Parades and Politics at Vichy 9781400878390

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PARADES

AND

POLITICS

VICHY T H E F R E N C H OFFICER CORPS UNDER MARSHAL P E T A I N

BY ROBERT O. P A X T O N

PRINCETON, PRINCETON

NEW

JERSEY

UNIVERSITY

I966

PRESS

AT

Copyright © 1966 by Princeton University Press ALL R I G H T S R E S E R V E D

L.C. Card 66-10557 Printed in the United States of America by Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey

TO MY P A R E N T S

Preface IN JUNE 1940, the French Army, as Europe had known and feared it since Louis XIV, vanished in the dust of the most overwhelming defeat so far suffered by a modern nation. There follows a natural caesura in French Army annals. Insofar as the words "French Army" appear in the vocabulary of World War II after 1940, they usually apply to units far from French soil, to that little band of gallant exiles around Charles de Gaulle. It is hardly surprising that the Free French have monopolized the name of "French Army": active combat attracts attention, underdog status invites sympathy, and sacrifice demands respect. Popular admiration in the Allied countries was quite rightly stirred by the stubborn Gaullist affirmation that "France has lost a battle, but she has not lost the war." It was only one jump to the further conclusion that there existed no French Army except Fighting France; that Fighting France was the root stock from which there sprang a new French Army in 1943 to fight in the Allied campaigns of Italy, Normandy, and Provence. This book attempts to fill the caesura in French Army history after June 1940. The French professional officer corps, though stripped of most of its arms and men, survived as a self-aware and cohesive social group. It not only survived; it played an active role in the Vichy regime. The overwhelming majority of French career officers rallied with enthusiasm to the work undertaken by the most august of their number, Marshal Henri-Philippe Petain. The Armistice Army in the Unoccupied Zone of metropolitan France and in North Africa was a characteristic Vichy institution. More than that, the Armistice Army was the root stock of the postwar French Army, upon which comVIl

Preface paratively small Gaullist and Resistance branches could later be grafted. The Armistice Army was the mainstream of French Army history. As the immediacy of battlefield exploits recedes, other aspects of military history come to the fore. It becomes permissible to interest oneself in an officer corps for its social and intellectual character rather than for its military laurels. I have been concerned less with "battles and leaders" than with the tone of an important social group and its part in public life. I have searched for the essential continuity of the French professional officer corps between 1939 and 1946 rather than for its more celebrated, but perhaps ephemeral, interruptions. I have turned my attention to the contribution made by officers to the Vichy regime, rather than to the strictly military aspects of the Armistice Army. And I have tried to examine the new freight of intellectual baggage taken on by officers during the Armistice Army years, in the belief that it was not all unloaded again in 1945. I have not attempted to interpret the whole meaning of the Vichy years for France; still less to trace the army troubles of the 1950's back in any determinist fashion to the very different vicissitudes of the 1940's. Nevertheless the Vichy years were a seed-time for many postwar military growths: a heightened determination to influence the education of French youth; an increasing fixation upon an international conspiracy working to undermine French values; a reinvigorated concern for Empire, the last crutch of French grandeur, and a heightened suspicion of British and American designs upon that Empire. This book is the extensive revision of a thesis submitted to Harvard University for the degree of doctor of philosophy. At the conclusion of a long labor to which many

viii

Preface people contributed, it should be more than a pious tradition to thank them publicly. They were responsible for whatever good features it might have; as for its bad ones, they would have known how to avoid them. H . Stuart Hughes devoted his usual wisdom and generosity to directing the dissertation upon which this book is based. Raoul Girardet, of the Institut d'etudes politiques of the University of Paris, first recommended the Armistice Army as a field of study and helped arrange important interviews and access to sources. I owe a special debt to Stanley Hoffmann of Harvard University, whose articles and whose personal advice were an unmatched guide to the workings of the Vichy regime and to sources of information about it. Robert Aron made a gesture altogether in keeping with the largeness of spirit of his classic Histoire de Vichy: he gave me access to his own notes and sources. A number of people let me use some of their personal papers: General Paul A. Bourget, Colonel Clogenson, M. Andre Desfeuilles, Captain Daniel Devilliers, InspectorGeneral Pierre Jacquey, Mme Jean de Lattre de Tassigny, Navy Captain Henri Laure, M. Pierre Martin, General Emile MoUard, M. Dominique Morin, M. Henri Nogueres, General Paul de la Porte du Theil, General Edmond Ruby, Colonel Raymond Sereau, and General Guy Schlesser. None of them necessarily accepts any or all of my opinions. In addition, approximately fifty persons, mostly senior officers, were kind enough to grant me interviews. As their names already appear in the text of this book where they are essential, and as many of them preferred not to be quoted directly, I have chosen to thank them collectively and anonymously. A number of institutions put their facilities at my disposal: the Bibliotheque de Documentation Internationale

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Preface et Contemporaine in Paris; the Service Historique de l'Armee, and especially General Charles de Cosse Brissac and M. Andre Golaz; the Centre de Documentation Juive, in Paris; the Hoover Institution, and especially Mrs. Agnes Peterson; the United States Department of State; and the United States National Archives, where Mr. Robert Wolfe put his extensive knowledge of captured German military archives to work on my project. Finally, the Sinclair Kennedy Scholarship Fund of Har­ vard University made possible a year's residence in France, and the Institute of Social Science at the University of California at Berkeley helped with the expenses of prepar­ ing the manuscript for publication. ROBERT O. PAXTON

Berkeley, California March ιφ$

X

Contents Preface

vii

I. June 1940: The French Army Lives On II. L'Armie

Nouvelle

3 39

III. July-December 1940: Neutrality or Revanche}

63

IV. A Plague on Both Their Houses V. Liberation in Captivity VI. The Officers Turned Schoolmaster VII. 1941: Neutrality Entrenched VIII. The Uses and Abuses of Freedom: Officers in Politics, 1941-42 IX. The Party of Revanche: Resistance in the Armistice Army X. 1942: Neutrality Threatened XI. November 1942: Neutrality Defended XII. After November 1942: The Officers Dispersed

94 141 183 214 253 282 311 344 391

XIII. In the Mainstream of French Army Tradition

410

Bibliographical Note

433

Abbreviations and Short Titles Used in Footnotes

441

Index

453

Xl

PARADES V

AND I

C

POLITICS H

Y

AT

CHAPTER

I

June 1940: The French Army Lives on There is no such thing as a nation without an army, however small. —an anonymous French General, Revue des deux mondes, ι February 1941 You judge rightly that a state can not con­ ceivably exist without a disciplined and obedient army. —Marshal Petain to Hider, 5 December 1942 France is not France without a sword. —Charles de Gaulle, 1954 FRENCH

DUNKIRK

DURING THE first days of June 1940, ten divisions of the British Expeditionary Force in France were snatched from annihilation on the beaches at Dunkirk to fight again another day. Three weeks later, under conditions less starkly dramatic but no less fateful, the French Army faced a Dunkirk of its own: a political Dunkirk. When the gov­ ernment of Marshal Petain sued for armistice from its tem­ porary retreat at Bordeaux on June 17, it was in Hitler's power virtually to abolish the French Army as an institu­ tion. For the first time since France had been a nation, there might be no French Army on the face of the earth. When General Charles-Leon Huntziger set out from Bordeaux on June 20 to represent France in the armistice negotiations, he could anticipate harsh terms. Marshal Pe-

3

The

French Army Lives

On

tain's ill-timed public declaration on June 17 that "the fighting must be stopped" had spread quickly to the re­ motest battalion, reducing French defenses to pockets of individual resistance. General Erwin Rommel, pushing his Seventh Panzer Division toward Brest and the tip of Brittany that day found French units standing along the road, their officers anticipating an immediate cease-fire. Rommel covered 150 miles on June 17, the longest day's advance ever made until then by an entire division.1 The Commander in Chief of French Armed Forces, General Maxime Weygand, had briefed Huntziger on the potential German demands which France must reject. If Germany sought major concessions in the French Fleet or the Empire, the last two French trump cards still unplayed, there could be no armistice.2 Of course, the French were hardly in a position to bargain, and the conditions of Huntziger's trip northward from Bordeaux showed it. Hun­ tziger did not even know where the parleys would be held. Setting out from Bordeaux in the afternoon of June 20, Huntziger and his party traveled for seventeen hours with­ out food or rest, along roads choked with frightened refu­ gees and idle soldiers, hardly a scene to stiffen negotiators' backs. Charles-Leon Huntziger was filling an unenviable role for a career officer. A marsouin, or colonial infantry officer, descended from an Alsace family which had moved after 1870 in order to remain French, Huntziger had spent much of a brilliant career in the Near East. At the close of World War I, he was aide to Marshal Franchet d'Esperey at Constantinople, and in 1933 commander of French 1

The Rommel Papers, B. H. Liddell Hart, ed. (New York, 1953), 69-73. Weygand, in, 246; General Paul-Α. Bourget, De Beyrouth a Bordeaux (Paris, 1946), 159; interviews. 2

4

The French Army Lives On forces in the Levant. By 1940 he had been promoted and was the youngest French general d'armee. In mid-June 1940, despite the fact that the initial German breakthrough at Sedan had occurred on the fissure between General Corap's Ninth Army and Huntziger's Second Army, Huntziger stood out as the officer most likely to reach supreme command. Prime Minister Paul Reynaud considered that among army commanders only Generals Billotte, Giraud, and Huntziger had sufficient personal ascendancy and prestige to make future commanders in chief; by the time Petain replaced Reynaud on June 17, Billotte had been killed in an automobile accident and Giraud was a prisoner of war. Huntziger remained, almost by default, the preeminent French general after Georges, commander of the northeast front, and Weygand.3 General Huntziger's eminence was more a commentary on the officer generation of 1940 than on his personal qualities. A slender man, still young and briskly military in his bearing, he was supple rather than strong. Foreign observers commented on his amiability and his skill in debate rather than on any elemental force of character. He was to be, in Hitler's words, "one of the wiliest and cleverest of French representatives," but he had neither the panache of a De Lattre de Tassigny nor the dogged straightforwardness of a Giraud.4 Everything in Huntziger's career prompted him to swallow his dismay and accept this repugnant assignment in a spirit of abnegation. Moreover, an instinctive sympathy 3 Paul Reynaud, In the Thic\ of the Fight (New York, 1955), 383; Henri Massis, "Huntziger, Weygand, de Gaulle," Hommes et Mondes (December 1954), 1-12; De Gaulle, 1, 51-53. 4 The Haider Diaries, 21 June 1940; DGFP, Series D, xi, No. 149; Leahy, 53.

5

The French Army Lives On with Marshal Petain's views made him all the more ready to serve the new government, even in its ultimate gesture of national humiliation. Before June 1940, Huntziger's fellow officers considered him "apolitical," which meant that he did not frequent governmental anterooms for the sake of his career, as politiquard officers did, and that he obeyed orders in the spirit of serving eternal France rather than the Third Republic. His handpicked press officer during the battle of France was Henri Massis, the prominent Action Frangaise pamphleteer. Huntziger and the Marshal were to develop warm relations as kindred spirits, both preoccupied with questions of morale and education. When the Francisque order was created as a mark of the Marshal's special esteem, Madame Huntziger was awarded the first emblem. With mixed feelings then, appalled at the role he was called upon to play, yet eager to serve the Marshal loyally, General Huntziger set out from Bordeaux not knowing where he was to confront the German conquerors. Only at Paris did Huntziger and his team discover their destination. Arriving at the little railroad station of Rethondes, in the forest of Compiegne, on June 21, Huntziger could recognize the statue of Marshal Foch, now draped in a swastika. The railroad car in which Weygand himself, as Foch's aide, had once read the Allied armistice terms to the defeated German high command stood on a siding. The ceremonies of 11 November 1918 were to be replayed in reverse, according to stage directions heavy with ironic symbols. Once installed in the railroad car where Hitler formally presented Huntziger with a copy of the armistice, the weary French delegates learned that they could hear the armistice terms but not discuss them. The armistice was to be a German diktat. In the mood of exhausted foreboding in which Hun-

6

The French Army Lives On tziger and his party prepared to learn the German terms, the fate of France and of the French Army appeared a dark one indeed. No wonder the provisions as read to them seemed a concession. On the first evening at Rethondes, June 21, a telephone connection with Bordeaux was arranged for General Huntziger, and, as the German interpreter Paul Schmidt listened from an adjoining railroad car, the French delegate relayed his first impressions to General Weygand. The armistice terms, though harsh, contained nothing against French honor. "In particular, one point, which he had discussed with Weygand before his departure, was not included in the terms. In this respect, things were quite different from what Weygand and he had assumed."5 The fleet could remain in French hands. There was good news, too, about the army. The German authorities, Huntziger reported over the telephone, "had orally and provisionally conceded [sic] a ioo,ooo-man army." The verb is a revealing one. For Huntziger and Weygand, a French Army to keep order in the Unoccupied Zone was a precious concession to French interests rather than a German device to free more German troops for the invasion of Britain. It was no accident that Hider's terms seemed lenient. Hitler had carefully planned their effect to avoid provoking the French into further resistance. As early as June 16, Hider had instructed that proposed armistice terms be drawn up, and the next day—the day Marshal Petain asked for negotiations—he outlined to Colonel Bohme of the Wehrmachtfuhrungsstab a formula designed to lull France into acquiescence. France would remain sovereign, faced with no territorial demands "for the present"; only part of 5

DGFP, Series D, ix, No. 513, p. 652.

7

The French Army Lives On France would be occupied, that part necessary for pursuing the invasion of England; the French Fleet would be neutralized rather than taken over by Germany, and France would retain some armed forces. Hitler's armistice strategy presumed, of course, that after Britain's surrender the velvet gloves could be removed for the final peace conference. For the moment, he told Colonel Bohme, Germany's plans for the peace, such as the reannexation of Alsace-Lorraine, must not be mentioned.6 The following day, meeting Mussolini at Munich, Hitler imposed the same restraints on Italian appetites. As regards the case of France, the question at the moment was one of proceeding in such a way as to secure if possible a French government functioning on French territory as a party to the negotiations. This would be far preferable to a situation in which the French government might reject the German proposals then flee abroad to London, to continue the war from there, quite apart from the unpleasant responsibility which the occupying powers would have to assume, among others, in the administrative sphere. Above all, the French Navy must be neutralized quickly and cheaply, lest it double or even triple British naval strength in some categories. Since Hitler was not sure that French naval officers would accept a German guarantee of neutrality, he thought it best to work for the moment toward neutralization in a Spanish port.7 Mussolini could only acquiesce in his stronger partner's strategy. By their own efforts, Italian forces had advanced 6 Colonel A. Goutard, "Pourquoi et comment l'armistice a-t-il ete 'accorde' par Hitler?", La revue de Paris, LVII (October i960), 79-95; The Haider Diaries, 21 June 1940. 7 DGFP, Series D, ix, No. 479, p. 608.

8

The French Army Lives On only a few hundred yards into the Riviera border town of Menton and captured several high alpine valleys. Mussolini had no choice, then, but to write Hitler on June 22: In order to facilitate the acceptance of the armistice by the French, I have not included among the clauses [of the Franco-Italian armistice] the occupation of the left bank of the Rhone, or of Corsica, Tunis, and Djibouti, as we had intended at Munich. I have limited myself to a minimum, that is, to the demand for a demilitarized zone 50 kms. in width.8 That France should continue to have an organized armed force during the armistice period was thus an integral part of Hitler's French policy, calculated to serve German interests during the weeks before the final peace conference. An Armistice Army would help the Germans keep order in their rear during the final assault on Britain, and a France with all the trappings of sovereignty would spare Germany the chores of total occupation and would prevent British exploitation of the remaining assets of French world power: the fleet and the empire. The Armistice Army was part of the German diktat. To many French officers, however, the provisional 100,000man army seemed the precious "concession" which General Huntziger had announced over the telephone to Weygand the night of June 21. General Emile Laure, for example, a former Petain aide who was released from Konigstein prison in October to resume his duties with the Marshal, discovered that "the military clauses of the armistice were better than he had imagined."9 German idea or not, the Armistice Army might well serve French interests, 8 9

The Haider Diaries, 24 June 1940; DGFP, Series D, ix, No. 525, p. 679. Laure, Journal, 21 October 1940.

9

The French Army Lives On particularly as the armistice period began to drag on beyond Hider's first expectations. Hitler's need for an interim French Army coincided very neady with two preoccupations nagging the minds of many a French officer. Beyond the immediate bread-andbutter worries of good assignments and promotion, the prospect of the French Army's dissolution, even for a brief armistice period, made French officers smell the smoke of social revolution, like nervous householders awakened in the night. Henri Massis, Huntziger's press officer, recalled that the first news of the armistice awakened memories of 1871 and the fears of a new Commune to follow. According to the one-time chief of the Third Bureau (operations) of the Armistice Army General Staff, the army's first priority task in the summer and fall of 1940 was preventing social revolution, for which all the ingredients were ripe: masses of displaced persons, a population in distress, and rumors of German collusion with the Communist Party in Paris. General Huntziger himself, about to assume command of the Armistice Army on September 6, explained to General von Stulpnagle that "his government feared internal unrest during the coming winter which may require military intervention." Clearly the dread of a Paris Soviet, which had helped persuade General Weygand to insist on an armistice in the first place, continued to influence officers after the armistice. "The Armistice Army exists above all for the preservation of order," wrote General Huntziger in his General Order No. 2 of 25 November 1940. It was an order of priorities upon which German and Vichy authorities could agree.10 10 Massis, 9; interviews; DGFP, Series D, ix, No. 25, p. 33; P. C. F. Bankwitz, "Maxime Weygand and the Fall of France," Journal of Modern History, xxxi (September 1959), 225-242; H2/184, frame 6,428,777.

IO

The French Army Lives On Neither the natural concern for job security nor the uneasy state of public order, however, fully explains the relief with which many French officers learned that a French Army would continue to exist during the armistice period. French officers had been taught to believe that a root-andbranch domestic opposition was threatening the very existence of a professional army in France. For one black moment, it had seemed that the German diktat might accomplish what a century of French antimilitarism had tried but failed to do: to abolish the institution of professional soldiery altogether in France. Only a brief survey of the French Army's past, as seen from the perspective of leading officers, can suggest the vividness of that particular cauchemar. Alone among modern Western armies, the French Army could believe that its very existence as a formal institution was challenged by an effective opposition. Professional soldiery had its vehement critics everywhere in Europe, of course; even Kaiser Wilhelm IPs high command had had to deal with imposing adversaries like Eugen Richter who tried to increase parliamentary control over the size and organization of the army. Even in the dark days after World War I, however, the German Army had managed to remain master of its own house, shutting out the prying fingers of detailed civilian budget control. In France, by contrast, the structure and cost of the army were debated annually so that, as Marshal Franchet d'Esperey observed Rumors persisted in Vichy that the German occupation authorities were allowing increased Communist activity in Paris at a time when the NaziSoviet Pact was not yet a year old. See The Haider Diaries, 10, 15, 21 August 1940; Aron 191-192; Fernand de Brinon, Memoires (Paris, n.d.), 76. For an American view of the danger of Communist revolution in evacuated Paris, see Gordon Wright, "Ambassador Bullitt and the Fall of France," World Politics, x, No. 1 (October 1957), 85. II

The French Army Lives On bitterly in the 1920's, the French Army had been forced to conform to the whim of a parliamentary majority." The heirs of the French Revolution had once been enthusiastic partisans of the national army, those "booted Jacobins" who would sweep away monarchy, clericalism, and reaction. After all, the first French Republic had revolutionized the art of warfare the better to revolutionize all Europe, and, under Napoleon, French soldiers had carried the tricolor from Madrid to Moscow. Louis Blanc, for example, better known as the proponent of public workshops as an entering wedge for socialism and a member of the government of February 1848, was also an enthusiastic believer in the expansion of republicanism by French arms. After the June Days of 1848 and during the reign of Napoleon III, however, the French Left came to regard the French Army as the class weapon of wealth. To be sure, militant Jacobin nationalism could reappear in the Paris Commune of 1871, as much a patriotic reaction to defeat as a social revolution, in the working class support enjoyed by General Boulanger, and in the evaporation of pacifism among French socialists in August 1914. But by i860, the career military man had evolved, as Raoul Girardet put it, "from the soldier of liberty to the soldier of order." The new generation of republicans who came of age under Napoleon Ill's autocracy were antimilitarist and pacifist as their intellectual forebears had not been, in part because the 11

G. A. Craig, The Politics of the Prussian Army (Oxford, 1955), 221222, 250-252, 423-425; Marshal Franchet d'Esperey, "Du directoire a la guerre de 1914," in Gabriel Hanotaux, ed., Histoire de la nation francaise (1900-29), viii, 492. The following paragraphs draw heavily upon Raoul Girardet, La Societe militaire dans la France contemporaine (Paris, 1953); Richard Challener, TAi? French Theory of the Nation in Arms (New York, !955); Joseph Monteilhet, Les institutions militaires de la France (Paris, 1932); Pierre Chalmin, L'Officier jrancais de 1815 a 1870 (Paris, 1957). 12

The French Army Lives On army and the regime supported each other so conspicuously. Republicans learned to grumble with Karl Marx that the motto of France had been changed from Liberie, egalite, fraternite to infanterie, cavallerie, artillerie.12 Two major aspects o£ French Army life helped engender a root-and-branch opposition to permanent military institutions in the late nineteenth century. One was the alleged social exclusiveness of the officer "caste." In fact, a major part of the French officer corps was promoted from the ranks of noncommissioned officers in the nineteenth century, a proportion as high as two-thirds of the new lieutenants in the 1820's, and a proportion which declined decisively only after mid-century. Again, during World War I, a flood of experienced sergeants received battlefield commissions and became full members of the officers corps, in sharp distinction to the German case in which battlefieldpromoted lieutenants became only "deputy officers," not fully accepted as the equals of their fellow lieutenants.13 Once commissioned, however, the range of possible future promotions narrowed sharply for the officer who had not been blessed with a diploma from Saint-Cyr or the Ecole poly technique. At the rank of major, promotion by seniority gave way to promotion by cooptation,1* and the gentlemenofficers of the selection boards knew what social distinctions were essential to high rank. Those exceptional officers of humble background who rose to the top through unimpeachable merit tried to conform to the model of their group's taste-setters. After the middle of the nineteenth 12

Marcel Blanchard, Le second R. G. L. Waite, Vanguard 45-48. 14 Col. T. Bentley Mott, "The Army," Army and Naval Journal, 13

empire (Paris, 1950), 151. of Nazism (Cambridge, Mass., 1952), Machinery of Promotion in the French LXXVI, NO. 50 (12 August 1939), 1195.

13

The French Army Lives On century, moreover, an unmistakable tendency to recruit more officers from upper bourgeois and noble families became apparent, a tendency fortified between the world wars by an increased proportion of officers' sons among applicants to military schools. The increasing reality of senior officers' upper-class origins, the increasing share of Catholic preparatory schools in the education of officer-candidates after the Falloux law of 1851, and the fondness of military rhetoric for treating the officer corps as a quasi-religious order all combined to give some verisimilitude to the charges of republican intellectuals that uniforms were synonymous with the defense of antique privileges. The other seed-bed of antimilitarism in late nineteenthcentury France was the flagrant use of regular troops to put down internal disorder. The first Napoleon, indeed, had already disciplined Paris on 5 October 1795, with his "whiff of grapeshot." By mid-century, however, the Due d'Aumale's entry into strike-torn Lyon at the head of 20,000 troops in December 1831, the Paris "massacre of the rue Transnonain" in 1834 (immortalized by Daumier's engraving), and especially the June Days of 1848 in which at least 1,460 people were killed, to cite only the official figure, had burned into the consciousness of an important part of the population an indelible image of peasant soldiers sent against urban workingmen and their families. France was not, of course, the only European country in which regular troops repressed industrial strikes at the end of the century. In the United States, federal troops upheld the interests of employers in the great railroad strike of 1877 and the Pullman strike of 1894. Winston Churchill sent troops against striking miners in Wales in 1911. The German Army helped put down the Mansfeld coal strike of 1910 and the Ruhr miners' strike of 1912. But only in France 14

The French Army Lives On did the regular army reconquer the capital city like an enemy fortress, and in France such a conquest occurred twice: in 1848 and in 1871. The stigma of class weapon thus imprinted on the French Army remained an open sore during the troubled years before the First World War when troops had to be used repeatedly: against the winegrowers in Provence in 1907, against a general strike at Draveil and Villeneuve-Saint-Georges, near Paris, in 1908, and against the miners of the Nord in 1911-13. Eight Frenchmen were killed by French soldiers in 1907, and ten in 1908." The French Army was already "in politics," then, in the sense that its status was a political issue. The army was an indispensable weapon which contending interests in France wanted to capture for themselves, or at least keep out of the hands of others. The conservative governments of the Restoration had nervously tried to uproot Napoleonic traditions in the officer corps. By 1870, the new republicans, who called themselves "Radicals," were pursuing the same aim of capturing the army from their political opponents. At the turn of the century, the Socialists and "RadicalSocialists" had enough political power to do something about the French Army. In 1893, the various socialist factions had pushed their representation from twelve to fortynine seats, with Radical help, and in 1902, the bloc republican captured enough seats to organize the Chamber and conduct business as it pleased. Their attitude toward the army had gone far beyond the mere intellectual grumbling of the antibarracks novels of the 1880's and 1890's: Abel Hermant's Le Cavalier Miserey, Lucien Descaves' Sous15

See also Leo A. Loubere, "Left-Wing Radicals, Strikes, and the Military, 1880-1907," French Historical Studies, Vol. 3, No. 1 (Spring 1963).

IS

The French Army Lives On offs, and such satiric plays as Georges Courteline's Gaietes de I'escadron. They had a specific program. As early as 1869 the young Radical lawyer Leon Gambetta, running for election in the working-class quarter of Belleville, in northeastern Paris, agreed to accept a list of demands, a cahier de doleances, which his potential constituents proposed to him. Among the clauses was "the suppression of standing armies." The young doctor Georges CIemenceau committed himself to the same goal before his constituents in Montmartre in 1881. They were still heirs of the revolution, these men of Paris who presented cahiers de doleances to their candidates; but now they emphasized the militia tradition of the revolution, the "levee en masse," the mass mobilization of the citizenry to defend its national patrimony, rather than its militantly expansionist tradition. "We want an army of citizens which would be invincible on its home soil, but incapable of carrying a war abroad," Jules Simon had said in 1867.16 The Radical-Socialist army program was crystallized in 1910 by the publication of Jean Jaures' L'Armee nouvelle, a book which was still the basis of French socialist military thought in 1960.17 The army, Jaures wrote, should be a temporary rather than a permanent institution. The only kind of army consonant with human freedom was the mass mobilization of an entire populace determined to preserve its patrimony and its socialist achievements against reactionary aggressors. All male citizens should attend "recruit school" for six months, after which they would remain available for national defense for thirteen years, keep16 David Thomson, Democracy in France (Oxford, 1958), 293; Francis Goguel, La politique des partis (Paris, 1948) 55; Girardet, 42. 17 See Guy Mollet, "L'Armee et la nation," Le Populaire, 23 FebruaryApril i960.

l6

The French Army Lives On ing their kit at home and reporting annually for two to three weeks' training. As for officers, two-thirds of them should be reserves, "civilian officers." The Regulars, who would be educated at civilian universities, were needed to maintain heavy arms depots and to staff training camps. It was axiomatic, of course, that governments fully responsive to the will of their peaceful populations needed only defensive arms; only governments which moved at the whim of princes or industrialists waged aggressive war. The "nation in arms" proposed by Jaures thus served a double function: to prevent wars of conquest, by making armies a purely defensive mechanism; and to destroy the power so often used by reactionary French regimes to repress the liberties won in 1792, 1848, 1871, and after. The threat to national defense posed by the mere existence of such ideas in twentieth-century France was, of course, grossly exaggerated by officers. More discerning eyes might have seen how much patriotism, even nationalism, lay thinly concealed within Jaures' defensive militia scheme. Jaures' republican defense against militant reaction was to transform itself very easily in August 1914 into national defense against German aggression, and Jaures' own son was to die on the Somme in 1916. Many officers, however, reacted to radical republican opposition with what might be called a "beleaguered minority" complex, an attitude adopted more than once by French interest groups which have come to consider themselves a tiny nucleus of truth forced to choose between total victory or annihilation. Among trade unions, this mood took the form of revolutionary syndicalism, a policy which accorded well with weak minority status and which permitted only two outcomes, unqualified victory or total defeat. Among officers, this mood expressed itself in a conviction that republican poli17

The French Army Lives On ticians were dedicated to dismantling the French Army, root and branch. There was at least a kernel of truth in their fears, however, for the opponents of a professional officer corps acquired enough political power in the twentieth century to influence the French Army in three ways: in parliament, by legislation concerning the army's organization, and by cutting the military budget; and outside parliament, by direct propaganda among draftees and noncommissioned officers. The early Third Republic's army legislation had not been unresponsive to career officers' preferences. Even while accepting the principle of universal military service after 1870, senior officers had insisted that mass national service not preclude long-term training and a large professional complement. Long service was essential, they argued, to mold the discipline, the force of will, and the cohesion of units necessary to make good soldiers. Military training meant the inculcation of military spirit, not mere drill in the manual of arms. Thiers met these preferences in the Army Law of 1872, in which universality of conscription was subordinated to length of service and the maintenance of a large standing force. Since not all young Frenchmen could be drafted to serve seven years, conscription remained in practice only a partial levy of the eligible, as it had been throughout the nineteenth century under the Gouvion SaintCyr Law of 1818. Henceforth, Radical efforts to make national service more universal and to reduce the impact of barracks life upon conscripts took the form of shortening the term of service, a step bitterly opposed by partisans of professionalism in the officer corps. General Gallifet's losing struggle against the two-year service law of 1889 was only the opening round of a long civil-military tug of war. In the twentieth century, the professionalists lost decisively 18

The French Army Lives On to the universalists. Military organization was an issue on which the radical and socialist strands of the French Left, so often at odds on issues of social or economic policy, could reassert their longed-for unity. The Dreyfusard coalition regrouped itself repeatedly on military issues long after it had ceased to function in other spheres. Middle-class exemptions from military service were swept away, that of seminary students with particular relish. Training was reduced to eighteen months in 1923 and then, in 1926, to a year. The cartel des gauches government of 1924 attempted to insulate draftees from the noxious influences of barracks life by setting up special training centers. Finally, the Army Organization Law of 1928 essentially embodied "the radicalsocialist program of before World War I." At any given moment, half the recruits, who were incorporated semiannually, had received only six months' training, and the professional contingent was so exclusively devoted to training the draftees that no military operation could be carried out without calling up reserves, as the French government learned to its sorrow when the Germans remilitarized the Rhineland in 1936. The French Army had become, General Debeney warned, "a training establishment rather than a fighting force."18 Misguided military legislation went hand in hand with budgetary parsimony, as career officers saw it. General Weygand observed that in the decade 1901-n, the Minister of Finance had regularly reduced the Minister of War's draft budget by one-third before even submitting it to the Chamber. Once before the deputies, the military budget was automatically opposed by the French Socialist Party from its founding in 1905 to its accession to power in 1936 "for rea"ChaUener, 178-180.

19

The French Army Lives On sons of a ritual nature," according to Leon Blum himself in one of his characteristically apolitical moments of candor. After 1920, the annual military budget debate was also used by the French Communist Party to launch what one aghast retired Colonel in the Chamber, Jean Fabry, described as "a call to rebellion."19 Opposition to a professional army outside the Chamber seemed even more ominous to career officers than the parliamentary opposition within. Carried on in secrecy, the extent and success of antimilitary propaganda outside parliament was easily exaggerated. Prewar syndicalist propaganda, of the sort that urged that "it is better to shoot a French general than a foreign soldier," was inherited by the French Communist Party after 1920. Between the wars the party published Le Consent, a newspaper designed to sow the seeds of indiscipline in the minds of homesick draftees. When French troops occupied the Ruhr in 1923, Jacques Doriot was in charge of disrupting the operation. During the war against the Moroccan rebel Abd-el-Krim in 1925, a police raid on the Lenin School at Bobigny turned up pamphlets designed to undermine French soldiers' willingness to fight against the Berber chieftain. Although the satiric press quickly dubbed the Communist leaders "Abd-elcriminels," many French officers found Communist propaganda no laughing matter.20 If so much concrete evidence of antimilitary activity among draftees could be exposed, 19 Maxime Weygand, Histoire de I'Armee Fran^aise (Paris, 1938), 318; Leon Blum, testimony in De Coquet, 129; J.O, Debuts. Chambre. 1934, session of 15 June 1934, 1514-1517. The Socialist vote for military credits in August 1914 was thus all the more remarkable a departure from principle. 20 Gerard Walter, Histoire du parti communiste francais (Paris, 1948), 137-138, 372; Edouard Bonnefous, Histoire de la Troisieme Republique (Paris, 1958), iv, 53.

10

The French Army Lives On how much more had gone undetected? The officers who participated in the Cagoule in 1938 and who formed a secret society of highly placed officers to root out the sources of such propaganda were a sign that some military men had decided to fight fire with fire. After conservatives had been frightened by the sit-down strikes and the Popular Front election victory of May 1936, a number of officers became convinced that a conspiracy, all the more ominous because its precise limits could not be traced, was undermining all permanent military institutions in France. Inevitably some officers came to identify any attack on the French Army as an attack on French society as then constituted. The Communist Party did, beyond doubt, advocate the overthrow of the existing social and economic system. As a converse, saving the army was all too easily identified with saving the existing social and economic system. Confronted with a root-and-branch attack, the French officer corps reacted with a root-and-branch defense of the army. The French Army was the "best element" in French society, whose destruction would carry away with it a whole way of life. A professional military institution was more than a tool for defense: it was the essential cement binding society together. The officers who served Marshal Petain after June 1940 had drunk deeply at these springs. General Paul de la Porte du Theil, later as leader of the youth camps one of the archetypal figures of the Vichy regime, frequently attacked the notion that armies exist only to make war. A professional army was one of the essential elements of a state, a school of citizenship. "It is, by its very nature, a permanent and necessary moral example." Where private citizens are dedicated only to their private concerns, the most elementary moral sense may be lost. But soldiers, 2/

The French Army Lives On dedicated exclusively to serving the state, are living witnesses of disinterested loyalty, men set apart not unlike priests. "To a weakening of the military spirit in a people has always corresponded a period of decline, and to its total disappearance, a period of definitive ruin." An anonymous general writing in the Revue des deux mondes in 1941 put even more succinctly the notion that France could survive only if its "vital cell," the French Army, continued to exist. "No nation exists without an army, however small, without that element of moral force, order, discipline, and abnegation which is at the base of any independent collectivity."21 In June 1940, when it seemed possible that the Germans might realize the officers' nightmare of dissolving the structures of a permanent military force, career officers reacted with the accumulated panic of several generations of the "beleaguered minority" complex. If France were to live for even a short time in a demilitarized society, permanent military institutions might never be reestablished. Frenchmen must not learn that a normal national life is possible without a professional officer corps. The British Dunkirk had been a literal escape from a foreign enemy force; the French Dunkirk was a symbolic escape from both foreign and domestic enemies. The armistice provisions permitting a continued French Army were regarded, therefore, with a vivid sense of relief by many French officers. We know that the Armistice Army was in fact a German desideratum; but to many French officers at the time, it seemed a precious concession for which good Frenchmen ought to be prepared to sacrifice many lesser matters. It helped reconcile to the armistice a number of officers whose normal 21 Paul de la Porte du Theil, hes Chantiers de la jeunesse ont deux arts (Paris, 1942), 207; Anon., "L'Armec de !'armistice," Revue des deux mondes, 1 February 1941, 356.

22

The French Army Lives On inclination was to listen to the voice of Charles de Gaulle and to continue the war from abroad. GAULLISM

CONTAINED

That viper I nourished in my bosom —Marshal Petain When the new Prime Minister, Marshal Henri-Philippe Petain, announced on 17 June 1940, five weeks and three days after the German western offensive had opened, that France was asking for an armistice, not all French officers were glad. The struggle within the cabinet which had preceded this momentous decision now had its counterpart outside. Only a struggle within the officer corps would bring almost all French officers to accept the Marshal's policy. An officer's position in the battle had a lot to do with his reaction. In France itself, the flood of German forces which broke through General Weygand's last line of defense along the Somme River on June 10 seemed only too obviously irreversible to those officers still capable of viewing the situation as a whole. Few officers could enjoy even that luxury. Units were severed from command, divided from one another, reduced to whatever weapons and whatever means of communication could be improvised. To the disorganization natural to any retreating army was added the numbing weight of fatigue. The fatigue of rapid retreat in a mechanized campaign is perhaps the ultimate in battlefield exhaustion. An advancing army, buoyed along by high morale, carries its own supplies, confident that its rear will be secure. Weary units have only to halt in order to let their men eat and sleep. A retreating army loses not only its morale but its supply train and control over its own rear. If a weary unit pauses, 2J

The French Army Lives On it is attacked or captured. The men can neither eat nor sleep. The remnants of units that heard the armistice rumors which raced through the front after Petain's speech acquiesced numbly or rejoiced. No commanding officer at the front is known to have expressed dissent to the Commander in Chief, General Weygand. Only one career officer with command responsibilities on the northeastern front, Captain Philippe de Hautecloque, was to become a leader in the Free French movement. Officers far from the battlefield reacted quite differently. Men who had not experienced blitzkrieg, colonial officers aware of the possibilities of France Overseas, attaches in foreign posts, such officers had to be shown that an armistice was necessary. They had to be convinced that the stillborn plans to hold out in Brittany or to carry on the war from North Africa were in fact hopeless. Many overseas commanders remonstrated energetically with General Weygand until the very signature of the armistice on June 25. Even then, some of these men joined De Gaulle in refusing to lay down their arms. It was anything but clear on June 25 that the vast majority of overseas officers could be reconciled to the armistice policy. These doubts in turn cast further doubts upon Marshal Petain's right to speak to the German authorities in the name of all Frenchmen. Could the Marshal impose an armistice on the French Empire, as he claimed to do in accepting Article 10 of the armistice? How widely did his writ run? The Marshal's ascendancy was touch-and-go through the negotiation period and until the very moment of the signature of the armistice. The concern felt in Germany is suggested by the relief with which General Haider's diary on June 30 greeted "the surrender of French military units in the colonies." 24

The French Army Lives On The most powerful and most reluctant of French overseas commanders on the eve of the armistice was General Auguste Nogues, Commander in Chief of French Forces in North Africa. Facing Italian troops rather than German, Nogues was determined to continue the war there. During June 1940, he sent "one or two telegrams a day" to the government urging it to move to North Africa to carry on the war. On June 17, he wired Weygand: the troops of the army, air force, and navy demand to continue the struggle to save French honor and conserve North Africa for France. . . . I am ready, if the government has no objection, to take the responsibility for this attitude directly, independently of the government, with all the attendant risks. . . . [This attitude] could moreover constitute a weighty factor in the negotiations. The following day he wired Petain: The Muslims are all ready, at this moment, to give their lives that the French flag might continue to wave over North Africa. We must not disappoint them. Moreover, with our fleet intact, the aircraft units which are now crossing the Mediterranean, and some additional means (officers, material), we will hold for a long time and without doubt well enough to contribute to the defeat of our adversaries. It is with a respectful but burning insistence, then, that I request the government, in the name of the oldest interests of our country, either to come pursue the struggle or let the struggle be pursued in North Africa if it is not possible to do so on the continent. It is the only way to keep our Muslim empire. . . .22 22

For this and succeeding paragraphs, see Proces Nogues; Proces

25

The French Army Lives On Convinced of the necessity of an armistice, Weygand made it abundantly clear to Nogues that no supplies could be sent from the continent. On June 18 and again on June 22, he sent General Louis Koeltz to Algiers to get exact figures on Nogues' capacity to defend North Africa without any aid from metropolitan France, and also to make clear beyond question the impossibility of sending any such aid. Nogues' opposition to the armistice received full support from Admiral Jean-Pierre Esteva, commander of the French Mediterranean fleet at Bizerte, and from General Mittelhauser, commander of French Forces in the Eastern Mediterranean. Mittelhauser wired Nogues: I have taken up a public position with you in favor of continuing the struggle. I presume a government of Imperial France will be set up in North Africa . . . Esteva wired the government on June 23 that "naval personnel will not understand if Italy is given concessions, and if ships are destroyed without having been able to take action against an enemy which is retreating." A later wire the same day stated: M. Peyrouton [the Governor-General of Tunisia] and General Nogues have the same opinion as I on the situation in North Africa and its general influence. . . . Peyrouton and General Nogues ardently want the government to be represented in North Africa by General Weygand and the Fleet Admiral [Darlan] in order to carry on the struggle there, especially against Italy. I promised Esteva; Koeltz testimony in Commission parlementaire d'enquete, rx, 2807S1; A. Truchet, L'Armistice de 1940 et I'Ajrique du nord (Paris, 1955); US. Foreign Relations, 1940, m, 891-926.

26

The French Army Lives On to transmit this wish to you, expressed by them to General Koeltz. Meanwhile, General Nogues was losing his early optimism about the possibilities of fighting on with existing North African resources, and from doubt he moved on to resignation when he learned that the Toulon squadron would not leave France. Even though he accepted the armistice as a loyal soldier, however, he wired Weygand on June 25 that "in full agreement with MM. Lebeau and Peyrouton [Governors-General of Algeria and Tunisia] I make the most explicit reservations about the demobilization measures and the conditions in which they will be carried out and overseen." He continued to stress the dangers of losing "moral authority" in the eyes of the native population. With the indispensable resources of French North Africa withdrawn from the war, General Mittelhauser's eagerness for a continued effort from overseas also began to fade. At first, he was "profoundly disturbed" by the attitude of officials in North Africa. Finally, on June 27, he proclaimed the cessation of hostilities in his theater of operations in the Eastern Mediterranean. Among troop commanders overseas, there remained only General Paul Legentilhomme in French Somalia, who stood ready to fight on against Italian forces in Italian Somalia and Ethiopia. The decision of the main overseas military commanders to obey orders and accept the armistice was a momentous one. It meant that there was no figure high in the chain of command willing to break that chain for the officers under him, to order whole units to follow him in an independent course of action. From June 25 on, an officer's decision to reject the armistice and go on fighting must be an indi27

The French Army Lives On vidual decision, involving abandoning his men or his post and violating a lifetime's lessons. Furthermore, the survival of the French Army after the armistice meant that no officer felt released to make such a decision as an individual. Hitler's "concession," the Armistice Army, meant that the whole armature of assigned responsibilities and chain of command remained in existence. Duly constituted authority above and duly constituted subordinates below were still in their places, and there were assigned jobs to be done. The French Army lived on, and its officers were not released to act as granular individuals. Only officers who stood outside that close-knit web of responsibilities and duties could tear themselves free to follow personal inclinations. One such officer was Charles de Gaulle. Colonel de Gaulle had commanded the Fourth Armored Division in its desperate effort to halt the German drive to the sea, from May 15 to June 6, and had he retained a field command, De Gaulle would no doubt have found it very hard to leave his men and go abroad. On June 7, however, his friend and sponsor Paul Reynaud promoted him and called him into the cabinet as Under Secretary of War. On June 8 he made the first of a series of flying trips to England to seek additional air cover and additional shipping to permit building a fresh force in North Africa. In London, deeply impressed by Churchill's determination, he became an active sponsor of Churchill's dramatic stroke of psychological warfare, the offer to merge France and Britain into a single country to carry on the war against Hitler. When he learned in the night of June 16-17 that his sponsor had resigned as Prime Minister, Brigadier General Charles de Gaulle could hardly have looked forward to a brilliant career as ex-Under Secretary of War. Not 28

The French Army Lives On only was his morale intact, but he was free of official responsibilities. Having prepared a means of escape for his family, therefore, De Gaulle managed to slip aboard the plane carrying General Spears from Bordeaux to London on the morning of June 17, where the next night he broadcast his famous appeal for continued resistance abroad. Charles de Gaulle did not create the overseas opposition to the armistice. During his first week in London, he tried to put himself at the disposal of the far more important leaders of that opposition in positions of command, Generals Nogues and Mittelhauser.23 Before June 25, indeed, the relatively obscure brigadier general in London hardly presented as yet a clear alternative to the far more important commanding generals in Algiers and Beirut. Indeed, many French officers were in no position to hear the eloquent appeal of June 18. An officer who had been trying to hold one of the Loire bridges that day could well comment to an interviewer twenty years later with some acerbity that he had not been at his fireside "in slippers" to tune in the B.B.C. Certainly there were would-be resisters who reached England in those days without having heard of De Gaulle. The future General Leclerc only heard of the London movement on June 25. The name De Gaulle begins to appear in the minutes of German staff meetings only on July 7. Through June 1940, to go by General Haider's diary, Algiers and Beirut were far more nervously watched than London as a center for resurgent French resistance.24 After June 25, however, by a process of elimination which shocked and surprised De Gaulle, the young briga23

De Gaulle, i, 95; Soustelle, 1, 55. Adrien Dansette, Leclerc (Paris, 1952), 47; Geschke, 43; The Haider Diaries, 30 June 1940. 24

2O

The French Army Lives On dier general was left as the one figure around whom the remaining elements of resistance could crystallize. From all accounts, those elements were still very vigorous at the end of June. United States consuls reported from Algiers, Casablanca, Lagos, and Leopoldville on the "strong move­ ment" among French officers to reject the armistice and go on with the war. In Beirut, the American consul was confident that whole units would cross into British Pales­ tine with their commanding officers; he knew "a number of officers" who were making such plans. 25 In the months to come, however, only a comparative handful of career officers were to join De Gaulle, and the Armistice Army was to be left the sole and undisputed heir of the French Army. The failure of even officers who bitterly resented the armistice to join Fighting France is baffling in retro­ spect. At the time, however, De Gaulle's movement had only a limited field of recruitment. Unlike Generals Nogues and Mittelhauser, General de Gaulle had not pleaded privately for continuing the war from abroad. He had made a ringing public rejection of the armistice. As in 1935 when he broadcast his strategic concepts by having his friend Paul Reynaud promote them in the Chamber of Deputies, De Gaulle had short-circuited the established network of military decision-making. More seriously, his action threatened the forthcoming armistice negotiations in the most direct way. Since it was essential for favorable armistice terms that the French government and high command appear to be acting in good faith and in control of the forces in whose name they claimed to speak, General Weygand ordered De Gaulle to return to France at once. On June 20, De Gaulle rather curtly re25

U-S. Foreign Relations, 1940, π, 571, 575, 637; ibid., in, 892-894.

30

The French Army Lives On jected the order.26 From the very first, therefore, his movement bore the brand of public disobedience. After the armistice had been signed, Marshal Petain and the high command needed more than ever to demonstrate their ability to enforce Article io, a promise to prevent Frenchmen from continuing the war abroad. Violation of that promise could well jeopardize the whole armistice policy and cause the Germans to cancel their "concessions." General Weygand took vigorous action to demonstrate French compliance with Article io. General Mittelhauser put his chief of staff, Colonel de Larminat, under arrest for having openly prepared the movement of French army units from Syria into British Palestine. In early July, General Germain was sent out to Djibouti first to persuade and then to replace his old best man, General Legentilhomme, about whose refusal to lay down arms the Italians had been complaining.27 Even with the loyalty of senior officers overseas assured, however, there remained the discontent of the rank and file which had so impressed American observers. In the Levant command, Weygand's own high prestige remaining from the months in the spring of 1940 when he had been French Commander in the Eastern Mediterranean, helped reassure doubtful spirits. In Africa, Vice-Admiral Charles Platon spent much of July touring French West and Equatorial African garrisons. As Minister of Colonies, he urgently explained the necessity of keeping the French Empire intact under a single French authority; as a senior officer, he could informally help 28

De Gaulle, I, 332, 333. OKW/i437, frame 5,573,569; Anon. [General Biihrer], Aux heures tragiques de !'empire [1938-41] (Paris, 1947), 282-285; General Edgard de Larminat, Chroniques irreverenaeuses (Paris, 1962), 91-113. 27

3*

The French Army Lives On guide his fellow officers along the path of least resistance, which was also the path of obedience. Platon was evidently persuasive. Governor-General Brunot in the Cameroons, for example, whom an American diplomat had found staunchly pro-British shordy before, now became "disappointingly sour and frightened." The beginnings of disarmament and doubts about British survival began to corrode the bellicose feelings of junior officers in Africa, according to the same American observers who had been impressed by their morale in June.28 Even if an officer were still determined to sacrifice career, family, and security to join De Gaulle, the refusal of Generals Nogues and Mittelhauser to launch a resistance movement meant that he had to reach British territory. The physical problems of transportation were formidable. The dramatic escape across the Pyrenees into Spain or across the channel by trawler could never be a mass travel route. It was no accident that fully one-third of the Free French force at Christmas 1941 were seafaring Bretons. By and large, the most fertile recruiting grounds were those French officers and men who were already on British soil, or with easy access to it. There were the disgruntled forces in Syria, who were expected to cross in great numbers into Palestine. In the end, however, after the arrest of Colonel de Larminat and growing doubts about British intentions in Syria, only some four to five hundred officers and men ever actually crossed the frontier, out of an army of 100,000. There were the crews of French ships of the Eastern Mediterranean squadron at Alexandria. But after the Franco-British naval clashes at Oran and Dakar, only about 100 officers and sailors out of 2,000 walked down the 28

U.5. Foreign Relations, ig40, n, 580, 639; De Gaulle, r, 117.

32

The French Army Lives On gangplank to join the little nucleus of Fighting French in Egypt.29 There were, finally, three kinds of French units in England at the signature of the armistice: the crews of French ships in British ports, the forces evacuated with the British Expeditionary Force from Dunkirk on June 3 and still unrepatriated, and veterans of the Anglo-French force which had failed to hold Norway in April 1940. General Weygand ordered these units home in compliance with Article 10. And official agencies in Britain were stringently forbidden to give any assistance to the dissident general. Another barrier had been set in the way of overseas resistance.30 In addition to the barriers of physical geography, there was a geography of the mind which made it difficult for a good officer to abandon his station and tear free from the web of responsibility which command placed upon him. It was almost impossible for General de Gaulle, standing outside the chain of command, to "break the charm," as he put it,31 to shatter the links which bound an officer to his seniors and his subordinates. Consider the example of General Maurice-fimile Bethouart, De Gaulle's classmate at Saint-Cyr and in July 1940 commander of the French detachment which had fought in Norway and had been brought back to Britain. General Bethouart's personal determination to rid France of the German occupation can not be doubted. In 1941, as liaison officer with the German Control Commission in Morocco, he hindered German freedom of movement sufficiently to provoke a crisis in the Armistice Commission. In 1942, he played a 2a U.S. Foreign Relations, 1940, in, 903-905; U.S. Department of State, 851.01/176; Robert Aron, France Reborn (New York, 1964), n o . 80 De Gaulle, 1, 100. 31 De Gaulle, 1, 143.

33

The French Army Lives On leading part among the pro-Allied conspirators who helped prepare the way for the American landing of November 1942. In July 1940, however, he saw no reason to question the validity of orders from the high command. The French Army still existed, and General Bethouart intended to serve France within it. Deciding on his own part to return to France, he left his junior officers free to take the decision which seemed proper to them. Nine officers joined De Gaulle, including such central figures in the Gaullist movement as Captain Dewavrin, better known as "Colonel Passy," Lieutenant Colonel Magrin-Vernery, later better known as "General Monclar," and Captain Pierre Koenig. Among even those whom geography permitted to join De Gaulle, therefore, the career officers who joined the movement at its beginning were largely restricted to men already detached from the close hierarchy of command functions, like De Gaulle himself, men for whom the chain of command had been broken. Captain Philippe de Hautecloque, for example, the only northeastern front veteran among prominent Free French career officers, heard about De Gaulle on June 25 after he had escaped to Paris from a military hospital taken over by the Germans. His biographer doubts that he would have abandoned an active assignment.32 General Georges Catroux had retired from active duty in 1939, only to be named Governor-General of Indochina when war was declared. After being replaced in that job by Admiral Decoux on July 14, he went to Singapore where he set out on August 25 for London. General Legentilhomme, who refused to cease fire in French Somalia, was joint Allied Commander in Chief at Djibouti; he did not move to British territory until August 2, 32

Adrien Dansette, Leclerc (Paris, 1952), 112.

34

The French Army Lives On after he had been removed from French command and had failed to rally his former officers to continued resistance. Colonel de Larminat, imprisoned in Syria for too openly preparing to move French units into Palestine, had already burned his boats when he escaped to join De Gaulle. Admiral Muselier, the only naval officer of flag rank to join De Gaulle, had been retired in 1939 after an ancient feud with Admiral Darlan reached the point of complete rupture. Navy Captain Philippe Auboyneau was already in Egypt as a liaison officer with the British Navy. There was also a group of military attaches from Latin American capitals who felt freer to follow their inclinations than officers with troop commands, men like Air Force Colonel Martial Valin from Brazil and Army Colonels Petit, Angenot, Brosset, and Dassonville. The adventures of Colonel Angenot, who was detailed to the Paraguayan army as a cavalry instructor in 1940, suggest how hard it was for even an officer off French soil to tear free from the web of routine responsibilities. Colonel Angenot cabled his allegiance to De Gaulle in June 1940, and received orders to work for the good cause in his current assignment. Thereupon the entire French military mission in Paraguay followed suit, only to receive a revised order from General de Gaulle summoning the whole group to London. After much indecision, Colonel Angenot left Asuncion alone in early September.33 Another category of Gaullist recruits were officers who escaped from German prisoner-of-war camps, such as Edward Corniglion-Molinier and Pierre Billotte. Captain BiIlotte, who escaped into the Soviet Union and was interned there until Russia was brought into the war on the Allied 33

U-S. Department of State, 800.20210/585.

35

The French Army Lives On side, reached London in the summer of 1941 at the head of a litde band of kindred spirits, 15 officers and 200 men. By contrast with all these officers set apart in one way or another from the chain of command, the vast majority of staff officers and troop commanders in metropolitan France and the Empire simply remained in place in the routine operation of the continuing French Army. To make matters worse, Prime Minister Churchill took a step in the first days of July which slowed even this small flow of officer recruits to a trickle, and which gave a new impetus to Weygand's efforts to assure loyal obedience overseas to the armistice policy. Churchill regarded the eventual disposition of the French Fleet as a matter of life and death for Britain. In early July, he saw nothing to prevent the world's second most powerful fleet from falling into German clutches. Article 8 of the armistice required not only that French ships be disarmed under German and Italian supervision, but also that they return to home ports, Toulon or Brest. Despite the German promise in Article 8 not to use these ships for war purposes during the armistice period, and despite repeated private assurances given by Admiral Darlan, the return of French warships to home ports put them uncomfortably close to German power in case the armistice should be denounced or violated. Churchill decided to prevent the return of French warships in Britain and in North Africa to metropolitan ports. On July 3, British troops seized the French ships in British ports, and on the same day off Mers-el-Kebir, the naval base at Oran, a British squadron presented the French Commander, Admiral Gensoul, with three choices: to join the British forces against Germany, to sail to some remote French area such as Martinique, or to scuttle his ships. Admiral Gensoul having rejected this ultimatum,

36

The French Army Lives On the British squadron shelled the French ships at anchor, causing 1,269 casualties.84 The reaction of Frenchmen to this news was a spasm of anger, humiliation, and hatred. Opinions were "violent in the extreme," Ambassador Bullitt told Washington, and moderation was not assisted by the fact that Admiral Gensoul neglected to mention the Martinique option in his reports of the British ultimatum. Marshal Petain wrote President Roosevelt on July 4 that "nothing could justify this odious aggression." Twenty years later officers could describe the incident to an interviewer as "those British murders." For General de Gaulle, this "lamentable incident" meant the end of hope for any official resistance in North Africa. In Syria and Lebanon, numerous officers who had planned to cross to Palestine changed their minds. In French Africa, a wave of animosity to London swept over circles which only recently had longed for a way to keep up the war alongside Britain. That "terrible axeblow," as De Gaulle called it, virtually cut off the slender stream of voluntary exiles reaching London.35 By the end of July, the Gaullist movement had leveled off to about seven thousand persons, officers and men, only a fraction of whom were career officers. Senior officers consisted of two generals who had been dismissed from remote overseas posts, one disgrunded admiral and one Navy captain who was already in London, and seven colonels and lieutenant-colonels, five of them attaches from Latin 34 P. M. H. Bell, "Prologue a Mers-el-Kebir," Revue d'histoire de la deuxieme guerre mondiale, January 1959, 15-36; Admiral Auphan and Jacques Mordal, La Marine francaise pendant la seconde guerre mondial (Paris, 1958), 160-169; Roskill, The War at Sea, 1, 131-138; testimony of Admiral Gensoul in Commission parlementaire d'enquete, vi, 1896-1916. 35 U.S. Foreign Relations, 1940, 11, 469, 470; ibid., m, 897; De Gaulle, I, 98, 114.

37

The French Army Lives On America. Only by acquiring new territory in French Equatorial Africa in August and September was the Gaullist movement able to enroll whole units in the normal exercise of their functions. By October 1940, the Gaullist force had risen to the modest total of 35,000 men, which remained its size up to November 1942.36 By the end of July 1940, then, two questions vital to the future of the French officer corps had been decided. There would continue to be a French Army in spite of the defeat. And the Gaullist movement, failing to break into the chain of command at any decisive point, was never to represent more than a minor fraction of French officers. The Armistice Army was to be the mainstream of social continuity in the French officer corps. se SousteIIe, i, 36, 51; Marcel Vigneras, Rearming the French (Washington, 1957), 10.

38

CHAPTER

L'Armee

II

Nouvelle

Marshal Keitel had refused to be drawn out on the sort of army which France could maintain during the armistice period. The general principle of a "ioo,ooo—120,000-man transitional army, without prejudice to the final setdement or to Italian decision" was finally set down in writing, not as part of the armistice agreement, but in an unsigned memorandum entided "Explanatory Notes to the Armistice Treaty" which, General Huntziger was assured, the Fiihrer considered binding on his part.1 All the details of the new army's size and organization were referred to an Armistice Commission, soon to be set up at Wiesbaden where the headquarters of the French military authority in Germany had been located after 1918. From June 1940 well into November, therefore, the French high command was busy with the simultaneous tasks of demobilizing the remnants of the defeated French Army and establishing the units of the new "transitional army," all with a careful weather eye to the possibilities of civil disorder. The process was begun by General Weygand, who, as Defense Minister, was the most powerful single influence in the first days of the Vichy regime, and was continued after September 6 by General Huntziger, who was named War Minister when Weygand's post was dissolved and he was sent to stop the dissident movement in French Africa. The lifelong concern of both Weygand and Huntziger for home-front stability presided over the gestation and birth of the Armistice Army. In accord with standard warA T RETHONDES,

1

DGFP, Series D, ix, Nos. 512, 524, pp. 650, 676.

39

L'Armee

Noupelle

time practice but with special urgency, military commanders were appointed in each department to oversee its security as soon as the dust of battle had settled. The state of siege declared in September 1939 gave them unusually extensive authority and the necessities of the moment quickly expanded that authority into areas not strictly military. General Jean de Lattre de Tassigny, for example, named Military Commander of the Department of the Puyde-dome in July 1940, first obtained emergency funds and prefabricated housing to help end the unhealthy rootlessness of refugees. So soon had the urgent tasks of French officers turned from the battle front to the home front. After the assurance of order, the most pressing problem was to see how large and powerful an army the Germans would permit during the armistice period. Domestic uneasiness and professional inclination combined to urge Defense Minister Weygand to present a far more ambitious Table of Organization than the Armistice Commission was likely to accept. His attempt to set up a brigade of artillery, including antiaircraft batteries, and a brigade of mechanized and motorized cavalry in each region militaire and to blanket the country with one regiment in each of the thirty-two unoccupied departments was promptly rejected by the Armistice Commission on July 12. The Germans would permit no motorized units in the French Army, they balked at the large number of regiments planned, and they set a 75 mm. ceiling on French artillery. As General Huntziger reported from Wiesbaden on August 14, after an unsuccessful attempt to raise the proportion of officers and to authorize armored reconnaissance cars and self-propelled artillery, 40

L'Armee Nouvelle the organization of the Armistice Army has been the object not of discussion but of decision. The Fuhrer's authority is always invoked every time the French delegation's arguments become embarrassing. An officer-interpreter just back from Wiesbaden on September 3 told an American official that the Armistice Commission was a mere "post-office" through which the German government transmitted its wishes. The Germans, he thought, were interested neither in constructive negotiations nor in peace, but only in disrupting France.2 The creation of the new Armistice Army advanced more smoothly after Weygand's departure when General Huntziger took charge and renounced all hope of retaining any mechanized and motorized units. His less ambitious Table of Organization was submitted to the Armistice Commission on September 4 and was readily approved by midOctober. The French Army would pose no threat to German security, General Haider noted with satisfaction in his diary.8 As officially established on 25 November 1940, the Armistice Army consisted of eight divisions, one stationed in each of the eight prewar regions militaires which fell within the Unoccupied Zone. Assigned to each division were three infantry regiments, one cavalry regiment, one regiment of horse-drawn artillery, one battalion of engineers, a communications group, a transportation company, and a legion of the Garde. Two higher commands, the first and second groupes de divisions militaires at Avignon and Clermont-Ferrand, controlled four divisions each. The 2

Weygand, in, 311; DFCAA, 1, 49, 65, 96, 100, 116; U.S. Department of State, 851.00/2073. 3 DFCAA, i, 174, 11, 112; The Haider Diaries, 11 October 1940.

41

L'ArmSe Nouvelle equivalent of an army corps in normal times, they were the highest level of field command permitted the Armi­ stice Army. The whole amounted in theory to an even 100,000 officers and men, no doubt a figure chosen more to avenge November 1918 than to meet calculated needs. In practice, total numbers sometimes fell short even of that quota. The men of the Armistice Army were supposed to be long-term volunteers, serving for a minimum of three years and offered strong financial inducements to reenlist. The draft and universal military service were suspended. In practice, however, the replacement of the Third Republic's short-term conscripts by long-term volunteers took place so gradually that the Armistice Army remained an army of draftees for most of its existence. When the last 1939 draft­ ees—those mobilized just in time to see the debacle—were finally released in September 1942, the volunteers did not make up the deficit. Demobilizing all but some 8,000 officers authorized for both metropolitan France and French Africa presented both an embarrassment and an opportunity to the high com­ mand. What fate would more than two-thirds of the 30,000 career officers in the French Army suffer, those for whom no Armistice Army assignment was available?* At the same time, what measures might be taken to improve the com­ position of the officer corps, to reduce it to sound heart wood by eliminating the weak, the unfit, and the unreliable? *The German Armistice Commission set at 3,584 the officer comple­ ment of the Armistice Army on n October 1940, DFCAA, π, 155; a slightly larger officer force was eventually authorized for the Armistice Army in Africa, ibid., τη, 381. There were 5,313 officers in French Africa when General Weygand retired in November 1941. Maxime Weygand, "La reconstitution de l'Armee d'Afrique (1940-41)," Hoover Institution, La vie de la France sous I'occupation [1940-44] (Paris, 1958-59), 11, 809. Al

L'Armie Nouvelle Reservists and holders of temporary commissions were no problem, of course, and thousands of officers were prisoners of war in Germany. From the first days, General Weygand sent the reservists home and canceled the temporary contmissions. The remaining career officers, however, not only sheltered in the solidarity of a close-knit corps but also enjoyed proprietary right to their ranks, by Marshal Souk's Law of 7 July 1832. There could be no question of removing career officers from the military rolls. But which officers wotild receive assignments, and which would not? A number of weeding-out expedients were adopted. On 2 August 1940, General Weygand reduced the upper age limit of officers, ostensibly "to rejuvenate the officer corps." Another measure transformed a number of specialty service branches—health, supply, military justice—into civilian components whose members would not take up coveted officer space. The personnel remained the same, of course, "subject to the same regulations, although they had become civilians." Officers could also choose to go on conge d'armistice, armistice leave, a special status of inactive duty at reduced pay without prejudice to later active duty and to the accumulation of promotion and retirement credits. Armistice leave was not expected to last long. The text of the law creating armistice leave on 25 August 1940 provided three months at full pay, with the implication that after that time a peace treaty might well have been signed allowing the reintegration of these surplus officers.5 Even after these administrative adjustments had reduced the number of officers on active duty, however, and despite the large contingent of career officers in German prison camps, some officers had to be pensioned off against their 5 Weygand, in, 312; J.O., Lois et dicrets, 25 August 1940, 4812; BaKetin offidel,

1940, I I O O , 1112, 1241.

