@Endeer:
What did the French contribute? Other than allowing the English to sink their warships at oran i cant think of much. The french did more harm to the allies than to the axis because of their willingness to give their ships over to the nazis because of mere pride.
The French didn’t hand a single warship over to the Axis. Many French warships were interned in British ports, sunk by the British, or in the case of Richelieu, trapped in an uncompleted state in a inadequate French African port. The rest were based in Toulon in Provence, where the Germans and Italians attempted to seize the French ships (with most of the ships going to Italy as compensation for losses sustained by the Italian Navy against the Royal Navy), but Jean de Laborde ordered the ships scuttled without hesitation. The Germans on the quay announced to Laborde on the Strasbourg that they were boarding, he shouted back “You are too late, the ship is sinking.” Which it certainly did. The French scuttled their entire fleet, they were a professional military organisation and I do not know of any Navy that has ever willingly turned its warships over to anybody. The Germans sailors and officers scuttled their ships in Scapa Flow when they found out the ships were to be parceled out to the Allies. The French Navy is a very old and very proud institution, it wasn’t about to meekly hand over its ships to the Germans, no sir.
As for the topic at hand, I’m in favour of improving the French position with House Rules. I very much respect the French (probably the only person I know who does), and I was saddened when they were pretty much made cannon-fodder for the Germans. I created a thread some time ago addressing the issue of France, but I digress. I think that the addition of a French infantry in Indo-China, and possibly a cruiser there is a good addition. I was also thinking about adding a naval base there, since Japan’s reason for taking it over was obviously for the naval facilities in Saigon and other ports. I would like to add a battleship too, for historical accuracy, France’s Navy was, after all, superior to that of Italy’s, and France even had an aircraft carrier (the Béarn). However, the Italian Navy is already hard pressed to defend against the existing British Fleet, so the addition of French capital ships would likely guarantee that Italy’s entire fleet will be destroyed on the 1st turn. With only 10 IPC income, Italy cannot hope to rebuild any sort of surface fleet for several turns, by which time the UK and France would have likely thrown what little forces they have in Africa out.