Britain and France have a long history. If Henry II had been successful in his ambition, they would be speaking English. Of course, a hundred years earlier, the same thing happened in reverse and the English aristocracy at least, were all French speaking.
On 18 June, nearly 100 years ago, The English once again humiliated a French army at Waterloo (At La Hay Saint to be exact) and we have managed to rub along together ever since.
All of this seems a long time ago to us, but to the French ruling elite, 100 years is a drop in the ocean of time. The Frogs and Le Rosbifs will always have an uneasy alliance.
France had just lost the war; its army was defeated and German soldiers were marching through Paris. France had surrendered; Britain was no longer its ally, as they were to make very clear when they killed over 1,200 French sailors attacking the French fleet at Mers-el-Kébir. I don’t understand why you insist upon blaming the French for failing to violate the armistice they had just signed with Germany and ignore that the British killed over 1,200 of their former allies while losing only 2 dead themselves, in large part because the French didn’t believe the British would actually open fire. Talk about blaming the victim.
You know why ‘rumors’ of the brutality of the USSR got into the German consciousness? Because the Germans knew what they had been doing to the Soviets during three years of occupation. Just for starters that had murdered over 3 million Soviet POWs through deliberate starvation, Einsatzgruppen had shot over a million communists, Jews, and other political undesirables in open air mass shootings, and Germany had abducted over 12 million slaves laborers to feed their economy, most of them from Eastern Europe. You should give Generalplan Ost a read for Germany’s plan to eliminate the Slavic peoples from European Russia via extermination, expulsion to Siberia or being reduced to slave labor.
Germany also didn’t keep trying to surrender, Jodl tried to surrender only to the Western Allies but was told in no uncertain terms by Eisenhower that the only acceptable terms were immediate and unconditional surrender:
That is so for the Reich as such; “Germans” kept seeking to surrender westward, as in individual commanders all through early '45.
But yes, it keeps coming up on this theme: France had just lost. Fair and square. Most of the world kept recognizing the Vichy government as de jure legitimate for years and, as pointed out, even later on the Allied and FF command kept recognizing Vichy forces’ field commanders as leaders to be convinced to turn to our side, not to be summarily thrown in chains.
What was the incentive for the fleet to go rogue or to surrender separately to the UK? The *a posteriori *notion that the right thing to do was to keep fighting the Axis to the last breath of the last free man was not “obvious” at the time of the 1940 capitulation. Let us remember the US tried as hard as it could to stay away from the whole thing until December of 1941.
Well, I’m one of the posters who finds it mysterious. And what I find mysterious is why the French fleet wasn’t handed over to the Allies BEFORE the armistice was signed.
Because the fleet was FRENCH, not British. US ships today would no more turn themselves over to British control in the case of Canadian conquest of North America than the French would have then. The thought is not one a captain would even consider, and he would probably court martial anyone who suggested such.
Paul Reynaud, the French Prime Minister, intended for France to continue the war from North Africa to liberate Metropolitan France. He was, however, deposed by the defeatist pro-German Marshall Phillipe Petain, who immediately called for an armistice.
Basically, the French Government was overthrown and captured by those hostile to continuing the war.
Well Canada’s a terrible example: they could never conquer N. America, even if they invaded with both tanks.
I’m not suggesting US ships (or French ones) turn THEMSELVES over, I would expect, if we were conquered, by say Mexico, that the President would send our Air Force to Canada and give our Navy to the Brits. Wouldn’t ALL Americans support such an action?
Why didn’t France do this, before an armistice and before the decision would fall to captains of individual ships?
(I think a poster just answered this–a collaborationist gov’t took control of France before it could be done. But that’s a very different explanation from, "Well, no one, not even Americans, would ever do that.)
Even crazier, the British government proposed that France and Britain become one country in order to keep French forces in the fight. See: Anglo-French Union.