43

L'Armee Nouvelle wishes. The High Command faced the ambiguous task, at once embarrassing and welcome, of reducing the French officer corps to its inner elite, those men who most clearly exemplified the senior officers' own notions of the flower of their profession. The law creating armistice leave gave General Huntziger the power to assign officers to that status if too few volun­ teered to leave active duty. General Aime Doumenc, a senior cavalry officer whose long staff experience had been supple­ mented by such major diplomatic assignments as heading the French military delegation at the abortive mutual de­ fense talks in Moscow in August 1939, was put in charge of a committee ostensibly charged with the study of the recent military campaign, but with the added function of determining which officers had proven to be unfit in batde. 6 Commissions de classement studied the battle diaries of units and attempted to keep the best officers on active duty. Weeding out "unfit" officers inevitably had its political overtones. Ideally, the work of the commissions de classe­ ment "consisted of establishing with the greatest impar­ tiality a classification of personnel in each grade and each specialty following the order of preference in each of the lists; and according to the need for officers, they were either assigned according to the authorized complements, or sent on 'armistice leave.' . . ." The air force explained without reticence, however, that its commissions de classements had been instructed to eliminate "dissidents" as well as incom­ 7 petents. Even in the absence of any equally direct informa­ tion about the weeding-out process in the army, it would be β Interviews; General Georges Revers, "L'Armee de l'Armistice," in Hoover Institution, n, 799. 7 Trait d'Union. Organe de liaison et d'information de I'aviation, No. 3, January 1941, 27, and No. 4, February 1941, 8.

44

L'Artnee Nouvelle hard to deny a tendency toward retrenchment upon a narrower social base. A comparison of the 1946 annuaires with the last prewar annuaires shows that, in the ranks of major and below, graduates of Saint-Cyr made up a higher proportion of officers in 1946 than had been the case in 1938. The army of 1938 had contained a large number of officers promoted from the ranks or incorporated from the reserves during World War I battlefield emergencies. By the middle 1930's, these officers, carried along as far as mere seniority could carry them, formed an overage, frustrated mass in the middle ranks who posed a "serious problem of quality and advancement."8 The retrenchment of 1940 seems to have eliminated most of that group. Jews and members of the Masonic orders were removed from the officer corps in 1941 and 1942 by special legislation. There were no Negro troops in the Armistice Army, the Senegalese battalions remaining in France being placed in special camps awaiting repatriation.9 The 8,000 officers left on active duty were not merely those given the best reports by their superiors but a group measurably nearer the social ideal cherished by senior officers. Among senior officers in public view, there were politiquard generals of Third Republic days whose fortunes declined. General Gamelin, of course, was put on trial in 1942 for his part in the tragic events of 1940. Paul Raynaud's close collaborator General de Villelume claimed 8 Bankwitz, 544. The relevant annuaires are: "Republique franjaise, Ministere des armees, Listes generates d'anciennete des offieiers de I'armee active de terre (Paris, 1946); Republique francaise, Ministere de la guerre, Etat militaire du corps d'artillerie metropolitain (Paris, 1939), ibid., Etat militaire des offieiers de cavalerie (Paris, 1939); ibid., Annuaire des offieiers d'injanterie (Paris, 1938). 9 Anon. [General Biihrer], Aux heures tragiques de Vempire (Paris,

1947), 220-228.

45

L'Armee

Nouvelle

after the war that Weygand had banished him to a remote provincial post with the remark, "You served M. Reynaud, but you did not serve France." There was no systematic purge, however. General Decamp, who had spent years in the conseil superieur de guerre staff as a confidant of Gen­ eral Gamelin, landed on his feet with the command of the XVth Military Region in the Armistice Army. 10 Like the German Army in 1919, the Armistice Army seems to have used the necessity for retrenchment as an opportunity to enhance the club-like intimacy of a homo­ geneous officer corps, largely drawn from the grandes ecoles, freed of ethnic minorities and political mavericks, a tighter family circle than the old mass army could ever be, at a time when the officer corps was already beginning to grow in upon itself and draw more young officers from officers' sons.11 The armament of the Armistice Army units justified General Haider's confidence that this temporary force posed no threat to German security. The units stationed in metro­ politan France were forbidden to use tanks, antitank weap­ ons, any artillery heavier than 75 mm., or antiaircraft artil­ lery. Each of the twenty-four metropolitan infantry regi­ ments of 64 officers, 314 noncommissioned officers, and 1,517 men was equipped only with individual small arms, 132 machine guns, and 136 mortars of various calibers up to 81 mm. Since the regiment's total vehicle allotment was 5 liaison automobiles, 6 motorcycles, and 140 bicycles, the regiment could move no faster than its basic horse- or muledrawn transport. Ammunition was limited to one thousand rounds per piece. 10 Commission parlementaire d'enquHe, ix, 2789; General LoustaunauLacau, Memoires d'un francais rebelle (Paris, 1948), 108. 11 Raoul Girardet, La SoaSte militaire dans la Trance contemporaine (Paris, 1953), 82.

Φ

L'Armee Nouvelle The French cavalry returned to the horse. A standard cavalry regiment of 1,041 officers and men consisted of six squadrons: two mounted squadrons, three with bicycles, and one squadron of eight AM.D. Panhard armored reconnaissance cars. Theoretically armed with machine guns, not all of these vehicles actually had their turrets. The sum total of these armored vehicles for the metropolitan Armistice Army was 64. Eight of the regiment's 10 mortars were drawn by trucks, and partial motorization was provided by 16 automobiles, 40 trucks, and 42 motorcycles. A cavalry regiment's weapons allowance included 378 sabers. A standard artillery regiment was approximately 1/9 motorized and 8/9 horse-drawn. Its primary armament was approximately fifty 75 mm. cannon, an excellent weapon which had proven effective against German tanks in 1940, but which was issued only in an 1897 model which could not be raised sufficiently in azimuth for antiaircraft fire.12 The Armistice Army of Africa was somewhat more effectively outfitted than its sister components at home and, unlike the metropolitan army which remained frozen at its November 1940 levels, the African Army was strengthened bit by bit as the Germans and Italians became convinced that it would help defend the French Empire against the Allies. The total numbers of French troops authorized in North Africa expanded dramatically. At first, the Italian Armistice Commission tried to limit French forces in North Africa to 30,000 men, none billeted as far east as Bizerte. By September 1940, however, after the French had demonstrated their readiness to defend the Empire from British 12 The above paragraphs are drawn largely from Premier Groupe de Divisions Militaires. Etat-major, premier bureau. 145/1-OR. Aide-memoire provisoire. L'armee de Varmistice (metropole). Resume des tableaux d'ejjectijs. (Avignon, 15 January 1942.)

47

L'Armoe Nouvette encroachment at Mers-el-Kebir and at Dakar, the German Armistice Commission raised the complement to 115,000 men.13 Armaments, too, were increased haltingly and grudgingly as the Germans grew more certain that Vichy was determined to uphold its authority in French Africa. A motorized group was approved for West Africa after the Dakar incident, and some stored weapons were released in Morocco in 1942 when invasion seemed imminent. As of 1942, therefore, the Armistice Army of Africa was most heavily armed in Morocco, where there were 48 modern tanks, 38 25 mm. antitank guns, and 3 antiaircraft groups. In Algeria, one regiment of chasseurs was equipped with tanks and all artillery units had heavy guns of 105 mm. and 155 mm. French forces were at their weakest in Tunisia, to mollify Italian suspicions. The 15,000 men there were armed as derisively as their metropolitan comrades, without tanks, antitank weapons, or motorized artillery. No ammunition was allotted for training. Even after these successive allowances of new material, however, the Armistice Army of Africa was reckoned "only conditionally capable" of repelling a landing from the sea, in the opinion of the German Control Commission at Rabat. Without more supplies, motorization, and heavier antitank weapons, it "could hold out only for a very short time."14 Contemplating this shadow of what had been in his own adult life the most powerful army in Europe, Marshal Petain "could not watch a military parade since the armistice without anguish in his heart." Unmoved by officers' 13

DFCAA, i, 277-280. OKW/2285, passim; Marcel Emerit, "La preparation de la revanche en Afrique du Nord sous Ie regime de l'armistice," Actes du 8ie Congres des soaetes sat/antes Rouen-Caen (Paris, 1956). 14

48

L'Armoe "Nouvelle emotion, the average French civilian dismissed the Armistice Army with a shrug. As Alfred Fabre-Luce described him, the French officer had become "a leader without troops, a technician thrown down from his machine, equipped only with an insulting bicycle."15 As if to compensate for its Graustarkian size and equipment, the Armistice Army trumpeted abroad the news of an intellectual and spiritual revival. It was to be an armie nouvelle: the phrase was blazoned across France in a series of recruitment posters and as the title of the army's new slick-paper magazine, all made possible by a generous allotment of scarce newsprint. A great armee nouvelle exhibition was staged at Vichy in April 1942, and traveling army exhibitions toured provincial towns. Clearly the high command wanted to show signs of brave new beginnings, casting off the burden of the old army's shortcomings. Hemmed in on all sides by barriers to technical innovation, however, the "new army" was more word than substance. Committed to a mission of maintaining domestic order and scrutinized by vigilant German Inspection Commissions which began work in the Unoccupied Zone on 10 August 1940 as the eyes and ears of the Armistice Commission at Wiesbaden, Armistice Army staffs had little leeway to develop new tactics or strategy.16 Indeed, there seems to have been little inclination to new tactical study, after the armistice, even though military revisionism is usually active on the morrow of a defeat. Armistice Army staffs were preoccupied, instead, with the psychological implications of defeat and the problem of morale. It was only natural to worry about the soldiers' state of mind after a 15 La France militaire, n July 1942; Alfred Fabre-Luce, Journal de la France, 11 (Paris, 1942), 174. 16 DFCAA, i, 68, 92; n, 153; OKW/1439, frame 5,594,311.

49

L'Armie Nouvelle batde whose most distressing feature had been the panic of troops demoralized by the Stukas' whine and by the sudden surge into view of massed tanks. No officer was more convinced of the primacy of the Armistice Army's moral assignment than General Huntziger himself. He had experienced at first hand the troops' stunned reaction to unexpected weapons and tactics. The left wing of his Second Army on the northeastern front had collapsed, along with General Corap's Ninth Army, to open the "Houx fissure" at Sedan through which the Germans had begun their race to the sea. Huntziger's press officer, Henri Massis, had tried to overcome panic with persuasion. An Order of the Day, addressing the soldiers paternally in the familiar "tu" form, exhorted them to recognize German efforts to undermine their morale as mere tricks, to hold their own as the tanks passed, and then to shoot the soldiers who followed. They should ignore rumors about parachutists and keep faith in the air force's accomplishments, even when no French planes were visible in the sky.17 The armistice and the prospect of releasing a lot of demoralized soldiers into an already dislocated society did nothing to relieve senior officers' uneasiness about morale and social order. Under General Huntziger's aegis, the Armistice Army emphasized the formation of the individual's soldierly qualities—high motivation, discipline, endurance of hardship, adaptability—at the expense of booklearning and even of combat drill. As Madame Huntziger explained her husband's policy to the American charge d'affaires during a visit to Berlin in December 1940 to look into the administration of French prisoners of war, Gen17 Henri Massis, "Huntziger, Weygand, de Gaulle," Hommes et Mondes (December 1954).

50

L'Armoe Nouvelle eral Huntziger sought first to rebuild the moral courage of the French people. For the moment, he was working quietly to build up maximum efficiency in the morale and equipment of the small French Army. When that task had been accomplished, a firmer national policy might be possible.18 "Combat training," declared General Huntziger in his General Order No. 2 of 25 November 1940, "will take a different course than before the war." Before the war, the French Army had overworked its textbooks. Now it should teach its men how to adapt to changes in the situation. Small units should begin training to operate in mixed terrain under changing circumstances to learn to use the land in coping with the unforeseen. These exercises should have "no tactical presupposition." Map drills for company and unit commanders, similarly, should presuppose no fixed strategy, but should develop the ability to solve unexpected problems, to make decisions rapidly, and to issue clear, brief orders.19 Local commanders followed his lead. The training program followed by the elite 2eme Dragons at Auch was of particular interest not only because it revealed the preoccupations of Armistice Army leaders but because its author, Colonel Guy Schlesser, became commanding officer of Saint-Cyr in 1946. The lessons of the 2eme Dragons were passed on to the postwar French Army. In 1940, Colonel Schlesser felt that his essential role as commanding officer was to create enthusiasm, passion, "foi." With only a ludicrous armament—six armored cars, three of which lacked turrets—enthusiasm might have seemed an impossible goal. Despite the inevitable discour18 19

U.S. Department of State, 851.00/2168 1/2. H 2 / i 8 4 , frame 6,428,781.

51

L'Armee

Nouvelle

agement of defeat, however, the presence of German occupying forces provided a focus for the energies of Colonel Schlesser's men. Nor did the lack of modern weapons necessarily prevent achieving the major end of all military training: creating the "will to fight." Skills with specific weapons were far less important than the will to fight, as the German Army had demonstrated. French officers had laughed when the German labor force presented arms with shovels, but because these men had the will to fight, they became excellent soldiers immediately upon being issued modern weapons. On the other hand, poorly motivated but well armed troops might take months to learn the simplest techniques. Weapons were of secondary importance; motivation came first. Without excluding purely military training, Colonel Schlesser gave his major attention to a training program which he called "the chapters of moral education." The "chapters" were five successive phases of training, each one designed to instill a certain quality of spirit necessary to "the will to fight." First came the taste for effort. Each recruit was directed upon arrival to a bicycle squadron which trained in the mountains. The recruits who responded to the challenge by covering the 150 kilometers back to Auch in one day had evidently learned the joy of a hard task well done. Next came the taste for risk and for adventure. Colonel Schlesser encouraged competitive dare-devil stunts, for the Armistice Army needed its share of casse-gueules. Unfortunately, the armistice terms forbade training with parachutes and sailplanes; Colonel Schlesser instituted parachute jumping for the cadets at Saint-Cyr in 1946 as a 52

L'Armee Nouvelle training device uniquely able to instill that pride in special risks which set paratroopers off from ordinary soldiers. In 1941, however, the 2eme Dragons had to settle for horses and motorcycles, which were used for competitive stunt riding. An often-printed photograph shows his mounted cavalry climbing the steep stairway at Auch from the Gers River to the Cathedral. As Colonel Schlesser recalled from his World War I flying days, the experience of danger in a group gave the group pride and confidence. To avoid creating mere "Apaches," Colonel Schlesser also tried to instill a taste for beauty. His regime stressed courtesy, impeccable attire (as it was to do later at SaintCyr), and ceremony. Music received special emphasis, for Colonel Schlesser believed that uninstructed young peasants responded more naturally and spontaneously to it than educated young city men. The evening colors ceremony at Auch was exceeded in splendor only by the full Sunday ceremony, performed under floodlights, with fanfares at the top and bottom of the great staircase and a guard of honor drawn up on the bridge over the Gers below. Colonel Schlesser, who had staged cavalry shows in the prewar years, felt that stirring ceremonies awakened pride in the service and a sense of the fitness of things. A further "chapter" sought to harden the men to privation. Having been deeply shocked by officers who gave themselves up in June 1940 rather than miss a few meals, Colonel Schlesser resolved to carry out experiments in voluntary deprivations of comfort. Later, at Saint-Cyr, he led the corps of cadets in the exercise of giving up smoking. The final "chapter" was discipline, a freely consented obedience based upon group spirit and mutual respect. Evening campfires, during which Colonel Schlesser tried

53

L'Armae Nouvelle to talk to each man personally, and group singing helped build the sense of wider community loyalty on which firm discipline could be built.20 Colonel Schlesser's program was by no means unique in the Armistice Army. General Armengaud, commander of the 92nd Infantry Regiment at Clermont-Ferrand, carried out a basically similar program without Colonel Schlesser's rigid schematic analysis of method. He too emphasized the character-building function of athletics, and he urged his officers to establish closer contact with their men than had been customary in the French Army. To reassure the French public that "the army was still military," strict attention was given to impeccable uniforms, and to saluting, never strong points among French draftees. His regiment had a band and a theater troupe. Above all, he sought to take his men through exploits which would develop a sense of accomplishment and group spirit. Marching back from summer maneuvers at La Courtine, his whole regiment climbed over the peak of Ie Mont-Dore in the pouring rain. At the summit, the regiment had a brief ceremony, and then went on to the village of Mont-Dore where a flagpole had to be quickly raised for a spot inspection by General de Lattre de Tassigny, at that time troop commander of the XIIIth Military Region. These activities did not, of course, totally replace normal military training oriented toward combat as before the war.21 Athletics was a characteristic Armistice Army training method directed more toward spirit and character than toward traditional military skills. An active sports program received full publicity in official publications and full sup20 Interviews; France toujour*, regimental review of the zeme Dragons; Daniel Devilliers, L'Etandard evade. L'Epopee du 2e dragons (Paris, 1957); Ch. A. de Gontaut-Biron, Les Dragons au combat (Paris, 1946). 21 Interviews.

54

L'Armoe Nouvelle port in the high command. Physical exercise and team competition were supposed to help overcome the "excessive individualism" and the "cult of ease" which flourished under the Third Republic. In particular, mountain training was supposed to exalt a man's spirit and develop tastes for risk, adventure, and teamwork. A law of 20 December 1941, the "Charter of Sports," set up the machinery for competition among units, regiments, and divisions. Championship play-offs were held before a distinguished audience in the stadium at Vichy. The German Armistice Commission gave its blessing to a new army school to train sports monitors.22 Sports had not been in such favor since the flurry of literature about the new generation on the eve of World War I.23 They had probably never received such official support. A preoccupation with shaping soldiers' moral outlooks and attitudes turned easily to a more general preoccupation with the attitudes of the citizenry at large. As General de Lattre wrote on September 15, 1940: The Armistice Army is composed of men who have just undergone the most terrible disaster our country has ever known. . . . Although there are those who fought bravely, it must be admitted that the majority knew battle only in the form of retreat with all its vicissitudes. . . . Since the armistice, they have sometimes been idle. Many belonged to dissolved units. They have forgotten 22 Captain de Lassagne, "Le centre (!'instruction de montagne du Lioran," Revue de Varmee francaise, No. 7, April 1942, 87-95; OKW/1444, frame 5.594.57528 E.g., "Agathon," Les jeunes gens d'aujourd'hui (Paris, 1913), 15; Etienne Rey, La renaissance de I'orgeuil jrangais (Paris, 1912), 156; Georges Le Cardonnel, "Une renaissance francaise," Mercure de France, 16 July 1913, 233-234. 242.

55

L'Armoe Nouvelle discipline and have perhaps even been assailed by doubts as a result of tendentious tales. Most are worried about their families, about whom they have received no news. Come from different units, from different branches, they lack cohesion. Having lived in hastily-built camps, they have formed careless habits of dress made worse by the lack of sufficient uniforms. The too frequent absence of well-trained and solid cadres had permitted the loss of care for appearance and cleanliness. Their self-respect has suffered all the more for that. And yet, it is out of these men that we must create a new army. Small in numbers, it must have exceptional quality. The sole organized force in the country, the army must remain the uncompromising guardian of our military traditions and must symbolize the ardor of our patriotism. . . . To reach this goal, we must begin with a total restoration of confidence. But that will be possible only if confidence has at its base a rigorous practice of discipline. No shortcomings in this domain can be tolerated. Then it will be easier to rebuild spirits and strengthen bodies to make men and good Frenchmen in every sense of the term out of our soldiers.24 As General de Lattre's words suggest, it was only a short step from measuring the effects of German weapons upon French soldiers' morale to seeking to make the army a solid social armature, "the sole organized force in the country." From there it was a still shorter step to the goal of transforming good soldiers into "good Frenchmen," as a first move toward wider social reconstruction. 24

De Lattre papers.

56

L'ArmSe

Nouvelle

Preoccupation with morale was not the only reason for the hesitancy and conservatism of the Armistice Army leaders about new doctrine. Marshal Petain was not the only leading military figure of 1940-42 who had a personal stake in the defensive strategy and the tactical doctrines of 1940. At the Riom trial, General Mittelhauser said he understood air power only when the German Stukas forced the British to abandon Trondheim in April 1940. General Touchon defended the prewar reglements sur la conduite des grandes unites, insisting that the existing defensive doctrine against tanks and planes was sound, and that the Germans too had used their tanks only after artillery preparation. General Keller, prewar Inspector of Tanks, testified to the "incomprehension and sometimes even hostility" with which tank problems had been considered in the prewar army; but to his embarrassment, the trial also revealed his letter of 1 December 1939 warning "that it would be hazardous to consider the lessons of the last war as out of date, lessons which, in the last analysis, no sufficiently probing experience has proven wrong." The Polish campaign, in General Keller's eyes, had taken place under particular conditions which would not be repeated in France.25 Thus, for many an officer, reform of existing tactical doctrine implied condemnation of his own services. It is not surprising, then, that the Armistice Army was not a period of intellectual stimulation. Some officers recalled that no attention was paid to new tactics, or even that there was no time for such luxuries. No new instruction in the conduite des grandes unites was permitted or contemplated, even secretly; its nearest substitute was Jacques Benoist-Mechin's Histoire de I'artnee allemande which was 25

De Coquet, 207, 238, 2 8 1 .

57

L'ArmSe Nouvelle distributed to staff officers. Perhaps the implication was that while France had taken four years to reconstitute its army after Sedan, and Germany had taken fifteen years after Versailles, the Armistice Army might well settle down to a long period of gradual revival on the Weimar model. Unfortunately, the Armistice Army did not have its Seeckt. As a result, the novelties which were supposed to make the "new army" a vanguard of national renovation amounted, in practice, to petty details or makeshift adjustments to economic necessity. The most radical innovation of all, the replacement of the nation in arms by a small professional army, was required by the terms of the armistice. Even though the change was "imposed by circumstances," however, there were officers who warmly welcomed a return toward the professionalism of predraft days. The Armistice Army had put a decisive stop to the Third Republic's evolution toward a Jauresian militia. Officers had nearly unanimously blamed short-term conscription for the catastrophe of 1940.26 The vista of a permanent, tight-knit, professional military corps organized to command the nation in arms, not merely to train it, was an alluring one—assuming, of course, that the 100,000-man limitation was only temporary. An article published with the Armistice Army's imprimatur observed that professional armies had been responsible for all the great victories which had inaugurated periods of French grandeur. Naval officers were particularly ready to point out how the navy's traditional reliance upon professional personnel in cohesive units had been vindicated in the recent campaign. The navy had performed more ably than the army, they claimed, because sailors, as members of a professional service, 26

D e Coquet, 195, 202, 219, 241.

58

L'Armoe Nouvelle did not feel treated as "mere interchangeable cogs." As Admiral Darlan told senior officers in January 1942, the Armistice Army "must be an army for the formation of cadres, for if the government calls the nation to arms, the army must encadrer the nation."27 There were other innovations in the "new army" even more broadly satisfying to professional army officers. The first peacetime chaplains since the establishment of the republic were assigned to the "new army" on 28 August 1941.28 As one veteran of the Chantiers de la jeunesse recalled, the Marshal pursued "the first really Christian government policy in 150 years." Neither of these changes, however, gave the Armistice Army legitimate claim to an innovating spirit. Armistice limitations and failure to obtain recruits prevented the high command from balancing small size with high quality. Since the Armistice Army had to keep 1939 draftees in uniform until September 1942, it resembled the remnant of the nation in arms more than a small but exceptionally well-prepared professional army. As for the introduction of peacetime chaplains, its main effect was to affront French anti-clericals with a new alliance of sword and altar. Other innovations of the Armistice Army were equally makeshift. Some were designed to please the ranks and to lure volunteers. The publications of the "new army" boasted about the amelioration of barracks conditions, and to the training offered to soldiers in crafts and skills. After 15 February 1941, by order of General Huntziger, all units 27

"La France et l'arm£e sont indissociables," in Les Documents Francats, 4eme annee, No. n , November 1942, 4-5; Jean Lecocq, "La marine: pilier de resistance," La revue universelle, 25 April 1941, 453; Darlan, "Conference," 13. 28 "L'Armee nouvelle," Les Documents Francais, 4eme annee, No. 11, November 1942, 8.

59

L'Armie Nouvelle were required to devote a part of their time to training soldiers in various civilian professions. "Without forgetting its essential role of training fighting men, the new army must also prepare the readaptation of soldiers approaching the end of their contract to the various fields of civil life."29 A further category of changes attempted to ameliorate economic conditions in the Free Zone. The widespread use of Armistice Army units in the fields at harvest time, while accompanied by talk of the ancient bond between the soldier and the soil, was clearly made necessary by the shortage of agricultural labor and of labor-saving machinery. Even the emphasis given to artisan skills in the army's training programs was based as much upon the desire to lower unemployment as upon a preference for preindustrial society. Taken as a whole, the "new army" so eloquently prophesied in military publications only heightened the discouraging contrast between hopes and realities in the Armistice Army. In fact, the public was more likely to discern a compulsive attachment to tradition than an exciting spirit of innovation among officers. The officer corps evidently had a narrower social base than ever. The new units themselves made a conscious effort to display the continuity of military tradition. Naturally, these new units had to be formed out of whatever debris of old units could be found in the Free Zone. Thus, the 25th Battalion of Chasseurs Alpins, formally dissolved on 4 August 1940, was reconstituted the next day at Nice "with local elements coming primarily from fortress units stationed in the Alpes Maritimes." The 2^me Dragons, officially dissolved on 22 July 1940, was reconstituted at Auch out of elements of the old 2eme Dragons, of the qeme Hus29 General Huntziger, "General Order No. 3," H2/184, frame 6,428,783; "L'instruction professionelle dans l'armee," Les Documents Frati(ais, 4eme annee, No. 11, November 1942, 16.

60

L'Armee

Nouvelle

sards, of the dissolved 2eme Chasseurs a pied, and of various individuals escaped from behind the German lines.30 Ignoring these heterogeneous origins, the Armistice Army made a special effort to "symbolize in exemplary fashion the permanence of our army."31 The high command sought to preserve the names of the old army's most illustrious regiments in its few remaining units. Their regimental flags proclaimed such distinguished lineages as the Conde Dragons {p.eme Dragons), the Enghien Cavalerie of 1640 (jeme Dragons), the old Royal Auvergne (i8eme regiment d'infanterie), and the young Napoleon's artillery regiment of Colmar ($eme regiment d'artillerie).32 That these historical associations were effective is suggested by the constant worry of the German Control Commissions about the chauvinism of the old regiment d'Alsace, the i^ume regiment d'infanterie.3* To reinforce this symbolic representation of the continuity of the French Army, the flags of regiments temporarily dissolved were entrusted to the remaining regiments. By such symbolic devices, the Armistice Army high command sought to make the few remaining units "a rallying of patriotism and civic fervor," to "create a communion among Frenchmen,... awake among them the feeling of solidarity which binds their successive generations in an uninterrupted chain, through thick and thin."34 30 Historique de 2;eme bataillon de chasseurs alpins (Nice, 1942), 17; Ch. A. de Gontaut-Biron, Les Dragons au combat (Paris, 1946), 231. 31 Mme de Lattre de Tassigny, preface to Daniel Devilliers, L'etandard evade. Uepopee du 2eme Dragons (Paris, 1957), vii. 32 See "Histoire et Organisation de l'Armee," Les Documents Franeais. Revue des Hautes etudes politiques, sociales, economiques, et financieres. 4eme annee, No. 11, November 1942, for the historical background of every unit in the Armistice Army. 33 OKW/i345, frame 5,572,825; OKW/i432, frame 5,592,78off. 34 Figaro, 10-11 October 1942.

6l

L'Armee

Nouvelle

At Saint-Cyr, withdrawn temporarily to Aix-en-Provence, the traditional ceremony of "baptism" in which p£re sysUme bestowed a name upon the senior class was reinstituted in the alien surroundings of temporary quarters. In 1942, the traditional plumed casoar was restored to use.85 It is possible that a vigorously innovating spirit could have transformed the "new army" slogans into an impressive reality. The Armistice Army might have somewhat mitigated the depressing public effect of its physical weakness by signs of intellectual strength. This was not the case. The Armistice Army had neither the time nor the resources to produce thinkers, writers, or planners for the future. Instead, the "new army" had all the appearance of a backward-looking makeshift which did litde to bridge the gap between officers and nation, a gap already visible before the war and dangerously deepened by the defeat. Moreover, during the two years which succeeded the Armistice Army's establishment, its officers further widened that gap. They developed an outlook toward war and toward its active participants which, while starting out in accord with public opinion, diverged increasingly from it and ended disastrously; they were unable to adjust to the crucial decision that had to be made in November 1942 if career officers were to lead in the liberation of France. 85 La France militaire, 15 February 1941, 4 March 1942. The promotion which would have graduated in 1940 had been named promotion Amitie Franco-Britannique; the classes of 1941 and 1942 were named promotion Marechal Petain and promotion Charles de Foucauld. The promotion Croix de Provence, to graduate in 1943, was dispersed in November 1942. Colonel George Stewart, "The Great Military Schools of France: SaintCyr," American Society Legion of Honor Magazine, Vol. 27, No. 2 (Summer 1956), 178.

62

CHAPTER

III

July-December 1940: Neutrality or Revanche} We must accept inferiority for a time. —The diary of a French general, Bastille Day, 1940 is a temporary state of affairs, by definition, and in the summer of 1940 no officer—French or German —imagined that the texts signed in Marshal Foch's railroad car in the forest of Compiegne on June 25 would regulate Franco-German relations for very long. The war was over. The armistice agreements were merely the prelude to a peace setdement which Marshal Petain hoped could be negotiated as soon as possible. The vast majority of Frenchmen thought no differently. Few French officers, however, and certainly not the Marshal, would willingly accept a permanently inferior relationship to Germany. It was axiomatic that the armistice was a hard temporary necessity and that France must eventually resume her rightful place in the world. It is in this sense that the claims of a revanche reflex asserting itself among French officers as soon as the numbness of defeat had worn off are legitimate. Revanche did not necessarily mean an immediate return to arms, however. Like a half-blinded boxer, France would only be struck down more brutally if she struggled into fighting stance again. In retrospect, General Weygand wrote after the war that his ultimate purpose in the summer of 1940 had been "to prepare our return to the batde." In

A N ARMISTICE

63

Neutrality

or

Revanche?

surviving documents, however, the word revanche, revenge, does not appear until February 1941 in a training order issued by General Weygand to Armistice Army officers in North Africa: "Finally, officers and men will have to summon the necessary energy to carry out this instruction in their love of country, their spirit of sacrifice, and their desire for revenge."1 And even then, the word occurs only in the secrecy of an official instruction. In the summer and fall of 1940, outside the handful of mavericks in London, officers who may have entertained rash thoughts of speedy revenge kept such thoughts to themselves; it was no time for brash, bloodthirsty jingoism. After all, there were other, better ways to avenge French defeat. Many officers consoled themselves with the reflection that the healing of time and the natural play of French human and material resources would do much to revive an eclipsed national greatness. AU the more important, then, to begin by rebuilding those human and material resources. A natural evolution would accomplish the rest, and with infinitely less agony and loss. In short, the French Army could prepare the restoration of French national greatness far more surely by assisting a domestic program of reeducation and reform than by delivering up yet another generation of French youth to useless slaughter. A rising birth rate, "sound" national ideals, an elimination of the class conflict fomented by a dissident Left: many officers could feel that these would be riper victories than the reconquest of a few blood-soaked acres. It was a civilian, Jacques Talagrand, the former militant on the syndicalist wing of Action Francaise, that "son of Maurras who had read Lenin," better known by his pen 1

Weygand, in, 317; Prods Weygand, 62.

64

Neutrality or Revanche? name Thierry Maulnier, who gave these ideas their clearest expression. By falling back upon what was best in French tradition, France would soon come to exercise a new form of international leadership: a mediation between the two warring "myths" of democracy and fascism. It was la France seule applied to the new conditions of a wounded and humiliated patrie. There were many important officers ready to agree. Let revanche come with time. Admiral Darlan, who took pride in the frankness of his realism, explained to U.S. Ambassador Leahy at the turn of the year 1940-41 that he looked forward confidently to the day when, Hitler having died and Nazism having lost its fervor, France would once again dominate the continent. England's impending disappearance from the continental stage, Darlan explained, made these hopes all the greener.2 Only a few bledards in far-flung outposts or a few visionaries could still believe in revanche by military means in the foreseeable future. For the rest, the lessons of defeat had been seared into almost every mind. A debilitating sense of weakness did not spring fullgrown, ex nihilo, into officers' minds in June 1940. Defeat forced old seeds of doubt into lush growth. Even in the September crisis of 1939, when the British government had been pressing for an immediate declaration of war and the French government had been frantically exploring the possibilities of Italian mediation during the first seventy-two hours after the Nazi invasion of Poland, not all senior officers had wanted to follow the British lead. Two of the nineteen members of the Conseil superieur de guerre, Generals Conde and Pretelat, opposed war outright, while only 2

Figaro, 7 July 1942; Thierry Maulnier, "L'Avenir de la France," La revue universelle, 1 February, 15 February, 25 March, 1 April, and 25 April 1941; Langer, 123.

65

Neutrality or Revanche? Generals Giraud and Biihrer were singled out for public denunciation in 1942 as "resolute partisans of war."3 Marshal Petain, then Ambassador to Spain, was absent from the September 1939 sessions of the Conseil suphieur de guerre, but to judge from the frequency with which he later criticized the "rash declaration of war,"4 he would quite possibly have sided with Conde and Pretelat. France was not ready to face the German juggernaut, and the high command knew better than anyone else the fearsome arithmetic of production and population which seemed to give Germany a clear advantage. What French general would not have been amazed at the fears of General Ludwig Beck, Chief of the German General Staff, who wrote on 5 May 1938, that Germany could not defeat the combined might of Britain and France, and that the French Army was the strongest in Europe? 5 In public, of course, senior army spokesmen like General Weygand and Marshal Petain expressed full confidence in French arms. But privately they were gnawed by doubts. As early as 11 February 1934, Weygand had written that "the present situation demands the immediate improvement of the laws governing our military condition and the prompt placing under construction of a strengthened military force"; nothing which had occurred since then, and especially since the Popular Front government had assumed power in June 1936 had alleviated his doubts. That was s

Dominique Sordet, "L'Affaire Giraud" (Mimeographed press release, Inter-France, Paris, 12 August 1942), 2. The service chiefs unanimously supported a French declaration o£ war on behalf of Poland if necessary, in a meeting in the office of War Minister Daladier on 23 August 1939. See Pierre Mazi, Les Grandes purnies du prods de Riom (Paris, 1945), 317-318· *E.g., U.S. Foreign Relations, 1940, 11, 380. 5 Wolfgang Forster, Ein General kfimpft gegen den Krieg (Munich, 1949), 81-119.

66

"Neutrality or Revanche? why so many officers regarded Weygand's acceptance of supreme command on 20 May 1940, as an act of personal abnegation. As for Marshal Petain, his slender confidence had already been shattered by 16 May 1940, when his personal aide, Major Bonhomme, wrote that "the war may be considered lost."6 The lightning success of German arms could only bolster the pessimists of 1939 and undermine the optimists. In March 1941, the German censorship intercepted a French major's letter to an old friend, the French vice-consul at Corfu, which expressed all the resentment of the vindicated doubters of 1939. The major complained bitterly about "that bellicose clan" around Alexis Saint-Leger, the permanent secretary-general of the French Foreign Office up to 17 May 1940. We should have waited, he said, until our armaments were ready. How distressing it was to have to put off his uniform just when he had been proposed for four stripes!7 With physical exhaustion piled upon discouragement, senior French officers were ready, in near unanimity, to go beyond an armistice and reach a final peace agreement with Germany in the summer of 1940. In spite of postwar denials, it now seems indisputable that Marshal Petain's government was seeking more than a breather in the summer of 1940. The Marshal's Foreign Minister and his armistice negotiator, General Huntziger, were as eager to know what sort of peace terms to expect as the German authorities were determined to keep them from knowing. When General Huntziger was finally able to establish telephone contact e

Maxime Weygand, La France est-elle defendue? (Paris, 1938), 46; Weygand testimony of 25 July 1947, Commission parlementaire d'enquHe, i, 246; Henri-Philippe Petain, preface to General Chauvineau, Une Invasion est-elle encore possible? (Paris, 1939); Bankwitz, 572; Nogueres, 33» 109. 7 OKW/685, frame 2,499,513.

67

Neutrality

or

Revanche?

from Compiegne on June 22 with his superior, General Weygand, at Bordeaux, however, he had to report that he could learn nothing about the proposed peace terms. Senior officers, no less than civilians, thought the war was over.8 Now that the war was ended, the business of restoring French national greatness could begin. Many French officers thought it would be a long, slow process. It might take twenty years, or fifty, or a whole lifetime. In a farewell address to the veterans of his Syrian campaign at Aries on 13 October 1941, General Henri Dentz warned: the peace will probably be a hard one, but we must think ahead for a distant future. Our generation has lost the war—it will suffer. But we must work for our young people, and aim at a period twenty or twenty-five years from now. At that time, France will recover her place in a renewed Europe, if she knows how to be worthy of it. Admiral Jean-Pierre Esteva, Commander in Chief of French Naval Forces in Tunisia, expressed a similarly distant view of French restoration to greatness in a "General Instruction" of 28 June 1940, to his subordinates: "You are preparing future harvests, sure that one day they will come to maturity, if not for you yourselves, at least for your descendants and successors whom you will have taken pains to mould."9 A majority of articulate civilians were no less certain that a peace conference was at hand. The group of anti-Laval senators who, led by Paul Boncour, Taurines, and Dormann, attempted from July 5 to 10, 1940, to propose legisla8

Col. A. Goutard, "Pourquoi et comment !'armistice a-t-il ete 'accorde' par Hitler?" Revue de Paris., October i960, 79-95, and letter from Paul Baudouin, ibid., November i960, 178; DGFP, Series D, ix, Nos. 459, 513, pp. 590, 652. 9 Figaro, 14 October 1941; Prods Esteva, fascicule 5, p. 19.

68

Neutrality

or

Revanche?

tion giving the Marshal the "dictatorship which ancient Rome several times conferred in its hours of great danger" without dismantling the parliamentary regime, envisaged "suspending the constitution until the signature of peace." The supporters of the "motion of the twenty-seven" of 8 July 1940, who, in addition to its drafter, the radical deputy Vincent Badie, included the Socialist deputies Louis Nogueres, Andre Philip, and Paul Ramadier, also declared the "imperious necessity of bringing about urgently the moral and economic restoration of our unfortunate nation and of pursuing negotiations for a durable, honorable peace." Camille Chautemps told U.S. Ambassador William Bullitt in late June 1940 that it was in order to get better peace terms that France felt compelled to set up a dictatorship.10 There is no good contemporary evidence of any Frenchman remaining in France in July 1940 who did not share the general expectation of an imminent peace treaty between France and Germany which would bind the two countries for many years to come. This almost universal conviction rested upon two elements: the hope that a prompt armistice would help persuade Hitler to be a lenient peacemaker; and the assurance that Britain's collapse would be no slower than that of France had been. After all, Britain had been even less prepared for war than her continental ally. Admiral Darlan predicted to Ambassador Bullitt on July 1 that Britain would last about eight more weeks. The Admiral was confident that events would justify his refusal to send the French fleet to so dubious a haven as Britain before the armistice.11 If the remark attributed to Weygand that Britain's neck would 10

Aron, 121-122, 141; Xavier Vallat, Le Nez de CUopdtre (Paris, 1957), 183; Langer, 70. 11 Langer, 63, 70.

69

Neutrality

or

Revanche?

be wrung like a chicken has survived in the face of repeated denials, it is pardy because it captures so neady the mixture of despair and schadenfreude prevalent among articulate French officers in the summer of 1940. The German planners demonstrated their confidence in an imminent peace conference, too, by busily drafting the final terms during the fall of 1940.12 Granted the axioms that the war was over, a peace conference shortly forthcoming, and a social revolution an ever-present danger, it followed for French officers that any rash violations of the temporary armistice could only make matters worse, whether by hardening the peace terms, amputating part of the French patrimony, or pouring out the solvents of social disorder. The stated policy of General Weygand as Defense Minister was to carry out the armistice terms to the letter. A standing order of 19 October 1940, issued by his successor General Huntziger as Minister of War, carried Armistice Army resignation one step further. In case the German government found it necessary to occupy southern France to counter a secession movement in French Africa, the Armistice Army was instructed to offer no fruitless resistance. The German authorities, always readier than necessary to anticipate French military resistance, were surprised to discover that the Armistice Army took no measures of military preparedness during the Laval crisis of December 1940. They had failed to measure the extent to which most French officers had renounced the military path to revanche™ 12 OKW/935, passim; DGFP, Series D, x, Nos. 23, 101, pp. 24, i n ; ibid., xi, No. 298, p. 483. 13 Proces Weygand, 22; OKW/117, frame 5,508,418; £[2/184, frame 6,428,805. Marie Granet and Henri Michel, Combat (Paris, 1957), 35, follow other authors in wrongfully attributing the nonresistance order to the crisis of 13 December 1940.

70

Neutrality or Revanche? Even though renewed war against the Axis was unthinkable in 1940, the armistice had hardly been signed when dramatic events made possible a war against the other side: against the British usurpers and Gaullist traitors in the French Empire. British acts at Mers-el-Kebir and the seizure of French ships in British ports on 3-4 July 1940 posed the alternatives of neutrality or revenge in an acute new form, in the first weeks of the armistice, even before the Armistice Army had been organized. The cabinet considered the outright declaration of war upon Britain. According to reports which reached the United States Embassy, all the military men in the cabinet were opposed to it. It was decided instead to break diplomatic relations. Nevertheless the Vichy high command was prepared to take immediate forceful action against Britain, in keeping with the paroxysm of rage following Mers-elKebir which William C. Bullitt was reporting to Washington.14 Reprisals along three channels were explored: direct action by French forces not yet demobilized; joint action with the Italian Navy against British naval forces in the Mediterranean; and requests to Germany for relaxations in the disarmament provisions of the armistice, to make unilateral French military action possible. Admiral Darlan, Navy Chief of Staff, was the most resolute partisan of direct action. He was, after all, the service chief most directly affected. Not only had part of his forces been shelled at Mers-el-Kebir and another part seized in British ports, but his repeated promises on 23 June 1940 to the first sea lord of the British Navy, Admiral Sir Dudley Pound, that the French Fleet would under no circumstances fall into German hands had clearly been 14 U.S. Embassy, Paris, report o£ 6 August 1940, U.S. Department o£ State, 851.00/2085.

7*

Neutrality

or

Revanche?

15

judged worthless in London. It was apparently at Darlan's command that a few French planes raided Gibraltar on July 5 and dropped bombs, all of which fell in the sea.16 Even if General Weygand disapproved of bombing Gibraltar, he was just as fully prepared for direct action as Admiral Darlan if the British attempted to displace Vichy authority in his old command, that ancient arena of FrancoBritish rivalry, Syria. On the basis of French intelligence reports of an imminent British seizure of French assets in the Near East, Weygand ordered General Mittelhauser in Beirut on 6 July 1940, to "answer force with force without attempting prior negotiation in case of British attack." He also considered reprisals in British Africa. On July 8, Weygand ordered the Commander of Troops in French West Africa to put the necessary forces at the disposition of the French Navy for a possible action against Freetown, Sierra Leone.17 Someone on General Huntziger's staff was even considering a plan to seize the Mosul oil fields in Northern Iraq. Since the attack on Oran (Mers-el-Kebir), we no longer owe any consideration to England, and we can draw great advantages from this new freedom. Couldn't our Levant Army seize the wealth which lies in the oil fields of northern Iraq, for the joint account of France, Germany, and Italy, and with the agreement of the latter two? 15 Admiral Auphan and Jacques Mordal, La Marine franfaise pendant la seconde guerre mondiale (Paris, 1958), 138-149, 158; Alain Darlan, Darlan parle (Paris, 1953), 69. 16 piayfair, i, 142-143; Baudouin, 239, claims that he and Weygand opposed this air raid. 17 Prods Weygand, 25; Anon. [General Biihrer], Aux heures tragiques de !'empire (Paris, 1947), 210-211.

72

Neutrality

or

Revanche?

By a relatively simple advance of two to three hundred kilometers into thinly defended country, France could force the Iraq Petroleum Company to reorganize itself under French-German-Italian majority control, and then raise production to meet continental needs. The plan seemed to have much to commend it. In addition to extending French, German, and Italian political authority as far east as the Persian Gulf area, it would run Near Eastern oil output "according to business and economic needs, not according to the rules of Anglo-Saxon trusts. That will be the revenge of the consumers upon the producers." Furthermore, the project had the advantage of not interfering with the existing one-fourth American share in the Iraq Petroleum Company. Finally, this great French gift to "Fortress Europe" would win for France corresponding concessions in the forthcoming peace treaty.18 A more immediate problem, however, was how to prevent British actions which looked in Vichy like spoliations of a fallen comrade-in-arms. Maddened by its powerlessness to defend the French Empire alone, the Vichy high command explored a second channel of action: joint operations with the Italian Navy against the British. Learning of the French mood of angry humiliation, Marshal Badoglio saw the opportunity to extend Italian advantages beyond the rather meager gains contained in the armistice. Badoglio proposed on July 5 that in exchange for a base in Algeria the Italian forces would assist French reprisals against the British Navy. The French military authorities actually responded with some eagerness to this proposal, before cooler heads prevailed. Admiral Duplat, head of the 18 OKW/i347, frames 5,573,576-580. The German Armistice Commission described this study as a "composition" found on General Huntziger's desk. It is dated 10 July 1940.

73

Neutrality or Revanche? French delegation to the Italian Armistice Commission at Turin, replied on July 7 that "the French government is disposed to grant" the requested facilities at Oran "to permit the Italian air forces to cooperate with French forces against British shipping."19 For a few days French imaginations ran unbridled. Admiral Duplat also asked the Italian delegation's head how his government would react to a French request for permission to conduct naval operations against British naval forces in Alexandria in order to "liberate" the French naval squadron interned there.20 On the following day, July 8, Admiral Duplat reported to General Weygand that although the Italian government was "extremely anxious" to obtain the base in Algeria they had made no further proposals. Italy saw no objection to an operation against Alexandria, however, provided that she received prior information in detail. Information was already being exchanged by the two intelligence organizations, the Italians sending information about Alexandria, the French supplying information about Gibraltar. In summary, Admiral Duplat said, the Italians will do all they can to facilitate "our air-naval operations against the British fleet." Here the first note of doubt crept into Admiral Duplat's dispatches: possibly Italian interest in Algerian base rights concealed a plan for political infiltration. Reluctance to give Italy a foothold in French North Africa coincided no doubt at Vichy with a painful awareness that a major operation was now beyond French resources. On July 9 Admiral Duplat told his Italian opposite number that the Alexandria attack had been "postponed" because the squadron in Alexandria harbor was no longer 18

DFCAA, v, 440-442. Vice-Admiral Rene-Emile Godfroy, VAventure Alexandrie (11)40-43) (Paris, 1953). 20

74

de la Force X a

Neutrality or Revanche? free to take advantage of it.21 It is highly unlikely that General Weygand was a stranger either to the proposal to attack British forces at Alexandria or to its abandonment, for Admiral Duplat corresponded from Turin with Weygand's armistice staff, the Direction des services de !'armistice at Clermont-Ferrand. The third reaction of the Vichy high command was to approach Germany. No sooner had Admiral Gensoul's incomplete version of the British ultimatum at Mers-el-Kebir become known in Vichy than General Weygand began trying to relax those armistice terms which restricted French freedom of reprisal. At Wiesbaden, General Huntziger justified the unilateral actions French forces had already taken, with detailed descriptions of French resistance to British aggression. At the same time, he asked the German authorities to permit further French action by suspending the demobilization clauses of the armistice. The German Armistice Commission acted with a sense of urgency which matched Huntziger's agitation. That very day, July 4, Hitler agreed to postpone those naval disarmament requirements "incompatible with the reported French measures in the Mediterranean," and on the following day—the day of the French air raid on Gibraltar—he suspended air force demobilization insofar as "necessary to repel English attacks in the Mediterranean."22 General Huntziger's urgent entreaties at Wiesbaden were intended not only to prove French loyalty to the armistice but also to prepare a dramatic broadening of FrancoGerman relations beyond the narrow confines of the armi21 DFCAA, v, 440-444; on July 7 Admiral Godfrey had made a local neutrality agreement with Admiral Cunningham, commander of the British Mediterranean Fleet. 22 DGFP, Series D, x, Nos. i n , 115, pp. 124, 127.

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stice. "We are in an extraordinary situation," he told Gen­ eral von Stiilpnagel, head of the German Armistice Com­ mission, on July 7. Normally, an armistice is an intermediate stage between war and peace . . . but our armistice is irregular, for defeated France finds herself almost at war with the same enemy as her victorious adversary. The regular procedures are no longer sufficient. They ought to be supplemented by additional contacts between persons not belonging to the Armistice Commissions. For new situations, new measures! . . . The recent events in the Mediterranean show that France is not playing a double game. They must con­ vince Germany of the loyal spirit in which the armistice terms are being executed.23 Just as French officers had drawn back, however, from a joint operation against Alexandria alongside the power whose African designs they most suspected, so Hitler drew back from permanent concessions to France which might compromise the rigor of his intended peace terms. Hitler decided instead to exploit French anglophobia as a means of gaining German base rights in French Africa. On 15 July 1940, Hitler's spokesman at Wiesbaden demanded the use of eight airfields in Morocco for the Luftwaffe, to be chosen by a German Commission and to be supplied through French ports and over the Tunis-Rabat rail line, as pay­ ment for the recent relaxations in the armistice terms. The Vichy authorities were stunned. General Huntziger wrote to Defense Minister Weygand: 23

Delegation fran?aise, "comptes-rendus," η July 1940.

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Here is the latest happy surprise! We had not thought it possible. This is a fine exploitation of the concessions made to our Navy and Air Force. . . . Huntziger knew to what penalties a refusal would expose the French people. On the other hand, his letter reasoned, compliance "would compromise us for all time in the eyes of the English." General Weygand was subject to no such hesitations. Advising General Huntziger to base his approach to the Germans on the strict letter of the armistice, the Defense Minister wrote directly to General von Stulpnagel objecting that the German demand "broached questions foreign to the armistice" which could only be settled by Marshal Petain himself. The German authorities let the matter drop.2* The events of July 1940 had been very instructive for the officers involved in French policy-making. They had learned that a brisk defense of the French Navy's neutrality could win significant relief from other military restrictions. They had also learned how strong was Hitler's temptation to step into North Africa himself at the slightest hint of slackness in French colonial defenses against Britain and the Gaullists. At the end of August, a new crisis put this new knowledge to the test. If the Vichy high command had expected to bring all overseas French forces under the armistice umbrella by replacing a few commanders in chief and sending a few senior officers on mission, General de Gaulle soon shattered these illusions. Despite the leveling off of his recruitment in London—or perhaps because of it—he 2i

DGFP, Series D, x, Nos. 129, 151, 158, pp. 147, 186, 198; DFCAA, i, 463-465. v, 436, 439.

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Neutrality or Revanche? launched an active campaign in August to spread his movement abroad in the French Empire. This new Gaullist initiative cast doubt once more on Petain's control of the French Empire, and thus upon his very reason for being. The Chad, in French Equatorial Africa, was the weakest link in Vichy's fragile chain of authority. Governor-General Felix Eboue, a native of French Guiana whose services to France were a brilliant vindication of the assimilationist colonial educational system, and Colonel Marchand, commander of French forces in the Chad, were eager to rally their area to General de Gaulle. On 24 August 1940, Rene Pleven and three officers, De Parant, D'Hettier de Boislambert, and "Major Leclerc," flew from London to Lagos in a borrowed British plane and traveled on, with the support of British authorities in Nigeria, to Fort-Lamy. Two days later the formal adherence of the Chad to the Free French movement was proclaimed. Leclerc, accompanied by D'Hettier de Boislambert, extended Gaullist authority to the French Cameroun the following day, August 27, by crossing from Victoria, in Nigeria, to Douala in a pirogue and presenting himself to an expectant Gaullist circle there. A Free French coup de main in Brazzaville, assisted by Colonel de Larminat on the other side of the Congo in Leopoldville, brought the French Congo into the Gaullist camp on August 28. That same day, the bad news about the Chad reached Berlin, setting off a flurry of activity in Berlin, Vichy, and Wiesbaden where Hitler and Petain were equally eager, each for his own reasons, to halt the decay of the Marshal's authority in Africa.25 The pattern of July 4 was repeated. The Vichy high command took what unilateral measures 25

See DGFP, Series D, xi, No. 20, p. 25.

78

Neutrality or Revanche? it could while simultaneously asking German permission to rearm its forces in Africa. On August 29, resolute action seemed to turn the tide in the Marshal's favor in Gabon. Governor-General Masson at Libreville, who had declared his allegiance to De Gaulle, hastily changed sides when the naval commander at Dakar had the captains of French warships in Libreville harbor announce the imminent arrival of a loyal French naval squadron. Meanwhile, the Vichy high command was trying to make that announcement come true. So important a movement of French forces required careful negotiation to avoid the appearance of violating the armistice. On August 29 and 30, General Huntziger at Wiesbaden presented notes to General von Stulpnagel requesting permission to send warships from Toulon to the West African coast, to send cargo aircraft to Equatorial Africa to help keep the native population supplied with basic commodities despite the British blockade, to hasten the repatriation of Senegalese troops still in mainland France, to use radio to inform the French African populations of the meaning of these events, and to communicate in code with colonial officials. Huntziger continued to plead the urgency of Vichy's requests on Saturday, August 31. He warned General von Stulpnagel that unless Germany permitted the necessary relaxations of the armistice terms, the French Empire, isolated from the mother country and supplied only through Britishcontrolled waters, would gravitate into the British camp, a calamity for France and Germany alike.28 General Huntziger won his point. Over Italian objections, the German government approved on September 6 the dispatch of six French warships, three cruisers and three destroyers, from the Mediterranean to French West and 29

DFCAJ,

1, 189; DGFP, Series D, xi, No. 20, p. 25.

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Equatorial Africa. In return, France must "promptly take all the measures necessary to suppress the revolt," notifying the German government in advance what measures were contemplated. "Failure on the part of the French govern­ ment in this situation would necessarily entail serious con­ sequences in Germany's general policy toward France." 27 Gabon remained a loyal island in a sea of hostile Gaullist allegiance, and the Vichy government sent Air Force Gen­ eral Marcel-Louis T£tu out to Libreville with the title of Governor-General of French Equatorial Africa to help re­ assert Vichy authority. As in July, the high command also sent persuasive senior officers on tour of French garrisons in other areas threatened with disaffection. Colonel Paul Bourget, who had been Weygand's chief of staff in the Levant in 1939-40, was sent back to Syria in mid-Septem­ ber to forestall a Gaullist movement which, it was antici­ pated, would "be brought to bear particularly on the army in Syria." Colonel de Gorostarzu, French air attache in Madrid and later a member of the Marshal's personal staff, was sent to Morocco on September 8 to prepare General Nogues to seize De Gaulle if the rebel general should arrive there. 28 In the most important assignment of all, General Weygand himself left his post as Defense Minister to become Delegate-General in French Africa with the mission of "fixing the steps to follow to return our dissident pos­ sessions to France." Although the general's arrival in his new post was delayed until early October by injuries suffered in the crash landing of his plane, he plunged into an active campaign to assure the loyalty of French officers 27 R o s k i l l , The War at Sea, ι, 302-320; DFCAA, D, χι, N o . 20, p . 25. 2 8 De Gaulle, 1, 122; Baudouin, 340, 349.

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1, 186; DGFP, Series

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in the Empire to Vichy. In spite of his seventy-four years, he spent forty of the next eighty days in an airplane touring garrisons and administrative centers from Tunis to Dakar. At Vichy, he was publicly credited with having "won North Africa personally from dissidence."29 For the moment, the military terms of the armistice had been eased only conditionally and temporarily. Italian opposition as well as Hitler's determination to profit by French defeat and his distrust of Petain all joined to prevent more than a temporary emergency suspension of French disarmament. But having learned that the stringent limitations on French military force were not immutable, French officers turned eagerly to the new and enticing project of strengthening the infant Armistice Army for its own sake. On 12 September 1940, General Huntziger used all his negotiating wiles to explain to General von Stiilpnagel why there must be 150,000, or at least 120,000 French troops in North Africa instead of the mere 30,000 permitted by the Italian Armistice Commission. Slily pointing out the danger to all colonial regimes—including the Italian regime in Libia— of mustering out a lot of disgruntled native troops in French North Africa, Huntziger observed that it was fear of Italian colonial ambitions that was pushing a lot of French colonial officers into the arms of De Gaulle. Only a sufficiently strong French Army could keep the French Empire intact and neutral, to the mutual advantage of Germany and France.30 In the end, however, it was not Huntziger's clever arguments but the battle of Dakar on 23-24 September 1940 29 Proces Weygand, 28; Weygand, in, 462; Alfred Fabre-Luce, Journal de la France (Paris, 1942), 240; Figaro, 12 November 1940. 30 DGFP, Series D, xi, Nos. 14, 33, 47, pp. 19, 42, 61; DFCAA, 1, 186-188, 273-280. For Italian opposition to German concessions, see DGFP, Series D, xi, No. 20, p. 25; OKW/1347, frames 5,573,557-560.

8l

Neutrality or Revanche? which relaxed permanently the military terms of the armistice and permitted a stronger Armistice Army than had been envisaged in June. An important force of French and British warships led by the aircraft carrier Ar\ Royal, with two thousand Free French troops and four battalions of Royal Marines embarked, set sail from Liverpool on August 31 convinced that the same sort of bloodless coup by persuasion which had just worked so well at Fort-Lamy, Douala, and Brazzaville would repeat itself at Dakar. On September 11, however, the three cruisers and three destroyers which the German authorities had released at Toulon passed through the Straits of Gibraltar hurrying south to Gabon to bolster General Tetu's little island of Vichy authority in Gaullist Equatorial Africa. Finding their way blocked by the AngloGaullist force nearing Freetown, they put in at Dakar on September 14. The resolution of Governor-General Pierre Boisson and of the French West African military commanders was sufficiently stiffened by this reinforcement to set aside all thought of even negotiating with De Gaulle's emissary, Captain Thierry d'Argenlieu, who came ashore in a small boat on September 23. After two days in which a desultory exchange of fire escalated to full-scale combat, the Anglo-Gaullist force retired to Freetown, leaving French West Africa in the Marshal's orbit. The Vichy authorities lost no opportunity to use the battle of Dakar to convince the German authorities of their determination to defend the French Empire, of the dangers of Italian efforts to disarm the French Army in Africa, and of the necessity of retaining strong French forces there. General Paul Doyen, new head of the French armistice delegation at Wiesbaden, implored General von Stiilpnagel "not to lack confidence in France." The Germans were 82

Neutrality or Revanche? informed that submarines had already been sent from Casablanca and bombers from Moroccan airfields to help defend Dakar. At Paris, where he was still hoping to ar­ range a meeting with Ribbentrop, Laval emphasized to German Ambassador Abetz how loyally and resolutely his government was defending West Africa. On September 24 and 25, French planes once again carried out a largely symbolic air raid on Gibraltar. 31 With Dakar, General de Gaulle and Marshal Petain had reached a stalemate. Gabon, the last Vichy enclave in French Equatorial Africa, was swept into Gaullist hands at the price of twenty casualties between October 27 and November 9, and General Tetu was captured. But in its essentials, the line drawn at the end of September between the two rival contenders for authority over the French Empire remained stable. Hereafter only force, as in Syria in the summer of 1941 or at Saint-Pierre and Miquelon during Christmas week of the same year, could change territory from one camp to another. The standoff at Dakar was Marshal Petain's Battle of the Marne, which stabi­ lized his front with De Gaulle and changed their war of movement into a war of position. Henceforth, Marshal Petain could speak to Hider in the name of the greater part of the French Empire: French North and West Af­ rica, Djibouti, the mainland Asiatic possessions, and French possessions in America, as well as in the name of main­ land France. Dakar also meant that Hider now became more inter­ ested in the possibilities of French collaboration than in placating Mussolini's desires to weaken French Africa. To be sure, he was still afraid to "prejudice the peace terms" 31 DGFP, Series D, xi, Nos. 92, 102, pp. 160, 180; J. R. M. Butler, Grand Strategy, π (London, 1957), 319.

83

Neutrality or Revanche? too strongly in French favor. Although he granted the French appeal to release all French African air forces "for action against England," he still refused to allow any more warships to be sent from Toulon to Dakar. But as he was to tell Mussolini at Florence on October 28, he was gready impressed by films he had been sent showing the French defending Dakar. His mood was now prepared for a meeting with Marshal Petain to explore the possibilities of a new policy of Franco-German cooperation against Britain.32 The Hitler-Petain interview at Montoire-sur-Loir on 26 October 1940 was promptly followed by meetings with Abetz and General von Rundstedt in Paris on October 31 and November 1 to explore the new political climate. General Huntziger had an important role among the negotiators, and military matters a central place in the talks. In order to take the first step toward cooperation, Laval declared, it was essential to change the political climate in France by demonstrating to the public two practical results of cooperation: conspicuous economic concessions, and stronger armed forces for France. General Huntziger had drafted a long and detailed memorandum on the forces needed for "active military operations" in the colonies, which he presented to General von Rundstedt on October 31. For metropolitan France, General Huntziger's sole request was the extension of recruitment for the Armistice Army to the Occupied Zone, "so that the Army will be a true reflection of the whole nation." Most of his requests affected the African Army and the Navy. For North Africa, Huntziger insisted that 32 DGFP, Series D, xi, Nos. 92, 96, 98, pp. 160, 165, 174; DFCAA, 1, 374-389. For Petain's eagerness to meet Hitler, see Adrienne Hytier, Two Years of French Foreign Policy (Geneva, 1958), 157-158; Geschke, 85. General Franz Haider recorded in his diary on 11 October 1940 that Hitler wanted to meet Pefcrin.

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an army of 120,000 men was essential to prevent "revolts as well as British operations." French officers with colonial experience should be liberated from German prisons to staff this force, and its armament should be increased with several squadrons of armored scout cars and several motorized artillery units. West Africa, Huntziger argued, was threatened "by British acts of violence as well as by dissidence movements," especially in "the new political situation." Since the six Senegalese battalions from France and the three from North Africa moved to Dakar in September were not enough, Huntziger proposed the creation of a whole motorized division there. Here, too, African specialists were greatly needed, and General Huntziger requested the release from a German prison camp of General Carles, the prewar commander in chief in French Equatorial Africa. General Huntziger also requested a powerfully reinforced Navy, since "threats to the Empire had never been so serious." Certain ships should be rearmed, especially submarines, "the most effective weapons against the British," and the Navy should be increased by 16,000 officers and men. French ships should be allowed freedom of movement, with due notification, of course, to the Armistice Commissions. "If it is wished that the French Fleet be in a position to fight, it must be up to its task." The French Air Force, according to the Huntziger plan, should be not only enlarged but modernized by resuming production of two new models, the Dewoitine 520 fighter and the Liore 45 bomber, which had just appeared at the moment of the armistice. These modern aircraft would be used only in Africa. As for the metropolitan air force, the creation of three more fighter divisions along the channel

85

Neutrality or Revanche? and the reestablishment of antiaircraft batteries would suffice.88 Strengthening the Armistice Army was, of course, only one of the conspicuous concessions which Laval assured the Germans would sweeten French public opinion. General Huntziger also asked General von Rundstedt "most urgendy" to abolish the "north-east line" which cut AlsaceLorraine off from France, and to ease restrictions on French traffic across the demarcation line between the Occupied and Unoccupied Zones. Laval urged Abetz the following day to call meetings of French and German officials to discuss the French share of occupation costs, the exchange ratio, and the status of the Nord and the Pas de Calais departments which had ominously been placed under the administration of the German occupation authorities at Brussels. The prominent place given to strengthening the Armistice Army in the days after Montoire, however, shows how officers could begin to see hopes of a wider professional fulfillment in the Armistice Army than they could have believed possible in June. From Montoire until the very dissolution of the Armistice Army, a thin trickle of concessions to officers' professional pride helped reconcile them to the Marshal's policy. The French negotiators—Huntziger, Laval, and Finance Minister Yves Bouthillier—had thrown themselves into the project of easing the armistice with such enthusiasm that Ambassador Abetz was worried. Excessive optimism could only rebound in excessive pessimism and despair. In fact, although the German Armistice Commission at Wiesbaden and General Warlimont of the Wehr33 Huntziger's November 1940 plan for a strengthened Armistice Army, only alluded to in DGFP, Series D, xi, No. 272, p. 449, may be found in full in OKW/132.

