Article 8 of the Armistice agreement:
Sending the fleet to Britain to continue fighting would seem to be a violation of that.
I know. The Fleet should have been sent before the Armistice was signed. It should have been sent before terms were even asked for. The British were begging the French to do this, if Wikipedia can be believed.
And the French were begging the British not to withdraw their planes from French airspace during the German invasion, to push their troops south and try to link up with the main French body, and, to evacuate French troops in parity with British ones at Dunkirk, and Britain didn’t do that for them. Why send the navy off to get itself killed when the war was almost over and it seemed inevitable that Britain would make a peace soon anyway?
Our old friend Admiral Darlan drafted a telegram to Admiral Abrial at Dunkirk stating;
“As soon as you are convinced that no troops outside the bridge head can make their way to the points of embarkation the troops holding the bridge-head shall withdraw and embark, the British forces embarking first.”
Churchill objected and said that the evacuation should be conducted with French and British troops “bras dessus, bras dessous”.
In the end the great majority of the French troops evacuated during Operation Dynamo chose repatriation rather than staying in Britain and joining De Gaulle’s Free French, so it wasn’t as if the lack of enthusiasm for joining the British struggle was confined to the French Navy alone.
According to the Wiki link on Mers-el-Kebir (somewhere above), the British ultimatum offered escort to a neutral port, suggesting America. This was actually something in the French commander’s orders from Vichy to consider, but apparently, that part of the ultimatum was not passed on to the fleet commander, and so he only had the choice of defect, scuttle, or die.
Is this correct? Im not saying you are wrong but im sure I read that the neutral port part of the ultimatum was not released to the French public.
From Wikipedia:
[quote=“DrDeth, post:56, topic:711563”]
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.
[QUOTE]
Fair enough, but he wasn’t a traitor.
The United Kingdom committed an act of war against Darlan’s country. I am not sure how it’s a confusing matter as to why Darlan would fight back against the UK and its allies.
Well, true, the Attack on Mers-el-Kébir was a act of war. But compared to what the Germans did to France- it was a romp in the countryside with butterflies and bunnies.
But before that occurred I want to point out this "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."
Note that that other Nazi collaborator Petain was indeed tried and convicted of Treason. Darlan doubtless would have been if not for his assassination.
So, yes, Darlan was a traitor.
Note that "In a speech to Parliament, Churchill repeated that the French armistice with Germany was a betrayal of the Allied agreement that forbade each country from surrendering to the Germans without notifying its allies. "
You’re not even in the realms of reality now. I am defending no one; I am telling you that you are wrong. If he was a man no one, not even his own countrymen trusted, how is it that when he ordered the Vichy French forces to cease resistance against and join the Allies his orders were obeyed? Why did FDR and Eisenhower broker the deal with him? I thought no one trusted him?
1)You’re wrong, as usual. Most of the French fleet was at Toulon, France in November 1942 and scuttled there when the Germans tried to seize it. There was only a partially complete battleship, a light cruiser, and 9 destroyers at Casablanca. 2) Darlan didn’t order anything, and 3) the French fleet at Casablanca sortied because the Americans were landing and shelling the French coastal batteries, hardly “without provocation”.
You didn’t provide 14 cites that I found fault in two of. You didn’t provide a single actual cite aside from retreading the one I already replied to, you provided google vomit of the words “admiral darlan not trusted” and “admiral darlan Nazi Collaborator” and obviously didn’t even bother to look at what the results you got were before presenting said vomit, you ‘cited’ a novel.
His orders were obeyed as he was in command. And, you can broker a deal with someone, even if you dont trust them. The Allies didnt trust or like him, but they did make a controversial deal with him to save lives.
Admiral Auphan ordered the scuttling, not Darlan. Darlan was in Allied hands at that time. True, more ships were in Toulon, but by the time they were scuttled Darlan no longer was in command.
Darlan was in command at Casablanca, and had given general orders to resist, despite the fact that the Allies had been talking to him for months. Still it took him being captured at gunpoint, and being given enormous positions of authority for him to order the surrender. Many Allied men died in those two days, needlessly.
The French at Casablanca opened fire first, due to Darlans orders and failure to surrender early.
Again, those cites show that Darlan wasnt trusted.
See:
and
and
President FDR sent a message to Ike about Darlan saying:
1. That we do not trust Darlan.
So making a run for, say, Brazil was never considered?
Darlan wanted to use the Fleet to help the Nazis. Well, at least when they were winning…
I wondered if it had been considered by the French commanders on the scene. Neither defecting to the Allies nor making their ships potentially (and probably) available to the Axis that had just been killing their comrades and conquering their country, it would seem like a rational choice.
There’s some evidence that sailing to a neutral port was what many of the line officers wanted, yes.
Damn. What a shame that they couldn’t make it happen.
If Darlan’s country is Vichy France, he certainly was a traitor. If his country is the French Republic, it didn’t exist when the UK bombed the French Fleet.
Darlan’s country was France, and his nation the French.
“France” wasn’t a country. “France” was a geographical term, like the “equator”.
False dichotomy. All countries are geographical (and cultural) terms. France is indeed a country, and widely referred to as such by speakers of English (and of course French). Over the years there have been two French empires, five republics and I’ve lost count of how many kingdoms, but these are not different countries; they are different states, governments or constitutional structures which (making due allowance for the odd border change or territory grab) administered the same country - France - and the same nation - the French.
Of all nations, the French are perhaps the least likely to think that their country has been extinguished, and a new country created, every time they revise their political constitution.