Thanks for the cite. Now I understand how Petain got control of the Government. (Like a thief in the night, really.) Before the French Fleet could be saved (for the Allies). It also clears up why the British bombed the French navy with such little compunction. Churchill had made clear how important the Fleet was, and Petain chose to switch sides and take the navy with him.
My cites do nothing of the sort, and in fact they say he was both a Nazi Collaborator and not trusted:
Darlan expected Germany to win the war and decided that it was advantageous for France to collaborate with Germany. He distrusted the British, and after the armistice of June 1940 he seriously considered waging a naval war against Britain. As a top official in the Vichy government, Darlan repeatedly offered Hitler active military cooperation against Britain…But he was as much a collaborator as Pierre Laval, and Darlan promoted a political alliance between Vichy French forces and Germany through the Paris Protocols.
Yes, indeed, Ike did make a deal with Darlan. But he didnt trust him.
If you read An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942-1943,by Rick Atkinson , you can see that not only was Darlan despised and not trusted, but that he wasnt trustworthy. He weaseled and prevaricated and caused the death of many French and American soldiers. Not to mention Darlan was a notorious Anti-Semitic. (Which was rather common in the French High Command)
Google Books?
id=6BzBBAAAQBAJ&pg=PT161&lpg=PT161&dq=admiral+darlan+antisemite&source=bl&ots=N1VZkNbnww&sig=ZXHMyMKcRqCflfzOttk7kNXTzbc&hl=en&sa=X&ei=SAPRVPn1KNj8oQTG7IKIAw&ved=0CFkQ6AEwCQ#v=onepage&q=admiral%20darlan%20antisemite&f=false
Because their goal wasn’t to do what was best for the UK but to do what was best for France (in their opinion). And keeping your own military assets under your control is the way to go in any case. There isn’t the slightest advantage to hand them over to a third party engaged in a war you’re not part of, and that very obviously they’re going to lose anyway. Especially when you’re soon going to negociate peace terms with the country against whom these military asset will be used by said third party. There were only bad consequences to such a choice : you’re losing a big part of your remaining strength to the Brits, and the Germans are going to make you pay for it on top of it.
Besides, anyway, people in charge (Petain and his croonies) weren’t enamored with the British (well…nobody was), and not even with the concept of democracy. If anything, they felt closer to the Nazis. Pétain despised the republican system, thought it was the source of all evils and wished to establish an authoritarian and reactionary regime. Of course, he would have prefered a French victory, but given the circumstances, his goal was to reestablish French preeminence working hand in hand with Germany. Definitely not to help the UK fight Germany. He might not have been a massive fan of the Nazis, but his mindset and vision was probably closer to, say, Franco in Spain, than to the like of Churchill or Roosevelt.
And if people who wanted to fight on had prevailed (and as I already said, even if you were an anglophile hard-liner, betting on the UK ultimately prevailing against Germany as De Gaulle did was bordering idiocy in these circumstances, so even those were likely to admit regretfully that surrendering was the only sensible move), the way to go wouldn’t have been to hand over the Fleet to the UK but to create a French government in exile controlling the fleet, the colonies, the troops present in the UK (back from Dunkirk and Norway) and in North-Africa, the gold reserves (about to be shipped away when the armistice was signed), presumably what was left of the airforce, etc…To keep the assets under French, not British, control.
But there was no point of view from which handing over the fleet to the UK while signing an armistice with Germany could make sense.
Canada’s also a bad example because they’re allies of Britain! In WWII, it’d be as if the French fleet surrendered…to Italy.
If (impossible, of course, but run with it) Japan had landed a major force and was taking over the whole west coast of the U.S., why wouldn’t the U.S. Navy send its ships to a neutral port, or a less-involved allied port (Valparaiso) or an active allied port (Sydney) rather than just sinking it all in harbor in San Francisco?
