Chin - War of Words. Britain, France and Discourses of Empire During The Second World War (2022)
Chin - War of Words. Britain, France and Discourses of Empire During The Second World War (2022)
Chin - War of Words. Britain, France and Discourses of Empire During The Second World War (2022)
War of Words argues that the conflicts that erupted over French colonial
territory between 1940 and 1945 are central to understanding British,
Vichy and Free French policy-making throughout the war. By analys-
ing the rhetoric that surrounded these clashes, Rachel Chin demon-
strates that imperial holdings were valued as more than material and
strategic resources. They were formidable symbols of power, prestige
and national legitimacy. She shows that having and holding imperial
territory was at the core of competing Vichy and Free French claims to
represent the true French nation and that opposing images of Franco-
British cooperation and rivalry were at the heart of these arguments.
The selected case studies show how British–Vichy–Free French rela-
tions evolved throughout the war and demonstrate that the French
colonial empire played a decisive role in these shifts.
Rachel Chin
University of Glasgow
www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781009181013
DOI: 10.1017/9781009180993
© Rachel Chin 2022
This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without the written
permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published 2022
A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Chin, Rachel, 1987– author.
Title: War of words : Britain, France and discourses of empire during
the Second World War / Rachel Chin, University of Glasgow.
Description: Cambridge ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 2022. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2022004199 | ISBN 9781009181013 (hardback) |
ISBN 9781009180993 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Great Britain – Foreign relations – France. | France – Foreign
relations – Great Britain. | World War, 1939–1945 – Great Britain – Diplomatic
history. | World War, 1939–1945 – France – Diplomatic history. |
Great Britain – Foreign relations – 1936–1945. | France – Foreign
relations – 1914–1940. | France – History – German occupation, 1940–1945. |
BISAC: HISTORY / Europe / Great Britain / General
Classification: LCC D750 .C47 2022 | DDC 327.4104409044–dc23/eng/20220321
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022004199
ISBN 978-1-009-18101-3 Hardback
Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of
URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication
and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain,
accurate or appropriate.
Introduction 1
1 From the Dunkirk Evacuations to the Franco-German
Armistice: Renegotiating the Franco-British Alliance 19
2 ‘The Real Question at Issue’: British Policy
and the French Fleet 56
3 A Necessary Tragedy? The British Bombardments
of the French Fleet at Mers El-Kébir 76
4 Vichy, the Free French and the Battle for Imperial
Influence at Dakar in September 1940 104
5 Promises of Independence: Operation Exporter
and the Struggle for the Levant 136
6 Operation Torch: American Influence
and the Battle for French North Africa 172
7 Independence on French Terms: The 1943 Lebanese
Parliamentary Crisis 204
8 Holding On to Empire: The French Bombardment
of Damascus, May 1945 230
Conclusion 260
Bibliography 269
Index 284
vii
friend and fellow bibliophile, has been an endless and unflinching source
of encouragement and espresso martinis. My family has put up with my
annoying habit of visiting archives in the middle of family holidays. Peter
has reminded me that more occasions should be celebrated with cham-
pagne. Finally, a short ode to Max the cat, whose demands for attention
have fuelled many happy research interludes.
1 Hansard HC Deb vol. 806 col. 211, 214 (10 November 1970) https://hansard.parliament
.uk /commons/1970 -11-10/debates/d6157654 -c7db- 4ee2-8a85 - 43a74d416295/
GeneralDeGaulle(Tributes).
2 Because the Vichy government and the Free French claimed to represent France
after the Franco-German armistice, the term ‘Franco-British relationship’ should be
understood as several relationships.
3 Eric Jennings rightly points out de Gaulle’s penchant for exaggeration. AEF and
mandated Cameroon counted 8,881 ‘Europeans’ and 6,124,391 Africans. Eric
T. Jennings, Free French Africa in World War II: The African Resistance (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2015), 45.
Methodology
The focus of this study is the role of the rhetoric of Franco-British
relations. This topic remains under-explored in the history of relations
between France and Britain and in particular in the history of the Brit-
ish and French Empires. This unique rhetorical approach, which has
not yet been deployed, reveals dynamics within and around the policy-
making process that conventional approaches and perspectives do not. It
demonstrates that the process of formulating and implementing official
policies was far more complicated than a weighing of military strategies
against available resources. And it delivers new insights into the complex
nature of Franco-British relations during the Second World War.
There remains a strong tendency in scholarship to view Franco-British
relations after the Armistice as unremittingly hostile.4 Eleanor Gates, for
instance, has described the events that followed the armistice as ‘divorce
on a grand scale’.5 Another consequence of viewing Franco-British
relations through a binary lens of either cooperation or rivalry is that
June 1940 became the moment that British policy-makers abandoned
the Entente in favour of a ‘special relationship’ with the United States.6
7 Talbot Imlay, Facing the Second World War: Strategy, Politics and Economics in Britain
and France 1938–1940 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 5. See also, Stanley
Hoffman, Decline or Renewal? France since the 1930s (New York: The Viking Press,
1974). Julian Jackson, France: The Dark Years, 1940–1944 (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2003), Chapter 5. Martin Thomas, Britain, France and Appeasement: Anglo-
French Relations in the Popular Front Era (London: Berg, 1997). Peter Jackson, France
and the Nazi Menace: Intelligence and Policy Making 1933–1939 (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2000).
8 See, for instance, Ashley Jackson, The British Empire and the Second World War
(London: Hambledon Continuum, 2006). Martin Thomas, The French Empire at War:
1940–45 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998). Eric T. Jennings, Vichy
in the Tropics: Pétain’s National Revolution in Madagascar, Guadeloupe, and Indochina,
1940–1944 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001). Eric T. Jennings, Free
French Africa in World War II: The African Resistance (New York: Cambridge University
Press, 2015). Martin Thomas and Richard Toye, Arguing about Empire: Imperial
Rhetoric in Britain and France, 1882–1956 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017),
Chapters 5–6. Martin Thomas, Fight or Flight: Britain, France and their Roads from
Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), Chapter 2. Aviel Roshwald, Estranged
Bedfellows: Britain and France in the Middle East during the Second World War (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1990). Frederick Cooper, Citizenship between Empire
and Nation: Remaking France and French Africa 1945–1960 (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 2014).
how those experiences have been remembered and how this past has
been integrated into more contemporary policy-making.9 This has led
to a growing interest in understanding how individuals and groups build
their legitimacy, and therefore their power and influence, using a combi-
nation of legal, rhetorical and material techniques.10
In this book, the evolution of the Franco-British wartime relationship
will be assessed through a series of imperial ‘crisis points’. When com-
bined with the rhetorical methodology that is central to this work, these
case studies illustrate the importance of empire as a material and symbolic
asset. Episodes include the British bombardment of the French fleet at
Mers el-Kébir (1940), British and Free French clashes with Vichy forces
at Dakar (1940), British-Free French operations to capture Syria and
Lebanon (1941), the British-American ‘Torch’ invasions of North Africa
(1942) and British-Free French tensions in the Levant in 1943 and 1945.
This book asks how British and Free French decision-makers prepared
to defend controversial policies of imperial confrontation. And it argues
that rhetoric, broadly defined as the persuasive language of policy-making,
played a central role in the conception, implementation and justification of
9 Stanley Hoffmann, ‘The Trauma of 1940: A Disaster and Its Traces’, in The French
Defeat of 1940: Reassessments, ed. Joel Blatt (Providence, RI: Berghahn Books,
1998), 354–371. Olivier Wierviorka, La Mémoire Désunie: Le Souvenir Politique des
Années Sombres, de la Libération à nos Jours (Paris: Le Seuil, 2010). Robert Frank,
‘The Second World War through French and British Eyes’, in Britain and France in
Two World Wars: Truth, Myth and Memory, eds. Robert Tombs and Emile Chabal
(London: Bloomsbury, 2013), 179–191. R. Gerald Hughes, The Postwar Legacy of
Appeasement: British Foreign Policy Since 1945 (London: Bloomsbury, 2014). Hugo
Frey, ‘Rebuilding France: Gaullist Historiography, the Rise-Fall Myth and French
Identity, 1945–58’, in Writing National Histories: Western Europe since 1800, eds. Stefan
Berger, Mark Donovan and Kevin Passmore (London: Routledge, 1999), 205–216.
Jon Cowans, ‘Visions of the Postwar: The Politics of Memory and Expectation in
1940s France’, History and Memory 10, no. 2 (1998): 68–101. Richard Toye, ‘The
Churchill Syndrome: Reputational Entrepreneurship and the Rhetoric of Foreign
Policy since 1945’, British Journal of Politics and International Relations 10, no. 3
(2008): 364–378.
10 On constructing the legitimacy of the Free French, see Julian Jackson, A Certain
Idea of France: The Life of Charles de Gaulle (London: Penguin, 2019), Chapter 8
‘Inventing Gaullism’. Jay Winter and Antoine Prost, René Cassin and Human Rights:
From the Great War to the Universal Declaration (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2013). On Vichy legitimacy, see Yves Durand, ‘Collaboration French-Style:
A European Perspective’, in France at War: Vichy France and the Historians, eds.
Leonard V. Smith, Laura Lee Downes, Sarah Fishman, Robert Zaretsky and Ioannis
Sinanoglou (Oxford: Berg, 2000), 61–76. Peter Jackson and Simon Kitson, ‘The
Paradoxes of Vichy Foreign Policy, 1940–1942’, in Hitler and His Allies in World War
II, ed. Jonathan R. Adelman (London: Routledge, 2007), 79–115. Simon Kitson,
The Hunt for Nazi Spies: Fighting Espionage in Vichy France (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 2008). For a reassessment of the impact of Churchill’s wartime rheto-
ric, see Richard Toye, The Roar of the Lion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014).
14 Richard Toye, Rhetoric: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2013), 4.
15 For the legal arguments and organisational structures used to assert the authority of
the Free French, see Winter and Prost, René Cassin, Chapter 6.
16 Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, 23.
17 For the challenges of measuring public opinion and its impact on policy-making, see
Daniel Hucker, ‘International History and the Study of Public Opinion: Towards
Methodological Clarity’, The International History Review 34, no. 4 (2012): 775–794.
18 See, for instance, Agnus Calder, The Myth of the Blitz (London: Pimlico, 1991).
David Reynolds, Warren F. Kimball and A. O. Chubarian, eds., Allies at War: The
Soviet, American, and British Experience, 1949–1945 (London: Macmillan, 1994),
250. Richard Toye, The Roar of the Lion: The Untold Story of Churchill’s World War
II Speeches (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). Alan Allport, Britain at Bay:
The Epic Story of the Second World War: 1938–1941 (London: Profile Books, 2020).
See also, for issues of misreporting due to feelings of guilt, M. A. Doherty, Nazi
Wireless Propaganda: Lord Haw-Haw and British Public Opinion in the Second World
War (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press Ltd., 2000), 119–120.
19 David Thoms, ‘The Blitz, Civilian Morale and Regionalism, 1940–1942’, in War
Culture: Social Change and Changing Experience in World War Two, eds. Pat Kirkham
and David Thoms (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1995), 4, 6.
20 See, for instance, Roger Austin, ‘Propaganda and Public Opinion in Vichy France:
The Department of Hérault, 1940–44’, European Studies Review 13 (1983), 455–482.
Pierre Laborie, L’Opinion Française Sous Vichy (Paris: Éditions de Seuil, 1990). Julian
Jackson, France: The Dark Years, 1940–1944 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001),
Chapters 11 and 12. Kay Chadwick, ‘Radio Propaganda and Public Opinion under
Endgame Vichy: The Impact of Philippe Henriot’, French History 25, no. 2 (2011):
232–252.
21 Jackson, The Dark Years, 274. Pierre Laborie, Résistants Vichyssois et Autres: L’Évolution
de L’Opinion et des Comportements dans le Lot de 1939 a 1944 (Paris: Editions du
C.N.R.S., 1980).
22 See, for instance, Philippe Burrin, Living with Defeat: France under the German
Occupation, 1940–1944 (New York: Hodder Education, 1997). Yves Durand,
‘Collaboration French-Style: A European Perspective’, in France at War: Vichy and the
Historians, eds. Sarah Fishman, Ioannis Sinanoglou, and Laura L. Downs (Oxford:
Berg, 2000), 63. John Hellman, ‘Communitarians, Non-Conformists, and the Search
for a “New Man” in Vichy France’, in France at War: Vichy and the Historians, eds.
Sarah Fishman, Ioannis Sinanoglou, and Laura L. Downs (Oxford: Berg, 2000), 94.
Francine Muel-Dreyfus, Vichy and the Eternal Feminine: A Contribution to a Political
Sociology of Gender, trans. Kathleen A. Johnson (London: Duke University Press,
2001). Robert O. Paxton, Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order 1940–1944 (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1972). Ronald Rosbottom, When Paris Went Dark:
The City of Light Under German Occupation, 1940–1944 (London: John Murray, 2014).
John F. Sweets, Choices in Vichy France: The French under Nazi Occupation (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1986). Laborie, L’Opinion Française, 328. See also Philip
Nord, France’s New Deal : From the Thirties to the Postwar Era (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 2010) for administrative continuity between the interwar and post-
war years.
28 Daniel Hucker, Public Opinion and the End of Appeasement in Britain and France
(Surrey: Ashgate Publishing Ltd., 2011), 1.
29 For research on imperial intelligence gathering see, for instance, Martin Thomas,
‘French Intelligence Gathering in the Syrian Mandate, 1920–40’, Middle Eastern
Studies 38, no. 1 (2002): 1–32. Martin Thomas, ‘The Gendarmerie, Information
Collection, and Colonial Violence in French North Africa between the Wars’,
Historical Reflections 36, no. 2 (2010), 76–96.
30 Hucker, Public Opinion, 20.
31 Sandra Koa Wing, ed., Mass Observation: Britain in the Second World War (London:
The Folio Society, 2007), xiv.
from French and British Foreign Office files summarised views of metro-
politan and foreign reactions to particular high-profile events.
The language that decision-makers used to describe the Franco-
British relationship to the public and to justify policies that impacted this
relationship was highly strategic. Before the Franco-German armistice,
rhetoric stressed the unshakable bond of the Franco-British alliance.
After the Franco-German armistice, it illustrated the divergence of
Vichy French and British-Free French expectations for German victory
or defeat. The imperial conflicts that followed the armistice, and the
ways in which they were fought, both rhetorically and materially, were
outcomes of this rupture. The rhetoric that policy-makers employed to
justify or condemn these conflicts mobilised a combination of cultural,
historical and emotive imagery. British rhetoric emphasised the inevita-
bility of an Allied victory. It stressed the moral and ethical character of
the policies it was using to reach this goal. A key outcome of this victory
would be the restoration of France. Images of Britain and Free France as
saviours of the metropole became justifications for incursions into Vichy
French colonial territory. Vichy French rhetoric also drew on recognised
images of Frenchness and Franco-British rivalry to combat British-Free
French challenges to its sovereignty. Cultural symbols such as Joan of
Arc were used to represent Vichy France as the ‘true’ France and Britain
as France’s historic enemy and imperial rival.
The relationships that developed between British, Vichy and Free
French actors were subtle balancing acts. They were constantly being
renegotiated, materially and rhetorically. The way in which France and
Britain’s wartime relationship was constructed rhetorically has a great
deal to say not only about the expectations that informed each actor’s
policies but also about the more deeply rooted cultural and social atti-
tudes that underpinned this process. French and British policies were
a product of material capabilities. But they were also premised on less
tangible factors such as public opinion and moral and ethical norms.
They were influenced by external pressures, which included the demands
of powerful neutral actors such as the United States. In this context,
decision-makers were fighting to win approval for their respective war-
time visions and the policies that would be used to achieve those visions.
Rhetoric played a central role in this process.
Book Structure
This book is structured around eight chapters that examine seven criti-
cal points in the Franco-British relationship between 1940 and 1945.
The selected case studies show how British-Vichy-Free French relations
evolved throughout the war, and they demonstrate that the French
colonial empire played a decisive role in these shifts. Case studies aim
to involve British, Vichy and Free French actors in order to illustrate
the significance of competing sources of Frenchness and competing
narratives of Franco-British rivalry and cooperation. They begin in
Chapter 1 with the collapse of French and British military resistance
and the conclusion of the Franco-German armistice. They conclude
with de Gaulle’s triumphant return to Paris and his early attempts to
formulate France’s post-war imperial policy. The intervening chapters
explore the British bombardment of the French fleet at Mers el-Kébir
(July 1940), Free French attempts to take Dakar from Vichy forces
(September 1940), Allied landings in North Africa during Operation
Torch (November 1942) and the British-Free French operations in the
Levant states in 1941 and subsequently in 1943 and 1945. These crisis
points illustrate the complexity of British, Free French and Vichy rela-
tionships while also demonstrating how the Franco-British relationship
shifted throughout the course of the war. The very public and conten-
tious nature of imperial clashes at Mers el-Kébir, Dakar, North Africa
and the Levant make them ideal case studies as each provoked strong
official and public reactions.
Scholars may quibble with my choice of case studies. They may ask
why some topics such as Franco-British cooperation in India, the New
Hebrides and Cameroun or Franco-British views towards colonial armies
do not feature in the analysis. These are indeed important questions.
They have been addressed by scholars such as Akhila Yechury, Doug-
las Deleney and Jonathan Fennell.35 This book cannot, unfortunately,
engage with every aspect of the imperial wartime experience, without
becoming detached from its core narrative, that is, the evolution of war-
time Franco-British relations seen through the dual lenses of rhetoric
and empire.
Together, the case studies identify what factors influenced French and
British policy towards the French colonial empire. They explain how these
35 See, for instance, Akhila Yechury, ‘“La République Continue, Comme Par le
Passé”: The Myths and Realities of the Resistance in French India’, Outre-Mers,
Revue d’Histoire 103 (2015): 97–116. Douglas Delaney, The Imperial Army Project:
Britain and the Land Forces of the Dominions and India, 1902–1945 (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2018). Jonathan Fennell, Fighting the People’s War: The British and
Commonwealth Armies and the Second World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2019). Eric T. Jennings, ‘Britain and Free France in Africa, 1940–1943’, in
British and French Colonialism in Africa, Asia and the Middle East, ed. James R. Fichter
(Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), 277–296. Jennings, Vichy in the
Tropics. Jennings, Free French Africa.
influences were represented in the resulting policies and the rhetoric that
accompanied them. This means that, inevitably, some voices and loca-
tions will feature more loudly in the narrative than others. Because the
wartime imperial operations under scrutiny were planned in London, for
instance, it is natural for some of the focus of the book to be on the British
capital. It also explains why nationalist voices play a prominent role in the
chapters on the Levant states, and why they are absent in others.
Selected case studies effectively track the shifting nature of Franco-
British relations during the war years while maintaining a relatively
consistent geopolitical perspective: the focus is on high-profile colo-
nial clashes throughout. Emphasis is also placed on initial invasions of
colonial territory that involved British, Vichy and Free French actors.
This is the best way to demonstrate how each side justified its role in or
response to these colonial incursions. In the case of Mers el-Kébir, de
Gaulle’s movement was only a few days old, thus limiting Free French
involvement to a rhetorical one. The Free French also did not participate
militarily in the Torch invasions. However, the debates surrounding
this decision, including the offer of Madagascar’s administration as
consolation and the Free French role in North Africa’s administration,
demonstrate the complexity of Free France’s position in the conflict and
the growing influence of American decision-makers.
The chapters to come range from early British concerns surround-
ing French imperial possessions as exemplified by the violence of Mers
el-Kébir through to the immediate post-war period. By 1945, colonial
issues again played a crucial role in Franco-British relations, this time
in the context of imminent exit from Middle Eastern mandated terri-
tories. Another advantage of ranging across the years 1940–1945 is to
highlight the steady growth of American influence on European colonial
affairs and the consequent French and British reactions to Rooseveltian
anti-imperialist rhetoric. The organisation of this book highlights several
unifying themes: the consistent rhetorical emphasis on Franco-British
wartime solidarity achieved by delegitimising the Vichy government, the
linking of empire with global power, legitimacy and national sovereignty,
the symbolic value of ‘tough’ policies and the overarching role that rhet-
oric played in creating a conceptual framework in which policy-makers
found their actions limited in real ways.
Chapter 1 establishes a critical foundation for the case studies that
follow. It introduces the nuances and complexities of the Franco-British
relationship. It demonstrates the significance of images of Franco-
British cooperation and rivalry that emerged through the events of the
French defeat in June 1940. After the signing of the Franco-German
armistice, two groups began to compete over who truly represented
36 Maurice Cowling. The Impact of Labour 1920–1924: The Beginning of Modern British
Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971), 4.
1 Corbin to Ministère des Affaires Étrangères, 5 June 1940, Personal Papers of Charles
Corbin, 391PAAP/2, Ministère des Affaires Étrangères (henceforth MAE).
2 J. F. V. Keiger, ‘“Perfidious Albion?” French Perceptions of Britain as an Ally after the
First World War’, in Knowing Your Friends: Intelligence inside Alliances and Coalitions from
1914 to the Cold War, ed. Martin S. Alexander (London: Frank Cass, 1998), 40. Peter
Jackson, ‘French Security and a British “Continental Commitment” after the First
World War: A Reassessment’, The English Historical Review 126, no. 519 (2011): 345.
19
endemic to French politics in the interwar years. Between 1932 and 1940,
the average lifespan of a French Cabinet was only four months.3 The unrest
that dogged Leon Blum’s Socialist government in 1936 caused further
scepticism as to the desirability of building closer ties with France. Joseph
Paul-Boncour, then serving as France’s permanent delegate to the League
of Nations, warned British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden that the rapid
development of anti-French and anti-British sentiment in both of their
nations was jeopardising future cooperation.4 Conservative MP Viscount
Cranborne (nicknamed Bobbety) met the British ambassador George
Clerk in Paris that September, where both agreed that ‘France must be
written off as a force in international affairs for some time to come’.5
Despite these interwar tensions, 1939 saw unprecedented levels of
cooperation. The Supreme War Council was convened. It was accom-
panied by financial and economic coordination designed to make the
Franco-British alliance, concluded six months earlier, a meaningful real-
ity.6 Following the German invasion of the Low Countries on 10 May
1940, events moved quickly. In the early morning hours of 17 June,
France requested armistice terms with Germany. Spanish dictator Fran-
cisco Franco served as an intermediary. In the days following this request,
uncertainty persisted on both sides. Doubts were sustained by coalescing
around the belief – perhaps more hope than expectation – that French
officials might yet proceed to North Africa to continue the struggle from
the heart of their African empire. Fears that Germany would move swiftly
to secure the French Empire and France’s oceanic fleet only increased
official anxiety in Britain about the choices the French government,
which by then had evacuated from Paris to Bordeaux, might make.
The Franco-German and Franco-Italian armistices went into effect
on 25 June. From this moment onwards, academics and political figures
alike have been trying to explain why Allied forces were overwhelmed so
rapidly and why the French defence system failed. Initially, blame litera-
ture flourished. It attempted to morally condemn the Third Republic and
provide instructions on how to avoid another similar catastrophe.7 Marc
3 Mark Mazower, Dark Continent: Europe’s Twentieth Century (London: Penguin, 1999), 18.
4 Eden to Foreign Office, 17 April 1936, FO 954/8A/18, The National Archives (hence-
forth TNA).
5 Cranborne to Eden, 16 September 1936, FO 954/8A/35, TNA.
6 Philip Bell, ‘Entente Broken and Renewed: Britain and France, 1940–1945’, in Anglo-
French Relations in the Twentieth Century: Rivalry and Cooperation, eds. Alan Sharp and
Glyn Stone (London: Routledge, 2000), 223.
7 Most notably, Andre Geraud’s The Gravediggers of France, Andre Simon’s J’Accuse!
The Men Who Betrayed France and Louis Levy’s The Truth about France. Referenced
from Julian Jackson, The Fall of France: The Nazi Invasion of 1940 (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2003), 3.
8 Marc Bloch, Strange Defeat: A Statement of Evidence Written in 1940 (London: Oxford
University Press, 1949), 157.
9 Peter Jackson, ‘Post-War Politics and the Historiography of French Strategy and
Diplomacy before the Second World War’, History Compass 4, no. 5 (2006): 871. See,
for instance, Jean-Baptiste Duroselle, La Décadence 1932–1939 (Paris: Imprimerie
Nationale, 1979). Eugen Weber, The Hollow Years: France in the 1930s (New York: W.
W. Norton & Company, 1994).
10 Jay Winter and Antoine Prost, René Cassin and Human Rights: From the Great War to
the Universal Declaration (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 118.
11 Joel Blatt, ‘Introduction’, in The French Defeat of 1940: Reassessments, ed. Joel Blatt
(Providence, RI: Berghahn Books, 1998), 2.
12 See, for instance, Robert Aron, The Century of Total War, trans. E. W. Dickes and
O. S. Griffiths (London: Praeger, 1954), 46. Robert Doughty, The Breaking Point:
Sedan and the Fall of France, 1940 (Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1990). Ernest May,
Strange Victory: Hitler’s Conquest of France (New York: Hill and Wang, 2000), 10.
William Keylor, ‘France and the Illusion of American Support: 1919–1940’, in The
French Defeat of 1940: Reassessments, ed. Joel Blatt (Providence, RI: Berghahn Books,
1998), 204–244. Martin Alexander, ‘“Fighting to the Last Frenchman?” Reflections
of the BEF Deployment to France and the Strains in the Franco-British Alliance,
1939–1940’, in The French Defeat of 1940: Reassessments, ed. Joel Blatt (Providence,
RI: Berghahn Books, 1998), 296–326. Jackson, The Fall of France. Peter Jackson,
France and the Nazi Menace: Intelligence and Policy Making 1933–1939 (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2000).