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Neutrality or Revanche? machtfilhrungsstab advocated "the broadest possible basic approval" of the French program, remaining suspicions and Italian objections cut Huntziger's list down to size. Hider decided on 14 November 1940 to permit only the formation of a "motorized unit" in French West Africa, the replacement from France of ammunition and material expended at Dakar, the addition of a fourth bomber unit in West Africa, and the remobilization of two groups of unarmed transport planes.84 For the rest, it was essential to see how serious the French were about "active military operations" in the colonies. General Huntziger had told General von Rundstedt on October 31: the first unswerving conception of Marshal Petain and his collaborators is not only to resist the British in Africa, but also, where it is necessary, to attack them in order to get back lost territory. "Il faut chasser les Anglais."35 As a pledge of this intention, General Maurice-Emile Falvy, just liberated from a German prisoner-of-war camp for the purpose, was sent to command the Niger-Dahomey-Togo Military Region and to create a base for eventual "action and negotiation" for the restoration of Vichy authority in the Chad. But Huntziger had also told General von Stiilpnagel on September 12 that France preferred to "use persuasion rather than fire on other Frenchmen who believe they are acting in good faith."36 Had Dakar stiffened Vichy's commitment to action? Or would Gaullist positions be 3i

DGFP, Series D, xi, No. 272, pp. 449, 52611.4; OKW/132; OKW/ 1347, frames 5>573.5"-5"· 85 OKW/132. The French words in the German text are probably a direct quotation from General Huntziger. se Laure, Journal, 15 November 1940; DFCAA, 1, 273.

S7

Neutrality or Revanche? tolerated in Africa if they did not become a base for British colonial expansion at French expense? What was Vichy's policy toward De Gaulle—containment or reconquest? Hider sent General Walter Warlimont, head of the National Defense section of the Wehrmachtfiihrungsstab, to Paris on November 29 and again on December 10 to find out. The negotiations between Generals Huntziger and Warlimont in Paris at the close of 1940 posed clearly the question of how far the Armistice Army would go to buy military concessions. There is every evidence that, despite Huntziger's rash remarks about kicking the English out of Africa, the Armistice Army and Marshal Petain wanted neutrality, not war. They wished to contain the BritishGaullist beachhead in Africa, not attack it. They hoped to deter further British moves by rearmament and, if need be, to defend their possessions against British or Gaullist seizure; but they did not want to lose everything by a rash offensive. On the other hand, they wanted to deter the Germans, who had told General Huntziger that "if you French are not capable of defending your empire, we will carry the war to the African continent." Huntziger reminded Darlan and Petain in November that "less than a week after a British occupation of Dakar, the Germans will be in French North Africa." Finally, at least among officers in the field, and as Weygand assured Roosevelt's representative Robert Murphy in 1941, they were delighted to use the Anglo-Gaullist threat as a pretext for the purely professional aim of having as big and well-equipped an army as possible.37 At the end of 1940, General Huntziger drew back from 37 Baudouin, 397; U.S. Foreign Relations, 1941, 11, 206, 425; conversation with Admiral d'Harcourt, U.S. Department of State, 851.34/189.

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Neutrality or Revanche? the prospect of a joint Franco-German operation against British colonies in Africa, just as Weygand had drawn back from a joint Franco-Italian operation in July. For Hitler had now come around to the intention of fomenting active hostilities between Britain and France, without the inconvenient dangers of a formal declaration of war. General Warlimont wrote of his own mission, "it is important that the French be brought into a clear position of head-on opposition to England by an offensive operation, were it only an attack on Gambia." Germany should require France not only to strengthen her defenses but to undertake operations against Gambia and Sierra Leone simultaneously with the contemplated reconquest of the Gaullist colonies. Freetown was "a thorn in the [French] flesh; they must have their rear free for later attacks upon Equatorial Africa."38 When the Huntziger-Warlimont conferences actually took place, however, French ardor seemed to have cooled considerably since October 31. This time there was no French mention of an attack against British territory. On November 29, Huntziger said that it would be "very difficult to undertake a direct attack on British areas without a new provocation." Darlan volunteered the opinion that "Freetown and Bathurst were not so important." In his view, the most important thing was to restore commercial connections with the colonies, thus removing the strongest attraction of alliance with Britain. Even Laval pointed out that Sir Samuel Hoare had told French Ambassador de la Baume at Madrid that movement of the French fleet, an S8 See Goering remarks to Laval on 9 November 1940. DGFP, Series D, xi, No. 306, p. 500; see also Weisung Nr. 18 of 12 November 1940 in ibid., No. 323, pp. 527-531, which presupposes Franco-British conflict; OKW/117, passim.

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Neutrality or Revanche? attack against British positions, or an offensive against De Gaulle would mean war. Germany must understand the entirely new strategic situation produced by this threat. As for the plans for an operation against the Gaullists, General Huntziger pointed out its multiple technical difficulties. French officers saw two possible routes: direcdy south across the desert, or east from Dakar along 1,500 miles of desert track through Niamey and Zinder to Chad. Preparations for the Chad operation could get under way in April 1941, but a large operation could hardly be mounted before November 1941 on account of the weather. Huntziger observed that it would do the French Colonial Empire more harm than good to send forces out on an implausible mission.89 Abetz found this conference "very disappointing," and Laval found it politic to agree with him. Back in Vichy on 7 December 1940, Laval explained that Abetz and General Warlimont were annoyed by the vagueness and hesitation displayed on November 29. Something more concrete would have to be prepared for the next meeting. Laval doubted that Britain would react to a French attempt to recapture her own territories in the Chad, "especially now when she is in the grips of such difficulties," and such a move would lead the Germans to block Italian designs upon French Africa. An "armistice meeting," at which Laval, Generals Huntziger and Bergeret, Admiral Darlan, Bouthillier, Belin, and Regnier were present, decided that an operations plan for the recapture of the Chad would be drawn up.40 Pierre Laval seems to have seriously meant to attack Gaullist strong points in Africa. At least he assured an 88 General Warlimont's report of this meeting is found in OKW/132. There is no information on it in DFCAA or DGFP. *DGFP, Series D, xi, No. 434, p. 762; DFCAA, v, 445-446.

go

Neutrality or Revanche? audience of officials in the Information Ministry in October 1942 that his mind had been made up in December 1940." The conduct of the next meeting with Warlimont on December 10, however, suggested that senior officers were dubious about the idea. Laval opened the meeting by telling Warlimont that General Huntziger was now in a position to describe planned operations with more precision than he had at the last meeting. General Huntziger's "precisions" turned out to be mere details added to previous plans. His only new point was "certain reprisals" which France "was willing to undertake if" there were new British aggressions. In response to direct questions, Huntziger denied that any reprisals against previous British attacks were under consideration at Vichy. Laval and Huntziger tried to trade their more precise plans for greater German concessions. Laval, who had assured his government colleagues on December 7 that the British would not oppose French efforts to retake FortLamy and Chad, told Warlimont on the ioth that a French reconquest of the colonies would "almost unavoidably" lead to conflict with Britain. France, he said, would take back her colonies nonetheless, accepting the resulting "position of war with England." But in return, Germany must guarantee the French Empire. French colonial officers would certainly not fight merely pour Ie rot de Prusse. In his turn, Huntziger presented an expanded version of his military shopping list of the previous October 31.42 This second round of negotiations was, of course, brusquely interrupted by the dismissal of Laval as Vice-Premier and Foreign Minister on 13 December 1940. There was no 41

OKW/i6o5, frame 6,500,061. OKW/i32, passim; DGFP, Series D, xi, Nos. 490, 506, pp. 839, 860; DFCAA, v, 445-462. 42

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Neutrality or Revanche? place in what Marshal Keitel called Germany's \alte Schulter reaction for any further easing of the terms; indeed, General Franz Haider observed with relief that "we are no longer bound by any obligation toward France."43 The French officers at Vichy were relieved too. While it would be a gross distortion to describe Laval's dismissal as an officers' coup, the senior officers around the Marshal were delighted to see him go. General Emile Laure, the Marshal's aide, confidant, and biographer, prided himself later on his share in the plan to persuade Petain to get rid of Laval. General Huntziger was among those who helped stiffen the Marshal's vacillating resolve to break with Laval over the proposed trip to Paris for the ceremonial reburial of the ashes of Napoleon's son at the Invalides.44 Although General Weygand was in North Africa, his old enmity for Laval was common knowledge: Weygand had tried to persuade the Marshal to keep Laval out of office in June 1940, and in September 1940 Laval seemed to have turned the tables by having Weygand removed from the Defense Ministry and sent to North Africa. General Haider concluded, perhaps unfairly, that Weygand had been a prime mover in the December 13 affaire. Even though the officers' precise role in the dismissal of Laval is still clouded, there is no question about their feelings. Laval's parliamentary past, the unmistakable odors of anticlericalism and antimilitarism that still lingered from his "socialist" days, his roublardise— all were offensive to the officers' sense of fitness. And the behavior of General Huntziger in the meetings with Warlimont were clear signs that the Armistice Army was drag43 General Keitel to General Thomas, 10 January 1941, OKW/2012, frames 5,596,112-113; The Haider Diaries, 16 January 1941. 44 But see DGFP, Series D, xi, No. 736, p. 1234, for Huntziger's eagerness on 3 January 1941, to yield to German pressure and recall Laval.

02

Neutrality or Revanche? ging its feet on the planned military operations against British Africa.45 With the dismissal of Laval on 13 December 1940, the major contours of the Armistice Army's neutrality position had been sketched in oudine. The French Army would not take the initiative against Gaullist or British positions in Africa. After all, Huntziger's stated preference for "persuasion" had been vindicated by results and Gaullism had been successfully contained. At the same time, the French Foreign Ministry had discreedy opened discussions between M. de la Baume, Ambassador to Spain, and British Ambassador Sir Samuel Hoare at Madrid immediately after Dakar, negotiations which belong properly to the history of Vichy diplomacy rather than military policy, but which show the desire of both sides for a ditente. On the other hand, the Armistice Army would work to keep German and Italian influence out of the French Empire. To keep the Axis out, however, it was essential to keep the Allies out as well. Hence the Armistice Army was prepared to reject, by force if necessary, British or Gaullist attempts to woo parts of French territory back into belligerency and thereby to destroy, all in one blow, Vichy's usefulness to Germany and Vichy's hopes for a lenient peace. The Armistice Army's chief military function was to be the defense of Vichy neutrality against attempts, either Axis or Allied, to make French territory a battleground. The officers would shoot to keep French soil out of the war zone and under French sovereignty. 45

Laure, Journal; Baudouin, 409; The Haider Diaries, 16 January 1941.

93

CHAPTER

IV

A Plague on Both Their Houses The army is anglophobe and germanophobe at the same time; distrust of England predominates in the colonies, and distrust of Germany predominates in metropolitan France . . . —General Olry, in conversation with General Bridoux, 18 June 1942.1 passions in 1940 bore little resemblance to those of the "Great War" of 1914, and the officers' state of mind showed it. Within months of having fought a coalition war against Germany alongside British forces, French senior officers had dallied with a renversement des alliances in the fall of 1940, only to draw back before Christmas to a policy of defending French sovereignty from both sides. By then, the vast majority of career officers had accepted the Marshal's neutrality. To do so was to obey orders in the way officers were schooled to obey, all the more readily when obedience was the only clear pathway among several competing morally justifiable courses of action. Moreover, many officers' emotional readiness to cry "a plague on both your houses" to the two remaining belligerents made obedience all the easier. FRENCH WARTIME

GERMANY

Virtually no French officers rejoiced in the German occupation of two-thirds of France; none were "pro-German" in a simple sense. National Socialism struck a responsive 1

Bridoux, Journal, 18 June 1942.

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chord only among a few maverick individuals in the officer corps in whom long years of colonial service had exaggerated a penchant—or a need—for conspicuous toughness. By and large, such officers found their niche outside the Armistice Army. There was Major Edgard-Joseph-Alexandre Puaud, for example, a crude, hard-drinking foreign legion officer who had returned from Indochina in June 1940 because "he loved war . . . like a true legionnaire." Totally without ideology, hungry for combat and command, Puaud perhaps resembled one of those roodess men of violence described by Ernst von Salomon in 1919 Germany rather than a fascist ideologist. Puaud found his metier not in the paper drills of the Armistice Army but as "general" of the Anti-Bolshevik Legion organized in Paris in the summer of 1941, under German auspices, to send French volunteers to fight on the Russian front.2 There was Joseph Darnand, not a career soldier at all but a sergeant from Nice whose reconnaissance exploits between the lines had been legendary in World War I, and who fought again as a reserve lieutenant in a commando unit in 1940. Darnand, who never found peacetime satisfactions to compare with his moments of glory in the man-to-man kill-or-bekilled existence of night patrols, was not drawn to the Armistice Army either. He found an outlet for his guerrilla skills in the veterans' movement in Nice. There he built that notorious paramilitary force, the Service d'ord& Ugionnaire, which by 1943 had become the scourge of the Resistance. The Front\ampfer type which modern war has bred in all countries, France included, was not very conspicuous in the Armistice Army. There ruled the bien pensants, not commandos; and National Socialism's contempt for the old elites held no great allure for an officer-elite. 2

C. L. Flavian, De la nuit vers la lumiire (Paris, 1946).

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The German Control Commissions had no doubt about French officers' hostility. They reported in January 1941 that "the tendency of the officers is anti-German," reflecting the "great hatred" for Germany in the general population, 95 per cent of whom hoped for a British-American victory, or at least for an indecisive outcome. The following October they concluded that "the whole World War I generation is irrevocably anti-German," conditioned by a lifetime of the traditional "anti-boche" language of barracks rooms and officers' messes. Only the youngest officers were perhaps "reachable." Armistice Army officers in Africa, those "who had not themselves experienced defeat," were probably more vigorously revanchiste than their colleagues in metropolitan France, German observers thought. General Weygand reported to Vichy from Algiers in November 1940 that "on this continent, Germany and Italy remain the enemies," and again on 12 March 1941, that: "it is my duty, in closing this report, to recall that West Africa, like the rest of French Africa, is sensitive and excitable; that feelings clearly incline toward Britain, whose victory she desires; and that you had better guard her jealously from any German presence."3 The traditional "anti-bochism" of French officers had not necessarily been sharpened in defeat, however. It is perhaps easier to nourish proud hostility against a traditional enemy where vengeance is plausible. The totality of defeat in 1940 stunned "anti-boche" traditions into dormancy, in strange contrast to 1918 when narrow victory released a jubilant chauvinism. Indeed, there was a brief period after the armistice of 1940 during which cordial relations between the two officer corps seemed possible. Many officers, then and after, were impressed by the "correct" behavior of German forces s OKW/685, frames 2,499,474, -601; OKW/1437, frame 5,593,826; OKW/117, frame 5,508,405; Prods Weygand, 33.

96

A Plague on Both Their Houses in the Occupied Zone and of the Control Commissions in the Unoccupied Zone. The German Control Commissions, in turn, reported that their French liaison officers maintained correct attitudes. Not only were French officers prepared to admit a kind of community of "officerhood," older than nations and deeper than citizenship, of the sort Rene Clair portrayed in his film, "La Grande Illusion"; Armistice Army correctness toward the German Control Commissions also reflected a need to restore French self-respect through unusual pomp and ceremony. When Vice-Admiral Andre Marquis became prejet maritime at Toulon, for example, he made a "state visit" aboard his flagship, the destroyer Hardi, to the various German control points within his coastal command. It was perhaps exceptional that General Giraud vowed not to wear his medals until he entered Metz as a victor. For many others, an exaggerated sense of the mutual honor due among officers kept Franco-German relations on an outwardly cordial level.4 The awesomeness of German forces also helped mute the barracks-room bravado of old-fashioned "anti-bochism." Some officers even reacted with a kind of veterans' pacifism, a feeling that after two world wars in vain, the effort to return the clock to 1870 was not worth it. "This must not happen again."5 The very existence of the Armistice Army itself was a further asset for friendlier Franco-German relations. Hitler had meant the armistice terms to seem generous, and French officers responded to the bait. Young officers who received rapid promotions in the new army had every reason to be complacent. The advanced age of Petain and Wey4 OKW/i434, OKW/1437, OKW/1438, passim; G. Ward Price, Giraud and the African Scene (New York, 1944), 14. 5 Interviews.

97

A Plague on Both Their Houses gand has given the Vichy officer corps a false reputation of senescence; in fact, retirement ages were lowered to compress the officer corps, and new blood had its chance. General Huntziger, who became War Minister in September 1940 when Weygand's office of Defense Minister was abolished, had been the youngest General of the Army in 1940. General Bridoux, who became War Minister in April 1942, had been a mere Brigadier General in 1940. A cavalry officer and former commander of the cavalry school at Saumur, Bridoux had been clearly marked for social prominence; but cavalry officers did not often make the grade politically during the Third Republic. The flowering of careers like these was another potential asset for the German authorities. Instead of using these resources to overcome the traditional "anti-boche" sentiments of French officers, however, the German government squandered them. Indeed, the long duration of the war allowed no other course. However successful Hitler's forbearing tactics had been in June 1940, they soon gave way to the exigencies of the continuing war against Britain and to his temptation to dominate and weaken the country that had humiliated Germany in 1918. Hitler's evaporating interest in placating France can be traced in the decline and fall of the so-called new policy of the autumn of 1940. After the French reaction to British "aggression" at Mers-el-Kebir in July and at Dakar in September had alerted Hider to the possibility of a reversal of alliances at Vichy, German staffs began to study the possibility of bringing France into active partnership against England. On October 4, the German Armistice Commission drew up a study entided "Note on the active enlistment of France in the campaign against England."8 6 OKW/1347, frames 5,573,520-536; The Haider Diaries, 28 September 1940; Geschke, passim.

98

A Plague on Both Their Houses The high point of the "new policy" was Hitler's fulsome offer of a "peace of historic generosity" at the Montoire meeting of 24 October 1940, when he was evidently trying to interest Petain in direct participation in the war.7 Mutual suspicions on both sides prevented fulfillment. The senior French officers who dragged their feet when French military operations against the British in Africa were under discussion played their part. After Laval's fall on 13 December 1940, the "new policy" was replaced by what General Keitel described in a letter of 10 January 1941 as a "cold shoulder" toward France. France was increasingly treated as a defeated adversary and a source of war booty.8 Even in the high days of the "new policy," however, the acts of local German officials ran counter to it. Like all Frenchmen, career officers bitterly resented the closure of the demarcation line, the refusal to reduce exorbitant occupation costs, the confiscatory rate of exchange,9 the setdement of non-French refugees on confiscated French lands by the Ostland organization, and the placing of the Pas-deCalais and Nord departments under administration from Brussels. Because of the central role of the Armistice Commission, moreover, the officers involved in daily relations with German authorities formed a more jaundiced impression of German policy than they might otherwise have adopted. In fact, no officer attached to the Armistice Commission from 1940 to 1944 was brought to trial after the war for collaboration. For example, General Paul Doyen, who became head of the French delegation to the German Armistice Commis7

DGFP, Series D, xi, Nos. 212, 227, pp. 354, 385. OKW/20i2, frames 5,596,112-113. 9 20:1, while in Switzerland it was 12:1. General Vernoux, Wiesbaden 1940-44 (Paris, 1954), 94. 8

99

A Plague on Both Their Houses sion at Wiesbaden on 13 September 1940, totally committed to the effort to "live in Germany's Europe" and with "blind confidence" in Petain, left that post in July 1941 at German request, disillusioned with Petain and skeptical of his original policy of negotiation to the bitter end.10 In 1945, General Doyen commanded the Alpine Army detachment which fought against the Axis under the supreme command of the American General Devers. In 1940, however, far from approving that tiny band of exiles in London which was doing France more harm than good, Doyen sought to have German demands "not imposed but negotiated." Since German exigencies were inevitable and would be enforced regardless of French feelings, it seemed far more intelligent to agree in principle and then "use the opportunities which present themselves to obtain more in return." In one typical instance, he exploited the incident of 22 March 1941, when the British motor torpedo boat K-77 entered the harbor at Nemours, Algeria, and was immediately fired upon by French coastal artillery after a warning shot. "Using the argument of our actions in the Nemours affair," Doyen reported, "I requested the necessary means for the protection of our merchant marine." Increasingly, however, Doyen ruefully described his activities as an "effort to dike the flood of German demands." Aware finally of the "painful contrast" between the words of collaboration and the deeds of German diktats at Wiesbaden, General Doyen submitted a remarkable final report to Vichy on 16 July 1941 arguing that increased German demands were actually a sign of weakness, the demonstration that German chances for victory were "more and more dubious." Admitting that there seemed 10 Raymond Brug&re, Vent, Vidi, Vichy—et la suite (Paris, 1952), 69; DFCAA, iv, 611, 639, 644.

100

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no other way for the present than the one chosen, Doyen pointed to the United States as the future arbiter of the war and hinted as strongly as he could in writing that French leaders must be ready for a change of orientation.11 Other officers' feelings toward Germany evolved in a similar fashion, as the increasing exigencies of the occupation coincided with increasing disbelief in a speedy German victory. In addition to the "flood of demands" which all Frenchmen resented, there were aspects of German policy which offended career officers particularly. German policy for Alsace-Lorraine effectively canceled out the first impressions of "impeccable" behavior. The frontier nationalism of these provinces had long contributed soldiers well out of proportion to the area's population, including General Huntziger himself. Metz and Strasbourg were highly charged emotional symbols to the French Army, and to be Military Governor of Metz—Giraud had been—was not only to command the most central frontier sector but also to share in the glory of the French military past. Speaking in Metz on 20 November 1938, Marshal Petain had evoked the twentieth anniversary of the French Army's reentry into the city, which had expunged from a whole generation of French officers the stain of dishonor which Bazaine's capitulation had placed upon them. Now Petain had capitulated, and the November 1940 expulsion of all residents of Lorraine and Alsace who wanted to keep French citizenship touched a raw nerve. General Laure wrote on November 14 that Petain was profoundly impressed by the fervor of the public reaction. "Relations with Germany grow worse. . . . We must not let the Lorrainers feel abandoned." It was the first issue on which French 11 DFCAA, iv, 38, 151, 227, 293, and the final report entitled "Les fruits d'experience," 664S.

101

A Plague on Both Their Houses Army publications were allowed to adopt a hostile tone to German measures.12 The impact of German designs on the border provinces had already been felt in the army. On 23 October 1940, the German Armistice Commission at Wiesbaden demanded the repatriation of all natives of Alsace and Lorraine in the army and in the Chantiers de jeunesse. General Huntziger's strategy was to yield peripheral points in order to save the essential: to retain army effectives and avoid forcible repatriation. "The government has already decided to close its eyes to the escape of Alsatians and Lorrainers from the Chantiers de jeunesse, and even to facilitate them in some cases," he observed at an "armistice session" on 20 November 1940. Alsatians and Lorrainers had already been concentrated in the youth camps nearest the demarcation line. Some had been forced against their will to enter the youth camps, and there was no point in sending them home angry; it was best not to search out and punish escapees. As for soldiers, on the contrary, "it was not possible to tolerate escapes." Huntziger proposed that he should personally promise the German authorities that any natives of Alsace and Lorraine who wished to be repatriated would be released. Privately, he believed that more than half the 3,500 in the army and the 4,000 in the youth camps would choose to remain in the Free Zone. When Huntziger's compromise proposal was rejected at Wiesbaden, the French government acceded on 24 December 1940 to the liberation of all draftees from Alsace and Lorraine in the army and youth camps. In practice, however, the Armistice Army quietly circum12 DGFP, Series D, xi, Nos. 331, 337, 338, 354, 526, pp. 570, 578, 580, 610, 885; DFCAA, 11, 380-389; Laure, Journal, 15 November 1940; La France militaire, 4 December 1940. 102

A Plague on Both Their Houses vented this agreement. At the end of December, General von Stiilpnagel complained that instead of the seven trainloads of 4,500 men they had anticipated, only 700 men had been repatriated to Alsace and Lorraine. Undoubtedly many of the released draftees simply disappeared into the mass of refugees in the Unoccupied Zone. Some who wished to remain in the army were given false papers. As late as August 1941, the Armistice Commission at Wiesbaden was still complaining that there were 2,000 Alsatians and Lorrainers left in the Armistice Army.13 The Alsace-Lorraine issue was perhaps the first instance of widespread contravention of German demands by the rank and file of the Armistice Army. The German Control Commissions in the Free Zone kept close watch on the units containing volunteers from Alsace and Lorraine, and reported on their dangerous attitudes. The 152nd Infantry Regiment, the traditional 1794 regiment d'Alsace, was particularly disturbing. The 4th demibrigade de chasseurs placed the arms of Alsace and the cathedral spire of Strasbourg on its insignia, and the shields of Strasbourg, Mulhouse, and Saverne on its brigade flag.1* Some units were also influenced by the presence nearby of refugees from Alsace and Lorraine. The University of Strasbourg had set up its alternate campus in 1939 at Clermont-Ferrand, which one German observer accused of being 13 Baudouin, 376; DFCAA, in, 30, 266-270; ibid., iv, 1, 164, 211, 451, v, 59; the German Control Commissions discovered some residents o£ the border provinces who complained to them about restrictions on their repatriation. OKW/143, frames 5,592,7805.; Maurice Catoire, La Direction des services de !'armistice a Vichy (Paris, 1955), 84, states that 215 soldiers and 12 noncommissioned officers opted to return to Alsace and Lorraine under German control. 14 OKW/i345, frame 5,572,825; General de Gouvello, "Solidariti chasseur," Le cor de chasse, No. 3, March i960, 7. Major Paul Ely, postwar chief of staff, commanded one of the three battalions of this unit.

103

A Plague on Both Their Houses "the capital city of anti-German feeling." Here also was the Archbishop of Strasbourg, who rejected German demands that he return to his see with the precious altar furnishings he had taken with him. Combining some of the young refugees with his own troops near Clermont-Ferrand, General de Lattre de Tassigny, then Military Commander of the Puy-de-Dome department, set up the first in a whole series of experimental youth camps in July 1940.15 Another issue which particularly antagonized officers was the continued captivity of 1,500,000 prisoners in Germany. According to Article 20 of the armistice, prisoners would be liberated upon the conclusion of peace. During the first months, when peace seemed imminent, the French military representatives at Wiesbaden did not raise the issue. When the expected peace conference did not materialize, however, the prisoners' fate took on new color. "As the armistice drags on," reported Lieutenant Colonel Lorber from Wiesbaden in April 1941, "certain situations can not continue: for example, the prisoners." A proposal to liberate prisoners from French North and West Africa and officers with colonial experience had an important place in General Huntziger's post-Montoire negotiations in Paris, and in subsequent conferences. In spite of the repeated French Army requests, however, only 120,000 French prisoners were ever liberated.16 Neither would the German authorities permit recruitment for the Armistice Army in the Occupied Zone, another issue which rankled throughout the period. Not only was the Armistice Army thus unable to reach its allowed numbers; but the army was prevented from retaining any in15

Interviews; OKW/1605, frame 6,500,019. DFCAA, iv, 297, 4155.; DGFP, Series D, xi, No. 272, p. 499; Catoire, Direction ties services de !'armistice, 44. 16

IO4

A Plague on Both Their Houses fluence on the youth of the most urban and populous twothirds of France. In a "Note au sujet du recrutement de l'Armee francaise" sent to Jacques Benoist-Mechin on 8 April 1942 for his use in negotiating with the German authorities in Paris, General Revers observed that with the liberation of the draftees of 1938-39 the Armistice Army would have such a deficit that at the rate of 1,500 enlistments a month, the army would reach its 100,000 men in April 1946! "It is difficult to accept such a distant date." Benoist-Mechin was instructed to ask permission to draft 50,000 men in the Occupied Zone. In the last months of 1942, the Armistice Army was finally allowed to post recruitment literature in the Occupied Zone for voluntary enlistment. Added to these particular military grievances were a number of minor irritants. Active career officers were forbidden to enter the Occupied Zone.17 The German authorities sought to violate the secrecy of the Foreign Legion and have all German nationals in that service repatriated.18 The revival of hostility to Germany was frequently less inhibited among junior officers. The duties of policy-making inevitably separate the top level of the officer corps from junior officers, whose freedom from ultimate responsibility permits emotion and sentiment to play a larger role in their opinions of policy. The caution of senior officers is only in part an expression of age: it is also the result of the burden of policy-making. But there were even senior officers who spoke their minds. General Robert Altmeyer, as commander of the XVIth Military Region, was exceptionally bold to write a letter to the German Armistice Commission in March 1941 protesting the behavior of German personnel 17

DFCAA, I, 120. OKW/i436, frame 5,593,461.

18

10$

A Plague on Both Their Houses in his area. The heated reaction of General Vogl at Wiesbaden was perhaps enough to prevent the recurrence of such incidents.19 The official Armistice Army emphasis upon ceremony and traditional observances also helped remind officers and men of former wars against Germany. The army celebrated the anniversaries of Napoleonic victories, if not of those of World War I.20 In the air force, the annual September Ii anniversary of the death of the World War I ace Guynemer was celebrated as usual, with the reading of Guynemer's posthumous Legion of Honor citation including the words, "with the most unshakeable faith in victory."21 In North Africa, it was even possible to celebrate World War II heroes. Air Force Colonel Baradez, who had been given the civilian post of subprefect of Bougie, Algeria, held a ceremony in June 1941 in the presence of General Odic, commander of French Air Forces in Algeria, commemorating the French pilots lost while trying to cross to North Africa on the eve of the armistice a year earlier.22 Thus, by December 1940, the ritual "anti-boche" stance of French officers was beginning to recover from the stunning shock of June, and the Armistice Army had even begun the systematic evasion of German requirements. ITALY

French officers' rancor against Italy after Mussolini declared war on 10 June 1940, was masked by none of the awe that 19

DFCAA, iv, 127, 180-181. OKW/i6o5, frame 6,500,052. 21 Figaro, 12 September 1942; Trait d'union, No. 12, October 1941. z2 Trait d'union, No. 11, September 1941, 15. General Odic, by then retired, left North Africa for England after General Weygand's dismissal at the end of 1941. 20

I06

A Plague on Both Their Houses tempered their feelings toward Germany. As the only belligerent to whom French officers could legitimately feel superior, Italy was a useful balm for wounded pride. In practical terms, Italy was an occupying power against whom a firm unyielding stand promised some success. The misfortune was that the Vichy high command mortgaged itself even more deeply to Germany in order to resist Italian demands successfully. Having belatedly declared war on France on 10 June 1940 only because the western campaign seemed about to collapse without a chance for Italy to share in the spoils, Italy was unable to capture the areas she hoped to claim. Against the four divisions of General Olry's Armie des Alpes, nineteen Italian divisions were able in two weeks to advance only a few kilometers through the town of Menton, and capture a few acres in four high valleys: the Petit SaintBernard, Mont-Cenis, Mont-Geneve, and Haut Guil. In Menton itself, the Italians failed to take the frontier post along the coast highway.23 With such meager gains on the eve of the armistice, the Italian army was ready to resort to desperate measures. General Roatta approached the German military high command with a request that Italian troops be transported via Munich to the Lyon area behind General List's front lines, "so as to get them to the points which include the area on which they want to make occupation claims." General Haider dismissed the project as "the cheapest kind of fraud."24 28 Colonel A. Goutard, The Battle of France, 1940 (New York, 1959), 259-260; Sarraz-Bournet, Temoignage d'un silencieux (Paris, 1948), 86, states that the Italians took a total area of 83,217 hectares, with a population of 28,475 persons, of whom 21,700 lived in Menton. 24 The Haider Diaries, 24 June 1940.

IQ1J

A Plague on Both Their Houses At the armistice negotiations, therefore, the French officer delegates took an intransigent tone toward their Italian opponents. On 21 June 1940 at Compiegne, General Huntziger informed Marshal Keitel that France would "on no account sign a similar treaty with Italy. . . . Italy declared war on us, but she did not make war on us." If Italy demanded equally stiff terms, France would fight on to the bitter end.25 In the last,days before the armistice, Weygand was evidendy still considering the possibility of continuing the war against Italy. On 22 June 1940, he sent General Koeltz to Algiers to ask General Nogues whether the present forces could continue to hold out in North Africa under attack from the Spanish Rif area, and whether offensive actions against the Axis from Tunisia would be possible, both without further support from the mainland. Such questions lost all point, however, with the German stipulation that the armistice should take effect only upon the conclusion of a simultaneous Franco-Italian truce.26 Although Marshal Keitel rejected the French request for a separate armistice excluding Italy, Hitler did oblige Mussolini to reduce his plans for the occupation of French territory. Huntziger came away from Rethondes convinced that Marshal Keitel shared the French contempt for Italy. Thus a pattern was set whereby French negotiators turned to German assistance in order to scale down exorbitant Italian demands.27 As the armistice period began, however, Italy still played an important role in French military destinies. Wishing to concentrate upon crossing the channel, Hider had acknowl25 26

DGFP, Series D, ix, Nos. 512, 513, 522, pp. 643, 652, 664. Commission parlementaire d'enquete, ix, 2810-2814; Proces Noguh,

26. 2

IDGFP, Series D, ix, No. 513, p. 654.

I08

A Plague on Both Their Houses edged the supremacy of Italian interests in the Mediterranean. It was the Italian Armistice Commission at Turin which was charged with establishing and inspecting the French forces not only east of the Rhone but also in the Levant, in North Africa, and in Mediterranean naval bases.28 Conflict between German and Italian policies toward France was to mount sharply, however, after the abandonment of the cross-channel operation and before the German invasion of Russia, when Hitler displayed more interest in Mediterranean affairs. The Italian government was quick, for example, to insist on equal facilities when it learned of the German demand for base rights in French North Africa in July 1940. The most important conflict between German and Italian policies centered about the "new policy" by which French forces in the Empire were partly rearmed in order to repel possible British or Gaullist operations. Rome suspected a Franco-German deal at the expense of Italian imperial dreams in Africa. The dispute turned to the Armistice Army's advantage.29 Initially, the Italians clearly anticipated the all but total disarmament of French forces in North Africa, to prevent French interference with their proposed annexation of Tunisia. The Italian authorities sought to limit the African Armistice Army to 30,000, to demilitarize Bizerte and Oran, to open up the Mareth Line fortifications on the TunisiaTripolitania frontier, and generally to leave Tunisia defenseless.30 28

Ibid., x, No. 54, p. 55, xi, Nos. 5, 20, pp. 6, 25. Ibid., x, Nos. 151, 158, pp. 186, 198; OKW/2012, frames 5,596,063064; OKW/1347, frames 5,573,511-515· 30 DFCAA, i, 277, 241; 11, 304; Langer, 49. The Graziani papers indicate that Italy hoped to annex Nice, part of Algeria, Tunisia, and Corsica. 29

/09

A Plague on Both Their Houses After the British attack upon the French fleet at Mers-elKebir on 3-4 July 1940, the Italian authorities were forced to accept the fait accompli of German postponements of French disarmament and demobilization "necessary to repel English attacks in the Mediterranean."31 Very shordy, however, the Italian authorities returned to the charge. The Italian government expressed grave doubts about French policy in North Africa to German Ambassador Mackensen on 26 July 1940, pointing out that French forces in Tunisia were still in a forward position and still motorized. In mid-August, Marshal Badoglio informed the German Armistice Commission that Mussolini would await until August 20 to see the effects of the easing of the armistice terms since Mers-el-Kebir, but that if the situation was not then clear, he proposed to carry through the demobilization of French forces in North Africa. Italy was ready for even stronger action in the French colonies, in case this was wished by Germany. On 6 September 1940, Signor Lanze, secretary of the Italian Embassy in Berlin, commented that French strength in Morocco seemed alarmingly great. Would not total disarmament be better? His interlocutor, Herr Woermann, Director of the Foreign Office Political Department, replied that it would be a greater evil if the French African colonies fell into the hands of De Gaulle and his adherents.32 This exchange summarized clearly the difference in emphasis of the two countries' armistice policy. The Italian authorities sought to reduce and replace French power in the Mediterranean; the German authorities sought to exclude British power from the Mediterranean, if necessary by 31

DGFP, Series D, x, No. 115, p. 127. 32OKW/1512, frame 5,519,436; DGFP, Series D, xi, No. 28, p. 36. HO

A Plague on Both Their Houses bolstering the French. The French military negotiators did not hesitate to use German assistance in overcoming the last two Italian limitations on French African strength. The disarmament of the French Navy in the Mediterranean called for in Article 8 of the armistice had been suspended after Mers-el-Kebir. The Italians tried repeatedly to lift this suspension. On September i, at the very period when the Gaullist take-over of equatorial Africa was causing the Germans to look with ever-increasing favor on Vichy forces in Africa, the Italian Armistice Commission presented a note calling for the full disarmament of the French Mediterranean Fleet by September 30. The French delegations at Turin and Wiesbaden felt sufficiently strong in German support to reject it as well as subsequent notes on the subject. In early October, the Italian authorities were still pressing for naval disarmament by a new deadline October 15, despite "evident" German pressure.33 Like the others, this deadline passed, and French contempt for Italian demands was confirmed. As for the proposed 30,000-man army in North Africa, General Huntziger took the matter up directly with the Germans: with General von Stiilpnagel at Wiesbaden on September 12, and with Lieutenant Colonel Speidel in Paris on October 31. Not that negotiations with Italy were neglected. Marshal Badoglio was contacted over the head of the Italian Armistice Commission, when his service on General Foch's staff in World War I and his prior acquaintance with General Parisot, deputy chief of the French delegation at Turin, were remembered. It was the German Armistice Commission at Wiesbaden, however, which 33

DFCAA,

i, 2 4 1 , 255, 11, 120.

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A Plague on Both Their Houses finally authorized 115,000 French troops in French North Africa and 60,000 in French West Africa.34 German authorities also put pressure on Italy to rescind her November 1940 order that all French ground forces be withdrawn from Bizerte.35 Throughout 1941 they were less eager than Italy to use Bizerte for Rommel's supply line, accepting the French contention that blatant Axis use of the port might provoke North African dissidence or a British occupation.36 Although French Armistice Army forces in Tunisia were eventually reduced to about 15,000 men, without tanks or antitank weapons, armed with nothing heavier than a few horse-drawn 75 mm. cannon,37 Italian pressures were never entirely able to remove some form of French military presence from Tunisia. The Vichy government used German support against Italy, at a price, however. Some French senior officers in North Africa evidently feared an Italian more than a German presence; at least they felt that resistance had more chance of success. No military figure went so far in this direction, of course, as did Pierre Laval, who urged the German authorities on 15 November 1942 to station German troops in Nice and along the Mediterranean coast so that the French population could be assured that Italian troops were there only for military reasons.38 34 DFCAA, i, 277, 280; DGFP, Series D, xi, Nos. 259, 264, 272, 321, pp. 436, 440, 449, and p. 5260.3; Sarraz-Bournet, Temoignage, 65; Vernoux, Wiesbaden, 68, 72. 35 DGFP, Series D, xi, No. 400, p. 70911.1. se OKW/20i2, frames 5,596,011-012; 5,595,996-997. The use of Bizerte to supply Rommel was finally imposed on Darlan in a meeting with Ciano on 12 December 1941. 37 Marcel Emerit, "La preparation de la revanche en Afrique du Nord sous Ie regime de !'armistice," extrait des Actes du 8ie Congres des Societes savantes Rouen-Caen 1956 (Paris, 1956), 791, 796. 88 O K W / i 3 3 , frames 5,502,117-118.

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A Plague on Both Their Houses Nevertheless the joint Franco-German policy of strengthening the Armistice Army's capacity to preserve French sovereignty in the Mediterranean implied that the German Armistice Commission would gradually take over inspection of this area from the weakening Italians. After a conversation with Marshal Badoglio, the German military attache in Rome concluded as early as n September 1940 that "without help the Italians can not both drive the British out of the Near East and keep the French in North Africa in check." After the Dakar incident in September 1940, Mussolini was willing to accept the presence of a joint German-Italian control commission in West Africa, although French objections that such a commission would drive the colonies into dissidence delayed the entire project for a time. In January 1941, Mussolini conceded that the Casablanca area was a German zone of influence. A "temporary" German inspection team arrived in Casablanca in January 1941, followed by a full-fledged German Control Commission in Morocco in April 1941. At the same time, the former Italian control commissions along the French Mediterranean coast were replaced by joint commissions.39 The German decision to replace at least part of the Italian control apparatus was based, of course, on considerations of Italian weakness and the strategic importance of the area. But the ease with which Germany penetrated North Africa was pardy due to the Armistice Army leaders' habit of calling upon German aid in limiting the pretensions of Italy in the area. By April 1941, violent French protests were powerless to halt German plans to send inspection teams to Morocco. In the long run, therefore, the Armistice Army leaders' resistance to Italy was not particularly successful. At best 39 OKW/1347, frames 5,573,543, -557-560; DGFP, Series D, xi, Nos. 154» 175» PP- 263, 289; DFCAA, in, 445, 448; iv, 290, 241, 254, 293, 304.

113

A Plague on Both Their Houses it was a source of profound moral satisfaction. From the beginning, even the senior officers of the Armistice Army presented a bold front to Italy. To head the French delegation to the Italian Armistice Commission at Turin, they named Admiral Duplat who, only a month before, had commanded the squadron ordered to bombard Genoa. The rest of the French delegation was said to be full of notorious sanctionnistes of Ethiopia days.40 There is evidence, too, that the Army General Staff took its first gingerly steps into the camouflage of arms and into clandestine mobilization to counter a possible Italian seizure of Nice. According to the testimony of the officers responsible for these programs, General Huntziger authorized the first illegal camouflaged military transport company on 21 September 1940 to defend Nice from Italian attack. One can suppose that the Armistice Army authorities, while still too pessimistic to mount clandestine plans against a German advance, were readier to plan resistance to the weaker victor, especially when Huntziger had already experienced German diplomatic assistance against Italy. Resistance movements must have sufficient hope in which to germinate. The government-sponsored veterans' organization, the Legion Franqaise des Combattants, dominated by Petain's aide General Laure until April 1942, made no efforts to spare Italian sensibilities. When the Italian residents of Nice staged a day of national propaganda, the Ugion responded with a Jeanne d'Arc festival on n May 1941, with a profusion of French flags and demonstrations which turned out to be equally anti-Jewish and anti-Italian.41 The LSgion's first anniversary in September 1941 was 40 Sarraz-Bournet, Temoignage, 63. Admiral Auphan and Jacques Mordal, La Marine jrangaise pendant la deuxieme guerre mondiale (Paris, 1958), 127; Pierre Nicolle, Cinquante mois d'armistice (Paris, 1948), 84. 41 OKW/i436, frame 5,593,405-

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A Plague on Both Their Houses celebrated with the collection of parcels of soil from all parts of France and the French Empire which were brought together in the crypt o£ the Vercingetorix monument at Gergovia in a symbolic combination of earthmystique, French unity, and praise for a safely antique liberator. The parcel of soil from Nice was collected with such eclat that Franco-Italian street riots broke out.42 French liaison officers with the Italian Control Commissions also paraded their scorn for the Italian officers. The Italians complained that their French liaison officers pointedly conducted all business in German, so that the Italian officers were excluded from the conversation. In an unseemly gay mood as host at a funeral breakfast for General Huntziger, Admiral Darlan bantered with General VaccaMaggiolini, before General Vogl, about the poor showing the Italian fleet had made against France in 1940. German Control Commissioners in North Africa solemnly forwarded statistics to Wiesbaden on the frequency with which Italian soldiers were called "coward" on the streets of Tunis. 48 So the Italian Control Commissions provided a useful safety valve through which the accumulated frustrations bred by overwhelming German power could escape without seriously endangering French lives and property. THE

ALLIES

Si les anglais vous mordent, mord-les! —town motto of Morlaix (Finistere) German Control Inspectors in unoccupied France were baffled by the "muddled thinking" they found there. Some 42

OKW/i6o5, frame 6,500,052. No parcels of earth appear to have been collected in Alsace-Lorraine. * 8 OKW/i432, frame 5.592.765; OKW/1436, frame 5,596,477; OKW/ 1444b, frame 5,595,168; OKW/1605, frames 2,499,926 et seq.

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A Plague on Both Their Houses of their officer contacts were clearly hostile to Britain without, in turn, being friendly to Germany.44 People caught up in the secular crusade of modern war have no time for neutrals. Neither Axis nor Allied observers could understand the French officers' mood of antipathy toward both sides which accorded so poorly with their own commitment. French officers' Germanophobia did not mean secret collusion with the Allies. Nor did the passionate resentment of Britain which swept the Vichy officer corps, reaching a pitch unknown in France since the Fashoda affair, mean sympathy for Nazism and Fascism. France was alone and prostrate, as officers saw it, a prey to the ravenous wolves of both sides. Admiral Darlan believed in July 1940 that Britain would treat France as harshly as Germany if she won the war. And the officer who had headed the Armistice Army's Third Bureau (operations) in 1941 recalled twenty years later that France had been "caught in a stranglehold" by two powers at,once, Germany and Britain, "who wanted to swing the Empire into her camp" and take it for herself.45 Like Darlan, most French officers did not intend to be water-boys for either side. Their mood turned inward upon la France seule. The explosion of antagonism to Britain in July 1940 can only be understood in terms of the nine months which had gone before. The British government had shown more determination than the French in the declaration of war itself. While the British cabinet wanted to present a joint ultimatum demanding a German agreement to withdraw armed forces from Poland by midnight, September 2/3, the French cabinet was reluctant to make German with44 OKW/i437, frames 5,593,696, -685, reports from Port Vendres dated June and September 1942. 45 U.S. Foreign Relations, 1940, n, 462; Langer, 70; interviews.

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A Plague on Both Their Houses drawal from Poland a condition for accepting Italian media­ tion, and delayed any decision until September 3. Finally, a unilateral British ultimatum was delivered at 9 A.M. on September 3, to be followed only eight hours later by a French note. 46 Looking back on these events after the de­ feat, General Weygand could remind the Dakar garrison in a private address on 29 October 1940 that "if we found ourselves at war again a second time, it was because the interest of the Anglo-Saxon powers took precedence over the interests of France." 4 7 Once the battle was joined, however, zeal appeared to have changed sides. Britain could send only ten divisions to France in the spring of 1940, that "ridiculous force" as General Weygand described it ten years later.48 Clearly the whole brunt of the unwanted campaign was to be thrust upon the 106 divisions of France. French and British offi­ cers had ample opportunity in the long watches of the "phony war" to reflect on these contrasts, and to abrade each other's sensibilities. Both sides had decided well be­ fore the outbreak of actual fighting that the other nation 49 wished to shift the main burden upon its ally. The disastrous reverses of May 1940 brought these ugly suspicions to the surface. As early as June 4, Petain re­ marked to U.S. Ambassador William C. Bullitt that Britain would probably "fight to the last Frenchman, and then 50 seek a compromise peace." By this time, two affairs had 46

Woodward, British Foreign Policy, ι -6. Weygand, "Allocution." See also Bankwitz, 836. 48 Commission parlementaire d'enquete, Vi, 1771. In 1914, the British had sent ten divisions at once, which could be raised by 1915 to 37. See Cyril Falls, The Great War (New York, 1961), 103. 49 Gordon Wright, "Ambassador Bullitt and the Fall of France," World Politics, x, No. ι (October 1957), 76. 50 Langer, 13. 47

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A Plague on Both Their Houses fanned the latent antagonism between the two allies to a white heat. The British had refused to send more than four squadrons of fighter aircraft to France, instead of the twenty which Weygand requested; and the coordination of the Allied armies had collapsed during the campaign in Flanders and the retreat to Dunkirk. 51 Indeed soldiers of the two evacuating armies were on the verge of taking pot shots at one another as they jostled for shelter under German shellfire in the dunes. Among French officers, the suspicion lingered long after that Lord Gort's British Expeditionary Force never really cooperated with Weygand's plan for a simultaneous attack from north and south to pinch off the German salient. In the officers' view, Gort, far from obeying Weygand's order to attack southward on May 24, an order agreed to by Churchill and by Sir John Dill, Chief of the Imperial General Staff, withdrew his forces channel-ward from Arras on May 23 and from that moment on concentrated solely on the evacuation of his force, without regard for French forces or for interallied plans.52 Once the British force had been withdrawn to Dunkirk, a second misunderstanding arose over whether it was intended solely to carry out its own evacuation, or whether it was to help hold a bridgehead to cover the preparation of the Somme-Aisne battle line to the south. When Admiral Jean Abrial, commander of the Dunkirk sector, learned on May 31 from General Alexander that the remaining British forces in Dunkirk would cease opposition to the Germans 01 John C. Cairns, "Great Britain and the Fall o£ France. A Study in Allied Disunity," Journal of Modern History, xxvui, No. 4 (December 1955)· 62 A. Goutard, Battle of France, 219-220; Cairns, "Allied Disunity," 375-377; Weygand, in, 112-123.

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on June 2, he bitterly accused the British of breaking their word of honor.58 By these unfortunate cross-purposes, the image of Britain abandoning France in order to defend her own home island was indelibly stamped on the minds of French officers. Even an Anglophile officer, General Fornel de la Laurencie, arguing in the clandestine publication Liberte in 1941 that a British victory was essential to the future revival of France, felt obliged to concede that "Britain had acted badly at Dunkirk." 54 After the armistice itself had climaxed the growing rupture of French and British war operations, an unmistakeably malicious schadenfreude crept into French officers' remarks about the imminence of British defeat. The overwhelming German force which had defeated the great French Army would not take long to end the supercilious attitude of the British, who had been able to contribute so little to the recent campaign.55 French antagonism to Britain had reached the point of dry tinder waiting to be blown into flame by some incident. The British seizure of French warships in British ports and the naval bombardment at Mers-el-Kebir which followed British efforts to lure Admiral Gensoul's squadron out of the Mediterranean was that incident. The spasms of emotion which the events of July 3 and 4 caused in France have already been described. Twenty years later, French officers still referred to the incident as the British "assassination" of nearly 1,300 French sailors. British support for the Gaul53

Cairns, "Allied Disunity," 374; Weygand, m, 130-131. Liberte, No. 7, spring 1941. The mutual recriminations traded by Generals Spears and Weygand in the last days had done little to cement relations. Cairns, "Allied Disunity"; Spears, Assignment to Catastrophe (London, 1954-55). 54 55

U9

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list take-over of French Equatorial Africa in August and September, and the second Anglo-French naval battle off Dakar in September seemed to fix upon Britain an indelible stamp as aggressor against French interests. France found herself, as General Huntziger told General von Stiilpnagel in July 1940 "for all practical purposes at war with the same enemy as her victorious adversary."56 In October 1940, the problem of Franco-British relations was thrust upon a group of French generals imprisoned in the German fortress of Konigstein. A British General Somerset arrived to share their confinement. General Somerset's appearance created "un petit moment d'emotion," wrote General Laure, because events "had awakened in many of us a real hostility against the British." The French generals finally agreed to tolerate the newcomer with a "reserved but correct" attitude.57 French naval officers would, no doubt, have found it harder to be tactful. Not only had French naval lives and material been lost to British gunfire; Admiral Darlan's promises to Sir Dudley Pound in June 1940 that the French fleet would under no circumstances fall into German hands had clearly been judged worthless in London. Admiral Darlan never forgot grievances against Britain; he still nurtured the slight he had endured at the coronation of George VI in Westminster Abbey in 1936 when, because the French Navy had no rank higher than "Admiral," he had sat behind brilliantly bemedaled Admirals of the Fleet from Siam and Ecuador.58 Darlan exaggerated even the normal tendency for French naval officers to regard Britain as the traditional enemy, a tendency compounded of the 56 57 58

Delegation francaise, "comptes rendus," 7 July 1940. Laure, Journal, 21 October 1940. Alain Darlan, Amiral Darlan pane, 39. 120

A Plague on Both Their Houses Breton flavor of the naval officer corps, memories of an­ cient wars, and more recent memories of the "humiliation" of the Washington Naval Conference of 1922 and the Anglo-German Naval Agreement of 1936.59 After all, it had been a Breton and a naval officer, the Count de Kersaint, who talked the National Convention into declaring war on Britain in January 1793. The German Control Commissions found that French naval officers would express their bitter­ ness toward Great Britain quite openly before them. In return, the French Navy received special privileges, such as the release of all its prisoners of war when General Wey­ gand was dismissed from command in North Africa in 1941.60 And Darlan himself no doubt found his famous anglophobia an asset when he came to power in the spring of 1941 and when he ran the Armistice Army in early 1942.61 If any group in the French Army shared traditional Navy suspicions of Britain, it was the veterans of colonial service. German observers were apt to describe a French officer as "pro-German, in the sense that French colonial officers are normally anti-British." Several senior officers of the Armi­ stice Army had breathed the air of French Syria, the fron­ tier where French and British interests had clashed most conspicuously in the twentieth century. General Weygand had replaced General Gouraud as High Commissioner in the Levant in 1923, when Prince Faisal's efforts to set up a Hashemite Kingdom in Damascus under British protection, and clashes over the Iraq-Syrian frontier were still fresh memories. He had had occasion that year to protest to the British Foreign Minister, Lord Curzon, about the operation 59

Auphan and Mordal, Marine franfaise, 21. OKW/1436, frame 5,593,405; OKW/1444, frame 5,594,575; DFCAA, v, 307· 61 See the German comment in DGFP, Series D, χι, p. 1217η. 60

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A Plague on Both Their Houses of British agents in Syrian elections. General Huntziger, a colonial infantry officer by training, was supreme commander of French forces in the Levant in 1933. General Henri Dentz had been chief of intelligence in Syria during the Druse rebellion of 1924, an experience which left him unshakably convinced that Britain was supporting tribal dissidence to push France out of the Near East.62 Weygand, Huntziger, Darlan: these three French officers each with his own sour memories of British ways were to run the Armistice Army from its creation to April 1942. As with French feelings toward Germany, therefore, imperial considerations—past memories as well as present conflicts—held one of the keys to Vichy relations with Britain. The course of the war decreed that those relations could only deteriorate. As Axis pressures on the Near East in 1941 and 1942 made the air route across mid-Africa a major British lifeline, Allied efforts to make use of strategic French territory increased. In the fall of 1940, the British eagerly supported General de Gaulle's establishment of a territorial base in French Equatorial Africa. In the summer of 1941, the German use of Syria as a base to aid the rebellion of Rashid AIi el-Gailani in Iraq provoked the British seizure of the French Levant: Syria and Lebanon. Before the Russian campaign drew Hitler's attentions to the East, in June 1941, Britain's desperate struggle to retain a footing in the Mediterranean forced her to be a more active interloper on French colonial territory than Germany. After the British had taken Syria and Lebanon, Admiral Darlan wrote to Marshal Petain on 21 July 1941 that the British e2 OKW/i349, frame 5,573,923; Bankwitz, 423; La France militaire, 15 November 1941; Andre Laffargue, Le general Dentz (Paris, 1954), 36.

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declare that they will give us back our Empire. I don't believe a word of it. Such generosity would be something new on their p a r t . . . . England is in competition with the United States for the possession of our North African empire, which they consider the best springboard for military operations. The longer the war lasts, the harder we will find it to keep Africa from falling into the hands of the Anglo-Saxons.68 At Dakar, Governor-General Pierre Boisson also doubted that Britain would ever give back Dakar once that superb port had fallen into her hands.6* Even before the Syrian conflict, General Laure wrote that he did not trust the British in the Near East. General Weygand, submitting his first report as the Vichy representative in French Africa on io November 1940, warned against the "corrupting activity" of Britain in the colonies.65 To be sure, Winston Churchill had gone out of his way to promise "the restoration of France and the unity of her Empire, including the territories which at present look to the Free French movement," as Sir Samuel Hoare, British Ambassador at Madrid, was instructed to tell the French Ambassador, M. de la Baume, on 7 November 1940. To General de Gaulle, on this as on so many other issues a kindred spirit with his Vichy opponents, Churchill had written on 7 August 1940 to promise "the full restoration 66 of the independence and greatness of France." But just as Churchill had doubted whether Darlan's promises about the neutrality of the French Fleet could withstand German 63

Laure, Journal, 31 July 1941. U.S. Foreign Relations, 1942, 11, 410. Laure, Journal, 18 March 1941; Prods Weygand, 33. ββ Woodward, British Foreign Policy, 94, 98; De Gaulle, 1, 341. See also Louis Rougier, Les accords Petain-Churchill (Montreal, 1945), 132. 64

65

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pressures, so many French officers wondered whether Churchill's promises—if they even knew of them—would withstand the temptations of actual possession. The growing frictions between Vichy and Britain had still other roots. At sea, France was suffering the fate of a maritime neutral in a commercial war. The British Navy continued to stop and seize French vessels on the high seas in its blockade of Hitler's "fortress Europe," and the French Navy fought back as firmly as German restrictions would allow. During the first eight months of the armistice, the French authorities tried quietly and secretly to negotiate a "leak" in the British blockade. These efforts received tacit encouragement in the fact that the British did not actively interfere with French trade from North Africa to Marseilles during the fall of 1940, primarily for lack of sufficient ships, but also out of "reluctance to provoke incidents with the French Navy."6T After Montoire, however, the "Marseilles leak" was closed as the British Navy maintained as close a blockade of France as it could find shipping to support. The most serious round of blockade negotiations began in January 1941 when the French government finally accepted a British invitation of 22 November 1940 to send an economic expert to Madrid.68 The French Navy did not wish to negotiate from weakness. It had been escorting some merchant ships through the Straits of Gibraltar since September 1940, but only with armed cutters. On January 24, however, the German Armistice Commission acceded to French requests to permit naval convoying of French merchant shipping, without prior German consent, along 67 W . N. Medlicott, The Economic Blockade (London, 1952-59), 1, 557-566. 68 Woodward, British Foreign Policy, 100.

I24

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the coast of French West Africa. When the German authorities were informed that negotiations were to begin with Great Britain for relief of the blockade, however, they ruled that the French had violated Articles io and n of the armistice. On February 22 the French delegation notified the German Armistice Commission that negotiations with Britain had been abandoned.69 After the failure of negotiation, and with the French Navy authorized to convoy merchant shipping on the high seas, the stage was set for intensification of an undeclared commercial war. Under these circumstances, any contact between the forces of the two countries was likely to degenerate into combat. On 22 March 1941, for example, a British torpedo boat pursued the French freighter Sitnoun into the harbor at Nemours, in Algeria, where French coastal batteries fired at the British boat. During the same week, the British bombed the Tunisian port of Sfax twice, on March 26 and 29, to attack two Italian ships which had taken refuge there; French antiaircraft fire was reinforced by Italian naval gunfire.70 When the British stepped up their attacks on merchant shipping supplying the Rommel forces in the late fall of 1941, French escort ships along the Tunisian coast received orders to fire automatically on all British planes, and the French Navy further asked the German Armistice Commission for permission for Algerian coastal batteries to fire automatically on known British merchant ships.71 Neither side wished for open war, however. After Mers-elKebir the British Admiralty ordered British ships not to 69

Medlicott, Economic Blockade, I, 560; DFCAA, xv, 52, 73, 112. La France militaire, 2 April 1941; Weygand, in, 415, admits that the French fired first. 71 OKW/i444b, frame 5,594,575. 70

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fire upon French ships unless fired upon, although they were to continue the blockade and to forbid French warships from entering enemy ports. Admiral Darlan, for his part, stated at least in private that France should avoid any action against Britain which would drag her into war with the Anglo-Saxons, "a war for which we are neither morally nor materially prepared." For example, the French naval escort "made no attempt to intervene" when a French convoy from Indochina was seized by a superior British force east of the Cape of Good Hope on 2 November 1941. In May 1941, however, the French escort had been able to recapture the freighter Fort de France seized earlier by the British.72 In general, the French regarded their naval escort as a deterrent, effective because neither side wished to overstep a tacit line of restraint. Restraint or no, the issue was a continuing irritant. During the year June 1940-May 1941, some thirty-three French merchant ships were seized by the British Navy, and an additional twenty-six in the year which followed/3 At bottom, Anglo-French friction reflected two profoundly differing conceptions of the war on opposite sides of the Channel. For Britain, looking to the sea, to the Commonwealth, and to the United States, the war was not yet lost as long as Britain could limit Hider to the resources of western and central Europe. For France, the war had already been decided on the battlefields of the continent. If peace could be made before all parties sank into total exhaustion, France would eventually recover the leading European role decreed by her geographic position and resources. 72 Playfair, i, 143; Bridoux, Journal, 11 September 1942; Roskill, The War at Sea, 1, 544; DFCAA, iv, 393. 73 Adrienne Hytier, Two Years of French Foreign Policy (Geneva, 1958), 272; U.S. Foreign Relations, 1942, 11, 204.

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That hopeful possibility was gready enhanced by the survival of her fleet and most of the French Empire. The longer the war lasted, on the other hand, the greater the risk that France would lose some of these trump cards, and the deeper the exhaustion a renascent France would have to surmount. It was this fundamental divergence of British and French interests which Marshal Petain dimly sensed when he denounced the "brutal selfishness of England" to Robert D. Murphy in August 1940. General Weygand was more astute when he spoke to the officers of the Dakar garrison on 29 October 1940, trying to explain Vichy policy to a group in which there no doubt lingered traces of the prewar alliance spirit. Speaking as "an old companion at arms of the English," Weygand reminded his hearers that "the principal motive for the actions of a state is interest." Clearly French interests differed from British. In 1918, when Weygand had been Marshal Foch's chief of staff, Britain had "wanted to avoid an excessive French influence in Europe, [and] . . . did not want to weaken Germany." In 1940, British interests were even more sharply in conflict with French interests. Vichy military publications also argued that continued war, "a struggle to the death of two ideologies, two civilizations," was solely in the British interest. England is waging "her war." She wages it without weakness, but without false sensitivity, either, in order to keep her privileged position in the world and her standard of living. As the war wore on and an Allied invasion of the continent became more than idle speculation, Armistice Army publications accused Britain of trying to make French territory once more the funeral pyre of French youth. British 727

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strategy in Africa, in Madagascar, around the Mediterranean was merely "a peripheral action, without any future to it, which would only ravage territories outside the Reich." As Admiral Godfroy bitterly observed in 1942, the Allied at­ tempt to return to the continent would "crush France, not liberate her." 7 4 Anglophobia grew with the course of the war, therefore, even as Germanophobia revived. French officers and army publications, unhindered by censorship, helped fan the flames. A press conference by Admiral Darlan on 12 March 1941, in which the admiral denounced the British seizure of 108 French ships since the armistice, was headlined "the balance-sheet of British piracy" in La France militaire. Air raids on French cities were described as "acts of sav­ agery." "No bananas for French children" was the head­ line when the British seized the Fort Richepanse off West Africa.75 Individual military men also sometimes made themselves active propagandists of anti-British sentiment. Admiral Abrial, who had rebuked the British commanding officer at Dunkirk on 31 May 1940 for betraying the common cause, went on a speaking tour in 1942 to carry the lessons of that experience to improperly oriented civilians. The admiral habitually began his set speech with a description of "the British flight at Dunkirk. . . . One may say that at that moment the British betrayed us." Then he would survey the long history of warfare between the two coun­ tries, concluding that "Frenchmen will do well to meditate 14 U-S. Foreign Relations, 1940, n, 380; Weygand, "Allocution"; Com­ mandant des troupes en Afrique occidental franjaise, Bulletin d'injormation, No. 8, 12 August 1941, 4, No. 9, 10 December 1941, 7, and No. 10, 20 April 1942, 27; U.S. Foreign Relations, 1942, π, 221. 75 La France militaire, 1 March, 12 March, and 4 June 1941; Le Temps, ι July 1941.

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their history. They will always see there the same disloyal proceedings and unscrupulous acts." According to the German Control Commissions, his speeches had great success and met wide agreement.76 At Port Vendres, two officers freshly repatriated from Syria, Le Brun and Roque, explained in a speech to the local Veterans' Legion that Britain had finally succeeded in her twenty-year effort to expel France from Syria.77 Some officers assailed the British political system as a reservoir of those values which had weakened France before 1940. Quoting with disapproval Churchill's remark that "England needs a democratic France," the newsletter of the French West African command added: "We must expect, no doubt, that Britain needs a weaker France, open to the same occult influences, so skillfully managed from London, which orient her, according to the moment, from an intransigent and violent pacifism and internationalism to a stormy chauvinism and an impatient bellicism, without regard for the forces at her disposal." Seething with bitterness from the Syrian war of the summer of 1941, General Henri Dentz delivered a farewell address to the survivors of his repatriated Levant Army at Aries on 13 October 1941, an address in which he combined all the elements of a sharpening hostility to Britain. As for the British, you have rediscovered in them our secular enemies, who think only of finding France when peace comes without a navy, colonies, or military traditions. . . . They represent those things which almost destroyed us: democratic-masonic politics and judeo76 OKW/i6o2, frame 6,500,019. For press accounts of the speech and the "ovation" which greeted it, cf. Figaro, 28 May 1942, 27 July 1942. "OKW/1437, frames 5,583,716-806.

