese. Adding Nepalese Ghurkas to the CMFI module was nixed because the generic soldier model is just too tall and lanky to represent them.

One of many reasons why we went the fictional "Vietnam-esque" route... the people of Bong-Hai are suprisingly tall & lanky for South East Asians.

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