13 Alan Allport, Britain at Bay: The Epic Story of the Second World War: 1938–1941
(London: Profile Books, 2020), 254.
the cause of the defeat on societal malaise were subject to revision – but,
crucially, not to outright rejection – in the 1970s. That Philip Nord’s
2015 book France 1940 continues to challenge long-standing perceptions
of national decadence is proof of the extent to which the original expla-
nation has clung on.14
Contemporary research has broadened explanations of defeat by
ascribing it to a more complex variety of political, economic and military
factors. Scholars have assessed the defeat from a wider chronology that
includes interwar French and British politics and policies of appease-
ment and the manner in which both nations envisaged a future conflict.15
J.-L. Crémieux-Brilhac’s two-volume study Les Français de l’an 40 (The
French in 1940), published in 1990, remains one of the most ambitious
and comprehensive examples of this wider and more nuanced interpre-
tation. Olivier Wieviorka, Robert Frank and Stanley Hoffmann have
encouraged scholars to not only revisit the causes of the French defeat
but also consider how it is remembered on both sides of the Channel.16
Franco-British rather than exclusively French narratives of 1940 are
essential to understanding the defeat itself, but also how it impacted the
Franco-British alliance in the five years that followed. Integrating empire
into this story captures a still wider set of factors (imperial rivalry, sov-
ereignty and anti-imperial nationalism) that influenced the conflict, and
the narratives that developed around the conflict, in fundamental ways.
This chapter tracks the development of Franco-British rhetoric leading
up to and following the request for and acceptance of a Franco-German
armistice. It argues that the collapse of French military resistance in June
1940 forced each side to redefine its position within the altered strategic
context of France’s surrender. The Franco-German armistice had hugely
different consequences for France and Britain. Each side interpreted and
14 Philip Nord, France 1940: Defending the Republic (New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press, 2015). See the introduction for an especially good summary of the present
historiography explaining the French defeat in 1940.
15 See, for instance, Stanley Hoffman, Decline or Renewal? France since the 1930s (New
York: The Viking Press, 1974). Julian Jackson, France: The Dark Years, 1940–1944
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), Chapter 5. Martin Thomas, Britain, France
and Appeasement: Anglo-French Relations in the Popular Front Era (London: Berg,
1997). Talbot Imlay, Facing the Second World War: Strategy, Politics and Economics in
Britain and France 1938–1940 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 5.
16 Stanley Hoffmann, ‘The Trauma of 1940: A Disaster and Its Traces’, in The French
Defeat of 1940: Reassessments, ed. Joel Blatt (Providence, RI: Berghahn Books,
1998), 354–371. Olivier Wierviorka, La Mémoire Désunie: Le Souvenir Politique des
Années Sombres, de la Libération à nos Jours (Paris: Le Seuil, 2010). Robert Frank,
‘The Second World War through French and British Eyes’, in Britain and France in
Two World Wars: Truth, Myth and Memory, eds. Robert Tombs and Emile Chabal
(London: Bloomsbury, 2013), 179–191.
explained the French defeat in very different terms. Each side offered a
very different vision of France’s future. June 1940 would, in retrospect,
become the point at which Britain’s wartime experience parted ways with
Marshal Pétain’s metropolitan French government. However, in the
midst of the crisis, the immediate situation was much less clear. The col-
lapse of France was less of a surprise than a new, and initially uncertain,
phase of the conflict, in which alliances had to be realigned and redefined.
Decision-makers in Britain and metropolitan France attempted to
make sense of the defeat by laying blame upon a specific group of men,
a national illness or the traitorous actions of the Belgian King, Leopold.
Pétain promised French renewal in the wake of defeat while British rheto-
ric guaranteed victory against Nazi Germany and the restoration of the
French state. General Charles de Gaulle’s Free French movement chal-
lenged the idea of a French capitulation, proposing continued French
resistance and a continuation of the Franco-British alliance. British and
Free French challenges to the legitimacy of Pétain’s government were
tied to strategic concerns such as the fate of the French fleet and the loy-
alty of the French Empire. They also reflected attempts to establish the
credibility of their actions on a wider scale: in the eyes of their respective
empires, the United States and their own publics. The imagery and argu-
ments that were established during this period of extreme uncertainty
formed the framework around which policy-makers and resistance move-
ments would take sides and justify their actions over the next five years.
From the lead up to the Dunkirk evacuations in late May until the
conclusion of the Franco-German armistice a month later, each side
gradually and tentatively redefined the conflict to fit with its new status
either as a belligerent or a (proposed) neutral actor. During this period,
rhetoric was mobilised to justify or criticise the Franco-German armi-
stice and the legitimacy of Pétain’s metropolitan government. In both
France and Britain, policy-makers prepared to defend their respective
visions for the future, whether inside or outside of the conflict. As the
Axis forces swept through France in 1940, British and French politi-
cal actors recognised the need to justify important decisions through
official announcements and carefully crafted speeches. This rhetoric
mattered because policy-makers believed in its ability to shape public
sentiment locally and globally. Rhetoric was a way to frame and defend
strategic actions and to indicate how those choices would determine the
future of each nation. The broader themes of morality, decay, rebirth
and justice that suffused early interpretations of the French defeat, the
ongoing British struggle and the Franco-German armistice reflected
how policy-makers attempted to impose a sense of certainty in a highly
uncertain context.
Expectations of Victory
Well before the conflict developed into the global struggle it became,
British and French policy-makers were planning how to sustain morale
and active participation in the war effort at home. As early as April 1939,
a British Cabinet report identified the need to personalise propaganda
messages, recognising differences in regional attitudes and viewpoints.
In regard to the actual persuasive power of such a campaign, the report
speculated: ‘The English people, being, in the broadest sense, idealistic
and illogical in temperament, are probably at least averagely susceptible
to propaganda (more so than the French)’.17 In France, the creation
of the Service Général d’Information similarly served to conduct wartime
operations ‘in the moral and psychological domain …’.18 More than a
year later, in late May 1940, British officials continued to recognise the
importance of maintaining public confidence through official statements
and communications. Messages on both sides of the Channel promised
that no matter how difficult the struggle, final victory was only a matter
of time. This notion of inevitable victory would remain at the heart of
British rhetoric throughout the conflict.
British policy in late May was balanced between two contradictory
approaches. First, it recognised the possibility of French defeat. This led to
efforts to preserve resources for home defence. Second, defensive prepa-
rations were carried out alongside sustained efforts to bolster French
and British morale in order to continue the war. Public announcements
dismissed speculations about strains in the Franco-British alliance. They
continued to exaggerate RAF successes in engaging with the enemy and
providing air support for the evacuations at Dunkirk. By late May, how-
ever, images of Allied military strength were foundering under the weight
of the German advance. When Churchill visited Paris on 16 May, he
found French Premier Paul Reynaud in a state of panic, claiming that
the war was lost. British Foreign Office intelligence concluded that the
German breakthrough at Sedan had resulted in ‘a severe shock … to the
whole of French public opinion’.19
The gravity of the military situation contributed to the British deci-
sion to prepare for the possibility of a French withdrawal. It also forced
decision-makers to consider the likelihood that Britain and its empire
could continue the war without the support of French forces. The now
own memoirs that Reynaud had argued for equal evacuation of French
and British troops in order to avoid compromising public perceptions of
the future of the alliance.31
French and British officials followed a policy of withholding informa-
tion from the public in order to avoid massive swings either towards over
optimism or deep pessimism. Official pronouncements avoided specula-
tions concerning the likely success or failure of the evacuations. Politi-
cal rhetoric focussed instead on the spectre of ultimate victory in the
future. Official statements and broadcasts were duplicated in the press
on both sides as a way to demonstrate continued resolve in the conflict
and the alliance.32 These intense efforts were aimed at creating a frame-
work in which the public could not conceive the possibility of defeat.
Cooper broadcast on 28 May, noting the seriousness of the situation,
but offering the belief that ‘there should be no loss of complete confi-
dence in our ability to achieve ultimate victory’.33 Reynaud broadcast
on the same day. He shifted blame away from French and British forces
by pointing out that the Belgian withdrawal had opened the Dunkirk
route to German divisions.34 Drawing out the imagery employed by both
sides during the final days of May highlights the role that rhetoric played
in strengthening the idea of the Franco-British alliance and shoring up
expectations of an eventual Allied victory. Maintaining images of Allied
strength impacted policy-making in concrete ways. On this basis, British
decision-makers argued against Reynaud’s request to petition the United
States directly for assistance. The Foreign Office criticised the idea as
a show of weakness and panic. It would be more expedient, it argued,
to make a public statement regarding British commitment to the fight
ahead.35 War Cabinet discussions concluded that such an appeal would
only ‘confirm American fears as to our weakness and would not produce
the desired effect’.36
Despite the confident tone of French and British rhetoric, the partner-
ship was being strained by the uncertainty of the military situation on the
ground. Behind closed doors, both French and British decision-makers
41 ‘Public Opinion on the Present Crisis’, 27 May 1940 (includes 26), INF 1/264, TNA.
42 Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War, vol. 2, Their Finest Hour (London:
Cassell & Co. Ltd, 1949), 88.
43 ‘Public Opinion on the Present Crisis’, 31 May 1940, INF 1/264, TNA.
44 Our Own Correspondent, ‘Anglo-French Brotherhood’s Supreme Example: Profound
Effect of Dunkirk Battle’, The Guardian, 1 June 1940, 9.
45 J. B. Priestley, ‘Broadcast from June 5 1940’, taken from Sonya O. Rose, Which
People’s War? National Identity and Citizenship in Britain 1939–1945 (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2003), 3.
46 Leo Amery, Transcribed Diary, 4 June 1940, AMEL 7/34, CCAC.
47 Sir John Colville, Private Diaries, 1 June 1940, CLVL 1/2, CCAC.
48 ‘Towards the End in Flanders: Bulk of BEF Withdrawn, German Air Raids in the
South of France, Another 113 Planes Fall to RAF’, The Guardian, 3 June 1940, 5. ‘4
to 1 Gains by RAF: Dunkirk Air Battles 169 Nazi Planes in 3 Days’, The Guardian, 3
June 1940, 5.
49 ‘Public Opinion on the Present Crisis’, 3 June 1940, INF 1/264, TNA.
50 Martin S. Alexander, ‘Dunkirk in Military Operations, Myths and Memories’, in
Britain and France in Two World Wars: Truth, Myth and Memory, eds. Robert Tombs
and Emile Chabal (London: Bloomsbury, 2013), 100.
51 ‘Les opérations militaires: La belle résistance de Dunkerque’, Le Temps, 3 June 1940, 1.
case, these depictions also drew liberally from the past, holding up his-
toric British victories as guarantees of future ones. This kind of language
was evident in First Lord of the Admiralty, A. V. Alexander’s empire
broadcast, which portrayed the Germans as sadistic murderers.
We have proved to the world what we ourselves have always known – that the
free men of the democracies are man for man superior, not merely to the masses
of German infantry herded into the fight, but also to the specially trained
fanatics of the German shock troops whose minds have been systematically
perverted in order to make them ruthless killers of innocent men, women and
children.52
Reports in the French and British press also celebrated Dunkirk. Sto-
ries of heroism and Allied unity were used as proof of future military suc-
cesses. One French article described with emotion the scene as heroes
disembarked in England.53 Broadcasts and news stories aligned Ameri-
can opinion with French and British efforts, arguing that the resolve of
the BEF was responsible for the success of the evacuations. The BEF’s
‘refusal to accept defeat’ was ‘the guarantee of final victory’.54 Repro-
ducing American praise for the evacuations was a way to highlight their
success. They also legitimised wider Allied aims by linking them to the
opinion of a powerful ‘neutral’ state.55
The high praise evident in the mass media and recorded in estimates
of public opinion once again left some unease in political circles. It was
difficult to strike a balance between public optimism and complacence.
And Franco-British fighting capabilities were now severely restricted
as a result of the withdrawals. Within the French government, internal
critique of British actions was common. Paul Morand, director of the
French Mission for Economic Warfare in London, observed that in the
Quai d’Orsay, opinion was that British forces had left France for good.
Morand himself argued that things would work themselves out between
the allies, but noted that something felt different: ‘… j’ai senti que la
BEF passait au second plan et le Home Front aux premier’.56 The dis-
putes were kept out of public view so as not to cast doubt on the strength
was anxious to see quantifiable progress in the war effort. Meanwhile, the
French government confronted internal divisions as it tried desperately to
contend with the chaos of military invasion and social upheaval.
79 Pétain’s addresses between 1940 and 1942 can be found in this volume: Philippe
Pétain, Les Paroles et Les Écrits du Maréchal Pétain, 16 Juin 1940-1 Janvier 1942
(Editions de la Légion, 1942).
80 War Cabinet 170 (40) Conclusions, 17 June 1940, CAB 65/7/65, TNA.
81 ‘Le Maréchal Pétain président du Conseil parle à la France’, L’Echo d’Alger, 18 June
1940, 1. ‘Poignante déclaration de M. Baudouin’, L’Echo d’Alger, 18 June 1940, 1.
82 Ibid.
89 Julian Jackson, A Certain Idea of France: The Life of Charles de Gaulle (London:
Penguin, 2018), 126–127.
90 Crémieux-Brilhac, La France Libre, 51.
91 Morand, Journal de Guerre, 248.
92 Jackson, A Certain Idea of France, 133, 135. Charlotte Faucher has also highlighted
the existence of anti-Gaullist sentiment in London. See Charlotte Faucher, ‘From
Gaullist to Anti-Gaullism: Denis Saurat and the French Cultural Institute in Wartime
London’, Journal of Contemporary History 54, no. 1 (2019): 60–81.
93 Crémieux-Brilhac, La France Libre, 47.
94 ‘Après l’allocution radiodiffusée du général de Gaulle’, Le Temps, 19–21 June 1940, 3.
95 Members included: Vansittart, Spears, Strang, Morton and Speight.
96 ‘Vansittart Committee’, 21 June 1940, GB165-0269 Box 1 File 3, Middle East Centre
Archive [henceforth MECA].
that had been rampant in the interwar years, cast a long shadow on the
idea of further resistance, even if the French Cabinet remained divided
over the issue. Nevertheless, British policy was conceptualised under the
assumption that continued resistance was still possible.
We know that uncertainty over how France would respond to the armi-
stice terms impacted British policy and led to the suppression of further
broadcasts by de Gaulle. The British press also speculated over the possi-
bility that Pétain’s ministry would reject the armistice terms and continue
to fight. These conjectures divided French sentiment into two camps:
defeatists and resistors. These categories would be replicated in British
and Free French rhetoric after the Franco-German armistice was con-
cluded. For the time being, however, the British press focussed upon Brit-
ain’s resolve to continue the struggle and refrained from criticising the
French. The announcement that France was enquiring about armistice
terms influenced British predictions about how the conflict would develop
in the future. But these predictions occupied a spectrum of possible out-
comes, of which a French withdrawal from the fighting was only one.
Recall that when Pétain’s request for armistice terms became pub-
lic, there was little surprise expressed either in official rhetoric or pub-
lic sentiment. The armistice request was not viewed as decisive proof
that France would exit the struggle. Intelligence reports described reac-
tions amongst the British public as displaying ‘confusion and shock, but
hardly surprise’.109 First Sea Lord Dudley Pound assumed that the armi-
stice terms would be invalidated by a request to surrender the French
fleet and that this would allow the French to terminate the conference
and resume fighting.110 By 20 June, the British press was asserting that
opposition to surrender was growing amongst the French population.
This claim was increasingly at odds with Pétain’s own explanations of
the reasons for defeat. An article in The Guardian accused the Pétain
government of suppressing the publication of favourable news, such as
increases in war material being supplied by the United States.111 As late
as 21 June Foreign Minister Lord Halifax met with French Ambassador
Charles Corbin, where he was told that public opinion in France was
gaining strength to continue the fight.112
In sharp contrast to Corbin’s optimism, Pétain’s 20 June broadcast
explained the reason for the defeat as ‘too few children, too few arms, too
109 ‘Public Opinion on the Present Crisis’, 17 June 1940, INF 1/264, TNA.
110 Pound to Churchill, 18 June 1940, FO 371/24311, TNA.
111 ‘Our London Correspondence: France’, The Guardian, 20 June 1940, 4. R. Campbell
to Foreign Office, 21 June 1940, FO 371/24311, TNA.
112 War Cabinet 174 (40) Conclusions, 21 June 1940, CAB 65/7/69, TNA.
few allies’.113 His words provided little scope to continue the struggle. He
argued that material shortages had led to France’s military collapse while
simultaneously tracing the root of these shortcomings to widespread
interwar decadence. Victory in 1918, Pétain argued, created a nation in
which ‘the spirit of pleasure has prevailed over the spirit of sacrifice’.114
The British press was quick to criticise Pétain’s perceived defeatism. The
Times published a critique of his address, arguing that Pétain’s speech
was ‘calculated to take the heart out of the French people’ and to justify
the request for an armistice.115 British publications persisted in claim-
ing that France might still reject the armistice terms. However, it was
possible to detect a growing tendency to understand the struggle as an
exclusively British one. More and more articles turned their attention to
the defence of fortress Britain rather than the possibility of continued
French aid. Corbin reported on 21 June that the British press contained
little news about France and focussed instead on the British effort and
the evolution of American opinion.116
Although there was little outright criticism of the French between 17
and 21 June, and indeed a great deal of pity for their current plight,
there was a noticeable shift in how the war was conceptualised.117 It
was increasingly interpreted as a British war. A South London shop-
keeper wrote that the public displayed a ‘quiet steady confidence: we
fight alone’.118 Resolve attached to these sentiments indicated a growing
disinterest for the French dilemma. Intelligence reports went as far as
warning, ‘the latency of anti-French feeling must never be forgotten. A
few days ago sympathy swamped it but it found indirect expression in
a common phrase “At last we have no Allies, now we fight alone”’.119
These images of Britain, isolated and alone, however, existed alongside
others that sought to give continuity to the Franco-British alliance. This
would be achieved by casting Britain as France’s saviour from Nazi dom-
ination and de Gaulle’s Free French movement as the gatekeeper of the
true spirit and sovereignty of France and Franco-British cooperation.
On 21 June, twenty-seven French parliamentarians boarded the ship
Massilia. They were bound for French North Africa, where they hoped
to continue the struggle from abroad. However, when they arrived in
113 ‘Too Few Children, Too Few Arms, Too Few Allies’, The Guardian, 21 June 1940, 7.
114 Ibid.
115 ‘French Envoys Hear Hitler’s Terms’, The Times, 21 June 1940, 6.
116 Corbin to Bordeaux, 21 June 1940, 9GMII/24, MAE.
117 ‘Relation sommaire de la situation à Londres du 17 Juin au 20 Juillet’, 10GMII/291,
MAE.
118 Mass Observation Diary 5039.3, 17 June 1940, MOA.
119 ‘Public Opinion on the Present Crisis’, 19 June 1940, INF 1/264, TNA.
120 Chantal Metzger, Le Maghreb dans la Guerre 1939–1945 (Malakoff: Armand Colin,
2018), 87. For more on the responses of nationalist leaders and the broader popula-
tion to the armistice in French North Africa, see Ibid, 83–93.
121 Christine Levisse-Touzé, ‘L’Afrique du Nord pendant la Seconde Guerre Mondiale’,
Relations Internationales no. 77 (Spring 1994): 10. On 22 June, Noguès reported that he
had sufficient munitions to carry out operations for two months. He urged Weygand
to send as many troops and materials as possible. Truchet, ‘L’Armistice’, 39.
122 Jackson, The Dark Years, 128.
The armistice terms met none of Pétain’s criteria for refusal. Rather,
they had been carefully crafted by the Germans to avoid giving France
cause to resume the conflict. British portrayals of the agreement as dis-
honourable were important, however, particularly from a symbolic point
of view. They challenged the moral basis upon which Pétain’s gov-
ernment had concluded the armistice. Questioning the legitimacy of
the armistice terms was also a way to undermine Pétain’s government
more broadly. General de Gaulle was rapidly becoming central to this
approach, fashioned as the authentic voice of France. De Gaulle’s 18
June address had claimed that French sovereignty was no longer synony-
mous with the metropole. Speaking from London, he said ‘I … am con-
scious of speaking in the home of France’.126 French Jurist René Cassin,
who joined de Gaulle in London, recalled this exchange with the General
at their first meeting on 29 June. To Cassin’s remark that French fighters
must be thought of as the French army and not a foreign legion in the
British army, de Galle responded, ‘We are France’.127 De Gaulle’s radio
addresses on 22 and 23 June called on Frenchmen to join him in disown-
ing the Franco-German armistice. They precipitated a concerned tele-
gram from French Charge d’Affaires Roger Cambon. Writing to Pétain’s
government, by now housed in Bordeaux, Cambon expressed his con-
cern that France and Britain were at risk of becoming mired in a war
of words.128 Indeed, an important goal of French rhetoric was to chal-
lenge British criticisms and assert the continued sovereignty of the French
nation and empire against British and Gaullist arguments to the contrary.
French analyses of the British political and press response to the sign-
ing of the armistice were quick to note that British rhetoric was mov-
ing in a new direction. Churchill’s statement had directly challenged the
legitimacy of the agreement and the current government. It argued that
acceptance of the terms could not have been made by a government that
‘possessed freedom, independence and constitutional authority’.129 The
War Cabinet likewise condemned the armistice terms as dishonourable,
arguing that the agreement was made under duress and left France inca-
pable of acting as a free and sovereign nation.130 Statements broadcast
in French and English via the BBC on 23 June argued that Pétain’s gov-
ernment had not only broken the 28 March agreement not to conclude
a separate armistice, it had also signed away its remaining agency to
126 Charles de Gaulle, Discours et Messages Pendant le Guerre Juin 1940-Janvier 1946
(Paris: Plon, 1970), 18 June 1940.
127 Jay Winter and Antoine Prost, René Cassin and Human Rights: From the Great War to
the Universal Declaration (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 111.
128 Cambon to Bordeaux, 29 June 1940, 9GMII/295, MAE.
129 ‘France Is Not Dead’, The Times, 24 June 1940, 6.
130 War Cabinet 176 (40) Conclusions, 22 June 1940, CAB 65/7/71, TNA.
140 David Low, ‘Low on the Surrender of France’, The Manchester Guardian, 26 June
1940, 6.
141 Former Paris Correspondent, ‘The Riddle of the French Capitulation: Pétain and
the Men Behind Him’, The Guardian, 25 June 1940, 4. ‘Britain and France’, The
Guardian, 26 June 1940, 4.
142 Hannah Diamond, Fleeing Hitler, France 1940 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).
Jackson, The Dark Years. Jackson, The Fall of France. Robert O. Paxton, Vichy France:
Old Guard and New Order 1940–1944 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1972).
143 Karine Varley, ‘Vichy and the Complexities of Collaborating with Fascist Italy:
French Policy and Perceptions between June 1940 and March 1942’, Modern &
Contemporary France 21, no. 3 (2013): 319.
144 ‘De Gaulle to Pétain: Who Is Responsible?’ The Guardian, 27 June 1940, 7.
145 ‘Italian Armistice Terms to France, Suggested Line for Publicity in Press and
Wireless’, 26 June 1940, FO 371/24348, TNA.
146 French Broadcast from Bordeaux, 23 June 1940, PREM 3/174/4, TNA. Pétain,
Paroles, 13. ‘Le Maréchal Pétain Répond à M. Winston Churchill’, Le Temps, 25 June
1940, 1. Francisque Laurent, ‘Stupeur Attristée’, L’Echo d’Alger, 25 June 1940, 1.
147 War Cabinet 179 (40) Conclusions, 24 June 1940, CAB 65/7/74, TNA.
148 ‘L’Attitude Anglaise’, L’Echo d’Alger, 26 June 1940, 1.
149 War Cabinet 181 (40) Conclusions, 25 June 1940, CAB 65/7/76, TNA.
150 Foreign Office note on countering French propaganda in the United States, 28 June
1940, FO 371/24311, TNA.
151 Desmond Dinan, The Politics of Persuasion: British Policy and French African Neutrality,
1940–1942 (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1988), 24.
152 Cambon to Bordeaux, 25 June 1940, 10GMII/292, MAE.
153 British Statement in French, 23 June 1940, PREM 3/174/3, TNA.
154 Crémieux-Brilhac, La France Libre, 59.
155 ‘Vansittart Committee’, 28 June 1940, GB165-0269 Box 1 File 3, MECA. Jackson,
A Certain Idea of France, 136–137.
156 ‘Memorandum of Agreement’, June 1940, FO 371/24340, TNA.
157 Charles de Gaulle, The Complete War Memoirs of Charles de Gaulle, vol. 1, The Call to
Honour, trans. Jonathan Griffin (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1955), 88.
158 ‘Submission to Slavery: Plea to Frenchmen, General de Gaulle’s Broadcast’, The
Guardian, 24 June 1940, 6.
into which she has been cast by the might and fury of the enemy’.159
The construction of the Franco-British relationship as one that remained
valid, so long as the Pétain government was excluded, was an important
assumption of British and Gaullist rhetoric in the following years, and
indeed, in the post-war years as well. It was premised on the notion that
no matter who claimed to lead the French nation, the legitimate France
remained tied to the aims and goals of Britain. Pétain’s address, also
made on 25 June, betrayed just how differently each side conceptual-
ised the defeat. While Churchill’s speech focussed upon the inevitability
of victory, Pétain’s outlined rational statistics, which made defeat inevi-
table. In sharp contrast to Churchill’s moral tones, Pétain argued ‘that
victory is dependent upon men, material and how they are used’.160
The French defeat led to a crisis of legitimation over who and what rep-
resented the ‘true’ French nation. The notion of a legitimate France was
being constructed and contested from the moment of the defeat. These
competing images can help to move the focus away from our knowledge
of how the war would end. Interpretations of wartime sentiment too
often make conclusions based upon the understanding that Allied vic-
tory was forthcoming. Peter Mangold wrote, ‘Britain’s final advantage
over its ally was moral. Unlike France, the crisis of June 1940, pulled the
British together, producing a climate of defiance’.161 The moral rhetoric
that surrounded the British struggle should not be used to explain why
Britain won. The myths and memories that grew stronger in the after-
math of the war ‘were as much a consequence as a cause of victory’.162
Churchill’s memoirs abound with arguments that ‘German thorough-
ness’ was no match for ‘British pluck’, examples of how retrospective
and historically grounded assumptions can carry on masquerading as
logical argument.163
In June 1940, the withdrawal of French forces shifted the military land-
scape in fundamental ways. British and French policy-makers responded
to these changes, not least of all by redefining each nation’s role inside
or outside of the struggle. And they fashioned their wartime narratives
to fit these positions. Roger Cambon observed this process from the
French embassy in London. He linked ongoing confidence in Britain
159 Hansard HC Deb vol. 362 col. 302 (25 June 1940) http://hansard.millbanksystems
.com/commons/1940/jun/25/war-situation#column_302. Notably at this point in
his address, an MP interrupted to shout ‘and by the politicians’.
