I can confirm that the quote is taken from French Colonial Soldiers in German Captivity during World War II by Raffael Scheck, p. 8-9. In terms of accuracy, that's how far the above claim goes. What we see in this video and the above quote taken from it is cherry-picking at its best and with no understanding of the realities of the dangers and threats posed to prisoners of war of African descent. The video in question is a egregious mix of opinion, distorted facts and downright falsehoods taken from dubious sources or cherry-picked from legitimate ones, all to make a case against "leftist inclusion". The fact that video highlights the fact that Scheck is Jewish, something that has nothing to do with his skill as a scholar or reputation, should be obvious to anyone that these are not arguments made in good faith.

The reality of the matter is that the video in question has cherry-picked Scheck's argument. Without a doubt, Scheck is not wrong. However, as the scholar that he is, he puts in the effort to contextualize it. Scheck is writing primarily of French colonial soldiers in French PoW camps. That is, prisoners of war that have been taken captive and processed to a camp where they were housed and guarded. Scheck has three main arguments in regards to the treatment of the colonial soldiers:

1. German propaganda aimed at North and West African soldiers so as to incite hatred for Jews, create anti-French and pro-German views and to create future collaborators meant that a more lenient policies towards African prisoners had to be lightened to the point where they were more or less equal to white prisoners. Furthermore, attitudes of guards could vary and sometimes be downright humane, as in the case of small work commandos in France where cordial relationships existed between captors and the captives. This is all, however, in the context of camps, not the capture of PoW:s after an engagement.

2. The Vichy French authorities were instrumental in trying to restore the rights and good conditions in the camps for the African prisoners. In the behavior of a colonial power, Vichy France wanted to be the ones to take care of their colonial subjects and shield them from German propaganda (see above). This meant that they repeatedly stressed to their German allies that the French colonial soldiers were to be treated with leniency and this is particularly evident in the Scapini Missions diplomatic efforts on the behalf of the well-being of the colonial soldiers.

3. French colonial soldiers were treated in a different, but somewhat equal, way to white French soldiers in as much that they were all kept in French camps, in a friendly French environment (where they even had contact with French civilians) and where aid societies could easily reach them. This was not the case for French soldiers kept in German camps. There are indications that mortality in the camps were higher for colonial soldiers than for white soldiers, but Scheck is careful to point out that the statistics are not wholly reliable and needs to be read with caution.

This leaves us with the question: What about after initial capture, as portrayed in Battlefield V?

As in 1940, German propaganda aimed at colonial soldiers as bloodthirsty savages, mixed with calls for revenge, racial hatred and accusations of the mutilation of German troops by colonial soldiers repeatedly led to the killing of captured colonial soldiers. As Scheck writes on page 32, "Being taken prisoner was a dangerous moment for all soldiers, but colonial soldiers, and particularly blacks, were exposed to the greatest dangers." Had "American Krogan" actually read the book he cites from, he would have known this since Scheck does not make this a secret and writes the first chapter of his book about it. In 1940, the massacres of colonial soldiers by German soldiers were carried out after the initial capture. Considerably little research has been made on war crimes against colonial soldiers in 1944-1945. After all, the considerably larger massacres on colonial troops in 1940 didn't receive proper attention until the release of Sheck's own Hitler's African Victims: The German Army Massacres of Black French Soldiers in 1940 in 2006. What we do know is that the killing of black prisoners continued until the end of the war. However, they were not soldiers from the French African colonies. Instead, they were African-Americans. One such case was the execution of 11 African-American soldiers of the 333rd Field Artillery Battalion on December 17, 1944 near Wereth, Belgium.

In the case of Battlefield V in general, we do need to keep in mind that the narratives that we see are fictional. In fact, every little aspect of the Second World War as portrayed in the video game is a fictional construction and has very little bearing on the experience of the actual, historical war. This could be said about any and all fictional depictions of the war in literature, film and video games. How we as an audience respond to them, how we receive them, is something that has increasingly interested historians, including yours truly. In the research I did back in 2017 on the reception of the previous Battlefield game, Battlefield 1, and the backlash against "leftist inclusion", I made the argument that it was primarily based on a perceived threat against what I term the white mythic space of the First World War, a notion grounded in racism and misogyny. If we were to extend this to Battlefield V and the Second World War, we see that the arguments used by "American Krogan" is equally steeped in that defence. The user in question is actively using the guise of "historical accuracy" to minimize or in other ways push back against the inclusion of minorities. Battlefield V is not an historically accurate game, nor does it pretend to be. It is a cultural product of a popular depiction of the Second World War that is continuously changing and revising itself. As DICE has previously shown in Battlefield 1, it is committed to showing a diverse set of stories to portray unexplored aspects of the World Wars. In that, it has succeeded while at the same time awakening the ires of people who would prefer the stories to be untold or minimized so as to avoid uncomfortable questions being asked in the modern day about the legacy of racism, slavery and colonialism on the western world.

Ok thanks again I’ll check it out!