Before the late 1960s, historians generally agreed that World War II had increased mass support for African nationalism. Initially, they claimed that soldiers returned home politicised by war-time experiences and looking for opportunities to spread new ideas acquired through contacts with Asian nationalists. Subsequent scholars gradually chipped away at these assumptions, some completely discarding them as ‘myths’. Current opinion suggests that the way African soldiers reacted to the war depended on their ethnicity, class origins, education levels, and military occupations, and that their role in independence politics depended on local conditions.