160 Pétain, Paroles, 16.
161 Peter Mangold, Britain and the Defeated French: From Occupation to Liberation, 1940–
1944 (London: I. B. Tauris, 2012), 7.
162 Jackson, The Dark Years, 113.
163 Churchill, Finest Hour, 322.
Conclusion
Between the Dunkirk evacuations in late May and the conclusion of the
Franco-German armistice a month later, the Franco-British alliance
transformed in fundamental ways. Each side mobilised to justify its new
position, either inside or outside of the conflict. This chapter established
a framework for understanding how the Franco-British alliance would
evolve over the next five years. The French decision to request an armi-
stice on 17 June set in motion first a tentative and then an increasingly
rapid shift in rhetoric on both sides of the Channel. The messages that
French and British policy-makers deployed through public statements,
newspapers and radio broadcasts told a story about why each nation’s
path was the most correct. These arguments, which would become cen-
tral to Vichy, British and Free French rhetoric throughout the course of
the war, were being formulated, tested and refined in 1940.
Even before Pétain’s government requested armistice terms, Franco-
British cooperation was complex and fraught with uncertainty. At the
outbreak of war, it appeared as though both sides were mobilising
resources for close cooperation. However, Germany’s swift progress
unleashed chaos in the Low Countries and throughout France. Between
15 and 20 June, an estimated 6–8 million refugees flooded French roads
and panicked officials deserted their posts.171 By late May, the possibility
of a French collapse was being weighed up in London behind the closed
doors of the War Cabinet. And it was being considered by the French
Cabinet as it fled from Paris on 10 June to the Château de Cangé in
the Loire and finally, on 14 June, to Bordeaux. It was also the subject
of public debate and rumour in Britain and France. Even so, frays in
the relationship were deliberately kept out of the press in order to avoid
damaging the public’s perception of the partnership, which would cast
doubt on promises of an Allied victory. Nevertheless, although British
power at the close of war. The following chapters will track the evolu-
tion of these debates from the bombardment of the French fleet to the
armed clashes that accompanied Syrian demands for independence in
1945. In attempting to explain, condemn or justify its policies, each side
would rely upon the framework that it had built in the days after the
armistice, mobilising competing ideas of sovereignty, legitimacy and the
moral stance of their respective paths.
‘In the fullest harmony with the Dominions we are moving through a
period of extreme danger and of splendid hope when every virtue of our
race will be tested and all that we have and are will be freely staked’.1
Churchill’s words were published across the domestic press on 5 July
1940. They resounded in the aftermath of the British bombardment of
the French fleet at the Algerian port of Mers el-Kébir. Their aim was to
justify Operation Catapult as a ‘necessary tragedy’ carried out against
an erstwhile ally. Official British explanations and local press analyses
avoided discussing the starkly violent nature of the operations against the
fleet. They preferred to press home the symbolic aspects of the opera-
tions. Namely, that Operation Catapult was proof of both the military
and moral superiority of the British war effort. In July 1940, British pol-
icy towards the French fleet allowed policy-makers to take control of the
wartime narrative. British rhetoric would justify the clashes as an exam-
ple of the kind of decisive action that was necessary to ensure the defeat
of the Axis powers and the liberation of France. But these claims were
not uncontested. For Pétain’s Vichy government, the bombardments at
Mers el-Kébir would become the cornerstone of images featuring Britain
as a historic and contemporary threat to French sovereignty.
The clashes that took place on 3 July 1940 between British and French
forces at Mers el-Kébir have been subject to various interpretations on
both sides of the Channel. On the British side, early analyses tended
to vindicate the action. They echoed Churchill’s ‘unfortunate necessity’
rationale – the British simply could not risk the possibility of the French
fleet falling into German or Italian hands. From the French perspec-
tive, the operations have more often been viewed as a betrayal of the
Franco-British alliance and evidence of underlying British self-interest
and historic perfidy. This latter perspective formed the crux of Jacques
56
6 Warren Tute, The Deadly Stroke (London: Collins, 1973), 16. The two ports of Mers
el-Kébir and Oran were both located outside of the French Algerian town of Oran.
The former was used for military ships while the latter housed commercial ships.
7 Hervé Coutau-Bégarie and Claude Huan, Mers el-Kébir (1940) La Rupture Franco-
Britannique (Paris: Economica, 1994), 108.
8 Martin Thomas and Richard Toye, Arguing About Empire: Imperial Rhetoric in Britain
and France, 1882–1956 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 163.
Free French forces in the years that followed. Future clashes at Dakar
and in the Levant would be added to a list of British crimes against the
Vichy government, which began at Mers el-Kébir.
Allocating two chapters to Catapult is essential to fully understand the
nuances of the decision-making process. Doing so makes clear how British
policy-makers integrated their expectations of how the public would react
to the operations themselves. Planning for Operation Catapult included
anticipating and managing public responses within Britain as well as fur-
ther afield in France and the United States. Furthermore, policy-makers
emphasised from the beginning how important it was to achieve public
support for these actions and they included dynamic plans to foster this
backing. In other words, the policy-making process, the bombardments
themselves and the rhetoric that justified them were all interdependent.
British thinking about the French fleet included considerations of its mili-
tary capabilities. But it also contained a careful analysis of how a possible
neutralisation of the fleet might be justified. Herein lies the link between
the decisions that were made behind closed doors and the ways in which
those policies were subsequently justified and debated in public. Policy-
making during this period betrayed an early preoccupation with the desire
to translate decisions into convincing press releases and public statements.
This discourse mobilised heroic rhetoric that confirmed British superior-
ity and the certainty of eventual victory. For the Vichy government, the
bombardments became emblematic of Britain’s inherent perfidy. Rather
than a symbol of strength and resolve, they came to embody the mistrust
that had long plagued France and Britain’s historic relationship.
In the initial discussions surrounding the French fleet, there was a
consensus within the War Cabinet and across the Service Ministries that
something should be done to safeguard it for the Allied cause. However,
this sentiment was moderated to account for the need to justify British
actions in a manner that would preserve Britain’s moral superiority and
avoid compromising abiding pro-French sentiment amongst the Brit-
ish public. These concerns impacted how Catapult was conceptualised.
They imposed tangible constraints on the operation, especially in rela-
tion to the use of force. From the outset, British strategists viewed local
and global public support as vital, if intangible, aspects of the broader
conflict.
The War Cabinet agreed that action should be taken against the fleet.
It also acknowledged that public opinion was in favour of this approach.
Pétain’s government, by this time settled in the French spa town of
Vichy, was also keeping careful track of British opinion. From London,
Charge d’ Affaires Roger Cambon sent regular analyses of the British press
to Vichy. He concluded that confidence in Britain remained relatively
strong after events in France. The population was focused largely on the
battle ahead and the possibility of German invasion.29 Decisive action to
secure the French fleet would strengthen public confidence even further.
War Cabinet members believed that the majority of the British popu-
lation was likely to approve of operations against the fleet. But local reac-
tions were not the only source of concern. British decision-makers were
also trying to shape a wartime policy that would garner support from fur-
ther afield. In this vein, the War Cabinet agreed that hypothetical opera-
tions should not be discussed in the press. The press would be informed
that ‘discussion of such measures might have an unfavourable reaction
in French circles which we hoped to rally to our side’.30 It was even more
important to avoid actions that would drive away popular French sup-
port given that General de Gaulle was still struggling to gain adherents to
his Free French movement. Admiral Cunningham, the Commander in
Chief of the Mediterranean fleet, wrote to Pound of de Gaulle: ‘No one
has any opinion of him’.31 Quashing press speculation ahead of opera-
tions against the fleet would give London a clean slate upon which to
explain how and why operations had been carried out. By the end of the
meeting, the War Cabinet had agreed to move forward. It would pre-
pare an ultimatum, and Pound and Alexander were instructed to begin
arranging the details of an operation to neutralise the French fleet.32
In the days that followed, the Cabinet commissioned a series of inves-
tigative studies. Its goal was to understand how operations against the
French fleet were likely to affect a number of stakeholders. The reports
emphasised the role that Catapult would play, both on a strategic and
symbolic level. On 29 June, Churchill requested a memorandum analys-
ing the implications of an aggressive policy towards the French Navy.33 An
initial report, compiled by the Cabinet’s Joint Planning Sub Committee
(JPSC), reached several conclusions. The first concerned the American
34 Ibid.
35 WM (40) 187th Conclusions Minute 8, Confidential Annex, 29 June 1940, 10 a.m.,
CAB 65/13/55, TNA.
36 Conclusions, Minute 5 Confidential Annex, 3 July 1940, CAB 65/14/3, TNA.
37 ‘Implications of Action Contemplated in Respect of Certain French Ships’, 29 June
1940, CAB 84/15, TNA.
38 Chiefs of Staff, ‘Implications of French Hostility, Draft Report’, 4 July 1940, CAB
80/14, TNA.
49 Michael Bess, Choices under Fire: Moral Dimensions of World War II (New York:
Vintage Books, 2006), 4.
50 Admiralty to Force H and C-in-C Mediterranean, 30 June 1940, ADM 1/10321,
TNA.
effort. And they did not know how the British public would respond to
violent action taken against an ally, even one that was no longer an active
combatant. They recognised that any operation against the fleet would
have to be justified to the British public as well as opinion in France and
the United States. By comparing the discussions that took place in the
War Cabinet and the Admiralty to the statements that were crafted for
the press and public, it will become evident that preparations to justify
Operation Catapult were an essential part of the policy-making process.
Policy-makers thought about how different groups of the public would
respond to an operation. And these considerations influenced how oper-
ations were conceptualised, implemented and justified. The operations
at Mers el-Kébir, and the rhetoric that followed them, were used to dem-
onstrate British power and strength and to press home Britain’s wartime
narrative, which culminated in an Allied victory.
In the days leading up to 3 July, Admiralty officials began finalising
the content of public statements for Catapult. On 2 July, Lord Alexan-
der gave Churchill the rough draft of a press release, which would be
distributed by the Ministry of Information (MOI) after the operations
had commenced. The draft contained two sections. The first suggested a
timeline for publication and the second proposed the text of the release.
The timing of the press release was crucial and would depend upon how
smoothly the operations had proceeded or were proceeding. Alexander
considered two likely scenarios. In the first, the text would be released
after the operation was completed. ‘The publication of the news of our
action in regard to the French Fleet must be carefully timed. If things
go well it would be desirable to wait until the operation whatever form
it takes is complete, and then to announce it with a justification of our
actions’.56 In this scenario, Gensoul would accept British terms, and
there would be no bloodshed. Catapult would be celebrated as a well-
considered and smoothly run operation.
In the second scenario, French resistance to British demands and/or
clashes between the French and British squadrons called for a slightly
different approach. If the operation did not go as planned, the MOI
would release a statement addressing the actions as they unfolded. ‘…
trouble may ensue and it will then be necessary to explain our attitude
and the reasons for the action which we are taking’.57 Having two alter-
natives for timing the release of the official explanation was important.
Decision-makers wanted to control as much as possible the circulation
of potentially negative or divisive news. Remember that the War Cabinet
58 Ibid.
59 Cambon à Vichy, 25 June 1940, 10GMII/292, MAE.
the Vichy government. The press release first criticised the French deci-
sion to request an armistice. It used this critique as a foundation to argue
that Britain’s response to the fleet was unavoidable. This strategy aimed
to convince the reader that British action was not only necessary but also
that it was morally and ethically sound. The core of the argument was
framed in the opening sentence: ‘The French Government felt that they
were unable to continue the struggle on land against Germany and in
spite of agreements solemnly entered into with His Majesty’s Govern-
ment, sought an armistice of the German Government’.60 In the second
half of the statement, Alexander contended that seeking the armi-
stice was a violation of the Franco-British agreement not to conclude
a separate peace. This claim established Britain’s legal right to engage
in actions that would fix the damage caused by breaking this contract.
Following these assertions, the draft made two claims. First, the fate of
the French fleet would influence Britain’s ability to win the war. Sec-
ond, despite honourable British actions to protect the fleet prior to the
armistice request, the French had not acquiesced. This refusal left the
British no choice but to take further action. Doing so was the only way
to secure itself and its citizens from German and Italian aggression.61
German promises not to commandeer the fleet for itself, the press release
emphasised, could not be trusted.
Even the grammatical construction of the press release emphasised
the wilful actions of Pétain’s government in the days leading up to Mers
el-Kébir. ‘The French Government’ as an active subject was the focus in
the first half of the narration. In sum:
The French Government felt that they were unable to continue the struggle
on land …, the French Government approached the German Government
with a request for an armistice …, The French Government … assured His
Majesty’s Government that they would never sign ‘dishonourable terms of an
armistice with the enemy’ …, … the French Government have put themselves
in a position in which it may be impossible for them to give effect to those
assurances …62
The British Government, on the other hand, was referred to only in
the passive tense. As a result, it appeared that the British government
was being acted upon, rather than controlling actions around it. Rather
than saying ‘Churchill’s government recognised the importance of the
French fleet to the on-going war effort’, the publication observed that
the value of the fleet ‘was pointed out to them …’63 Passive voice made
the subject implicit by emphasising the direct object. This made Cata-
pult appear to be an automatic or inevitable response to French action.
In the second half of the draft statement, the British government began
to take a more active role. However, the message still relied substantially
upon broad arguments of inevitability. The British were portrayed as
having little choice in their subsequent actions: ‘In these circumstances
His Majesty’s Government have felt constrained to take action to ensure
that important units of the French Fleet shall not come under enemy
control for possible use against the British Empire’.64 This press release
placed full responsibility for the chain of events leading to 3 July on the
French government. British agency was all but eliminated. The reader
was left with the perception that there was simply no other course of
action that the British could have taken. This draft was the response to
a best-case scenario, in which the French admiralty chose not to resist
British demands. Unfortunately, Catapult did not go as smoothly as
policy-makers hoped.
Conclusion
British policy towards the French fleet rested upon a broad two-part
consensus. First, the strategic importance of the fleet meant that it had
to be protected against German or Italian seizure. Second, the process
of neutralising the fleet would be adapted according to the actual cir-
cumstances at each port and the ships that were docked there. From
early on, military considerations played a crucial role. Any planned
actions had to account for material limitations faced by British naval
forces. They also had to try to anticipate how the French would respond
to British actions, especially hostile ones. Previous studies have not con-
sidered the nuances of British policy towards the French fleet as well as
the limitations it faced. This chapter has laid out these differences as
crucial to understanding how and why operations would develop dif-
ferently at each port. It has also laid the groundwork for understand-
ing how rhetoric would, in the aftermath of the bombardments, distort
policy in favour of presenting a coherent image of British strength and
resolve. The significance of the rhetoric that surrounded Mers el-Kébir,
for both British and French policy-makers, will become more apparent
in the following chapter.
63 Ibid.
64 Ibid.
65 Jon Cowans, ‘Visions of the Postwar: The Politics of Memory and Expectation in
1940s France’, History and Memory 10, no. 2 (1998): 70.
on a moral level. It lay the blame at the door of the French govern-
ment without incriminating the broader French public. This approach
attempted to keep the idea of Franco-British partnership alive by mak-
ing one of the Britain’s wartime aims the liberation of France. As events
around the fleet unfolded, policy-makers would be forced to modify their
press releases to not only reflect but also more importantly justify the
starker reality of the outcome. How they would do this would reveal the
ever-present concern for public sentiment at home, within the French
metropole and in the United States. At the same time, Britain’s wartime
narrative would find itself pitted against that of the metropolitan French
government.
1 War Cabinet 192 (40) Conclusions, 3 July 1940, CAB/65/8/4, The National Archives
(henceforth TNA).
2 Ibid.
3 Alan Allport, Britain at Bay: The Epic Story of the Second World War: 1938–1941
(London: Profile Books, 2020), 194.
76
policy towards the fleet was a product of strategic concerns as well as less
tangible factors such as public opinion. Decision-makers were careful to
consider how different groups inside and outside of Britain would react
to violence being used against the fleet. Military operations against the
fleet were viable from a material perspective. Yet, symbolic ethical and
moral considerations played a key role in isolating violent action to spe-
cific ports where the risk of extensive civilian causalities was minimised.
This chapter will move on from the plans for Operation Catapult to
consider how events developed on the ground. Material factors such as
limited time and poor communications impacted the outcome at Mers
el-Kébir. It will then explore the justifications and condemnations that
exploded in reaction to the bombardments – the war of words. These
debates moved decisively away from conceptualising the events as a stra-
tegic wartime operation. Instead, the bombardments were interpreted in
much more subjective and emotional terms. In British justifications, the
bombardments were a necessary tragedy. In metropolitan France, they
were a vicious stab in the back.
Until operation Catapult commenced on 3 July, British policy-makers
had to plan their rhetoric around a number of possible outcomes. This
process illustrated that the operations at Mers el-Kébir were more than a
strategic gambit. For many within Britain, they were the manifestation of
a broader sentiment that called for – and indeed craved – decisive action.
The press releases and radio addresses that emerged from the War Cabi-
net and Admiralty offices highlighted the desire to gain approval not just
from the British public but also from further afield. Specifically, from
within governing circles in Washington and the wider American public.
These goals made the public representation of the operations critical.
Discussions over how to present the outcome of Catapult were a signifi-
cant part of the planning process that unfolded in the War Cabinet.
What emerged, on the British side, was a series of statements that
described the bombardments as a literal demonstration of British strength
and determination. At the same time, the French condemned British pol-
icy at Mers el-Kébir for its brutality against a neutral state and its alleged
failure to engage in established patterns of conventional diplomacy. The
British may not have had many military options available to them in July
1940. However, this weakness was certainly not apparent in the rhetoric
that followed the bombardments. Justifications pressed home the inevi-
tability of the operation. They framed the bombardments as a sign of
unswerving British resolve and the country’s undiminished capacity to
wage war against the Axis powers. At the same time, British rhetoric con-
tinued attempts to foster the support of metropolitan France by rhetori-
cally exonerating the French population from the ‘Men of Vichy’.
In the French spa town of Vichy, the new home of the French metro-
politan government from 1 July 1940, Pétain would also turn to rheto-
ric in an attempt to discredit British actions at Mers el-Kébir. Pétain
and Paul Baudouin’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs attempted to sway
American and global opinion against the ‘British aggressions’. But it
quickly became clear that the vast majority of the international press
was more inclined to see the bombardments as a reasonable course of
action.
Following official statements, speeches and broadcasts, mass media
outlets in both France and Britain largely echoed the official explana-
tions offered by their respective leadership. The British press drew on
an abundance of historic imagery to further justify the brutality of the
operations. It connected past victories to the present conflict in order
to suggest future success. On the French side, Mers el-Kébir was a piv-
otal event. It influenced how Franco-British relations were portrayed for
the rest of the war. The bombardments came to signify the resurgence
of Britain’s historic policy of territorial violation and blatant aggression
against the French state. After the conclusion of the Franco-German
armistice, the legitimacy of unoccupied France as an imperial nation
depended on its ability to maintain the territorial integrity of both the
metropole and its colonies. British and later Free French incursions and
the rhetoric that accompanied them were challenges to French sover-
eignty, and more precisely the legitimacy of Pétain’s government. The
Vichy government countered these challenges by claiming the rights of a
neutral nation and by dismissing the Gaullist movement as both traitor-
ous and essentially un-French.
Timeline of Events
In the days leading up to 3 July, Admiral Somerville finalised his opera-
tional plans. These detailed instructions tried to anticipate how Admiral
Marcel-Bruno Gensoul, the commander of the Force de Raid moored at
Mers el-Kébir, would respond to the British ultimatum. On 30 June, flag
officers and senior commanding officers met onboard the British battle
cruiser HMS Hood. Here, they agreed that if it became necessary, a bom-
bardment at Mers el-Kébir would be carried out in three phases. First,
Somerville would order rounds to be fired purely as a means to scare the
French and indicate British resolve. If the French still refused British
terms, limited gunfire and bombing would be initiated to prompt the
evacuation of the ships. Last, torpedoes or other means would sink the
ships. Similar destructive action at the neighbouring non-military port
of Oran was, as we know, not considered permissible due to the likely
high loss of civilian life.4 Operational orders dated 1 July formalised this
three-stage approach. Stage II parts 1 and 2 were described as follows:
(1) ‘Show that we are in earnest by offensive action without endangering
French ships’. (2) ‘Destroy the French ships by our own actions’.5 This
was a coherent plan created by British Admiralty commanders to disable
vital units of the French fleet at Mers el-Kébir. It anticipated only limited
casualties thanks to the two-stage warning system.
At 10:45 a.m. on 3 July, Admiral Somerville noted in his diary that the
French were furling their awnings, an act that could only be construed as
readying for a fight. In response, the Admiralty suggested seeding the har-
bour with magnetic mines to prevent the fleet from escaping.6 Early that
same morning, Somerville had received another message from the Admi-
ralty. It stated that although no time limit would be imposed on the ultima-
tum, it was important that the proceedings were completed, whatever the
outcome, before the sun went down that day.7 This stipulation had a direct
impact on the negotiations. It imposed a highly restrictive time frame that
did not leave Somerville with room to manoeuvre should Gensoul delay
in answering the ultimatum. Somerville’s Vice Admiral Cedric Holland
delivered the terms of the British ultimatum and the accompanying mes-
sage to the French Admiralty between 11:00 a.m. and 11:15 a.m. on the
morning of 3 July. Because Holland was fluent in French, he had been
given the unsavoury task of delivering the ultimatum to Admiral Gensoul.
However, Gensoul was offended that a ranking captain had brought the
message rather than an admiral. He refused to see Holland, forcing him
to wait in his boat for the French Admiralty barge to deliver a response.8
Gensoul’s refusal to cooperate was disappointing to Somerville and others
in the British Admiralty. However, perhaps they should have been less sur-
prised. As one of the only Protestants in the heavily Catholic French Navy,
Somerville considered Gensoul to be relatively Anglophilic. But Gensoul
had already declined once to colour outside the lines of French official-
dom. On 24 June, British Admiral Dudley North had visited Gensoul in
an attempt to take advantage of his personal sympathies and persuade him
to continue the war alongside Britain. However, he had refused on the
grounds that he was bound to obey the orders of the French government.9
At 11:30 a.m., First Sea Lord Pound sent a message informing Force H
that he was drafting a signal that would offer the French immediate demili-
tarisation in addition to the options stated in the ultimatum. However,
Pound telephoned Somerville an hour later to inform him that the draft
had not been approved. Instead, Somerville should inform the French fleet
that if it prepared to leave the harbour he would open fire.10 Gensoul had,
in the meantime, conveyed the British ultimatum to his superiors at the
Admiralty, although he failed to mention the option to move the fleet to a
port in the French West Indies or the United States.11 Too much weight
should not be given to this omission for changing the course of events.
Throughout the day, Gensoul clearly reiterated his refusal of the ultima-
tum. He also did not believe that the British would actually open fire on the
fleet.12 Gensoul made no move to evacuate his ships against the possibility
of attack, nor did he display any real intention to concede to any of the
British requests. This inaction was a symptom of the belief on both sides
that actual bombardment was highly unlikely. To the British, the most
important outcome was the public display of Pétain’s government yielding
to British strength and resolve. The decision not to offer demilitarisation
after having delivered the original ultimatum stemmed from this mindset.
War Cabinet minutes stated that to do so ‘would look like weakening’.13
Following the receipt of the British ultimatum, both admirals waited
for his counterpart to yield. At 11:51 a.m. and again just after 12:09 p.m.,
Gensoul repeated his resolve to fight, rather than acquiesce to the British
terms. Somerville prepared to open fire.14 However, Vice Admiral Hol-
land suggested waiting and Somerville extended the ultimatum deadline.15
From this point onward, the decisions taken by Gensoul and Somerville
illustrated the high levels of uncertainty on both sides. Decision-making
was further constrained by the setting sun. Like Gensoul, Somerville
believed his counterpart would ultimately yield. He was loath to open fire
upon the French ships and interpreted French inaction as a sign of weak-
ening. He extended the deadline for British action to 3:30 p.m.16 Gensoul
eventually agreed to meet the British delegation aboard the Dunkerque at
2:15 p.m. The British Admiralty had informed Somerville on 2 July that
the French had a procedure for demilitarising their ships, which could
17 Ibid.
18 Ibid.
19 Lasterle, ‘Admiral Gensoul’, 843.
20 Arthur Marder, From the Dardanelles to Oran (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1974), 249.
21 ‘Narrative of Third July’, First Sea Lord’s Records 1939–1940, ADM 205/6, TNA.
22 Admiral Somerville’s Official Report, 26 July 1940, ADM 199/826, TNA. Somerville’s
pocket diary listed 17.45 as the time at which he opened fire, SMVL 1/31, CCAC.
23 Tombs, That Sweet Enemy, 565.
Hesitations on both sides also contributed to the relative chaos of the final
moments. Gensoul, to the very last, made no move to evacuate his ships.
He still believed that his recent comrades would never follow through on
their threats. Holland also doubted that force would be necessary. He wrote
in his report of the operation, ‘My answer to ask for a final reply before fire
was opened was based on my appreciation of the French character since I
have often found that an initial flat refusal will gradually come round to an
acquiescence’.24 Leadership on both sides misinterpreted the situation to
the extent that they refused to believe that the other party would consent
to the use of force. However, it was the British command to fire directly
at the fleet without first giving the French the opportunity to evacuate
that would in later years be held up as a callous and brutal display of vio-
lence. The broader context of the situation was also relevant. Britain was
under threat of imminent invasion. Taking action to decisively neutralise
the French fleet would free up British ships from shadowing their French
counterparts and allow them to return to home waters to patrol against
invading forces.25 Even if Somerville had reached an agreement on disarm-
ing the fleet, it could not have been carried out within six hours given the
approaching darkness as well as the impending arrival of reinforcements.
