Vichy France (53 page)

Threats to the Social Order—2: Second Front

[
Vichy leaders
]
are convinced that a British military victory on the continent is impossible, but, admitting its possibility for the sake of argument, they say it can only be accomplished at the cost of a complete social breakdown in Germany which would soon spread over the rest of the continent. The horrors forecast are reminiscent of similar nightmares depicted in 1918. These dangers inestimably become more acute, they say, as the duration of the war is extended and destruction increases; an early peace and a drawn peace are therefore what France must strive and wish for, a peace in which the French will have a certain arbitral role.

—
H. Freeman Matthews, 27 December 1940
¹⁸

The Allies want to reawaken Gaullist zeal and stimulate incidents which would appear to reveal breaches in French unity. They want to unleash an insurrectionary war in France.

—
Robert Havard de la Montagne, 25 August 1942
¹⁹

T
HE BEST WAY TO AVOID REVOLUTION WAS TO KEEP
France out of the war. The relation of war to revolution had been at the heart of revolutionary and counterrevolutionary strategies since the nineteenth century. Marx’s view of war as a social catalyst had been given clearer focus by Lenin, who argued that intensifying capitalist competition would lead inevitably to imperialist wars that signaled the last stage of capitalism. The implication was that war was socialism’s opportunity, though it was a rare left revolutionary who went as far as the early Mussolini or Jules Guesde and actually rejoiced in that fact. The
standard establishment view was the opposite: a healthy little victorious war was supposed to divert domestic discontent and tighten patriotic sinews.
²⁰

World War I and the Russian Revolution changed all that. For people like Pétain, who had been named commander in chief of the French Armies in May 1917 in order to halt the runaway military mutinies in that spring and early summer, there could be no further doubt that in the present state of technology war had become an engine of social dissolution rather than of social solidarity. They agreed with Stalin’s assertions in the early 1930’s that the next war, however deplorable the suffering it would bring, would spread the revolution. Only segments of the French left clung to the pre-1914 notion that war would solidify the French population and submerge French revolutionaries in a new “sacred union” as in 1914. Neither French conservatives nor revolutionaries had found any reason to rejoice in their World War I experience.
²¹

All the arguments that had made Frenchmen dread war in 1939 and grasp hopefully at a way out in June 1940 were reinforced by 1942. The earlier resentment about the “brutal selfishness” of Churchill’s obstinacy was sharpened as the continued war tipped one French colony after another into British hands and as the first British bombings of French cities began with the 3 March 1942 air raid on the Boulogne-Billancourt Renault works. Early hopes that the neutral United States would step in and mediate an end to the conflict were not completely dashed by Pearl Harbor. As late as August 1942, Vichy spokesmen were
still urging the United States to be an arbitrator rather than a liberator in Europe.
²²

By that time the fear of returning to war had taken on an urgent new actuality. The second front was on everyone’s lips. Laval first raised the subject of an “Allied attack” on French Africa with Abetz on 23 May 1942, expressing his fears about French public opinion if there were no German concessions improving the quality of daily life. Pétain faced the prospect of a second front, Rudolf Rahn reported after talking with him at the end of May, “with an extraordinary display of apprehension.” The controlled Vichy press argued that since Allied difficulties with supply and transport against the submarine-infested North Atlantic would keep any Allied landing down to commando level, the Allies were restricted to operations on the level of the Dakar fiasco of September 1940. As at Dakar, the Allies would have to rely upon internal complicities to compensate for inadequate force. The Allies would attempt some operation on the continent only as a result of Russian pressures rather than tactical readiness. Under such conditions, an Allied operation on the coasts of Europe would be more likely to divide France and turn her into a stalemated battleground than liberate her. If an Allied commando failed, it would prompt the German occupation of the rest of France; if it succeeded, it would bring war and revolution home. Either prospect filled Frenchmen with foreboding. Roger Martin du Gard, writing to André Gide on 30 August 1942, couldn’t agree with those who thought peace was close. He foresaw two or three years ahead of “massacres, social insurrection, and material shortages,” followed by years more of disorders and readjustments. He was not far wrong.
²³

