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- LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's most famous World War II commander, Field
Marshal Viscount Montgomery, submitted a racist masterplan for Africa that
so embarrassed the postwar government it kept watch on him to ensure he
did not repeat his opinions in public.
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- Public records released Thursday reveal
that Montgomery -- who was revered as a hero for leading British troops
to victory over the Germans in North Africa -- planned to turn the continent
into a white supremacist bulwark against communism.
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- A secret, two-month-long tour of 11 African
countries in 1947 led him to conclude that the African "is a complete
savage and is quite unable of developing the country himself," the
official papers revealed.
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- His attitude to African independence
movements was shown in a recommendation to the government that said, "We
should have no nonsense with the United Nations Organization about Tanganyika;
it should be absorbed into the British bosom."
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- Tanganyika, which now makes up part of
the nation of Tanzania, became independent from Britain in 1961.
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- Montgomery, affectionately dubbed Monty
by his troops, was particularly scathing about Ethiopian leader Haile Selassie,
whom he called a pathetic figure. "To give the Emperor any more lands
would be utterly absurd," he reported.
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- His confidential report was rebuffed
by the post-war British Labor government, whose official policy was to
build self-government in Africa.
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- Senior ministers were so concerned about
the report that Montgomery's lectures were watched to ensure he did not
repeat his racist views in public. His African tour was kept secret from
all but a handful of top officials.
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- The release of the secret papers under
Britain's 50 year rule may tarnish Montgomery's image -- glorified in numerous
films -- as a war hero.
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- Lord Chalfont, a former Labor foreign
minister and biographer of Montgomery, said an icon had tumbled.
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- "A lot of people will find it extremely
surprising. His reputation is irredeemably damaged. I find it very disappointing
and depressing," Chalfont said.
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- Montgomery's official biographer Neil
Hamilton said Britain would still remember him as a brilliant strategist,
but conceded that in politics he was "unbelievably naive."
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- Hamilton said that Montgomery's description
of Africans as savages was "the kind of schoolboy terminology that
Monty used to rally his troops, the equivalent of urging them to hit Rommel
for six."
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- Montgomery reacted stoically and with
humor to the government's rebuttal of his plan, the records show.
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- "When I wrote my report I was fully
aware that you would not agree with it; in fact I said so to my staff!
It is obvious that we disagree fundamentally on the whole subject; time
will show which of us is right," he said in a letter to the colonial
secretary of state at the time, Arthur Creech Jones.
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