Seeing how Operation Catapult unfolded in real-time on 3 July makes it
clear that both Somerville and Gensoul were making decisions in a highly
uncertain environment. With France newly withdrawn from the war, it
was still unclear how official sentiments and loyalties would align them-
selves. The British were, in all respects, very limited militarily. They were
preparing for a defensive phase of the conflict, which would require the
most efficient use of their naval resources. There was also a strong desire
to dispel uncertainty and bolster morale within Britain while encourag-
ing pro-British sentiment in America. In this sense, the willingness to
take hostile action against the fleet was tremendously symbolic. Decisive
action against the fleet was a strategic manoeuvre, but it was also a power-
building exercise. Rhetoric would play a critical role in fostering these
images of British power.
29 Ibid.
30 This was despite the fact that Pétain’s government moved from Bordeaux to Vichy on
1 July, after the armistice placed Bordeaux in the occupation zone.
31 ‘Proposed Statement to the Press’, July 1940, PREM 3/179/4, TNA.
32 Akhila Yechury and Emile Chabal, ‘Introduction’, in Britain and France in Two World
Wars: Truth, Myth and Memory, eds. Robert Tombs and Emile Chabal (London:
Bloomsbury, 2013), 88.
33 E. H. Carr, The Twenty Years’ Crisis, 1919–1939 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016),
135.
34 Michael Bess, Choices under Fire: Moral Dimensions of World War II (New York:
Vintage Books, 2006), Chapter 13.
the persuasiveness, or at the very least, the emotive power that these
kinds of arguments could have, even if the underlying decision-making
process was much more complex.
British policy-makers were eager to drive support away from Pétain’s
government. But they continued to protect the idea of Franco-British
cooperation. To do this, the press release was edited to downplay any
suggestion of overt Franco-British hostility. The original text depict-
ing the Franco-German armistice stated that the French government
‘undertook by the terms of the Armistice to hand over their Fleet to the
enemy’.35 The words ‘hand over’ were changed to ‘allow’, transferring
agency from the French to the Germans.36 The following excerpt shows
how aggressive words were replaced with more neutral options. Note in
particular how the word ‘hostilities’ was replaced with ‘operations’.
H.M.G. deeply regret that the French Admiral in command at Oran refused to
accept any of the conditions proposed, with the inevitable result that hostilities
broke out between British and action had to be taken against the French vessels
in that locality. These hostilities (operations) are still proceeding.37
This excerpt proposed that Catapult, and the bombardments that
resulted, were an ethical, if still tragic, course of action during a time
of war. Knowing that the environment in which these operations were
planned was highly complex, it is striking how British rhetoric ironed out
any operational wrinkles and uncertainties. The tone of these discussions
and the rhetoric they produced made it easy to forget that Somerville had
planned to prompt the French ships to evacuate before firing at them
directly. Moreover, in War Cabinet discussions, members decided not
to offer compensation to the families of French personnel killed at Mers
el-Kébir. It was thought that doing so could be ‘misinterpreted’ as an
apology and acknowledgement of wrongdoing.38 Mers el-Kébir was to
be a tragedy, but a justified one.
While this draft was being edited, the War Cabinet met to determine
when the statement should be released to the local press. They also
talked about writing a second announcement for the American press.39
These preparations anticipated the impact that the operations would
have at home and on a more global stage. In the days following the bom-
bardment, Political Intelligence Reports compiled by the Foreign Office
concluded that the general effect, ‘especially in the United States, has
refusal to guarantee its security, away from Axis hands. Before analysing
the details of Churchill’s address, it is important to note that Lord Hali-
fax delivered an identical speech that day in the House of Lords explain-
ing and justifying what had taken place at Mers el-Kébir. As Prime
Minister, Churchill’s speech was given more attention than Halifax’s.
The relative value attached to Churchill’s words shaped how Catapult
was conceptualised at the time and how it is remembered today. The
persuasiveness of rhetoric can shift according to who is doing the talking,
as in the case of these identical speeches delivered by Churchill and Hali-
fax in 1940. But time can also appreciate or erode rhetoric’s perceived
value. In this case, victory in 1945 validated much of Churchill’s rhetoric
and obscured the more complex and uncertain environment in which it
was initially delivered.
Early in the speech, Churchill linked the idea of British victory to
French liberation: ‘But the least that could be expected was that the
French Government, in abandoning the conflict and leaving its whole
weight to fall upon Great Britain and the British Empire, would have
been careful not to inflict needless injury upon their faithful comrade, in
whose final victory the sole chance of French freedom lay and lies’.45 The
choice of language in this excerpt, compared to that of the draft press
releases, was much more aggressive. Emotive verbs such as ‘abandoning’
and ‘inflict’ suggested malicious intent on the part of the French govern-
ment. On the other hand, Britain retained its role as France’s protector,
and eventual liberator. After denigrating the new government, Churchill
severed the will of the French people from the defeatist origins of the
Bordeaux/Vichy government. ‘Thus I must place on record that what
might have been a mortal injury was done to us by the Bordeaux Govern-
ment with full knowledge of the consequences and of our dangers, and
after rejecting all our appeals at the moment when they were abandoning
the Alliance, and breaking the engagements which fortified it’.46 Describ-
ing the French fleet as a ‘mortal injury’ to the British war effort left no
doubt as to the validity of the British actions that followed. This sentence
also made it clear that the ‘Bordeaux Government’ could not claim the
popular support that would have made it a representative government.
The following paragraphs built on this notion of illegitimacy.
Churchill described the final weeks of June and the Franco-German
armistice negotiations: ‘There was another example of this callous and
47 Ibid.
48 Hannah Diamond, Fleeing Hitler (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 113, 116.
49 Robert O. Paxton, Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order 1940–1944 (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1972), 38.
50 ‘Vansittart Committee’, 8 July 1940, GB165-0269, Middle East Centre Archives
(henceforth MECA).
51 Nicholas Atkin, The Forgotten French: Exiles in the British Isles 1940–44 (Manchester,
2003), 254. Simon Berthon argues similarly that in the wake of the Franco-German
armistice, ‘two Frances had emerged’. Simon Berthon, Allies at War (London: Thistle
Publishing, 2013), 32.
52 Michael Dockrill, British Establishment Perspectives on France, 1936–40 (Basingstoke,
1999), 157.
53 David Reynolds, ‘1940: Fulcrum of the Twentieth Century?’, International Affairs, 66,
no. 2 (April 1990), 325, 333.
But these public squabbles were only one side of a much more nuanced
policy. By refusing to recognise Pétain’s government as a legitimate rep-
resentative of French interests, British rhetoric kept the notion of alli-
ance alive. And it kept France’s seat at the victor’s table warm.
Churchill closed his address by stressing that the War Cabinet had
embarked upon Catapult with a heavy heart but a unanimous sense of
purpose.54 He suggested that the bombardment, however tragic, was an
eventuality for which the Cabinet and Admiralty were well prepared.
Unsurprisingly, he did not explain why the ships had not been evacuated
prior to the bombardment. Portraying the outcome at Mers el-Kébir as
an ‘unfortunate necessity’ normalised the deaths of the French sailors
as causalities of war. Churchill made a strong case that accomplished
three things: it validated British actions, defended the French citizenry
and castigated the Bordeaux government for betraying its British allies
and the French nation. In concluding, he employed a classic rhetorical
technique. He offered his audience the opportunity to digest the facts
for themselves and reach a logical conclusion. ‘I leave the judgment of
our action, with confidence, to Parliament. I leave it to the nation, and
I leave it to the United States. I leave it to the world and to history’.55
Churchill understood that rhetoric was persuasive. More importantly,
he understood that it needed to strike a delicate balance between pre-
senting an argument for consideration and telling the public what to
think. Moreover, we know that the War Cabinet was confident that the
British public would welcome a strong policy towards the French fleet.
This knowledge makes Churchill’s statement, which boldly called for the
world to judge British actions at Mers el-Kébir appear far less daring.
Churchill’s Commons speech was received with feelings of relief and
approval from both sides of the House. Members cheered for two full min-
utes. Even Chargé d’Affaires Roger Cambon acknowledged its undeniably
warm reception. Writing to Foreign Minister Baudouin, he described
political and popular attitudes in Britain as determined. He saw a refusal
to compromise on issues that were perceived to affect the prosecution of
the war.56 Cadogan wrote in his diary that day that while the results of
Catapult were not ideal, ‘Winston was able to make good enough show-
ing in House and had a good reception’.57 [sic] John Colville echoed this
54 Winston Churchill, ed., Into Battle: Speeches by the Right Hon. Winston S. Churchill,
PC, MP (London: Cassell, 1941), 240–241.
55 Hansard HC Deb vol 362 col. 1049 (4 July 1940) http://hansard.millbanksystems
.com/commons/1940/jul/04/french-fleet.
56 Cambon to Buadouin, 5 July 1940, 10GMII/336, MAE.
57 Cadogan, Diaries, 310.
rhetorical alignment with British policy was a way to assert the power
and legitimacy of his movement. By sanctioning such high-level policies,
de Gaulle also supported the idea of a continuing Franco-British alli-
ance. In this construction, his movement carried the torch of authentic
French interests. At this early date, publicly challenging British policy
towards France and the French Empire would only reveal the weakness
of de Gaulle’s movement, and its reliance on British resources. Later,
we will see how this need to preserve the outward appearance of Anglo-
Free French cooperation constrained both British and Free French
policy-making.
In Vichy, officials were working hard to respond to the bombardments
as news arrived from Mers el-Kébir and Alexandria. Like his British
counterparts at the Foreign Office, Baudouin was also trying to win sup-
port for the metropolitan government within American circles. Pétain
even penned a three-page letter to Roosevelt urging him to see the injus-
tice of British policy.67 Baudouin issued French communiqués to the
US State Department with the expectation that the information would
be passed on to the American press. These communications presented
a straightforward case of British aggression, describing the ultimatum,
the use of magnetic mines to seal off the port and the final command to
open fire.68 High commissioner for propaganda, Jean Prouvost reported
to the American press that Churchill had undertaken an act of aggres-
sion ‘unprecedented in history’.69 Baudouin also prepared talking points,
which he sent to French embassies and consulates around the world. He
hoped to validate the position of the Vichy government by depicting the
bombardments as an unwarranted act of violence. Writing to the diplo-
matic mission in Berne, Switzerland, Baudouin described the attacks as
‘brutal and inexcusable’.70 He instructed diplomatic staff to stress to the
public and government officials in their respective postings the terrible
nature of the British attack. They should also try to discredit British jus-
tifications for the bombardments by focussing on Churchill’s tendency to
‘alter the truth’ of what had happened.71 Despite Baudouin’s best efforts,
however, the results were disappointing. Only international responses
from Spain, Bulgaria and Romania appeared to be sympathetic to the
was Mr Churchill speaking – “The eve of battle for our native land”’.76
This article did more than vindicate Churchill’s actions. It implied that
victory itself was simply a matter of time and that Mers el-Kébir was the
first step towards this great ‘destiny’. The article went on, ‘… the cheers
were loud and sustained, and one particularly noticed Mr Chamberlain
foremost in the demonstration waving his order papers’.77 This imagery
captured the symbolic passing of power to Churchill. Although he had
held the Premiership since May, Churchill had yet to receive the full
approval of the House and the British citizenry. Yet, less than two weeks
after the conclusion of the Franco-German armistice, The Observer was
already making room for Churchill in the annals of British history. ‘He
took his place with the greatest of our historic men. He ranked with
Cromwell and Chatham’.78
The Times, which followed the government line most closely, also had
high praise for Churchill. The highest commendations were linked to his
speech and its thunderous reception. ‘It is not often that the House is
so deeply moved. The Prime Minister’s speech matched a theme which
had the qualities of a Greek tragedy, and it will live as one of the most
memorable in the history of Parliament’.79 Another article described the
reaction to his address. ‘… and the whole House rose to cheer loudly and
with a note of fierce resolve his declaration that the war should be pros-
ecuted with the utmost vigour until the righteous purposes for which we
entered upon it had been in all respects fulfilled’.80 In all of these descrip-
tions, Churchill was no longer just a politician who had backed a popular
policy. He had been vaulted to historic greatness. And he became the
embodiment of British resolve in the ongoing conflict. This was despite
the fact that the battle was just beginning.
The press also praised Churchill’s distinction between the French
population and their leadership. The Guardian’s former Paris correspon-
dent criticised Admiral Gensoul as a tepid character who had abandoned
his sense of honour and the Franco-British alliance.
From what I know of Admiral Gensoul, he must have been completely under
the thumb of his Bordeaux masters. He was reactionary in his political views
and was regarded in naval quarters as unimaginative, unenterprising and
scarcely intelligent. It was this ‘dull dog’ … who gave the ghastly order to his
men to go and fight the British.81
The article described the ‘abyss which the battle of Oran has revealed
between the Bordeaux Government and the common people of France …’82
A photograph of Gensoul, which was published in The Times was cap-
tioned, ‘Admiral Gensoul in command of the French Fleet at Oran. He
refused to adopt any of the honourable alternatives offered by the Brit-
ish Government’.83 Editorial content adopted a similar tone. J. Nicholson
Balmer wrote, ‘Sir, - No reasonable person questions the wisdom of the
decision of the Government of Britain in the grim choice set before it at
Oran and we welcome the distinction drawn between the French nation
and its Fascist Government’.84
These articles also invoked images of the past, this time to argue that
French honour remained tied to the Allied war effort. Trying to pin
down an authentic France and to define what it meant to be honour-
able, however, was difficult. What resulted was often a confusing mix
of characteristics borrowed from France’s long history of revolution. ‘It
is difficult to believe that the French people, with all of their proud his-
tory behind them, can be content to become a vassal state, lending their
ancient prestige to the very forces that Revolutionary France and Catho-
lic France have combined in denouncing as a new barbarism’.85 Here,
history was used to provoke a kind of nostalgia or sense of pride for the
past. But this practice came with its own challenges. British references
to history, whether to encourage French resistance or to promise British
victory, had to be skirt around France and Britain’s own less than har-
monious past. The Times cited the 1807 British seizure of the Portuguese
and Danish fleets to justify its operations at Mers el-Kébir. ‘From the
supreme crises of our history we have always emerged with spirit purged
and ennobled’.86 This was a defensive policy that was originally taken to
protect Britain from invasion by Napoleonic forces. As we will see later,
Vichy rhetoric would use France and Britain’s historic rivalry to criticise
British and Free French incursions into its colonial empire.
The congratulatory tone around operation Catapult spoke to a wide
section of the British public, which was demanding that its leadership
successfully. ‘The need for silence about the French fleet in the past
fortnight will now be apparent to everyone. The most strenuous efforts
have been made by the Government to avoid the painful, but ultimately
inevitable use of force against a recent ally …’92
The press only allocated a few lines to discussing the operations that
had been undertaken to secure French ships in British ports and at Alex-
andria. Some of this silence can be attributed to the fact that negotiations
at Alexandria were still ongoing. News that tentative agreements had
been reached to demobilise ships at Alexandria was not reported until 8
July.93 But we should also bear in mind that the press used the bombard-
ments at Mers el-Kébir to help shape a wider strategic narrative about
Britain’s role in the war effort. In this context, nothing could diminish or
question Britain’s steadfast trajectory towards victory. The non-violence
that had accompanied other meetings with the French fleet, rather than
being celebrated, was used to justify the violence that had occurred at
Mers el-Kébir. The ease with which Britain had taken charge of French
ships in British ports became evidence of how effortlessly the Germans
could have done the same.94 By the same token, facts such as the death
toll of French naval personnel were conspicuously absent from the press.
Showing that British policy towards the French fleet was also sup-
ported by a wider global audience was another way to legitimise it. One
article noted, ‘It is universally agreed that Britain’s action was made
unavoidable. Britain, it is recognized fully, was not in a position to incur
further dangers to the cause which is also that of France’.95 Given earlier
discussions in the War Cabinet, it will come as no surprise that press
agencies were especially keen to demonstrate American approval of
the operations. This tendency was also symptomatic of the very pub-
lic expectation that American intervention would be forthcoming. The
Guardian ran an article containing statements from several American
senators and newspapers, all of which applauded the tenacity of British
action towards the fleet. The article commenced by saying, ‘Britain was
completely justified in attacking the French fleet at Oran. This is the
general feeling in naval quarters in Washington’.96 Between 5 and 6 July,
four further articles reiterated American opinion towards the actions
92 Naval Correspondent, ‘Anxious Days at the Admiralty: Future of the French Units’,
The Guardian, 5 July 1940, 5.
93 ‘Gibraltar Raid: Made by French Planes; Vichy Statement; Warships Demobilised at
Alexandria?’ The Guardian, 8 July 1940, 5.
94 ‘British Action at Oran’, The Times, 5 July 1940, 4.
95 Diplomatic Correspondent, ‘France and British Seizure of Ships’, The Guardian, 5
July 1940, 2.
96 ‘Britain Right: Washington View of Oran Battle’, The Guardian, 5 July 1940, 2.
against the French fleet. They argued that American officials and public
support was rallying around the British cause. ‘Mr Churchill’s speech
today in the House of Commons was fully reported on the American
wireless and has created a profound impression here. There is no doubt
that the people of the United States wholly understand and sympathise
with the necessities which compelled Great Britain to attack the fleet
of her late Ally’.97 Quotations from The New York Times, The New York
Herald Tribune and The Baltimore Sun reinforced this idea. ‘American
sympathy is overwhelmingly with Great Britain in her action against the
French Fleet’.98
British policy-makers recognised the symbolic importance of taking
decisive action to neutralise the threat of the French fleet. So too Pétain’s
government understood the significance of the fleet as a symbol of French
sovereignty. The French press also rallied around this idea. Ironically, on
3 July as Admiral Somerville was squaring off against Admiral Gensoul,
Le Temps published a celebratory story entitled ‘The French Navy’. The
article reflected on the 1921 naval conference in Washington. After this
event, the French navy had been granted greater recognition in the French
press and amongst the public. It was praised for its strategically impor-
tant role as an oceanic naval force and a guardian of the French Empire.
French naval policy was, ‘in spite of political fluctuations and unceas-
ing changes of government … worthy of a great country and its global
empire’.99 This article, published only days before the public rupture of
Franco-British diplomatic relations, did not portray the fleet as solely a
military asset. It was an essential part of the French nation and its empire.
The fleet, moreover, was depicted as a symbol of stability and continuity
within France’s often tumultuous political scene. Now, its retention by
Pétain’s government made the fleet more important than ever.
After the bombardments, it was not surprising that the French press
unanimously described the violence at Mers el-Kébir as unjustifiably
aggressive. The French position was depicted as honourable while Brit-
ish actions were painted as dishonest and unsportsmanlike. These argu-
ments asserted the right of the new French government to be treated
as a genuinely neutral nation. The same themes would be refined and
expanded upon as the war continued. They would re-emerge after fresh
instances of British ‘aggression’ in the French colonial empire. But in the
immediate aftermath of the bombardments, the French press response
was relatively concise, but no less cutting, in its tone and overall mes-
sage. Compared to the extensive response offered by the British press,
the French press was still limited in its ability to print regular editions.
It was also hampered by paper shortages and the broader social turmoil
that had accompanied the eight to twelve million refugees fleeing South-
ward from Belgium and France.100 Many papers simply reprinted official
statements verbatim, and it was not uncommon to see the same story
replicated across different papers.
The theme that was most prevalent in the French press was condem-
nation for the British ‘aggressions’ at Mers el-Kébir. The Vichy govern-
ment’s official communiqué, which was broadcast on the evening of
4 July, appeared in print the following day. Both the official commentary
and material written by press correspondents unreservedly condemned
the attacks. The articles depicted Force H and the British government
more broadly as ‘the aggressors’. The rhetoric described the bombard-
ments at Mers el-Kébir as ‘the aggression, the crime, the attack and
the hostilities’. A number of articles stressed that the attacks had been
planned in secret and that this ‘ambush’ contravened notions of honour-
able behaviour.101 Stories published in Le Temps between 5 and 6 July
condemned British policy as ‘l’agression odieuse et inconcevable’.102 An
official communiqué printed by L’Echo d’Alger undermined the morality
and the legality of British actions. It described Somerville’s order to fire on
the French fleet as ‘le crime que son gouvernement lui avait ordonné’.103
These words redefined the Franco-British relationship. They removed
France from the conflict, which also placed British actions outside
the boundaries of acceptable warfare. This had the effect of making the
bombardments appear at least petty and at worst immoral. The French,
both as a government and a nation, on the other hand, were portrayed as
victims of British violence. Worse, Britain had acted despite numerous
French guarantees that all precautions had been taken to make certain
that the fleet would be protected against German designs.
After Churchill’s Commons statement, Baudouin published a tell-all
piece, in which he examined the state of Franco-British relations since the
outbreak of war in 1939. He argued that since 1940, France had put in
all the effort to mobilise forces for the upcoming battle. Meanwhile, the
every moral and material guarantee that it would retain full control of
its fleet. In light of these promises, France could only maintain its hon-
our by not giving in to British demands, and by meeting ‘la force par la
force’.109 Likewise, the actions taken by Gensoul in refusing to accept the
ultimatum were ‘heroic’ and taken in defence of French honour.110 The
notion of French honour was also closely linked to French sovereignty.
In the statement that Prouvost wrote for the American press, he argued
that the French response at Mers el-Kébir was a fight ‘pour l’honneur
de ses drapeaux’.111 Three months later, Vichy propaganda would return
to these same themes. La Tragédie de Mers-el-Kébir, a nine-minute pro-
paganda film that used live footage from the bombardments explained
the event to its viewers, ‘… an English squadron arrives to submit to
Admiral Gensoul a set of conditions that are unacceptable for reasons
of honour’.112 For Pétain’s government, just as for Churchill’s, the fleet
was more than a strategic resource. It was a symbol of power. And for the
Vichy government, it was a symbol of its legitimacy and its sovereignty.
‘La flotte devait rester français ou périr’.113
The responses to Mers el-Kébir that were presented in official state-
ments and reiterated throughout the press distanced the metropole and
the empire from the ongoing war. They did so by constantly restating
how aggressive, unjustifiable, unexpected and dishonourable British
actions were. These same themes will re-emerge time and time again
as British and Free French forces clash with Vichy troops throughout
the empire. After Mers el-Kébir, Vichy’s statements did not mention de
Gaulle’s rival forces. Indeed, calling attention to his presence would only
complicate Vichy’s claims as the sole representative of French interests.
Similarly, because so much of the international press was sympathetic to
the British cause, Baudouin was unable to assert, as Churchill had done,
that he had received any significant support outside of the metropole.
By 9 July, discussions of the bombardments were fading from the press.
A final account from New York described the American reaction as one
of ‘painful surprise’ but admitted that the press was not condemning
British actions.114
That same day, in the Vichy Casino, the parliament voted 624 votes
to 4 in favour of revising the French constitution. The following day a
Conclusion
In the wake of the bombardments at Mers el-Kébir, rhetoric was
deployed on both sides of the Channel as a strategic tool of domestic and
foreign policy. For Britain, it was intrinsic to the policy-making process.
The War Cabinet studied the metropolitan press, diplomatic reports and
intelligence reports. Using these resources, they concluded that action
against the fleet was likely to be popular with the majority of the British
public and American officials. Senior figures in the Admiralty worked
from these expectations as they carefully wrote and revised their press
statements and broadcasts. Studying these communications highlights
the value of Operation Catapult not only as a strategic military venture
but also even more so as a symbolic declaration of absolute determina-
tion to carry on the war. The violence of the bombardments was justified
using language that promised ultimate victory. The British press created
an aura of certainty around these promises, by linking historic victories
with contemporary policy. Within these depictions, France played the
role of a beleaguered nation under the thumb of Germany and the defeat-
ist Pétain government. Its only chance to overcome this domination was
through British victory and rescue. At the same time, British and French
leadership were both eager to gain international and especially American
approval for their policies. British press statements, Churchill’s Com-
mons address and corresponding press articles all alluded to the idea of
American support. In fact, they cited examples of American backing as a
way to justify British policy towards the fleet.
French criticisms of British policy towards its naval forces did not
gain much traction internationally. Only a few nations, including Bul-
garia and Turkey, were supportive. This lacklustre response did not stop
Foreign Minister Baudouin from encouraging his overseas representa-
tives to promote sympathy for the French as victims of a British attack.
However, even he recognised the paucity of international support for
this version of events. Nevertheless, French rhetoric after Mers el-Kébir
is instructive because it laid the groundwork for much of what would
be written over the next two years, before the total occupation of the
metropole late in 1942. The themes that were present in Baudouin’s
115 Enclosure II, ‘War with Vichy Government, Memorandum by the Middle East Joint
Planning Staff’, 27 September 1940, CAB 84/23, TNA.
1 Emil Lengyel, Dakar: Outpost of Two Hemispheres (Garden City, New York: Garden
City Publishing Co., Inc., 1943), 13.
2 Ibid., 3.
3 Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize: The Republican Idea of Empire in France and West
Africa, 1895–1930 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997), 248.
104
4 Ruth Ginio, French Colonialism Unmasked, the Vichy Years in French West Africa
(Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2006), xiv.
5 Desmond Dinan, The Politics of Persuasion: British Policy and French African Neutrality,
1940–42 (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1988), 56. Eric T. Jennings,
Free French Africa in World War II: The African Resistance (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2015), 2.
6 Jennings, Free French Africa, 41–44.
7 Barnett Singer and John Langdon, Cultured Force: Makers and Defenders of the French
Colonial Empire (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2008), 235.
8 Dinan, Persuasion, 60.
this framework, escalated force was justified, even desired.9 Free French
statements had tried to defend the decision to withdraw from Dakar out
of empathy for the local population and a desire to avoid heavy casual-
ties in a fight between Frenchmen. Press and public opinion throughout
Britain criticised both of these arguments because they were inconsistent
with ideas of victory. In this framework, violence was viewed as a neces-
sary precursor to victory.