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saxon finance. They represent the past, but nothing constructive. . . .78 Inevitably, General de Gaulle's movement—dependent on British hospitality, transportation, and equipment—was tarred with the same brush. Recruitment to the fledgling Gaullist movement had been shut off by the rupture in Franco-British relations in July 1940, and the movement's capacity to grow thereafter depended upon its success in taking control of whole sections of overseas France: acquiring en masse the local cadres of French Equatorial Africa or Oceania as they obeyed orders in the line of duty, rather than attracting a few independent-minded exiles. After the geographical frontiers between De Gaulle and Vichy had hardened in the late fall of 1940, however, even this second means of growth was halted. After that time, the Free French movement could gain further ground in the French Empire only by open warfare. And open warfare, such as the Syrian campaign in the summer of 1941, only branded Gaullism the more firmly as a tool of British imperial expansion. Among professional officers, the appeal of Gaullism was virtually dead by the end of 1940, despite the tendency of German observers to apply the term "Gaullism" to all forms of disgruntlement.79 Considering the amount of effervescence among overseas officers at the moment of armistice, the success with which the Armistice Army command prevented the transfer of armistice regrets into positive Gaullist affirmations was notable. Hitler himself had been pleasantly surprised. Before he met Marshal Petain at Mon78 Afrique occidentale francaise, Bulletin d'injormation, August 1941, 2; Figaro, 14 October 1941. 79 E.g., OKW/685, frame 2,499,596.

!JO

No. 8, 12

A Plague on Both Their Houses toire on 24 October 1940, he had suspected that a "secret deal" existed between the two Frenchmen. As he told Mussolini at Florence on October 28, two things changed his mind: the vigor of the French defense at Dakar, and the honest anger he had seen on the Marshal's face four days earlier at Montoire when the name of De Gaulle came up in conversation. Petain had called his former protege "a blot on the honor of the officer corps."80 The very reasons which stimulated anglophobia, sharpened by shared nationality, made Gaullism anathema to most French officers. No longer merely a little-known movement of dubious respectability, as it had been in July, Gaullism had become an object of positive disapproval. For one thing, Free French activities seemed to serve British purposes. The most conspicuous Gaullist military operations were directed only against other Frenchmen,81 in areas far from the nearest German force. Not until the autumn of 1942, when General Koenig's First Free French Division fought with the British Eighth Army against Rommel could this initial impression be challenged. Instead, the Gaullists drew parts of the French Empire into the war and out of the French orbit. Thus they seemed to be a stalking-horse for British colonial ambitions. Furthermore, the Gaullists had not effectively weakened Germany, to countervail all the dissension they had sowed in France. No major Free French action—neither in Equatorial Africa in 1940, in Syria in June 1941, nor at SaintPierre and Miquelon in December 1941—had directly attacked Axis positions. When General Koenig's First Free 80 DGFP, Series D, xi, No. 246, p. 411. Before Admiral Leahy, the Marshal also called De Gaulle "that viper which bit the breast which nurtured it." Leahy, 43. 81 La France militaire, 25 September 1940, 28 June 1941.

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French Division, fighting with the British Eighth Army against Rommel, held its positions gallantly at Bir Hakeim in June 1942, Rommel nevertheless swept on into Egypt. These small gains—were they gains at all?—had been bought at what seemed far too high a price. Since the war seemed destined to end in a stalemate, Gaullist attempts to bring French Africa into the war would lead only to the loss of French possessions. France would be weakened for the eventual peace talks, with a corresponding strengthening of the other antagonists, Britain and Germany. In General Weygand's view, it was Free French activity which prompted such further Axis encroachments as the exchange of German for Italian Control Commissions in Africa in the spring of 1941. Only in perfect obedience to the Marshal could "national and imperial unity and what remained of our independence be saved."82 Metropolitan France, too, would have to pay a part of the price. General de Gaulle did "not take into consideration the situation in which the French population would be placed by a hostile attitude toward the Axis, which would lead without any possible resistance to the total occupation of our territory, the isolation of our Empire, and the complete loss of our independence."83 By violating the proper timetable, the Free French wantonly provoked reprisals against their innocent countrymen. De Gaulle's colleagues also aroused suspicion. Among his handful of officers were men like Admiral Muselier, who had been fired from the service in 1939 after disagreements with Darlan, officers already on the "outs" with their 82 Weygand, H I , 459; Afrique occidentale francaise, Bulletin tion, N o . 9, 10 December 1941, 2. 83

d'informa-

Afrique occidentale francaise, Bulletin d'injormation, loccit. 1

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services, "unworthy elements," as Mme Huntziger described them to an American diplomat. The Communist menace also lessened De Gaulle's appeal. Not only had the Free French movement too much support from the Left, according to such officers as General Laure, but by helping perpetuate the division of Europe, De Gaulle encouraged Soviet expansion: "When, then, will the BoIshevization of Europe be stopped?" Gaullism was easily portrayed as a flight from the hard fate of one's country and fellow citizens. It had a disconcerting air of emigration. A prominently anti-German Vichy officer recalled that "there were those of us who would not accept defeat, but there was no question of leaving France. We had too much to do here." Compared to the great work of preparing the Armistice Army for its legal, careful, orderly, and timely return to war, the quixotic adventure abroad of a few rash and disobedient hotheads seemed a mere "adventure" into which some fine soldiers had been "trapped," but from which they could not "escape with honor," as Mme Huntziger put it.84 Added to the many factors which made the Gaullist movement seem suspect were the sacrifices required from those who would go abroad to join the movement. The choice demanded more than mere intellectual allegiance. Leaving his family behind, an officer determined to join De Gaulle forfeited his prospects for a successful career and the esteem of his fellows. Even the careless expression of opinions was inhibited by the presence in every unit of officers of the bureaux des menees anti-nationales. 84 Laure, Journal; Afrique occidentale frar«;aise, Bulletin d'injormation, No. 9, io December 1941, 2; U.S. Department of State, 851.00/2168½.

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A prefect in the Occupied Zone reported in the summer of 1941 that among civilians under the German boot De Gaulle "had many sympathizers but few proselytes."85 Among career officers in the Free Zone it would be safer to say that he had few sympathizers and almost no proselytes. It is interesting to note how many career officers actively engaged in anti-German activities dissociated themselves from the Gaullists working toward the same ultimate end. General Benoit-Leon Fornel de la Laurencie, for example, was in secret contact with the American Office of Strategic Services. He provided the channel through which United States' funds reached Henri Frenay, founder of the resistance movement "Combat." In 1941, however, while refusing to condemn the spirit with which De Gaulle had gone to London, he wrote that once the Petain government was established "any dissidence was a crime against the patrie."8" Robert D. Murphy and other American representatives in North Africa soon learned to accept anti-Gaullism as standard among the officers with whom they planned French cooperation with a possible Allied landing in French North Africa. The circle of officers and civilians who dealt secretly with Murphy during the spring and summer of 1942 made the United States' representative promise that no Free French forces would be included in Allied plans for a landing on French soil, to spare Frenchmen the prospect of another fratricidal battle.87 It was not German pressure alone, therefore, which prompted a whole series of measures against Gaullism 85

DFCAA, iv, 297. Rene Hostache, Le Conseil National de la Resistance (Paris, 1958), 20; Marie Granet and Henri Michel, Combat (Paris, 1957), 55; General B.-L. Fornel de la Laurencie, Une mission de quatre mois a Paris (mimeographed, n.p., n.d., but probably April 1941), Note Number 11. 87 £7.5. Foreign Relations, 1942, 11, 229, 379, 412. 86

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A Plague on Both Their Houses within the army. Pressures there were, of course. It had been essential during the crisis of July-October 1940 that the Vichy government prove to Germany that it could enforce Article 10 of the Armistice, forbidding French soldiers from fleeing abroad and French subjects from fighting on in the army of another country. German authorities had repeatedly insisted on the punishment of those who had fled to British territory. Charles de Gaulle, who had been sentenced to four years of prison by a court-martial in the XVIth Military Region on July 7, was retried on August 2 by a court-martial in the XIIIth Military Region and sentenced to death.88 A law of 10 September 1940 empowered the government to revoke the rights and privileges of citizenship of persons who had gone abroad since May 10 "without legitimate reason." A special court-martial was set up at Gannat on September 24 to try officers for desertion.88 Renewed German pressures the following April led to what General Doyen called a "campaign against Gaullism." On 12 April 1941, the French frontier was closed to all persons between the ages of seventeen and forty without special permission to leave the country. On April 6, the Marshal delivered a major address denouncing the "evil winds" of subversion which were beginning to stir, and appealing for "unity" against "dissidence." The German authorities, still unsatisfied, complained that the Marshal had allowed U.S. Ambassador Leahy to water down his speech.90 88 Delegation francaise, "comptes rendus," 7 July 1940; DFCAA, 1, 150; Bankwitz, 791; Georges Cattaui, Charles de Gaulle: Vhornme et son destin (Paris, i960), 340. 89 Bulletin officiel, 1()40, 1319, 1320; La France militaire, 8 January 1941; Le Temps, 12 November 1941. 90 OKW/i444, frame 5,594,838; La France militaire, 9, 12 April 1941;

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German pressures or no, there was more than a touch of outrage in the Vichy high command's reaction to the Gaullist secession. On 21 July 1940, General Weygand wrote to Petain urging "the removal from active duty lists and from the Legion of Honor rolls of all career military personnel judged by a court of law to have deserted to a foreign country." In fact, General de Gaulle and officers with him were stripped of French citizenship too.91 In November and December 1940, touring the garrisons of French Africa, Weygand denounced those "traitors in foreign pay" who performed "acts of treason" against ,France instead of fighting the "adversaries of France."92 When the two camps finally made war on each other, as in Syria in the summer of 1941, feelings were so bitter that there were cases of violation of white flags and abuse of prisoners. Although there were no doubt younger officers free of the cares of policy-making who admired De Gaulle's courage during the Armistice Army years, surviving written opinions— whether public or secret—are all hostile, even among officers engaged in anti-German activities. The prevailing animosity to the traitor-general born in the Armistice Army years helped reinforce newer forms of anti-Gaullism among officers long after the war. The trials of officers who had gone to join De Gaulle went on at a leisurely pace through 1941 which suggests that Vichy penalties were far more drastic in word than in fact. The special court-martial at Gannat, finally convened in January 1941 under the presidency of General Dufieux, DFCAA, iv, 491; OKW/685, frame 2,499,397. During the same month, the Italian Control Commissions along the Mediterranean coast were replaced by mixed German-Italian commissions. 91 Proces Weygand, 26; La France militaire, 11 October 1941. 92 Proces Weygand, 36.

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the prewar Inspector of Tanks who had opposed De Gaulle's theories of mechanized warfare, passed sentence upon nine officers and thirteen men before its dissolution the following November. Twelve of these, including General Catroux, General Legentilhomme, and Colonel de Larminat, were sentenced in absentia to death. Except for two sentenced to twenty years at hard labor, the rest, officers actually in custody, were sentenced to one or two years in prison, often with suspended sentences. The regular courts-martial also dealt with men who were caught trying to leave the country or assisting the Gaullists at Dakar in September 1940. In all, they tried 147 officers and men in 1941, fourteen of whom were condemned in absentia to death. With junior officers or noncoms actually in custody, light sentences were frequent. Five pilots who had tried to "place themselves at the disposition of England" on 5 July 1940 were given sentences of one year in prison "in view of the regrets expressed by the accused" when their cases came up the following May. But more than half, eightyeight, were sentenced to ten years in prison.93 When the Gaullist cases dating from the summer and fall of 1940 had been disposed of, however, some 170 strong, the courts-martial had less to do. The paucity of new cases is a dramatic measure of Gaullism's declining appeal in the Armistice Army. Even considering the risks and sacrifices involved in attempting to escape abroad, the absence of career officers in the metropolitan Armistice Army sufficiently attracted by De Gaulle to take those risks is striking. Only eleven officers were brought to trial for joining 93 La France militaire, 8 January, 1 March, 3, 17, 21, 28 May, 4, 7 June, 5, 12 July, 17, 27 September, 15 October 1941; Le Temps, 12 November 1941. There is no guarantee that all cases were reported in the press.

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the "dissidence" during 1942, at least insofar as the press could print the news. And one of those, Air Force General Odic, was hardly a Gaullist. Having retired in 1941 in North Africa, General Odic had been sufficiendy distressed by the expulsion of General Weygand in November to escape to London. Unable to find the sort of role there he apparently wanted, he went to the United States, full of "unfavorable comments" about the movement in London.94 Another retired General, Richert, also offered his services to the United States at the end of 1941, after Weygand's departure, with the remark that his first inclinations to Gaullism had been soured by De Gaulle's "errors" and by the "unworthy elements" which surrounded him. He wanted to work with the United States rather than with Great Britain, he said, for he considered the United States friendly to French interests.95 Pilots on maneuvers no longer struck out for Gibraltar from North African air bases very often. In June, aircraft variously estimated at up to one thousand had crossed to North Africa, and in July 1940 a number of pilots tried to reach British soil. In September 1941, however, when four out of six planes on a training flight near Casablanca on the 18th went on to Gibraltar, the American consul remarked that it had been "a long time since this last happened here." The fact that planes were carefully limited to two hours' fuel was a major stumbling block, of course. But even in the service most dissatisfied with Vichy, the traditionally "republican" French Air Force, the zeal for daring escapes to join De Gaulle had diminished.98 94 U.S. Foreign Relations, 1942, 11, 477; A. L. Funk, De Gaulle: The Crucial Years (Norman, OkIa., 1959), 26-27; La Prance militaire, 24 June 1942. 95 U-S. Department of State, 851.00/2575. 96 Interviews; La France militaire, 7 May 1941; U.S. Department of State, 851.2226/12.

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A Plague on Both Their Houses In sum, the Gaullist movement ceased to attract career army officers in any significant numbers after the summer of 1940. By 1942, the Gaullist movement appeared to be at its lowest ebb, at least according to one French Air Force officer.97 Its place among the Allies did nothing to shake the strict neutrality into which most career officers settled. As for the United States, that country enjoyed the esteem of perhaps 85 per cent of French officialdom, United States charge d'affaires Freeman Matthews estimated.98 Among officers, the United States conjured up memories of 1917; no history of colonial conflict had brought the two national interests into opposition. For military administrators in North Africa, moreover, the United States represented a precious source of cloth, kerosene, and foodstuffs to mollify a potentially restive Arab population. Hence the MurphyWeygand agreements, under which the United States undertook in the spring of 1941 to help open a door for French North Africa in the British blockade. Most of all, French officers saw in the United States a possible future arbiter of the war, an eventual counterweight to German dominance. As General Paul Doyen observed from Wiesbaden in the summer of 1941, the United States was emerging as the eventual shaper of the future. Beginning to suffer the strains of a long war, Germany could already discern the United States as "the enemy beyond Russia." It was only through United States' support, Doyen concluded, that France could have a European future instead of the mere Mediterranean future envisaged by Germany. In the same tenor, General Weygand wrote to Admiral Darlan on 20 June 1941 expressing relief that the Americans were not going to break relations with Vichy France despite the Syrian conflict. 97 98

Langer, 258. Langer, 173.

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This is very fortunate, first of all because there is hope of seeing other ships arrive loaded with the supplies we need so greatly. It is also fortunate because it is indispensable that we not remain alone with the Germans, and that the winner of this war be on our side, or at least not against us." Part of distant America's charm, however, was her neutrality. An island of calm in a world gone mad, the United States alone had the power to intercede and arbitrate an end to Europe's fratricide. General Weygand and Admiral Darlan both urged Ambassador Leahy to use the United States' neutral position for peace. After the United States entered the war in December 1941, although many junior officers responded with memories of 1917 and Robert Murphy had new visitors in North Africa anxious to work secretly with him, senior officers were not always glad. A United States joined with the fighting Allies had lost some of its bloom. In Morocco, General Nogues became more and more testy about the dangers of American diplomatic missions violating French African neutrality.100 As the Armistice Army was to move on toward its day of reckoning in November 1942, its leading minds were setding more and more firmly into a neutral orthodoxy which saw French salvation only in a stiff arm raised against both sides. 99 DVCAA, iv, 644; La France Libre, Un document a lire. Rapport da general Doyen, president de la delegation jrangaise aupres la commission d'armistice (n.p., 1941); Proces Weygand, 44. 100 U.S. Foreign Relations, 1942, n, 254, 256.

I40

CHAPTER

V

Liberation in Captivity It is our leader who is in power. —Diary of a French General, ι July 1940 IN SPITE of the humiliating poverty of the Armistice Army, in spite of the hard realities of German control, most French career officers obeyed orders loyally—whether on active duty or on armistice leave. Loyalty and obedience were easily portrayed as stern military virtues, while those who sought greener pastures abroad could easily be de­ nounced as crass self-seekers. "You know well those who have gone over to the other side: the corrupt, debtors, placeseekers, the perpetually dissatisfied, the mismatched, keep­ ers of mistresses. . . .'n Loyalty to the Armistice Army was also the path of least resistance, the well-trodden course along the grooved channels of routine. Officers' acceptance of the Armistice Army went beyond mere acquiescence in a hard, temporary necessity, how­ ever: the Armistice Army could inspire genuine enthusi­ asm. "This was the most fervent period of my life," re­ called one young cavalryman twenty years later, a man who had entered the Armistice Army directly from SaintCyr and who had known other fervent periods. Most nota­ bly, as a tank commander in General Leclerc's Second Armored Division during the liberation of Paris, he had smashed his machine through the German-barricaded gates to the great courtyard of the ficole de Guerre. A more senior officer could feel twenty years later that "it was a 1

General Henri Dentz, quoted in Figaro, 14 October 1941.

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Liberation in Captivity happy time. Everyone knew we were working in the right direction."2 Such militant enthusiasm twenty years later may appear overly defensive, the defiant reaction of stung pride. At first glance, there was little to justify the fervor. That shrunken remnant of an army could offer neither professional pride, glamorous careers, nor prospects of imminent revanche. In large part, warm memories of the Armistice Army simply reflect a genuine enthusiasm for the regime. Under the Marshal, French officers were serving the first really sympathetic administration since the good days of Thiers and Marshal MacMahon. Not only had Marshal Petain won the threatened army the right to survive as an institution; he set it free at last to reassert its proper place in French society, properly honored and properly consulted on matters of national policy. The Armistice Army basked in the warmth of a friendly government, as no generation of French officers had done for sixty years. The Armistice Army could hardly conduct a roll call without German scrutiny, to be sure. These limitations, being transitory, were more easily borne. The more permanent and therefore more galling limitations imposed by the Third Republic had been swept away forever. The overseas armistice crisis once surmounted, the Vichy regime subjected the officers' moral code of unquestioning obedience to no other acid tests before November 1942 comparable to those of the turn of the century—Dreyfus, Andre, the inventories—or those of the late 1930's. Obedience to Vichy was obedience to a congenial regime. It was not direct political authority which career officers sought, however. Officers still took pride in remaining "above politics," aloof from the sterile combinations of 2

This paragraph is based on interviews.

I42

Liberation in

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parties which they both feared and scorned. "Playing politics" was still one of the foulest phrases in the military lexicon. "Sir," General Giraud is supposed to have retorted indignantly to a newspaperman in North Africa in 1943, "I am a soldier. I don't play politics."3 The officers loyal to Petain wanted rather to become more fully officers, fulfilling a wider conception of an officer's role than the Third Republic had been willing to accept. The first function the officers wished to reestablish was access to council. The officers wanted to participate more fully in policy-making, especially in military affairs, where they insisted that officers' views take precedence over those of mere politicians. General Weygand had complained bitterly to President Lebrun, upon taking leave in 1935 as retiring Commander in Chief of the French Army, that "a military man could not make himself heard in France."4 In France, as elsewhere, twentieth-century total war posed a technical problem of the relative weight elected civilians, appointed civil servants, and professional military men should have in making total war or defending against it. In France, more than elsewhere, the issue was posed in political terms. The Third Republic, as officers saw it, had progressively replaced expert military advice with politicians' expediency in shaping military policy. For example, military men had all but disappeared from the Council of Ministers. The Minister of War had been automatically a general during the first years of the republic; Charles de Freycinet had become the first civilian Minister of War during the Boulanger crisis. But during the last decade of the nineteenth century, it was still customary for a general to be Minister s 4

Jean Planchais, La malaise de I'armee (Paris, 1958), 5. Bankwitz, 512.

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of War. After the Dreyfus Affair, however, it became the rule to name civilians to the War Ministry. In the fifteen ministries between the turn of the century and the outbreak of World War I, only five Ministers of War had been generals: De Gallifet, the Dreyfusard Picquart, and three "republicans," Andre, Brun, and Goiran. Between the wars, only six of the last forty-two ministries of the Third Republic appointed generals to serve as War Ministers: three ministries in 1935-36 with General Maurin; the first Herriot ministry of 1924 with General Nollet; the tenth Briand ministry in 1926 with General Guillaumat; and the Doumergue Ministry of 1934 with Marshal Petain. In the same fashion, only two admirals served as Minister of the Navy after 1898: Admiral Boue de Lapeyrere in the first Briand cabinet in 1910, and Admiral Lacaze in three cabinets during World War I.5 Not only did the number of officer-ministers decline; their functions changed. The early officer-ministers were spokesmen for the army as much as for the cabinet, who functioned in practice as technical advisers to a strong executive. In part because the assemblies contained a healthy proportion of former officers (the National Assembly of 1871 included 70 officers, of whom 26 were generals), and in part because an authoritative executive was free to seek advice where it chose, Thiers and Marshal MacMahon called upon professional officers to play a large part in drafting military legislation. With the decline of executive authority and the swing of parliamentary power to forces hostile to professional soldiery, however, the few remaining officer-ministers faced the unpalatable alternatives 5 L'Annee politique; The Statesman's Yearbook; Mattel Dogan, "Les Officiers dans la carriere politique," Revue francaise de sociologie, H, No. 2 (April-June 1961), 89-90. Fabry, war minister in 1935, was a retired colonel. I44

Liberation in

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of giving the sanction of their rank to military legislation of which the high command disapproved, or resigning. For the sake of ministerial solidarity in a time of crisis, War Minister Petain in 1934 had to endorse the continuation of one-year military service and cut military expenditures.6 Of course, as "apolitical" officers saw it, a few isolated republican generals, such as Andre, Picquart, and NoUet, could make a career by playing the republican game.7 But by and large, these officer-ministers had become spokesmen for the Prime Minister and not for the French Army, more politicians than soldiers. The result of these combined tendencies was the military legislation of the later Third Republic, closer to the conceptions of Jaures than to those of disgruntled soldiers like Marshal Franchet d'Esperey, who wrote that the army had been made to conform to the will of a parliamentary majority, and General Weygand, who wrote that adequate governmental authority and a willingness to accept sound military advice went hand in hand.8 The frustrations of men like Franchet and Weygand had been raised to the exploding point with the Popular Front election victory of May-June 1936, which brought to power a politician, 6 Marshal Franchet d'Esperey in Gabriel Hanotaux, ed., Histoire de la nation frangaise (Paris, 1920-29), vni, 438; Philippe Petain, testimony, 10 July 1947, Commission parlementaire d'enquete, 1, 169-184; Maxime Weygand, testimony, 25 July 1947, ibid., 1, 244-247; Edouard Daladier, testimony, 27 February 1942, Pierre Maze, Les Grandes journees du prods de Riom (Paris, 1945), 39. 7 For an attack on Nollet, see Lt. Col. Reboul, "La malaise de l'armee francaise," Revue des deux mondes, 15 March 1925, 388. His enemies called him "Andre II." Georges Bonnefous, Histoire politique de la troisieme republique (Paris, 1956-62), in, 25, n.i. 8 Marshal Franchet d'Esperey, "Du Directoire a la guerre de 1914," in Gabriel Hanotaux, ed., Histoire de la nation francaise, vni, 437/!.; Challener, 43; General Weygand, La France est-elle de)'endue? (Paris, 1938), 3. 42-47·

HS

Liberation in Captivity Leon Blum, who had consistently voted against all military appropriations as a matter of principle and who opposed the increase of military service to two years, and a party which had campaigned on the slogan "Not a penny, not a man for Berlin" during the German reoccupation of the Rhineland. 9 The change of regime in July 1940 dramatically revived the officers' ability to "make themselves heard." In the first place, officers were not displeased by the eclipse of parlia­ ment and the restoration of a powerful executive. Deprived of the vote since 1872 and accustomed to regard parlia­ ment as a sink of iniquity, where miserable politicians had capriciously decided the army's lot in years past, the officers held no brief for parliament. They were ready to help cleanse France of the baneful influence of deputies. "Too many parliamentarians" was still Weygand's judgment of the government of 17 June 1940, in which he was Defense Minister. General Laure marveled in December 1940 that Pierre-Etienne Flandin could be named Foreign Minister to succeed Laval, "even though that meant another parlia­ 10 mentarian." The officers hoped that in military legislation and budgets, where party maneuvers had once set policy, expert advice from the high command would now prevail unchallenged. This state of affairs was facilitated by the appointment of senior officers to places at the very center of policy­ making. The Marshal's cabinet of 12 July 1940 contained a higher proportion of military men than any ministry since Marshal Soult had formed a government in 1832 in which 9 De Coquet, 129; for examples of Blum opposing all military expendi­ ture, see J.O., Chambre. Debuts, session of 14 June 1934, 1497-1499; ibid., session of 15 March 1935, 1022-1026; Le Populaire, 25 March 1936, 25 May 1936. 10 Baudouin, 222; Laure, Journal, 12 December 1940.

ιφ

Liberation in Captivity three out of nine ministers were career officers.11 Naturally, the military departments were returned to military hands. After the term of General Colson as Minister of War, from July 12 to September 6, 1940, General Huntziger innovated an unprecedented combination of command and administration: he was simultaneously War Minister and Chief of Staff. His successors, Admiral Darlan from November 1941 to April 1942, and General Bridoux, from April 1942 to August 1944, carried on the same concentration of functions. Generals Pujo and Bergeret enjoyed the same arrangement in the Air Force, and Admiral Darlan was both Navy Minister and Chief of Staff of the Navy. No recent regime had tolerated such concentration of military functions in the hands of one man. Senior officers' new assignments went beyond the military sphere, however, to embrace civilian administration. The Ministry of Colonies returned to Navy hands, as before 1895, in the persons of Admirals Platon and Blehaut. Admiral de Kervereguin de Penfentenyo was Secretary-General of Family Affairs for a short time. General Aime Doumenc presided over the Commissariat for Reconstruction. More important than mere numbers was the privileged role played by these officer-administrators. Accustomed to the steep pyramid of a military staff, Marshal Petain preferred to work directly with a small inner circle of superministers, each of whom coordinated the work of several departments. Even within this inner circle, Petain liked to meet almost daily during the first months of the armistice with an "armistice committee," ministers directly responsible for carrying out armistice policy, among whom military men inevitably had a prominent place.12 11 Roland d'Ornano, Gouvernement et haut-commandement en regime parlementaire (Aix-en-Provence, 1958), 19. 12 ArOn, 164-166; Baudouin, 241; Fernet, 1.

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Liberation in Captivity During the months when putting the armistice into effect was the chief business of government, General Weygand was a de facto prime minister. Pierre Laval, formally VicePresident of the Council, was away in Paris a great deal of the time trying unsuccessfully to make direct contact with Hitler or Ribbentrop, through Otto Abetz, soon to be German Ambassador in Paris.13 Laval finally had his success, in the meetings at Montoire with Hitler on October 22 and 24. In the meantime, however, it was General Weygand who had his finger directly on the German pulse through control of communications between Vichy and the German Armistice Commission at Wiesbaden. At the Vichy end, the Direction des services de I'armistice, under General Louis Koeltz, oversaw the workings of all ministries insofar as the application of the armistice affected them. At the Wiesbaden end, the French delegation, still headed by General Huntziger, dealt directly with General von Stulpnagel. A typical "armistice committee" meeting included General Weygand and the service chiefs, General Koeltz, Admiral Fernet who took notes for the Marshal as secretarygeneral for the Presidency of the Council, Baudouin, and perhaps Laval, if he happened to be in Vichy. Ordinarily it was Weygand who took the floor to present some armistice matter which required immediate decision.14 Even after Weygand's departure for North Africa in September, War Minister Huntziger continued to enjoy an important role in the cabinet by virtue of his contact with the German Armistice Commission, although as Laval's authority increased the center of negotiation tended to pass 18

Baudouin, 282, 355. Henri Dumoulin de Labarthete, Le Temps des illusions (Geneva, !946)» 33>' Fernet, 11; DFCAA, in, 267-268, v, 445. 14

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increasingly from Wiesbaden to Paris and from the Armistice Commission to the German Ambassador, Abetz. When Laval was removed on December 13, however, Huntziger, Darlan, and Flandin were named a "committee of three" to replace the now vacant post of Vice-President of the Council. After 21 February 1941, it was Admiral Darlan who raised the power of an officer-minister to its maximum. In his own hands, he accumulated the offices of VicePresident of the Council, Foreign Minister, Minister of the Interior, and Minister of Information.15 From the vantage point of high place, the officer-ministers were also able to appoint a number of other officers to administrative posts. Their aim was not to establish military government. With nearly thirty thousand career officers on hand in July 1940 and only about eight thousand assignments available, the military high commands wanted primarily to provide alternate employment for their officers on armistice leave. While some technical officers could remain in army employ in the "civilianized" service branches, the average infantry, cavalry, or artillery officer had to depend on connections—not all of them military—to find alternate employment.16 Among those officers fortunate enough to find government jobs were eight Vichy prefects and eight subprefects.17 Four admirals and a general were the governors-general of the five most important overseas possessions.18 Important 15

Aron, 344; DGFP, Series D, xi, No. 530, p. 889. Jacques Weygand, Le Serment (Paris, i960), 146, comments bitterly on the good fortune of well-connected officers in 1940. 17 This figure does not seem to have increased after January 1941, although it is no longer possible to identify officers among appointments in the corps prefectoral listed in the ]ournal officiel after that date. Martin Sane, Huntziger's son-in-law, became prefect of the Loiret. 18 Abrial, Algeria; Esteva, Tunisia; Decoux, Indochina; Robert, the 16

H9

Liberation in Captivity police posts were held by Colonel Georges-Andre Groussard, inspector-general of the Surete" Nationale19 and by Admiral Bard, prefect of police from 14 May 1941 until his nomination as Ambassador to Switzerland on 30 May 1942.20 A few places were available on ministry staffs,21 while the Chantiers de jeunesse were entirely run by military men. Major Guillaume de Tournemire headed the private youth movement, the Compagnons de France. Two of the eight members of the Conseil de Justice Politique named to advise the Marshal on the Riom trial, and five of the two hundred members of the pseudo-parliament, the Conseil National, were career officers.22 When the government dissolved elected local governing bodies and replaced them with appointed "special delegations," places were occasionally provided for officers, such as General Duplat in the "special delegation" replacing the municipal council at Saint-Etienne. At Bastia, two of the twenty-one appointed municipal councillors were officers, and four of the eightysix municipal councillors of Paris.23 Three were mayors, now appointed rather than elected, such as General Cartier at Annecy. At the lowest levels of public employment, volunteers for the Armistice Army were promised priority over civilian applicants for public jobs after completion of Antilles; Nogues, Morocco. High authority in Algeria returned to civil hands only with the appointment of M. Yves ChStel on 19 November 1941. /.0., Lois et decrets, 21 November 1941, 5000. 19 / . 0 . , Lois et decrets, 5 October 1941, 5222. 20 J.0., Lois et decrets, 15 May 1941, 2046; Figaro, 30 May 1941. 21 E.g., Lt. Col. Herviot, charge de mission at the Ministry o£ the Interior, J.O., Lois et decrets, 15 September 1940, 5008; Admiral Guichard, Darlan's directeur de cabinet as Minister of Foreign Affairs. Dumoulin de Labarthete, 142. 22 Aron, 412; La France militaire, 29 January 1941. 23 / . 0 . , Lois et dicrets, decree of 18 November 1940; ibid., decree of 28 March 1941; Le Temps, 20-21 December 1941.

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their three-year service. When the police increased threefold during 1941, special consideration was given to the employment of ex-soldiers.24 Officers had a particularly important place in the special courts established to deal with cases of "dissidence." A special court-martial set up at Gannat on 24 September 1940 for "crimes and acts against the unity and security of the state" was headed by General Dufieux and included an admiral, the oldest veteran of the 1939-40 campaign, and a representative of the Legion Fran^aise des Combattants. Its successor, the Tribunal d'Etat, empowered to judge "not according to the violations of law but according to damage to the state," included General Touchon and Admiral Caudron among its five members.25 Although the officers in public employment were a small minority, aside from those in the special courts—about 9 per cent of the prefects named between July 1940 and December 1941 can be positively identified as officers26—their presence was hody opposed. No critics suggested that France was about to fall under military dictatorship; but they objected to the play of special interest, the inexperience of the officers, and violations of the solidarity of certain professional corps. Pierre Nicolle, lobbyist at Vichy for the Petites et Moyennes Entreprises, complained in his diary for 11 August 1940 that General Weygand was trying "to plant a lot of officers in posts which they are totally unprepared to occupy"; at that very moment, Admiral 24 La France militaire, 29 January 1941; Brian Chapman, "The Organization of the French Police," Public Administration, xxix (Spring 1951), 72. 25 Le Temps, 12 November 1941; Figaro, 15 November 1941. 26 "L'Oeuvre du gouvernement du Marechal au Ministere de l'Interieur. La renovation de la carriere prefectorale," L'Espoir frangais, No. 355, 10 September 1941, n.p., lists 7 officers out of 80 new prefects.

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Fernet and Petain's chef de cabinet, Dumoulin de Labarthete, were negotiating once again about possible jobs for unemployed naval officers. Dumoulin himself grumbled about "those five-striped illiterates," and Achille Cardinal Lienart, Bishop of Lille, is said to have wondered aloud whether they would find an admiral to replace him. 27 The circumstances of the moment as well as the change of regime helped enhance the officers' role. It was the Third Republic which had declared a state of siege on ι September 1939, not to be raised until 12 October 1945; and it was republican legislation which transferred to mili­ tary commanders during a state of siege "all the powers with which the civil authority is clothed for police and for the maintenance of order." Civil authorities henceforth ex­ ercise their powers "by permission only, not by right." 28 In law, therefore, the military commanders of each de­ partment and the commanders of the eighteen Military Regions into which France had been divided in 1873 were given extensive powers to try civilians for security offenses, to make night searches, to close publications, and to seize arms. In the Free Zone of France in the summer of 1940, there remained eight Military Regions, whose commanders oversaw the military commanders of thirty-eight depart­ ments. In fact, moreover, these military commanders alone had the resources to deal with the most pressing physical problems of the moment: the reconstruction of a paralyzed transportation system, and feeding, clothing, and shelter­ ing the masses of refugees. Under General Aime Doumenc, the Ministry of War undertook to rebuild bridges and roads, and the military commanders of individual de27 Pierre Nicolle, Cinquante mois d'armistice (Paris, 1947), 1, 59; Dumoulin de Labarthete, 235; Aron, 166. Dumoulin, 142, lists thirty admirals in high administrative posts. 28 Dalloz, Encyclopedic juridique. Repertoire de droit public et adminis­ tratis (Paris, 1958-60), π, 407ΓΙ.

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Liberation in Captivity partments could obtain funds and prefabricated buildings from military stocks to deal with refugees.29 In practice, finally, the fear of some Communist attempt to fill the vacuum of authority in June and July 1940 magnified the security function of the regional commanders. Under the particular threat of disorders in the summer of 1940, civilians as well as military men were brought before the courtsmartial of the eight Military Regions and in North Africa. For example, military tribunals committed the former ministers Jean Zay and Georges Mandel to prisons from which they did not emerge alive.30 A whole host of circumstances conjoined, then, to lend an active, positive interpretation to the statutes concerning military commanders' powers in a state of siege. Crowning the edifice of this whole new structure in which military men were so successfully "making themselves heard" was the senior spokesman of the French Army, Marshal Henri-Philippe Petain. The Marshal as head of state was the first and foremost sign of the army's new position. He hallowed the regime for officers, even those who detested his advisors and resented other aspects of the regime. "The French Officers in this area honor Petain but reject his advisors, especially Darlan," reported the German Control Commission branch office at Port Vendres in September 1941. A German agent in Morocco reported with evident astonishment in May 1942 that there were officers loyal to Petain who hoped nonetheless for the victory of the United States.31 Even officers sympathetic to the Allied cause could cling to their faith in the Marshal in the belief that he was playing a double game. 29

/.0., Lois et decrets, 1-4 July 1940, 4498. See La France militaire, 9 October 1940; Proces Nogues, 43-56. 81 OKW/i437, frame 5,593,814; OKW/1605, frame 2,499,953.

30

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Liberation in Captivity The fervor, the catholicity, and the durability of the Petain cult has no twentieth-century parallel in France. It marked a rush of the pendulum from the skepticism and mocking irreverence of happier times far to the side of an almost religious veneration for a leader in adversity. No other figure in recent French history has inspired the same hagiographic imagerie d'Epinal: the children's coloring books, the songs, the paraphrases of the Lord's Prayer— all the symbolism of a paternal and once-victorious savior in whom the French people tried to rediscover a lost greatness.32 At a time when civilians like Andre Gide still proclaimed their "admiration and respect" for the Marshal after two years of Vichy hardship, the officers were all the more mesmerized by the seven stars, the exquisite military bearing, and the victor's emblems of their chief spokesman.38 Once the chief of a clan in the bickerings of World War I leaders, Henri-Philippe Petain had outlived the controversies of his first career. The other World War I Marshals— Foch, Joffre, Fayolle, and Gallieni—were dead, and although Franchet d'Esperey still lingered on, living in seclusion since a crippling automobile accident in North Africa on 19 March 1933, Petain had long been simply "the Marshal." Since a Marshal of France never retires, Petain continued to serve actively as a member of the Conseil Superieur de Guerre, during the 1920's as president of the Haut Cotnite de Guerre, in 1934 as Minister of War, and in 1939 as Ambassador to Franco's Spain. He had become the living embodiment of the French Army, the senior spokesman of the French of32 For examples of Petain cult literature, cf. Ie Marquis d'Argenson, Petain et Ie petinisme (Paris, 1953), 169-179. 33 Andre Gide, Journal 1939-42 (Paris, 1946), 10 October 1942.

154

Liberation in Captivity ficer corps, a figure who symbolized unity rather than past controversies. The Marshal had played this new symbolic role of his old age with consummate skill: accessible to all, committing himself to none, revered at the antipodes of opinion. His more politically aggressive aide, Major LoustaunauLacau, described him in 1935 receiving "a multitude of visitors" and listening to all with a reserve "which sometimes made us despair." Leon Blum himself had called him "our noblest and most humane soldier" in 1939, although the phrase was perhaps intended more to protest sending a celebrity as ambassador to Franco than to praise the Marshal.34 From every quarter of the officer corps, therefore, came an unhesitating vote of confidence for the first officer to guide French destiny since Marshal MacMahon. From those who resented defeat, because he represented the victory of 1918. From those who hoped to resist the Germans, because he had once defeated them. From those who hoped for the victory of the Allies, because he was believed to be playing a double game. From those who wished to end the useless carnage between France and Germany, for he had been the hoarder of French lives at Verdun and the apostle of a defensive strategy. From bien-pensant Catholics, for his education reforms. From all, because no officer would brook civilian criticism of the most august officer in the land. Even General Weygand, once representative of the Foch faction against the Joffre crowd, who was said to have made fun of Petain during the presentation of his Marshal's baton at Metz in December 1918, knew how to 84 he Populaire, 3 March 1939; Georges Loustaunau-Lacau, Mimoires d'un frattfais rebelle (Paris, 1948), 93.

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repress his waspish tongue when the solidarity of an en­ circled and threatened army was at stake. He told a group of officers at Tunis that Petain was "the sort of leader for whom we have waited ten years."35 No wonder many officers exulted at the heady ascent of their corps' position. General Laure, a prisoner in the for­ tress of Koenigstein along with a number of other French generals, sensed the expanded horizons opening to officers still on active service. Speaking to his fellow prisoner-gen­ erals on ι July 1940, he urged them to participate more fully in national life. As general officers, we have always worked and acted according to our consciences, even—and especially—in the final situations of the war, which made us hold it a sacred duty to share the captivity of our troops; so we have a right to count ourselves among the elite of the nation. As such, we will withdraw no longer into the silence of "la Grande Muette," for it is our leader who is in power, and we are assured that our suggestions will find the warmest welcome with him. 36 Not that the more articulate and politically conscious officers wanted to overstep the bounds and sully themselves in politics; the very bounds themselves were being redrawn. The proper role of an officer was being more liberally de­ fined. An anonymous senior officer, seeking perhaps to assuage the doubts of some of his fellows, summoned the officer corps in an article in the Revue des deux mondes to become active sustainers of the new regime. 35

Andre Geraud (Pertinax), Les Fossoyeurs (New York, 1943), 11, 22; U.S. Department of State, 740.0011 European War 1939/9305. 36 Laure, ]ournal (1943 MS), 1 Juiy 1940.

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Liberation in Captivity Before the war, the army, silent, saddened, and often discouraged, held aloof from politics and its hatreds, its sordidness, its scandals, its incoherence—all those qualities which were to do such harm to France. This aloofness was wise. Could the army possibly participate in those competitions, so rarely honorable, whose turmoil muddied the stagnant waters? Could it choose among the uncountable factions, throw itself into parliamentary struggles where the national interest was systematically subordinated to the profit of class or personal ambitions? To do so would have risked compromising, dislocating the army's moral unity and discipline. Now, in the labor of rebuilding and cleansing under way, the army has its role to play: a civic role—absolute devotion to the person of the Head of State, total adherence to his policies. Is this selling ourselves to a party? There aren't any parties any more. Or rather, there is only the Party of France.37 The Marshal himself called upon officers to take a political stand, to take an active part in the "National Revolution." Speaking at military maneuvers at La Courtine on 7 July 1942, Petain told the officers present that "although your primary mission is to assure command and discipline and to watch over the morale and bearing of the new army, you also have a social role to fulfill in participating in the work of national reconstruction, a work to which you can make an important personal contribution."38 Some officers were ready to interpret the redrawn lines more broadly still. Not for them a mere release from that "neutrality" which had been reckoned the proper military 37

Anon., "L'Armee de l'armistice," Revue des deux mondes, 1 February 1941, 357-358· 88 La France militaire, 11 July 1942.

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Liberation in Captivity attitude under the Third Republic. Now that military men could once more make themselves heard in France, it was tempting to consider it not only a soldier's right but his duty to express his views on any aspect of the national scene. And a soldier's opinions were to have extra weight as the views of an elite. In the fortress of Koenigstein on ι July 1940, after rejoicing that "our leader is in power," General Laure proposed that the generals use their enforced leisure to form study groups, to draw up a blueprint for the future reorganization of France. "The study on which we shall em­ bark will go far beyond our professional sphere." On the following Bastille Day, four study groups did meet. The generals were divided into sections on moral regeneration, economic and social questions (General Alphonse Juin, who was to command troops in the Allied armies in 1943-45 sat in this group), organization and administration, and police and internal order (General Charles Mast, who was to help the Allies land in North Africa in November 1942 was a member of this group). 3 9 While a few prisoner-generals were discussing national reform in a German fortress, other officers in France were doing something about it. In fact, the Armistice Army ex­ perience laid bare the priorities of officers' political preoccu­ pations, once domestic restraints had been removed. For, liberated despite the captivity of their nation, the ofEcers were free to turn their first attention to three areas which had hitherto been closed to them. They tried to correct some of the errors of Third Republic military organization. They sought to settle old scores with the army's traditional enemies of the past and to stifle criticism from present enemies, in order to restore the army's "proper role" in 89

Laure, journal, 14 July 1940.

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society. And for the future, they sought to grasp an important part of the educational function in French society. THE

U S E S OF

FREEDOM

The Marshal and his government felt some hesitancy about overturning some of the Third Republic legislation of which they disapproved. Such Popular Front economic measures as the forty-hour week and annual paid vacations remained on the statute books, with amendments.40 Generally speaking, the economic legislation against unemployment born of depression could not easily be dispensed with in a time of unemployment born of war and occupation. The military institution, by contrast, was a blank tablet upon which the Vichy government could write at will. The military establishment of the Third Republic had been swept away in the rubble of defeat. Now direcdy responsible for military organization, freed from the interference of politicians and the risks of parliamentary debate exploiting a hostile public opinion, the high command could put its theories into practice. It was free to give form to the military ideas ripened, matured, and frustrated in prewar policy disputes. In practice, however, the "new army" was more word than substance. The Armistice requirements precluded the return to long-term obligatory military service for which the high command had argued before the war. Shortage of materiel and close German surveillance prevented the development of training methods beyond the official function of maintaining order. The desire to exculpate the army 40 J.O., Lois et decrets, 26 March 1941, 1307, decree authorizing extension of the work week to forty-eight hours, with extra pay; 23 April 1941, 1738, law of 12 April 1941 authorizing suspension of congis payes in certain industries, with compensation.

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for the defeat of 1940 stifled efforts to evolve a new body of tactical doctrine. In one realm, however—the area of command structure —nothing seemed to stand in the way of a fundamental reconstruction. General Weygand had written that adequate command authority had a twin prerequisite: a strong government ready to accept military advice.41 Now, with extensive powers in the hands of the Marshal and powerful military participation in government, both the basic necessities of command were at hand. Furthermore, no requirement of German policy seemed to preclude the erection, at least in law, of a centralized, forceful command structure. Finally, since past failures of coordination and command could be directly attributed to the political failings of the old regime, no motives of self-justification inhibited the desire for reform. Nevertheless, the Armistice Army in fact failed to correct the diagnosed weaknesses in French command structure, largely through a clash of personalities across ill-defined limits of authority which made the Third Republic seem orderly and well-coordinated by comparison. Prior to the battle of the Marne, supreme command was the art of coordinating purely military factors: infantry and artillery, army and navy, attack and supply. After the long war of attrition which followed that batde, however, the necessity to coordinate national production and consumption with the command and supply of military forces called for an authority at once more powerful and more far-reaching. During the First World War, the only durable solution to this new challenge was Clemenceau's 41

Maxime Weygand, La France?, 38-44.

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undisputed authority over both military and civil affairs.42 Army commentators between the wars tended to support some similar supreme authority capable of quick and effective decisions in both civil and military realms, with the proviso that a more sympathetic ear be turned to professional military advice than Clemenceau had been accustomed to give. General Weygand regretted that Clemenceau had cavalierly undermined Marshal Foch's efforts to harmonize the military armistice terms with anticipated future French economic and strategic demands such as the Rhine frontier. Clemenceau had tried to restrict Foch to a purely military sphere. In the view of General Weygand, Foch's old chief of staff, the first requirement for proper total war organization was an end to the "watertight compartments" into which French civil and military affairs had traditionally been divided.43 On the purely military level, army spokesmen between the wars campaigned vigorously for the establishment of a supreme command over all services, a generalissimo to be named in advance during peacetime. In fact a generalissimo was not named until the actual outbreak of war, in the person of General Gamelin, who did not have the untrammeled authority which so many professional officers had advocated.44 On the broader level of coordination for total war, army officers also campaigned for the creation of a Minister of * 2 Jere Clemens King, Generals and Politicians (Los Angeles, 1951); Pierre Renouvin, The Forms of War Government in France (New Haven, 1927). 43 Maxime Weygand, La France?, 42. 44 Challener, 239-240; A. Reussner, "La reorganisation du haut commandement en mai 1940," Revue d'histoire de la deuxieme guerre mondiale, June 1953, 49ff.

l6l

Liberation in Captivity National Defense liberally endowed with the power of decision and authority over other ministries.46 Marshal Petain fully concurred in these views. In a 1936 article, he expressed doubt that France could rely for defense upon the simple collaboration of three ministers in peacetime and, in wartime, upon "simple personal contact" among the three commanders in chief. Analyzing the special modern problems of apportioning limited funds among competing services and apportioning limited material among competing missions, Petain concluded that an authority must be created sufficiently powerful to arbitrate among these conflicting demands. The Marshal's concrete proposals, however, were cautious and did not far exceed the measures actually put into effect in 1938. He proposed the establishment of a Minister of State for National Defense who would exercise by delegation the Prime Minister's ultimate responsibility for arbitrating among competing demands in defense matters. The Minister of State's chief of staff would coordinate in peacetime the functions of the three service ministries, which Petain thought had proved their usefulness and should not be abolished. He would also direct over-all operations in wartime.4* The interwar Chamber of Deputies came to approximately the same conclusion. Wary of another CIemenceau dictatorship, they tried to reduce command in total war 10 a formula compatible with parliamentary control. Only Andre Tardieu experimented briefly with a Ministry of National Defense under Francois Pietri, from February 20 to June 2, 1932, an experiment which went far enough to antagonize the navy and air ministries but not far enough 45

E.g., Weygand, La France?, 38; ChaIIener, 238-239. Philippe Petain, "Defense nationale et commandement unique," Revue des deux mondes, 1 May 1936, 5-17. 48

l62

Liberation in Captivity to centralize effectively army planning and administration.*7 The Chamber's solution was an elaborate structure of coordinating committees, first proposed by Paul-Boncour in 1924 and approved unanimously in the law of 11 July 1938 on the organization of the nation for time of war.48 At the apex of this structure stood the Conseil Superieur de la Defense Nationale, a joint body of ministers and military commanders, chaired by the Prime Minister, and empowered to "direct and coordinate the national defense" (Article 3). Below this organ stood a Chief of Staff of National Defense, chosen from among the service chiefs, and charged with "Coordinating the action of the three departments of war, navy, and air." (Article 5. General Gamelin had already been named to this post on 21 January 1938.) Within each ministry a consultative committee was created to prepare the wartime use of all resources under its purview (Article 48). Although the Prime Minister was given "authority over the use in war of all resources of the country," an authority which he could delegate to a Minister of National Defense, (Article 4), he was given no explicit power of rapid executive decision. Decisive executive action was the missing ingredient in this law, as General Weygand complained. In his opinion, the Minister of National Defense "corresponds to nothing real" for he had no power of decision over other ministries, each of which was explicitly responsible for its own national defense preparations.49 The criticism is just, for the Minister of National Defense was not 4T

Gamelin, n, 62-65; Weygand, La France?, 38. J.O., Lois et decrets, 13 July 1938, 8330-8337. Article 33 explicitly stated the Chamber's "absolute right of control" of all ministerial acts; see also Challener, 206-207, 236-237. 49 Weygand, La France?, 40. 48

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Liberation in Captivity given powers greater than those of any other minister. But General Weygand's own further comments suggest that senior officers themselves were partly responsible for those "watertight compartments" whose existence inhibited efforts to set up an effective war government in advance. Weygand worried that the n July 1938 provision that "the government sets the goals to be attained by force of arms" would authorize "the government meddling in the conduct of military operations reserved to the commander in chief."50 In practice, since both Daladier and Reynaud held simultaneously the offices of Prime Minister and Minister of National Defense, even the spirit behind the law was not put into effect. Both ministers were so weighed down with the responsibilities of other portfolios that they could not apply a single driving executive authority to the post of National Defense. Furthermore, Daladier was personally committed to a restrictive interpretation of the powers of the Minister of National Defense. Opposed to "overcentralization" of the armed forces, he claimed no direct authority over the three service ministers.51 The traditional division of the services, further complicated in 1933 with the establishment of the French Air Force as a separate service, was paralleled by a further division within the army between the authority which prepared for war and the authority which commanded in war. Joffre had provided a single direction both for the preparation for war and command in time of war in the reorganization of the Supreme War Council in 1912. In 1920, however, the two functions were separated again. Preparations for war were placed in the hands of the Chief of the General Staff, while command in time of war would be exer50

IHd., 42. Challener, 238-239.

51

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cised by the Vice-President of the Supreme War Council. An effective military machine depended entirely on smooth personal cooperation between these two authorities, since the generalissimo-elect must be consulted on changes in the numbers or types of weapons provided him by the Chief of the General Staff.52 During the static period of Petain's tenure as Vice-President of the Supreme War Council and generalissimo-elect, 1920-31, the system faced no particular challenge and worked smoothly under the Marshal's unquestioned seniority.53 In the 1930% however, the accession to senior posts of younger generals without Petain's personal ascendancy and the incipient revolution in armament made the separation of war preparations from eventual command seem ludicrous. Only party feelings about individual generals delayed the reunification of these two responsibilities until 1935. On the retirement of General M.-E. Debeney as Chief of the General Staff in 1928, Minister of War Paul Painleve opposed the nomination of Weygand, while Petain objected to General Louis Maurin. When Weygand was finally named Chief of Staff in 1930, violent attacks by Socialist Deputy Max Hymans made it clear that he was too controversial a figure to hold both posts. When Weygand became Vice-President of the Supreme War Council in 1931, political expediency required him to abandon the office of Chief of Staff to General Gamelin. The two men did not work well together during the ensuing four years, perhaps 62

J.O., Lois et dicrets, decree of 13 July 1912; ibid., 23 January 1923,

1301. 53 Donald J. Harvey, "French Concepts of Military Strategy" (unpublished doctoral dissertation, Columbia University, 1952), 5; Bankwitz, 472-490. Petain's Chiefs of General Staff were General Henri-Victor Buat, 1919-24, and General M.-E. Debeney, 1924-28.

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Liberation in Captivity because Weygand resented Gamelin's politiquard career.54 Only upon Weygand's retirement in 1935 were the two positions of Chief of Staff and generalissimo-elect reunited, as in Joffre's day, under Joffre's protege Gamelin. Gamelin's close connections with powerful deputies, such as Colonel Jean Fabry, chairman of the army committee of the Chamber for eight years and rapporteur-general of the national defense committee of the Senate for four,55 might have produced a wise concentration of executive and legislative authority, for both planning and execution. In practice, however, Gamelin lacked the force of character to overcome traditional resistances to central authority.66 The navy continued to go its own way, as did the separate air force after 1933. Darlan himself, when the shoe was on the other foot in 1942, denounced the exclusiveness of the other services, pointing out that although the navy's technicians had developed an excellent 90 mm. antiaircraft gun, the army's technicians worked independently on a similar artillery piece which could not be completed in time for the 1940 campaign.57 As for the Supreme War Council, it met only thirteen times in the four years 1935-39, and was never consulted on questions of command organization or the tactical operation of major military units.58 The campaign of 1940 only emphasized the need for some more effective form of central politico-military authority. In January 1940, General Gamelin named General Georges Commander in Chief of the North-East Front, with headquarters at La Ferte-sous-Jouarre, retaining for 54

Bankwitz, 472. Ibid., 48o£E.; Col. Jean Fabry, J'ai connu (Paris, i960), 10. General Andre Laffargue, Justice pour ceux de 1940 (Paris, 1952), 68. 67 Darlan, "Conference," 8. 68 D e Coquet, 218. 65 56

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Liberation in Captivity himself over-all command of land forces and supreme coordinating authority of all theaters of operations. Gamelin further divided his own command between his personal headquarters at Vincennes, and headquarters, land forces, twenty-two miles away at Montry. Thus Gamelin, invested with the prestige of supreme commander, was unable to bring that prestige to bear on the nation and the army. Isolated at Vincennes, without even a radio communications center, where General de Gaulle found in early April "the atmosphere of a convent," General Gamelin seemed to resemble "a scientist in the laboratory mixing the ingredients of his strategy." Gamelin explicitly refused to visit General Georges' headquarters, fearing to compromise the authority of the Commander in Chief of the NorthEast Front. After the German attack opened on May 10, he did not issue an order until May 19. Gamelin's notions of command had not only the psychological effect of removing the supreme commander from a direct role in encouraging his subordinates and gauging the course of the battle, but also the physical effect of splitting the staff in two parts and enormously confusing the work of staff officers.59 At the Riom trial, Gamelin was specifically charged by the public prosecutor with this division of command, and General Mittelhauser further testified to the lack of liaison between the army and air force.60 It was not only Armistice Army officers who were concerned about French command structure. Even General de Gaulle—again demonstrating his essential unity of thought with officers of the Armistice Army—centralized the high command in 1944-46 under General Juin as Chief of Staff for National 59

De Gaulle, i, 38; Colonel A. Goutard, The Battle of France 1940 (New York, 1959), 97-104; Reussner. 60 D e Coquet, 91, 207.

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Liberation in Captivity Defense, with extensive powers, a post which later under civilian direction decayed once again into a secretariat.61 The Armistice Army high command, then, had every reason and every opportunity to make an important contribution to the problems of French organization for national defense. With no parliament in session, the officers need no longer fear raising the old specters of concentration of power in professional military hands. Weygand, who had personally experienced the effect of political quarrels in weakening command, certainly needed no convincing. The Marshal himself had campaigned for centralized direction of national defense. And there need be no fear of self-incrimination. As the prosecution of General Gamelin at Riom suggested, a conspicuous reform in command structure might shift the onus of defeat from the shoulders of the army onto those of its former commander in chief. With a sense of long-held hopes brought to fruition, therefore, Marshal Petain put his ideas of unified command into practice by naming the Commander in Chief of the French Armies, General Weygand, simultaneously to the newly created Ministry of National Defense. Weygand was Minister of National Defense from June 17 to September 6, 1940. After him, Admiral Darlan held the same post from August 1941 to April 1942. It was a position of unprecedented authority in recent French military organization, with the three service departments reduced to secretaryships of state subordinated—at least in name—to a senior minister garbed in the dual authority of civilian and military rank.62 61 Gabriel de Bellescise, "L'armee et Ie pouvoir politique sous la IVe Republique a travers Ia litterature militaire" (unpublished dissertation, Institut d'Etudes Politiques, Paris, 1959), 23. 62 The individual service ministries were not reduced to secretaryships o£ state until 12 July 1940.

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Liberation in Captivity The eclipse of parliament and the decline of deputies' influence seemed to open the way to another kind of reform, the reduction of alleged political influence in military assignments. Between the wars, many officers grumbled at the role of patronage by which senior military office was passed around among the "old political-military crowd" in the ministry staffs. In 1898, the Waldeck-Rousseau government had dissolved the commissions de classement, the promotion boards, which had presented a list of recommended new general officers to the Minister of War each year. This early Dreyfusard attempt to reduce the role of senior officers in choosing new generals was reversed by Weygand himself who persuaded War Minister Andre Maginot to reinstitute the commissions de classement in 1930. The Minister still had the last word, however, in senior promotions and assignments. Those officers who believed they had been excluded from high appointive office by lack of contacts with Third Republic "ministrables" easily assumed that such office had to be "bought" from deputies, shameful and demeaning behavior for an officer who should be "above politics."63 In the eyes of those officers unwilling or unable to rise through political contacts, the role of deputies and ministers in army appointments had become a scandal. The scandal seemed somehow more flagrant when the deputies or minister in question were men of the antimilitary Left. During the Cartel des gauches government of 1924, Lieutenant Colonel Reboul wrote: Never has advancement been distributed in so unequal a fashion as in these recent years. It is the consequence of ea Georges Loustaunau-Lacau, Memoires, 83; Bankwitz, 480, 532. See also Stefan T. Possony, "Organized Intelligence: The Problem of the French General Staff," Social Research, vm (May 1941), 233.

i6g

Liberation in Captivity a regime which pursues ceaselessly the intrusion of politics in the a r m y . . . . It is in fact deplorable that the steps are shortened for those who belong to a coterie, for the clients of a personality in power.64 The Marshal's government seemed to offer an end to such chicanery. Henceforth, under the control of the officer corps alone, promotions would depend solely upon merit. A Navy Department circular in September 1940 specifically suppressed the use of letters of recommendation "from persons having no qualifications at all for presenting such recommendation," and provided penalties for those who tried to use outside influence for more rapid promotion.85 REVANCHE ON THE HOME FRONT

Another use to which the high command put its new-found freedom was a vigorous counterattack upon the army's domestic enemies, old and new. If the Vichy regime was, in Stanley Hoffmann's telling phrase, "the great revenge of the minorities," no group made better use of its opportunities to settle old scores than the officer corps. General Weygand, long convinced that the "enemies of the nation" were mounting a "plot" against the army, had urged the French people in his Academy address of 19 May 1932, to "abandon distrust of the army, to give it confidence for its vital role." In the disarray of defeat, that plea had a new urgency.66 84

Reboul, "Malaise," 390. U.S. Department of State, 850.00/2137. 88 Stanley Hoffmann, "Aspects du regime de Vichy," Revue francaise de science politique, vi, No. t (January-March 1955), 48; Bankwitz, 59, 145, 526, 610. 85

IJO

Liberation in Captivity Indeed, the defeat could now be attributed in part to the Third Republic's fundamental hostility to the special values alleged to inhere in military life. The regime itself had had a "fatal effect" on morale, General Paul de la Porte du Theil testified at the Riom trials on 24 March 1942. General Requin, who had been a French delegate to disarmament discussions at the League of Nation in the 1930's and whom Admiral Leahy considered staunchly proAllied, and a number of other senior officers embroidered the same theme. Antimilitary prejudices and Communist propaganda had eroded the soldiers' will to fight.67 Even after the war, in the one uncontrolled outburst which marred his otherwise serene appearances in 1947 before the parliamentary commission of enquiry into the events of the years 1933-45, General Weygand upbraided civilians who suspected officers of ulterior motives. "Such suspicions were at the base of our defeat." Marshal Petain had an equally tender nerve for civilian critics of anything military. In late May and early June 1940 the two officers angrily attacked Prime Minister Paul Reynaud for publicly blam­ ing General Corap for the German breakthrough at Sedan, for "the real guilty parties are not to be sought among the military leaders."68 It was only natural, then, that the Marshal's regime tried to curb the army's critics. The first task was to restore the career of arms to its ancient place of prestige, to redress that "lack of official respect" about which officers had com­ plained for years, that Republican protocol whereby "a fifty-year-old colonel gave precedence to a subprefect of βτ De Coquet, 213, 232, 256; Leahy, 92; Paul Reynaud, In the Thick, of the fight (New York, 1951), 302; Gamelin, 1, 348-357. 68 Weygand, testimony of 25 July 1947, Commission parlementaire d'enquHe, 1, 236; Baudouin, 121-122.

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Liberation in Captivity twenty-six." It was the government's stated policy to "restore the army to its proper place in the panorama of French institutions." Although "the army is already beginning to resume that place in the nation which it should never have lost, . . . the army will never take its true place in the nation until the day when officers are restored the rank which is their due for the nobility of their task and the general valor they represent . . ."e9 The press and propaganda resources of the state, as well as the not inconsiderable ceremonial life of Vichy, were set to the task of restoring that rank. Even when paper was stricdy rationed, the army sponsored a lavish review, La revue de I'armee jrangaise, an abundant poster and pamphlet literature, and a newspaper which appeared three times a week, La France militaire. State facilities were placed at the disposal of an elaborate exhibition of L'Armie Nouvelle at Vichy in the spring of 1941. The army used the stadium at Vichy for parades and displays. The Armistice Army itself devoted a part of its efforts to the mission of reviving French interest in the military institution. Its units took on a busy ceremonial life in the towns and villages of the Unoccupied Zone in order to display the physical evidences of patriotism. Never has a defeated army paraded so often or with such panoply. As soon as the remains of a regiment could be arranged in some semblance of military formation, even in July 1940, dress reviews were held to help revive military pride and to counteract the sort of despair which could lead to nihilistic civic disorder. At Clermont-Ferrand in early July 1940, for example, General Weygand came down to 69 Reboul, "Malaise," 387; General Paul de la Porte du Theil, Lei Chantiers de la jeunesse ont deux arts (Paris, 1942), 207.

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Liberation in Captivity review the units collected there and to pin the LSgion d'honneur on the tunic of General de Lattre de Tassigny. When the Armistice Army units came into being, they paid especial attention to ceremonial. According to Colonel Guy Schlesser's "General Order No. 2" of 9 September 1940, to his second regiment of dragoons: the salute to the flag, which evokes the grandeur of eternal France, requires a ceremony as majestic in its conception as it must be perfect in its execution. . . . Precise movements and ardent bugle-calls command a silent prayer from each Frenchman, a fervent act of faith in the destiny of France. Thus twice a day, at eight in the morning and five-thirty in the afternoon, the inhabitants of Auch could see an elaborate colors ceremony, under floodlights if it was dark, complete with plumed headgear, resplendent harness, and echoing buglers from the castle at the top of the town and the bridge over the Gers below.70 For Frenchmen without a nearby garrison, carefully chosen units toured small towns to have a football match with the local young men, to stage a military demonstration, to play a band concert, and to conduct a ceremony at the monument aux morts. Thus the Armistice Army promoted simultaneously the new cults of sport, the army, and patriotism. At Aubusson, on May Day 1941, the prefect and mayor were reported to be delighted at the "cooperation of the new army" in a local celebration. "Times have changed," reported an equally delighted officer. "Now we 70 Charles de Gontaut-Biron, Les Dragons au combat. Journal de marche du 2e Dragons, campagne 1939-4$ (Paris, n.d.), 237; Daniel Devilliers, L'etendard evade. L'epopee du 2e Dragons (Paris, 1957), 10, 13; interviews.

