 First edition | |
| Author | William Gardner Smith |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Genre | Novel |
| Publisher | Farrar, Straus |
Publication date | 1948 |
| Publication place | United States |
 | This article needs additional citations for verification .(September 2015) |
Last of the Conquerors is the 1948 debut novel by African-American journalist and editor William Gardner Smith. [1] [2]
The novel concerns the author's experience as an African-American GI serving in the racially segregated United States Army in US-occupied Germany after World War II. [1] The protagonist, Hayes Dawkins, has an affair with Ilse, a white German woman. He and Ilse struggle against racist Army officers and policies to sustain a relationship that some white soldiers condemn (although there are also many friendly whites who help them).
Last of the Conquerors depicts post-Nazi Germany as more racially tolerant than the United States. While this depiction may or may not be accurate, Smith's novel is offering a critique of Marshall Plan rhetoric claiming that American society should be a model for the world, while African-Americans continued to suffer under the Jim Crow system at home and in the military (an inconsistency noticed by many other writers, American and German, at the time).