Anglo-Gaullist relations remained complex in late 1940, but so too did
relations between Britain and Vichy. The uncertainty that characterised
these relationships was a product of the wider contextual instability that
was prominent throughout the autumn. In the closing months of 1940,
the British embassy in Madrid served as a covert backchannel to maintain
communication between Britain and Vichy. Despite this evident willing-
ness on the part of the British government to preserve some ties with
Vichy, more significant was Britain’s refusal to publicly acknowledge
either the legality or the legitimacy of Pétain’s government. The Vichy
government also recognised that it needed to find a balance between its
former ally and its current occupiers. Vichy officials were willing to use
tensions with Britain to gain concessions from Germany and Italy that
would allow them to secure and even expand the French empire. But too
great an escalation in tensions risked further occupation of French terri-
tory, a result that would jeopardise Vichy’s claims of sovereignty.
At Dakar, Operation Menace tried to forcibly shift the loyalty of
French Senegal from Vichy to the Free French. It only deepened the
rift in Franco-British relations that had opened at Mers el-Kébir. And
while British officials would try to distance themselves from the opera-
tions, the Vichy government invoked images of Britain as its hereditary
enemy to make sense of the attacks. This crisis also brought to the fore
another rivalry, between Vichy and the Free French. This social and
national conflict saw each side asserting itself as the legitimate repre-
sentative of the French nation state. The British Chiefs of Staff (COS)
would argue that the Free French, as a movement that was hostile to
the Pétain government, must lead any incursions onto French colonial
territory. They, like the War Cabinet, hoped to avoid giving Vichy the
chance to accuse Britain of taking its colonies for itself. However, as
the retaliatory bombing of Gibraltar by Vichy forces would show, the
metropolitan French government intended to explain Dakar as a crisis
in Franco-British relations and imperial relations more specifically. At
the same time, Vichy deliberately refused to acknowledge the role that
9 James Turner Johnson, Ethics and the Use of Force: Just War in Historical Perspective
(Surrey, England: Ashgate, 2011), 2.
the Free French had played in the operations. This left Vichy and de
Gaulle in the midst of a rhetorical battle in which each side fought to
confirm its own representative legitimacy. Each side saw empire as the
source of its symbolic and strategic power.
10 Arthur Marder, Operation ‘Menace’, The Dakar Expedition and the Dudley North Affair
(London: Oxford University Press, 1976).
French after resistance was subdued.20 These early plans were hidden
from de Gaulle. There was still a great deal of reluctance within the
British bureaucracy to lend unqualified support to a large-scale French
dissidence movement. It was not uncommon to find indifference, and at
times open hostility, within the service ministries towards the develop-
ment of an effective Free French fighting force.21 Rhetorical support for
de Gaulle did not always translate into material support.
By mid-August, however, the JPSC had revised the operation to
include more Free French elements, as Spears and Morton had initially
envisaged. The previous, British-led plan, based on a surprise landing
of British troops at six beaches and only a small Free French contin-
gent was abandoned due to problems of swell.22 The Vice Chiefs of Staff
(VCS), de Gaulle, Spears and Churchill, met on 20 August to discuss
changes.23 In this modified plan, de Gaulle would issue an ultimatum to
the garrison at Dakar. He would call on British support only if resistance
was serious. De Gaulle agreed that if determined Vichyite opposition
continued, ‘… the British force would use all the force in their power to
break down resistance’, in order to install de Gaulle in Dakar by night-
fall.24 At the same time, de Gaulle remained adamant that the operation
should retain as much French character as possible and that it should
make every effort to avoid bloodshed.25
The contradictions and uncertainties at this early date were already
apparent. Both the JPSC and the COS believed that capturing Dakar
would require a great deal of manpower. Vice Chief of the Imperial Gen-
eral Staff (VCIGS) Sir Robert Haining argued that a hostile reception at
Dakar would require the use of ground forces and ‘withdrawals from the
defence of Great Britain which cannot be justified at the present time’.26
General Irwin had similar doubts. He warned that intelligence indicated
‘a marked difference’ between opinions and attitudes of the Dakar gar-
rison and population. At the same time, the War Cabinet knew that forc-
ing Dakar into the Free French camp could compromise the legitimacy
of the operation and jeopardise de Gaulle’s claims to represent popular
French interests. ‘Every endeavour would be made to secure the place
20 ‘Inter Service Planning Staff, Capture of Dakar, 77th Meeting’, 9 August 1940, WO
106/5192, TNA.
21 Dinan, Persuasion, 48–49.
22 ‘Operation “Menace” Report’, 19 August 1940, CAB 80/16/58, TNA. ‘The Dakar
Operation, August and September 1940’, May 1942, WO 232/13, TNA.
23 ‘The Dakar Operation, August and September 1940’, May 1942, WO 232/13, TNA.
24 ‘History of Operation “Menace” prepared by the Naval Staff’, PREM 3/276, TNA.
25 ‘Memorandum by General de Gaulle on Operation “Menace”’, 19 August 1940, CAB
80/16/58, TNA.
26 ‘V.C.I.G.S. Strategy’, 18 August 1940, WO 106/5192, TNA.
without bloodshed, on the plea that an Allied force had come to prevent
the Germans seizing Dakar, and to bring succour and help to the col-
ony’.27 These disparities could hinder an operation whose success relied
upon a favourable local response.28
Despite these uncertainties, the War Cabinet approved Operation
Menace on 27 August. Perhaps, the news that territories in AEF were
rallying to de Gaulle made it more confident that the expedition would
meet little resistance. But the operation was moving forward without a
full picture of local sentiment. Officials had yet to be briefed by Com-
mander Rushbrooke and Captain Poulter, liaison officers with the French
in Dakar. Haining suggested postponing the operation for four weeks
until they had more information on local conditions. But the War Cabi-
net declined.29 Rushbrooke and Poulter were able to convey their intel-
ligence on 29 August, but this was only two days before the expedition
sailed from Scapa, the Clyde and Liverpool. Both officers emphasised
the strength of defences and the loyalty of troops to the commander of
the Dakar garrison and Pétain.30 The official British Admiralty recount-
ing of the last days of August explained that despite these warnings,
nothing could be done. The final approval had already been given.31
Britain’s operational plans also had to consider the possibility that
Vichy would retaliate against threats to its empire. For Vichy, as for the
Free French, empire represented a valuable strategic asset. Its reten-
tion was important to the legitimacy of Pétain’s government. It was the
empire that would ‘compensate France for its defeat’, and sustaining
this myth meant protecting it from any external threats.32 Only a week
before the attacks, Boisson would write to Vichy arguing that the peace
of French Africa was under constant threat as a result of the ‘insidious
British propaganda’.33 Even before de Gaulle consolidated AEF for the
27 W.M. (40) 225th Conclusions, Minute 6, Confidential Annex, 13 August 1940, CAB
65/14/21, TNA.
28 ‘Operation “Menace”, Memorandum by Major-General Irwin circulated for consid-
eration by the Chiefs of Staff’, 27 August 1940, CAB 80/17/27, TNA.
29 ‘Operation “Menace” Memorandum by the Vice Chief of the Imperial General Staff’,
17 August 1940, CAB 80/16/53, TNA. The event was also reportedly held up a further
three days due to ‘misbehaviour by some of the French crews’. Evidently, improved
messing consisting of champagne and frois grois was demanded. Additionally,
the captain’s mistress had disappeared and he refused to sail until she was found.
‘Admiralty Record Office, “Unofficial Account of Operation, Major P. R. Smith Hill,
Royal Marines”’, ADM 199/907, TNA.
30 ‘The Dakar Operation, August and September 1940’, May 1942, WO 232/13, TNA.
31 Captain S. W. Roskill, The War at Sea 1939–1945, Vol. 1, The Defensive (London: Her
Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1954), 308.
32 Ginio, French Colonialism Unmasked, 10.
33 Ramognino, L’Affaire Boisson, 93.
Free French, Vichy officials had discussed using the rise in Anglophobia
caused by Mers el-Kébir to expand overseas at the expense of Britain. A
Staff Study dated 10 July 1940 suggested that the French Middle East
Army could seize Iraqi oil fields at Mosul and Kirkuk.34 Whether Vichy
forces would have, in practice, carried out these operations at the risk
of opening a full-scale war with Britain is debatable. But this kind of
belligerent stance underlines how important empire and even imperial
planning was to Vichy’s claims of sovereignty and legitimacy.
Early in September, as British ships sailed towards Dakar, the War
Cabinet considered a note from COS Secretary, General Hastings Ismay.
He expressed concern about the possibility of reprisals from Vichy, a
risk increased in his view because a lack of secrecy was jeopardising the
operation.35 An earlier War Cabinet session had concluded that the like-
lihood of Vichy declaring war on the British was not very high. However,
retaliations against British colonial possessions were considered likely.36
The Joint Planning Staff (JPS) anticipated several possible reactions: air
attacks on Gibraltar and/or Malta, attacks on British trade in the Atlan-
tic by submarines and active operations by contingents of the French
fleet.37 Even after the departure of the task force, decision-makers were
still arguing over the advisability of the operation. And on the same day
that the War Cabinet was considering Ismay’s warnings, another inci-
dent threatened to derail the operation. A French squadron was on its
way to Dakar.
The British Consul in Tangier and the Naval Attaché in Madrid both
warned London on 9 and 10 September, respectively, that a French
squadron was approaching the straights of Gibraltar. These warnings
were immediately forwarded to the War Cabinet.38 Admiral Dudley
North, Admiral Commanding of the North Atlantic did not try to detain
the ships. Three French cruisers and three destroyers from Toulon passed
through the straights on 11 September. On enquiry, North defended
his actions. Having received no further instructions following the warn-
ings from Tangier and Madrid, he had conferred with Gibraltar-based
34 Robert O. Paxton, Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order, 1940–1944 (New York:
Alfred A. Knopf, 1972), 59, 61.
35 ‘War Cabinet Joint Planning Staff, Operation “Menace” Note by the Secretary’, 10
September 1940, CAB 84/18, TNA.
36 W.M. (40) 235th Conclusions, Minute 7 Confidential Annex 27, 27 August 1940,
CAB 65/14/26, TNA.
37 ‘Implications of French Hostility Arising from Operation “Menace”, Report by the
Joint Planning Staff’, 10 September 1940, CAB 80/106/3, TNA.
38 ‘Message from Tangier Consul General’, 9 September 1940, NRTH 1/3, Churchill
Archive Centre (henceforth CCAC). ‘Message from Naval Attaché Madrid’, 10
September 1940, NRTH 1/3, CCAC.
Vice Admiral James Somerville. Together, they observed that the French
ships were not attempting to disguise themselves and were acting with
friendly intentions. There was no reason to impede them. The ships were
allowed to pass, and North even sent a friendly message: ‘Bon voyage’.39
In the War Cabinet, this turn of events rocked the foundations of the
operation. Policy-makers tried to estimate how these ships could impact
the success of their plans from a tactical perspective. But their discus-
sions also revealed how intangible factors, such as prestige and credibil-
ity, influenced their willingness to proceed with the endeavour.
One historian has described Operation Menace as a sequel to Mers
el-Kébir, an endeavour to consolidate militarily strategic assets in the
wake of the French defeat.40 This observation overlooks the symbolic
role that such operations could and did play throughout the war. Such
considerations are crucial to understanding the plethora of motivations
that influenced how Menace was planned and carried out, in the War
Cabinet, the Service Ministries and the Free French Headquarters at
Carlton Gardens. British policy recognised that seizing French colonial
territory was in a different category from ensuring that the fleet did not
fall into enemy hands. The politics of these operations were complicated.
This was not because they risked alienating British public opinion. Their
complexity stemmed from the desire to portray any operations involving
French colonial territory as French in character.41 Avoiding accusations
of imperial rivalry was one reason for this approach. Maintaining the
credibility of de Gaulle’s movement as a real alternative to Pétain’s gov-
ernment was a second. The very real need to manage limited wartime
resources was a third.
After the squadron of French ships had arrived at Dakar, British and
Free French decision-making reflected this combination of military and
political concerns. The initial response in the War Cabinet was to cancel
the expedition. On 16 September, Undersecretary for Foreign Affairs
Alexander Cadogan expressed his delight at this outcome.42 ‘The French
ships have forestalled us in Dakar, and so “Menace” is off! I cannot
truly say I am sorry!’43 This decision should also have been a relief to
39 ‘Passage of Three French Cruisers and Three French Destroyers from Toulon
through the Straights of Gibraltar on 11 September 1940’, 8 December 1940, AVAR
5/4, CCAC.
40 Marder, Operation ‘Menace’, vii.
41 ‘Note on Political Considerations of Dakar Movements’, August 1940, PREM 3/276,
TNA.
42 ‘History of Operation “Menace” prepared by the Naval Staff’, PREM 3/276, TNA.
43 Alexander Cadogan, The Diaries of Sir Alexander Cadogan 1938–1945, ed. David Dilks
(London: Cassell, 1971), 16 September 1940.
de Gaulle. Only days before, he had told Spears that if the squadron
reached Dakar he did not think the port would come over to the Free
French side willingly.44 However, after the operations were cancelled, de
Gaulle, Spears, Cunningham and Irwin all argued that Menace should
go forward as planned.45 Britain’s Force M had just been reinforced by
two cruisers from the South Atlantic Fleet.46 The prospect of a military
victory made the operation attractive for both Cunningham and Irwin.
For his part, de Gaulle continued to declare that he would not involve
himself in a fight amongst Frenchmen. But he agreed that if the Dakar
garrison tried to stop his representatives from landing, British troops
could use force to install him.47 He wanted to achieve tangible, territorial
gains and protect recent advances in AEF.48 Churchill justified his own
shift in thinking in his memoirs. Although he ‘had no doubt whatever
that the enterprise should be abandoned’, the unexpected zeal showed
by military leadership on the ground, caused him to change his mind.49
The Dakar operations were also deeply political. We know that de
Gaulle did not want his movement to be associated with displays of vio-
lence against other Frenchmen. This attitude was also echoed in British
policy-making quarters. Part of the reluctance to use force was based on
the desire not to alienate metropolitan French opinion. The Ministry of
Information (MOI) warned the War Cabinet that Menace could damage
recent favourable shifts in metropolitan French attitudes towards Britain
and de Gaulle.50 The British Consul in Geneva had recently passed on
information from a Monsieur Ruffin, which suggested that Vichy leader-
ship had asked the press not to attack the British so strongly.51 And in
the autumn of 1940, Vichy and Britain were still exchanging diplomatic
messages through Madrid. While these contacts hardly constituted any
concrete agreement or relationship, they were symptomatic of British
willingness to entertain a broader concept of Franco-British relations
alongside the Anglo-Gaullist relationship. A pitched battle over Dakar
risked jeopardising this delicate balance.
At the same time, British rhetoric was committed to publicly backing the
Free French as the true representative of French interests and as a symbol of
ongoing Franco-British solidarity. The operations at Dakar needed to main-
tain and even strengthen the credibility of these claims by making it look like
French colonies were queuing up to join de Gaulle. Major General Irwin
conveyed this sentiment to forces participating in the operation when he
emphasised the political importance of installing de Gaulle as a leader within
the broader region of French West Africa.52 Sailing orders for the operation
stressed the need to ‘make every effort clearly to establish the Free French
character of your force.’ This was done in part to avoid dissent from the
residents of Dakar. But it was also intended to preserve the legitimacy of the
operation from a broader perspective.53 The relationship between de Gaulle
and his British patrons was certainly not an equal one. But neither was de
Gaulle completely powerless. In the public eye, the Anglo-Free French rela-
tionship relied on each side reinforcing the legitimacy of the other.
In London, Secretary of State for War Anthony Eden argued that de
Gaulle would not have a political future if he did not proceed with the
operation. Spears warned that ‘the political consequences of ordering
de Gaulle to abandon Menace and proceed to Duala may be serious,
since … they might result in de Gaulle representing himself as abandoned
by the British Government’.54 The outcome of operations at Dakar would
also impact how key neutral countries, including the United States, mea-
sured the strength of the Allied war effort. After the War Cabinet agreed
to reinstate the operation on 18 September, Churchill sent a telegram to
President Roosevelt five days later. He wrote, ‘It looks as if there might
be a stiff fight. Perhaps not, but anyhow orders have been given to ram it
through’.55 The cavalier tone of the message conveyed Britain as a capa-
ble and plucky fighter, a solid investment for American arms and eventu-
ally men. But it also showcased the contradictions that would derail the
operation, between shoring up popular support for de Gaulle’s move-
ment and engaging in an armed struggle against French colonial territory.
56 Michael J. Butler, Selling a ‘Just’ War: Framing, Legitimacy, and U.S. Military
Intervention (Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 10.
57 War Cabinet 256 (40) Conclusions, 23 September 1940, CAB 65/9/18, TNA.
58 ‘Summary of Operations 23–25 September 1940, Westernland’, September 1940,
AG/3(1)/251, Dossier 3, AN.
59 ‘H.M.S. Ark Royal, Cedric Holland, Timeline of Operations’, 29 September 1940,
ADM 199/907, TNA.
60 Roskill, The War at Sea, 317.
61 Force M to Admiralty, 4.50, 24 September 1940, ADM 223/507, TNA.
62 Cadogan, Diaries, 23 September 1940.
of the Free French, whose unarmed negotiators had suffered the indig-
nity of being shot at as they sailed away. British forces had returned fire
only in self-defence. British and Free French rhetoric employed a classic
method, in which war is described as an act of self-defence, rather than
a punitive conflict. This makes it possible to justify engagement in war
as a means of protecting your own nation even while encroaching on the
territory of another state.69 Vichy would use a similar model to criticise
the Menace operations while situating itself as a neutral nation rather
than a combatant. By using these tactics, both sides were acknowledging
the symbolic significance of wartime operations. Rhetoric was employed
to situate the operations within the framework of competing Anglo-Free
French and Vichy French wartime narratives.
On 25 September, officials at the scene and in London debated
how long operations against Dakar should be continued. A War Cabi-
net meeting the previous evening had found most members, including
Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax, Eden and First Lord of the Admiralty
Alexander, in favour of ending the conflict. Members also discussed
two related issues. First, they noted the need to forestall public agita-
tion within Britain in response to the French cruisers being allowed to
pass through Gibraltar. Second, they agreed that abandoning operations
at Dakar would strengthen Vichy’s position.70 British forces bombarded
Dakar for a final time between 9:00 a.m. and 9:25 a.m. that morning
before de Gaulle decided that he should go to Konakry to try and rally
French Guinea. He was concerned that French public opinion would
be irreparably alienated if he were seen to engage his forces against his
countrymen.71
The decision to abandon Menace triggered efforts to salvage the situ-
ation from a rhetorical perspective. Spears immediately sent information
to General Ismay ‘… suggesting a way of presenting the operation to
the public’.72 De Gaulle’s approach to the press focussed upon preserv-
ing the benevolent character of the operation and pinning most of the
blame on the Germans. Churchill took charge of damage control with
the Americans. He wrote to Roosevelt claiming that the operation had
failed because of the presence of Vichy partisans who had ‘gripped and
held down … all friendly elements’.73 Nevertheless, like other public
69 Oliver O’Donovan, The Just War Revisited (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2003), 22.
70 W.M. (40) 258th Conclusions Minute 2 Confidential Annex, 25 September 1940,
CAB 65/15/10, TNA.
71 ‘Spears Mission Timeline of Events’, 24 September 1940, SPRS 136, CCAC.
72 Ibid.
73 Churchill, Their Finest Hour, 435.
also opened fire on British ships which were merely observing the situ-
ation, and it was only after they had suffered serious casualties that the
British Fleet opened fire in retaliation’.76 The War Cabinet, however,
was hesitant to publish the communiqué in British papers. It only agreed
to do so after realising that it had already appeared in the American
press.77
Free French descriptions of Menace portrayed the operation in a static
rather than a fluid sense. In other words, they avoided discussing the
operation as a dynamic process, during which each side made calculated
and strategic choices over a period of time. Instead, they directed atten-
tion towards a selection of factors that had motivated the expedition and
to the outcome of the operation. The decisions that were made between
the starting and end points of the operation disappeared from view. This
imposed a sense of inevitability on the events that followed and relieved
agency from the Free French. A 27 September cypher message from de
Gaulle to his French Equatorial African territories and specifically Gen-
eral Edgard de Larminat, Philippe Leclerc, and Governor of Chad, Félix
Éboué illustrated this approach. It was entitled ‘facts which should be
known and repeated’.78 The message contained a list of justifications for
both the initial action and its subsequent outcome. In summary:
1. Initiation of the operation due to requests from elements within
Senegal.
2. Totally French in nature; the British were present only to observe.
3. Following German demands, Vichy sent a squadron to Dakar, which
reinforced the defences and arrested French partisans.
4. The British opened fire only after sustaining causalities.
5. The bombardment was ceased by request of de Gaulle because he
was not in favour of the result it would achieve.79
Even more so than the British operations at Mers el-Kébir, there was a
deep awareness of the need to present the operation as both ethically and
militarily expedient.80 Describing Britain’s role as solely observational
was a blatant lie. Nor was there any evidence that the squadron that had
arrived in Dakar had been sent there as a result of German demands. De
Gaulle was trying desperately to salvage a sense of authority and political
76 Ibid.
77 War Cabinet 257 (40) Conclusions, 24 September 1940, CAB 65/9/19, TNA.
78 De Gaulle to Larminat, Leclerc and Éboué, 27 September 1940, SPRS 136, CCAC.
79 Ibid.
80 Again, it is possible to see a real disinterest to engage with or distinguish between
the range of sentiments within the population, particularly when it comes to local
Senegalese inhabitants.
agency. It was clear that he hoped to imply that while military force
could have easily overcome the defences at Dakar, he had deliberately
chosen to withdraw in order to avoid further loss of life. De Gaulle con-
tinued to maintain an almost palpable concern when it came to the per-
ceived legitimacy of his own movement. Until 10 September, only 2,172
Frenchmen had signed up to join the Free French Naval Force despite
early hopes for resistance within both the Naval and colonial spheres.81
Notwithstanding the best efforts of de Gaulle and the Admiralty, the
following days would see strong criticism from the press in Britain, the
United States and, obviously, Vichy. Spears himself acknowledged, ‘…
the effect of Dakar on English and American opinion has been abso-
lutely disastrous’.82 Churchill’s later justifications of the withdrawal as
one of the ‘unforeseeable accidents of war’ admitted that, to the rest of
the world, the operation ‘seemed a glaring example of miscalculation,
confusion, timidity and muddle’.83
81 ‘Organisation of Allied Naval, Army and Air Contingents’, 25 September 1940, CAB
66/12/14, TNA.
82 Edward Spears, ‘Meeting at Government House, 14.30’, 1 October 1940, SPRS 136,
CCAC.
83 Churchill, Their Finest Hour, 437.
84 Rothermere to Churchill, No date, CHAR 2/398, CCAC.
97 ‘What the Public is Asking No. 3’, 7 September 1940, INF 1/283, TNA.
98 Richard Toye, The Roar of the Lion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 75.
99 War Cabinet 255 (40) Conclusions, 20 September 1940, CAB 65/9/17, TNA.
100 ‘Reaction to Dakar and de Gaulle, Home Intelligence Weekly Reports’, 30 September–9
October 1940, INF 1/292, TNA.
101 Ibid.
102 Home Press Summaries, 27 September 1940, ADM 1/10321, TNA.
109 ‘Dakar and de Gaulle’, 14 October–21 October 1940, INF 1/292, TNA.
110 ‘To All Frenchmen’, 3 August 1940, FO 892/24, TNA.
111 Daventry, ‘Honneur et Patrie Voice la France Libre’, 25 September 1940,
10GMII/338, Ministère des Affaires Étrangères (henceforth MAE).
112 ‘Daventry en Français, Situation à Dakar’, 26 September 1940, 10GMII/338, MAE.
113 ‘The French Empire’, The Guardian, 26 September 1940, 4.
114 ‘Bitterness of Vichy: The Dakar Action’, The Guardian, 27 September 1940, 2.
115 Ginio, French Colonialism, 16.
116 William I. Hitchcock, ‘Pierre Boisson, French West Africa, and the Postwar
Epuration: A Case from the Aix Files’, French Historical Studies 24, no. 2 (2001): 306.
117 ‘Dakar Forts Fire on Free French Warships’, The Guardian, 25 September 1940, 5.
118 Paul Baudouin, The Private Diaries of Paul Baudouin: March 1940–January 1941,
trans. Sir Charles Petrie (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1948), 247.
119 Télégramme au départ, de Vichy, 24 September 1940, 10GMII/338, MAE.
120 ‘Une escadre Anglaise ouvre le feu sur Dakar après avoir adressé un ultimatum
aux autorités Françaises’, Le Temps, 25 September 1940, 1. ‘L’agression Anglaise
contre Dakar’, Le Temps, 27 September 1940, 1. ‘Dernières nouvelles, l’agression
Britannique contre Dakar’, Le Temps, 27 September 1940, 2.
bring Britain and France closer together by encouraging the British gov-
ernment to stop supporting the Gaullist movement.131
Intelligence reports from the French Foreign Ministry emphasised that
de Gaulle was not the obvious British choice for a Free French leader
and that his movement did not have complete freedom.132 Vichy was also
gathering intelligence from servicemen who had been repatriated to the
metropole. Many of them cast doubt on the popularity of de Gaulle’s
movement among the British public. These reports estimated the
strength of the movement at only 5,000 members in mid-September.133
Interviews carried out from 16 September concluded that an influen-
tial contingent of British opinion was hostile to the Free French.134 A
24 September report suggested that Menace was not an attack against
the Vichy government, but rather, an effort to continue the war against
Germany and Italy. It also identified the real threat that German forces
would use Anglo-Free French operations as a pretext for occupying the
Free Zone and French North Africa.135
By the end of the year, the Vichy Cabinet had adopted a policy of resis-
tance against further Gaullist expansion, rather than trying to actively
roll back their gains.136 There was thus a sharp contrast between the
unwavering condemnation of the Vichy press and the more pragmatic
analysis that continued behind closed doors. Rhetoric allowed Vichy to
craft its own narrative of the new status quo and to disguise the more
complex reality of its relationship between the occupying powers and its
former ally. But this balance was not an easy one to sustain.