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Captivity

have friends at Aubusson." Making a virtue of necessity, the diversion of troops and equipment to agricultural purposes in an emergency effort to stave off food shortages was portrayed as forging a new link in the ancient ties between army and soil. Every opportunity was seized to present the army to the people of France, to involve the army in ceremonial public life, and to emphasize the pride and accomplishments of the service. "Religion has priests, the nation has . . . the army." 71 It was as if the Armistice Army was meant to provide the external visible signs of an inward national grace. In addition to its general campaign to eradicate antimilitarism in France, the Armistice Army took special action against Masonry, the organization which it held responsible not only for the affaire des fiches of 1905 but for many ills of the Third Republic. Rooting the secret society's alleged "pal system" out of the army was part of the Armistice Army's quest for austerity to replace the cul­ pable laxity of the "old regime." According to a law of 11 August 1941, officers of Masonic lodges were declared 72 ineligible for state service, including the army. The cam­ paign against Masons included the confiscation of the records of the lodges, their scrutiny by a committee under the chairmanship of Bernard Fay, librarian of the Bibliotheque Nationale, and the publication of this committee's 71 Lt. Rogez, "Le 30ε bataillon de chasseurs a Aubusson," Revue de Varmee francaise, November 1941, 60-61; La France militaire, 13 Septem­ ber 1941, 29 November 1941; Revue de Varmee francaise, October 1941, 28-33, April 1942, 71-82; Captain JoIy, "La foi qui precede la victoire," Secretariat d'Etat a la defense, Souvenirs et traditions militaires, No. 3, March 1944, 156. 72 / . 0 . , Lois et dScrets, 12 August 1941, 3365. Secret societies had already been dissolved by a law of 13 August 1940, ibid., 13 August 1940, 4631.

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Liberation in Captivity discoveries in the monthly review, Les Documents Maconniques™ Like so much Vichy legislation, the anti-Masonic campaign was more words than action. A prominent public figure, like Marcel Peyrouton, could be exempted from the Masonic ineligibility if he was sufficiently well-connected. But from the lists published in La France militaire, it can be determined that 135 officers and 24 noncommissioned officers were forcibly retired. Like other government employees, soldiers and officers had to sign an oath to the effect that: I, the undersigned, declare on my honor that I do not belong to any secret organization banned by law, or that I have resigned therefrom. I hereby engage, on my honor, never to adhere to any such illegal organization in case such an organization should again be constituted. These declarations, having been collected by commanding officers and forwarded to headquarters, were placed in each man's dossier. As for civilian employees of the Ministry of War who had belonged to secret societies, they were barred from merit promotions in a ministerial circular of 22 January 1942. Henceforth ex-Masons could expect to advance only by strict seniority, as if to compensate for the allegedly faster promotions which "occult" influences had won for them under the Republique des camarades?4, Perhaps to the high command's surprise, the purge of officers and the lists of Masonic dignitaries published for public reproval in the Journal officiel™ revealed how small 73 This review began appearing only late in 1941. Cf. La France militaire, 26 November 1941. Its contents attracted little notice. 74 Figaro, 6 February 1942; La France militaire, 17 September 1941 et seq.; U.S. Department of State 851.00/2134; Prods Delmotte, 225, 248. 76 J.O., Lois et decrets, 12 August 1941, 3367, through 22 October 1941.

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Liberation in Captivity the impact of Free Masonry had been upon the military profession. Social pressures had opposed Masonry in the army, even if political expediency was said to have favored it. Although ten generals were among the number retired for holding office in a lodge, the number of officers who held office in a lodge did not increase proportionately as one descended the ranks. Fully a third of the victims were officers of the service corps, such as doctors and supply officers. The cavalry, with six officers expelled, and the navy, which lost one doctor, had the smallest contingent of Masonic officeholders. A sampling of the lists of these dignitaries in the Journal officiel suggests that a little less than 3 per cent of them were career military men, either officers or noncommissioned officers.76 The Armistice Army also expelled 96 Jewish officers and 216 Jewish noncommissioned officers.77 More zealous even than the civilian Commissioner for Jewish Questions, Xavier Vallat, the high command forbade Jews to volunteer as soldiers by an arrete of 24 October 1940, although the laws of 3 October 1940 and 2 June 1941 excluded them only from officer and noncommissioned officer rank.78 Prospective Gentile volunteers were reassured that "thanks to these conditions of admission, you will live in a good atmosphere." Some individual officers doubted the wisdom of these policies, and, in fact, some Jewish officers were exempted from the law by special decree. Many officers, however, helped 76

J.O., Lois et decrets, 14-21 August 1941. Secretariat d'etat a la defense, "Officiers et sous-officiers ayant quitte l'armee en execution des lois des 2 octobre 1940, 11 avril 1941, et 2 juin 1941," 18 May 1943. (MS at Centre de documentation juive contemporaine, Paris.) Most of the noncommissioned officers have Algerian names. 58 ' Bulletin officiel, 1940, 1322; ibid., 1941, 943, 1254, 1601, 1609; letter, Xavier Vallat to General Huntziger, n October 1941, observing that the army had unilaterally gone beyond the law in Jewish matters. (MS at Centre de documentation juive, Paris.) 77

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Liberation in Captivity make the cliches of traditional barracks-room anti-Semitism acceptable public style. They referred widely to Free France as "chez les juifs." At best, a general like Robert de Saint-Vincent, soon to be relieved of command of the XIVth Military Region, could refuse to supply troops to keep order during the entrainment of foreign Jews for deportation during August 1942. At worst, officers like Admiral Marquis could write their enthusiastic support to the Commissioner for Jewish Questions while others, officers on armistice leave like Lieutenant Colonel Chomel de Jarnieu and retired officers like General de Lavigne-Delville, could participate enthusiastically in the Commission's work of ridding French public life of an allegedly excessive Jewish influence.79 The Marshal's regime helped protect the Armistice Army from its new critics as well as from its traditional enemies. Not all the new critics belonged to the traditional antiarmy circles familiar to officers from Third Republic days. Some political groups active after 1940 in German-occupied Paris, displaying a properly fascist scorn for the old elites, denounced the half-heartedness of Marshal Petain's "National Revolution" and derided its dependence on generals and clerics. They were egged on by German Ambassador Otto Abetz, a man who took so seriously the long-suppressed progressive rhetoric of early National Socialism that he baffled Berlin functionaries. In December 1940, Abetz warned Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop that Vichy was 79 Six raisons de vous engager dans 1'armee de Vair (n.d., n.i); for exemptions, cf. La trance militaire, 22 October 1941, and J.O., 1940, p. 6097, 1941, p. 3500. One exempted officer, General Darius-Paul Bloch, had been appointed head of a new Armaments Bureau in the Army General Staff by Weygand in 1930, Weygand, testimony of 25 July 1947, Commission parlementaire d'enquete, 1, 239. MS at Centre de documentation juive, Paris.

777

Liberation in Captivity dominated by a few intellectuals, rich bourgeois, and generals without roots in the mass of the people, who were "trying to set up a military dictatorship through the prestige of the victor of Verdun, with the willing aid of the Church." Only Laval and Admiral Darlan, Abetz thought at that point, were capable of combining traditional French anticlerical liberalism with a "modern social policy" which would keep Communism from monopolizing all popular opposition to the old-fashioned reactionaries of Vichy.80 Richly supported by Abetz's secret funds, Jacques Doriot's Parti populaire frangaise and the Rassemblement national populaire of Marcel Dear., Eugene Deloncle, and Jean Goy carried on a satirical press and radio campaign against the "defeated and decorated generals" of Vichy. Both Doriot and Deat, moreover, had retained the flavor of their younger days as militant antimilitarists of the Communist and Socialist parties. Deat, officers could recall, had marched in his captain's uniform in the Paris Commune anniversary parade at Pere Lachaise cemetery on 18 March 1917, just before the mutinies of 1917 shook the French Army's control of its own troops. Doriot had committed even more flagrant outrages against the army. As a Young Communist leader, he had organized an underground opposition to the Rif War among the troops in 1925. Marshal Petain, the commander in chief in that war, was a less than enthusiastic host when Doriot came to lunch one day in 1941 at the Hotel du Pare. For the most part, officers of the Armistice Army tried to uproot Doriotist influences in their commands.81 The clearest example of government efforts to preserve S0

DGFP, Series D, xi, Nos. 531, 588. Langer, 84; Paul-Marie de la Gorce, The French Army (New York, 1963), 126; Dumoulin de Labarthete, 327; OKW/685, frames 2,499,3201!. 81

IJ8

Liberation in Captivity the army from criticism was the trial at Riom of Daladier, Blum, General Gamelin, and other Third Republic leaders. On the eve of the trial's opening session, Paul Marion, Secretary-General for Information, released to the press the government's "general guidance and censorship instructions concerning the treatment of the Riom trial hearings in the press." Order No. 2, for example, required that reporters orient their coverage of the campaign of 1940 toward various failures in organization and equipment of the army and its fortifications. According to order No. 4, they were to show that the defeat was a result of the "methods of government" employed by the Third Republic. In particular, according to order No. 5, the reporters were to "show that the army could not be considered to be on trial, for the army, men and officers, had to fight without having available the indispensable tools of modern warfare." The press, the orders concluded, would use the daily refutations which would be furnished to it by the State Press Service as the proceedings demanded, "especially if the name of the Marshal comes up."82 After the trial began on 19 February 1942, daily press instructions covered specific points brought out in testimony. For example, Daladier's comment that Petain cut armaments appropriations in 1934 (order No. 5) and that "You are citing only the names of defeated generals" (order No. 23) were censored.83 The Armistice Army was interested in more than mere negative censorship. Since a majority of the prosecution witnesses (there were no defense witnesses) were officers, the Army General Staff took exceptional measures to assure 82

De Coquet, 15; Pierre Maze, Les Granies journSes du prods de Riom,

324. 83

The daily press orders are printed in full in Maze, 324-328.

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that their testimony was fully documented with favorable evidence. General Laure, the Marshal's official historian, was asked by Minister of Justice Barthelemy to be ready to supply information on the Marshal's life to help refute hostile allegations. To assist Laure, General Georges Revers, Darlan's chef de cabinet for War Ministry affairs, was named on 4 March 1942 head of a "Documentation Section" to produce official papers as needed "to better enlighten public opinion." The Marshal personally prevented at least one witness, General Georges, from citing one of his 1940 letters dealing with the problem of command.84 Despite these efforts, the generals' testimony did not always remain fixed upon material shortages and failures of authority attributable to the Third Republic. Some officerwitnesses, especially younger officers, did not spare their seniors. General Martin pointed out that French tanks' dependence upon artillery inhibited their mobility; General Sciard admitted that the short operating range of French tanks was a result of the official doctrine which assigned tanks to infantry support rather than to autonomous action; General Lenclud also criticized the General Staff's tactical concepts for tanks. An Information Committee on the Riom Trial, which met on 27 February 1942, including representatives of the Marshal's cabinet and the three service ministries, was forced to admit that the official orientation notes were actually having an effect opposite to that desired.85 The ringing accusations of Blum and Daladier that the army was attempting to escape its own trial seemed only further propagated by the officers' attempts to censor them. Confusion about the very purpose of the Riom trials also 84 85

Laure, Journal, 28 February; Nogueres, 38-40, 328-329; Maze, 25. D e Coquet, 232, 234, 252, 260, 265; Nogueres, 328.

l80

Liberation in Captivity embarrassed and divided officers. If the trials were intended to inculpate those guilty of declaring a hopeless war, as Hitler hoped and as some officers, notably General Huntziger and the Marshal himself preferred, it was all too well known that the military high command had supported going to the assistance of Poland in a meeting in Daladier's office on 23 August 1939. Furthermore, such an interpretation conflicted with army efforts to magnify the heroism and warrior spirit of the great majority of units in the campaign. If, on the other hand, the trials were intended to punish those guilty of losing the war, as most Frenchmen preferred to believe, the onus would fall all too easily upon the military staffs. In either case the army stood to lose. Furthermore, some officers deplored the trial as divisive.86 Although there is no direct evidence that the Armistice Army high command had a role in ending the Riom trials on 17 April 1942, it is certain they welcomed the cessation of their increasingly embarrassing sessions. The most vigorous and conspicuous of the officers' uses of freedom, however, the activity to which they turned most eagerly and most spontaneously, was a counterattack upon the corrupting influence of public schools. If Britain had won battles on the playing fields of Eton, France must have lost hers in lycee classrooms. Even before the war, General Weygand, for example, tended to charge the teaching profession, clearly oriented to the left in politics, with undermining love of country and pride in the army, without which any amount of modern materiel was useless. But devotion to the patrie and to military duty have bitter enemies whose pernicious propaganda spreads 86 Dumoulin de Labarthete, 369, 379; Baudouin, 378; Reynaud, 234; Maze, 317-318; Laure, Journal, 15 September 1940.

l8l

Liberation in Captivity everywhere and to which it is high time to put an end. A good number of these adversaries belong to the educational system, which of course also has many admirably patriotic teachers. What kind of soldiers can emerge from such schools? All the material efforts accomplished for national defense risk being made sterile unless, in a France of one flag, the education of young Frenchmen becomes national once again, and unless the efforts to disorganize our military forces are repressed with the utmost severity.87 How much bitterer such accusations were to be after the defeat. The Armistice Army's efforts to grasp a role in national education was the first-priority use of the officers' new liberty. 87 Maxime Weygand, La France?, 45; see also Maxime Weygand, Comment ilever nos fils? (Paris, 1937).

l82

CHAPTER

VI

The Officers Turned Schoolmaster they were to besmirch themselves in "politics," even the most scornfully apolitical officers threw themselves with enthusiasm into public education. Education was not politics; it was an integral part, perhaps the noblest part, of an officer's proper duties. It was a part of those duties, moreover, from which the Third Republic had wrongfully excluded them. Curiously, it was the Third Republic itself which first taught French officers their educational calling. The idea was totally irrelevant to the long-enlistment professional army of France before the Franco-Prussian War. Even after the army reforms of the 1870's, many officers, skeptical of the value of short-term draftees, wanted to enroll soldiers for the longest possible period—at the expense of universal military service, if necessary—in the interest of maximum technical efficiency. The retired General Guillemaut, who supported universal conscription in 1872 as a means of forging national unity after the Commune, 1 spoke more as a conservative deputy than as a soldier. The young Lieutenant Louis-Hubert Lyautey won nothing but raised eyebrows and an obscure colonial assignment with his eloquent plea that good officers command not only the bodies but the minds and spirits of their men.2 During the generation after 1891, however, Lyautey's ideas became almost second nature among professional officers. HOWEVER RELUCTANT

As the officers gradually accepted the notion of a mass 1

Challener, 36-37. Anon. [Lt. Louis-Hubert Lyautey], "Du Role social de l'officier," Revue des deux mondes, 15 March 1891, 443-459. 2

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annual contingent as normal, they also accepted as normal the possibility that the officers could influence the contingent's opinions. Furthermore, the educational possibilities of universal military service were blatantly used for political ends by the army's enemies, the Dreyfusards. Prime Minister Emile Combes' War Minister, the detested General Andre, launched a program in the military schools designed to bring young officers into conformity with national opinion. Students at Saint-Cyr and at Polytechnique attended required lectures on their social and educational role as future officers. They learned that officers must create "the fusion of political dissidences, . . . the reconstruction of the spirit of sacrifice within the leisure class, of the spirit of discipline among the popular classes, in short of all the virtues which always flourish in the shadow of the flag."3 General Andre intended his young officer-educators to preach the republic among their men. "Let anyone note these two dates: 1900, 1904," he wrote several years later. "Let him remember that under my ministry four annual contingents, after receiving this education, have returned to civilian life. Then let him ask himself what influence these classes may have had upon the elections of 1906 which were so admirably republican." Professional officers, however, accepted Andre's technique while rejecting his goal. Indeed, the best way to defeat the enemy was to adopt his methods. Jules Ferry and Ferdinand Buisson had sent their professors out on campaign—Peguy called them "the black hussars of the Republic." The officers, real hussars this time, would launch their countercampaign against the pro8 Ministere de la guerre. Conferences sur Ie role social de 1'officier faites en IC)Oi aux eleves de VEcole Speciale Militaire par Ie lieutenant-colonel Ch. Ebener (Paris, n.d.), 50. See also Georges Duruy, L'Officier educateur (Paris, 1904), a course delivered at l'ecole polytechnique.

184

Officers Turned Schoolmaster fessors. At the time of General Andre, General Jules Bourelly had commented sourly that the Minister's officer-educator theories were only a ruse "to glorify the regime of the moment."* That aim no longer seemed so reprehensible forty years later when the regime was the good government of Marshal Petain. Reversing General Andre, the Armistice Army tried to bring public opinion into accord with the views of career officers. The officers appropriated a place for themselves in the system of national education. Prevented for a time from winning foreign conquests, they set out to recapture their own nation. Deprived of the sword, they took up the pen. General Goislard de Monsabert wrote in 1942 that the new army's proper mission, at last clearly defined for it by a proper head of state, was to be "a veritable center of propaganda. Its action must radiate in all social levels through projects which he [the Marshal] has clearly defined." Officers must diffuse the new ideas "first within the army, and next in the nation."5 The Armistice Army had three generations of antimilitarist and antipatriotic lay school instruction to avenge. Already, in the novels of Ernest Psichari, fifty years before, the state schools and the army had been portrayed as two universes apart. The hero of I'Appel des armes, the son of a school teacher typically anticlerical and pacifist, makes a long spiritual odyssey from his father's world of values to a colonial officer's world of values. The two worlds are totally irreconcilable; the hero must cast off the one in order to reach the other. Marshal Petain himself was profoundly concerned with 4 General Louis Andre, Cinq ans au Ministere (Paris, 1907), 108; Georges Duveau, Les instituteurs (Paris, 1957), 138; Challener, 66. 5 General Goislard de Monsabert, "La mission de l'armee franfaise en Afrique," Revue de l'armee frangaise, No. 9, June 1942, 42.

i85

Officers Turned Schoolmaster the values inculcated in French state schools. When he was asked to join Gaston Doumergue's "national government" in the aftermath of the February 6 riots of 1934, Petain spoke first for the portfolio of national education. It was the portfolio of war, of course, which Marshal Petain was offered, but he could not be prevented from speaking out on his favorite subject. At the annual dinner of the Revue des deux mondes at the end of 1934, he delivered an ad­ dress on the need for "a truly national system of educa­ tion": national as opposed to "international, patriotic as opposed to relativistic." After the defeat, Petain's attention remained riveted upon the shortcomings of the French educational system, now seen as a major cause of defeat. He told United States Ambassador Bullitt in July 1940 that France had lost the war because her reserve officers had been taught by socialist teachers.6 Petain stood by no means alone on the schools issue. General Wegyand, who had attacked unpatriotic pacifist education in 1937, under the title Comment Mever nos fils, specifically singled out the schools to blame for the French downfall. General Huntziger was preoccupied with the impact of defeat on French youth. General de Lattre de Tassigny confided to one of his aides that he "would have liked to have been minister of youth and of agriculture at the same time—the two go together; especially now when we must carry out a return to the soil." General de la Porte du Theil, national head of the Chantiers de jeunesse, main­ tained that the enfeeblement of military spirit in France, inevitable concomitant of an age of national decline, was the result of gaps in the old educational system. Of all β Fernet, 150; Marshal Petain, "L'Education nationale," Revue des deux mondes, 15 August 1940, 249-253; Langer, 2ofif. General Haider, who said the same thing, had evidently been listening to French officers. The Haider Diaries, 9 August 1940.

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Officers Turned Schoolmaster French institutions, claimed one of the chantiers publications, the University had departed farthest from the idea of public service, unlike the army which, by its very structure, was the French institution least contaminated by democracy. The University had gone to any lengths, even to the falsification of texts, to justify the ideas of the French Revolution. Even outside the charmed circle of Armistice Army officers, General Gamelin pointed an accusing finger at French education.7 The officers' urge to do something about the schools, strong enough before the war, became an obsession after the defeat. Even apart from their desire to shift the blame, the officers were sufficiently alarmed about public order to pay particular attention to the state of mind of young people. Thus the state schools, with their allegedly unpatriotic and even revolutionary orientation, joined the list of old enemies whose attacks the officers sought to avenge. Officers did not expect, of course, to take a direct hand in the functioning of the public school system.8 The new army thought of itself rather as an essential supplement to classroom learning, "the last stage of the education of youth," or "the prolongation of school," or as "a school of tradition, of honor, and of high moral formation."9 7 Baudouin, 122; De Lattre papers; General de la Porte du Theil, Les chantiers de la jeunesse ont deux ans (Paris, 1942), 207; "Armee et Universite," Prendre parti hardiment, No. 28, December 1942, 11; "L'enseignement de Phistoire, ibid., No. 30, February 1943, 10; J. C. Cairns, "Along the Road Back to France 1940," American Historical Review (April 1959), 591. 8 The law of 6 September 1940, J.O., Lois et decrets, 7 September 1940, which placed the Secretariat for Public Instruction under General Huntziger, Minister of War, was a purely paper arrangement based on the Marshal's preference for a steeply pyramidal cabinet in which many secretaries of state reported through a few ministers. Huntziger did not interfere in the secretariat's operation. Jerome Carcopino, Souvenir de Sept Ans (Paris, 1953), 298-299. 8 General A. Niessel, "Les chantiers de la Jeunesse," Revue des deux

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Although the army was to supplement rather than directly influence the French school system, officers followed with great interest the work of reforming that system. General Laure for example, was pleased by Jerome Carcopino's abolition of free secondary education. Heretofore, free secondary education had swelled the ranks of students abnormally and had favored the cities where there were Iycees; now the funds saved could be applied to bourses so that peasants would benefit equally.10 The return to voluntary religious instruction during school hours also pleased the bien-pensant majority of French officers. Officers tended to believe that schools should create moral men as well as learned men. In the new spirit, schools must not only instruct but must "adapt youth to the family, to work, to the community." Up to now, schools had taught individualism; losing touch with French tradition, they had taught that France began in 1789. "It is without doubt in education that the most fundamental reforms of the New France will take place." A manual used in the Chantiers de jeunesse argued that French youth needed education, not merely enseignement: education meant inculcating a set of moral and patriotic values.11 General de Lattre de Tassigny assailed the state schools for their "too exclusively intellectual and bookish training," whose concentration on examinations treated young people as identical, interchangeable mechanisms; proper education should develop individual qualities of leadership.12 mondes, 15 December 1941, 470; "Le gouvernement du Marechal Petain," Trait d'union, No. 2, December 1940, 5; "Bilan de quelques mois d'effort," ibid., No. 8, June 1941, 12. 10 Laure, Journal, 6 September 1941. 11 "Le gouvernement du Marechal Petain," Trait d'union, No. 2, December 1940, 2; Principes d'une education civique jran(aise (n.p., 1942). 12 De Lattre papers; "L'armee et Ie pays," Prendre parti hardiment,

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Given this view of education, the officers imagined that the school and the army fulfilled essentially the same func­ tion. They were complementary stages in the formation of French youth. As such, they must work together. Especially now that the purely military function of the armed force was severely limited, its educational function must be stressed. Admiral Esteva wrote Darlan on 23 June 1940, two days prior to the effective date of the armistice, Admitting that it is impossible to continue the struggle, we must think of the future. We have unscrupulous ad­ versaries against us, adversaries who have sworn to anni­ hilate us. But perhaps there will be sufficient time be­ tween the armistice and the peace to recommence the education of some good Frenchmen. I have always had the idea that the Navy ought to contribute to the grandeur of France not only as an organ of national defense, but also by instructing its personnel militarily, morally, and spiritually. That is an even finer and nobler task now. 18 These sentiments were not limited to naval officers. Gen­ eral Guy Schlesser recalled that, as the son of an officer, raised in a military environment, "I have always thought of the officer as an educator." General Bridoux wrote of the Armistice Army as the "school mistress of citizens." Refer­ ence to the army as a "school of character" is a standard 14 cliche found in Armistice Army publications. If such thoughts had reached only the cliche stage, they No. 18, February 1942, ridicules "Ie premier binoclard venu, si mou, si timore fut-il, de presenter une quelconque 'peau d'ane' pour etre sacre officier de reserve." 13 Proces Esteva, fascicule πι, 16. 14 LeS Documents Francais, No. 11, November 1942, 3; 26e regiment d'injantene. Regiment de Lorraine (Vichy, n.d.).

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would not be particularly important for a study of the French Army. Under the Marshal's regime, however, the officers had the time, the inclination, and the freedom to put their thoughts into action. Furthermore, their empha­ sis upon the need for a moral and spiritual regeneration of France reveals the implicit assumption that the French defeat of 1940 was basically of a moral and spiritual, not technical or military, nature. Partly, of course, and perhaps subconsciously, many officers wished to reject purely military interpretations of the defeat. But they also expressed clearly a reluctance on the part of French conservatives to explain social problems in terms of economic forces or political interests.15 Cer­ tainly not so much had been heard about moral order since the days of the Due de Broglie and of Marshal MacMahon. Insofar as the fall of France had political causes, the officers did not trace them to organizational failings, as even An­ dre Tardieu would have done, but to the Third Republic's denigration of the idea of leadership. "The evolution of thinking was tending in France toward the negation of the role of the leader," wrote one of General de Lattre's dis­ ciples. "In politics, its suppression was total . . . they wanted to regard a politician as nothing more than the executor of the people's will." 16 Insofar as the fall of France was economic, the officers attributed it to evil moral teachings of class warfare, and not, as Marc Bloch wrote, to "the small town which we loved so well." As for the forty-hour week, the officers analyzed it not in terms of production, but as an evil moral lesson leading to a cult of ease and 15 Cf. Jean Touchard's characterization of Prevost-Paradol: "a gravity, . . . a concern to subordinate politics to morals, themes properly Orleanist." Revue Franqaise de science politique, π, No. 1 (January-March 1956). l e De Lattre papers

igo

Officers Turned Schoolmaster facility. As General Dentz wrote to his nephew in the summer of 1940: You have had the sad privilege of looking on as a young boy as your country succumbed to disaster. It is not only the army which was beaten on the field of battle; it was the whole nation. The cause of it was that the nation had no more soul and no more social armature. It lived for twenty years without any ideal, seeking only material satisfaction. It renounced the great law of effort and of work.17 If all French troubles were fundamentally of a moral nature, then the remedies must be moral as well. Hence the emphasis upon rebuilding soldierly virtues in the Armistice Army's training program; and hence the Armistice Army's fervent effort to reorient the value system of French youth. The army's educational function was carried out in three distinct fashions. In the broadest sense, the army was supposed to present symbols of patriotism and examples of discipline to an entire people who had forgotten both virtues. With only a 100,000-man army at their disposal, the Armistice Army commanders were already predisposed to think of their force primarily in symbolic terms. General de la Porte du Theil explained the interlocking of material and symbolic functions of an army to the staff of the Chantiers de jeunesse. "Many people have the simple notion that an army exists only to make war." Naturally that was true up to a point, for "no human institution can live without an element of material force." 17

General Andre Laflargue, Le general Dentz (Paris, 1954), 20. Cf. also General Weygand's denunciation o£ "laziness" in "Allocution," 2.

igi

Officers Turned

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But the army is not only an indispensable element of force : It is, by its very character, a permanent and necessary moral example. . . . In the midst of citizens devoted only to their private concerns, the nation risks losing its most elementary moral sense. The soldier, devoted exclusively to the service of the state, must be a model and a witness of disinterested loyalty. . . . Whether he wishes it or not, the officer, like the priest on a different plane, is a man set apart, "un separe." . . . Woe to the nation where soldiers cease to be, or cease to do their duty. The weakening of the military sense in a people has always corresponded to an age of decline, and its disappearance to an age of national ruin. General de la Porte du Theil emphasized that he was not talking about mere military training. His aim was the education of virtues sometimes wrongly called "military," for it seems to me that all people need courage, disinterestedness, loyalty, and discipline. But it is quite true all the same that these virtues flourish particularly in the army, and the army is their sanctuary. France must re-establish her ancient values, and restore the army to its proper place in the spectrum of institutions. The army and the schools together had the work of ten years before them. The army has a triple role in the state: —military —political, in the good sense of the term —moral. J02

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To reduce it to the first would be strangely to underestimate it. Let the army itself neglect any one of these aspects, and the state will go under; let the citizens cease to be involved with the army, the army will be fatally cast out of the state, instead of being integrated into it; the army will lose its substance in a few years, and the state will not survive it.18 Ceremony too, in addition to restoring military institutions to their true rank and prestige, was intended to serve the educational function of patriotic example to all citizens. This new army, small in number, will become a living model of quality, not apart from the nation, but an integral part of the regenerated nation. It will maintain devotion to the patrie within the nation. . . . It will show an example to the country, while waiting to become the country's image.19 The second manner of carrying out the army's educational role was the education of the young men who passed through its ranks. Although only 100,000 men in metropolitan France were allowed under arms by the armistice terms, the Armistice Army determined to serve its traditional function as a school of character for these men. They would then become an "elite" of patriotism and discipline within the population. "More than any other institution, the army, by its place in the state and its mission imposes upon all its cadres the role of leaders. By its organization and its traditions, the army facilitates the virile expression of that role, without weakness or demagoguery," wrote General de 18

De la Porte du Theil, Les chantiers, 207-208. General Huntziger, "General Order No. 1," L'Armee nouvelle, No. 1, n.d. [October-November 1941], 1. 19

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Officers Turned Schoolmaster Lattre de Tassigny. Since the army inculcates values learned in no other place, values neglected by the schools, the army's 100,000 men must become an elite to preserve those values in society. Among the officers who took their job as educators seriously, none are more interesting than Colonel Guy Schlesser and General de Lattre de Tassigny, for General Schlesser became commanding officer of Saint-Cyr in 1946 while De Lattre became Chief of Staff of National Defense. Thus the educational doctrines of the Armistice Army were carried direcdy into the postwar French military establishment. The "chapters of moral education" of Colonel Schlesser have already been described. The various schools founded by General de Lattre were even more extraordinary attempts to reshape the system of value of French youth. Jean de Lattre de Tassigny, "passionately interested in young people all his life," hoped to be put in charge of the youth camps, the Chantiers de jeunesse, set up by the Vichy government to help keep order in the wake of defeat. Failing that, he created his own system of special leadership schools.20 As Military Commander of the department of Puy-deDome in July 1940, General de Lattre diverted a part of the funds allocated for refugee relief to the creation of a work camp in the decaying village of Opme, about ten kilometers from Clermont-Ferrand. Ostensibly part of the official Chantiers de jeunesse, the camp became De Lattre's own brain-child, distinct from the national administration of the Chantiers, and even in competition with it. Here General de Lattre attempted to carry out "an 20 The following paragraphs are based upon the De Lattre papers and interviews.

i94

Officers Turned Schoolmaster experiment on French youth." His raw material consisted of young draftees not yet incorporated in units at the armistice, released prisoners of war, the remains of De Lattre's own 14th Infantry Regiment, and the evacuated student body of the University of Strasbourg, all collected at Clermont-Ferrand. From this group, the general chose a hundred youths, "carefully selected in precise proportions as typical representatives of every region of France, of every social origin, of every profession, of every activity, of all horizons, in order to obtain from every point of view 'a reflection of the French nation.'" His first purpose in putting them to work together in the village of Opme, then, was to accomplish the amalgamation of classes and backgrounds whose mutual hostility in prewar France so disturbed him. The village of Opme had been partially deserted when its agricultural population found jobs in the Michelin tire factory at Clermont-Ferrand. General de Lattre assigned his hundred young men the task of rebuilding its crumbling stone houses. Still with an eye on the Chantiers de jeunesse, De Lattre hoped the pattern of infusing new life into decaying villages would be repeated all over France. At Opme, under the direction of trained artisans, the youths worked in turn as stonemasons, painters, electricians, cabinetmakers. Each morning there was an hour of gymnastics; each evening a colors ceremony, where frequently the general himself talked about, the great laws you must follow to enrich your life, to be really a man, to become a leader: The double law, human law of work, divine law of love; The cult of effort;

m

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The pride for work well done; Pride in the accomplished task. This group of youths was released from obligatory serv­ ice on 20 January 1941, along with the official Chantiers de jeunesse, and at the same time General de Lattre became Commander of Troops of the XIIIth Military Division, also at Clermont-Ferrand. A larger canvass called forth a more grandiose scheme. In the summer of 1941, De Lattre set up on the site of his camp at Opme an "Ecole de Cadres Militaires" for the Division, with the intention of creating a model for extension to the other seven divisions of the Armistice Army. Although the idea was enthusias­ tically backed by the head of the Third Bureau of the Armistice Army Staff, Major Touzet du Vigier, and the camp was visited by General Huntziger, the project re­ mained within the confines of one division. De Lattre thus was forced to rely on nonmilitary sources of revenue, such as his friend Maxime Blocq-Mascart, later a resistance leader and still later active in the revolution of May 1958, who contributed money for a swimming pool. Although there were no longer civilians in the second generation at Opme, De Lattre still worked for "an amal­ gamation of all conditions of men, through better mutual understanding of officers and soldiers . . ." Under De Lattre's orders, 300 officers, noncommissioned officers, and enlisted men lived a corporate life in the vil­ lage, performing manual labor together, learning ancient crafts, and rediscovering the traditions of peasant France. On the morrow of defeat, it was clear that military knowledge is only one part of the qualities indispensable for command. Alone, it is not enough.

ιφ

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It is necessary first to develop in the leader a set of personal qualities: faith in himself, discipline, passion for command, a taste for risk, initiative, the will to make an effort. And above all, the leader must have knowledge of his men and concern for their welfare. De Lattre's main aim was to produce leaders, a type of dominant personality which leveling democracy had done all too much to repress. University men, for example, had chosen candidates for officers' schools by written examinations, when what was needed was officers with the essential quality of leadership, "L'emprise sur l'homme." As De Lattre himself wrote, military training had been too intellectual, too bookish. . . . Living in a country where the law of work and the notion of authority had fallen into disrepute, many knew nothing of the need for effort and the meaning of command. . . . Moreover, the very conditions of life of the country in the prewar years tended more and more to break the national cohesion, to separate the social classes; our young people arrived in the regiments without having had real contact with other milieux than their own. De Lattre's techniques were a conscious rejection of University practices where examinations selected memorizers, not leaders. De Lattre divided his pedagogy into "direct" and "indirect" teaching. Among indirect methods of teaching, the site of the camp was important in itself. The village of Opme would affect the young people there, De Lattre thought, by its rude climate and rough terrain forcing an active response to surroundings; by its location on the plateau of Gergovia, where Vercingetorix had led i97

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"the Gauls' first resistance to invasion"; and by its "solid, simple local art." A life in common, with the same labor, table, and lodging for officers, noncommissioned officers, and men would provide that "amalgam of all conditions" which Lyautey had preached and which De Lattre had sought earlier with his first youth camp. De Lattre did not advocate a leveling form of amalgamation, however, for each group of thirty men had an officer as leader and the members of each group were intended "to learn to esteem those who know how to be leaders." A care for perfection in uniforms, discipline, military drill, and hard labor would teach the keystone of De Lattre's scheme of [values: "the law of effort." De Lattre set great store by the pointe d'effort, the extra burst of exertion, often at night under floodlights for dramatic impact, by which weary men would learn they were capable of accomplishing far more than they thought. The direct educational methods planned by De Lattre included physical training, some military drill, such as shooting and the manual of arms, in which all branches and grades could participate together, and training in artisanal crafts. The most conscious effort to change the intellectual orientation of his men was De Lattre's lecture course on French history. Drawn up by Robert Garric, founder of the iquipes societies movement before the war and an evident source of much of De Lattre's social outlook,21 these lectures were intended to display "the living 21 For a description of Game's work as seen by a sensitive young middle-class woman first attracted to the "equipes sociales" and then disillusioned with their bourgeois "do-goodism," see Simone de Beauvoir, Memoires d'une jeune fille rangee (Paris, 1958), 173, 179-180, 196,

222-223.

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Officers Turned Schoolmaster reality of our nation, its brilliant periods, its periods of decline, its magnificent revivals." The lectures, far removed from the University's arid cramming of facts, used history to present the message "of hope and confidence, and that of effort, or will, and of work." The course was called la fresque des fiertis francaises. Vercingetorix, the first resister of invasion; Sully and les deux mamelles de la France; Corneille, the poet of honor, were passed in review. Correcting with a vengeance the overemphasis upon post-1789 France in the Third Republic's schools, the lectures dipped into the postrevolutionary period only once, in a lecture entided "the great peasants of France." These included Jeanne d'Arc, Saint Vincent de Paul, Msgr. Affre, Joffre, Clemenceau, and Philippe Petain. These two remarkable individuals, Colonel Schlesser and General de Lattre de Tassigny, were not alone in their preoccupation with the wrongs of French education and the army's duty to right them. In the military schools, the sterile reliance upon examinations which selected bookish men rather than leaders was replaced by such questions as the following. Candidates were asked to comment upon a quotation from Psichari's Le voyage du centurion: Show that a unit is made "bien sabrante et bien volante," that is, combative and mobile, by the absence of material goods, by courage, cheerful optimism, the spirit of enterprise, and honor. In what ways do you think these qualities could be imparted to an artillery battery?22 At Saint-Cyr, temporarily located at Aix-en-Provence, "it appeared that the teaching in military schools ought to aim less at inculcating a vast sum of facts in their students 22 La France militaire, 13 June 1942; cf. also Francis Bayle, "Orientation et selection militaires," in Revue d'histoire militaire, September 1942, 33-42·

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than at providing them with a solid formation as men and leaders, that is to say to make them morally, physically, and intellectually suited to command and to move men, and also to radiate authority around themselves."23 At the Ecole militaire de I'artillerie, temporarily located at Nimes, "the moral formation of students was the principal aim"; artillery officers must be prepared for the roles of instructor, organizer, and for "social action."24 Among officers already in mid-career, a select few were chosen to join young civil servants at the Ecole nationale de cadres at Uriage, near Grenoble, a study group which experimented with leadership techniques and social doctrines in the atmosphere of a religious retreat. In part perhaps because the school was directed by a young officer on "armistice leave," Major Dunoyer de Segonzac, the military participants mastered their distaste for uninhibited discussion with civilians, and admitted that there was much to learn "from those outside" about "the spiritual and moral side of leadership in general."25 Clearly the Armistice Army took seriously its role as a "school of character." As the bearers of "the torch" of French tradition, all 100,000 officers and men must be made a model to the nation and a leaven to raise the whole society to new values.26 23 "L'ecole speciale militaire et l'ecole militaire de l'lnfanterie a Aix-enProvence," Revue de I'armee francaise, No. 4, January 1942, 9. 24 "L'Ecole militaire de I'artillerie," Revue de I'armee francaise, No. 6,

March 1942, 1 1 . 25 Major Hachette, "Les ofKciers a l'Ecole nationale de cadres d'Uriage. Notes d'un stagiaire," Revue de I'armee jrancaise, No. 2, November 1941, 60-69; Lt. Roux, "Extraits des notes d'un autre stagiaire," ibid., 69-70; Janine Bourdin, "Des intellectuels a la recherche d'un style de vie: l'Ecole nationale de Cadres d'Uriage, 1940-42." Revue Francaise de science politique, ix (December 1959), 1029-1045. 26 General Goislard de Monsabert, "La mission," 41.

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The Armistice Army's emphasis upon the spiritual side of training did not mean, of course, that the entire 100,000man force was being trained to become the officers and noncommissioned officers of a new mass army, some Vichy apologists notwithstanding. The Armistice Army high command had neither sufficient freedom nor sufficient inclination to set up a new "Krumper system" in emulation of Prussia after Jena.27 At most, the officers looked forward to the restoration of a large national conscript army after the signing of a peace treaty. It was not Vichy style to create an army of 100,000 leaders. At Opme, General de Lattre de Tassigny strove not for an army of leaders but for an army of teams: leaders and followers. Furthermore, the German Control Commissions were too strict about the maximum allowances of 4 per cent officers and 12 per cent noncommissioned officers and about long-term service for volunteers to have permitted any clandestine preparation of an army of cadres. The group in the Service de la statistique at Lyon which was preparing a clandestine mobilization system planned to rely entirely upon the old cadres of June 1940; they never proposed to promote the entire Armistice Army to the role of cadres for a new army of conscripts. Thus there is no contemporary evidence for a "Krumper system" in the Armistice Army. The officers' aims were at once broader and longer-term than the mere technical strengthening of the armed forces, important as strengthening the armed forces might be. The officers meant to recapture the nation by re-educating its 27 Even the "Krumper system" itself, as distinct from the nationalist myth which grew up about it later, was originally only a device for training replacements, not a "shadow army." William O. Shanahan, The Prussian Military Reforms 1786-1813 (New York, 1945).

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Officers Turned Schoolmaster youth. Indeed, military efficacy and national regeneration were intertwined, for the officers perceived that on the battlefield, face to face, "moral values are weighed and judged far more than material forces." Since the war had been lost for lack of will and motivation in the French people, the road to military recovery must lead through a national—or, more properly speaking, nationalist—revival. The officers wanted to orient all French youth, not just the troops. THE

CHANTIERS

DE

JEUNESSE

Under the republic, when all able-bodied French youths had passed through the hands of the army for at least one year, the state of public opinion would not have tolerated a conscious effort to reshape their values. Now that the officers were free to exercise their true metier as teachers, they no longer had access to all French youth. By the armistice terms, the Armistice Army's 100,000 men must all be long-term volunteers. Conscription was forbidden. The educational implications of ending the draft weighed more heavily upon officers than the military implications. A career army in itself was even reckoned an improvement by some officers; it was certainly an improvement over the republican system of one-year conscription. Valmy forgotten, they now credited the great French victories of history to professional armies.28 But a career army risked losing its influence over the country's youth, the very influence which the officers wanted not merely to maintain but to enhance. As General Niessel wrote in the Revue des deux mondes, defeat had revealed the need to 28 "Histoire et organisation de l'Armee," Les Documents Francaise, No. 11, November 1942, 4. See also Joseph Monteilhet, Les institutions militaires de la France (Paris, 1932), 217, 243, for the tenacity of some officers' preferences for a career army after 1870.

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Officers Turned Schoolmaster fight against selfish individualism and to revive the spirit of duty. Since a period in the army, the last stage of education of youth, was no longer possible because of the conditions of the armistice, a means had to be found of developing in our young people the qualities which guarantee the national revival. And as the High Commissioner of the Chantiers de jeunesse recalled after their first year of existence, it appeared [in July 1940] that all conscription having been abolished, the youth of France would no longer have occasion to be gathered together and submitted to discipline—a serious lack, which could not help but augment disorder in the state. Although the country may no longer require the life and blood of her children, she needs more than ever that they give themselves to her without reserve.29 The chaos of defeat lent a special urgency to the need to perpetuate the army's wholesome influence upon French youth. In fact, the situation in which many young Frenchmen found themselves in June 1940 gready increased those fears of social disorder which had helped convince General Weygand and others to insist upon an armistice in the first place. To the disunited fragments of military units which had sometimes lost their leaders and their cohesion in the chaos of retreat were added a flood of civilian refugees, the unemployed and the uprooted of a civilian economy at a stand29 General A. Niessel, "Les Chantiers de jeunesse," Revue des deux mondes, 15 December 1941, 470; General de la Porte du Theil, Les Chantiers de la jeunesse. Conference faite Ie 2/ novembre 1941 (Paris, 1941), 12; General de la Porte du Theil, "Note faite a Chatelguyon, Ie 14 Mars 1941."

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still. In the town of Evreux, for example, only 172 persons out of a normal population of 19,300 remained on June 11; a week later, there were 218 persons in the city, and 6,800 on June 30. Only on July 15 did the population again reach 10,000 persons.30 Added to this tide of rootless humanity were the last classes of draftees which had been mobilized on 9-10 June 1940, the second class of 1939 and the first class of 1940, men who had not finished training when the campaign began. Some of these men had never reached their units; some did not even have uniforms. To withdraw these draftees from "influences hard to control and perhaps dangerous,"31 the Minister of War summoned General Paul de la Porte du Theil, Commander of Troops of the XIIIth Military Division, to his temporary offices at Royat on July 4 and entrusted him with full authority to gather these green recruits in an organization totally separate from the planned Armistice Army. The Minister wished neither to include these untrained men in his meager allotment of 100,000 soldiers, nor to send them home "in the material and moral state in which the retreat had left them." General de la Porte du Theil was instructed to "take into hand all the uprooted young men who have just suffered a terrible shock, and who we may fear could become embittered and demoralized for a long time. In the general state of the country, the danger was serious and the peril imminent."32 Out of these emergency instructions grew the youth camps, the Chantiers de jeunesse, the new institution by which a healthy military influence could be 80

Marcel Baudot, L'Opinion publique sous !'occupation (Paris, i960),

12. 31 P. de la Porte du Theil, Un an de commandement des Chantiers de la Jeunesse (Paris, 1941), 1. 32 Capt. P. de Montjamon, Conference jaite a I'etat-major de Varmie Ie /9 jevrier /942 (n.p., 1942), 1; P. de la Porte du Theil, Un an, 2.

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Officers Turned Schoolmaster retained over the country's youth even without obligatory military service. General de Ia Porte du Theil's first decision reflected the fear of social disorder which presided over the creation of the Chantiers. Two days after receiving this assignment, he announced that his mission was impossible unless "the men were grouped in units of two thousand or less, and removed from the deleterious influence of cities." There would be mutiny within forty-eight hours if the recruits were demobilized in urban centers.83 As the son of a for­ estry official and an outdoorsman of long standing, the general proposed to set the young men to work in small groups at forestry. From July 1940 to January 1941, some 90,000 young men set up small camps where they carried out useful labor, primarily making charcoal. In spite of the inevitable initial difficulties of organization and supply, the Work Camps were successful enough to suggest their re­ tention as a permanent institution. On 18 January 1941, after the release of the draftees of the summer of 1941, the temporary decree of 30 July 1940 creating the Groupements de jeunesse was replaced by a law establishing the Chan­ tiers de jeunesse as a permanent organ of the new state. Henceforth, every French male must spend eight months of his twentieth year in a Work Camp. 8 4 During the next three years, every eight months, some 100,000 young Frenchmen went to work in forty-three Camps in the Free Zone and Algeria. The Chantiers de jeunesse neatly embodied the two major preoccupations of the Armistice Army. Conceived as an emergency employment scheme to prevent social dis­ order, they evolved into a permanent institution for impart83 34

P . de la Porte du Theil, interview, 24 July 1961. J.O., ι August 1940, 4606; 19 January 1941, 618.

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Officers Turned Schoolmaster ing military values to French youth. Established as a necessity, they were continued as a virtue. The official purpose of the Work Camps was "to give a complement of moral, virile, and professional training to the young men of France, all classes together, in order to make leaders out of the best qualified and to make healthy, good men out of all, united in the fervor of the same national faith."35 As the camps evolved into a permanent institution, their economic value was also emphasized as a further argument to convince skeptics. When the French cabinet debated the question of continuing the Chantiers on 9 November 1940, General de la Porte du Theil emphasized their useful productivity, their ability to perform work "which could not be done by ordinary laborers, not being sufficiently remunerative despite its utility."36 Charcoal-burning was the most important of these uneconomic public works assigned to the Chantiers. In the desperate shortage of fuel imposed upon the Free Zone by the twin exactions of German confiscations and British blockade, the manufacture of charcoal was vital to the French economy. By the spring of 1941, General de la Porte du Theil could tell his subordinates that "work is the primary reason for the Chantiers' existence."37 One thing, however, the Camps were never meant to be. It was never intended, either by the Armistice Army high command or by General de la Porte du Theil himself, to make clandestine military units out of them. Any such 35 Etat-major du general de la Porte du Theil, "Reglements des groupements de jeunesse." 36 Jacques G. Ravault, !,'Institution du stage dans Us chantiers de la jeunesse (Lyon, 1942), 146. 37 P . de la Porte du Theil, "Note."

206

Officers Turned Schoolmaster quixotic military venture would have imperiled the primary and essential task of the Chantiers, the preservation of a vital and threatened French institution, "the institution by which all Frenchmen serve their country for a time."38 In entire accord with the armistice policy, the directors of the Camps were willing to accept the temporary fact of defeat in order to salvage one of the most essential elements of French social order. If repeated close scrutiny by the German Control Commissions, intensely suspicious of the Youth Camps, turned up no evidence of paramilitary activity in them, it was because none was undertaken.39 At the most, there were local initiatives in clandestine activity which the Chantiers administration preferred to know nothing about. "Considerable" military material, mostly heavy tractors, tank trucks, and other vehicles easily converted to forestry purposes, were used by the Chantiers, although it is perhaps an exaggeration to call this "camouflage." Individual camps whose leaders cooperated with the Armistice Army officers involved in hiding extra weapons did so entirely upon their own responsibility. Contacts in 1942 between the Chantiers1 "alumni association" in the Lyon area and General Andre Laifargue of the underground Arme"e secrete were also an entirely local initiative.40 Colonel Jean Sylvestre Van Hecke, organizer and head of the Chantiers in all Algeria, was the movement's most conspicuous participant in clandestine activity and a perpetual thorn in the flesh of General de la Porte du Theil. 38

P . de la Porte du Theil, interview, 24 July 1961. H 2 / i 8 4 , frame 6,428,744; OKW/1605, frames 2, 499,824, -841, -982; OKW/1400, passim. 40 Proces de la Porte du Theil, hearing of 18 November 1947, 2; interviews; General Andre Laflargue, testimony, Proces Petain, 658. 39

207

Officers Turned Schoolmaster Van Hecke, under the code name Robin des bois (Robin Hood), was a prime mover in the little circle of civilians and officers who planned a military coup d'etat in 1942 to swing French North Africa into the Allied camp. Basing their plans upon massive United States aid, Van Hecke, Jean Rigault, the vegetable oil magnate Jacques LemaigreDubreuil, and Lieutenant Colonel Jousse maintained close contact with Colonel William Eddy of the O.S.S. and Robert D. Murphy, United States Counsellor of Embassy in France on special assignment in North Africa, from November 1941 through the spring and early summer of 1942.41 When United States arms and money had been received, "Robin Hood's men," the Algerian Youth Camps, were supposed to form the military force of the movement. Van Hecke's activities having aroused Laval's suspicions, General de la Porte du Theil was urged repeatedly to check up on things in North Africa. Evidences of disloyalty there appeared to be combined with irregularities in the use of material and funds. Although De la Porte du Theil never removed Van Hecke from his post, he finally went to North Africa—by a genuine coincidence—on 7 November 1942, so that he was present during the Allied landing. Fully aware of Van Hecke's activities, General de la Porte du Theil still felt that his duty lay with the Chantiers in France, where he returned on November ir. There, on November 15, indulging in no useless accusations or denunciations of the dissident Chantiers, he issued a circular which anticipated a similar landing in France. He urged all members of the Chantiers to avoid the agonized search for duty as he had seen it in North Africa by "maintaining yourselves in the most absolute loyalty toward the Mar41 U.S. Foreign Relations, X942, 11, 227-229, 232, 263, 271, 293, 299, 3!9> 383, 392. See also Langer, 229-232, 239-242; Aron, 538-540.

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42

shal." Thus, while General de la Porte du Theil made no conspicuous effort to root out men suspected of clandestine activity for the Allies, his personal priorities were clear. No rash acts must be allowed to jeopardize the essential work, "a work of general education of the race, made necessary by the state of abandonment in which our youth finds itself."43 The Chantiers de jeunesse remained throughout their three-year life almost entirely in military hands. Although their administration came under the authority of the Secretary of State for Youth Affairs after August 1940, the Youth Camps' budget remained separate and the movement retained a certain autonomy. The most serious challenge to officers' control of the Chantiers was turned aside by the Marshal himself. In the face of opposition from civilian youth leaders who wished to take over the movement when its temporary mandate expired, Petain decided personally in January 1941 that the permanent Youth Camps program should be run by the same staff which had administered the temporary Camps for the draftees of the summer of 1940.44 As a result of the Marshal's decision, the Youth Camps' staff continued to be drawn almost exclusively from officers and noncommissioned officers on "armistice leave." Of 165 senior officials of the Chantiers in June 1942, all but two can be identified as officers.45 Only at more junior levels 42 P. de !a Porte du Theil, interview, 24 July 1961; Bulletin periodique officiel, No. 112, 15 November 1942. 43 Montjamon, 13. 44 Ravault, 51-52, 147; P. de la Porte du Theil, "Le Marechal et les Chantiers de Jeunesse," Tron(ais. Bulletin bimestriel de liaison de I'Amicale des anciens du Groupement No. 1, special issue, 1951. 45 OKW/1400, frame 5,587,286. Fifteen of those 165 bore the "particule" of nobility, while seventeen more had four or more first initials, displaying, if not high birth, at least a yearning for its badges.

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Officers Turned Schoolmaster were staff members recruited from young men brought up through earlier sessions of the Camps. In his haste to get this emergency program into action, General de la Porte du Theil had drawn heavily upon his own personal connections—officers of his own wartime command, the VIIth Army, staff members of the Ecole de Vartillerie, officers who had helped him in the scouting movement before the war." As the brain-child of officers, even without formal links to the Armistice Army, the Chantiers de jeunesse were a concrete example of educational theories current among military men. Their very organization was intended to help rid France of that "fatal individualism which was once the weakness of France."47 Divided into twelve-man teams under a "chief," the young men mingled with men of other classes and backgrounds, submerged their own private interests in a larger common good, and learned to follow unquestioningly the discipline of the group. Every activity of the Camp became a competition among teams. The subordination of individual wills to corporate life was further emphasized by sports, campfire ceremonies, discussion groups, and the daily labor in the forests. Indeed no aspect of life in the Chantiers was supposed to lack educational significance, down to their very rural environment. The moral formation of young people is a work of every instant which finds its resources in every circumstance of camp life. Whether it be physical education, the daily work, the craft shop, sports, or the evening campfire, there is an educational aspect of it which must not be neglected, but used so that all efforts converge . . . to 46

P. de la Porte du Theil, Un an, 12. Marshal Petain, "Message aux jeunes des chantiers, 28 July 1942," quoted in Ra vault, 17. 47

270

Officers Turned Schoolmaster create among the majority a "new mentality" which will keep them in the straight path after leaving the camps.48 Since manual labor in the forests occupied only half of each day, and since the young men never left the Camps except on leave, there remained ample time for more traditional educational activities. Lectures on French history and institutions could hardly avoid having a clear point of view, even though General de la Porte du Theil insisted that the Chantiers had no "doctrine" except wholesome, healthy living, and no religious tie. Scorning the "manuals of history where facts are presented successively without apparent connection and which arouse boredom and the effort of memorization," and rejecting the "deviations" and "falsified texts" of the past ten years "designed to justify the ideas of the French Revolution,"49 the lectures were didactic essays intended to arouse pride in the French past and civilization. A disgruntled German Control Officer reported that far from teaching "an inner rapprochement to Germany," the Chantiers' history teachers were going back to Jacques Bainville who glorified Richelieu's policy of European domination.50 Other spiritual godfathers of the Chantiers were Marshal Hubert Lyautey, whose 1891 article on "The Social Role of the Officer" had first urged officers to take French youth in hand, and Albert de Mun and Rene de la Tour du Pin, who had attacked liberal capitalism in the name of Christian brotherhood. One vital lesson which the officers wished to teach their young charges was a proper knowledge of and admiration 48

Montjamon, 3. P. de la Porte du Theil, "Les chefs des chantiers," Revue universelle, 10 November 1942, 540; P. de la Porte du Theil, Un an, 178; "L'Enseignement de l'histoire," Prendre parti hardiment, No. 30, February 1943, 10. s0 H 2 / i 8 4 , frame 6,428,744. 49

2//

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for the French Army. Since the Chantiers were in part a temporary substitute for universal military service, they must nurture the flame of military pride in young men deprived of active military life. The Armistice Army itself encouraged army propaganda within the camps, alarmed by the tendency of some officers there, "hermetically sealed" from their colleagues still on active duty, to scorn the accomplishments of the Armistice Army's small but proud operation. The high command delegated Major Huet to tour the Chantiers lecturing on "the New Army." At the same time, teams of young officers visited the various camps to "show the real face of the army" and the efforts of renewal attempted by its leaders. Furthermore, the Chantiers were persuaded to encourage their young men to enlist in the Armistice Army, whose recruitment of volunteers had fallen far below expectations.51 Marshal Lyautey had urged that, under universal military service, the officers should find their "greatest field for social action" in the contingents of draftees. Deprived by the armistice of that field, officers found a substitute in the Chantiers de jeunesse. In fact, freed of the chores of military training, they could devote full time to correcting a situation which General Weygand had already described as absurd in 1935. It is a slap in the face of good sense to spend billions on national defense, to maintain millions of men under arms, and then allow attacks to be made upon that very sacred ideal in the name of which these services are asked. Will we wait until it is too late to reform?52 51 Montjamon, 12-13; Jacques Isorni and Jean Lemaire, Requite en revision pour Philippe Petain (Paris, 1950), 82; P. de la Porte du Theil, Les chantiers, 207; Bridoux, Journal, 16 May 1942. 62 General Weygand, preface to Hubert Lyautey, Le role social de I'officier (Paris, 1935), 6.

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In the Chantiers, with even less inhibitions than in the army, the officers could recapture the youth of France which had so long been the prisoner of an alien educational system. Free to act within French society, the officers turned their energies not to acquiring direct economic, social, or political power, but to "the education of the race."

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CHAPTER

VII

1941: Neutrality Entrenched We must not become a second Yugoslavia. —General Nogues, 20 April 19411 AT THE close of 1940, events had begun to refute French officers' certainty that the war was over. Hider's failure to command the air over Britain and to launch his crosschannel invasion was bound to revise Vichy estimates, as it was revising estimates in Berlin. But the prospect from Vichy in 1941 did not resemble the view from Berlin, or from London or Washington. As the year opened, it looked from Vichy as if victory had eluded the grasp of one side without falling into the clutches of the other. Like the last war, the new conflict was becoming a long campaign of attrition; but unlike the last one, it seemed likely to bog down in stalemate.2 Darlan himself had to admit to U.S. charge d'affaires Freeman Matthews in mid-December 1940 that he no longer expected a British collapse. But Britain was still "finished on the continent."3 Marshal Petain, now more than ever convinced that defense was inherently superior to offense, predicted to Robert D. Murphy at about the same time that there was "no possible outcome" to the war but a "drawn peace."4 General Weygand agreed. In midsummer 1941 he told Murphy that "Germany can't invade England—but neither can Britain invade the continent." 1

U.S. Foreign Relations, 1941, 11, 298. These forecasts were first made publicly by Andre Chaumeix in Revue des deux monies., 1 January 1941, 140, and 15 February 1941, 553. 3 Langer, 113. 4 U.S. Foreign Relations, 1940, n, 418; see also ibid., 411. 2

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I941'· Neutrality Entrenched He urged the United States to use its world influence for a peaceful way out of the deadlock.5 French officers, like a majority of civilians, confronted the new prospect of a long war with sinking hearts. U.S. Ambassador Leahy perhaps did them less than justice when he wrote in disgust to President Roosevelt in July that the French wanted "peace at any price." In the view of military men whose 1941 thoughts can still be determined, the price France would pay for a long war far exceeded the price of even a hard peace with Germany. A long war increased the risks of social disorder, in the first place. The stalemated blood-letting of 1914-18 had severely shaken European social structures; a second long war would topple them. "If the war continues, Communism will prevail throughout Europe," Admiral Darlan warned Ambassador Leahy, protesting that the United States was only protracting Europe's agonies by encouraging the stubborn British.6 A long war also endangered French sovereignty over the Empire. French overseas possessions had never seemed so vital—or so threatened—as under Vichy. In June 1940, the partisans of an armistice had been shocked by the proposal to move the French government to the foreign soil of North Africa. By November 1941, the French Empire had become, in Weygand's words, not only "the protection of metropolitan France against abuses which the Reich imposes upon all European peoples" but possibly "the key to the final issue of the war." If Germany gained access to the Empire, she could impose her will upon France "without any possibility of any reaction," and would gain the 5 US. Foreign Relations, 1941, n, 371. ^ Ibid., 185, 189.

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resources needed to fight on for ten years, if necessary.7 The Empire had become Vichy's window on the world, the very reason for German tolerance of the regime, the one guarantor of a major place for France at the coming peace conference. At the same time, the deadlock on the continent had put French Africa in the spotlight of attention by the two belligerents. The Empire had become a prey stalked simultaneously by Britain, by Germany, and by Germany's jackals in Africa: Italy and Spain. To acquiesce in the encroachments of one combatant in the Empire was to invite reprisals by the other. General Huntziger could well remember the German threats in the previous autumn that within "less than a week of a British occupation of Dakar, Germany would be in French North Africa." The British had made their determination to oppose any Axis seizure of French Africa no less clear, in secret talks between the French and British ambassadors at Madrid. Only strict neutrality, it seemed to many officers in 1941, would preserve the precious assets of the Empire to France; and only if it were preserved intact against dissidence or foreign attack could it serve as the French shield against German swords.8 Moreover, a long war increased the chances of France herself being drawn back into "the abyss." In 1941, both Britain and Germany seemed to be trying to force France into immolation for their benefit. General Dentz warned his Syrian veterans and the nation in October 1941 that the British "dream was to see France in revolt against the occupying powers, whatever results this would have for 7

Ibid., 461; Prods Weygand, 31. Woodward, British Foreign Policy, 95; U.S. Foreign Relations, 1941, ii, 461; Baudouin, 340, 397. 8

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the population and for the whole country." General Paul Doyen warned his government from Wiesbaden in July 1941 that Germany would try to involve France in new adventures like the Syrian war, "in which we have everything to lose," until Hitler had "dragged us into his fate.''9 In place of either of these two suicidal courses, Marshal Petain and his military advisors struggled to keep French soil from becoming a battlefield once again. A France liberated by the passage of contending armies would be a France destroyed, as Petain had said as early as 13 June 1940, at Cange, where Churchill had flown to meet the French government. Petain and his officers had instead a vision of France surviving to form a bridge between the two contending ideologies. "He did not believe that the German defenses could be forced," recalled General de la Porte du Theil after the war. "For him, the war would end in lassitude," and France would emerge as the logical mediator. Admiral Darlan also believed in 1941 in the rewards of patience. After Hitler's death, he assured Ambassador Leahy, Nazism would lose its impulse and France would recover the place in Europe which geography and resources decreed for her. "Hitler can not build a new Europe without France," Pierre Laval was to tell representatives of the youth movement late in 1942. "If he is vindictive, he will lose, for France is too important geographically and culturally to ignore." This civilian's preference of peaceful revival to a destructive military liberation was also the view of many officers in 1941.10 9

DFCAA, iv, 554, 644; Figaro, 14 October 1941. General Augustin-Emile Laure, Petain (Paris, 1941), 432-433; Albert Kammerer, Du Debarquement ajricain an meurtre de Darlan (Paris, 1949), Appendix xm; General de la Porte du Theil, "Le Marechal et les Chantiers de la Jeunesse," Troncais. Bulletin bimestriel de liaison de VAmicale des 10

2I7

ig4i: Neutrality Entrenched There were Armistice Army officers who, even in 1941, foresaw an eventual return to arms against Germany. But premature timing could cost France and the Allies more than it cost the Axis. On Sunday, 9 March 1941, General Weygand, temporarily in Vichy from his Algerian post, paid a secret visit to Admiral Leahy at the United States Embassy. His aide, Count de Rose, returned in the afternoon to continue the conversations begun that morning. Although Leahy was given the "definite impression" that Weygand and the African Army would resist an Axis attack on French Africa, Count de Rose believed that any attempt by the French forces in Africa to make war on the Axis would result in the total occupation of France and the enslavement of the French people, without altering the war's outcome. Later, when the eventual defeat of Germany had become more apparent, the French African Army, if assisted from overseas, might be able to contribute much to the cause of the democracies. It was at precisely that moment, March 1941, that another letter from De Gaulle urged Weygand to commit himself and French North Africa to the Allied side. As another Weygand aide recalled twenty years later, it would have been "stupid" to raise the standard then, only to provoke a German occupation of French Africa. France must not return to the war before "the intelligent moment."11 Through 1941, hardly a French officer believed the "intelligent moment" had come—even officers who were to fight gallantly three years later in the Liberation Armies. General Charbonneau, commander of the Oran Division anciens du Groupement No. i, special issue, 1951; Langer, 123; Bridoux, Journal, 1 November 1942. 11 Interviews; Weygand in, 459, and Appendix xi; De Gaulle 11, 188, 332, 363; U.S. Department o£ State, 851.00/2265.