All you’ve done is repeat the exact same thing you cited the first time, which I’ve already responded to. Repeating it again doesn’t make you correct, but to reiterate, he contemplated waging a naval war against the British after the British had just killed over 1,200 French sailors at Mers-el-Kébir attacking the French fleet there. It doesn’t sound so terribly damning of the man, now does it? It also doesn’t change the fact that even after Churchill’s actions Darlan kept his word that no French ship would fall into German hands when the fleet scuttled two years later, nor that FDR and Eisenhower knew that he was the man that they had to make a deal with since Henri Giraud was a nobody as far as Vichy French forces in North Africa were concerned. When Darlan ordered all French forces in North Africa to cease resistance against and join with the Allies, he was obeyed.
Google vomiting results of the words “admiral darlan not trusted” and “admiral darlan Nazi Collaborator” isn’t very impressive or persuasive; particularly when you clearly don’t care what you come up with. You might be interested to know that your last usable link is to “In Search of the Silk King: A Novel By Maya Herman.” Your first and second links are to newspaper articles from December 1942 where “Gen Catroux, C-in-C Fighting French the Levant” said he was not to be trusted. Big shocker there, Free French general calls Vichy French admiral untrustworthy.
Ok, you are defending a notorious Nazi Collaborator and anti-Semitic. A man who no-one trusted- not the Nazis, not the Allies, not even his own countrymen.
I suppose you can say Darlan “kept his word” in that no significant French ships were handed over the Nazis. But that’s because the Allies had to sink most of the remaining ships during the Naval Battle of Casablanca, after Darlan ordered his navy to fire on the US Navy- without provocation. His failure to order surrender (as he agreed but weaseled on) cost the USA:
4 troopships sunk
~150 landing craft sunk
4-5 aircraft destroyed
1 battleship damaged
2 destroyers damaged
1 oiler damaged
~174 killed and many wounded. Not to mention about 500 French sailors dying needlessly.
Mind you- he did finally agree to surrender- but only after drawing out negotiations to
enhance his personal political power- Darlan demanded that they recognize him as commander of all French forces in the area and recognize him as High Commissioner of France (head of civil government) for North and West Africa.
Sure, there were a lot of cites. But if someone provides you with 14 cites that all agree that “xxxxx” finding fault with two of them doesnt allow you to ignore the other dozen.
Darlan was a untrustworthy bigoted weasel who was a notorious Nazi Collaborator.
It makes sense why turning the ships over to the British might have been unpalatable, but why not the neutral option? Running for Turkey would expose them to attack from Italian and German forces among others, but it was a powerful fleet (though without air cover, right?), and their odds of survival would be better while on the run than sitting in port. Alternatively, they could head through the Strait of Gibraltar to head south to Liberia, but Liberia probably could not accommodate them. Could they have made it across the Atlantic? Churchill mentioned French colonies in the Americas, but most of the countries of the Americas were neutral at that time. I imagine they could have defended themselves against any Axis submarines that tried to cut them off in the Atlantic, and surely they would face less Axis opposition heading towards the Atlantic than towards Turkey, right?
Of course there was. Sometimes you do the right thing even if you can’t see how it personally benefits you. Helping the Allies was the right thing to do and it made sense. Reynaud supported sending the Fleet to British ports, but he resigned before it could be accomplished. He couldn’t have been the ONLY Frenchman who felt that way. It’s just so French to say, “We’ll surrender our land and our people to the Nazis, but we’ll be God-Damned before we surrender our navy to the British. That is where we draw the line!” So French it hurts.
Reynaud resigned because he opposed the armistice, and couldn’t stomach it, so if he favoured handing over the fleet to the British, that would be entirely consistent.
However the French government which concluded that the armistice was in the best interests of France would inevitably conclude that not handing over the fleet to the British was also in the best interests of France; it would be wildly irrational to do otherwise.
You don’t have to be French to think that a unilateral armistice with the Germans, plus retaining your fleet, makes sense; you just have to be modestly rational. Anyone who thought about it for an instant would see that handing over the fleet to the British was completely incompatible with signing a functioning armistice with the Germans.