On the other hand, de Gaulle was determined to take ownership of
the operation to demonstrate his own initiative and the autonomy of
the Free French movement. Press releases issued by his office (or by
Richmond Temple) disassociated Britain as much as possible from the
expedition. British officials also supported this approach. Churchill’s 8
October Commons address described the events at Dakar as ‘primarily
French’. He defended de Gaulle’s claims that the majority of Frenchmen
in Dakar were naturally inclined towards the Free French cause but were
unable to act freely, being ‘employed as the tool of German and Italian
131 Ibid.
132 ‘Renseignement Angleterre, officier Français rapatrié d’Angleterre’, 17 September
1940, 9GMII/295, MAE.
133 ‘Renseignement, Angleterre, Source: Officier français rapatrié d’Angleterre’, 17
September–16 October 1940, 3P102, Dossier 3, Service Historique de la Défense
(henceforth SHD).
134 Ibid.
135 ‘Grande-Bretagne, évènements de Dakar, 23–25 Septembre 1940’, 24 September
1940, 10GMII 338, MAE.
136 Paxton, Old Guard, 87.
137 Hansard HC Deb vol. 365 col. 300 (8 October 1940) http://hansard.millbanksys-
tems.com/commons/1940/oct/08/war-situation.
138 W.M. (40) 259th Conclusions Minute 2, Confidential Annex, 26 September 1940,
CAB 65/15/11, TNA.
139 Churchill to Roosevelt, 4 October 1940, CHAR 2/399, CCAC.
140 Weekly Political Intelligence Summaries, 18 September 1940, FO 371/25235, TNA.
141 Foreign Office to Sir G. Knox (Rio de Janeiro), 18 December 1940, FO 954/8A/135,
TNA.
Conclusion
Hervé Coutau-Bégarie and Claude Huan have pointed out that Opera-
tion Menace never had much chance of success in the face of symbolic,
but very real resistance.144 Their assessment brings to life the significance
of empire as both a strategic and symbolic asset within the wider con-
flict. The rhetoric that emerged in response to the Anglo-Free French
operations at Dakar was a product of military limitations and political
manoeuvring on all sides. It reflected the distinct wartime narratives that
British, Vichy and Free French leaders were constructing and the diffi-
culty of sustaining those narratives in the midst of a constantly changing
wartime environment.
In the British metropole, the mass media was highly critical of the lack
of planning leading up to the invasions and the decision not to follow
through with the occupation. Calling for parliamentary explanations,
these criticisms demonstrated that de Gaulle’s Free French movement
traitors, Jews and foreigners, thus positioning itself and its empire as the
only true representatives of France.147 The conflicts over French sov-
ereignty would become even more convoluted in the years to come as
each side encountered new pressures and competing demands. Ameri-
can pressure would force Britain to allow relief aid to reach unoccupied
France. Vichy would be confronted with increasing German demands
for manpower and materials – in the metropole and in its colonial ter-
ritories. And the influence of the United States would become decisive
after it entered the war as a co-belligerent in December 1941.
147 The Chargé in France (Matthews) to the Secretary of State, 14 November 1940,
FRUS.
The French mandate states of Syria and Lebanon were one of the most
contentious imperial battlefields of the Second World War. Here, adding
to the bitter Franco-British arguments, rhetorical skirmishes pitched the
voices and interests of French governors (actual and potential), against
local nationalist opponents for the first time. The collapse of France had
brought empire to the fore of both French and British policies. But nei-
ther imperial protagonist had given much thought to the local popula-
tions of the territories involved.1 All of this changed in 1941. The Levant
states played an important role in Franco-British policy, rhetorically and
strategically. Their position, as emblematic of continuing French impe-
rial power or, alternatively, evidence of Vichy’s craven submission to
Axis demands, had been a source of speculation from the moment of the
French defeat. War Office intelligence in July of 1940 stressed the stra-
tegic value of the Levant and the importance of making sure it remained
friendly towards Britain.2 However, it was not until spring 1941 that
plans were made for an actual military operation in the area. These plans
culminated in the 8 June invasion by British imperial and Free French
Forces as part of Operation Exporter.
Unlike earlier colonial confrontations involving the French fleet in
North Africa and the strategic port of Dakar, Exporter was a protracted
military engagement. It lasted from 8 June to 14 July 1941. This made
it impossible for policy-makers to withhold news from the press until
its conclusion. The War Cabinet and Chiefs of Staff (COS) were aware
that public opinion was calling for decisive action to combat German
infiltration in the region. This affected how Exporter was planned and
publicised. After the public backlash that had followed the Dakar opera-
tions, success was essential to avoid further damaging British prestige.
136
Failure would also have wider regional repercussions than those suffered
at Dakar. Early official communiqués promised a swift victory; however,
sustained resistance from Vichy forces dispelled these predictions. At the
same time, British rhetoric had to counter Vichy and German accusations
of imperial expansion. Nazi propaganda depicted Hitler’s Germany as
the only nation that could be relied upon to grant independence to the
Levant. British participation, it argued, was motivated solely by the desire
to win a broader struggle for imperial supremacy in the Arab world.
The strength of nationalist demands in the Levant impacted British
and Free French rhetorical strategies in several ways. De Gaulle’s war-
time narrative had, up to this point, promised to liberate France and
the French Empire from Nazi domination. In the Levant, the Gaullist
administration was confronted with well-established nationalist demands
for the first time. This meant that de Gaulle, and de Gaulle’s choice for
Delegate General to the Levant, General Georges Catroux, had to estab-
lish the legitimacy of the Free French movement on a different basis.
They had to present themselves as liberators, but also as guarantors of
Levantine independence. The result was that Gaullist rhetoric alter-
nately celebrated France’s historic claims in the Levant and proclaimed
that Free France recognised the sovereignty and independence of the
two states.
De Gaulle’s policy towards the Levant was to establish an interim Free
French administration, which would retain office in wartime and later
preside over Syria and Lebanon’s transition to independence. Part of this
process would be to negotiate a series of preferential treaties preserving
France’s historic influence. Officially, the British supported this plan.
However, British officials soon discovered that their policies towards the
French Levant also resonated more widely. On the one hand, national-
ist groups in Syria and Lebanon placed Britain under pressure to ensure
that de Gaulle and Catroux’s promises of self-governance and indepen-
dence were carried out. Britain’s presence in the Levant was interpreted
as an alternative – and a potential escape – from French rule. On the
other hand, demands for independence in the Levant were also being
watched closely by Arab nationalists in Palestine, Iraq and Egypt many
of who had similar ambitions.3 As William Roger Louis has pointed out,
‘The issue of independence in the Levant became a test case of whether
or not the British would fulfil their wartime promises’.4 In response to
3 Eugene Rogan, The Arabs, A History (London: Penguin Books, 2012), 303.
4 Wm. Roger Louis, The British Empire in the Middle East 1945–51: Arab Nationalism, the
United States and Postwar Imperialism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984), 124.
these wider regional tensions, the Foreign Office chose to carve a middle
line. It refused to commit to a precise timeline or method regarding the
transition from French rule to formal independence. It chose instead to
mould Britain into the figure of arbiter extraordinaire. Casting Britain as
a neutral observer in the Levant, it was hoped, would allow it to distance
itself from controversial French policies.
But as Vichy’s colonial power waned with the loss of its toehold in
the Levant, Britain found itself with a new Middle Eastern imperial
rival in the shape of a fiercely independent Free French administration
in Beirut. The Middle East rapidly became the regional crucible in
which Anglo-Gaullist tension was most severe. Tensions were aggra-
vated by material imbalances – British and Imperial ground forces far
outnumbered Catroux’s resources. And under the direction of Gen-
eral Henry Maitland-Wilson, British forces were also more successful
in attracting the support of the local Syrian population. The British
desire to consolidate American backing, coupled with their continuing
distrust of the Free French, aggravated Anglo-Gaullist relations even
further.5
The Anglo-Free French occupation of the Levant brought to the fore
rhetorical battles, which, unique to this setting and previous operations,
attempted to mobilise the support of a local population already deeply
engaged in its own nationalist struggle. They did so by promising to
grant independence to Syria and Lebanon. However, these promises
were impacted by deeply rooted histories of Franco-British regional
rivalry and Britain’s own territorial interests. French forces would accuse
Britain of using Arab nationalism ‘as a pretext and means to oust us
from Syria’.6 And even if British political and military leaders were will-
ing to acquiesce to Free French desires for continued influence in the
Levant, the reality and strength of nationalist movements such as the
Syrian People’s Party (founded by nationalist leader Dr Abd al-Rahman
Shahbander in 1925) limited their ability to manoeuvre following the
invasion. If Britain was to continue to enjoy the regional benefits granted
it through preferential treaties with Iraq and Egypt, it had to maintain its
credibility throughout dealings with the Levant. This meant upholding
the rhetoric of independence, even if the Free French were reluctant to
turn this rhetoric into a reality.
5 Following Dakar operations, Roosevelt had requested that Churchill refrain from
sharing information concerning military operations with the French. Henri de Wailly,
Syrie 1941, La Guerre Occultée Vichystes contre Gaullistes (Paris: Perrin, 2006), 415.
6 Susan Pedersen, The Guardians: The League of Nations and the Crisis of Empire (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2015), 166.
7 The history of Syrian and Lebanese nationalism and of French and British policy in
the Middle East is developed in greater detail in Chapter 7.
8 James L. Gelvin, Divided Loyalties: Nationalism and Mass Politics in Syria at the Close
of Empire (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 9. Erez Manela also
highlights the significance of Wilsonian rhetoric as a tool wielded by anti-imperial
nationalists to make their own claims. Erez Manela, The Wilsonian Moment: Self-
Determination and the International Origins of Anticolonial Nationalism (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2007).
9 Martin Thomas, ‘French Intelligence-Gathering in the Syrian Mandate, 1920–40’,
Middle Eastern Studies 38, no. 1 (2002): 1. Martin Thomas, The French Empire between
the Wars: Imperialism, Politics and Society (Manchester: Manchester University Press,
2005), Chapter 7.
10 Martin Thomas, ‘French Intelligence-Gathering’, 1.
11 D. K. Fieldhouse, Western Imperialism in the Middle East: 1914–1958 (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2006), 245.
12 Jennifer M. Dueck, ‘The Middle East and North Africa in the Imperial and Post-
Colonial Historiography of France’, The Historical Journal 50, no. 4 (2007): 947.
13 Fieldhouse, Western Imperialism, 252.
14 Ibid., 256.
15 Ibid.
16 Ibid., 302.
17 Pedersen, The Guardians, 160.
At a strategic level, the War Cabinet agreed that having local sup-
port in the Levant and the broader Middle East region was paramount.
Ensuring regional tranquillity meant that vital sources of manpower
could be allocated more efficiently to engage with German or Italian
forces. However, British and Gaullist factions could not agree on how
to respond to nationalist demands in both Levant states. Neither Brit-
ain nor the Free French were strangers to these kinds of demands, and
they recognised the regional instability that could result from them. Dur-
ing the interwar years, anti-imperial sentiment in the Levant and other
Middle Eastern mandated territories like British Palestine was an almost
constant source of instability. These experiences, however, fostered two
different approaches to policy-making. The French remained reluctant
to relinquish influence, and there was a particular desire to preserve the
cultural institutions it had introduced. French links to Lebanon were
rooted in historical claims made by the Catholic Church to protect the
Levant’s Maronite Christian and other ethnic minority populations.
French Catholic schools and missions in Syria were a way to spread
French ‘civilisation’.24 These attachments were deeply cultural and
highly emotive. On the other hand, British priorities were to protect its
strategic and economic interests even if this meant relinquishing political
influence.25 British decision-makers wanted to cultivate a broad base of
regional support that would protect its interests. And the Foreign Office
feared that ‘… too close an identification with France’s anti-nationalist
and pro-Christian policy could seriously jeopardize Britain’s standing in
the Muslim world’.26 These contrasting approaches to Mandate gover-
nance fostered Franco-British tensions between the two world wars. And
they laid the groundwork for tensions to re-emerge in 1941.
When the war broke out in 1939, the strategic significance of the
Levant was never in question. Immediately following the French col-
lapse in June 1940, the COS emphasised the importance of maintaining
sympathy for the British cause in Syria and Lebanon. At this point, they
preferred to preserve the status quo rather than become embroiled in
costly military operations.27 On 10 July, the French High Commissioner
in Beirut, Gabriel Puaux, warned the Ministry of Foreign Affairs that
a British blockade could set off a Syrian and Lebanese revolt.28 French
assess whether a military victory in the region was achievable and estimate
how British operations in the Levant would impact British prestige in the
region and also at home. At the same time, British decision-makers had to
ensure that the Free French policy would complement rather than hinder
its own aims.
On the military side, Britain reacted quickly to the threat of German
infiltration in to Syria. Wavell began drafting operational plans on 23
May. But Wavell, and other officials in the British service ministries,
remained reluctant to collaborate militarily with de Gaulle and the Free
French more generally. ‘I do not trust discretion of French generally.
Though am sure de Gaulle himself entirely discreet’. [sic]38 Wavell was
unconvinced of Free French abilities to successfully plan and carry out
strategic operations. In a letter to Churchill, he wrote, ‘Previous experi-
ence has made me somewhat sceptical of information on Syria from Free
French sources and Free French plans sometimes take little account of
realities’.39 Wavell highlighted military factors, which he believed could
impact the immediate outcome of a full-scale invasion of the Levant
states. But his attitude also illustrated that a broader disdain for the Free
French could still permeate strategic decision-making. At this juncture,
Wavell was primarily concerned with drawing up plans for the opening
days of the invasion. In reality, Exporter spanned a much longer time-
frame. Unfolding over a period of weeks and months, it raised a number
of additional preoccupations, which were distinct from immediate mili-
tary or security concerns.
Any military operation in the Levant would have serious political
consequences, both for Britain and the Free French. The COS tried to
anticipate how the operations would be received in the Levant, across
the Middle East and at home in Britain. Working from their experiences
in previous operations, policy-makers recognised that Exporter had to
be successful on two levels. First, it had to achieve a military victory.
Second, it had to win the hearts and minds of different, and sometimes
disparate, constituencies of opinion. Churchill’s government had to con-
vince Syrian and Lebanese nationalist groups and wider Middle East
opinion that Britain’s role in the operations was driven by wartime expe-
diency and emphatically not by imperial ambition. One way to do this
was to position France, as represented by de Gaulle, as the legitimate
administrator of the Levant – still, in other words, the tutelary man-
date holder. This meant that British authorities had to convince local
interest groups that the operations were Free French in nature. They
were supported by British and Imperial forces but not led by them. This
tactic, in addition to being a façade, would also complicate Britain’s
position. Underwriting Free France’s status in the Levant made the
British guarantors of French promises of independence – another com-
mitment of the mandate holder. And this eventuality was already written
into a treaty (the agreement signed in December 1936).
Churchill’s seeming readiness to temporarily underwrite a veneer of
Free French power in the Levant disguised the preeminent concern of
British foreign policy: the conservation of remaining pro-British senti-
ment throughout the Arab world. Given the importance of upholding
British prestige in the Middle East, London could not allow a Gaullist
administration to simply replace the Vichy regime. Nationalist groups
would interpret this as a blatant betrayal of both British and Free French
promises of independence. Churchill in a 19 May note wrote regard-
ing the approach to be taken in Syria: ‘We must have an Arab policy’.40
The prime minister went on to suggest that if the Vichy French army in
Syria refused to join the Allies, Britain could claim that the mandate had
lapsed. This, he argued, would generate pro-British sentiment amongst
the Arabs, who would see British policy as a way to achieve indepen-
dence. ‘The French have forfeited all rights in Syria since they quitted
the League of Nations and we are entitled to argue that their Mandate
has lapsed. Furthermore, none of our promises to de Gaulle cover man-
dated territories’.41
Britain’s eagerness to shore up in own influence in the Middle East
impacted how its policies towards the Levant and the Free French there
were conceptualised. Churchill’s key intelligence advisor, Major Des-
mond Morton, confided on 30 March, ‘The Chiefs of Staff have told
my committee on more than one occasion that they would consider the
rallying of Syria to our side a matter of high importance …’42 Edward
Spears echoed this sentiment a few days later. On 10 April, in a note to
Churchill, Spears speculated that, due to skilful German propaganda,
local populations might have become substantially pro-German in
orientation. He also emphasised that it was crucial to construct an image
of Allied strength to encourage Syrians to join the Allies. This would,
he argued, have a considerable effect on the opinion of several groups
including the senior officers and men of the French fleet and would ‘tend
to bridle Vichy’s pro-German tendencies’.43
44 Home Intelligence Weekly Reports, 21–28 May 1941, INF 1/292, TNA.
45 Télégramme, Francelib, 5 April 1941, AG/3(1)/257, Archives Nationales (henceforth
AN).
46 De Gaulle to Haute Commissaire Brazzaville, 5 April 1941, AG/3(1)/257, AN.
47 Home Intelligence Weekly Reports, 21–28 May 1941, INF 1/292, TNA.
48 ‘Aide Memoire by Vice Chiefs of Staff’, 6 June 1941, CAB 80/57/58, TNA.
49 Ibid. Cipher Telegram, War Office to C. in C. Middle East, 6 June 1941, WO
106/3073, TNA.
rhetoric of the articles, a tactic, it was argued, which could goad the
British government into taking preventative measures.54 Similarly, press
bulletins in late May concluded that the British were treating the Levant
as an enemy-occupied territory.55 Alarmed by these rhetorical escalations,
Vichy tried to counter British claims and prove that any German inter-
ference in the region had long since ended. After British radio broad-
casts asserted that Syria was entirely under German domination, Darlan
instructed the French embassies in Washington and Madrid to inform
their British counterparts that following Vichy requests, Germany had
removed all war material from Syria.56 Vichy even tried to counter British
rhetoric with its own imperial bluster. A French Information Office state-
ment released in late May argued that the time had come for France to
‘recover especially in Africa the whole of her Empire’.57
In the final days of May, the focus of Britain’s Levant policy shifted to
legal issues over the Mandate and the timeline for Syrian and Lebanese
independence. These questions rapidly coalesced into sharper sources
of friction between the British and Free French leadership. On 24 May,
Catroux publicly backed British proclamations endorsing the early rec-
ognition of Levant state independence. De Gaulle resented this policy,
not least because he did not believe Churchill’s repeated claims that
the British had no interest in usurping the French in the Levant.58 His
worries were not entirely ungrounded. There was a general consensus
throughout the British government that it was not worth jeopardising
British military interests in order to placate French sentiments. A 14
May cypher from the War Office had stated this position clearly: ‘You
are certainly free to act against German aircraft in Syria and on French
aerodromes irrespective of possible effects of such action on relations
with Vichy and Free French’.59 Spears was also becoming suspicious
of de Gaulle’s reticence. He feared the General would not give proper
assurances of independence to Syria and that this would cause tension
in the region and embarrassment to Britain. ‘The Arab question … as
two distinct elements of the local population: French colonials and the
more pro-French Christian minorities in Lebanon. To do so, he sug-
gested a number of recognisable approaches. Spears believed that Brit-
ish statements should be ‘careful to dissociate French people from their
Government’. They should make it clear that they had been betrayed
by their leaders, thereby arousing a ‘sense of honour’.71 He even sug-
gested quoting past French heroes in order to stress Vichy’s inherent
un-Frenchness. Spears believed that Napoleon’s adage ‘the man who
obeys the orders of a captive General is a traitor’ would be particularly
effective.72 The following day Wavell, in line with Spears, recommended
that a British propaganda campaign should be mounted with the goal of
discrediting Vichy and supporting the Free French.73 This was only the
beginning of British and Free French efforts to consolidate their respec-
tive influence within the Levant and throughout the Arab world.
Further complicating matters, explanations of Exporter also had to
consider opinion outside the Middle East. British rhetoric had to respond
to criticism at home, which critiqued the sluggishness of the operations
and their inability to secure a rapid victory against Vichy troops. It also
had to contend with Vichy rhetoric, which continued to rehash argu-
ments based on its legal status, national sovereignty and historic rights
in the Levant. Imperial conflict in the Levant thus forced Britain and
the Free French to wage rhetorical battle on a number of fronts. Most
importantly, placing independence at the centre of this rhetoric opened
a gap between British and Free French understandings of the conflict.
In particular, it highlighted the growing tension between British and
Free French definitions of Levantine independence and visions of their
respective imperial influence after the conflict.
In the lead up to Exporter, there was extensive speculation about
German infiltration in the Levant across the British press. After 8 June,
the press continued to support action to quash this threat. In official
quarters, efforts were made (as at Dakar) to downplay Vichy resistance
and keep the spirit of Franco-British alliance alive. War Office instruc-
tions stressed that press releases should ‘refer to French opposition as
Vichy troops or Vichy planes not (repeat not) as enemy’.74 However,
high levels of resistance from Vichy troops in the Levant made it dif-
ficult to depict their armed forces as a victim of German domination.
78 Ibid.
79 Special Correspondent, ‘Entry at Dawn’, The Times, 10 June 1941, 4.
80 ‘War Communiqué’, 16 June 1941, WO 216/10, TNA.
81 C. in C. Middle East to War Office, 16 July 1941, GB165-0269 Box 1 File 7, MECA.
82 Home Intelligence Reports, 18–25 June 1941, INF 1/292, TNA.
83 Our Correspondent, ‘Divided Allegiance in Syria’, The Times, 17 June 1941, 4.
84 Telegram, Churchill to Wavell, 16 June 1941, WO 216/10, TNA.
85 Cypher, Blamey to Churchill, 17 June 1941, PREM 3/422/6, TNA.
86 ‘The Advance into Syria’, The Times, 11 June 1941, 5.
99 Broadcasts in French for the French Listener, 9–15 June 1941, ABMS 1/2/2, CCAC.
100 ‘Le Maréchal Pétain aux Français du Levant’, L’Echo d’Alger, 9 June 1941, 1. ‘What
Vichy Says’, The Guardian, 9 June 1941, 6. ‘L’Attaque contre La Syrie et la Défense
de Notre Empire’, Le Figaro, 9 June 1941, 2.
101 Guide: Les Thèmes de Propagande, no date, F/41/266, AN.
102 Broadcasts in French for the French Listener, 30 June–6 July 1941, ABMS 1/2/3,
CCAC.
103 James Turner Johnson, Ethics and the Use of Force: Just War in Historical Perspective
(Surrey, England: Ashgate, 2011), 2.
104 The Ambassador in France (Leahy) to the Secretary of State, 16 July 1941, Document
835, FRUS.
105 Broadcasts in French for the French Listener, 2–8 June 1941, ABMS 1/2/2, CCAC.
106 Parr to Eden, 26 July 1941, FO 432/7, TNA.
107 Broadcasts in French for the French Listener, 14–20 July 1941, ABMS 1/2/3, CCAC.
108 Ibid.
109 Diplomatic Correspondent, ‘Vichy Protest to Britain’, The Times, 11 June 1941, 3.
110 Home Intelligence Weekly Reports, 25 June–2 July 1941, INF 1/292, TNA.
111 Ibid.
112 Spears to Spears Mission Brazzaville, 8 July 1941, GB165-0269 Box 1A, MECA.
113 Spears to Foreign Office, 1 June 1941, GB165-0269 Box 1A, MECA.
114 Cypher, C. in C. Middle East to War Office, 4 July 1941, WO 216/10, TNA.
115 Cypher, Foreign Secretary to Lyttelton, 3 July 1941, PREM 3/422/6, TNA.
116 Cypher, C. in C. Middle East to War Office, 2 July 1941, PREM 3/422/6, TNA.
assurances, both privately and in the Commons, were never carried fur-
ther than vague promises. Nowhere in the British government was the
preservation of French influence a priority over Britain’s own regional
interests. Even Spears, the original champion of the Free French move-
ment, was clear on this matter. Writing to Consul-General Robert Parr
at the Spears Mission in Brazzaville, he stated decisively, ‘No French
officer however high in rank must ever be allowed to run down British
authorities and if any should forget, as some apparently do, that we are
the predominant partner in the Alliance, they must be gently reminded
of this fact. No French soldier would have a rifle in his hand or a franc in
his pocket were it not for us’.123
British concerns surrounding the stability of the Arab region were evi-
dent throughout the operation. Most importantly, they impacted how
Wavell explained the invasions to local audiences in the Middle East.
He soon abandoned his initial attempts to legitimise the operation by
arguing that troops were meeting little or no resistance from Vichy. He
decided these depictions were no longer credible and were in fact creat-
ing suspicions of British duplicity amongst those observing the course
of the invasion in Palestine and Egypt.124 He informed the War Office
‘We are now taking line that opposition was in fact thin and sporadic at
first but that in the nature of things fighting once started does spread
and consequently opposition is now more general and fighting has been
severe in places’.125 Unlike previous operations, the War and Foreign
Offices believed that the invasion and occupation of the Levant would
only be successful if they could manage ‘Arab opinion’. By this they
meant wider local opinion in the Levant but also in the broader Middle
East. This meant managing the expectations of local nationalist leaders
but also avoiding broader popular unrest. Plans to manage local opin-
ion were integrated into the operational plans constructed by the War
and Foreign Offices. Wavell was responsible for issuing ‘proclamations’
to local press agencies in Cairo and Jerusalem immediately following
the launch of Exporter while the Foreign Office managed the invasion-
related propaganda in India and Turkey.126
Wavell’s early reports stressed that ‘the Arabs’ seemed generally
pleased at the British arrival. But tensions between the British and
123 Spears to Spears Mission, Brazzaville, 23 July 1941, GB165-0269, Box 1A MECA.
124 Secret Cipher Telegram, C in C Middle East to War Office, 19 June 1941, WO 193/969,
TNA.
125 Secret Cipher Telegram, C. in C. Middle East to War Office, June 1941, WO 193/959,
TNA.
126 Secret Cipher Telegram, C. in C. Middle East to War Office, 7 June 1941, WO 106/3073,
TNA.
127 Secret Cipher Telegram, C. in C. Middle East to War Office, 10 June 1941, WO
106/3073, TNA.