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Neutrality

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and considered an unusually friendly officer by American observers, still argued for neutralizing North Africa. In May 1941, at the moment of the Paris Protocols crisis, Charbonneau reported the deep concern created in his officers and noncommissioned officers by the proposed French concessions, not merely because "they wish passionately for an English victory, which alone can stop German designs on us," but also because the cessions of material to "our opponents" in North Africa might "lead to the Germans' finally assimilating us into the operations area."12 A civilian who similarly combined a passionate hope in Allied victory with an equally passionate plea for neutralizing French North Africa was Emmanuel Monick, the Secretary-General of the French protectorate staff in Morocco who played a large role in the establishment of American supply shipments to French Africa. Monick was finally forced out of office in late 1941 by German pressure. But in Monick's opinion, an Anglo-American declaration of intention not to use North Africa would be the best way to keep the area out of German hands.13 Nothing in the course of the war during 1941 seemed to refute these axioms. Looking on through the special lenses of isolation, from the peculiar perspective of Vichy, few French officers could find signs that either side could overwhelm the other. The year opened, to be sure, on a note favorable to the Allies. British successes in Libya and President Roosevelt's signature of the Lend-Lease Act on 11 March 1941 were followed up by the overthrow of the Yugoslav regime of 12 OKW/685, frame 2,499,322. General Charbonneau's report reached the German Control Commission's inspection group in Oran "by confidential means"; see also Langer, 180. 18 Langer, 106; U.S. Foreign Relations, 1941, 11, 361, 402.

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Prince Paul and Prime Minister Cvetkovic on March 27, an event which aroused considerable enthusiasm in unoccupied France.14 But the rapidity with which German forces overwhelmed Yugoslavia and Greece and drove on to Crete in April and May 1941 hammered home the bitter lesson that weak nations which rely only on British naval assistance were certain to be brutally crushed. General Doyen reported from Wiesbaden that in his opinion the German drive toward Suez made the war's outcome more "uncertain"; his personal "hopes" in Great Britain had been "liquidated" by British reverses. Indeed the shock to confidence in British resilience gave pause to at least one American observer,15 while Churchill himself, contemplating the possible loss of Gibraltar, told William C. Bullitt that unless the United States entered the war in full force he did not see how Britain could hold out after August 1941. Similar rumors which made Gibraltar the next German target flourished at Vichy in the spring of 1941, rumors either planted to mask preparations for Operation Barbarossa, or spawned by Hitler's last futile attempt in February to nudge Franco into action. Marshal Petain told Leahy that he saw no way to prevent such a move.16 Graver still in French eyes were the German reinforcements under General Erwin Rommel which came to the aid of the hard-pressed Italians in North Africa in March 1941. By April 20 the Axis had retaken all of Cyrenaica except Tobruk, and were once more solidly reestablished on the very doorstep of French North Africa. Herr Hemmen, German economic representative at Wiesbaden, 14

OKW/868, frame 5,534,572. DFCAA, iv, 459, 491; Robert E. Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins (New York, 1948), 301. le Langer, 144; Leon Noel, testimony, Proces Petain, 174. 15

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warned General Doyen that the presence of German troops close by made nonsense of a favorite French diplomatic gambit: Doyen could no longer "play the specter of secession in North Africa" to tone down German demands.17 Meanwhile, French officers were struggling to keep French North Africa neutral ground. In practical terms, that meant keeping the British and Gaullists out to avoid a German take over, while keeping the Germans out to avoid British reprisals. In the spring of 1941, the most crucial challenge to neutrality came from the German side. Hitler, so willing in late 1940 to leave North Africa to Italian ministrations, had at last recognized the necessity for a more active German role there.18 Not only was Rommel sent to stiffen the faltering Italians; the German Armistice Commission, which had been talked out of sending a mixed German-Italian inspection team to French West Africa in September 1940, announced in mid-January 1941 that an all-German inspection team would be sent to Morocco. General Paul Doyen and General Weygand led a threemonth fight to keep them out. Doyen warned the Germans that their presence might provoke new secession movements like those of the preceding August and September. The sight of jeldgrau uniforms in Morocco might revive "that delicate situation which existed in our African colonies and which we agreed to try to avoid at all costs." Despite Doyen's warnings, three German officers were sent to join the Italian inspectors in Morocco on 22 January 1941. In March, the threat of German inspectors in the French 17

DFCCA, iv, 260, 297. Compare Hitler's General Order No. 18, of 22 November 1940, with General Order No. 22, of 11 January 1941. 18

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Empire took on new and more ominous proportions. The German authorities announced that they were taking over the inspection function in Morocco, leaving the Italians responsible for overseeing the armistice only in Algeria and Tunisia. The French authorities fought back with the only weapons at their disposal—verbal ones. General Huntziger wrote Darlan on 17 March 1941 urging the Admiral to authorize the French delegation at Wiesbaden to fight this extension of German authority on "solid arguments of law" resting on the armistice terms. "Anyway it appears to me that we can not agree." He added in pen at the bottom of the letter: "I just brought the Marshal up to date. He assured me that he will never consent to the German extensions, which are, in reality, a German infiltration into Morocco." On March 24, Darlan finally met German Ambassador Abetz and urged him to have the proposal withdrawn. The status quo was best in Africa, he argued, particularly when France was trying to make the collaboration policy a success.19 A week later, on March 31, General Doyen formally in­ formed his opposite number at Wiesbaden, General Vogl, that France could not accept the extension of German con­ trol to North Africa. This would, he argued "disturb the delicate equilibrium" established in the French Empire. By this time, however, Darlan was trying to avoid a diplo­ matic break over the question. He sent conciliatory tele­ grams to Weygand promising that the German inspectors would stay strictly within the limits of their assignment 20 and avoid all contact with the natives. Weygand's opposition was just as categorical as it had been to German bases in French Africa in July 1940. 19

DFCAA, πι, 445, 448; iv, 209, 241, 254, 287-288. IHd., iv, 289.

20

222

194i-. Neutrality Entrenched Indeed his personal word was involved. He had promised all the garrisons he had visited in the fall of 1940 "that whatever happens your government would give no one the right to use air or naval bases in our Africa."21 Consequendy, Weygand wired Darlan on 3 April 1941 that "I insist again that an absolute refusal" be given to the increase of German personnel in North Africa. General Koeltz wired Weygand, however, on April 17 that the OKW "entirely maintains" its point of view. Weygand's opposition was still not exhausted. On April 19, he wired General Koeltz that Because of the great repercussions of all sorts already visible in all areas from the strengthening of German control measures in Morocco, I request the government to make a public declaration that France yields to this Diktat only under enemy constraint. I further ask permission at least to make a declaration in the African press. In the margin of this telegram, in Darlan's hand, is the note, "no declaration until further order."22 At Wiesbaden, General Doyen at least had the satisfaction of maintaining the French refusal and stating that France "yields only to force." The first twenty members of the new German Control Commission arrived in Morocco in mid-April 1941. On April 20, Weygand and Nogues flew in person to Vichy to protest the German incursion, to no avail.23 Once the German Control Commission was established in Morocco, and had sent liaison officers to the Italian Commis21 Weygand letter to Petain, 5 November 1940, in Proces Weygand, 40. 22 DFCAA, iv, 292. 23 DFCAA, iv, 304; U.S. Foreign Relations, 1941, 11, 298.

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sions at Algiers and Tunis, Weygand took active steps to limit its activities. Here he had the support of Marshal Petain, who wrote him on 25 April 1941 that "you will oversee personally the state of the North Africa question and the evolution of the danger resulting from the extension of the German 'control missions.' "24 First, Weygand carefully chose a liaison officer: General Emile Bethouart, who was soon to attract unfavorable attention in the German Armistice Commission with an inflammatory speech in October 1941 against les boches on the anniversary of the Narvik expedition, and who later headed the Giraud organization in Morocco making secret plans to welcome the Allied landings of November 1942. With Bethouart's assistance, Weygand attempted to insulate the German control officers from contact with unauthorized officers and with all civilians, and to keep track of their activities. Kenneth Pendar, one of the American "vice-consuls" appointed to oversee the distribution of goods shipped from the United States under the Murphy-Weygand Agreement, was assured that French intelligence agents photographed every document in the German Control Commission headquarters. Weygand did not hesitate to arrest German agents. French measures were effective enough to provoke German protests.25 French officers like Weygand and Bethouart were clearly nervous that a foreign authority in the Empire might further diminish an already tarnished French prestige in the eyes of native populations. The recollection that the defeat of 1870 had been followed by a North African revolt 24

Laure, Journal, 25 April 1941. DFCAA, v, 163; Kenneth Pendar, Adventure in Diplomacy (New York, 1945), 54; Weygand, in, 413-417; OKW/1605, frames 2,499,953979. 6,500,027. 25

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I941'· Neutrality Entrenched was not a reassuring one. For it was the "secret of all colonial policy," General Goislard de Monsabert wrote in the Armistice Army's official quarterly in June 1942, that an impression of invincible might was the surest guarantee of the loyalty of Arab populations who attributed might to the favor of Allah. Every French officer had learned by heart the Algerian chiefs' response to Marshal Bugeaud's speech at the triumphal parade at IsIy in 1844: "God has given us the French King as Sultan, and we will obey."26 Armistice Army limitations on the German Control Commissions in Africa went beyond mere resistance to a conqueror, then. The officers were determined to spare native eyes the sight of French officers taking orders from a foreign authority—any non-French authority. Here was another reason why Armistice Army colonial policy was directed impartially against all comers. "I will have anyone arrested within the hour who gets in touch with the German Commissions," was reported to German intelligence agents as a "typical" Weygand remark. Weygand not only arrested German agents; he had two Arabs executed for contact with the commission. German inspection officers were evidently moved by the same considerations of national prestige when they complained of being forbidden to "occupy in the eyes of the native population the dignified position due to representatives of the great German Reich." Things had reached the point, General Vogl protested on 1 November 1941 to General Beynet, the new French representative at Wiesbaden, that tradesmen refused to make deliveries to the German Control Commission's lodgings. He accused the French au26 General Goislard de Monsabert, "La mission de l'armee fra^aise en Afrique," Revue de l'armee franfaise, No. 9, June 1942, 27.

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I941'· Neutrality Entrenched thorities of attempting to give the natives the impression that Germans were in Morocco only "on French suffrance." Unless the harassment of German inspectors ceased, the Germans would go armed and in uniform in Morocco. It was a threat which showed how well General Vogl understood French imperial sensitivities.27 The same kind of German threats had to be used to end the French practice of excluding German inspectors altogether from a "zone of insecurity" in Morocco. In January 1942, the Control Commission rejected these limitations and the requirement that a French officer accompany their travels at all times. The German inspectors would go wherever their duties required, General Bethouart was informed, regardless of the "zone of insecurity" restriction and "if a French liaison officer does not provide enough protection, they will defend themselves." Although French colonial officers have recalled that the chief purpose of the "zone of insecurity" restriction was to conceal clandestine French military preparations, it also helped mask from Berber eyes the spectacle of French officers taking orders from Germans.28 It was part of the same policy to sentence Messali Hadj, leader of the Parti populaire algerien, to sixteen years at hard labor and to arrest thirty of his followers in May 1941. The Germans, in turn, were interested in Algerian nationalism and reported back to Berlin the text of the song, "La Bastille Algerienne."29 The same sensitivity to French colonial prestige was at 27

OKW/685, frame 2,499,432; 17.5. Foreign Relations, 1941, 11, 3173J9> 354> 481; Pariser Botschaft BdI 1125, Serial 3796H, frames £042,701-704. 28 OKW/2286, frames 5,596,451-470; interviews. 29 OKW/685, frames 2,499,432, -756ff. The Tunisian leader Bourguiba was already interned.

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work in Tunisia, where Admiral Esteva had initially opposed the armistice because of the dangers of increased Italian influence. As Governor-General, Esteva attacked that influence so openly that the Italians could complain that the French administration fights against everything Italian. It also is trying by every means to arouse the spirit of opposition to Italy and of French unity. The army is being trained to resist not only Italian claims but [possible] Vichy agreements to territorial compensation.80 The Axis countries were not the only threat to Empire neutrality. The British and the Gaullists continued their efforts to woo French officers and parts of the French Empire back into the war. On 17 January 1941 Winston Churchill wrote a personal letter which he managed to have delivered to Weygand acknowledging an alleged request for oil for North Africa and expressing the hope of a "renewed active collaboration between French and British arms for what is still the common cause." Weygand forwarded the letter on to Petain denying that he had requested anything of Mr. Churchill, and suggesting that the British were trying to compromise him. "But I am one of those old trees on which ivy won't climb. . . . Naturally I have made no answer."31 On March 2 came a letter from De Gaulle, which offended Weygand by its tone as well as by its content. General Catroux, who had tried to contact General Weygand the previous November, also wrote to other Vichy officers, such as Generals Fougere and ArIabosse in the Levant command and General Emile Laure, 80 31

OKW/i444b, frame 5,594,633. Laure, Journal, 6 February 1941.

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Marshal Petain's aide. Although Laure had served under Catroux before the war in Algeria, Catroux's invitation to "dissidence" in March 1941 shocked him with its "disregard for the factor of timing." Catroux argued that only a French return to battle would efface the impression of defeat among colonial peoples, even at the risk of "the total occupation of France—for at that price we will achieve our resurrection and victory." Laure was convinced that to break off the armistice would be "seriously premature." It could have no other effect than the "Polandization" of France, and those still in France were in a better position to understand German brutalities than Catroux.32 Laure's arguments were a neat capsule summary of the spirit of attentisme which reigned in the Armistice Army. Weygand tried to insulate his command from Gaullism as vigorously as from the German Control Commissions. In the spring of 1941, he arrested Colonel LoustaunauLacau, Major Beaufre, and their civilian coconspirator Jacques Lamaigre-Dubreuil for preparing a pro-Allied network. He dismissed officers who spoke too openly of "Prussia in 1808," and warned his subordinates not to attract attention, whatever their private feelings.83 In May 1941, both British and German pressures upon French neutrality focused on a new arena: Syria, where the anti-British revolt in adjoining Iraq led by Rashid AIi al-Gailani placed another part of the French Empire in the path of war. Once more French territory had become strategic ground for both sides. Like his predecessor Laval, Admiral Darlan was eager 32

D e Gaulle, i, 188-189; Laure, Journal, 18 March 1941; General Georges Catroux, Dans la bataille de la Mediterrannee (Paris, 1948), 88-91. 83 Georges Loustaunau-Lacau, Memoires d'un francaise rebelle (Paris, 1948), 245; Giraud, 153; Marcel Lerecouvreux, La Resurrection de I'armee francaise (Paris, 1955), 126.

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to emerge from the limbo of the temporary armistice relationship and reach some more permanent agreement guaranteeing the integrity of French territory and easing the conditions which had been imposed in June 1940 to meet specific situations which were long out of date. The French had been petitioners for closer relations rather than resisters since the Laval crisis of 13 December 1940 made the "cold shoulder" attitude official German policy towards France, and General Huntziger had been among the most active Ministers in the government's efforts to restore normal relations in January. Thus the high command, no less than the Vice-Premier himself, was responsive when the German government suddenly abandoned its aloofness in May and began to cultivate French cooperation in the Syrian situation.34 Hitler wanted to use French resources in the Levant to support the Gailani revolt in Iraq. Darlan wanted to place Franco-German relations on "a new basis," to "ameliorate present conditions," to "create a favorable climate for honorable treatment" at the peace conference.85 General Huntziger wanted to resume the negotiations which had come to nought the previous November for a larger, better armed military force for Vichy France. These interests combined to produce a second "Montoire" period in 1941, the episode of the Protocols of Paris. On 5-6 May 1941, Darlan agreed to allow German aircraft en route for Iraq to land and refuel at Syrian airfields, and to ship weapons stockpiled in Syria to Iraq. In return, there was another high-level meeting. This time Darlan visited Hitler at Berchtesgaden on May 11-12, and although si

DGFP, Series D, xi, No. 654, p. 1096; Laure, Journal, 18 January 1941. 35 La France militaire, 14 June 1941.

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1

I94 '· Neutrality Entrenched he found Hitler preoccupied by Rudolf Hess' flight to Scot­ land, the two agreed to renewed collaboration based on an eye-for-an-eye philosophy: "for a big thing, a big thing; for a little thing, a little thing." Soon Berlin's instructions to the Armistice Commission at Wiesbaden would be speaking of a "fundamental change" in Franco-German relations, in which German concessions were to be granted at the same tempo that the French made good their promises to aid the German war effort.88 As after Montoire, General Walter Warlimont of the Wehrmachtfiihrungsstab came to Paris for the week May 20-28 empowered to "renew Franco-German defense nego­ tiations going beyond the armistice." The "big things" Hitler wanted were base rights in French West Africa, French aid in Iraq, use of French ports in the Mediter­ ranean, the cession of neutral shipping interned in French ports, and military supplies. In return, Hitler was prepared to grant two kinds of concessions. French defensive capac­ ity could be strengthened, and Hitler hoped the reinforced Armistice Army would then reassert French sovereignty over the African areas controlled by De Gaulle. A second kind of concession would improve the Vichy government's domestic stance to enable it to bear the unpopularity of collaboration. Such concessions might include the liberation of the 72,000 prisoners who were veterans of World War I and a relaxation of procedures for individual persons crossing the demarcation line between the Occupied and Unoccupied Zones.87 In the privacy of the German Embassy at Paris, the 86

Adrienne Hytier, Two Years of French Foreign Policy (Geneva, 1958), 259; DFCAA, iv, 459, 560; OKW/1444, frame 5,594,751. 37 General Warlimont's instructions are in OKW/1444, frame 5,594,767.

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negotiations appeared to run smoothly. On May 21 a draft protocol was drawn up, and the following day Warlimont wired Berlin that "today's negotiations produced a fundamental willingness to place Dakar at our disposal soon as a base." Admiral Darlan had explained, however, that the indispensable prerequisite was "the prior strengthening of French defensive means." German concessions made so far to improve the Armistice Army, Darlan complained, had been hardly worth mentioning.88 As in the previous November, General Huntziger was ready with an extensive expansion plan for the Armistice Army, for the prospect of reviving French military power was a beguiling one.89 General Warlimont was optimistic that decisions about to be taken would be "fundamental to the recovery of the situation in the De Gaulle area."40 But he had not reckoned on the stubborn determination of senior Armistice Army officers to take no provocative initiatives which would endanger the neutrality of French Africa. Even on May 22, Huntziger had refused to set a date for German use of Dakar, subordinating the whole issue to permission to recruit for the Armistice Army in the Occupied Zone as well as to the prior reinforcement of the African Armistice Army. On May 26, in what Warlimont denounced as "a step backward," General Huntziger and Admiral Platon, Colonial Minister, suggested two stages in German use of Dakar: first, the supply of German merchant ships, which could themselves supply German submarines; second, and after French and African opinion had been fully prepared 88

OKW/20i2, frames 5,596,078-079. DFCAA, iv, 46off. 40 OKW/20i2, frames 5,596,078-079. 39

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by dramatic economic and political concessions, repair facilities might be made available for German submarines and merchant ships. Jacques Benoist-Mechin suggested that Germany might help prepare the proper climate by declaring French sovereignty definitive in the present extent of the Empire.41 The Protocols of Paris were duly signed on 28 May 1941. Part I largely ratified certain French assistance already granted in Syria to the German operation in Iraq, with German concessions offered in return; Part II granted Germany the use of the port of Bizerte and the BizerteGabes railroad for the supply of Rommel's forces in Libya, the sale of French trucks and heavy artillery from North Africa to the Axis, and the charter to Germany of neutral merchant shipping in French hands—again with German military concessions in exchange; Part III, finally, agreed in principle to German use of Dakar, limited to civilian supplies for German merchant shipping in the first period, to begin about 15 July 1941. As for the recapture of Gaullist areas, the German authorities recognized that considerable French military development was a prerequisite.42 On the same day, however, Darlan and Abetz signed a "Complementary Protocol." Since the German use of Bizerte and aid to be given to the German Navy at Dakar "could lead to armed conflict with England or with the United States," the French government must first obtain all the promised military and political concessions before keeping its part of the bargain. Darlan declared that sufficient military reinforcements had been granted in exchange for Bizerte for the French government to carry 41 42

DFCAA, iv, 460-464. DFCAA, iv, 472-479; Langer, 402-412.

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igAi: Neutrality Entrenched through that part of the agreement. As for West Africa, on the contrary, implementation of the Dakar agreement must await both the necessary military defense measures, and the necessary political and economic concessions "to justify" this step "before the public opinion of his country." Darlan's intentions were perhaps made even clearer during the negotiations, when he said that with the full application of the Protocols "France would become an associate." FrancoGerman relations would enter an entirely new status which must be reflected in political agreements. "We are still within the Armistice status, and Germany can denounce that Convention at any time without worrying about earlier concessions she might have made in Africa."43 Only a definitive peace treaty would rescue France from the tentative and transitory armistice status in which her rights were so fragile. Darlan and Huntziger had violated the neutrality convictions of other senior officers, however. When General Weygand learned the terms of the Protocols of Paris on May 28, he wrote Marshal Petain a blistering ten-page letter. Military cooperation with our adversaries is precisely the thing against which the French African conscience revolts most openly. . . . Three affirmations, regarded here as government promises, are the foundation of their obedience to the government: no base in French Africa will be put at the disposal of the Germans or the Italians; France will not deliberately go to war with her former ally, although she will defend her territory wherever it is attacked.44 43 DFCAA, iv, 470-471. The protocole complementaire is printed in ibid., 479-480. i4 Proces Weygand, 48-49; Weygand, HI, 428-429.

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I94i: Neutrality Entrenched On June 2, Weygand arrived in person by plane from Algiers carrying this letter and warning the cabinet that to implement the Protocols was to trigger a dissidence movement in French Africa. This army [in North Africa] is nervous; it is burning to fight. But [Weygand] guarantees the authority he has over it and the state of obedience in which he will maintain it. . . . "I am perhaps the only person who can give you that absolute guarantee, without exaggerated vanity: I ask you not to lose sight of what I am telling you."45 The news that Colonel Philibert Collet had tried to move his Circassian unit across the border from Syria into British Palestine in the night of May 21-22, in a skirmish in which two French officers were killed—the first conspicuous recruitment to Gaullism since November 1940—gave point to Weygand's warning that only strict neutrality would hold the Armistice Army together.48 During three days of cabinet meetings, supported by the Air Minister, General Bergeret, and by the GovernorsGeneral of Tunisia and French West Africa, Admiral Esteva and Pierre Boisson, Weygand tried to kill the Protocols. When he returned to North Africa, he told Emmanuel Monick, secretary-general in the French administration at Rabat, that "I succeeded in calling a halt to the proposed adoption of a new policy; the council of ministers took no action on it."47 In truth, Darlan himself had already postponed applying the Dakar agreement. Furthermore, the Germans themselves hesitated to become involved in distant Dakar, under the 45 46 47

Laure, Journal, 4 June 1941. DFCAA, iv, 519; Anne Collet, Collet des Tcher\esses (Paris, 1949). £7.5. Foreign Relations, 1941, 11, 368; Weygand, in, 428-440; Langer,

157·

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1Q41: Neutrality Entrenched very guns of the British fleet, after the Eastern campaign began to absorb their major energies. Hitler decided late in June 1941 not to use Dakar "on political grounds." Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop wrote to Marshal Keitel on June 27 that strong measures against France would precipitate the colonies into the Gaullist camp. Since Germany was now too occupied in Russia to support France, care must be taken to avoid war between France and Britain. Nevertheless, since some British reaction to German use of Bizerte seemed inevitable, Germany should set up an air base at Dakar. For once Dakar had fallen into British hands, Germany could never use it—for a naval base or for any other purpose. Keitel rebutted von Ribbentrop's proposal vigorously on July 2. If a German naval base was too provocative for the stability of Dakar, a German air base would be even more so. The French had proved their point, Keitel had to admit. Germany should not exercise her new rights at Dakar until after the Eastern campaign was won; at that time, Dakar having been kept out of Allied hands by French neutrality, Germany could enjoy base facilities there on short notice.48 Keitel's reply to von Ribbentrop showed how the French negotiators' skill had reinforced the new Eastern preoccupations to bring the German government around to letting Weygand win his point. Within a week of Weygand's flying trip to Vichy, moreover, the French received a stunning object lesson in the dangers of letting either side use French soil for belligerent purposes. The German aircraft sent through Syria to Iraq in May 1941, which had reopened broad Franco-German negotiations again, provoked the British to attack Syria 48

OKW/20ia, frames 5,596,029-034.

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on June 8 and to capture the whole French Levant, after a campaign fought in dead earnest by both sides. The Treaty of Saint Jean d'Acre, signed, inappropriately enough, on Bastille Day 1941, announced the amputation of yet one more limb from the prostrate body of the French Empire. The Armistice Army was at war, then, almost exactly a year after the French Army had laid down its arms with Germany. And it was at war with Britain and Britain's French "lackeys." Once more, as after the Mers-el-Kebir battle, the Vichy high command was sorely tempted to accept Axis military aid. The day after the Anglo-Gaullist forces attacked northward out of Palestine, on 9 June 1941, the German Armistice Commission offered German air cover to the French Levant forces in Syria and Lebanon. The German offer was renewed urgently the next day, this time with the apparently mistaken contention that General Dentz in Syria had asked first for German help. The Vichy government, without flatly rejecting German air support, insisted that Luftwaffe operations be entirely independent of French actions and that German aircraft could not use Syrian airfields or overfly Syrian territory. Jacques BenoistMechin, government representative in Paris, delivered a similar message to Ambassador Abetz. To avoid "adverse psychological effects" and to "look out for the troops' morale," French forces in Syria must appear to be defending their patrimony alone.*9 Air Marshal Goering withdrew his offer when he learned of these restrictions. At headquarters of the French Levant Command in Beirut, General Dentz was torn between the dangers to French morale of German air cover and the temptation to 49

DFCAA, iv, 540-542; OKW/1444, frame 5,594,669.

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redress an unfavorable balance of forces. At least twice, on June 12 and June 17, he wired Vichy requesting approval for German air support. And as many times, he changed his mind. "Intermittent assistance, a symbolic [German] support of the sort which fared so poorly in Iraq, is not worth losing the morale benefit of our attitude and of our general policy for." Finally, on June 21, Dentz gave up the idea for the last time.50 At the last minute of the Syrian war, the bitterness of a second defeat got the best of General Huntziger. In the face of "overwhelming" British air superiority, Huntziger urgently asked the Luftwaffe on July 1 to raid British airfields in Palestine and Jordan. This time, enthusiasm for joint operations had changed sides. The Germans refused on July 4, pleading insufficient forces; since the project had last been mentioned, Operation Barbarossa had been launched and German Armies were rolling into the Soviet Union.51 Even though passion briefly overcame the normal caution of two commanding officers, the Armistice Army in the Levant finally fought alone to the end, and the reluctance of the Vichy high command for joint operations alongside Germany was confirmed. The acids of French defeat in Syria—the second French Armistice in thirteen months—corroded French officers' feelings about Germany and Britain even more deeply than before. French soldiers had now killed British soldiers and had been killed by them, for the first time since Waterloo; it was the Armistice Army's Mers-el-Kebir. The French Levant forces had offered no mere token resistance, no baroud d'honneur. Marshal Keitel thought their behavior 50

Proces Dentz, session of 18 April 1945. DFCAA, iv, 544; The Haider Diaries, 3 July 1941.

51

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had been "beyond reproach," and General Haider was im­ pressed by the toughness of French defenses.52 The Vichy high command took the Levant war so seriously that it drained its precious hoard of armaments in French North Africa for reinforcements. Three battalions of colonial in­ fantry were to be shipped to Marseilles and from there overland, in twenty-four trainloads, to German-held Salo­ nika and thence by sea to Beirut; the first trainload left Marseilles on June 25, and the operation was still incom­ plete when fighting stopped. At the same time, Vichy fighter strength in the Levant was almost doubled by air­ craft flown from North Africa. Things reached the point where even the German Armistice Commission warned the French not to "strip" French North African defenses.58 The presence of Gaullist units among the British added a fratricidal edge to the fighting. There were cases of the abuse of the white flag and the maltreatment of prisoners. Casualties reached 4,300 on the Allied side and 6,000 on the Vichy side, of whom 1,000 were killed. After the armistice, given their choice of joining the Free French or going home, all but 5,668 out of 37,736 officers and men of the Levant Armistice Army chose repatriation. Some of these were merely homesick, of course; but many could approve Major Gaillard Bournazel's bitter reproach to Colonel Col­ let: "Go join the Jews, then; they will pay you well."54 Vichy officers helped fan the flames of anglophobia. In a press conference on July 1, War Minister Huntziger re­ counted the "savagery" of the R.A.F. which had bombed 52 OKW/20i2, frame 5,596,019; The Haider Diaries, 10 June 1941 et seq. 53 DFCAA, iv, 426-434, 507-522, 537; H2/184, frame 6,428,751; Playfair, 11, 206. 54 Playfair, π, 205, 221; Le Temps, 11 July 1941.

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government buildings in Beirut, while the French who knew perfectly well where headquarters was in Jerusalem would not stoop to such barbarism. General Dentz addressed a farewell reunion of the repatriated Levant troops at Aries on October 13 where he poured out the accumulated venom of an old colonial soldier humiliated before the indigenous population. "As for the British, you have found in them our secular enemies, who think only about the France without a Navy, without colonies, without military traditions which they hope will emerge from the peace . . . representatives of all those things we almost perished from: democratic-masonic politics and judeosaxon finance."55 The Syrian fiasco did nothing to improve French officers' feelings toward Germany, either. Those already antagonistic to Germany blamed Hider for destroying the "delicate equilibrium" and provoking a British attack; while those more antagonistic to Britain felt Germany had let France down by withholding adequate military aid. General Paul Doyen, who had grown weary of the "flood of German demands" in his ten months as French representative before the German Armistice Commission at Wiesbaden, was being forced out of office by the Germans. Before leaving Wiesbaden, however, Doyen sent a long memorandum on "The Lessons of Ten Months at Wiesbaden" to his immediate superior General Koeltz, head of the D.S.A. {Direction des services de !'armistice) at Vichy. It is a document strongly imprinted with post-Syria resentments. "Collaboration," he wrote, is inevitable to life in Germany's Europe, as long as that may last. It feeds the French population, restores the economy, and safeguards 65

L e Temps, 2 July 1941; Figaro, 14 October 1941.

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the Empire. But purely economic "collaboration" must not become "cooperation," which is inevitably military. French national interest ceases when bombs fall on workers in French factories, when there is a break with the United States, and especially when France is drawn into "the abyss of war." Hider wants to draw everything into his fate, and will destroy everything with him. The lesson of the last few weeks is that "we have little to hope for in German concessions" for all our sacrifices. "We have harvested litde for French blood." General Doyen, who three years later was to command a detachment of the Liberation Army in the Alps, already had the ingenuity to see increased German demands as a sign of weakness. Hitler's star was waning, but the most dangerous threat to French survival in 1941 was that of being dragged back into the war. His second in command, Lieutenant Colonel Lorber, warned on 29 June 1941 in similar terms against the "greatest danger" for France: "participation in the Germano-AngloRussian War."56 From an altogether different point of view, Jacques Benoist-Mechin in Paris accused the Germans of "letting us down." The first diplomatic casualty of the Syrian campaign was the already half-moribund May Protocols. Part III of the Protocols, the proposed German supply and submarine base at Dakar, was already becoming a dead letter. In late June, the French government also began dragging its feet on Part II, supplying Rommel's armies through Bizerte. To preserve the posture of neutrality, the French insisted that shipments must originate from southern Italy, not from Toulon; and French naval vessels would not take part in the convoys. On July 9, Admiral Darlan told General Vogl, 56

DFCAA, jv, 547, 554, 611, 639, 644.

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head of the German Armistice Commission, that although the Bizerte agreement had been "signed," the French government had not decided whether it could carry it out. For one thing, the fact that France had been "left in the lurch" in Syria was not encouraging; furthermore, the United States had just taken authority in Iceland. Might not a further provocation lead the United States to seize Dakar, the nearest African point to South America?57 Finally, on July 12, Darlan made the Bizerte agreement conditional on a new Montoire. The French government considered the Protocols just one aspect of a broad reorientation of Franco-German relations; until those relations had been explored and clarified on the widest possible basis, Part II of the Protocols, the Bizerte agreement, could not go into effect by itself.58 Weygand's triumph over the Protocols was only temporary, however. Darlan's note of 12 July 1941 inaugurated a new diplomatic rupture only slightly less total than the "cold shoulder" period following Laval's dismissal. At Wiesbaden, discussions left the lofty plane of a new overall Franco-German status and returned to niggling questions of detail. German negotiators were instructed on 5 September 1941 to make no further concessions until the North Africa administration (i.e., General Weygand) had become more cooperative. Weygand was forced to retire by a German ultimatum in early November. As for Axis use of Bizerte, the OKW ruled that the proper timing was still open to question, while the German Armistice Commission openly advised against reopening an issue which would provoke a British attack upon poorly defended B7 OKW/1444, frame 5,594,826; OKW/2012, frame 5,596,829; DFCAA, iv, 562-582. 58 DFCAA, iv, 589. 241

ig4i: Neutrality Entrenched North Africa, and which would lead the French government to renew its demands for conspicuous political and economic concessions, "as in the summer of 1941."59 The mutual needs of both parties still kept some warmth in the corpse of the Protocols, however. The German authorities still wanted French economic resources; Darlan still wanted to renew the "indispensable conversations," to make basic revisions in the political and economic limitations placed upon France by an outworn armistice. One more effort was made to negotiate "the application of Part B of the Protocol of May 28" after the dismissal of Weygand briefly thawed Franco-German relations. When the German, Italian, and French spokesmen finally sat down together from November 27 to December 21,1941, however, their conceptions of the Protocols' meaning could not be reconciled. The French negotiators argued, with good reason, that their need for broad political, economic, and military concessions was now even greater than it had been on May 28. Britain had proven in Syria her unhesitating resolve to attack any portion of the French Empire used by the Axis. Hence the talks must begin on the level of general policy, with details to come later. The Germans concluded as the talks broke up that relations were "back to where they were on 24 July."60 The Protocols were dead. Henceforth Franco-German negotiations would proceed strictly on the level of detail. Marshal Petain was able to tell a skeptical Admiral Leahy on 27 January 1942 that there was "no question" of Axis bases in French Africa.61 That he could keep his word rested in part on the determination of his officers to keep the Empire out of the war 59 60 61

OKW/20I2, frames 5,596,015, 5,595,963. DFCAA, v, 43, 46, 387-401. US. Foreign Relations, 1942, 11, 124.

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ig4i: Neutrality Entrenched —and in part on German loss of interest. For, at the end of June, all German attention was focused on the new Eastern front in the Soviet Union. With all eyes at Vichy riveted on Syria, the German attack on the Soviet Union could not signal that decisive change in Axis fortunes which it seems in retrospect to have been. Earlier in the year, to be sure, Darlan had remarked to Leahy that if Germany attacked the Soviet Union, "that means her downfall" and Petain had found in the apparendy inevitable German clash with Russia the one bright spot in an otherwise gloomy picture.82 But the stunning German success in the Balkans had intervened, and the French Empire was losing Syria when news came from Russia on 21 June 1941. Hence French military reactions to the Eastern campaign were ambiguous. Many French officers doubted that Soviet Russia could long withstand the juggernaut which had overwhelmed "the magnificent French Army"; Germany would be victorious in "two or three months," Ambassador Leahy was assured in Vichy.83 To give French officers their due, not all Allied observers thought differently. The British Joint Intelligence Committee estimated on 14 June 1941 that the German Army could reach Moscow in six weeks, although Churchill, Eden, and the Foreign Office were not so pessimistic. Some observers in the United States were little more confident of Soviet ability to withstand a German attack.6* The lessons of Napoleon's campaign and of World War I hardly seemed to apply, for if Hider could gain rapid control of the oil and wheat of the Ukraine and the Caucasus, he would have found the solution to the 62

es Langer, 123, 144. Leahy, 40. * Woodward, British Foreign Policy, 150, n.i; Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkjns, 304, 327. e

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ig4i: Neutrality Entrenched supply problem which was Germany's inherent weakness in all long wars of attrition. Unlike Napoleon, Hitler had no need to fight Russia to a political decision as long as he exercised de facto control over vital Soviet resources. A number of French officers had special reasons, however, for expecting an early German victory. They had long attributed inherent military weaknesses to the Soviet system, in part on political grounds. During the debates on ratification of the Franco-Soviet Treaty in February 1936, General Weygand permitted Horace de Carbuccia to inform wavering deputies of his "hostile" opinion; he also published a notice in Le Temps denying obliquely that he favored the treaty: he had "never been consulted." Paul Reynaud recalled after the war that General Maurin, Minister of War at the time of the signing of the pact, asserted in the Council of Ministers that from a military point of view the Russian alliance would be of no benefit to France. Marshal Petain's objections were frankly political. He published his view on 30 April 1936 that "by holding out a hand to Moscow, we have held it out to Communism, and we have introduced it to a large number of decent people here, who until now fought shy of it. We have admitted Communism into the register of avowable doctrines. It is quite likely we shall have occasion to regret it."65 Such weighty opinions outbalanced favorable reports on the Soviet Army, such as that of General Loizeau, head of the French military delegation to the Soviet maneuvers in 1935, who concluded, on the basis of material, tactics, and enthusiasm, that "the red army is probably at the present time one of the most powerful armies of Europe." 86 Bankwitz, 602; Le Temps, 25 February 1936; Paul Reynaud, In the Thic\ of the Fight (Paris, 1951), 52.

244

igp:

Neutrality Entrenched

Furthermore, whatever favorable military opinion there was in 1935 was seriously undermined by the subsequent mili­ tary purges in the Soviet Union, buttressed by the social fears of conservatives after 1936. After the war Leon Blum blamed his failure to implement the Franco-Soviet pact on military reticence following the purges.66 It was all the more natural, therefore, that French mili­ tary observers in 1941 should predict the rapid defeat of the Soviet Armies and Hitler's speedy exploitation of Rus­ sian oil and wheat. Admiral Leahy noted five days after the opening of the campaign that "Petain expects Ger­ many to succeed in occupying those provinces of Russia near the German border and to set up therein independent buffer states which will cause the downfall of Stalin and remove the menace of Communism." General Brosse, mili­ tary correspondent for Le Temps, wrote a month later that Soviet defeats were only to be expected, for, although the Red Army had a great deal of material, it lacked experi­ ence, training, and a good officer corps. General Haider had said approximately the same thing in his diary, theo­ rizing that it would take the Soviet Army four years to recover from the effects of the purges.67 At lower levels of the army, however, if postwar reminis­ cences are accurate, some officers judged the strategic sig­ nificance of Operation Barbarossa better than their seniors. Lieutenant Colonel Touzet du Vigier changed his mind about the outcome of the war at this point. French liaison officers with the German Control Commission team at Port Vendres were reported to be impressed by Soviet 66

"Impressions du general Loiseau sur les grandes manoeuvres en U.R.S.S.," Le Temps, 20 September 1935; Commission parlementaire d'enquete, π, 121-132. 67 Langer, 163; Le Temps, 24 July 1941; The Haider Diaries, 13 June 1940, 3 September 1940.

MS

I94i:

Neutrality

Entrenched

resistance rather than by German victories. In Algiers, while many officers anticipated an easy German victory in Russia, General Weygand himself was "exhilarated" by the possibility of grave German difficulties. He told Robert D. Murphy that Germany had lost the war, and intimated that he no longer thought that a neutral America was France's best hope. The reaction of General Paul Doyen at Wiesbaden sums up very well the balance of hopes and doubts raised in a strongly pro-Allied officer by "the most important week" in the war so far. In his final report on 16 July 1941, Doyen asserted that Germany was "growing exhausted" and that her "definitive success seems more and more doubtful." Yet General Doyen still did not believe in a definitive Allied success. The realistic short-term task for France was still "to live in Germany's Europe." That the United States would eventually emerge as the war's arbiter was his most confident prediction.68 The year 1941 had served to reinforce the lessons learned by most officers in the fall of 1940: France could survive only by insulating what remained of her soil from the two hostile forces at war. The lines of neutrality sketched in by December 1940 were now, a year later, more firmly drawn. One further arena of Franco-German negotiations in which officers were involved contained a possible challenge to French neutrality. As the war wore on, Germany's need for French strategic resources increased and the pressures mounted for the cession of stocked materials and even for war production for Germany in unoccupied France. As War Minister and Chief of Staff, General Huntziger was intimately involved in these questions. He firmly believed 68

Interviews; OKW/1436, frame 5,593,461; Robert D. Murphy, Diplomat Among Warriors (New York, 1964), 85; DFCAA, iv, 644S1

246

1^/j.i: Neutrality Entrenched that the fist around the neck of France could be loosened by reciprocal concessions. Furthermore, he was eager to enlarge the Armistice Army's material endowment and freedom of action. As in the post-Montoire negotiations of November and December 1940, in which Huntziger had learned that a soldier can become a horse trader, he was ever ready with a substantial list to bargain against German requests for war material. Through 1941, Huntziger's success in keeping flowing a small trickle of material concessions for the Armistice Army helped lull many officers into acquiescence and to conceal the fact that the strategic axioms of July 1940 were becoming less and less relevant to Franco-German relations. Huntziger had two things to offer Hider: the promise that the Armistice Army would keep French soil neutral, off limits for the enemies of the Axis; and the contribution which French military material could make to an increasingly tightly pinched Axis supply line. He excluded, however, the outright military collaboration of French forces alongside the Axis. In return, General Huntziger hoped to increase the modern armament at the Armistice Army's disposal. And his superiors, the over-all shapers of French policy, hoped to buy a relaxation of some of the more galling features of an armistice never expected to last so long. In the economic sphere of collaboration, the Vichy high command was willing in 1941 to buy concessions with the transfer of French supplies to Axis fronts, including North African supplies to Rommel; with the manufacturer of war material for Germany; and even, after some protest, with the transshipment of Axis supplies across French territory. Trucks and fuel were an important French contribution 247

ig4i'· Neutrality

Entrenched

to Rommel's campaign. The French government agreed to sell 13,000 trucks to Germany in February 1941, and a further 1,100 military trucks in North Africa to Rommel's army in December 1941. French petroleum products were delivered to Rommel in December 1941 and again in early 1942,69

The manufacture of war material for Germany in the Unoccupied Zone was the subject of long, tedious negotiations in which French representatives attempted to answer demand for demand, particularly for the strengthening of the Armistice Army. From the beginning, of course, the German authorities were able to administer the Occupied Zone in accordance with their prearmistice aim, "assuring to the Reich the benefit of all the economic resources of France and her colonies in order to carry on the war against England."70 When the British Isles held out unexpectedly and the war dragged on, Hitler tried to extend this exploitation to the Unoccupied Zone. The German Armistice Commission asked the French authorities on 24 September 1940 to approve the manufacture of war material for Germany in the Free Zone. Taking advantage of the renewed climate of major negotiation created by the Syria crisis, General Huntziger put forward formal French counterproposals on 10 July 1941. Having learned to match German requests demand for demand rather than reject them outright, he accepted about one-third of the German desires in principle, and subordinated them to a simultaneous program of arms 69 DFCAA, in, 404; iv, 38; v, 401-411; The Haider Diaries, 4 March, 18 March, 2 May 1941; U.S. Foreign Relations, 1941, 11, 231; ibid., 1942;

II, I26ff. 70 "Directive economique donnee Ie 17 juin aux redacteurs allemands de l'armistice," La France interieure, Cahier No. 46, 15 October 1946, 1-6.

248

ig4i: Neutrality Entrenched manufacture for French use. New material proposed for the Armistice Army included 300 tanks, 500 armored cars, antitank artillery, and aircraft. Most of the new artillery he requested would provide antiaircraft protection against the British air raids which were certain to visit the reviving French armaments industry. Factories in the Occupied Zone would take part in this joint program, which thus brought them back partially into the French economic orbit. Finally, for moral and psychological reasons, and to keep secret the German destination of some of the material, the French would manufacture nothing of purely German design. General Huntziger's bold bargain suffered the same fate as that of November-December 1940, as negotiations were cut off by a new "cold shoulder" period. On 12 October 1941, however, a minor fraction of the summer's proposals was agreed upon. Artillery ammunition and bombs would be manufactured in the Unoccupied Zone for both French and German use. It had taken thirteen months of negotiation to begin the French manufacture of arms and ammunition for Germany in the Free Zone. n A similar agreement had been reached on 21 March 1941 for a joint program of aircraft construction in the two zones. About six hundred planes were to be manufactured for France during the first year, while about three thousand would be manufactured for Germany. Germany must supply her own raw materials. In exchange, France must also have more adequate means of defense: increased aircraft allowances, and the creation of antiaircraft batteries. Letters were exchanged on 28 July 1941 setting this 71 Delegation frangaise, "comptes rendus," 24 September 1940, 8 July 1941; OKW/1444, frame 5,594,604; OKW/2337, passim.

249

ι:

κ)4

Neutrality Rntrenched

program into effect. French warplanes actually began roll­ ing off the assembly lines again. Although some of the obso­ lete Morane 406, fighter aircraft in Africa were replaced with more modern Dewoitine 520 fighters in November 1941, however, there was insufficient time to modernize the air forces of even the African Armistice Army before the following November. 72 Finally, in December 1941, when the success of General Auchinleck's drive westward put Rommel and the Italians into precarious straits, the German and Italian governments insisted upon using the port of Bizerte to transship Axis supplies, a concession which the French high command had been resisting since the Protocol discussions had broken down the previous July. The Vichy authorities were able in return only to require the careful camouflage of these transshipments, to avoid Allied reprisals. They managed to adopt an air of ignorance with American representa­ tives who tried to learn the contents of the sealed boxes. Admiral Darlan also had to overcome the objections of Admiral Esteva, the Resident-General in Tunisia, who opposed the Axis use of Bizerte until Darlan explained to him that a continued British advance might bring the war 73 onto the soil of the French Protectorate. Insistent German pressures for economic assistance from the Unoccupied Zone had stretched the Vichy government's neutrality policy thin. Nevertheless, the basic lines sketched in by December 1940 had become an orthodoxy a year later. A keener edge had been honed on French antago72 Delegation francaise, "comptes-rendus," 8 November 1940, 21 March 1941, 22 October 1941; OKW/1444, frame 5,594,594; DFCAA, iv, 94,

123, 229. 73 OKW/2012, frame 5,596,002; U.S. Foreign Relations, 1942, 11, 126S.; OKW/1444, frame 5,594,575; Soustelle, i, 293.

250

i:

i()4 Neutrality Entrenched nisms against both sides, along with the determination not to be dragged back into a pointless war. The Armistice Army would not try to recapture Gaullist areas in Equa­ torial Africa; nor would it willingly fight alongside Axis forces. Its high command did, however, struggle to keep Franco-German negotiations alive, in order to buy in­ creased strength for the Armistice Army at what seems, in retrospect, a fearsomely high price. On the other hand, the Armistice Army would not tolerate any Allied encroach­ ment in the French Empire unless, as Weygand put it, "the balance of forces had shifted." He told Robert D. Murphy, "If you come with two divisions, we will fire on you. If you come with twenty-five divisions, we will receive you with open arms." Darlan said virtually the same thing to U.S. Ambassador Leahy on ι August 1941. When you have 3,000 tanks, 6,000 planes and 500,000 men to bring to Marseilles, let me know. Then we shall wel­ come you. But neither side can win the war, and Europe will be exhausted. It is to your interest as well as to ours that there be an early peace.74 Darlan clearly expected such a force to arrive on the Greek Calends. In December 1941, the commander of troops in French West Africa circulated among his garrisons his reflections on the question, "Is a victory possible?" The general be­ lieved that no one could affirm that it was, for the moment. It was far more likely that the two belligerent blocs, "shrinking before the hazards and consequences of so gigantic an operation," would "proceed to an organization of the world, trading off interests and susceptibilities on 74

Prods Weygand, 32; U.S. Foreign Relations, 1941, 11, 189.

25/

iQ4i: Neutrality

Entrenched

both sides. One thing is certain: the longer the war lasts, the more the European nations, whether they deplore it or not, will have to maintain their solidarity" in the face of the Anglo-Saxon blockade. France is neutral. Sufficiently bled white and bruised by two wars in twenty-five years, wars into which she threw all her human and material resources, she intends to wage no more war unless a new aggression menaces her empire or her unity or the very life of Frenchmen. This is an imperious necessity for the future of the French race.75 The danger was that neutrality, which made some sense in the summer of 1940, would become one of those mindless orthodoxies that military systems sometimes propagate, making honest and patriotic French officers miss the "intelligent moment" when it arrived. 75

Afrique Occidentale Francaise, Bulletin d'information, No. 9 (10 December 1941), 8.

252

CHAPTER

VIII

The Uses and Abuses of Freedom: Officers in Politics, 1941-42 months following the armistice, when General Weygand was Minister of Defense, were a high watermark in career officers' participation in the making of French national policy. Not since Marshal MacMahon's day had officers played so central a part in the everyday decisions of government; not since Napoleon Ill's day had the regime worked so enthusiastically to enhance the prestige of things military. But Weygand's position as de facto prime minister was not slow to arouse opposition from two sources. Civilians objected to an excess of uniformed officeholders; other officers and other services resented General Weygand's personal dominance. Indeed, Marshal Petain's heralded liberation of the officer corps from the evils of Third Republic politics was more apparent than real. If what the officers had denounced as "politics" was the use of state power to influence technical military decisions for the benefit of particular interests, the same practices went on under another name. Within the officer corps, the flowering of factions and cliques belied the corps' pretensions of complete unity; and from outside, civilian interests interfered in promotions and assignments. After April 1942, Pierre Laval reasserted a civilian control over the army all the more thorough because unstructured, since civil-military relations were no longer channeled through traditional institutions. In the end, the notion of a unified officer corps divided only by politiquard influence was exT H E THREE

253

Officers in Politics, 1941-42 ploded for the myth that it was. It is tempting to think that only some dominant civilian executive, a Clemenceau, could impose unity on the juntas into which officers' "apolitical" behavior so readily lapsed when no strong hand grasped the helm. Weygand's dismissal from the office of Minister of National Defense on 6 September 1940, was the first harbinger of a particularly vigorous season of feuding within the services. Mere interservice rivalry alone does not explain Weygand's reassignment to French Africa, of course. There was an emergency to be met there. Weygand's prestige and ascendancy were a kind of one-man fire-brigade to save French Africa from "dissidence." Nevertheless, conflicts of authority had their place in the event. Weygand's leave-taking from Marshal Petain was cool, and his office —the Ministry of National Defense—was abolished when he left it. Weygand had never been able to overcome the traditional hostility of the navy and air force to central—i.e., army— direction. Admiral Darlan, in particular, ran the navy as an autonomous empire. Whereas Generals Colson and Pujo were secretaires d'etat of the army and air force, respectively, Darlan had salvaged an autonomous tide as Ministre-secretaire d'etat of the navy. Civilians were little less disgruntled by Weygand's power. From the very first, Weygand had explicit ideas about the full gamut of national issues and about the presence of "too many parliamentarians" in government. Civilians, in turn, suspected Weygand of packing the government with his own creatures. These accumulated discontents were sufficiendy loud to reach General Haider in Berlin, perhaps 254

Officers in Politics, 1()41-42 through Pierre Laval's contacts in Paris.1 For Laval himself was not likely to have forgotten that Weygand vetoed his appointment as Foreign Minister when Marshal Petain's first cabinet was set up on 17 June 1940. The government reshuffle of September 6 can be credibly interpreted in a number of ways. The Marshal may have wished merely to reduce the total number of ministers, and it is suggestive that all former parliamentarians except Laval lost their jobs along with Weygand: Lemery (Colonies), Marquet (Interior), Mireaux (Public Instruction), Pietri (Communications), and Ybarnegaray (Family and Youth). 2 Weygand himself, in memoirs written long after the event, and his best-informed biographer have seen the hand of Laval eliminating a rival.3 And according to Foreign Minister Paul Baudouin's diaries, most of Weygand's resentment at the time was directed against another rival, Admiral Darlan.4 Whatever half-forgotten underground struggle for power produced the cabinet shuffle of September 6, two aspects of the change are clear. The Germans had nothing to do with it. General Haider, for example, makes only the most casual reference to the incident.5 And in the second place, the result of Weygand's departure was to be the triumph of service particularism for the following year. Admiral Darlan was no more distressed than Laval to see the Ministry of National Defense dismantled. Weygand's departure also coincided with a decline everywhere in the civil role of officers. In the departments, the 1

Baudouin, 26 June 1940, 222-225; The Haider Diaries, 9 August 1940. Aron, 165, 169; Laure, Journal, 7 September 1940. 8 Weygand, in, 341; Bankwitz, 796. * Baudouin, 330-333, 343. See also Weygand, m, 341. 5 The Haider Diaries, 8 September 1940. 2

255

Officers in Politics, 11)41-41 prefects gradually reasserted their primacy over the military commanders of the departments. Although the unexpectedly long duration of the armistice did not permit the state of siege to be lifted, the law was amended on 14 September 1941 to permit the Council of Ministers to restore powers to civil authority by decree.6 Other functions returned to civilian hands, not without friction such as the brief contest for authority over refugee relief between General Aime Doumenc, Commissioner for Reconstruction, and Interior Minister Adrien Marquet in August 1940.7 Gradually and almost unobserved, the locus of political initiative passed from the Vichy-Wiesbaden circuit to the Vichy-Paris circuit, and thus from military hands to civilian. In Weygand's day, a unified armistice administration had dealt with most Franco-German issues through General Huntziger, the French delegate to the German Armistice Commission at Wiesbaden, while Laval spent long and fruitless periods in Paris with German Ambassador Abetz, trying to set up a meeting with responsible German officials. Laval and Abetz shared a joint interest in making Paris the center of Franco-German discussions. When General Doyen replaced General Huntziger in September 1940, economic issues were detached from Wiesbaden's control and moved to Paris where Yves de Boisanger, governor of the Bank of France, negotiated with Herr Hemmen. 8 The Montoire meeting meant not only the birth of "collaboration" but the victory of the civilians in Paris over the generals at Wiesbaden in the direction of 6 Dalloz, Encyclopedic juridique. Repertoire de droit public et administratif (Paris, 1958-60), n, 407S. 7 / . 0 . , Lois et decrets, 3 August 1940, 4498; Bankwitz, 783; Weygand, testimony of 21 and 30 June 1949 in Commission parlementaire d'enquete,

vi, 1870, 1920. 8

Delegation francaise, "comptes rendus," 7 July 1940; DFCAA, 1, viii.

256

Officers in Politics, 1941-42 Franco-German relations. By December 9, the French delegation at Wiesbaden realized that its work was now subordinate to Laval's discussions with General Walter Warlimont in Paris, of which it was only vaguely informed. General Warlimont, in turn, noticed that Laval and Darlan dominated these meetings at the expense of General Huntziger. 9 A further amputation occurred after 16 December 1940, when the blind deputy Georges Scapini took charge of prisoners' affairs from an office in Berlin.10 Darlan, in his turn as head of government, negotiated with Germany through a delegation in Paris, headed by Fernand de Brinon, and through Jacques Benoist-Mechin, secretaire d'etat in the cabinet. Things had reached the point in May 1941, during the Syrian crisis, where BenoistMechin and his German opposite numbers could agree "in view of certain recent indiscretions" to work only very remotely with Wiesbaden.11 General Doyen, alarmed at the dangers of diffused centers of negotiation, continued to urge the centralized control of Franco-German relations as a safeguard against haphazard concessions.12 Despite his warnings the Armistice Commissions—and French military men—played a less directing role in foreign policy after Montoire. During 1941 and 1942, however, a second attempt was made to centralize French military authority—and by the very man who had done his share to thwart it in Weygand's day: Admiral Darlan. After assuming Laval's old 9

DFCAA, iv, 404; General Walter Warlimont, Im Hauptquartier der deutschen Wehrmacht, 1939-45 (Frankfurt am Main, 1962), 139. 10 Baudouin, 400; DGFP, Series D, xi, Nos. 385, 401, pp. 678, 710-711. 1:L OKW/i444b, frame 5,594,664. A note signed by General Doyen deploring German territorial aspirations at French expense had reached Free French hands and was being widely disseminated from London. 12 DFCAA, iv, 260, 271.

257

Officers in Politics, 1941-42 office of vice-president of the Council of Ministers in February 1941, Darlan began to draw into his hands an impressive collection of offices. In addition to being de facto prime minister, Darlan was Minister of Foreign Affairs, Minister of the Interior, and, of course, Minister of the Navy. He was also designated dauphin, the successor to Petain's functions in case of the old Marshal's incapacity or death.13 A cluster of offices so foreign to the traditions of a responsible ministry could be administered, of course, only through an elaborate staff organization. Officers had a large place in it. As chief of staff for the Ministry of National Defense, Darlan naturally chose a navy man, Admiral Bourrague, who had the distinction of having actually commanded in action against the British at Dakar. Less appropriately, a naval officer was also Darlan's chef de cabinet for foreign affairs, maintaining direct liaison between Admiral Darlan and the permanent SecretaryGeneral of the Foreign Office, Charles Rochat. General Laure snorted with derision at the sight of Admiral Darlan "trying to seat himself in his multiple functions, too heavy and too numerous for one man."14 Darlan's setback in June 1941, when he had to backtrack on the Paris Protocols under pressure from Weygand, from General Bergeret, the Air Minister, from U.S. Ambassador Leahy, and from his own second thoughts, prompted him to shore up his position. On the one hand, he undermined the foundations of Weygand's power in North Africa; on the other, he tried to centralize his power over the independent-minded ministers of the other services. 13

/ . 0 . , Lois et decrets, n February 1941, 674, 678; 17 February 1941,

774·

14

Laure, Journal, 27 February 1941.

25S

Officers in Politics, 1941-42 On 21 July 1941, he complained to Petain about Weygand in the following letter: I am constandy attacked and even opposed by men holding important posts. General Weygand makes himself the willing echo of these attacks, kept informed by a liaison agent whom he maintains in your staff. His entourage and he himself are hostile to the policy you have asked me to follow. Although General Weygand is faithful to you, he is only faithful in outward appearance to your government. So that I can continue to carry out usefully the tasks you have entrusted to me, I need not only your confidence but the public conviction that I enjoy your confidence. It is necessary too that my authority be total, and that you be the sole judge of my acts. . . . The oaths of fidelity to the Marshal ought also to be oaths of fidelity to the person of his successor. Six days later, on July 27, Darlan wrote again to the Marshal urging that Weygand, Nogues, Esteva, and Chatel— the government delegate in French North Africa and the three governors-general under him—be summoned to Vichy, and that the general policy of the government be explained to all the ministers and secretaries of state. They must be instructed to obey Darlan as they would the Marshal, in all circumstances, and to recognize Darlan as the Marshal's successor.15 General Weygand was in fact called to Vichy on August 8-9, 1941, and, together with General Huntziger, the War Minister and Commander in Chief of the Army, he opposed the concentration of military power in Darlan's hands. The Marshal read a paper prepared by General 15

Ibid., 31 July 1941.

259

Officers in Politics, 1941-42 Laure proposing as a compromise the creation of a Ministry of National Defense whose incumbent would not simultaneously be one of the service chiefs. After all, the inefficiency displayed in 1940 could be attributed to DaIadier's having combined the portfolios of War and National Defense, and navy spokesmen had accepted a similar compromise before the war, in the Tardieu government of 1931. Darlan, realizing that his plans to grasp an "absolute dictatorship" were unrealizable, agreed in principle to the formation of a Ministry of National Defense whose head could not simultaneously be a service chief. If he accepted the post, he promised to appoint a successor to himself as Minister and Commander in Chief of the Navy, "but after a certain delay."16 In fact, although Darlan was duly made Minister of National Defense in August 1941, he did not keep his part of the bargain. The "delay" in appointing a successor lasted through Darlan's period of power, and Admiral Darlan was replaced by Admiral Auphan at the Navy Ministry only in April 1942 when Laval replaced Darlan at the summit and the Ministry of National Defense was once more abolished." Furthermore, Darlan was soon rid of his arch-rival Weygand. While it would be a gross oversimplification to blame Darlan alone for Weygand's forced retirement in November 1941, Admiral Darlan was not without his share of responsibility for that event. He played upon the German distrust of General Weygand which had existed since the le Ibid., 10 August 1941. For a Casablanca version of the incident, cf. U.S. Foreign Relations, 1941, 11, 423: "Weygand: 'You distrust our forces, then.' Darlan: 'Yes.' " The informant stated that the two officers were at dagger's point from then on. 17 /.0., Lois et decrets, 12 August 1941; Bridoux, Journal, 19 April 1942.

260

Officers in Politics, 1941-42 Laval crisis of 13 December 1940, when Ambassador Abetz described him as "the chief opponent of Laval's policy of a rapprochement with Germany."18 The collapse of the Paris Protocols put Weygand in a far worse light in Berlin. In the fall of 1941, Darlan's foreign affairs spokesman in Paris, Secretaire d'etat Jacques Benoist-Mechin, stimulated German suspicions of Weygand. He hinted to Ambassador Abetz that Weygand's enemies in the cabinet were powerless to throw him out of French Africa unless the German authorities helped by refusing to transact useful business until Weygand retired. The German Armistice Commission, grappling in the fall of 1941 with the problem of implementing the moribund Paris Protocols, was in fact instructed on 5 September 1941, to make no further concessions to France until the North African administration (i.e., Weygand) had become more cooperative. In early November, Darlan posted Count Deleuss to Sofia, thereby depriving Weygand of his eyes and ears in Vichy.19 Finally, on November 17, came a German note which amounted to an ultimatum: Weygand must go if Franco-German relations were to remain productive. Darlan promised General Vogl, chairman of the German Armistice Commission, to replace Weygand with a civilian Governor-General and with General Dentz as military commander with limited powers. Thus Darlan was not solely responsible for Weygand's forced retirement and the dismantling of his proconsulate in French Africa. German displeasure was paramount, and it was fortified by the ancient Petain-Weygand conflict, by army-navy antagonism aggravated by Darlan's impolitic remarks about "our undefeated navy," by Interior 18

O G F F , Series D, xi, Nos. 490 and 529, pp. 839-888. O K W / 2 0 i 2 , frame 5,596,015; U.S. Department o£ State, 851.00/ 2441. 19

26l

Officers in Politics, 1941-41 Minister Pucheu's irritation with Weygand's authority over prefects in French Africa, and by local clashes between Weygand and the Governor-General of Algeria, Admiral Abrial, and General Francois, head of the Algerian branch of the veterans' Legion. But Darlan did his share, as the Germans acknowledged. In gratitude, they liberated all French naval prisoners of war.20 Within the same week, Darlan's grasp on the other services took an unexpected leap forward when War Minister Huntziger, returning from an inspection trip to North Africa, was killed in an airplane crash on 12 November 1941. At once, there were rival candidacies for command of the Armistice Army. The Marshal himself expected to name a purely technical figure without political ties, a plan which had the stated support of the United States government.21 General Olry, former commander of the Armie des Alpes against the Italians in 1940 and hence a general who had fought successfully against the Axis, would be succeeded after a year by General Juin, recently liberated from Konigstein prison. The German authorities wanted Dentz. Generals Bridoux and De Lattre de Tassigny pressed their own candidacies. Exploiting these rivalries in a fashion still unclear, Darlan kept the office vacant for five months and commanded the Armistice Army himself, as "interim" Minister of War. Only German pressure and the return of Laval in April 1942 finally dislodged the Admiral from a complex of military posts which included the Ministry of National Defense and the command of two of the three services.22 20 Weygand, in, 524-525, 529-530; Prods Benoist-Mechin, fascicule 4, pp. 9, 12, 17; OKW/1444, frame 5,595,166; DFCAA, iv, 387^. 21 U-S. Department of State, 851.00/2445. 22 H 2 / i 8 4 , frame 6,428,896; V.S. Foreign Relations, 1941, 11, 464; Bridoux, Journal, 20 May 1942.