For Frenchmen in North and West Africa, a prime target for an Allied landing especially after the United States had moved into Iceland in 1941, fears of an Allied landing had an added incentive. The arrival of a foreign army would increase native unrest and eclipse French prestige in native eyes, already deeply shaken by the defeat of 1940. An interesting evolution along these lines of thought was that of General Noguès, Delcassé’s son-in-law and a Popular Front appointee as governor-general of Morocco in 1936. In 1940, as commander in chief of French forces in North Africa, he had vigorously opposed the armistice until it was made clear to him that the navy would not come to North Africa to support continued war. Once again governor-general of Morocco, he helped keep German inspectors under close surveillance and control, partly to keep the victors out of the eyesight of Moroccans. Increasingly in 1941 and 1942, he warned Americans that he would oppose an Allied military presence in Morocco with equal adamancy. Under the impress of the need for colonial stability, he evolved from belligerent in 1940 to firm neutralist by 1942. It was only one example among many of colonial officials’ fears that liberation meant native risings.
²⁴

These twin arguments for social order—domestic and colonial—together with reluctance to see France once more a battleground explains why so many Vichy officials with access to American ears warned in the summer of 1942 that an Allied landing would meet French resistance.
²⁵
Even pro-Allied French officers, deeply involved with U.S. representative Robert Murphy in planning a return of French North African forces to war
against the Axis, grew nervous about a “premature” landing as the summer of 1942 brought its rumors.
²⁶

Vichy authorities went beyond warnings in 1942. The small Armistice Army’s vigorous preparations to resist an Allied landing were a sign that they meant business. On July 31 the cabinet at Vichy decided that in case of an Allied invasion, Marshal Pétain would appeal to French citizens to remain loyal to their armistice obligations.
²⁷
In Africa, Moroccan defenses were reorganized and troops were sent to advanced coastal positions for the summer invasion season. The Vichy government asked Germany to permit more modern equipment in West Africa, including armor and aviation, and obtained partial satisfaction finally on August 27 in exchange for making the neutral ships in French Mediterranean ports available to the Axis for charter. In early October women and children of the French community were evacuated from Dakar. In mainland France, defense measures were studied and an exercise held at Hyères in September. Prefects in the Mediterranean departments instructed police to exert special vigilance against parachutists. In July British subjects still living along the Mediterranean coast were moved inland. In the French officer corps, age limits were lowered in order to force into retirement several division commanders (notably General Frère) who were not considered reliable for action against an Allied landing. On August 12 Abetz reported to Berlin that Pétain wanted to discuss joint Franco-German defense measures for the coast of the Bay of Biscay. As that coast lay in the Occupied Zone, it is apparent that the Vichy regime wanted to reassert its military role, as it was simultaneously trying to reassert its police role, across the Demarcation Line.
²⁸

In the midst of these preparations came a warning signal that seemed to confirm all the Vichy preconceptions about an Allied landing. On 19 August 1942 an Allied amphibious force consisting mostly of Canadians came ashore at Dieppe and on the highlands north and south of the town. After a few hours, the Germans destroyed this force and took most of the survivors prisoner. The artillery and tanks put ashore helped German and Vichy propaganda claim that this was the Allies’ maximum effort, designed to secure a foothold through local complicity and to expand through insurrection. Vichy’s relief at the Allies’ failure was not feigned.