128 Secret Cipher Telegram, War Office to C. in C. Middle East, 1 July 1941, WO
106/3073, TNA.
129 Charles de Gaulle, War Memoirs. Volume One: The Call to Honour 1940–1942, trans.
Jonathan Griffin (London: Collins, 1955), 194.
130 Note, Churchill to Lyttelton, 12 July 1941, WO 216/10, TNA.
131 War Cabinet, Committee on Foreign (Allied) Resistance (Syria), 18 July 1941,
GB165-0269, Box 1 File 4, MECA.
132 Khoury, Syria and the French Mandate, 583.
133 Gelvin, Divided Loyalties, 7.
141 Special Correspondent, ‘The Fighting in Syria: Vichy Prisoners Confused about the
Issues’, The Guardian, 12 July 1941, 4.
142 Special Correspondent, ‘French Dupes in Syria’, The Times, 11 July 1941, 3.
143 Special Correspondent, ‘Armistice in Syria’, The Times, 14 July 1941, 4.
144 ‘Extracts from Lyttelton-de Gaulle Agreement’, 25 July 1941, PREM 3/423/4, TNA.
‘Projet d’accord Franco Britannique au Levant’, 25 July 1941, 18GMII/43, MAE.
145 Cypher Telegram, Churchill to Lyttelton, July 1941, PREM 3/422/6, TNA.
146 War Office to C. in C. Middle East, 15 July 1941, GB165-0269 Box 1A, MECA. C.
in C. Middle East to War Office, 15 July 1941, GB165-0269 Box 1A, MECA.
147 Draft Message, from Lt. Col D.D.I.P, 17 July 1941, WO 106/5707, TNA.
148 Hansard HC Deb vol. 373 col. 464 (15 July 1941) http://hansard.millbanksystems
.com/commons/1941/jul/15/war-situation.
149 ‘Mémoire concernant l’administration des états de Syrie et du Liban’, July 1941,
AG/3(1)/202, AN.
150 Télégramme Chiffre, au de Gaulle, Beyrouth, 2 August 1941, AG/3(1)/204, AN.
151 Télégramme, de Gaulle au Catroux, 20 July 1941, AG/3(1)/202, AN.
152 De Wailly, Syrie 1941, 415.
153 ‘Record of a Meeting between the Prime Minister and General de Gaulle’, 12
September 1941, PREM 3/422/3, TNA.
Conclusion
In October, Churchill appointed Spears as Minister of State, Beirut.
The role that he eventually played in pushing for independence would
be the source of untold Anglo-Free French friction.162 Even before his
appointment, Lyttelton had requested to Catroux that Spears be pres-
ent at treaty negotiations between France/Syria and France/Lebanon.
De Gaulle was fundamentally opposed to this idea. He argued that if
this request was in line with the general sentiment of the British govern-
ment, then it was evidently a political line that was ‘irreconcilable with
the sovereign rights of France’.163 After Exporter, the ultimate fate of the
Levant states became a vital issue in British foreign policy and remained
so into the post-war period. The War Cabinet confirmed its attitude at a
meeting on 5 September: ‘No action should be taken which would indi-
cate that Syria was necessarily to remain under Free French control’.164
After successfully ousting General Dentz and the Vichy administration
from Syria, the British government as a whole was forced to confront a
situation in which competing French, Syrian, Lebanese and Arab ideas
of nationalism were of primary importance. By publicly supporting a
policy of independence, Britain hoped to strengthen its own reputation
throughout the Middle East and particularly in Palestine. The following
chapters will build upon these early efforts, identifying how changes in
the broader wartime context, including the entry of the United States
into the war and the growing likelihood of Allied victory, configured the
contours of British Middle Eastern strategy. In particular, this approach
will consider how publicly espoused policy actually limited material
responses to the French arrest of the Lebanese Parliament in 1943 and
the bombardment of Damascus in 1945.
Amongst the British public, the Exporter operations were initially crit-
icised for progressing too slowly, an outcome that was attributed to mis-
placed sympathy for Vichy troops. On the other hand, from the beginning,
British officials believed that the operation would be more successful if it
was represented as a Free French initiative. British policy-makers in the
Cabinet and Foreign Office hoped that this approach would increase the
legitimacy of the operation and forestall Vichy and Axis propaganda. But
stiff opposition from Vichy troops and the general unpopularity of the
Free French amongst the local population led to further complications.
This was especially evident in the extent to which British rhetoric tried to
shore up both the Anglo-Free French and the Anglo-Arab relationships.
The British could not simultaneously support Gaullist policy, which per-
sisted in maintaining France’s ‘rightful’ place in the Levant and polish its
image amongst Arab nationalists. Unless, that is, the latter were willing
to conclude a treaty in line with French demands. But both British and
Free French officials recognised that images of Franco-British alliance
were essential to maintaining the credibility of their narratives of Allied
victory and French liberation. Visible cracks in the partnership would
make it difficult to combat Vichy’s accusations of British perfidy and the
historic Franco-British rivalry.
From a strategic point of view, the ongoing conflict and the pressing
need to reallocate scarce men and resources meant that unrest in either
the Levant or the broader Middle East was highly undesirable. When
push came to shove, the British would choose regional security and long-
term prestige over placating Free French desires for continued influence.
The British were careful to construct a rhetoric that was based around
promises of independence, thereby assuring themselves of local support.
The following weeks and months would see these claims tested by de
Gaulle’s reluctance to give up the territory without concluding the pref-
erential treaty he was demanding. Exporter established the groundwork
for a shift from an Anglo-Vichy to an Anglo-Gaullist conflict based on a
by now familiar rhetoric of sovereignty and imperial rights.
1 See, for instance, Arthur Layton Funk, The Politics of Torch: The Allied Landings and the
Algiers Putsch 1942 (Lawrence, Kansas: The University Press of Kansas, 1974). Keith
Sainsbury, The North African Landings 1942: A Strategic Decision (London: Davis-
Poynter, 1976). Peter Mangold, Britain and the Defeated French: From Occupation to
Liberation, 1940–1944 (London: I. B. Tauris, 2012), Chapter 11.
172
and white settlers in Algeria and manage the demands of the Soviet
Union. Having entered the conflict in June 1941 following invasion by
German troops, the Soviets had been pressuring the Allies to open a sec-
ond front. This would lift some of the burden from beleaguered Soviet
troops. Roosevelt used rhetoric to portray Torch as an effective second
front even though it fell far short of this level of commitment. Neither
Churchill, Roosevelt, nor the CCS believed that Torch met Soviet Leader
Joseph Stalin’s demands. Rhetoric, then, was used as a means to confirm
wartime ideals. It was also a way to publicly declare that Torch fulfilled
Anglo-American commitments to their Soviet allies. Orchestrating Allied
justifications for carrying out the Torch invasions involved a complex
array of letters, statements, leaflets and broadcasts. Each communication
tried to anticipate – and thus to pre-empt – varying levels of dissent from
numerous interested parties.
The commanders of the Anglo-American task force believed that it
was of primary importance that North Africa be captured with a mini-
mum of resistance from Vichy forces. The implications of this objec-
tive were far reaching in moulding the nature of the operation itself,
strategically and rhetorically. In particular, this goal necessitated that
Torch’s senior American commanders retained great flexibility in their
dealings with the Vichy officials in situ. After the landings, Roosevelt
played a central role in maintaining Admiral François Darlan as head
of government in French North Africa. The so-called ‘Darlan deal’ was
condemned by British public and parliamentary opinion. In sharp con-
trast to the willingness evident amongst the American press and public
to accept Darlan’s assistance as a matter of military necessity, the British
response betrayed a deeply personal connection to the moral identity of
the war. British decision-makers found themselves in the position of hav-
ing to justify a policy that contradicted its earlier narratives of a just and
moral war. Ministry of Information (MOI) Home Intelligence Reports
indicated that the criticism in the British mass media of the Darlan affair
derived from moral qualms rather than strategic doubts about the wis-
dom of the North African landings. Public valuations of military prog-
ress, or indeed victory, were, as in previous operations, being measured
against certain ethical standards. The Joint Planning Staff (JPS) knew
this, and its members wielded discrete rhetorical strategies to try to rec-
oncile competing military and political agendas.
The JPS recognised that the decision to work with Darlan needed to
be justified and, in some measure, played down. Responding to harsh
criticism at home, official British rhetoric tried to distance British policy
from any deals made with Darlan by shifting the focus to the American
leadership. Churchill attempted to soften the policy by refusing outright
to discuss the deal on the floor of the House of Commons. Both strata-
gems pointed to an underlying acknowledgement that the agreements
made were perhaps neither as temporary nor as contingent as public and
parliamentary sentiment would have liked. Explicit promises to remove
Darlan from his role as head of the Algiers government could not be
made in good faith. The decision to work with Darlan also had a wider
impact. It damaged the legitimacy of the pro-Allied resistance move-
ments sponsored by the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) and
the American Office of Strategic Services (OSS).2 The arguments that
arose around the Darlan deal highlighted the tensions between policies
based on military expediency and policies perceived as moral compro-
mise. From the inception of Torch, until Darlan’s assassination on 24
December 1942, the Allies found themselves trying to align the opera-
tions with the expectations of diverse interest groups – at home, in the
empire and within the alliance itself.
2 Philip Bell, ‘British Public Opinion and the Darlan Deal: November–December
1942’, Journal of the British Institute in Paris, no. 7 (1989): 71–79. T. C. Wales, ‘The
“Massingham” Mission and the Secret “Special Relationship”: Cooperation and
Rivalry between the Anglo-American Clandestine Services in French North Africa,
November 1942–May 1943’, Intelligence and National Security 20, no. 1 (2005): 44–71.
3 Desmond Dinan, The Politics of Persuasion: British Policy and French African Neutrality,
1940–1942 (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1988), 241.
and service ministries insisted that Free French involvement would jeop-
ardise the secrecy of the operation and risk a second Dakar.4 Governed
by ardent Pétainist Paul Annet, Madagascar was strategically important.
If the Vichy government allowed Japanese forces to use the island as an
operational base, this would jeopardise the security of the Indian Ocean
and hamper communications between Britain, South Africa and the
Australian dominions.
Operation Ironclad commenced on 5 May 1942. The British gained
complete control of the island six months later, with a final armistice
signed on 6 November. By this time, planning for the North African
invasions was nearly complete. Although the British government had
announced on 14 May that Free France would play a role in political
considerations in Madagascar, the timing of Free French involvement
remained unclear, much to de Gaulle’s anger.5 British reluctance to
hand over the reins to de Gaulle in Madagascar reflected the continued
unpopularity of the Free French across the island, ongoing suspicions
of Free French incompetence amongst the Chiefs of Staff (COS) and
the growing influence of American authorities, many of whom remained
sceptical of if not hostile towards de Gaulle’s movement.
Planning for Operation Torch thus began in the midst of both mili-
tary setbacks and shifting interallied relationships. The British war effort
faced criticism at home. In July, Churchill had undergone a parliamen-
tary vote of no confidence, although he passed it easily. The Anglo-
Gaullist relationship was strained as a result of disagreements over Free
France’s role in the Middle East and its exclusion from the Madagascar
operations. And for the first time, British decision-makers were under
pressure from their relatively new Soviet and American partners.
The Anglo-Soviet relationship was never an easy one. Britain’s failure
to conclude an agreement with Stalin prior to the outbreak of war, the
later conclusion of the Molotov–Ribbentrop pact and core ideological
and political differences meant that both parties continued to harbour
deep suspicions over the other’s wartime intentions. Although British
public opinion favoured close cooperation with the Soviet Union, British
policy largely settled on a more arms-length approach. Foreign Secretary
Anthony Eden met Stalin for the first time on 16 December 1941. The
meeting was tense throughout because Eden refused to agree to recog-
nise Stalin’s territorial demands. Stalin also criticised Britain for not pro-
viding sufficient material support and for leaving Soviet troops to draw
the bulk of German firepower. After significant Soviet and media pres-
sure, on 5 December 1941, Britain declared war on Finland, Romania
and Hungary. This declaration was a symbolic rather than an immediate
material commitment to Soviet demands for a second front. On 26 May
1942, an Anglo-Soviet treaty was signed. It provided for mutual help
and assistance during and after the war and prohibited either side from
concluding a separate peace. During his visit to Moscow that August,
Churchill faced unrelenting pressure from Stalin for the opening of a sec-
ond front. While the British premier precluded a risky landing in France,
he came away from the Russian capital convinced that action in 1942
was crucial in order to reassure the Soviets. Roosevelt agreed.6
Anglo-American negotiations at the Washington-based Arcadia Con-
ference in December 1941 had already illustrated this shared desire to
conclude a successful offensive action before the end of 1942. A second
front would remove pressure from the Russians fighting in Stalingrad
while also satisfying growing public demands, particularly in the United
States, for a grand offensive gesture. However, Anglo-American rela-
tions had their own share of challenges. Early in 1942, Churchill and
Roosevelt clashed over the future of India. Roosevelt also had his own
ideas about post-war power structures. He did not view France as a great
power, and this belief would place Britain in the difficult position of bal-
ancing between American power and French demands and expectations.
Churchill was an early advocate of launching an Allied operation in
French North Africa. Its proximity to Libya and Egypt made it strate-
gically important. And the French Delegate General of North Africa,
Maxime Weygand, was rumoured to be sympathetic to the Allies.7 How-
ever, the American military establishment under Secretary of War Henry
Stimson initially opposed this policy. American Chief of Staff Gen-
eral George Marshall submitted American proposals for a small-scale
cross-channel attack in 1942 (Operation Sledgehammer), followed by a
large-scale invasion of Western Europe in 1943 (Operation Round-up).
However, his British counterpart, Chief of the Imperial General Staff,
Sir Alan Brooke was hesitant, as was Churchill. Scholars have described
these negotiations as the last time that Britain was able to successfully
challenge American plans.8 In reality, Roosevelt’s personal preference
for the North African operation also encouraged the Allies along this
course of action. Churchill also attributed Head of the British Military
6 David Reynolds, In Command of History: Churchill Fighting and Writing the Second
World War (London: Allen Lane, 2004), 316.
7 Weygand succeeded Admiral Jean-Marie Abrial in this post on 17 July 1941.
8 Sainsbury, North African Landings, 9. Dinan, Persuasion, 240.
9 Ibid., 247.
10 Captain S. W. Roskill, The War at Sea 1939–1945, Vol. 3, The Period of Balance
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationary Office, 1956), 312.
11 Andrew Cunningham, A Sailor’s Odyssey (London: Hutchinson, 1951), 478.
12 Chantal Metzger, Le Maghreb dans la Guerre 1939–1945 (Malakoff: Armand Colin,
2018), 151.
13 Renamed the Fighting French in July 1942. The term Free French will continue to be
used for the sake of clarity and consistency.
18 JPS report, ‘Joint Political and Economic Action with U.S. Government’, 16 August
1942, FO 371/32133, TNA.
19 Churchill to Strang, 21 August 1942, FO 371/32133, TNA.
20 Alexander Cadogan, Churchill’s permanent undersecretary for Foreign Affairs wrote
privately that he thought Roosevelt’s insistence that de Gaulle be told nothing until
after the first landings was silly. David Dilks, ed., The Diaries of Sir Alexander Cadogan
1938–1945 (London: Cassell, 1971), 489.
21 Churchill to Roosevelt, C-185, 5 November 1942, Kimball, Alliance Emerging, 660.
22 Thomas, ‘Imperial Backwater’, 1073.
23 Roosevelt to Churchill, 5 November 1942, PREM 3/349/20A, TNA.
24 François Kersaudy, Churchill and De Gaulle (London: Fontana Press, 1990), 217–218.
25 Home Intelligence Weekly Report No. 107, 22 October 1942, INF 1/292, TNA.
26 Ibid.
occupation. Intervention was devised ‘to secure this area for France at
the request of patriotic Frenchmen who have called upon their friends
for assistance’.31 Early communiqués stressed that the invasions were
primarily American in nature. The British played a supporting role in
the air and through naval action. No mention would be made of the
involvement of British ground troops. This decision was a product of
the belief that Anglophobic sentiment within North Africa could have a
significantly adverse impact upon the course of the operation.
Two documents were to be released immediately after the operation
commenced. The first was an initial military communiqué and the sec-
ond a broadcast message to the French people recorded in French by
Roosevelt. The Foreign Office did not think much of Roosevelt’s record-
ing, which they described as, at most, intelligible. In it, Roosevelt argued
predictably that the operations had become necessary in order to deal
with the threat of Axis incursion.32 Roosevelt’s broadcast was to be issued
simultaneously with the military communiqué and was addressed to both
metropolitan France and French North Africa. The Foreign Office felt
that it was crucial not to address the local population of French North
Africa in a separate address. Historic anti-imperial American rhetoric
might lead Vichy to suspect, or at least accuse, America of using the
invasions to foster local independence movements.33 The Foreign Office
requested a number of edits to the American documents. These requests
demonstrated that British decision-makers were willing to prioritise the
American complexion of the operation at its inception. But they insisted
upon maintaining and receiving credit for the landings as a joint endeav-
our after British troops had also established themselves on the ground.
Roosevelt’s initial broadcast to the French people made no reference to
British forces and was given only in the name of the United States. Fol-
lowing Foreign Office requests, a line was modified to refer to the United
Nations. This would make it easier for the British to integrate their role
in later communiqués.34 The revised address read: ‘The Americans, with
the help of the United Nations, are doing all that they can to ensure
a sound future, as well as the restitution of ideals, of liberties and of
democracy to all those who have lived under the Tricolour’.35
36 Joint American and British declaration to French people, 4 November 1942, PREM
3/437/1, TNA.
37 Marshall to Eisenhower, 13 October 1942, FO 371/32135, TNA.
38 ‘Suggested Lines of Propaganda for O.W.I.’, 25 September 1942, FO 371/32134,
TNA.
39 Ibid.
40 Draft Statement, ‘British Statement to be issued in support of U.S. broadcast’,
October 1942, FO 371/32135, TNA.
The first page featured a black and white image of the Statue of Liberty,
over which flew in vibrant colour French and American flags. A full-
page photograph of Les Invalides depicted French and American troops
on 4 July 1917 commemorating Franco-American cooperation during
the American Revolutionary War. The photo was titled ‘Une fraternité
ancienne nous unit’ and its caption quoted Lafayette’s address to the
American Congress in 1824.45 The emphasis throughout was on Ameri-
can troops and American arms. Earlier, Churchill had proposed drop-
ping leaflets in North Africa that would explain the role of British ground
forces. Roosevelt refused this request. Churchill’s reluctant acquiescence
in the matter only highlighted American dominance in determining the
rhetoric of the Torch operations.46 The materials that were distributed
during Torch attempted to create an image of Franco-American coop-
eration and partnership where British attempts had failed. At the same
time, the British and American press were instructed to avoid drawing
attention to resistance offered by Vichy troops and to ‘give the impres-
sion that our forces landed as allies’.47
During the final preparations for the landings, Roosevelt shared a press
release with Churchill. Although its intended audience was the Ameri-
can public, this and other releases found their way into the British press.
This communiqué set the tone for overall interpretations of the inva-
sions. It described the landings as the key turning point in the war and
attributed the bulk of the credit to the Americans, despite referencing for
the first time impending British ground reinforcement.48 The statement
also returned to the question of the second front. British ambassador in
Moscow, Archibald Clark Kerr, wrote to the Foreign Office as early as
17 October with his own advice for Torch. ‘When it comes to its psy-
chological effect upon the Russian people, which we must naturally wish
to be important and stimulating, [it] will depend largely, if not entirely,
upon the way in which the operation is presented to them’.49 However,
early Political Warfare Executive analyses concluded that portrayals of
Torch as a second front would not be credible. Rather, the operations
should be presented as a step towards a second front.50
Even the original press directive issued by the Foreign Office was
clear that the invasions should not be referred to as a second front.
However, these instructions were altered after Roosevelt submitted his
press release.51 In late October, Roosevelt expressed to Churchill his
desire to be able to make the argument to Stalin that Torch satisfied
Allied obligations towards the Soviet Union.52 The American press
release blatantly characterised the invasions as providing ‘effective Sec-
ond Front assistance to our heroic Allies in Russia’.53 This outcome
had benefits for Britain as well. A confident statement could dampen
Soviet anger over Britain’s refusals to launch an immediate attack on
the German rear.54 Churchill wrote to Eden and Permanent Undersec-
retary for Foreign Affairs Alexander Cadogan that he believed describ-
ing Torch as a second front would get them out of a tight spot with
their Eastern allies.55 The conscious decision to portray the North
African operations as a fulfilment of Soviet demands illustrated the
importance of presentation in foreign policy and of putting pressure on
allies through rhetoric. Torch was the first major joint Anglo-American
operation. More importantly, it was the first time that the British ceded
so much operational and rhetorical initiative to its new ally. However,
operational commanders Eisenhower and Cunningham soon found
themselves reacting to a situation on the ground that was vastly dif-
ferent from what they had anticipated. This would force the Allies to
justify highly controversial and unforeseen decisions.
58 Dwight D. Eisenhower, Crusade in Europe (New York: Doubleday and Company, Inc.,
1952), 103. Metzger, Le Maghreb dans la Guerre, 163.
59 Governor General of Tunisia, Jean-Pierre Estava was strongly in favour of the Pétain
government. German troops would eventually occupy Tunisia between November
and May 1943. For a history of this occupation, see Metzger, Le Maghreb dans la
Guerre, Part 3, Chapter 2.
60 Cunningham, Sailor’s Odyssey, 477.
61 Roskill, Period of Balance, 322.
62 Eisenhower, Crusade in Europe, 110.
63 Julian Jackson, France the Dark Years, 1940–1944 (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2001), 222.
64 Ibid., 105.
73 ‘Rapid U.S. Advance in North Africa’, The Times, 9 November 1942, 4.; ‘Americans
Advancing Rapidly’, The Guardian, 9 November 1942, 5.
74 Home Intelligence Weekly Report, 12 November 1942, INF 1/292, TNA.
75 Ibid.
76 Home Intelligence Weekly Report, 19 November 1942, INF 1/292, TNA.
77 Diplomatic Correspondent, ‘Allies Speak to France’, The Times, 9 November 1942, 4.
78 ‘U.S. Request for Passage through Tunisia’, The Guardian, 10 November 1942, 5.
‘Stop Press News: General Giraud’, The Guardian, 10 November 1942, 6.
79 Roskill, Period of Balance, 325.
80 ‘Torch and the S.O.E. Signals Stations at Gibraltar’, 11 November 1942, HS 7/68,
TNA. Communiqué Vichy, 11 November 1942, 9GMII/273, MAE.
power building tool to situate his movement on the moral high ground.
He stressed that should Churchill choose to publicly take steps to move
away from Darlan, all of world public opinion would stand behind him.97
In the French metropole, the press continued to clarify the conse-
quences of ‘l’agression anglo-américaine’.98 By 16 November, the
French press was reporting that Darlan was contravening Pétain’s
repeated orders to resist the invasion. Darlan was criticised for claim-
ing to act in the name of the French head of state.99 Le Temps published
Pétain’s 14 November message to Darlan, which ordered him to defend
North Africa against ‘l’agression américaine’ and not to act against Axis
forces.100 Giraud was also accused of betraying Pétain.101 This portrayal
was in sharp contrast to the Algiers press, which was now writing from
a pro-Allied perspective. On 17 November, L’Echo d’Alger published a
large photo of Giraud under the caption, ‘Un Grand Soldat’.102 While
the North African press moved towards the Allied camp, in the metro-
pole, Pétain had just ceded his administrative powers to Laval. Under
Act 12, Laval was now able to enact laws under his own signature.
Meanwhile, difficult questions over the present deal with Darlan
began to emerge with more insistence, particularly in British diplomatic
circles. Minutes submitted by Foreign Office Official and head of the
Reconstruction Department Gladwyn Jebb argued that while military
expediency may lend credibility to the agreements, the moral aspect of
the decision, ‘perhaps in the long run is even more important’.103 One
historian has argued that the agreements with Darlan left Allied clan-
destine groups SOE and OSS facing a ‘moral hazard’. The agreements
jeopardised their validity in the eyes of other European resistance move-
ments.104 De Gaulle also warned Eden that the effects of the agreements
had been disastrous amongst the population of the whole of metropolitan
France.105 It was impossible to isolate cooperation with Darlan from the
well-established and essentially moral narratives of the Allied war effort.
106 Churchill to Roosevelt, C-193, 17 November 1942, Warren F. Kimball, ed., Churchill
and Roosevelt the Complete Correspondence, vol. 2, Alliance Forged (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1984), 7.
107 Roosevelt to Churchill, R-214, 17 November 1942, Kimball, Alliance Forged, 8.
108 Our Correspondent, ‘Local Status of Darlan’, The Times, 18 November 1942, 4.
109 Our Correspondent, ‘Mr. Welles on the Final Conquest’, The Times, 19 November
1942, 3.
110 ‘The Darlan Mystery’, The Guardian, 18 November 1942, 4.
111 Minutes, W. Strang citing 21 November letter from Darlan to Clark, 26 November
1942, FO 371/32145, TNA.
call for Darlan’s retention for a ‘fairly long period’ and warned that any
‘impression[s] to the contrary should not be publicly created’.112
In Churchill’s private communications with Roosevelt, he repeatedly
emphasised the need to alleviate criticisms that painted Allied actions
as immoral. On the Allied side, the conflict with Germany had always
been described as a noble struggle against tyranny and darkness. Allow-
ing Darlan into the Allied camp was a sharp departure from this stance
and risked jeopardising Churchill’s credibility. Churchill entreated with
Roosevelt, ‘A permanent arrangement with Darlan or the formation
of a Darlan government in French North Africa would not be under-
stood by the great masses of ordinary people whose simply loyalties are
our strength’.113 Churchill consistently portrayed the British and Allied
struggle using a straightforward framework of good versus evil. Depict-
ing the war in this way, however, created quite complex expectations in
regard to how it should be fought. These expectations were frequently
expressed using language that was deeply emotive and moral. At the
same time that the Darlan affair was developing, a series of related events
clarified why Darlan would never be accepted as a legitimate ally.