262

Officers in Politics, 1941-42 Admiral Darlan made vigorous use of his pluralism. First, he moved the Direction des services de I'armistice, the Vichy organ coordinating relations between the various ministries and the German Armistice Commission at Wiesbaden, back from the Ministry of War to the Ministry of National Defense, where it had first been created under General Weygand's aegis.23 Next, Admiral Darlan attempted to replace the traditional diffusion of army authority with something approaching the more monolithic navy organization.2* The command function, he said, had been "paralyzed by the overdevelopment of administration"; he would "restore the prerogatives of command."25 Darlan's diagnosis of army command structure under the Third Republic, with its pyramid of coordinating committees and its diffusion of authority, was well-founded. It agreed with the prevailing view of senior army officers both before and after the war. Weygand told the postwar parliamentary commission of inquiry that the "dilution of responsibilities" in military administration had caused disastrous delays between developing prototypes of military equipment and putting them into production. AU the various semi-independent organs involved with armaments thought they could enter a factory and order changes in military equipment. General Gamelin attributed his weak authority as Chief of Staff of National Defense, from January 1938, to resistances on the part of the Ministers and of the other services' permanent administrations.26 The 23

OKW/i444, frame 5,594,575. For example, whereas the army traditionally had both an inspectorgeneral and a chief of general staff, these functions were fused in the navy. Gamelin, 11, 62. 25 Figaro, 10-11 January 1942. 26 Commission parlimentaire d'enquete, 1, 239-240; 11, 368-369. 24

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Officers in Politics, 1941-42 most controversial figure was the Secretary-General of the Ministry of War, the permanent civil servant whose control of the day-to-day administration of the army increased in proportion to the short tenure of the Minister and to his great inexperience. Weygand bitterly criticized this position, held by Pierre Guinand when Weygand was VicePresident of the Supreme War Council, and by Robert Jacomet from 1936 to the war, as "uncontrollable . . . , without technical competence . . . , and answering to no one." It was ridiculous that a controleur-general should become de facto director of the French armaments program. M. Jacomet himself testified at Riom that the principle of decentralization had prevailed at the Ministry of War for fifty years. Describing his own responsibilities as limited to coordination and to budgetary questions, but clearly more influential than he wished to admit at Riom, M. Jacomet only fostered the impression of the War Ministry as a driverless machine.27 Under the Secretary-General, each arm—infantry, cavalrv, artillery—was administered by a direction. The directions d'armes, Jacomet said, had evolved "each one into a little ministry." If the Minister was linked to the directions through the Secretary-General, then the future commander in chief was linked to them only at two removes, through the Minister. As the Marshal's sometime aide Major Georges Loustaunau-Lacau said, "The general staff pulled this way, the directions pulled that way, and the two met in the Minister's antichamber to find a compromise."28 Darlan intended to put the directions directly under the commander in chief of the army—himself, at that moment. 27

Commission parlementaire d'enquete, i, 239; De Coquet, 171-175. Georges Loustaunau-Lacau, Memoires d'un jrangais rebelle (Paris, 1948), 67. 28

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Officers in Politics, 1941-42 Denouncing the separate directions d'armes as a "system which, developing certain particularisms, obstructs the thoroughgoing renovation of the army," he combined all the directions—infantry, cavalry, fortifications, artillery— into two branches, the direction du personnel and the direction du materiel, under the direct authority of the commander in chief of the army. The commander plans, orders, and directs the use of forces. The administration, subordinated to the commander, assures the proper working of the units and their services, in order to furnish the commander the means to act.29 Darlan's enhancement of the commander in chief's power at the expense of the Minister's power was possible, of course, only after the disappearance of civilian ministers and of the concept of civil authority preeminent in military matters. Although civilian ministers returned after the war and diffusion of responsibility flourished again in the French Army, the directions in their prewar form remained in the limbo to which Admiral Darlan consigned them. Indeed, postwar military reforms often seemed, at least to one of Darlan's former staff officers, to be following the direction taken by the Admiral.30 Having introduced the more direct naval organization of command into the army, Darlan proceeded to introduce navy terminology and even navy "spirit." Army officers were urged to spend more time with their units, "to live aboard," in order to create a team spirit under a com29

Decret of 28 November 1941, Bulletin officiel, 1942, 609. Other directions of a purely service nature, such as health, remained under the Minister's direct authority. 30 General Georges Revers, interview, 11 March 1961.

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Officers in Politics, 1941-42 mander whose authority would be as absolute as a ship captain's, and whose self-abnegation would be "raised to the level of an ideal, a veritable mystique." In keeping with this spirit, officers were required to take their noon meal with their command instead of returning to their families. In general, the Admiral tried to "navalize" the army, hoping to transform it into tight-knit teams of specialists like so many seagoing crews.31 The final element of Darlan's command structure reforms was an effort to delegate more responsibility to local commanders. The attempt to decentralize authority was not really at odds with his aim to centralize administration and command at the top; for what interested Darlan was authority of command at all levels. A local commander should not have to check with the high command before making petty decisions. He should develop a sense of initiative, sure of possessing the same absolute authority over his men as the captain of a ship. Decentralizing by the fiat of centralized authority, Darlan distributed lists of matters which ought not to be referred to the Ministry. On 15 June 1942, he attempted to reduce all staffs by 20 per cent, and increased the required periods of troop command for professional staff officers, brevetes d'etat major. The Admiral's goal was an army of small units with powerful internal cohesion, commanders with wide discretionary authority, and a highly developed sense of initiative.32 Darlan's measures aroused too much resentment among army officers to make much headway. The interference of an Admiral in sovereign army affairs, the unfamiliarity of his ideas, their unsuitability to the anticipated postwar mass 31

Revue de I'armee francaise, No. 8, May 1942, 57-61; interviews. UArDiOe nouvelle (Vichy, 1942), 33-37.

32

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Officers in Politics, ^41-42 army, and their violation of army traditions all generated discontent.38 "To believe certain rumors," Admiral Darlan declared in a public address on 10 January 1942 which was printed and widely disseminated, "it appears that the reforms in our military organization made at my urging are not particularly appreciated by a certain number of army officers." The Admiral was underestimating his opposition. It was "the greater number" of army officers who resisted his interference. Although the Admiral urged officers "not to belong to any military clan," army particularism—the counterpart of the very spirit Darlan had once personified in the navy—triumphed over his changes.34 As 1942 opened, the rupture between Darlan and the Germans over applying the past summer's Protocols of Paris had become complete. Laval, with the support of Otto Abetz, was able to profit by Darlan's inability to achieve any useful dialogue with the Germans. Eventually, German refusal to work with Darlan any longer accomplished what army officers' resentments had been unable to do. Pierre Laval became Head of Government on 16 April 1942, not merely "Vice-President of the Council" as before. Like Admiral Darlan before him, he combined in his own hands the major ministries: Foreign Affairs, Interior, Information. Unlike the Admiral, he was not interested in the direct control of any military departments. The Ministry of National Defense, a potential rival source of power, went quietly unfilled. Darlan, stripped of that office, was given the new post of Commander in Chief of French Armed Forces. But Laval was determined to keep a close indirect control over the military ministers. He replaced 33 84

Interviews. Darlan, "Conference," 3; Figaro, 10 January 1942.

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Officers in Politics, 1941-42 Darlan with Admiral Auphan as Navy Minister, and then handpicked a War Minister in a fashion which strikingly demonstrated a new assertion of civilian influence in military affairs. In September 1940, General Charles-Leon Huntziger had been the most notable surviving General of the Army outside German prison walls, the logical successor to Weygand by the canons of selecting a War Minister for his ascendancy and prestige within the Army. In April 1942, by contrast, General Eugene-Marie-Louis Bridoux was a relatively junior General of Division chosen for his loyalty to Laval. General Bridoux's unorthodox ascent to power was a measure of the extent to which army matters had fallen into unaccustomed hands by April 1942. Before the war, Bridoux had cut a brilliant figure in French equestrian society. A "grand cavalier," "tres jockey club," he had trod all the proper rungs to success in the equestrian beau monde. The son of a cavalry general, Saint-Cyrien, first in his class at the Ecole de Guerre in 1924, Colonel Bridoux reached the pinnacle of cavalry society in 1938 as commanding officer of the cavalry school at Saumur. The precision riding team at Saumur, the cadre noir, was the showpiece of French—and perhaps of European—horsemanship. It was in this capacity that Bridoux was a leading figure at the International Horse Show in Berlin in January 1939, where he and his team were personally congratulated by Hitler, and where he met von Papen, Crown Prince Wilhelm, and a number of German cavalry generals. He also met Fernand de Brinon, the racehorse breeder's son who had been one of the guiding spirits of the Comite France-Allemagne along with such Germans as Otto Abetz. At that moment, 268

Officers in Politics, 1941-42 Bridoux seemed destined to enjoy all the splendors of French cavalry high life, but none of the joys of high military office, for the Third Republic did not reward officers of his stripe.35 The war redirected many careers. Promoted Brigadier General and named to command the 41st Infantry Division at a time when Charles-Leon Huntziger was an army commander, Bridoux was wounded and held as a German prisoner of war in the Paris hospital of VaI de Grace—the only French general taken prisoner who was not sent to a German fortress. Here he was found by his old horse-show friend, Fernand de Brinon, who had become French Government Delegate in the Occupied Zone after the Laval crisis of 13 December 1940. On 18 March 1941, De Brinon secured Bridoux's release on "prison leave" to serve as secretary-general in his French Government Delegation office in Paris. As a prisoner of war on leave, Bridoux was bound by parole. On the day of his release, he directed the young German officer in charge of the proceedings, Lieutenant von Bulow, to "transmit to the Militiirbefehlshaber [General von Stiilpnagel] my engagement [sic], in conformity with the Armistice clauses, not to perform any act hostile to the German Army during the entire duration of the Armistice, and to inform him that if the Armistice is denounced, it is the German commander's responsibility to take measures to limit the activity which I will then attempt to resume."36 Bridoux's promise was only a conditional one, of course, as he threatened to resume fighting if the armistice were denounced. But it is difficult to escape the conclusion that during his months of service in De 35 Prods Bridoux, hearing of 16 December 1948, 3; La France militaire, 29 April 1942; Revue de I'armee frangaise, No. 9 (June 1942), 2. 36 Proces Bridoux, hearing o£ 16 December 1948, 56.

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Officers in Politics, 1941-42 Brinon's Paris office, in frequent contact with Ambassador Abetz, he gradually assumed the position of German protege. Early in 1942, at a time when Laval and Abetz were working for the restoration of Laval to the government, Abetz was also working to install Bridoux as Minister of War in place of the "interim" Admiral Darlan. It was Marshal Petain himself who first sounded Bridoux out on a possible assignment as Minister of War on 6 February 1942, but Bridoux' status of paroled prisoner seemed to exclude him from further consideration. Ambassador Abetz enthusiastically took up the case with Berlin. "With a little suitable pressure," he wrote on February 13 to Von Ribbentrop, Bridoux could be made Minister of War. The appointment "would be in the German interest, for he is a convinced partisan of the policy of collaboration and he offers the necessary assurance of a purge of centers of Gaullist resistance in the Armistice Army, especially in the anti-German deuxieme bureau [intelligence]." The German government was ready to free Bridoux unconditionally if he were made Minister of War. There was opposition to Bridoux among other officers, however. General Juin called on Petain's aide, General Campet, in mid-March and warned that the Army would be "worried and discontented" by such a choice. Admiral Darlan, who had no desire to see the end of his "interim" tenure of the War Ministry, wrote personally to Hitler on 1 April 1942, thanking him for his willingness to liberate Bridoux from parole, but informing him that Petain was now considering Dentz for the job. Darlan proposed that Bridoux become a permanent liaison officer for an expanded Legion of Volunteers against Bolshevism.37 37

Proces Bridoux, hearing of 16 December 1948, 3-5, 60-61.

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Officers in Politics, 1941-42 When Laval became head of government in mid-April, however, he quite naturally appointed as War Minister the colleague of his long stay in Paris since 13 December 1940, General Bridoux. The Germans had not always been so successful in influencing command appointments in the Armistice Army. Although they had eliminated Weygand in November 1941 after three months of pressure, they failed to secure the removal of three other generals whom they "considered, righdy or wrongly, as hostile": Nogues, the GovernorGeneral of Morocco; Koeltz, director of the armistice staff at Vichy until August 1941; and De Lattre de Tassigny, army commander in Tunisia in 1941 and in 1942 commander of the Armistice Army division at Montpellier. On the positive side, although General Juin, whom they had released from Konigstein especially for colonial duty and who enjoyed German confidence, became commander of French forces in North Africa after Weygand, General Dentz—their particular favorite—received no new command assignment after the Syrian war. In Bridoux, however, they had a man tailored to order. The new Minister of War, who regarded Laval as "the only man capable of directing affairs in the present situation," was too straightforward a soldier even to understand the complexities of Laval's bargaining tactics. In August 1942, he praised Laval's policy of "gaining the position of moral creditor with the Reich, to the exclusion of any horse-trading which would be incompatible with our present situation."38 If Armistice Army officers had any doubts about Laval's intention to intervene directly in military affairs over the head of General Bridoux, they were soon dispelled. On 38

Prods Benoist-Mechin, fascicule 4, 17; Bridoux, Journal, 28 August, 22 September 1942.

2JI

Officers in Politics, 1941-42 20 May 1942, Laval summoned the general officers of the First Group of Military Divisions, half of the Armistice Army, to lunch at Vichy. General Dentz was also present, although he held no command. After good food and wine had done their work, Laval exercised his well-known powers of persuasion on the generals, outlining his policies to them and explaining the narrow limits in which French policy was free to seek French goals. Some of the generals gave the new Prime Minister a cool reception. General Olry was hard of hearing, and seemed to feel ill at the end; Generals de Saint-Vincent and De Lattre de Tassigny were conspicuously unconvinced.39 It was unprecedented for a Prime Minister to harangue a group of generals in a smoke-filled room and to enlist them in his support, like so many small-town mayors. One wonders how much the generals disagreed with the substance of the talk and how much with Laval's plain intention to draw career officers into his political network. The possibilities of civilian interference in army affairs in the Vichy regime were all the more ominous in the absence of any clearly agreed institutional framework. Bridoux had little use for the high-flown concern for moral re-education which had been the hallmark of the Armistice Army when Huntziger and the Marshal were working so closely together. Training, he urged, should become "more strictly military, sports and other activities being only means to an end."40 Instead of moral education, Bridoux turned his energies to the fighting strength of the Armistice Army. From his first day in office he began to prepare for anticipated British commando landings, which the armistice provisions made the army so ill-equipped to 89 40

Bridoux, Journal, 20 May 1942. Ibid., 28 August 1942.

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Officers in Politics, 1941-42 face. He protested against the German prohibition of motorized units. He turned his major attention to trying to extend recruitment to the Occupied Zone, to replace the draftees nearing the end of their service. And he enthusiastically backed Laval's efforts to trade the impounded neutral shipping in French ports for German release of more war material for the Armistice Army in Africa. His passion to enlarge the military force under his command, a professional reflex which many an officer shared whatever his political preferences, put him into a strange sympathy with those officers maintaining illegal weapons stocks in the Armistice Army; he soon found out about their work. As long as such officers kept their mouths shut, he let them work. Their preparations might even be used against British commando raids.41 One of Bridoux's most controversial innovations was his attempt to bring the unofficial Legion des volontaires contre Ie bolshevisme under his aegis as an official French Army unit, to be rebaptized the Legion tricolore. The original Anti-Bolshevik Legion was a private organization incorporated at Paris shortly after the invasion of the Soviet Union in mid-summer 1941, apparently on the initiative of French individuals including only one French official in Paris, Jacques Benoist-Mechin. Eugene Deloncle, former Cagotdard leader, headed the central committee. The one general among the founders, General Paul Lavigne-Delville, who wrote a column in Action francaise, had retired in 1928. The Anti-Bolshevik Legion recruited about three thousand Frenchmen over a sixteen-month period to fight as German soldiers on the Russian front.42 41

Ibid., 23 June 1942, and passim. Prods Benoist-Mechin, fascicule v, 62; Fernand de Brinon, Memoires (Paris, n.d.), 75; La France militaire, 9 and 30 August, 10 and 17 Septem42

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Officers in Politics, 1941-42 Bridoux proposed not only to make the Anti-Bolshevik Legion an official unit of the French Army but to transfer it from an exclusively Russian role to a worldwide role, to carry the French flag "in all theaters where French inter­ ests are at stake." It seemed to Bridoux particularly im­ portant to show French arms wherever German troops might set foot in French colonies. "As to the eventuality of a German landing in Syria," he wrote on 1 July 1942, "the President [Laval] is, like me, of the opinion that France must be represented, and that we must see to it that the Legion of Volunteers is redirected toward the South." When the Germans advanced eastward across the Libyan desert, Bridoux wrote, "The results obtained by Marshal Rommel in Cyrenaica could open an important period of political and military developments in the Near East, if he has the means to pursue his operations rapidly toward the East. We will then be sorry if we arrive late with our Legion tricolore; when the Legion of Volunteers was set up, the government did not understand what could one day come out of it." Bridoux's fear that a neutral France would lose out unless she asserted her interests and participated in colonial campaigns is even clearer in his diary for 25 June 1942. "The fall of Mersa-Matruh lets us glimpse the possibility of an Axis action in Syria. Thus the question of using a French force alongside the Germans is posed for us, if we wish to affirm the principle of our rights in those regions."43 Ready to admit that France was neither emotionally nor materially ready for a war with Britain, Bridoux still worried more about the dangers of isolation than about the virtues of neutrality. Like De ber 1941; !'Illustration, ι July and 5 September 1942. Members of the Legion wore French uniforms only when in France. 43 Bridoux, Journal, 25 June, 4 June, 1 July 1942.

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Officers in Politics, 1941-42 Gaulle himself, and like some of the staff officers who were secretly discussing plans to bring the Armistice Army back into action, he saw that France must earn a place at the peace conference by taking part in the war. Before Bridoux, the Vichy government had adopted an attitude of gingerly acquiescence in the Anti-Bolshevik Legion. The government had announced on 5 July 1941, that it had "no objection" to the enlistment of volunteers in "the European struggle against Communism." Although Jacques Benoist-Mechin promised Colonel Hans Speidel, chief of staff to the German high command in France, that the French government would assist in the legion's recruitment, that assistance had been less than half-hearted. To be sure, the Legion took over—fittingly enough—the old Intourist offices on the Rue Auber in Paris, and the Marshal's name appeared on recruitment posters there.44 The Marshal even responded warmly to a note from Colonel Labonne, Legion commander, acclaiming the Legion's part in restoring the country's "confidence in its own vertu" and in sparing Europe from the Bolshevik peril.45 But in the Unoccupied Zone, German Control officers found the Legion's recruitment offices virtually empty, and recruitment figures a mere trickle. During the month of August 1942, a total of three army men and one air force man arrived in Marseilles from North Africa to join the Legion. The over-all judgment of the German Armistice Commission in May 1942 was that French authorities were hindering recruitment for the Legion.46 44 OKW/i444, frame 5,594,823; P. Bourget and G. Lacratelle, Sur les murs de Paris (Paris, 1959), 54; Jacques Weygand, he Serment (Paris, i960), 140. 45 L e Temps and Figaro, 7 November 1941. The messages were printed on page 4. «OK.W/1437, frame 5.593.685; H2/184, frame 6,428,742; OKW/i436, frame 5,593,555; OKW/1605, frame 2,499,941.

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Officers in Politics, 1941-42. General Bridoux attempted to end this reticence and to make the Legion's volunteers full-fledged members of the French Army. Unlike their predecessors, volunteers in the new Legion tricolore were eligible for all the benefits of the regular Armistice Army: promotion, retirement, invalid pensions, and the right to win the Legion d'honneur and the Medaille militaire. Armistice Army commands were ordered repeatedly—as if considerable pressure was necessary—to set no barriers in the way of recruitment for the Legion, and to supply material to it.47 For career officers, the Legion was at once an attack upon professionalism and a violation of neutrality. General Bridoux was well aware of the "numerous opposition" to the new Legion within the Armistice Army; officers were "reticent" because of the political influences dominant in the Legion's central committee: those notorious Paris antimilitarists around Deat and Doriot.48 In the end, however, it was German opposition rather than French officers' reticence which kept Bridoux's Legion tricolore from ever being more than a name. From the first, Hitler had ordered "dilatory" handling of the initial AntiBolshevik Legion. Later, when the Germans were quite ready to have reinforcements on the Russian front, they were not prepared to see these battalions returned to properly French uses or to allow French units to excite Italian jealousy in North Africa. The German authorities finally had their way by simply ignoring the Legion tricolore and by continuing to act as if the old Anti-Bolshevik Legion were still the official agency. Shortly after the total 47 J.O., Lois et decrets, 18 July 1942; La France militaire, 1 and 8 July, 12 August 1942; Proces Delmotte, 13. 48 Bridoux, Journal, 17 June, 15-16 July 1942.

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Officers in Politics, 1941-42 occupation of France, in January 1943, the stillborn Legion tricolore was formally abolished.49 Admiral Darlan, who had been compensated for his fall from power in April 1942 with the new post of Commander in Chief of French Armed Forces, had no love for General Bridoux and his works. It was not long before the activities of the new War Minister began to chafe at the prerogatives of the Commander in Chief. The two commands were soon rivals. Although Bridoux was at first reassured that the limits of Admiral Darlan's authority had been "clearly defined" and that he acted "only on my suggestion" in army matters, by the end of July he was alarmed at the Admiral's independent power which seemed oriented against the policies of the government.50 On 27 July 1942, Bridoux urged President Laval to reconsider the texts of the previous April 16 which defined the relative powers of Darlan and the service chiefs. The Admiral now appeared to be exceeding his authority both in the use of funds and in control over personnel. Bridoux was also convinced that Darlan was trying to build a clientele within the army, a personal machine. The Admiral further appeared to be trying to control the intelligence services of the three arms, in a single centralized organization, whose loyalty to Laval's policies was doubtful. Now an outsider, Darlan was, in fact, displaying a new-found interest in contacts with Americans, and his chief of staff, General Georges Revers—later head of the OR.A. {organisation de resistance de I'armee) which helped in the Normandy landings in June 1944—was carrying out activities 49

OKW/1444b, frame 5,594,823; Bridoux, Journal, 10-12 October 1942; Nogueres, 363-364. 50 Bridoux, Journal, 18 June, 9 July, 20 July 1942.

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Officers in Politics, 1941-42 which Bridoux did not understand but suspected were pro-Allied. By September, the two officers were clashing openly in the presence of Marshal Petain.51 Although General Bridoux was never able to challenge the Admiral's personal position as Commander in Chief of French Armed Forces, these two ill-defined centers of responsibility created a clash of command in 1942 potentially more debilitating than the insufficient authority of command had been in 1940. The two commands worked at cross purposes, as is shown by the curious double assignment given General de Lattre of Tassigny in the fall of 1942. From the Commander in Chief of French Armed Forces, Admiral Darlan, De Lattre received command of a Theater of Operations in Provence, allegedly for the defense of the Mediterranean coast. The army staff, probably with the knowledge of General Bridoux, sent General de Lattre a handwritten letter on 15 June 1942 naming him to command the reoccupation of Paris "in case the German occupation forces should be brought to evacuate France."52 In this confusion of authority, it is difficult to see how the Armistice Army could have intervened effectively on either side at the time of the Allied landing of November 1942. With rival factions at the summit and with a revived political influence active in senior appointments, the role of cliques and clienteles in all officers' careers became more pronounced. It was one of the officers' reasons for rejoicing in Petain as Chief of State that he was supposed to eliminate all this chicanery. At last promotions and appointments were left where they should be, in the exclusive purview of officers. 61 52

Ibid., 20-21 July, 25-27 September 1942. De Lattre papers.

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Officers in Politics, 1941-42 Another affaire des fiches was supposed to be excluded for all time. In practice, however, the erstwhile "political" influence of deputies and ministers merely gave way to the same thing under another name, the influence of military clans and coteries. In fact, the "apolitical" officers of the Armistice Army were as adept at manipulating service careers as Third Republic politicians had been. The very choice of officers to fill the four thousand billets in the new Armistice Army had had its inevitable political aspect. Darlan had helped the Germans get rid of his archrival, Weygand; and in the weeks after November 1941, he had made extensive changes in the generals' roster. Now, under Bridoux, command appointments based on nontechnical, nonmilitary criteria reached a new high under the influence of growing invasion jitters. Laval distrusted the army, partly by habit, partly for its part in his 1940 fall, partly for its reviving "anti-Boche" tradition. He let Bridoux know a number of times in the summer of 1942 that he was "preoccupied by the possible repercussions in the army of an English action on our coasts."53 To reassure the Head of Government, Bridoux—working in full accord this time with Darlan—carried out a new purge expressly designed to "eliminate turbulent elements constituted by a certain number of commanding officers whose unintelligent activity has had the effect of setting a bad example and maintaining among their subordinates political activities opposed to the government." On 15 September 1942 the retirement age for officers on active duty was again lowered for each rank and for each type of duty, as in August 1940. Among the officers forced into retirement was one of its most conspicuously revanchard generals, General Aubert-Achille-Jules Frere, commander of BS

Bridoux, Journal, 6 August 1942.

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Officers in Politics, 1941-42 the Second Group of Military Divisions at Avignon, who was later to die in a German prison camp for his part in setting up the main officer resistance movement, the OJI.A. Retired also was General Robert de Saint-Vincent, who had "not been convinced" by Laval's luncheon talk on May 20. Indeed half of the eight Military Divisions received new chiefs in the shake-up. Contemplating these changes, Bridoux observed with satisfaction that "when the command has been reorganized by the application of the new law on retirement ages, there will no longer be any worry about the calm of the units."5* Approaching its second birthday, the Armistice Army could hardly claim that the replacement of civilian War Ministers by generals, the eclipse of parliament, and the elimination of politiquard officers in the old sense had really liberated the army from political influence. Curiously enough, it was the power given to high-ranking officers and the executive feebleness of the Marshal's so-called authoritarian government which gave free rein to the growth of cliques. Nontechnical criteria were as often the basis for promotion and appointments in the Armistice Army as under the Third Republic, particularly as the rumors of an Allied landing in the fall of 1942 aroused conflicting senses of duty among French generals. Finally, after April 1942, Laval had reached a degree of civilian interference in army matters which would have been difficult for a Third Republic prime minister to achieve. In 1940, a number of officers had blamed military factionalism upon the interference of civilians. Liberation from civilian control, however, had led only to a rampant play of officer politics in 54 Bridoux, Journal, 28 July, 6 and 31 August 1942; /.0., Lois et decrets, 1942, p. 2723; Bulletin officiel, 1942, iv, 17; Fernet, 189; Weygand, Le general Frere (Paris, 1949), 214; La France militaire, 27 August 1942.

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Officers in Politics, 1941-42 the Armistice Army. Perhaps the disagreeable lesson was that only an unquestioned civilian supremacy, preferably under a Clemenceau who would crack heads together, could preserve the alleged inherent unity of the French officer corps.

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CHAPTER

IX

The Party of Revanche: Resistance in the Armistice Army No PROFESSIONAL officer was satisfied with an army more appropriate to Ruritania than to France. The Armistice Army was tolerable only if temporary. Eventually France must once again have one of the world's great land forces. If goals were agreed upon, however, methods were not. "We must imitate the Reichswehr between 1919 and 1933," wrote General Bridoux, Laval's chosen War Minister, in September 1942.1 Explicit in Bridoux's remark was the notion of slow, evolutionary growth within the letter, at least, of foreign restrictions; implicit in it was a hint of clandestine rearmament. The Vichy high command had already won some relaxations in armistice limitations in the fall of 1940 by proving France's willingness to defend the Empire against Allied use. The generals had brought a few more concessions in 1941 by agreeing to supply military material to the Axis, by fighting back in Syria, and by acquiescing in General Weygand's retirement. Some officers couldn't wait for the fruits of slow, legal evolution, however. They wanted to swell French military power at once, illegally, clandestinely, in violation of the armistice. That professional urge was the beginning of "resistance" in the Armistice Army. The most elementary reaction of a defeated army is to hide away all the equipment it can, for some still-unplanned future use. German officials fully expected the French Army to emulate their own 1919 efforts to hide weapons in caves 1

BrIdOUX, Journal, 7 September 1942.

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Army

and cellars. "The Germans have a 'camouflage' reflex," the French delegation at Wiesbaden reported on 21 October 1940. "Everything which lacks clarity, any discrepancy between two lists, the smallest discovery by a Control Commission sets it in motion." In spite of their diligent searches, however, the German authorities found very few camouflaged weapons. As of 17 February 1941, the German Army Command (OKH) judged that there was "no great supply of hidden material" in France. The tanks and guns which were left had either been removed to Germany or stored in German-supervised depots. What remained in French hands was in poor condition, and its use would be a "mere improvization."2 It was with considerable surprise, then, that the German forces which occupied the Free Zone in November 1942 began to discover important caches of hidden weapons. By the middle of April 1943, 536 secret arms stocks had been discovered, including material as important as "38 dismantled tanks of an unknown U.S. model." Clearly a lot of military material had been hidden away after the armistice. It is less clear, however, by whose authority this material was hidden away, and for what purposes. Hiding arms began as an individual local initiative. A few officers hid away arms and ammunition even before the armistice had been signed. Others began to do so in the late summer months when the old units were dissolved and new Armistice Army units were being formed. Gradually, through personal contacts, some of these officers coordinated their individual initiatives.3 2

DFCAA, i, 254, 11, 120; H2/184, frame 6,428,809. The following pages are based upon interviews; Weygand, HI, 322-323; General Picquendar testimony in Proces Pitain, 636; Mollard papers; OKW/1353, frames 5,575,212-252; OKW/1420, frames 5,590,571-580. 3

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At a date now impossible to determine, but probably before the first week in September, the high command of the new Armistice Army began to coordinate and direct these activities from above. General Colson, War Minister until 6 September 1940, is said to have issued a "very secret order" on July 5 or 6 urging that valuable weapons be hidden away rather than stored in German-controlled depots. General Weygand recalled after the war that he had given similar orders as early as the end of June 1940, orders which took on a new urgency when the German Armistice Commission refused to permit the Armistice Army to have modern weapons. Additional urgency may have been stimulated on 1 August 1940 when General Stulpnagel informed General Huntziger that in view of the unexpected failure of England to sue for peace, Ger­ many would have to insist upon the delivery of the most important categories of weapons, rather than their mere storage, for extra security.4 Official complicity in the camouflage of weapons after the Germans began to tighten their grip on the Armistice Army can never have been conspicuous after General Hun­ tziger became War Minister on September 6. Huntziger was very eager to prove to the German authorities how loyally France was carrying out its part of the agreement. On ι August 1940, for example, he pointed out the arms depots already established under German control as evi­ 5 dence of French sincerity. Nevertheless within the Armistice Army command itself an illegal organization was set up to oversee clandestine stocks of weapons and military transport. This organiza­ tion was the Conservation du materiel, later and more 4

DFCAA, i, 109; Delegation francaise, "comptes-rendus," ι

1940. 5

Ibid.

284

August

Resistance in the Armistice Army flatteringly known as the Camouflage du matSriel, the CDM. In December 1940 Colonel Picquendar, chief of the Army General Staff, appointed Major Emile Mollard head of the Material Section of his First Bureau. With the encouragement of Colonel Picquendar, Mollard in turn created the CDM. to find, hide, and maintain supplementary weapons and vehicles in excess of the Armistice Army's allowance. Major Mollard's official position as head of the Material Section of the First Bureau provided an effective cover for his unofficial activities as head of the CDM. He gathered about himself a small group of staff officers willing to undertake an illegal project. In addition to his own headquarters, Mollard developed an "autonomous section" within the sous-direction du train in the War Ministry offices in the Hotel Mart at Royat, an office officially concerned with transport. He appointed a local representative of the CDM. in each Military Region, and in some garrisons and departments where suitable persons could be found. Local representatives were left as independent as possible of centralized control. Within this loosely organized framework the CDM. had three fields of activity. Its earliest function, and the one most indisputably blessed with official sanction, was the preparation of a secret fleet of military trucks camouflaged as civilian transport companies. According to the terms of the armistice, the Armistice Army was expected to move its cavalry by horse or bicycle, its infantry on foot, and its supplies by horse-drawn vehicles. An infantry regiment, for example, was provided a total motorized transport of five automobiles for staff officers and six motorcycles. The Armistice Army command understood that a force which moved at a walk was practically useless, even for internal 2«5

Resistance in the Armistice

Army

order. Furthermore, "at this time the French War Ministry feared an Italian attack upon Nice and made preparations to oppose this aggression by military means."6 General Huntziger himself had already written a letter on 21 September 1940, soon after assuming office as War Minister, urging the Ministry of Finance and the State Property Administration {Direction des domaines) to withdraw trucks from the official German-controlled stockpiles before the Germans themselves could seize them. To get the French economy moving again, it was essential that of the 70,000 trucks still in French military hands at the close of fighting, that large number requisitioned from civilian businesses in 1939 be restored to civilian use. Hence the French delegation at Wiesbaden was willing to make concessions to "unfreeze" these stockpiled vehicles, a step which was finally completed only in July 1941.7 The CDM. went much farther than merely restoring requisitioned commercial vehicles, however. With the cooperation of the Ministry of Finance and the State Property Administration, military trucks were ceded by fictitious contracts to private companies on the understanding that the Armistice Army could use them in an emergency. The CDM. was evidently beginning to move trucks around within the depots, to shift them among depots, and to change registration numbers by December 1940, for the German Control Commissions noted all of these suspicious activities. Sometimes the Control Commissions' stenciled mark "K.U.K." was covered up. At Issoudun, bulk fuel tankers were being disguised as civilian property and slipped out of the depot. To the Germans' exasperation, the French depot commanders always insisted that the e

OKW/i353, frame 5,575,214; OKW/1420, frame 5,590,573. DFCAA, iv, 622; OKW/1439, frame 5,594,331.

7

286

Resistance in the Armistice Army best trucks were civilian property, and could not be sent to Germany as military booty.8 Unknown to them, many of these trucks were being transferred to civilian transport companies and absorbed into their fleets. The first of these firms to receive military vehicles was "Les Rapides du Littoral" at Nice, a bus line, which set up a new trucking branch. Since this first transaction took place in the XVth Military Region, the companies were known as Societes XV. Eventually there were eighteen Sociites XV. They received a total of 3,720 vehicles by fictitious contract. Typically, transportation officers and noncommissioned officers on "armistice leave" were assigned to these companies to oversee their use of military equipment. The trucks were required to be ready on two hours' notice for the Armistice Army in case of military emergency. That emergency never came. In November 1942, when German occupation forces took over the former Free Zone, the Societes XV were given antedated purchase papers to prove that the army vehicles belonged to them by a bona fide business transaction. The secret could not be preserved, however, and in December 1943, Lieutenant Colonel MoIlard and many of his collaborators were arrested. The German authorities decided to retain the Societes XV for their own use.9 At the end of the war, 1,344 of the original 3,720 trucks remained in the hands of the companies. Most of the rest (949) had fallen into German hands through seizure, sale, or barter. Only 134 were ever used by resistance units. Clearly the Sociites XV were a failure from a material point of view. And the psychological benefit of having participated in clandestine operations against the 8 9

OKW/i432, frames 5,592,780(! OKW/1353, frame 5.575.53^-

287

Resistance in the Armistice

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enemy was undermined after the war because the companies who used military trucks were suspected of profiteering.10 Although camouflaged military transport was the first activity of the CDM., it was neither the last nor the most important. At a date now impossible to determine, the CDM. also attempted to bring the scattered local initiatives in the camouflage of arms and ammunition under unified direction. The collection phase, the discovery of arms which could be hidden, was virtually ended by the spring of 1941. The German Control Commissions which began to function in August 1940 gradually established a close check on the remaining stockpiles which had not already been taken into German custody. Few weapons and little ammunition remained to be hidden, for the French efforts to prove their loyalty to the armistice were at play here too. General Haider recorded in his diary in October 1940 that the French were turning in more guns than the Germans had expected, and, in March 1941 that the surrender of arms and material was making "surprisingly good progress."11 The work of the CDM. was not finished, however, when there were no more spare weapons left to hide. It was Major Mollard's policy to have all hidden material serviced and kept in repair for use on short notice. In January 1943, when the unexpected discovery of hundreds of weapons caches was leading the German Control Commissions to suspect the existence of a "central organization," they ob10 Mollard papers. The "Administration des contributions directes" of the Ministry of Finance cleared the companies of illegal use of military equipment or illegal profits in May 1946. 11 Daniel Devilliers, L'Etandard evade (Paris, 1957), I J 8 ; The Haider Diaries, 10 October 1940, 18 March 1941.

288

Resistance in the Armistice Army served that even the caches which appeared to date from 1940 were carefully maintained.12 How important was the weaponry and ammunition hidden away and maintained by the C.DM.} Some rough quantitative estimate is provided by collating two sorts of information: the lists of hidden material discovered by the German Control Commissions in 1943, and the lists published after the war by CDM. veterans in order to claim a share in the resistance. Even if one accepts the larger of the two figures for each category of weapons, the Armistice Army could only have been reinforced by about 80 per cent in rifles, machine guns, and mortars. The hidden antitank weapons of various calibers, whether sixty or one hundred is the nearer estimate, would of course have provided a weapon which was altogether forbidden to the Armistice Army under armistice regulations.13 Qualitatively it has been claimed that, at least in North Africa, the best material was hidden away while only obsolete material remained in the official, Germancontrolled depots.14 According to the lists of material seized by the Germans in the Free Zone, however, the CDM. did not have conspicuous success with the most modern equipment. For example, the 25 mm. antitank gun which had proved ineffective against modern tanks in 1940 made up from half to two-thirds of the total weapons in this category, while only a few of the more effective 37 and 47 mm. pieces could be saved. Evidently the most modern material in the official depots was often removed to Germany before it could be smuggled out into hiding. One 12

OKW/i397, frame 5,586,437; Devilliers, 16. See Table I, p. 290. Marcel Emerit, "La preparation de la revanche en Afrique du Nord sous Ie regime de l'armistice," extrait des Actes du Sie congres des societes savantes Rouen-Caen, 1956 (Paris, 1956), 797. 13

14

289

Resistance in the Armistice Army TABLE I WAR MATERIAL CAMOUFLAGED IN UNOCCUPIED FRANCE Category of material

German Armistice Commission records*

General Mollard*

"individual arms" rifle ammunition machine guns mortars 75 mm. cannon 75 mm. shells 47 mm. antitank 37 m m . antitank 25 m m . antitank

46,585 28,000,000 rounds 5,828

85,000 over 1,000 tons 9,500 200 55 9,000 18 — 80

3>IQ3 17 ia,73° 25 6 28

WAR MATERIAL CAMOUFLAGED IN NORTH AFRICA Category of material rifles automatic rifles machine guns mortars 75 mm. cannon "cannon" 47 m m . antitank 25 and 37 m m . antitank tanks armored cars

Weygandc

Emerifi

55,000 1,500 2,500 210 82 —

45,000 1,250 1,380

43 45 5 23

165 41

35 36 31 12

a "In Geheimlagern erfasstes Material," Anlage I zu K.J. der D.W.St.K. Kontrolkbt., Nr. 739/43 geh. v. 30.3., OKW/1397 (U.S. National Archives T-77, Roll 843, frames 5,586,383-387). b General Emile Mollard, in Amicale des anciens du C.D.M., Bulletin d'injormation, No. 1, April 1947, 13. c General Maxime Weygand, "La Reconstitution de l'armee d'Afrique," in Hoover Institution, La Vie en France sous !'occupation (1940-44), 11, 811. d Marcel Emerit, "La Preparation de Ia revanche en Afrique du Nord sous Ie regime de l'armistice," 8ie Congres des sodites savantes Rouen-Caen ig^6 (Paris, 1956), 796-798.

290

Resistance in the Armistice Army senior officer, recalling the obsolete weapons with which he had gone to war in 1940, rejoiced bitterly that this "ridiculous" equipment had finally been destroyed by German discoveries. He hoped the Germans had gotten it all.15 Neither quantitatively nor qualitatively, therefore, would the CDMh material have made the Armistice Army much more effective. While it would have increased the French capacity to assist Allied invasion forces, it would not have made the Armistice Army itself a fair match for the German occupying forces. No doubt the officers involved were well aware of these limitations. The most ambitious effort of the CDM. was the clandestine construction of several crude armored scout cars. The project was set under way in April 1941 under the direction of Major Arnaud, CDM. representative in the XVIth Military Region. The work was carried out by J.-J. Ramon, director of tank production at the Renault company until October 1940, in a series of barns and warehouses in small towns near Castres and in the Perigord. Ramon obtained 225 General Motors chassis purchased by the French Army before the defeat and never used, and the armor plate from a dismantled armored train. Turrets were assembled around standard 25 mm. antitank guns in a converted tobacco barn near Saint-Cyprien (Dordogne). A prototype model was tested on 17 October 1942, and shown ten days later to General Picquendar. On November 11, the prototype was dismantled and the accumulated parts were stored in caves and quarries near Castres and Sarlat (Dordogne). 16 The results of this project, too, evidently fell into German hands. In April 1943, a German Control Commission 15 General Tony Albord, Les Bases d'une armee nouvelle (Paris, n.d., but 1946), 136. 16 Joseph Restany, Une enterprise clandestine sous I'occupation allemande (Paris, 1948).

29/

Resistance in the Armistice

Army

discovered in a walled-up cave at Sarlat the parts of thirtyeight dismantled tanks "of an unknown American model."17 The CDM. was not the only group of officers faithful to Petain who violated the armistice terms. Within the Armistice Army General Staff itself, plans were laid in 1941 and 1942 for ways in which a reinforced Armistice Army might be used to help liberate France. No good evidence remains, to be sure, of serious planning during the first dark months of the armistice. Only after the German invasion of the Soviet Union, and especially after Pearl Harbor, did the problem of using the Armistice Army when the tides of war had definitely turned begin to seem relevant. At some time in the summer of 1941, Colonel Picquendar, chief of staff, ordered the head of his Third Bureau (operations), Lieutenant Colonel Alain Touzet du Vigier, to form a bureau d'etudes, a close circle of staff officers to be known only to themselves, to draft contingency plans for Armistice Army action. Its members were: Major Clogenson, assistant chief of the Third Bureau who replaced Touzet du Vigier as head in January 1942; Major Moillard of the First Bureau (materiel), who was in touch with Mollard and the CDM.; and Captain Mesnet, a transportation specialist from the Fourth Bureau. Under the cover of general military studies, these men examined the possibility of tripling the Armistice Army. Whereas total mobilization was clearly out of the question in any foreseeable emergency, it seemed feasible to plan the creation of sixteen additional divisions, to be armed by the "OK.W/1397, frame 5,586,367.

292

Resistance in the Armistice Army CDM., to flank the existing eight divisions of the Armistice Army.18 Where could the extra sixteen divisions be found? One obvious potential reserve army, the Chantiers de jeunesse, was excluded from the start by these planners, for neither General de la Porte du Theil nor the high command was willing to jeopardize its essential educational mission. All the French Army's recruitment offices, moreover, had been closed by the German authorities who wisely resolved to prohibit the accumulation of any body of documents which might permit the rapid recall of the recently demobilized troops.19 As for the national veterans' movement, the Legion frangaise des combattants, even if some of its local branches may have organized themselves along the lines of former units, the general staff was opposed to the dangerously transparent move of trying to make it a paramilitary force. Anyway, most of its members belonged to the World War I generation.20 The secret mobilization planners would have to improvise. The most complex of these improvisations was a punched-card mobilization system worked out by Rene Carmille, former officer turned civilian technical expert for the general staff who had become head of the new National Statistics Service of the Finance Ministry in 1941.21 Not only did Carmille's service own the first mechanical 18 This and the following paragraphs are based on interviews; Clogenson papers; Jacquey papers; General Picquendar testimony in Prods Petain, 636, 641. 19 DFCAA, n, 70. 20 Interviews; Xavier Vallat, Li? Nez de Cleopatre (Paris, 1957), 193-

218. 21 The following paragraphs are based upon interviews; Jacquey papers; Bulletin trimestriel de !'Association des amis de Vecole superieure de guerre, No. 12 (April 1961), 60-61.

293

Resistance in the Armistice

Army

data-processing system in France; its Demography Branch had a larger quantity of information about Frenchmen of military age than even the recruitment agencies had possessed in September 1939. To the demobilization papers of 2,500,000 former French soldiers had been added the cards enabling demobilized soldiers to collect their pay, tobacco ration cards, the results of a July 1941 census of all persons between the ages of eighteen and sixty in the Free Zone, and the identification number and card assigned by the Vichy government to all French citizens. Toward the end of July 1941, Lieutenant Colonels Henri Zeller, Pfister, and Perisse of the Armistice Army general staff persuaded Carmille to use the resources of the National Statistical Service to prepare a system to mobilize fifteen divisions in two weeks, and a general reserve of approximately one hundred units over a longer period. During the winter of 1941-42, Carmille, working privately with Major Pierre Jacquey who had been detached from the general staff to help him, pulled out the names of 220,000 trained veterans still living in the Free Zone, assigned them to units by localities so that partial mobilization by regions might be possible in an emergency, and prepared punched cards so that the mobilization orders could be printed within a few hours. Although the German Control Commissions were intensely suspicious of the Statistical Service and its regional branches,22 they did not actually discover the mobilization cards, which were stored near Lyon. Rene Carmille was deported for other activities and died in Germany in 1945. His brainchild was never used. In truth, his was not a device for clandestine mobilization. It was a clandestine de22

OKW/i6o5, frame 2,499,841. 294

Resistance in the Armistice Army vice for hastening an open mobilization in case the opportunity for it ever arose. The use to which this reinforced Armistice Army should be put, once raised from eight to twenty-four divisions, is less clear. The planners estimated that their greatest opportunity grew out of the great loss of German manpower in Russia in the fall of 1941, and the continued involvement of German forces deep in the Soviet Union in 1942. If Germany had eventually to withdraw some of her occupying forces from France, the opportunity might present itself to move north and occupy Paris. This aim seems to have predominated in 1942, when General Verneau had replaced Picquendar as chief of staff. A letter to General de Lattre de Tassigny of 15 June 1942 makes these aims clear: The Third Bureau has been studying for a long time the dispositions to take to reoccupy Paris in case the German forces should be brought to evacuate France. . . . I have finally been able to take a decision by which you are designated to command the army charged with the movement on Paris. . . . No other officer will be informed except you and your future chief of staff. signed, Olleris.23 Such a proposal clearly looked into the rather distant future. The dominant viewpoint of Colonel Touzet du Vigier during his tenure as chief of the Third Bureau in 1941 was rather to plan a joint action with Anglo-American landing forces, probably on the Mediterranean coast. Then the Armistice Army would hold a "sill" on the Alps-Cevennes 23

De Lattre papers; Colonel Olleris was deputy chief of staff.

295

Resistance in the Armistice

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line, with the more northerly units moving south to the line, and the coastal units moving inland. In the most long-range thoughts of Du Vigier's group, five distinct forces seemed to be available: the Armistice Army itself, the new units brought up by partial mobilization, the reserve of experts and technicians and exceptional officers who had been stationed in the greater safety of North Africa, an avant-garde of clandestine groups in the Occupied Zone, and, finally, the equivalent of a "parachuted army" in Germany, the prisoners of war. The General Staff of the Armistice Army was by no means the only group involved in speculative planning. On the local level, the Second Group of Military Regions is said to have carried out map exercises in 1941 for a hypothetical seizure of the port of La Rochelle, in the Occupied Zone, to provide a deep-water port for an Allied landing.24 In the summer of 1942, Admiral Darlan himself as Commander in Chief of French Armed Forces, named General de Lattre as theater operations commander for the Mediterranean Coast, at a time when the opinions of General de Lattre were known to all. Best known of the preliminary strategic plans are those made in contact with United States representatives. In North Africa in 1942, the U.S. diplomat Robert D. Murphy worked with several groups of officers eager to obtain information about eventual American assistance. Although General Weygand saw to the clandestine preparation of a limited mobilization to provide services, supply, and local security in case the African Armistice Army had to take action, he cut off abrupdy American representatives who tried to discuss these matters personally with him in May 24 General Revers in Hoover Institution, La France sous I'occupation allemande (Paris, 1958-59), 11, 799; interviews.

296

Resistance in the Armistice

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25

1941. But a number of subordinate officers were eager to discuss such eventualities with United States representatives, especially after Pearl Harbor. Murphy asked Washington's advice on 9 January 1942 about whether to encourage a group of officers "who wish to resume hostilities," since he had recently received "frequent" approaches from officers who wished to work actively for the Allied cause. By the summer of 1942, Murphy was working closely with two general officers in important positions: General Charles Mast, chief of staff to the commander of troops in Algeria, and General Emile Bethouart, commander of the Casablanca Division. Lieutenant Colonel Jousse and General Mast forwarded lists of material needed to make the African Armistice Army capable of effective action.26 The escape of General Giraud from the German prison fortress of Konigstein in April 1942 created another center for strategic planning. Giraud, having withstood the pressures of Laval and Abetz to return to prison for the sake of "collaboration," settled near Lyons, at the country house "Fromente" owned by a Lyons industrialist, Roche de la Rigodiere. Here, profiting by the "immense prestige" he enjoyed in the Armistice Army, he began to make contacts. On 17 June 1942, he met Weygand near Aix-lesbains and, having discussed the possibilities for action linked with an Allied landing in southern France, he urged Weygand to take charge of the "French uprising." Although Weygand declined this task on the grounds of age and health, the meeting ended in apparent agreement. Giraud was convinced of the goodwill of Murphy, who, he felt, wished France restored to her proper place in the 25 Weygand, in, 399-401; Prods Weygand, 60; U.S. Foreign Relations, 1941, n, 344-346· 26 U.S. Foreign Relations, 1941, 11, 227, 228, 263, 331; Marcel Vigneras, Rearming the French (Washington, 1957), 12-14.

297

Resistance in the Armistice Army world, and was perhaps more confident than Weygand that Petain would think in the same way "when the veil had been torn away."27 So far, Giraud's activity seems to have been confined to conversations with military leaders. For example, two days later, on June 19, he met at Toulouse with former officers of his old Seventh Army of 1940: Baures, Chesnelong, Noetinger, Γ Abbe Lasalle, Colonel Schmitt. Two days later, on June 21, he talked to General de Lattre at Montpellier about his ideas for the future, but found the General cau­ tious and noncommittal. It was only at the end of July 1942 that General Giraud and his contacts and confederates began making firm plans. The planning stage began only after Giraud had been con­ tacted by an official of the U.S. Embassy in the Forest of Randan near Vichy and had answered President Roosevelt's message asking him to work with the United States for the liberation of France, on the promise that French sover­ eignty would be restored in full. From this point on, Giraud began the mise au point of his plans. Without precise direction from the United States, even after Colonel Jousse, General Mast, and Lemaigre-Dubreuil had been in secret conference with General Mark Clark on 20 October 1942 at a secluded beach villa near Cherchell, fifty miles west of Algiers, Giraud counted upon an Allied invasion with two characteristics: it would take place in southern France, and not before the spring of 1943. Basing his estimates upon these two facts, General Giraud and his aides devised a complex offensive plan by which the mobile units of the Armistice Army, reinforced by hidden weapons stocks and clandestine units, would 27

Giraud, 147-152; Weygand, in, 545; interviews.

298

Resistance in the Armistice Army make a surprise attack northward from the Lyons area into Alsace, falling back toward Belgium. The purpose of this maneuver would not be to conquer territory, but to "sow disorder in the Germans' rear," and thus permit the landing of a more powerful Allied force. This sudden offensive toward the north would also be supported by a British attack on the north coast, since General Giraud estimated that early Allied occupation of the airfields in southern France would provide Allied air superiority. Giraud's ambitious first plans were brusquely interrupted by the stunning and humiliating message of 2 November 1942 that the Allied landing would take place within six days, and only in North Africa. Swallowing his resentment at this "lack of confidence" on the part of the Allied high command, for General Clark had concealed these plans at the Cherchell meeting, Giraud and his staff prepared a simpler alternate plan for a mere holding operation on the Mediterranean coast of France to facilitate a later Allied landing. When he left France by British submarine on 4 November 1942, General Giraud still hoped to divert a part of the Allied landing to the south coast of France to take advantage of the Armistice Army.28 The story of arms camouflage and of clandestine planning in the Armistice Army comes from that particularly dusty corner of the historical attic given over to plans for contingencies which never arose. The best documented of the Armistice Army's resistance activity, hiding extra arms and ammunition for the day of reckoning, did not survive the German occupation of the Free Zone in November and December 1942. The clandestine mobilization schemes and the various strategic plans for a seizure of Paris, of a deep28

General Andre Beaufre, letter to the author, 21 July 1962; Giraud, M7> 157·

299

Resistance in the Armistice Army water port, or for holding a "sill" in southern France to cover an Allied landing, which have little of the independent corroboration provided for the CDM. by German or Italian discovery, have lived on only in the imprecise recollections of regretful memories. Nevertheless the difficulties faced by these groups, the party of revanche, reveal important features of the Armistice Army experience. In the first place, any very effective plans and preparations for making the Armistice Army the nucleus of a liberation force were doubly restricted, in ways in which the Reichswehr never was after 1919: by the effective operation of foreign inspectors throughout the country, and by the unwillingness of the high command to act independendy of government policy. The German Armistice Commission, working with admirable efficiency and dispatch, set up three Kontrollinspelotion branches, one each for the army, the navy, and for war industry. The Heeres\ontrollinspe\tion began functioning on 10 August 1940, during the demobilization phase and before the Armistice Army proper had come into being. Although its three control commissions (army, aviation, and war material) were located in the Occupied Zone at Bourges, its nine subcommissions carried out inspection throughout the Unoccupied Zone at their own discretion. The presence of a French liaison officer and General von Stiilpnagel's promise that the inspectors would not be chicaneur were the only French safeguards. In 1941, German inspection teams were also stationed in Mediterranean ports.29 By the time Armistice Army officers could discern any future ahead other than an imminent peace 29 DFCAA, i, 68, 92, 11, 153; OKW/1439, frame 5,594,311; Delegation francaise, "comptes-rendus," 1 August 1940.

JOO

Resistance in the Armistice Army conference with Germany, the German inspectors were already well entrenched. Resistance plans in the Armistice Army were also seriously handicapped by the opposition of senior officers. The German clandestine "re-armers" after 1919 had to keep their projects secret from a hostile civil authority, but they worked in the warm cocoon of command approval. The planners of revanche within the Armistice Army, on the contrary, had to face the opposition not only of the civil authority but of their own seniors. The Armistice Army high command, itself a potent voice in the making of Vichy policy, was deeply committed to avoiding rash violations of the armistice. General Picquendar, even when he testified on Marshal Petain's behalf at the trial in 1945, described the highest echelons' support for his projects as "rather timid, rather reticent."30 General Weygand made his own clandestine plans, but rigorously repressed any divisive or dissident project. General Huntziger, War Minister from September 1940 to November 1941, was far less well-disposed to illegal activity. To be sure, it was he, according to German information, who tried to slip trucks out of their depots to forestall German confiscation on 21 September 1940. If, as the Germans were told, his major motive was to prepare to resist an Italian seizure of Nice, he was far less ready to tolerate any provocative measures against the stronger Axis partner. Having signed the armistice, he acted as if its terms bound him personally. When he received word indirectly of the work being done by the CDM., he gave Major Mollard "the dressing down of his life." He accused the officers who took part in illegal activities of committing 30

Proces Pelain, 637.

301

Resistance in the Armistice Army the whole nation by their folly. But he did not seek out and hunt down the members of the CDM.31 General Bridoux appears to have received with more equanimity than his predecessor the information that clandestine stocks of weapons were being maintained.32 Bridoux entertained notions of playing a more active role in the war, in the belief that French national grandeur depended upon military participation. His public advice to generals commanding Military Regions, at any rate, was to "act like the Reichswehr between 1918 and 1933—to work in silence." The CDM. leaders experienced no active opposition from Bridoux.38 War Minister Bridoux' chief of staff, General Delmotte, certainly knew about the CDM. since he had participated in it as a colonel commanding a regiment in the XIIth Military Region in 1941. By 1942, however, his viewpoint seconded that of his superior officer. Not at all averse to a possible increase in French power, Delmotte wished to be sure that that power would not be used in a dangerous fashion. He warned Major MoIIard to "stick to his role of camouflaging materiel, without concerning himself with the use that could be envisaged for it." As for Admiral Darlan, he sent General Georges Revers, his chief of staff, to walk in the woods with General Giraud in the fall of 1942 giving counsels of prudence and caution.34 Generally speaking, a much more tolerant mood toward violations of the armistice prevailed in the Army General Staff than in the War Ministry. Officers expected to find quite different atmospheres in the two headquarters, the Hotel des Bains and the Hotel Thermal. A War Ministry 31

OKW/i353, frame 5,575,214; interviews. Bridoux, Journal, 6 August 1942. 83 Bridoux, Journal, 7 September 1942; interviews. 34 Interviews. 82

302

Resistance in the Armistice Army view was likely to prevail in local commands, however, for there was a bureau des menees anti-nationales in each unit to oppose the spread of dangerous ideas and projects. Formed in September 1940 to "cover" the illegal continua­ tion of the dissolved Fifth Bureau (security and counter­ espionage), the bureaux des menees anti-nationales had two missions.85 Ostensibly they worked against opposition move­ ments, "Communism, separatisms, espionage," within the armed forces. Clandestinely, they opposed the operation of foreign intelligence agents, especially Axis agents, in the Free Zone. According to Colonel Paul Paillole, who headed a successor organization, the service de securiti militaire, some fifty "traitors and spies" were quietly condemned to death and executed in the Free Zone from 1940 through 1942. It was in fact at German insistence that the bureaux m.a. had to be dissolved in April 1942, although the Ger­ man charge of contact with Allied security agents was incorrect. As usual, the Germans attributed to the Armistice Army a more serious opposition than actually existed. There is indeed some evidence that the bureau m.a. arrested Allied intelligence agents as well as Axis agents.38 And without denying its fundamentally anti-German ori­ 87 entation, this counterespionage organ appeared to all but a few well-informed officers primarily in its public guise as the opponent "of all suspected of having Gaullist senti­ ments or simply of wishing for the defeat of the Axis." The ΜΛ. officer in each unit and in each mess made it 85

Letter to the author 3 August 1962, from Colonel Paul Paillole. Soustelle, 1, 304. 87 Bridoux, Journal, 9 October 1942, lamented the disturbing report by Colonel de la Rocque that the bureaux mji. "are still gathering intelligence information on the occupying forces." Colonel Paillole fled to North Africa in November 1942 and served in General Giraud's intelligence services. 36

303

Resistance in the Armistice Army difficult to express pro-Gaullist opinions,38 however tentative or speculative. The most notorious of the regime's efforts to inhibit any erosion of strict discipline was the oath sworn by all officers "to the person of the Chief of State, promising to obey him in all that he will order me to do for the good of the service and for the success of French arms."39 The imposition of a personal oath upon officers, standard practice in French imperial or monarchical regimes but unknown since 1870, was not a sign of particular suspicion toward a group known to be largely enthusiastic for the Marshal's government. The oath was not limited to officers, nor was it out of keeping with the paternalism, the taste for symbolic ceremonies, and the revival of medieval customs so characteristic of the Vichy style. Not only did all other state servants eventually take an oath to the Marshal; athletes swore "to practice sports with unselfishness, discipline, and loyalty, to become better and to better serve the country." Peasants took the following oath: "Passionately attached to the nation, the soil, the family, convinced that Marshal Petain is protecting the primordial interests of the country, I swear obedience to his person, his program, to his doctrine so profoundly inspired by Christian doctrine." Simone de Beauvoir recalled taking an oath "like everyone else" to retain her lycee post. The ceremonial swearing of allegiance, preferably in a setting of great solemnity, was no novelty under the Vichy regime.40 What set the military oath apart from civilian oaths was its redundancy. An officer assumed that he had conse38

General Collet, testimony in Proces Dentz; interviews. Acte constitutionnel No. 8, J.O., 16 August 1941, 3439. 40 Figaro, 19 February 1942, 23-24 May 1942; J.O., 16 August 1941, 3439; La France militaire, 30 April 1941; Simone de Beauvoir, La Force de Vage (Paris, i960), 478. 39

304

Resistance in the Armistice Army crated his life to obedience to his country. Indeed he had often publicly promised at the swearing-in ceremony of a new commanding officer "to obey all that he commands for the good of the service, for the execution of the military regulations, and the preservation of the laws of the Republic." Many officers thus considered it demeaning to take another oath like civil servants. Some still believed after the war that the oath was imposed upon the army by civilians.41 It would be difficult to show that the personal oath to Petain in itself prevented any officer from joining the Gaullist movement when there were so many better reasons. Most officers probably took the oath as a mere formality; others claim never to have taken it at all, since the rigor with which the oath was administered seems to have varied among different commands.42 Many members of the party of revanche were certain of the secret approval of the victor of Verdun. After November 1942, the oath's validity could hardly have seemed convincing to any dedicated revanchiste. One Alsatian Colonel, commander of the recently dissolved 152nd Infantry Regiment, told the German Control Commission on 4 December 1942 that General Giraud had not broken his word to the Marshal by helping the Allies since the Marshal was no longer free.43 The oath was probably invoked more often after the war than during it. Its sanctity helped explain to hostile critics why an officer had remained loyal to the regime. In fact, however, army officers stood by the Marshal's government, not because of physical constraint or the moral con41

Jacques Weygand, Le Serment (Paris, i960), 22; interviews. Jacques Weygand, 13; Raymond Brugere, Vent, Vidi, Vichy—et la suite (Paris, 1952), 65; interviews. «OKW/1397, frame 5,586,465. 42

305

Resistance in the Armistice Army straint of an oath, but because they were pleased with it. The weight of official displeasure, even if one believed that the Marshal secretly approved, inevitably made the activities of the clandestine planners less convincing. Because of the dangers of wide disclosure, little groups went their own way in isolation. It was typical of Armistice Army clandestine projects that the Giraud circle worked independently of the Armistice Army General Staff in 1942, which by then was primarily interested in a move on Paris if the Germans withdrew the occupation force to fight in Russia. The Giraud circle, moreover, had little confidence in what it could learn of Rene Carmille's mobilization project. It is doubtful, in fact, that Carmille's punched-card mobilization system would have been used even if General Giraud had rallied much of the Armistice Army to support an Allied landing in southern France in I943·44 Even the CJ)M. did not have the run of the French military household. General Labretoigne du Mazel, Director of Material at Royat, in whose very department Major Mollard organized the C.D.M., was officially "uninformed" so that the high command would not be compromised. Not even regimental commanders were supposed to know. In the end, the official roll of CDM. participants —those entitled to their rights as members of a "combatant unit" so recognized after 1945 by the War Ministry —contained three thousand names, many of them civilians who permitted clandestine stores to be hidden on their property. Official doubts meant that the CDM. and other clan44

General Andre Beaufre, letter to the author, 21 July 1962.

306

Resistance in the Armistice Army destine operations had to be financed by underhand means, another feature of their activity which disturbed some honestly anti-German officers. When it became impossible to conceal sufficient funds in the normal military budget, Jean Jardel, director of the budget in the Finance Ministry, and M. Boissard, director of the State Property Administration (domaines) helped Major Mollard receive some of the funds from German purchases of French military vehicles. As the Blitzkrieg settled down into a war of attrition, and particularly as material was being massed for the attack on Russia, the Germans bought more and more trucks in France. By the so-called Dankworth contracts, between February and December 1941, German purchasing agents acquired 16,259 military vehicles in France.45 Jardel appointed M. Leroy, an Inspector-General of Finance, to deposit some of these funds in the bank account of the fictitious engineering company of Etienne Dubourg at Marseilles, whose accounts Major Mollard drew upon for the C.D.M.ie The German purchasing agents were sufficiently desperate to pay high prices for military trucks. When the CDM. was discovered and its leaders arrested in late 1943, the German investigators learned that they had bought some American-built trucks valued at 85,000 francs for 230,000 francs apiece. Furthermore, some of these trucks were sabotaged before delivery into German hands. The German Control Commissions complained that when the purchases began, it suddenly became extraordinarily diffi45

DFCAA, iv, 611; purchases by contract, as distinct from confiscations, are listed in Commission consultative des dommages et des reparations, Dommages subis par les materiels de guerre et les immeubles militaires francais (Paris, 1948), 32-33. * e Interviews; Proces Jardel; OKW/1353, frame 5,575,218.

307

Resistance in the Armistice

Army

cult to find trouble-free army trucks. The best trucks appeared to have been sent to private companies.47 Another underhand means of obtaining funds was fictitious purchase. The Ministry of Finance paid the Dubourg Company in Marseilles for purchases of equipment for the army, purchases which never took place. The German investigators discovered in 1943 that the CDM. had obtained "several hundred million francs" by these various transactions, 65,000,000 francs of which were still in Major Mollard's hands in November 1942. The Germans were convinced that most of this money had gone to support the armee secrete, by which term they referred in general to all the resistance organizations whose extent they were beginning to understand.48 The irregularities of finance inevitable to underground activities were only one more reason for some honestly revanchist officers to remain aloof. In the very nature of the case, therefore, the clandestine planners in the Armistice Army were a small, dispersed group condemned to no share in national glory, unless the metropolitan Armistice Army itself were to play a major role in the liberation of France. Instead, the metropolitan Armistice Army was destined to be dissolved in November 1942. The strategic planners within its general staff were planning for situations which never arose. Their plans, in fact, were condemned to irrelevance because dominant Armistice Army thinking had permeated them. Saturated with Vichy views of the wisdom of neutrality, they rejected—perhaps wisely—any idea of Armistice Army action until the tides of war were setting so firmly in the other direction that France would be quickly liberated in a war 47 48

OKW/i353, frame 5,575,245; OKW/1439, frame 5,594,332. OKW/i353, frame 5,575,218; OKW/1420, frame 5,590,574.

