Actually Germany declared war on the United States not the other way around. But that’s the kind of thing I’m talking about. A declaration of war is legal justification for invading a country. Saying a country has no functional government and you’re restoring order is a legal justification. Saying that the government of a country is illegitimate and you’re restoring the real government is a legal justification. Saying a country is occupied by some other country you’re at war with and you’re attacking that country’s forces is a legal justification. Saying a country was about to declare war on you and you attacked them pre-emptively in self-defense is a legal justification. But none of these appear to apply in this case.
That was their strategy. The American military lawyers filed motions of discovery concerning the local geography which the French ignored. If the subsequent American invasion had failed, they were going to use that as the basis of their appeal to have the outcome of battle overturned.
Well the Allies could always turn about and say that they were invading a colony(s), so they had the right.
No, the United States did declare war on Germany on December 11, 1941.
You’ve listed all these “legal” justifications for war. Legal according to what?
Germany declared war first on the US. While the US responded in kind, it was Germany that got things rolling between the two.
A lot of weird things happened like the North Africa situation in WWII. Take Iceland: semi-independent from Denmark (having the Danish crown in common), cut off after Germany took over Denmark, tried to remain neutral, invaded by the UK in May 1941, and the Brits handed it over to the US in July 1941! That’s right, even before the US entered the war, it assumed control of a non-combatant neutral occupied country. Makes the North Africa landings look completely legit by comparison.
There were negotiations between a Mr. Murphy, the U.S. State Dept. liaison in Algiers, with local French leaders (Adm. Darlan’s unexpected presence on the invasion date interfered with the plans, as they should have realized from the fact the man’s name was Murphy!). FDR expected that the Armee d’Afrique would come over to the Allied side either without a fight or with token resistance to satisfy French honor – realistically they knew that while France was de jure an independent neutral country, French independence and neutrality went only so far as it was convenient for the Germans to allow. So given the opportunity to rejoin the fight on the Allied side, he expected that they would.
A telling statistic: during WW2 there more allied occupation troops in Iceland than the adult male population.
Legal according to themselves. Obviously it’s a pretty easy standard to achieve. It’s not like they had to present their case to some neutral third party and win approval to invade. But modern nations do take it seriously and almost always present some kind of legal justification for their actions even if it’s actually a blatant case of territorial conquest.
Another odd invasion during WWII: On Christmas eve 1941, the Free French invaded Vichy controlled Saint Pierre and Miquelon off the coast of Canada. Roosevelt was royally peeved. But you see, that was in violation of the Monroe Doctrine (huh?) while Operation Torch was just hunky dory. I guess Germany should have declared a Bismarck Doctrine or something and that would have stopped the allies.
Try working with the facts. Roosevelt was not at all fond of DeGaulle, who was an arrogant SOB at best, but he also realized, as did Churchill, that DeGaulle for all his faults was able to rally the Free French and make them into an effective fighting force, and in so doing to draw off Vichy supporters. (There is a small aside in Churchill’s histories, regarding DeGaulle being particularly obstreperous before the Cadablanca Conference, in which Churchill notes that in an unguarded moment between himself and DeGaulle, the latter said that his arrogance towards the USA and UK was politically motivated – that Frenchmen would not rally behind what they saw as a British or American puppet, so he needed to “tweak the lion’s nose” in order to demonstrate his independence of British control.)
It was Cordell Hull, US Secretary of State, who protested the Free French takeover of St, Pierre et Miquelon, and in fact ordered Canadian Gen McNaughton to saeize it from the Free French (an American Cabinet member giving a Canadian commander orders didn’t sit well either!) – and Roosevelt was forced to smooth this over. Hull’s rationale was that we (USA) recognized Vichy and not the Free French – a triumph of formalism over Realpolitik.
No it’s not, It’s right on the coast of Morocco and is the chief port of that country.
The Vichy French did resist-the French battleship JEAN BART fired shells and hit the USS MASSACHUSETTS-you can still see the dent in the forward turret, where a French 14" shell struck it.
I understand that Gen. Giroud thought that HE should be the leader of the free French-which riled DeGaulle enourmously.
Giraud went further then that. He not only wanted military and political command of all French forces, he also wanted military command of all of the allied forces if North Africa. The most the allies offered him was military command of the French forces in North Africa.
It wasn’t as if anyone was going to call them out on it. No one in America was going to go to court about it. There was no UN to be appealed to, the old League of Nations had effectively gone into suspension in 1939.
The question of who would be the most effective leader of the Fighting French remained a vexed question for some time. Giraud and De Gaulle hated each other, Darlan might, the Allies thought, be made use of, at least for a time.
I think you’re missing the point. Nobody ever gets called out for their legal justification for going to war (unless they lose the war). There’s no appeal procedure and nobody has any authority to hold a hearing. It’s mostly a symbolic gesture albeit an important one. And it was considered an important thing in the United States in 1942 - we protested when other countries did not offer a legal justification for their invasions.