Alongside reports of Darlan’s rising star in North Africa, the British
press was printing images of the commander of the British Eighth Army,
General Bernard Montgomery, entertaining German General Wilhelm
von Thoma. Von Thoma, who was responsible for the 1937 Guernica
massacre, had been captured outside of El Alamein on 4 November.
Home Intelligence Reports concluded that the British public was dis-
gusted by what appeared to be a friendly relationship. Montgomery was
treating von Thoma ‘as if he were the captain of an opposing cricket
team’, rather than an enemy combatant. There was a strong sense that
it was not only desirable but also right to ‘punish’ those who had broken
the moral code. This idea of acceptable retribution was also evident in
repeated calls for Britain to launch a series of punitive bombing raids
on Italy. ‘The Italians supported Mussolini, just as the Germans sup-
ported Hitler, and the only thing to do with them is to hit them hard
and tell them there is more to come’.114 Criticisms of the von Thoma
affair and calls for a harsher Italian policy were consistent with previ-
ous reactions to Franco-British clashes and to the ongoing Darlan affair.
They reflected a moral code that made war a deeply personal endeav-
our, in which punishment and retribution were expected and necessary.
In 1940, the British public had celebrated the bombardments at Mers
115 Commentary by Ed Murrow from London, C.B.S. Network in English for U.S.A.,
25 November 1942, FO 371/32155, TNA.
116 Ibid.
117 Communiqué du Comité National Français, 16 November 1942, 18GMII/129,
MAE. Foreign Office to Halifax, 16 November 1942, FO 371/31951, TNA.
118 Churchill, Hinge of Fate, 565.
119 Ibid.
120 Bell, ‘British Public Opinion’, 76.
121 ‘Communication à tout les postes, presse’, 25 November 1942, 18GMII/135, MAE.
122 Diplomatic Correspondent, ‘General Attacks Darlan: de Gaulle’s Position’, The
Guardian, 26 November 1942, 6.
123 Home Intelligence Weekly Report, 3 December 1942, INF 1/292, TNA.
124 Ibid.
125 Home Intelligence Weekly Report, 10 December 1942, INF 1/292, TNA.
Conclusion
From the moment that planning for Torch commenced in earnest, the
Anglo-American JPS was trying to manage how the invasions would be
viewed by individuals and governments. Planners shared the belief that
Vichy forces were less likely to resist an American invasion. And they
agreed that Giraud would make an ideal and uncontroversial leader in
North Africa. These calculations were not entirely accurate. Neverthe-
less, the meticulous drafting and sequencing of press releases and com-
muniqués demonstrated the lengths to which the Allies were willing to
go in order to reassure all interested parties of their good intentions.
These communications suggested that the invasions were mounted in
order to forestall German occupation and begin the restoration of France
to its rightful place in the civilised world. Such depictions instilled the
operations with a great deal of early significance. Not only did American
142 Home Intelligence Weekly Reports, 31 December 1942, INF 1/292, TNA.
143 Diplomatic Correspondent, ‘Chance to End Muddle: Allies Must Take Firm Line
Giraud’s Policy’, The Guardian, 27 December 1942, 1.
144 Halifax to Foreign Office, ‘War Cabinet Distribution’, 1 January 1943, PREM
3/442/14, TNA.
145 Churchill to Eden, 2 January 1943, PREM 3/442/14, TNA.
146 Ibid.
represented as the patrie (fatherland). The coming years would see the
further disintegration of any meaningful Vichy sovereignty. Emphasis
would shift towards the damage done by a treacherous Anglo-Gaullist
alliance, which, it was claimed, had helped bring France to its knees.
The moral tone that underpinned criticisms surrounding Torch was
evident in the language that policy-makers were using behind closed
doors to warn of the dangers of collaborating with Darlan. It also satu-
rated the press and public responses across much of Britain. De Gaulle
capitalised on the ethical qualms expressed about the Darlan deal. His
office profited from the publication of strong statements that condemned
Darlan without reserve, something that no Ministry in the British gov-
ernment was able to do. That de Gaulle was largely powerless in this
situation made his rhetoric credible, not only as a promise of action but
also as a moral absolute. De Gaulle took an ethical stance that chimed
with public sentiment in Britain more broadly.
The sympathies of the British public, as the Foreign Office, MOI and
Commissariat de Information tracked them, were moulded by the belief
that de Gaulle had been treated unfairly. His loyalty had been trampled
on in favour of an inglorious, if expedient, marriage of convenience with
Darlan’s followers in Algiers and Rabat. What was notable about the crit-
icisms surrounding Darlan, whether they were propagated by the press
or voiced by figures such as Eden, Cadogan or Vansittart, was that they
all argued that a moral compromise of this calibre risked jeopardising –
and indeed overriding – the material gains of a military victory. From
June 1940, British rhetoric spanning official statements, Churchillian
speeches and press interpretations had described the ‘men of Vichy’ as
venal defeatists: the antithesis of the war effort. Rehabilitating a member
of this group into the Allied camp was virtually impossible from a moral
point of view. The operation itself could easily be described as a military
victory. The fact that its success was undermined by the Darlan agree-
ments showed that victories were not judged solely on the basis of mate-
rial outcomes. Military operations were still judged and discussed on an
ethical platform as much as a military one.
1 Meir Zamir, ‘De Gaulle and the Question of Syria and Lebanon during the Second
World War: Part I’, Middle Eastern Studies 43, no. 5 (2007): 675–708. Meir Zamir, ‘The
“Missing Dimension”: Britain’s Secret War Against France in Syria and Lebanon,
1942–1945: Part II’, Middle Eastern Studies 46, no. 6 (2010): 791–900.
2 James Barr, A Line in the Sand: Britain, France and the Struggle that Shaped the Middle
East (London: Simon and Schuster, 2011), 163.
3 For a comprehensive list of Middle East operative bases and missions, see Ashley
Jackson, The British Empire and the Second World War (London: Hambledon
Continuum, 2006), Chapter 7, esp. 109–116.
4 Bruce D. Marshall, The French Colonial Myth and Constitution-Making in the Fourth
Republic (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1973), 128.
204
8 Susan Pedersen, The Guardians: The League of Nations and the Crisis of Empire (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2015), 260.
9 The CFLN was formed when the CNF merged with Giraud’s Commandement en
Chef Français Civil et Militaire.
10 Jennifer M. Dueck, The Claims of Culture at Empire’s End: Syria and Lebanon under
French Rule (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 3.
11 Jackson, British Empire, 100.
background makes plain the depth of French ambition in the Levant and
the extent to which local political movements were highly fragmented.
The willingness of two of the three strands of Lebanese political opinion
to acquiesce to some kind of continued French presence in the region
further illustrates how early nationalist movements were thinking about
and formulating their policies.21 The First World War also influenced
considerably the evolution of Middle East politics. The betrayals car-
ried out by liberal European powers engendered a culture of suspicion,
a rejection of elitist liberalism and an era of political violence.22 These
experiences would inform nationalist demands and expectations during
the Second World War.
Franco-British political manoeuvring within the Middle East also has
a long history. This is important because shared imperial experiences in
this region shaped and limited French and British policy ambitions.23
Individual mandates did not exist in isolation from each other. They
were tied together by a complex network of sociocultural links. This
meant that French and British imperial policy was closely connected,
even interdependent. Greater Syria, encompassing modern-day Syria,
Lebanon, Palestine and Jordan, had been a recurrent source of Franco-
British rivalry since the early nineteenth century. In 1841, communal
fighting amongst the Muslim Druze and Christian Maronites, the two
dominant groups residing in the Lebanese highlands of Mount Leba-
non, was exacerbated by British support for the former and French sup-
port for the latter.24 The much-vaunted 1904 Entente Cordiale may be
celebrated as a mutual assistance pact. But it was rooted in imperial
rivalry. The agreement resolved differences in Franco-British arguments
in North Africa while fomenting others in the Middle East by facilitat-
ing European empire building in Western Asia. In addition, this under-
standing removed all time constraints on the British occupation of Egypt
and acknowledged French ‘rights’ in Morocco. Imperial bargaining of
Arab futures became the norm. The Sykes Picot agreement, concluded
21 This framework was not unique to the Levant. Frederick Cooper likewise examines
how both French and African leadership were advocates of the post-war French fed-
eration movement as a path towards manageable regional development. Frederick
Cooper, Citizenship between Empire and Nation: Remaking France and French Africa
1945–1960 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014).
22 Elizabeth Thompson, Justice Interrupted: The Struggle for Constitutional Government in
the Middle East (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013), 2, 9.
23 James R. Fichter, ‘Britain and France, Connected Empires’, in British and French
Colonialism in Africa, Asia and the Middle East, ed. James R. Fichter (Cham,
Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), 1, 9.
24 Rogan, The Arabs, 115.
25 The history of this period has been well documented and will not be discussed in
significant detail here.
26 Pedersen, The Guardians, 68.
27 Dueck, The Claims of Culture, 17.
28 Philip S. Khoury, Syria and the French Mandate: The Politics of Arab Nationalism
1920–1945 (London: I. B. Tauris, 1987), 587.
29 Fieldhouse, Western Imperialism, 276.
30 Khoury, Syria and the French Mandate, 597.
31 Zamir, ‘De Gaulle and the Question of Syria and Lebanon’, 678. Barr, A Line in the
Sand, 226. Albert Hourani, A History of the Arab Peoples (London: Faber and Faber,
2005), 356.
32 Wm Roger Louis, The British Empire in the Middle East 1945–1951: Arab Nationalism,
The United States and Postwar Imperialism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984), 167.
33 Khoury, Syria and the French Mandate, 614.
34 Ibid., 599.
35 Ibid., 615.
36 ‘Resolutions of the Middle East War Council on the Political Situation the Middle
East’, 17 June 1943, CAB 66/37/47, The National Archives (henceforth TNA).
The undeniably crucial role that Egypt played as the lynchpin of the
British war effort in the Middle East meant that it was vital to remain
(as much as possible) on good terms with King Farouk’s government.
British Ambassador in Cairo Miles Lampson had successfully pressured
Farouk into dismissing his pro-German Prime Minister, Ali Mahir, in
1940. However, nationalist rumblings from the likes of future presidents
Gamal Abdul Nasser and his fellow army officer Anwar Sadat were
symptomatic of a broader desire to rid the country of its British occupi-
ers.44 Worryingly, these sentiments were too often coupled with support
for the Axis powers. In February 1942, after the resignation of Egyptian
Prime Minister Husayn Sirry, Lampson demanded that Farouk appoint
Wafdist leader Mustafa el-Nahhas Pasha to take his place. In a strange
twist of fate, the national Wafd party was the only Egyptian political
faction that was still credibly antifascist. Lampson had Farouk’s Abdin
Palace surrounded with British troops and armoured vehicles. This show
of imperial strength did nothing to endear the British to the Egyptian
political elite in the long term.
By the time of the Lebanese parliamentary crisis, British policy in the
Levant had two aims. In the long term, it aimed to conserve regional
influence. In the short-term, it sought to avoid jeopardising the public
image of the Anglo-Gaullist partnership. This attempt to balance two
fundamentally opposing viewpoints was described in the official history
of British foreign policy during the Second World War. Sir Llewellyn
Woodward avoided placing blame for the Lebanese debacle. Instead, he
argued that the French should not have taken such ‘high-handed mea-
sures’ in November 1943 but that the Lebanese were equally rash in
unilaterally revoking French privileges.45 Britain’s dual goals resulted in
often-contradictory policy initiatives. Officials on the ground, such as
Spears and Casey actively worked with local nationalists, advising them
to refrain from violent retaliation as a way to build international sym-
pathy for their demands. However, in London, British Foreign Office
officials hoped to preserve a neutral stance. They knew that backing the
French would jeopardise Anglo-Arab relations while forcing the French
to back down would further undermine Anglo-Free French cooperation.
The CFLN, itself increasingly recognisable as a full-fledged government-
in-waiting, was intent on consolidating French influence in the Levant.
But the CFLN’s lack of resources meant that Free French administra-
tors were compelled to rely upon vastly superior British manpower to
55 Ibid., 56–57.
56 Ibid., 65.
57 Charles de Gaulle, The Complete War Memoirs of Charles de Gaulle, vol. 3, Salvation,
trans. Richard Howard (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1960), 873.
58 Thomas, Crises of Empire, 127.
East Fulham Mr William Astor made it clear that he believed that Brit-
ain had to take action to guarantee Lebanese independence in order to
maintain British honour.83 MP for Oxford Quintin Hogg argued that the
Lebanese, as ‘among the most gifted of the Arabs’, should not be pres-
sured into a treaty they did not wish to make.84
The problem that British policy-makers faced was that there was no
good side to take in the conflict. Adding to the pressure of its home
press, local and regional nationalist groups were wielding the Allies’ own
wartime narrative to make the case against imperial domination. Writing
from Cairo, British diplomat Terence Shone expressed his concern over
Egyptian reactions. The Egyptian press, he argued, was unabashedly
on the side of the Lebanese. Egyptian publications were mobilising the
democratic principles expressed in the Atlantic Charter as proof that
French actions were indefensible.85 The daily Wafdist newspaper Al
Misri followed the 8 November pronouncements closely. It called on the
CFLN to recognise the death of imperial regimes and the incompatibility
of Allied principles with the domination of a large nation over a small
one.86 If Britain chose to step in on the side of the French, this ‘would be
extremely awkward’, Shone continued.87 Saudi monarch Ibn Saud also
cited the democratic themes of the Charter in his telegram to Churchill.
He invoked a highly cultural image of the British, which drew on ideas
of fair play and its historic commitment to champion the cause of the
underdog.88 The Iraqi response was no less scathing. On 13 November,
the Chamber argued that continued British support for and backing of
the CFLN was allowing French officials to maintain control over the
Levant. A few members even called French troops ‘British mercenar-
ies’.89 The following day, British ambassador in Baghdad Sir Kinahan
Cornwallis reported that the Iraqi press was united in condemning
French actions in Lebanon. Cornwallis stressed that the mass media was
inciting Arab nationalist militancy.90
83 Hansard HC Deb vol. 393 col. 1405 (11 November 1943) http://hansard.millbank-
systems.com/commons/1943/nov/11/lebanon-french-authorities-action. ‘Criticism in
the House of Commons’, The Guardian, 12 November 1943, 8.
84 Hansard HC Deb vol. 393 col. 1451 (23 November 1943) http://hansard.millbanksys-
tems.com/commons/1943/nov/23/lebanon-situation.
85 The Atlantic Charter was a joint statement made by Churchill and Roosevelt on 14
August 1941. Amongst other things, it promised ‘the right of all peoples to choose the
form of government under which they will live’.
86 Al Misri, 8 November 1943, 4GMII/29, Ministère des Affaires Étrangères (hence-
forth MAE).
87 Shone to Foreign Office, 10 November 1943, GB165-0269, MECA.
88 H.M. Minister, Jedda to H.M. Minister, Beirut, 13 November 1943, MECA.
89 H.M. Ambassador, Baghdad to H.M. Minister Beirut, 13 November 1943, MECA.
90 H.M. Ambassador, Baghdad to Foreign Office, 14 November 1943, MECA.
100 Foreign Office to British Legation Beirut, 19 November 1943, GB165-0269, Box 3,
MECA.
101 Ibid.
102 Spears to Foreign Office, 11 November 1943, GB165-0269, Box 3, MECA.
103 G. E. Maguire, Anglo-American Policy Towards the Free French (Basingstoke:
MacMillan Press Ltd., 1995), 50.
Conclusion
On 21 November, the CFLN announced the release of the internees
and the reinstatement of President Bishara al-Khoury. However, the
crisis was hardly forgotten. For nationalist groups in the Levant, it reaf-
firmed the unacceptability of continued French rule. For de Gaulle, it
confirmed British duplicity. As the Allied victory appeared more assured,
issues of post-war governance, reconstruction and, crucially, French
standing in the global order became supremely important. The rhetoric
of imperial reform during this period was inextricably linked to French
sovereignty.104 In 1943, de Gaulle could not yet claim leadership over
metropolitan France, but he was increasingly asserting power over the
empire.105 His uncompromising attitude towards the Levant remained
a source of concern for his British colleagues. Foreign Office direc-
tives instructed that comments on the freeing of the Lebanese officials
should be minimised and refrain from emotive or highly opinionated
comment.106 This stance reaffirmed the British desire to avoid choosing
104 Martin Shipway, The Road to War: France and Vietnam, 1944–1947 (New York:
Berghahn Books, 2003), 25.
105 Shennan, Rethinking France, 62.
106 ‘Foreign Office Directions for Response on Release of President and Ministers in
Lebanon’, 22 November 1943, FO 898/197, TNA.
260
played a vital role in subsequent debates over those same policies, which
developed in the mass media and public opinion in the metropole and
further afield. Rhetoric was not simply the act of explaining a policy,
it was a strategic tool of political persuasion. The arguments that were
being constructed and disseminated via the highest levels of government
policy-making establishments were crafted with the intention of convinc-
ing their readership to think about and discuss an issue in a particular
way. The methods that were being used to construct these arguments
told a story about how and why policy-makers mobilised material facts,
historical imagery, cultural understandings and particular visions of the
post-war future to justify their policies or condemn those of others.
The debates that developed in response to these official justifications,
in the mass media and the public sphere, provide insights into the stan-
dards and norms that were used to judge national and international poli-
cies. Accepting that statesmen used rhetoric in order to influence how
an operation or an initiative was judged by a particular group or groups
leads to a second assertion. Namely, public opinion or what decision-
makers and leaders believed to be public opinion had a tangible impact
on final policies. Likewise, the mass media could echo or challenge the
arguments made through official government statements. Governments
in France and Britain alongside Charles de Gaulle’s Free French move-
ment looked to the press as a reliable measurement of public opinion.
They fashioned policy and policy justifications with this in mind.
Rhetoric was a strategic policy-making tool in its own right, for de Gaulle,
Vichy and the British. The way in which rhetoric was incorporated into mili-
tary operations showed that military manoeuvres had not only strategic but
also symbolic value. Policy-makers used rhetoric to gain power, prestige and
credibility for themselves while simultaneously taking it away from a rival.
This practice was at the heart of British–Free French rhetoric, which aimed
to delegitimise Pétain’s Vichy government while advancing the notion of
continuing Franco-British cooperation. Policy-makers also adapted their
messages according to which audience they wanted to reach. These deci-
sions illustrated the changing influence of discrete interest groups. At dif-
ferent points throughout the war, decision-makers focussed their efforts on
shoring up opinion at home, gaining the respect of neutral opinion abroad
and consolidating the support of anti-imperial nationalist groups. Rhetorical
analyses do not just tell us one thing about policy-making, the press or pub-
lic opinion. They deliver insights into how the priorities and aims of each of
these groups shifted or remained fixed over time. They can tell us something
about the underlying concerns that were driving these shifts.
The manner in which policy-makers chose to craft policy justifications
also tells us a great deal about the social and cultural values that informed
Vichy’s right to freely govern the empire and fleet. The way in which the
Vichy government responded to these challenges betrayed its preoccupa-
tions with shoring up its power and prestige. By casting blame exclusively
on British territorial aggression and imperial rivalry, Vichy rhetorically
marginalised the Free French movement. According to Vichy, opera-
tions in French colonial territory were simple cases of imperial land grab-
bing. De Gaulle and other members of the Free French became traitors
and British agents who had lost all claims to French citizenship. Empire
was just as important to de Gaulle and later the provisional French gov-
ernment. Having an empire signalled legitimacy and conveyed power
and prestige on a global level. Both de Gaulle and the Vichy government
believed that being able to demonstrate control over colonial territories
would help them attain global status and recognition.
By May 1945, the French Empire was even more important, as both
France and Britain sought to find a way to maintain ties with strategically
important mandated territories. At the same time, the reality of recon-
struction at home, increasing demands from nationalist movements
and a heavy reliance on loans from the anti-imperialist United States
made demonstrations of imperial reform essential. It was at this point
that French and British policy rhetoric began to depart from underlying
policy goals. This was especially apparent in the Levant states. Here, and
in the broader Middle East, both France and Britain hoped to preserve
varying levels of strategic, economic and cultural influence by concluding
preferential treaties with their colonies and mandated territories. Their
ability to do this depended upon being able to exert more influence than
the local nationalist groups that were beginning to demand unqualified
independence. Between 1941 and 1945, British and Free French policy-
makers were under increasing pressure to adhere to their promises.
The issue of Syrian and Lebanese independence caused a great deal
of strain in both Franco-British and Franco-Levantine relations. More
importantly, the debates that developed around this issue illustrated the
authority that each side could bring to bear on a global level. Recognising
that a strong rhetorical stance on the side of the nationalists would dam-
age its relations with de Gaulle and its mandated territories, the British
and Middle East Command in Cairo did their best to stay out of the
fray and present themselves as a neutral middleman. However, Britain
could only maintain this position credibly if France, Syria and Lebanon
came to a mutual agreement on France’s future position in those terri-
tories without significant British intervention. This was not to be. What
the three chapters on the Levant showed was that the success of British
policy was inextricably linked to its prestige in the Middle East. Rhetori-
cally backing Levantine independence was a policy that was increasingly
at odds with its long-term strategy to preserve British interests in its own
mandates and throughout the region.
The violent repression of nationalist sentiment in Lebanon in 1943
and in Damascus in 1945 discredited French demands and forced Brit-
ain to exercise its superior military and political power. At the same time,
it illustrated the influence of nationalist voices, which were mobilising the
rhetoric of the Atlantic Charter against its authors. American and Soviet
anti-imperial policies (whether rhetorical or actual) helped to interna-
tionalise discussions surrounding the future of empires. Forums such as
the San Francisco conference and later the United Nations would serve
as platforms upon which previously unrepresented states publicised their
grievances to great effect.
The crisis in the Levant was heightened by the fact that the Free
French and later the provisional government never had the material
resources to challenge British policy in the Middle East. Becoming the
head of the provisional government in 1944 may have given de Gaulle
official recognition and legitimacy as the head of the liberated French
state. However, the economic and financial reality in France was dire.
De Gaulle’s attempts to revitalise French prestige through a reformed
empire faced challenges at home and abroad. These challenges reflected
the disparity between French rhetoric and the reality of limited French
material resources. In the Levant, French claims based on historic cul-
tural influence were undermined by nationalist movements determined
to make France adhere to their rhetoric of independence.
Another way in which British, Free French and Vichy policy-makers
tried to assert the credibility of their respective wartime policies was to
justify them using moral, ethical and cultural imagery. Wartime deci-
sion-making was articulated through concepts such as duty, honour,
valour and altruism.3 In the case of the British, the decision to continue
fighting against the Axis powers after the French defeat in June 1940
was almost always portrayed as a moral decision. Churchill’s addresses
promised that victory was guaranteed because Britain was on the ‘right’
side of the battle. One of his best remembered speeches, delivered in
the House of Commons on 4 June 1940, did this by contrasting Brit-
ain’s glorious and fundamentally honourable past with Hitler’s ‘sinister’
and ‘perverted’ ideology.4 Victory over the Axis was never guaranteed
3 Michael Bess, Choices under Fire: Moral Dimensions of World War II (New York: Vintage
Books, 2006), 3. Bess argues that these concepts are essential to understanding the
nature of decision-making during the Second World War.
4 Michael Burleigh, Moral Combat: A History of World War II (London: Harper Press,
2010), 170.
fighting over. It demonstrated that the press and public influenced how
official policies were conceptualised, implemented and communicated.
These rhetorical battles showcased how wartime policies and post-war
expectations were being formulated, articulated, debated, judged and
remembered. Rhetoric was used to assert strategic interests or camouflage
a lack of material power. The language and imagery of press releases and
speeches drew on social and cultural values to lend credibility to official
arguments and to try and shape a particular public response. Historic
images of Franco-British cooperation and rivalry suggested that events
in the past could be used to make sense of circumstances in the present.
When viewed this way, rhetoric becomes a powerful tool of persuasion as
well as a robust method of historical analysis. It opens up greater under-
standing into how we try to or are persuaded to make sense of the world
around us. And it underlines the undeniable importance of rhetoric, as
a strategic tool of policy-making and method for asserting national pres-
tige, legitimacy and influence.
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ADM 199 War History Cases and Papers, Second World War
ADM 202 War Diaries, Unit Diaries, Detachment Reports and Orders
ADM 205 Office of the First Sea Lord
ADM 223 Naval Intelligence Papers
Cabinet Office
CAB 65 War Cabinet Minutes
CAB 66 War Cabinet Memoranda
CAB 67 War Cabinet Memoranda
CAB 80 War Cabinet Chiefs of Staff Committee Memoranda
CAB 84 War Cabinet Joint Planning Committees
CAB 102 War Histories
CAB 195 Cabinet Secretary’s Notebooks
Colonial Office and Commonwealth Office
CO 968 Defence Department Original Correspondence
Foreign Office
FO 432 Confidential Prints (France, Belgium, Luxemburg and the Netherlands)
FO 371 Political Departments, General Correspondence
FO 892 British Mission to the French National Committee
FO 898 Political Intelligence Department
FO 954 Private Office Papers of Sir Anthony Eden
Home Office
HO 262 Home Intelligence Division
Ministry of Information
INF 1 Files of Correspondence
269
War Office
WO 32 War Office and Successors, Registered Files
WO 106 Directorate of Military Operations and Intelligence
WO 193 Files Concerning Military Planning, Intelligence and Statistics
WO 201 Middle East Forces, Military Headquarters
WO 204 Allied Forces Mediterranean Theatre
WO 208 Directorate of Military Intelligence
WO 216 Chief of the Imperial General Staff
WO 232 Directorate of Tactical Investigation
Churchill College, Churchill Archive Centre, Cambridge
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Papers of Leo Amery (AMEL)
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Papers of Robert Vansittart (VNST)
Mass Observation Archives, University of Sussex
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SxMOA1/2/25/2/G/1 The French Navy
Middle East Centre Archives, St. Antony’s College, Oxford
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F41 Service de l’Information
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Europe, Volume IV (1945)
General and Europe, Volume II (1940)
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