In addition to congratulating the German Army publicly for “cleansing” French soil of the invader, Pétain seized the occasion to make a new bid for French military autonomy. He wrote to Hitler on August 21 proposing that, in view of “the most recent British aggression, which took place this time on our soil,… France participate in her own defense” and demonstrate “my wish that France make a contribution to the safeguard of Europe.” In other words, he was renewing more urgently his proposal of nine days earlier for joint Franco-German coastal defense planning. As Fernand de Brinon recalled, the Current phrase around Vichy was “to open a French crenellation in the Atlantic Wall.” It was the long-sought opportunity to reimplant the French Army in the Occupied Zone.
²⁹

High-ranking Germans were no more eager for autonomous French help in August 1942 than they had been since the end of the “new policy” of 1940 and of May–June 1941, however. “France declared war on us,” Hitler had said in a war conference on 5 May 1942, “so she must bear the consequences.” Only the ever-enthusiastic Otto Abetz showed some interest in Pétain’s proposal. He suggested on September 4 that the French be permitted to build Atlantic coastal fortifications instead of paying occupation costs. Berlin’s only gestures were to liberate all the citizens of Dieppe (some 750 strong) in German prisoner-of-war camps, in recognition of their city’s failure to rise in support of the Canadians, and to agree finally on August 27 to permit an armored unit to be set up in West Africa to repel possible Allied action there, in exchange for the German right to charter neutral merchant ships interned in French ports since 1940. Hitler doesn’t seem to have bothered to answer Pétain’s letter.
³⁰
Once again, it was German indifference and suspicion rather than French reluctance that blocked a striking step toward Franco-German military cooperation. Pétain talked with Prince Rohan on October 20 about the kind of deal he wanted to make in the face of threatened Allied landings: “If they give us our sovereignty, we will be a defensive barrage. ‘Ihr gebt Souveränität, wir machen Barrage.’ ”
³¹

It was in this mood that the Vichy government learned in the night of 7–8 November 1942 that Allied forces were coming ashore in Morocco and Algeria. In view of what we know now about widespread Vichy attitudes toward an Allied landing in 1942, the vigor of the French defense should not be surprising. Although the French army command in North Africa, which had drawn Armistice Army units back from the coast in the fall of 1942 in the belief that the invasion season was over for another
year, was taken completely by surprise, the French fought back as vigorously as they could. In Morocco and the
Oranais
area of Algeria, there was far more than a mere token resistance for German eyes. The official Allied death toll was 663. The few middle-ranking French officers who had conspired in advance to aid the Allies and who had been notified at the last minute did not succeed in taking over command in any locality for more than a few hours.
³²

After the war considerable mystification was created around claims by Pétain’s defense that the marshal had sent two telegrams of “secret accord” to Darlan, on November 10 and 13. This is supposed to reflect Pétain’s real approval of switching to the Allied side, as distinct from his public exhortations to fight on against the “aggressors.” Everything is wrong with that now well-rooted tale. Although Darlan publicly claimed Pétain’s secret support in November and December 1942, there is, in the nature of the case, no contemporary evidence. Even if Pétain approved of Darlan’s actions on November 10 and 13, the policy being approved at that point was neutrality and not support for the Allies. And it is altogether out of character. The Allied landing was a disaster to Pétain’s hopes for a compromise peace. Only the threat of even tougher French defense of the mainland might deter the Allies from the next, even more disastrous move.
³³

Vichy authorities rushed to prepare defenses against anticipated further landings on the Mediterranean coast of France itself. Although the Germans occupied the rest of France on November 11, the Armistice Army, which had followed orders of calm almost without exception, was not dissolved. The Germans authorized the creation of an autonomous French defense zone around the great naval base at Toulon and the main units of the French fleet. French Army units were moved in and prepared for coastal defense. As in Syria and during the Allied landings in Morocco and Algeria, Vichy rejected the notion of French and German troops fighting shoulder to shoulder. Their weapons pointed in the same direction, however, and it seems likely that if Allied forces had attempted to land near Toulon in mid-November 1942 they would have been greeted by no less French gunfire than in North Africa ten days earlier. It was the kind of defensive autonomy within the Occupied Zone that Pétain had been seeking since Dieppe.
³⁴
As it happened, Hitler decided to dissolve the Armistice Army, citing the “betrayal” of those French officers now fighting alongside the Allies in Tunisia, and attempted to seize the French fleet on November 27. The fleet was scuttled in Toulon harbor in Vichy’s most determined act of neutrality.