308

Resistance in the Armistice

Army

of movement. When the Allies invaded North Africa in November 1942, and the Germans reacted by occupying the rest of France, none of the clandestine planners could honestly tell his fellow-officers that the moment for action had arrived. In the first place, no Armistice Army strategist dreamed of a unilateral action in metropolitan France by French arms. Any action at all must be contingent upon an Allied landing in France with such overwhelming force that there would be no chance for a bloody stalemate on French soil. It was not Giraud alone who argued in this way. "There was not the shadow of a doubt," recalled General du Vigier in discussing the attitude of the Third Bureau in 1941, "this could happen only in a coalition." If World War I had been a draw without United States aid, then, a fortiori, France could not liberate herself alone in the present unequal struggle.49 The second universal axiom was the timetable for this operation: better too late than too soon. From the Armistice Army point of view, an American landing should take place in metropolitan France rather than in the colonies; and it should take place only when the United States had become capable of a decisive and rapid land campaign. The clandestine planners' mobilization scheme, for example, required two weeks of unimpeded preparation before the Armistice Army could even be raised to twentyfour divisions. Clearly the plan could go into effect only after the German forces had renounced or lost control over an important part of France. Finally, none of these various plans had reached more than an embryonic stage by November 1942. Since no 49

Giraud, 133; interviews.

309

Resistance in the Armistice Army French officer could reasonably expect an early British landing on the continent with the invincibly superior force which would make French cooperation possible, the clandestine planners' interest—and trust—turned instead to the United States. The United States, of course, entered the war only in December 1941, and given the notorious sluggishness with which democracies worked, the most optimistic among French officers expected no feasible operation on French soil before 1943. The total irrelevance into which all these clandestine preparations fell in November 1942 was not, of course, all the Armistice Army's fault. The Allied landing in North Africa reduced them to idle dreams. The landing took place in the colonies; there was no simultaneous landing in the Unoccupied Zone; there was no force capable of preventing Germany from occupying the rest of France and snuffing out the shadow sovereignty in which the clandestine planners had worked. The main importance of the party of revanche in the Armistice Army, therefore, was the bitter regret which inevitably surrounded it. Its members had acted from honorable motives, if without any quixotic urge to fight in a French Thermopylae. As one of them recalled, it had seemed vital to rebuild French morale by storing illegal arms, even if those arms were obviously insufficient to save France without outside help. Thus they could prepare their wills and confidence for the more challenging period to come. For these officers, there was more to do at home than abroad, and they expected the French public to thank them for what they had wanted to do. Another brick had been set in the wall of civil-military incomprehension.

3/0

CHAPTER

X

1942: Neutrality Threatened The gist of his conversation was that he has orders to defend French Africa against all comers, but he hopes the provocation will come from the Germans. In that case, he will ask our aid. But we should not make the mistake of attacking because he would be obliged to give orders to oppose our force . . . —General Alphonse Juin, 5 November 1942 as reported by Robert D. Murphy 1 of 1941 had seemed to prove to most French officers the wisdom of the Marshal's neutrality. Even the party of revanche intended to await the turn of the tide. The year 1942, as seen from Vichy, did not announce that turn. For even the most impatient of French officers, the "intelligent moment" did not seem to have arrived. As the old year closed, to be sure, the Allies seemed for a brief moment to have upset the stalemate. In December 1941, the brute fact of the first Soviet winter offensive could not be shrugged aside. Even the newsletter of the French West African command, so dubious of Allied prospects, could not resist a few invidious comparisons between Hitler and Napoleon in Russia. The German General Staff had clearly "underestimated" the Soviet Union, which was revealing "unsuspected reserves of strength." Unlike Napoleon, Hitler had had to fight every inch of his T H E EVENTS

1

US. Foreign Relations, 1942, 11, 425. 3II

I942'· Neutrality

Threatened

way eastward from the frontier. And whereas Napoleon had left Moscow on 18 October 1812, Hitler was only approaching that city on 14 October 1941, facing an "intact" and "very modern" Soviet Army.2 More dramatic still, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor brought the United States into the war. For a moment, memories of the coalition of 1917-18 flickered alive. The French people no longer believed in a German victory, the German Control Commissions reported at the end of December 1941.3 Among officers, a compromise peace seemed a more distant prospect than ever. Early in January 1942, the Armistice Army staff sent a note summarizing the world situation to General Weygand, now living in forced retirement in Provence. "In 1942, of the three solutions which could end the war—Axis victory, compromise peace, Anglo-Saxon victory—the first may be set aside with certainty. The war may drag on for a long time, but the Anglo-Saxon bloc can no longer be defeated."4 In French Africa, the news of Pearl Harbor stimulated a new burst of activity among discontented officers and civilians who had been more openly disgruntled since the forced retirement of Weygand. United States representative Robert Murphy was now "frequently approached" by French officers who wanted to "transfer their activity to the Allied forces." With the authorization of Cordell Hull, Murphy began maintaining discreet contacts with this nucleus of French officers, while urging them to remain where they were in the French military establishment. These were the origins of the Murphy network which at2

"Moscou 1812-1941," in Commandant des Troupes en Afrique Occidental Francaise, Bulletin /!'information, No. 9, December 1941, 16. s OKW/i437, frame 5,593,766. 4 Weygand, in, 537.

3/2

79-

OKW/1362 Deutsche

Waffenstillstandskommission,

Aussenstelle

Paris, Akte Geheime Kommandosache der Deutschen Waffenstillstandskommission/Aussenstelle

Paris,

teilung I (U.S. National Archives T-77,

Ab-

837).

OKW/1392 Der Deutscher General des Oberbefehlshabers West in Vichy. Unlabeled folder (U.S. National Archives T-77, Roll 842). OKW/1394 Kontrollinspektion

der Deutschen Waffenstillstands-

kommission. Lageberichte der und der Kontrollinspektion stillstandskommission, 31.11.42 Archives T-77, Roll 843).

445

Heeres\ontrollinspe\tion der Deutschen

Waffen-

- 19.4.43 (U.S. National

Abbreviations and Short Titles OKW/1400 Kontrollinspektion der Deutschen Waffenstillstandskommission. Franzdsische Arbeitsdienst. Zeitabschnitt: Juli

1942-Dez.

1943

(U.S. National Archives T-77,

Roll 843). OKW/1410 Kontrollinspektion der Deutschen Waffenstillstandskommission.

Allgemeiner

Franzdsischen D.WSt.K.,

Schrijtswechsel

Verbindungs-Abordnung

April

1941 - August

Archives T-77,

mit

der

bei der KI/

1944 (U.S. National

845).

OKW/1420 Kontrollinspektion

der Deutschen Waffenstillstands-

kommission. Kontrollabteilung G-Kdos (U.S. National Archives T-77,Roll846). OKW/1431 Kontrollinspektion

der Deutschen Waffenstillstands-

kommission. Kriegstagebuch:

V. O. des bevollmiichti-

gen Deutschen Generals in Vichy beim Franzdsischen Gruppen\ommando

I

in

Avignon,

1.11.42 - 2-12.42

(U.S. National Archives T-77, Roll 848). OKW/1432 Kriegstagebuch.

Herres\ontrollunter\ommission

soudun, j.8.1940 - 31.1.1941

(U.S. National

Is-

Archives

T-77, Roll 848). OKW/1434 Kontrollinspektion der Deutschen Waffenstillstandskommission. Kriegstagebuch der Gem. KS. 1.11.1941

- 31.J.1942

Marseille,

(U.S. National Archives T-77,

Roll 849).

446

Abbreviations and Short Titles OKW/1435 Kriegstagebuch der Deutschen Kontrolldelegation Mittelmeerkuste, 15.4.41 - 8.9.42 (U.S. National Archives T-77, Roll 849). OKW/1436 Anhang zum Kriegstagebuch der Deutschen Kontrolldelegation Mittelmeerhuste.

Tatigheitsberichte

(U.S.

National Archives T-77, Roll 849). OKW/1437 Kriegstagebuch der D.AS. 15.4.1941

- 30.9.1942

Port Vendres, mit Anlagen

(U.S. National Archives T-77,

Roll 849). OKW/1438 Kriegstagebuch der Deutschen Kontrolldelegation Sete, 7.4.1941 - 4.12.1942 (U.S. National Archives T-77, 849). OKW/1439 Tatigkeitsbericht lib gemass AHM.

der

Heereskontrollunterkommission 1940, Ziffer 538, Anlage Zi.

3b,

15.8.40 - 2.3.43 (U.S. National Archives T-77, R°U 849). OKW/1444 Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, Wi. Rii Amt. Unlabeled folder (U.S. National Archives T-77,

R

° U 850).

OKW/1512 Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, Wehrmachtfuhrungsstab, Qu. Unlabeled folder (U.S. National Archives T-77, Roll 850). OKW/1605 Oberkommando

der

Wehrmacht,

Wehrmacht-Propaganda. Geheim-A\ten

447

Abteilung

£ur

iiber Fremde

Abbreviations and Short Titles Staaten—Frankreich

(U.S. National Archives

T-77,

Deutsche Waffenstillstandskommission. Geheim

Kom-

Roll 1027). OKW/2012 mandosachen-Chefsachen, D.W.St.k./Ia

(Wehrmacht)

(U.S. National Archives T-77, Roll 851). OKW/2130 Der Franz. Ubergangsheer in Marokko (U.S. National Archives T-77, Roll 851). OKW/2262 Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, Abteilung Landesverteidigung. Unlabeled folder

(U.S. National

Ar-

chives T-77, Roll 851). OKW/2285 Deutsche Waffenstillstandskommission, Kontrollkommission Heer, Marokko. Besondere und fremde (Az-K.^gg)

Berichte—eigene

(U.S. National Archives T-77,

Roll 851). OKW/2286 Deutsche Waffenstillstandskommission, Kontrollinspektion Afrika. Unlabeled folder (U.S. National Archives T-77, Roll 851). OKW/2336 Deutsche

Waffenstillstandskommission.

Delegation bei der Deutschen

Franzdsische

Waffenstillstandskom-

mission, Unterkommission fur Kriegswirtschaft, D (U.S. National Archives T-77,

R

Liste

° U 851).

OKW/2337 Deutsche Waffenstillstandskommission. Gruppe Riistung. Deutsche Franzdsische

448

Munition-

und

Kriegs-

Abbreviations and Short Titles gerdtefertigung 851).

(U.S. National Archives T-77, R ° u

OKW/2341 Deutsche Waffenstillstandskommission. Unlabeled folder (U.S. National Archives, T-77, R ° u 852). Pariser Botschaft BdI 1125 German Foreign Ministry Archives (U.S. National Archives T-120, Roll 3966, Serial 3796H). W1/III.A.11 Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, Wehrwirtschaft und Rustungsamt. Unlabeled folder (U.S. National Archives T-77, R ° u 7^1 )· SECONDARY AND

Aron Aron, Liberation Bankwitz

WORKS,

PUBLISHED

PUBLISHED

MEMOIRS

SPEECHES

Robert Aron, Histoire de Vichy (Paris, 1954). Robert Aron, Histoire de la liberation de la France (Paris, 1959). P. C. F. Bankwitz, "Weygand: A Biographical Study" (Unpublished dissertation, Harvard University, 1952).

Baudouin

Paul Baudouin, Neuf mots au gouvernement (Paris, 1948). Challener Richard D. Challener, The French Theory of the Nation in Arms, 1866-1939 (New York, 1955). De Coquet James de Coquet, Le Proces de Riom (Paris, 1945). Darlan, "Conference" Secretariat a la guerre, cabinet, Con449

Abbreviations and Short Titles

Fernet

Gamelin De Gaulle

Geschke

Giraud Howe

Langer

ference faite Ie 10 Janvier a I'Hotel Thermal par VAmiral de la Flotte F. Darlan, Ministre de la defense nationale, devant les officiers de I'etat-major de Varmee et les hauts fonctionnaires du Ministere de la guerre (Macon, 1942). Vice-Admiral Fernet, Aux cotes du marechal Petain (1940-44) (Paris, 1953)· General Gamelin, Servir, 2 vols. (Paris, 1947). Charles de Gaulle, Memoires de guerre. I. L'Appel, 1940-42. II. L'UnitS, 1942-44. III. Le Salut, 1944-46. (Paris, 1955-59). Gunter Geschke, "Die deutsche Frankreichspolitik 1940 von Compiegne bis Montoire. Das Problem einer deutsch-franzosischer Annaherung nach dem Frankreichfeldzug," Wehrwissenschajtlichen Rundschau, Beiheft 12-13, October i960. Henri Giraud, Mes evasions (Paris, 1946). George F. Howe, Northwest Africa: Seizing the Initiative in the West (The United States in World War II. The Mediterranean Theater of Operations). (Washington, 1957). William L. Langer, Our Vichy Gamble (New York, 1947). 450

Abbreviations and Short Titles Leahy

William D. Leahy, I Was There (New York, 1949).

Nogueres

Louis Nogueres, Le veritable proces du marechal Petain (Paris, 1955).

Playfair

I. S. O. Playfair, The Mediterranean and the Middle East (History of the Second World War. United Kingdom Military Series) 4 vols. (London, 1954-59).

Roskill, The War at Sea

S. W. Roskill, The War at Sea (His­ tory of the Second World War. United Kingdom Military Series) Vol. I (London, 1954).

Soustelle

Jacques Soustelle, Envers et contre tout, 2 vols. (Paris, 1947-50). General Maxime Weygand, Memoires. III. Rappele au service (Paris 1950). General Maxime Weygand, Allocu­ tion du general Weygand aux officiers des armies de terre, de tner, et de I'air ά Da\ar Ie 29 octobre 1941 [sic pour 1940] (Saigon, 1941). Ernest Llewellyn Woodward, Brit­ ish Foreign Policy in the Second World War (History of the Sec­ ond World War. United Kingdom Civil Series) (London, 1962).

Weygand III

Weygand, "Allocution"

Woodward, British Foreign Policy

451

Index Abetz, Ambassador Otto, 83, 84, 86, 90, 148-49, 177-78, 222, 236, 256, 261, 267, 268, 270, 297. 320, 341, 386 Abd-el-Krim, 20 Abrial, Admiral Jean, 118, 12829, 14811, 262, 411, 424-25 Action franfaise, 6, 64, 273 administrators, officers as, 149-50 Affaire des fiches of 1905, 174, 279 Africa, French Equatorial, 31, 77-93, 120, 122, 130, 1 3 1 , 251 Africa, French North, plan to continue war in, 24-30, 215. See also Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia Africa, French West, 31, 48, 7793, 112, 327.329.Seealso Dakar agriculture, French Army and, 60 Ailleret, General Charles, 406, 417, 421, 426 Air Force, French, 44, 75, 84-87, 106, 137-38, 147. 164, 249-50, 254, 329, 349, 357 Alexandria, French naval squadron at, 32, 384; French plans to attack, 71-76 Algeria, command structure in, 331-33, 337; defense of, 125, 325-90; French Army in, 48, 109-12, 323, 348-49; Italian presence in, 222; nationalism in, 226 Allied invasion, in Normandy, 277, 406; in Provence, 420 in North Africa: French fear of, 272, 278, 317-44. 352; French preparations to aid,

208, 224, 228, 295-99, 312-13, 318-19, 325; French resistance to, 325-90 Allies, see Great Britain, United States, war Alsace-Lorraine, attitudes toward German policy in, 8, 48, 61, 86, 101, 103-104, 388; repatriation to, 102-103 Altmeyer, General Robert, 105 amalgamation of social classes, army as instrument of, 195-98, 412-13, 4i6 ambassadors, officers as, 149, 154 Andre, General Louis, 143, 145, 184-85 Angenot, General Paul-Emile, 35 Anglo-German Naval Agreement of 1935, 121 Annet, Governor-General Armand, 324 Anti-Bolshevik Legion, see Legion des volontaires contre le bolshevisme antimilitarism, 10-21, 49, 92, 170-71, 185-87, 276, 427-30 anti-Semitism, 45, 114, 129-30, 176-77, 238 Arab unrest, 226; officers' fear of, 25-27, 139, 221-28, 335-36, 353, 367 Archambaud, Commander, Edouard-Eugene-Roger, 384 Arlabosse, General, 227 armament of Armistice Army, 40-49, 398; efforts to enlarge, 75-93, 109, 230-31, 246-50, 272, 282, 323, 327-29 Armee des Alpes, 100, 107, 262, 403-404, 407

453

Index Arm.ée secrete, 207, 308, 404-407 Armengaud, General Jean-Henri, 54 Armistice of 25 June 1940, acceptance of by officers, 9-11, 22, 86, 97, 206-207, 247, 269; French desire to replace with permanent agreement, 75-76, 229-33, 241-42, 313-14; negotiation of, 3-9, 67-68, 107-108; observance of, 31, 40-49, 70, 76-77, 79, 222, 282, 284; officers' opposition to, 23-38, 130; relaxation of, French efforts to obtain, 63-93, 109-13, 229, 241, 282, 323, 327-29; terms of, 7-9, 24, 32, 36, 39, 59, 97, 111; unexpected duration of, 10, 63, 229; violations of, 70, 102-103, 125, 282-10, 393, 430 Armistice Commissions, activity of, 40-41, 49, 98-99, 103, III14, 132, 148-49, 207, 221-26, 241, 256-57, 261, 263, 283-84, 288, 300-301, 307, 327, 417, 433, 436-37; French efforts to restrict, 33, 221-26, 328, 336 armistice leave, 43-44, 149, 177 army of liberation, formation of, vii, 398-99, 415-18 Arnaud, Major, 291 artisans, 60, 195 assignments to office: German influence in, 87, 219, 239, 241, 260-62, 268-72; political influence in, 46, 169-70, 268-73, 280; United States influence in, 262 Attentisme, 214-20, 228, 240, 309-11, 319 attrition, war of, 214-19, 244, 307

Auboyneau, Admiral Philippe, 35 Auchinleck, General Sir Claude John Eyre, 250, 313 Audibert, Colonel, 408 Aumale, Due d', 14 Auphan, Admiral Gabriel, 260, 268, 339, 362n, 367, 383-84. 411 Axis, joint military operations with, discussed, 71-93, 236-37, 315-16, 381-82; French reluctance for, 76, 99, 230-31, 23637. 316, 332, 365, 387; supply of material to, 112, 125, 230, 232, 240-42, 246-50, 282, 31416, 327-28, 334. See also Germany, Italy, base rights, defense, war Badie, Deputy Vincent, 69 Badoglio, Marshal Pietro, 73, iio-II, 113 Bainville, Jacques, 2 1 1 Baradez, Colonel Jean-Lucien, 106 Bard, Admiral Franjois-MarieAlphonse, 150 Baril, Colonel Louis, 360, 418 Barre, General Georges, 349, 363-71, 387, 436 Barthelemy, Joseph, 180 base rights on French territory, Axis efforts to obtain, 74, 7677, 109, 112, 221-23, 230-33, 242, 314-16, 365, 387 Bataille, Major, 355 Bathurst, 89 Baudouin, Paul, 148, 255 Baume, Ambassador Robert Renom de la, 89, 93, 123

454

Index Baurés, General Jean-BaptisteHenri, 298 Beaufre, General Andre, 228 Beauvoir, Simone de, 198n, 304 Beck, General Ludwig, 66 Belin, Rene, 90 Benoist-Mechin, Jacques, 57, 105, 232, 236, 240, 257, 261, 273, 275 Berard, General Louis-Gustave, 380 Bergeret, General Jean-MarieJoseph, 90, 147, 234, 258, 411 Bethouart, General MauriceEmile, 33-34, 234, 297, 338, 350. 352, 360, 418, 427 Beynet, General Etienne-PaulEmile-Maurice, 225-26, 365 Billotte, General Gaston-HenriGustave, 5 Billotte, General Pierre, 35, 41819 Bir-Hakeim, battle of, 132, 318 Bizerte, 109; Axis use of, 112, 233. 242, 314-16, 367-69 Blanc, Louis, 12 Blehaut, Admiral Henri-PaulArsene, 147 Bloch, Marc, 190 blockade of France by Britain, 124-26, 128, 139, 206 Blocq-Mascart, Maxime, 196 Blum, Leon, 146, 155, 179-80, 245, 335 Bohme, Colonel (Chief of Staff, German Armistice Commission), 8, 329 Boisanger, Yves de Breart de, 256 Boissard, of French Finance Ministry, 307 Boisseau, General Robert, 356

Boisson, Governor-General Pierre, 82, 123, 234, 336-37, 387 Bonhomme, Major (aide to Marshal Petain), 67 Bonnet de la Tour, General Rene-Edouard-Joseph, 379 Bordenave, Captain Jean-Hippolyte-Raymond, 404 Boue de Lapeyrere, Admiral Auguste, 144 Boulanger affair, 12, 143 Bourget, General Paul-Alexandre-Pierre, 80, 436 Bourguiba, Habib, 226a Bournazel, Major Gaillard, 238 Bourrague, Admiral CelestinJean-Leon, 258 Bourrelly, General Jules, 184 Bourret, General Victor, 428 Bousquet, Rene, 378 Bouthillier, Yves, 86, 90 Brazzaville, struggle for control of, 78, 82 Briand, Aristide, 144 Bridoux, General Eugene-Marie, 94, 98, 147, 189, 262, 268-80, 282, 302, 319-20, 324, 326, 332, 338-39, 342, 367, 374-8o, 39298, 411, 437 Bridoux, Captain Jean, 396, 411 Brinon, Fernand de, 257, 268-70 Brittany, and French Navy, 121; plan to continue fighting in 1940, 24; resistance in, 408; role in Free French recruitment, 32 B oglie, Due Albert de, 190 Brosse, General (military correspondent of he Temps), 245 Brosset, General Diego-CharlesJoseph, 35, 420

455

Index Brun, General Jean-Jules, 143 Brunot, Governor-General, 32 budget, 1 1 , 19, 146 Buhrer, General Jules-Antoine, 66, 436 Bugeaud, Marshal Thomas-Robert, Due d'Isly, 225 Bureaux des menees antinationales, 133, 303-304, 401 Buisson, Ferdinand, 184 Bullitt, Ambassador William C., 37. 69. 71, 117. 186 Cagoule, 21, 273 Callies, General Jean-JulesAlexis, 355 Cameroun, French, 78 camouflage of arms by French, 114, 207, 273, 282-92, 299, 301302, 306-308, 393-96, 406-408, 417 Campet, General Jacques, 270, 386 Carbuccia, Horace de, 244 Carcopino, Jerome, 188 Carles, General Emile-JacquesGabriel, 85 Carmille, Controleur-general Rene, 293-95, 3°6 Cartel des gauches, 169 Carrier, General Georges-Eugene-Alphonse, 150 Catroux, General Georges, 34, 137, 227-28, 418, 436 Caudron, Admiral, 151 cavalry, 47, 98, 268 ceremony, emphasis upon, 53, 97, 106, 172-74, 193, 428 Chad, struggle for control of, 78, 87-92 Challe, General Maurice, 427

Chamber of Deputies, see Parliament Chantiers de jeunesse, 102, 150, 186-88, 194, 202-13, 293> 404 Charbonneau, General Jean-Eugene-Marie, 218-19 Chassin, Major, 356 Chatel, Governor-General Yves, i49n, 259, 332 Chautemps, Camille, 69 Cherchell, meeting of French and American officers at, 29899. 337 Chesnelong, staff officer of General Giraud, 298 Chretien, Colonel, chief of intelligence in Algeria, 340 church, officers' attitudes toward, 14, 59, 188; Vichy policy, 59, 155, 178, 188, 341 _ Churchill, Prime Minister Winston, 14, 28, 36, 123-24, 217, 227. 243 Ciano, Count Galeazzo, 314 Circassian troops in Syria, 234 civilian control of the army, 253, 264-72, 280-81. See also Parliament civil-military relations, 11-21, 49, 62, 142-53, 156-59, 172-74, 25354, 310, 403, 427-30 Clair, Rene, 97 Clark, General Mark, 298-99, 337. 356, 358-62, 364 Clemenceau, Georges, 16, 16062, 199, 281, 422 Clermont-Ferrand, attitudes of population, 104 Clogenson, Colonel GeorgesHenri-Jean, 292, 375 Cole, U.S. Consul-General Felix, 322

456

Index Corap, General Andre-Georges, 5, 50, 171 Corniglion-Molinier, Edward, 35 Cosse de Brissac, General Charles de, 400 Costa de Beauregard, Colonel Jean-Baptiste-Leon, 404 Crete, impact of German success in, 220, 317 Curnier, Major Jean-Emile, 397 Curzon, George Nathaniel, Marquis of, 121

collaboration, economic, 84, 232, 240, 246-50, 317, 328-29; political, 75-76, 83-92, 100, 22935, 239-40, 256, 328, 387, 390. See also Axis for military collaboration Collet, Colonel Philibert, 234, 238 Colliou, Major Marcel-Maurice, 407 colonial officers, 4, 24, 121-24, 354 colonies, see Empire Colson, General Louis-Antoine, 147,254,284, 411 Combat, 134, 401, 405, 421 Combes, Emile, 184 Comite France-Allemagne, 268 command, in North Africa, 33142, 360-61, 363; structure of, 41, 160-68, 254, 258-60, 263-67, 277-78, 346 Commissariat for Reconstruction, 147, 256 Commune of 1871, 10, 178, 183 Communism, activity in France, 10, 20, 21, 178, 401, 406-407, 414; officers' fear of, 10, 133, 171, 215, 244, 275, 401-402, 414 Compagnons de France, 150 Conde, General Charles-Marie, 65 Congo, French, 78 Conseil national, 150 Conseil superieur de la defense nationale, 163 Conseil superieur de guerre, 6566, 154, 165-66, 264 continuity in French officer corps, vii-viii, 38, 60-61, 41115, 432

Dakar, Allied attack on, 32, 48, 81-84, 88, 98, 113, 120, 131, 137, 216, 258, 317, 322, 336, 339, 347, 3 5 0 - 5 G e r m a n use of, 229-35, 240-41 Daladier, Edouard, 164, 179-81 Dankworth Commission, 307 Darlan, Alain, 341 Darlan, Admiral Fran^oisXavier, and British, 88-90, 116, 120-23, 126, 128, 214-15; as negotiator with Axis, 88-90, 115, 222-23, 228-34, 240-41, 257, 314-15; views of others about, 153, 178, 340-41 /939-40: commander of French Navy, 26, 120, 132, 384 iy June 1940—April 1942: Minister and Chief of Staff of French Navy, 71, 254-55, 268 21 Feb. 1941—April 1942: Vice President of the Council and dauphin, 149, 22223, 228-34, 240-41, 250, 25767, 3 I 4- I 5 Aug. 1941—April iq42: Minister of National Defense, 166, 168, 258, 260-67

457

Index Nov. 1941—April 1942: Minister of War and commander of the Armistice Army, 59, 122, 262-67, 270 April—Nov. 7942: Commander in Chief of French Armed Forces, 267, 277-78, 296, 324-25, 339-42, 372, 374 Nov.—Dec. 1942: in Algiers, 341-87 Darnand, Joseph, 95 Dassonville, General AchilleFernand-Hector, 35 Deat, Marcel, 178, 276 Debeney, General Marie-Eugene, 19, 165 Decamp, General Jules-PhilippeOctave, 46 declaration of war in 1939, 6567, 116-17, 181 Decoux, Admiral Jean, 34, 148n, 436 defeat of 1940, responsibility for, 45, 58, 159-60, 168, 1 7 1 , 17879, 181, 190-91, 202 defense of French territory, against Allies, 63-93, 94, 125, 272, 278, 317-43, 344-90; against Axis, 63-93, 94, 286, 301, 316, 333, 340 Delcasse, Theophile, 335 Delestraint, General Charles, 404-406 Deleuss, Count, 261 Delmotte, General Joseph, 302, 379. 388, 397. 407, 4 1 1 , 422 Deloncle, Eugene, 178, 273 Demarcation Line between occupied and unoccupied zones, 86, 99, 105, 230, 375-76. 380 Dentz, General Henri, 68, 122,

129, 1 4 m , 191, 236-39, 26162, 270-72, 321, 370, 4 1 1 , 437 Derrien, Admiral Louis, 365-70 Descour, General Marie-MarcelAlbert-Regis, 404, 426 Desre, Colonel Raymond, 352 Devers, General Jacob L., 100 Dewavrin, Colonel Andre ("Passy"), 34 Dieppe, Allied raid on, 320-22 Dill, General Sir John, 118 Direction des services de I'armistice ( D S A ) , 75, 148, 239, 256, 263 discipline, see obedience dissolution of Armistice Army, 308, 387-90, 401 Djibouti, see Somalia, French Dody, General Andre-MarieFrangois, 352, 420 Doolittle, U.S. Consul-General Hooker, 363 Dorange, Colonel Andre-JeanMarie-Frangois, 332 Doriot, Jacques, 20, 178, 276, 333 Dormann, Senator Maurice, 68 Douala, struggle for control of, 78, 82 "Double Game," 76, 153, 155, 306, 430 Doumenc, General Aime, 44, 147, 152, 256 Doumergue, Gaston, 144, 186 Doyen, General Paul, 82, 99-101, !35, r 39, 217, 221-23, 239-40, 246, 256-57, 407 Dreyfus affair, 19, 142, 169, 184 Dufieux, General Julien-ClaudeMarie-Sosthene, 136-37, 151 Dumoulin de Labarthete, Henri, 152

458

Index Dunkirk, evacuation of Allied force at, 3, 22, 33, 118-19, 128, 390 Dunoyer de Segonzac, General Pierre-Dominique, 200 Duplat, Admiral Emile-AndreHenri, 73-75, 1 1 4 Duplat, General, 150 Duval, General, military correspondent for Le Journal, 320 Eboue, Governor-General Felix, 78 Ecole de cadres, at Opme, 19499, 412; at Uriage, 200 Ecole militaire d'artillerie, 200, 210 Ecole poly technique, 13, 184 Eddy, Colonel William A., 208 Eden, Anthony, 243 Education, officers' attitudes toward, 181-82, 185-89, 198-99, 293; officers' role in, 159, 183213 Eisenhower, General Dwight D., 308, 360, 418 El Alamein, battle of, 318 Ely, General Paul, 417-18, 420, 427 Empire, armed forces in, 47-48, 79-87, 110-13, 326-31; determination to preserve French sovereignty in, 31, 77-93, 116, 121-24, 140) 216, 221-28, 23031, 235-40, 274-75, 313-17, 322, 326-39, 345, 353-54, 361, 364, 392, 398, 421, 424-27; enforcement of armistice in, 24-38, 47-48, 78-83; Free French in, 78-83, 87-91, 93, 130, 230-31, 251, 387; nationalism in, 226;

vital French asset, viii, 4, 9, 127, 129, 132, 215-16, 322, 391, 421 Esteva, Admiral Jean-Pierre, 26, 68, i48n, 189, 227, 234, 250, 259, 3i5, 333-35, 361, 363-70 Ethiopia, 1 1 4 execution of French officers, postwar, 410 Fabre-Luce, Alfred, 49 Fabry, Colonel Jean, 20, I44n, 166, 425 Faisal, Prince, 121 Falloux law of 1851, 14 Falvy, General Maurice-Emile, 87 fascists, attitudes toward French Army, 177-78, 333, 341; officers' opinions of, 95, 116, 178, 217; role in Armistice Army, 95 Fashoda affair, 116 Faure, General Jacques, 431 Fay, Bernard, 174 Fayolle, Marshal Emile, 154 Felber, General, 385, 389 Fernet, Admiral Jean-LeonMarie, 148, 152, 436 Ferry, Jules, 184 Fighting French, see Free French First Regiment of France, 397-98 Flandin, Pierre-Etienne, 146, 149 fleet, see Navy Flexer, U.S. Consul-General, 336 Foch, Marshal Ferdinand, 6, 63, h i , 127, 154, 155, 1 6 1 , 422, 425 forces frangaises de I'interieur ( F F I ) , 407, 412-13, 418, 419

459

Index Foreign Legion, 105, 327 formation of Armistice Army, 40-49 Fort-Lamy, struggle for control of, 78, 82, 91 Fougere, General FrangoisMarie-Jacques, 227 Fourth Republic, officers under, 136, 412, 417-21, 426-30 France, world position of, 64-65, 126, 139, 216-17, 274-75, 282, 297, 302, 321 Franchet d'Esperey, Marshal Louis-Marie-Félix-Frangois, 4, 11, 145 Francisque, 6 Franco General Francisco, 15455, 220 Francois, General, 262 Franc-tireurs partisans ( F T P ) , 406 Free French, activities of, 37, 7783, 130-32, 236-38, 318, 402, 405-406, 415-16; attitudes of Vichy officers toward, 23-28, 130-39, 238, 337, 379, 382, 398, 418-20; internal measures against, 80-81, 134-38, 228, 254, 303-304; military operations against, 87-51, 93, 230-31, 251, 387; recruitment of, vii, 23, 29-38, 77, 1 30-33, 1 37-39, 234; role in Fourth Republic officer corps, 38, 415-20 Freetown, struggle for control of, 72, 82, 89 Free Zone, Armistice Army resistance to, 70, 371-90; occupation by Axis, Nov. 1942, 299, 345, 354, 356, 358, 359, 361, 364, 369, 371-90 Frenay, Henri, 134, 400, 424

Frere, General Aubert-AchilleJules, 279-80, 405, 407 Freycinet, Charles de, 143 Gabon, struggle for control of, 79-83 el-Gailani, Rashid Ali, 122, 22829 Gallieni, Marshal Joseph, 154 Gallifet, General Gaston-Auguste, Marquis de, 18, 144 Galy, General Paul, 411 Gambetta, Leon, 16 Gambia, possible French attack on, 89, 387 Gamelin, General Maurice, 4546, 161-68, 179, 187, 263 Gannat, military court at, 136, 151 Garcie, Colonel Jean-Andre, 408 Garon, Captain, 400 Garric, Robert, 198 Gaulle, General Charles de, vii, 23, 24, 28-38, 77-83, IIO-II, 122, 123, 130-39, 227, 231, 275, 318, 322, 401, 405-406, 408, 409, 415-17, 423, 427, 436 General Staff, 147, 164-68, 285, 302, 371-90, 420; first bureau, 284, 292; third bureau, 10, 196, 292, 319, 375, 415; fourth bureau, 292; fifth bureau, 303. See also intelligence service for second bureau Gensoul, Admiral Marcel-Bruno, 36, 75 Georges, General Alphone-Joseph, 166-67, !8o, 373, 399 Gergovia, 115, 197 Germain, General Maxine-JeanVincent, 31 Germany, attitudes toward, 94-

460

Index 106, 128, 214, 239-40; negotiations with, 75-93, 100, 102, 228-42, 247-50, 256-57, 313-17, 366,372-73.392-93; policy of, 7-9. 76-78, 81, 89, 97-99, 110-13, 220-26, 234-35, 255. 276, 327, 385-88 Gibraltar, bombing raids on, 7274, 83; Axis threat to, 220 Gide, Andre, 154 Girardet, Raoul, 12 Giraud, General Henri-Honore, 5, 66, 97, 101, 143, 297-99, 302, 305-306, 309, 319, 329, 338, 350, 358, 360, 386, 398, 405. 416, 428, 436 Glieres plateau, resistance on, 403, 406 Godfroy, Admiral Rene-Emile, 128, 384, 436 Goring, Marshal Hermann, 236, 314-16 Goislard de Monsabert, General Anne-Jean-Thimothee-MarieJoseph de, 185, 225, 346, 360, 420 Goiran, General Cecil, 143 Gorostarzu, Colonel Alfred de, 80 Gort, General John Standish, Viscount, 118 Gouraud, General Henri-JosephEugene, 121 governors-general, officers as, 148-49 Goy, Jean, 178 "Grande muette," 156, 422-25 Great Britain, attitudes toward, 37, 69-73, 96, "5-30, I 3 1 , 214, 219-20, 238-39, 317-18, 323, 337, 354, 383, 39o; negotiations with, 93, 123-25, 216;

plans to attack colonies of, 7176, 84, 87-91, 93, 99, 230-31, 387; policies of, 28, 36-37, 11728 Greece, impact of German success in, 220, 317 Groussard, Colonel GeorgesAndre, 150 Guichard, Admiral Louis-MarieCharles, i5on Guillaumat, General MarieLouis-Adolphe, 144 Guillaume, General Augustin, 319, 420-21 Guillemaut, General, 183 Guinand, Controleur-General Pierre-Marie, 264 Guingouin, Colonel, "the Limousin Tito," 408 Guynemer, Captain Georges, World War I ace, 106 Haider, General Franz, 24, 29, 41, 46, 92, 107, i86n, 238, 245, 255, 288, 387 Hanoteau, General Pierre-LouisCharles, 385-86 Harcourt, Admiral Jean-Bernard-Armand d', 88n Haut comite de guerre, 154 Haute cour de justice, 411, 43435 Hautecloque, Captain Philippe de, see Leclerc Hemmen, Ambassador Richard, 220, 256 Herriot, Edouard, 144 Herviot, Colonel Maurice-JeanFerdinand-Ernest, i5on, 328-

461

329 Hess, Rudolf, 230 Hettier de Boislambert, 78

Index Hitler, Adolf, 6, 10, 65, 75, 76, 78, 81, 83, 87-89, 98-99, 108, 148, 181, 214, 217, 231, 239-40, 245, 276, 311-12, 321. 366, 370. 372, 374. 385, 387-88, 391-93, 437 Hoare, Sir Samuel, 89, 93, 123 Hoffmann, Stanley, 170 Huet, Colonel, 212, 404 Hull, Cordell, 312, 325 Huntziger, General CharlesLeon, Alsatian background, 1 0 1 ; death, 1 1 5 , 262; opinions of, 6, 10, 50, 181, 186, 247; views of others about, 5 7933: commander of French Forces in the Levant, 122 May—June 1940: commander, Second Army, 5, 50, 67-68, 98, 269 June 1940: Armistice negotiator, 3-7, 39, 108 July to Sept. 1940: Head of French Delegation to the German Armistice Commission at Wiesbaden, 40, 7581, 120, 148, 256 6 Sept. 1940—Nov. 1941: 39, 41, 44, 50-51, 59, 84-93, 98, 102-103, 111, 114, 147, 14849, 196, 229, 231, 237-38, 246-49, 257, 259, 268, 272, 284, 286, 301, 371 Huntziger, Madame C.-L., 6, 50, 133 Hymans, Deputy Max, 165 Iceland, arrival of U.S. forces in, 241, 322, 327 intelligence services of Armistice Army, activities against Allies, 303, 326; activities against

Axis, 224, 270; participation in Resistance, 400-401 inter-service rivalry, 164, 166, 254-55, 261, 266-67, 277-78, 354 Invasion, see Allied invasion inventories crisis of 1905, 142 Iraq, revolt in, 122, 228-32, 235 Iraq Petroleum Company, French plan to reorganize, 7273 Italy, attitudes toward, 25-27, 82, 106-15, 216, 227, 286, 333, 366; French efforts to restrict expansion of, 74, 90, 107, 11012, 227, 250, 333, 365-66; French negotiations with, 7176, 106-13, 242, 314-15; German policy toward, 108-112; policy of, 8-9, 3 1 , 73-76, 79, 81-83, 87, 220-21, 276, 314-15, 348-49, 366 Jacomet, Controleur-General Robert, 264 Jacquey, Inspecteur-General Pierre, 294 Jacquot, General Pierre-Elie, 402n, 406 Jannekeyn, General JeanFrangois, 373, 4 1 1 fardel, Jean, 307 Jarnieu, Lieutenant-Colonel Pierre Chomel de, 177 Jaures, Jean, ideas on army, 16J7> 58, 145 Jeanne d'Arc, 199 Jews in French Army, 45, 176. See also anti-Semitism Joffre, Marshal Joseph, 154, 155, 166 Jousse, General Moise-GermainLouis, 208, 297-98, 318, 360

462

Index judges, officers as, 150-51, 153 Juin, Marshal Alphonse, 158, 167, 262, 270-71, 3 1 1 , 315-17, 331-33. 334, 346-49, 353-54, 359. 361, 363, 367-69, 397, 416, 420, 436 Keitel, Marshal Wilhelm, 39, 92, 108, 235, 237 Keller, General Louis-Marie-Joseph-Ferdinand, 57 Kersaint, Comte de, 121 Kesselring, General Albert, 366 Koeltz, General Louis, 26-27, 108, 148, 223, 239, 271, 348, 361 Koenig, General Pierre, 34, 1 3 1 , 318, 408, 415-16, 418 Krug von Nidda Consul-General Roland, 329 Kriimper system, lack of, in Armistice Army, 201 Labonne, Colonel Roger-Henri, 275 Laborde, Admiral Jean-JosephJules-Noel de, 361, 384, 4 1 1 Labretoigne du Mazel, General Louis-Felix, 306 Lacaille, General Henri, 382 Lacaze, Admiral Marie-JeanLucien, 144 Lacheroy, Colonel Charles, 431 Laffargue, General Andre, 207, 388, 436 Langlois, General Jean-Leon-Albert, 378-80, 382, 389-90 Lanze, Italian diplomat, 1 1 0 Larminat, General Edgard de, 31-32, 35, 137, 416, 419, 426, 436 Lasalle, Abbe, 298

Lattre de Tassigny, Marshal Jean-Joseph-Marie-Gabriel de, 5, 40, 55-56, 173, 186, 188,190, 193-99, 201, 262, 271-72, 278, 295, 296, 298, 376, 378-79, 389, 398, 402, 404, 411-12, 419-21, 437 Lattre de Tassigny, Madame Jean de, 398 Laure, General Emile, 9, 92, 101, 114, 120, 123, 133, 146, 155, 158, 180, 188, 227-28, 258, 340, 401, 411 Laurencie, General Benolt-Leon Fornel de la, 119, 134 Laval, Pierre, 68, 83-92, 1 1 2 , 146, 148-49, 178, 217, 228-29, 253, 255-56, 258, 261, 267-72, 277, 280, 282, 297, 327-29, 339, 357, 365-66, 370, 372-74, 392-97, 437 Lavigne-Delville, General Paul de, 177, 273 Leahy, Admiral William D., 65, 135, 1 7 1 , 215, 217-18, 220, 24243, 245, 251, 258-60, 315, 332, 339, 362n Lebanon, 37, 122 Lebeau, Governor-General, 27 Lebrun, President Albert, 143 Leclerc de Hautecloque, Marshal Philippe-Franfois-Marie, 24, 29, 34, 78, 141, 4 " , 4i5-i6, 419 Legentilhomme, General Paul, 27, 3i, 34, 137 Legion Franfaise des Combattants, 95, 114-15, 1 5 1 , 262, 293 Legion tricolore, 273-77 Legion des volontaires contre le bolshevisme, 270, 273-77, 39697, 399, 4 "

463

Index Legislative control of French Army, see Parliament Lemaigre-Dubreuil, Jacques, 208, 228, 298 Lemery, Henri, 255 Lenclud, General Fernand-Zacharie-Joseph, 180, 394 Lend-Lease Act, 219 Le Puloch, General Louis-JeanAlain, 420 Le Ray, Captain Alain, 404 Leroy, Inspecteur des Finances, 307 Leyer, General Roger, 416 Liberation of France, attitudes toward, 64, 128, 217, 309, 400, 403, 409; officers' role in, 62, 100, 158, 240, 277, 319, 403409, 416 Libreville, 79-80 Libya, impact of course of war in, 219-220, 250, 274, 313-18, 342 Lienart, Achille Cardinal, Bish­ op of Lille, 152 Loizeau, General Lucien, 244 Lorber, General Henri-MarieAntoine-Francois, 104, 240 Lorraine, see Alsace-Lorraine, Metz Loustaunau-Lacau, Colonel Georges, 155, 228, 264, 436 Lyautey, Marshal Louis-Hubert, 183, 211-12, 332 Mackensen, Ambassador Eberhard von, n o MacMahon, Marshal Edme-Patrice, 142, 144, 190, 253 Madagascar, British invasion of, 128, 324-25, 339 Maginot, Andre, 169

Magnan, General Pierre, 418, 420 Magrin-Vernery, General RaoulCharles ("Monclar"), 34 Malraux, Andre, 408, 414 Malta, impact of British difficul­ ties in, 318, 326 Mandel, Georges, 153 Marchand, Colonel Pierre-Al­ exandre, 78 Mareth Line, ro9 Marion, Paul, 179 Marquet, Adrien, 255-56 Marquis, Admiral Andre, 97, 177, 384-85, 411 Martin, General Julien-FrangoisRene, 180 Marx, Karl, 13 Masonic orders, 45, 129, 174-76 Massis, Henri, 6, 10, 50 Masson, Governor-General, 79 Massu, General Jacques, 426 Mast, General Charles-Emman­ uel, 158, 297-98, 319, 346-49, 360, 418 Material, see armament, Axis, collaboration Matthews, H . Freeman, 139, 214 Maurin, General Louis, 144, 165, 244 mayors and municipal council­ lors, officers as, 150 mediator, possible French posi­ tion as, 65, 217 Mendes-France, Pierre, 418 Mendigal, General Jean-AchilleHenri, 361 Menetrel, Dr. Bernard, 362η Mers-el-Kebir naval base, British raid on, 32, 36-37, 48, 71-76, 98, 110-11, 119, 125, 236-37, 382

464

Index Mesnet, Captain Henri-MarieEdme-Charles, 292 Messali-Hadj, 226 Metz, 97, 101, 155 Michelier, Admiral Francois, 350-52, 354-55, 411 Milice, 397 military organization, 40-49, 145, 152, 158-68, 254-60 military values, 22, 1 7 1 , 184, 238, 389, 429 ministers, officers as, 143-47 Ministry of, Air Force, 147; Colonies, 147, 328; Family Affairs, 147; Finance, 19, 82, 286, 307-308; Foreign Affairs, 149, 258, 267; Information, 91, 149, 179, 267; Interior, 149, 258, 267; Navy, 147, 258, 260; Sports and Youth, 209; War, 147, 152, 154, 204, 262, 265, 268-71, 302, 402 Miquelon, see Saint-Pierre et Miquelon Mireaux, Emile, 255 Mittelhauser, General EugeneDesire-Antoine, 26, 29-32, 57, mobilization, secret plans for, 292-96, 306, 309 Moillard, Captain Albert-Robert, 292 Mollard, General Emile, 285-92, 301, 306-308, 407 Monclar, see Magrin-Vernerey Monick, Emmanuel, 219, 234 Monsabert, see Goislard de Monsabert Montagne-Noire, resistance in, 407 Montoire-sur-Loir, meeting of Hitler and Petain at, 84, 99,

18

104, 124, 130-31, 148, 230, 241, 247, 256-57 moral role of army, 21, 49-57, 188-200, 272, 412-13 Morel, Lieutenant Theodore, 403 Morocco, army in, 48, 110-12, 325-44, 349; defense of, 325-90; German influence in, 1 1 3 , 22126, 354, 356; Spanish threat to, 108, 216, 330-31 Mosul, French plan to seize, 72 Mouvement de liberation nationale, 400 Mun, Comte Albert de, 2 1 1 Murphy, Robert D., 88, 127, 134, 208, 214, 246, 251, 297, 3 1 1 13, 3 J 8-i9, 322, 325, 332-33, 337-40, 346-48, 401 Murphy-Weygand agreements, 139, 219, 224, 336 Muselier, Admiral Emile-HenriDesire, 35, 132 Mussolini, Benito, 8, 83, 84, 106, 108, n o , 1 1 3 "Naphthalinards," 409-410, 430 Napoleon I, Emperor, 14, 15, 61, 92, 106, 243-44, 311-12, 318 72 . Napoleon III, Emperor, 12, 253 National-Socialism, see fascists Navy, 4, 7-8, 25-27, 32-37, 58, 69, 77-85, i i o - I I , 119-21, 123-29, 147, 239, 261, 263, 265-66, 340, 351, 361, 381-90, 393 Negroes in the Armistice Army, 45, 85 Nehring, General, 370 Nemours incident, 100, 125 Neubronn, General von, 394 Neutrality, end of, 361-71; of France after 1940, 63-93, 84, 125, 132, 140, 216-52, 276, 308,

Index 311, 313, 344. 359-62, 364. 36869, 371, 390; Gaullist appeals against, vii, 227-28; of officers in domestic politics, 142-43, 156-58 Niamey, 90 Nice, struggle against Italian influence in, 112, 114-15 Nicolle, Pierre, 151, 429 Niessel, General A., 202 Nigeria, 78 Noetinger, General Marie-Joseph-Louis-Henri, 298 Nogueres, Deputy Louis, 69, 422 Nogues, General Auguste, 25-27, 29-32, 80, 140, 149n, 223, 259, 271, 322, 330, 333-36, 349-62, 363, 373-74, 411. 418 Nollet, General Charles-MarieEdouard, 144-45 Nord, department of the, under separate administration, 86, 99 Norway, Allied campaign in, 33-34, 224 oaths of allegiance, 175, 259, 304-306, 401-403 obedience, as problem for officers, 9-11, 23-31, 132, 141-42, 33i, 334, 337, 344-45, 368, 398, 400, 402, 415, 422-27 Oceania, French, 130 Odic, General Robert-JeanClaude-Roger, 106, 138 officer corps, see continuity, social composition, unity Olleris, General Pierre-ArmandMarie-Robert, 295 Olry, General Rene-Henry, 94, r07, 262, 272 Opme, see ecole de cadres order, preservation of, 10-17, 21,

39-40, 50, 202-205, 377-78, 392, 401-403 Organisation civile et militaire (OCM), 401 Organisation de Resistance de I'armee (ORA), 277, 280, 405406, 417, 420 Ostland organization, activity in France, 99 pacifism, 12, 97 Paillole, Colonel Paul, 303, 401 Painleve, Paul, 165 Papen, Franz von, 268 Parant, de, 78 Paris, plan to move Vichy government to, 92; plan to reoccupy by force, 278, 295 Parisot, General Henri, i n Parliament, attitudes toward, 92, 145-46, 168, 254-55; control of army by, 11-20, 92, 143-59, 168-69; de Gaulle and, 30; officers in, 144, 166, 418; vote of powers to Petain by, 68-69. See also civilian control Parti populaire algerien, 226 Parti populaire frangais, 178, 333 Pas-de-Calais, department of, under separate administration, 86, 99 "Passy," see Andre Dewavrin Patch, General Alexander McC., 420 Patton, General George H., 352, 356 Paul-Boncour, Joseph, 68 peace, expectation of, in 1940, 43, 63-69, 73, 132, 214-33; French hopes for, 67-69, 140, 215-17, 240, 313; German plans for, 8-9, 70, 76, 83

466

Index Pearl Harbor, impact of Japanese raid on, 312, 317, 322 Peguy, Charles, 184 Pendar, Kenneth, 224 Penfentenyo, Admiral HerveAlphonse-Marie Kervéréguin de, 147 Perisse, Lieutenant-Colonel PaulAntoine-Gilbert, 294 Petain, Marshal Henri-PhilippeBenoni-Omer-Joseph, before World War II, 66, 101, 154-56, 185-86, 244; officers admiration for, vii, 94, 100, 133, 15357. 199. 292. 304-306, 415-16, 419, 423 7925: commander of French forces in the Rif War, 178 7935: Minister of War, 144-45, 179, 186 77 June—9 July 1940: Prime Minister, 3-5, 23-25 9 July 1940—Aug. 1944: Head of State, 21, 3 1 , 57, 69, 77, 81, 87-88, 97, 135, 142, 14647, 153-54, 159-60, 180-81, 190, 209, 217, 222, 233, 242, 254, 258-59, 275, 278, 31415, 355, 359, 369-70, 374-75, 391_92, 398, 415 Petit, Colonel, 35, 357 Peyrouton, Marcel, 26-27, 175 Pfister, General Georges-JeanEugene, 294 Phalange africaine, 392-99 Philip, Andre, 69 Pietri, Francois, 162, 255 Picquandar, General OdilonLeonard-Theophile, 285, 292, 295, 378 Picquart, General Georges, 143, 145

Platon, Admiral Charles, 31-32, 147, 231, 328, 370, 410 Pleven, Rene, 78 "Polandization," French fear of, 228, 390 police, officers as, 150-51 political role of officers, 15-30, 142-82, 192, 244-45, 253-81, 335, 425-27 "Politiquard" officers, 6, 45-46, 166, 253, 280 Pommies, General Jean-BaptisteAndrew, 404, 407-408 Popular Front of 1936, 21, 66, 159, 335 Porte du Theil, General PaulMarie-Joseph de la, 21, 171, 186, 191-93, 204-12, 293, 411 Pound, Admiral Sir Dudley, 71, 120 Pourchier, Major Marcel, 404 Prefects, officers as, 106, 149; powers of, 152-53, 256, 262 Pretelat, General Andre Gaston, 65 prisoners of war, policy toward, 85, 104, 257; release of, 9, 85, 87, 104, 121, 230, 262, 269, 317, 321, 328, 332, 337 professional officer corps in France, 12, 58, 183, 202; opposition to, 18, 144 promotion of officers, Armistice Army policy, 98, 170, 175, 278-80; political influence in, 169-70, 278-80; Third Republic policy, 13, 45; Fourth Republic policy, 414, 417 Protocols of Paris, 219, 229-35, 240-42, 258, 261, 267, 314, 327 Psichari, Ernest, 185, 199 psychological warfare, 28, 431

467

Index Puaud, General Edgard-JosephAlexandre, 95 411 public opinion, officers' efforts to influence, 49, 55-56, 172-74, 182-213, 430-33 Pucheu, Pierre, 262 Pujo, General Bertrand-BernardLeon, 147, 254, 411 purge of officers, by Vichy, 4346, 279-80, 338; by Fourth Republic, 410-11, 423-25 Puy-de-Dome, department of, 104, 194 Pyrenees, resistance in, 404, 407408 Radical Party, military program of, 15-19 Raeder, Admiral Erich, 384 Rahn, Rudolf, 320, 370 Ramadier, Paul, 69 Ramon, J.-J., 291 Rassemblement national populaire, 178 recovery of France, officers efforts to promote, 49-62, 63-68, 157, 159, 183-210, 275; slow pace anticipated, 58, 68 recruitment for Armistice Army, 42, 84, 104-105, 323, 327 refugees, 10, 152, 203-204 Regnier, Marcel, 90 Reichstadt, Due de, "l'Aiglon," 92 religion, comparison of officers' vocation to, 14, 22, 174, 192. See also church Requin, General Edmond, 171 resistance, attitudes toward, 198, 224, 282-310, 399-409; officers' participation in, 282-310, 399409, 438; as possible source of

new officers, viii, 411-15; Vichy policy toward, 70, 282-86, 292, 301-307, 371, 392, 397 revanche, 58, 63-93, 142, 155, 279, 282-310, 312-13, 398, 400 Revers, General Georges, 105, 180, 277, 302, 342, 385-86, 405, 420, 437 revival of French Army, under German occupation after November 1942, 391-92, 396; in North Africa after November 1942, 398-99, 415-18 revolution, officers' fear of, 10, 70, 203-205, 215, 377-78, 401 Revolution nationale, 64-65, 177, 334, 34i Reynaud, Paul, 5, 28, 30, 45-46, 168, 171, 244 Rhineland, German reoccupation of in 1936, 19, 146 Rhone River, 9, 109 Ribbentrop, Joachim von, 83, 148, 177, 235, 270 Richert, General AugustinXavier, 138 Richter, Eugen, n Rif, frontier with Spanish Morocco, 330; war in 1925, 20, 178 Rigault, Jean, 208 Riom trial, 57, 150, 167-68, 171, 179-81, 264 Roatta, General Mario, 107 Robert, Admiral Georges, i48n Robert de Saint-Vincent, General Louis-Albert-Pierre, 177, 272, 280 Rochat, Charles-Antoine, 258, 366, 373 Roche de la Rigodiere, 297

468

Index Rocque, Colonel Francois de la, 303n Rommel, General Erwin, 4, 125, 131-32, 220-21, 240, 247-50, 313-18, 327, 334, 397, 415 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 37, 215, 298, 363 Rose, Count de, 218 Rost, Colonel von, 395 Roubertie, General Jean-SylvainLouis-Jules, 348 Rousselier, Colonel MauriceCharles, 408 Ruault-Frappart, Commander von, 384 Ruhr, French occupation of in 1923, 20 Rundstedt, Marshal Karl Rudolf Gerd von, 84-87, 385, 394, 396, 397 Saint-Cyr, 13, 33, 45, 51-53, 62, 141, 184, 194, 199, 268, 352, 401, 403, 4 1 1 , 419, 421 Saint-Florentin, meeting of Goring and Petain at, 314 Saint-Jean d'Acre, Treaty of, 236 Saint-Leger, Alexis, 67 Saint-Nazaire, Allied raid on, 320 Saint-Pierre et Miquelon, 83, 1 3 1 Salan, General Raoul, 424, 427 Salomon, Ernst von, 95 Sane, Martin, i49n Saumur, 98, 268 Scapini, Georges, 257 Schlesser, General Guy, 51-54, 173, 189, 194, 199, 388, 398, 421 Schmidt, Paul, 7 Schmitt, Colonel Gaston, 298

Schnitzler, Captain, 396-397 Sciard, General Theodore-Marcel, 180 secret societies, see Masonic orders Seeckt, General Hans von, 58 Serre, Major, 400 Service d'ordre legionnaire, 95 Service national de la statistique, resistance activities of, 201, 293-95 Service de travail obligatoire, 401 Sevez, General FrangoisAdolphe-Laurent, 420 Sierra Leone, French plans to attack, 72, 387 Simon, Jules, 16 social composition of officer corps, 13, 42-46, 60 social role of army, 21, 157, 183203, 381, 412-13, 416 social status of officers, rise under Vichy, 142, 156, 158, 17173, 253, 429 Socialist Party, military program of, 15-21, 146, 178, 186 Somalia, French, struggle for control of, 9, 27, 31, 34, 83 Somerset, General, 120 Somme River, 23, 1 1 9 Soviet Union, attitudes toward, r 33, 243-46, 402; impact of course of war in, 109, 122, 139, 235, 239, 243, 295, 306307, 3 " - i 2 , 3 r 9 , 342-43. See also Communism Soult, Marshal Nicolas, Due de Dalmatie, 146 Spain, French fear of in Morocco, 108, 216, 330-31

Index Spears, General Sir Edward, 29, 119n Speidel, General Hans, 1 1 1 , 275 sports, emphasis upon, 53-55, 272 stalemate, view of World War II as, 83, 132, 214-19, 251, 309, 3 1 1 . 317, 342-43. 403 Stalingrad, battle of, 342 state of siege, increased powers of army under, 152-53, 256 Strasbourg, 101-104, 195, 428 strategic preconceptions of officers, 49, 247, 295, 309-310, 319, 330-38, 342-43. See also stalemate Stülpnagel, General Otto von, as president, German Armistice Commission at Wiesbaden, July 1940—15 Feb. 1941, 10, 76-82, 103, h i , 120, 148, 284, 300; as Militarbefehlshaber in Franhreich, 15 Feb. 1941—12 Feb. 1942, 269 Supreme War Council, see Conseil superieur de guerre survival of military institutions in France, officers' major preoccupation, 3, 11-23, 238. 344. 381, 389. 391 Syria, armistice in, 31-32, 35, 37, 234; British in, 72, 80, 83, 12123, 136, 139, 217, 234-43, 257; collaboration with Germans in, 122, 228-42; French recovery of, 274; veterans of Franco-British fighting in, 68, 129, 216, 271, 327, 370 tactics, military, 49, 57-58, r8o Talagrand, Jacques, 64 tank warfare, 50, 57, 137, 180

Tardieu, Andre, 162, 190, 260 Taurines, Senator Jean, 68 Tetu, General Marcel-Louis-Joseph, 80-83 Teulery, Major ("de Viguier"), 414 Thierry d'Argenlieu, Admiral Rene-Victor-Marie, 82 Thierry-Maulnier, see Talagrand Thiers, Adolphe, 142-44 Third Republic, attitudes toward, 6, 17-21, 58, 142-46, 15859. 169-70, 179, 190-91, 210, 425-26; military policy of, 1220, 45, 160-68, 269, 280, 42526 Tillon, Charles, 414 Tixier-Vignancourt, Jean-Louis, 424 Tostain, Colonel Paul, 338, 357 Touchon, General Robert-Auguste, 57, 151 Toulon, units of French Fleet at, 27, 36, 82, 84, 361, 381-90 Tour du Pin, Rene de la, 2 1 1 Tournemire, Colonel Guillaume de, 150 Tradition, revival of military, 60-62 training, 49-57 Tribunal d'etat, 151, 376, 380 Tunisia, army in, 48, 110-12, 331, 348-49; Axis occupation 358, 363-71; defended against Allies, 250, 315, 391-97; Italian influence in, 110-12, 115, 222, 226-27, 315-17, 331; material to Axis through, 125, 232, 240-41, 250, 314-16, 334; national revolution in, 334 underground, see resistance

470

Index United States, attitudes toward, 73, 138-40, 153, 215, 246, 310, 312-13, 331, 336; policy of, 135, 139, 250, 258, 315; support of Resistance by, 134, 296-99, 312-13, 318-19, 329; threat to French Empire, 35354, 361-62, 421 unity, of officer corps, as goal, 155-57, 234, 253-54, 280-81, 424, 427; of social classes, 19499, 412 universal military service, in France, 18-19, 183-84; suspension of, 42, 58-59, 193, 202-203 Uriage, see £cole de cadres Vacca-Maggiolini, General, 1 1 5 Valin, Colonel Martial, 35 Vallat, Xavier, 176 Valmy, batde of, 202 Van Hecke, Colonel Jean-Sylvestre, 207-208 Vercingetorix, 115, 197, 199 Vercors, resistance in, 404, 406, 426 Verdun, battle of, 305, 326 Verneau, General Jean, 295, 374, 377, 405 Vernejoul, General Jacques-JeanFrangois de, 420 Verthamon, Major, 350 Veterans, see Legion Frangaise des Combattants Viard Commission, 360 Vice-Presidency of the Council, 148-49, 258, 267 Vigier, General Alain Touzet du, 196, 245, 292, 295-96, 309, 319, 415, 420 Vignol, Colonel Georges, 372

Villelume, General Marie-Joseph-Victor-Paul, 45 Vogl, General, president of German Armistice Commission at Wiesbaden, 15 Feb. 1941— Aug. 1944, 106, 115, 222, 22526, 240, 261, 340 voting rights, officers' lack of, 146 Waldeck-Rousseau, government of, 169 War, French declaration of against Allies, 89; against Axis, 63, 71, 108, 218, 227-28; against Britain, 71-93, 125, 231-33, 235-43 Warlimont, General Walter, 8892, 230-31, 257, 396 Washington Naval Conference of 1922, 121 Weygand, Colonel Jacques, 423 Weygand, General Maxime, before World War II, 66, 143, 169, 186, 212, 244, 264; dismissal of, 138, 258-62, 271, 279, 282, 312, 327, 331; German arrest of, 373n; opinions of, 10, 19, 39, 46, 63-64, 66, 69-70, 96, 117, 123, 127, 132, 139-40, 143, 145-46, 160-61, 170-71, 181-82, 186, 212, 214233-35, 244, 246, 251, 313, 317, 322, 401, 429; in retirement, 297-98, 373-75, 411 7923 and 1940: commander of French forces in the Levant 20 May—25 June 1940: Commander in Chief of French Forces, 4-5, 7, 10, 23-27, 30, 67-68, 92, 108, 118, 425 77 June—6 Sept. 1940: Minister of National Defense,

Index 3 1 , 39-41, 43, 46, 70-77, 80, 92, 146, 148, 1 5 1 , 160, 168, 172, 222, 253-57, 263, 268, 284 6 Sept. 1940—17 Nov. 1941: government delegate in French Africa, 39, 64, 80, 92, 96, 123, 136, 221-26, 227, 233-35, 241-42, 296, 301, 33435 Wilbur, Colonel William H., 352 Wilhelm II, Kaiser, n

Wilhelm, Crown Prince, 268 Woermann, Dr. Ernst, n o Wiihlisch, General von, 354-56 Ybarnegaray, Jean, 255 Yugoslavia, impact of German success in, 214, 219 Zay, Jean, 153 Zeller, General Andre, 406, 420 Zeller, General Henri, 294 Zinder, 90

472