WW2 75th Anniversary Poll–-#10--MAY 1940

I voted for “quit (historical outcome).”

After Fall Rot succeeded, France was effectively beaten militarily. Yes, it still had a credible land force left. But it was clear that if France did not negotiate peace terms with Germany, the German offensive would continue until it reached Spain. Better for the French to retain some of France (Vichy France) than to lose the whole of the nation to German invasion. At that point in the ballgame France had nothing to gain by the continuation of hostilities, and was in a position to lose Vichy France if those hostilities continued.

Even though the French take a lot of flak for having surrendered, surrender was absolutely the right military decision under those circumstances.

Continuing the war from the French colonial empire rather than surrendering  could actually have been in France’s medium-to-long-term interest because it might have shortened the war (or at least made the war easier for the Allied side) and thus perhaps might even led to an earlier liberation of France.

France controlled large portions of North Africa, so the presence of an active Allied power there rather than a collaborationist Vichy regime would have meant that the Italian and (eventually) the German forces in Libya who fought a one-front war against the British to their east for a couple of years would instead have had to fight a two-front war against enemies to the east and the west.  It’s even possible that the Anglo-French forces might have gotten complete control of North Africa early in the war – in 1942, or 1941, or even possibly in late 1940 – rather than in 1943 as happened historically, which would have taken a huge load off the Allied war effort.  Having the French Navy on the Allied side would also have much improved the Allied naval position in the Mediterranean, whose control was crucial to both sides.

At any rate, France’s surrender came with an awful lot of items in the negative column, with little on the gain side.  The British promptly attacked the French fleet, sinking or damaging several major warships and killing thousands of French sailors.  Much of the country became an occupied zone, while the Vichy-controlled so-called “free zone” found itself living under an authoritarian collaborationist regime; the whole country, as I recall, was subject to a crippling occupation tax of heaven-knows-how-many-millions of marks per day, which in effect gave the Nazis a free license to loot the nation.  And the French didn’t even get to keep the so-called “free zone” over the medium term: the Germans promptly occupied it when the Allies invaded North Africa in late 1942.

I take on board Marc’s point about fighting on from French overseas territories and if I knew how to change my vote from defend to fight on would do so.

Think the issue raised needs to be looked at from all angles, not just militarily, and quitting yielded very little immediate benefit while leaving France with a long term national identity issue that remains raw.

No-one has picked up on my wondering whether an “honourable” peace might have changed the outcome of the war, so clearly not as interesting as I thought!  :-)

Given the mixed French record following the armistice, is there a chance that G might have won itself a half-“willing” French ally in it’s war on Russia and north African campaigns? What difference might that have made? Perhaps ripe for it’s own poll on the 75th anniversary of the armistice?  :|

@Private:

No-one has picked up on my wondering whether an “honourable” peace might have changed the outcome of the war, so clearly not as interesting as I thought!Â

I did in fact take note of your previous question about the “honourable peace” concept, but I was reluctant to offer any opinions on the subject because I wasn’t sure from what angle the question was being posed.  Your new post today still leaves me unsure about what’s behind the question, but I get the impression – perhaps incorrectly – that it’s related to a subject that’s been raised in this forum many times: the theory (with which I disagree) that France, Britain and the U.S. should have realized that Soviet Russia was more dangerous to the world than Nazi Germany, and therefore that the western democracies should have been sensible enough to make a deal with Hitler rather than going to war against him – a deal that, at minimum, would have given him a free hand in dominating central and eastern Europe, and which ideally would have involved their joining him in a crusade against the USSR.  As I’ve said, this subject has been debated ad nauseum in numerous threads, so I’m not going to restate any of my previous arguments on the subject.

On the general concept of Germany offering France an “honorable peace,”  however, I will venture a couple of comments.  As I’ve said in one or two other threads, one of Hitler’s most powerful motivations for conquering France was to avenge Germany for its defeat in WWI – a defeat he had taken very personally in 1918, and which he resented deeply for the rest of his life.  He didn’t just want to defeat France, he wanted to humiliate it too…which explains such theatrical touches as the surrender at Compiegne in Marshall Foch’s old railway car, or the German victory parade through Paris which followed the exact route of the French victory parade after WWI.  Given all this, and given that the French government under Petain had no desire to keep fighting, why would Hitler have made any concessions to France when he was able to get everything he wanted without having to bargain?  Going easy on France would actually have contradicted one of his strongest motivations for subjugating the country in the first place – the revenge motive – and going easy on France wasn’t required to achieve the purely military objectives of the campaign because Petain’s government caved in and signed away the mortgage without any great fuss.

@CWO:

I did in fact take note of your previous question about the “honourable peace” concept, but I was reluctant to offer any opinions on the subject because I wasn’t sure from what angle the question was being posed.���  Your new post today still leaves me unsure about what’s behind the question, but I get the impression – perhaps incorrectly – that it’s related to a subject that’s been raised in this forum many times: the theory (with which I disagree) that France, Britain and the U.S. should have realized that Soviet Russia was more dangerous to the world than Nazi Germany, and therefore that the western democracies should have been sensible enough to make a deal with Hitler rather than going to war against him

No, Marc, that is not my view, nor where I am coming from. Have debated against that concept myself in my short time on this board, winning some acceptance that G’s position at the heart of Europe ratchets up its threat compared to R. Have also answered this poll to say that France should have fought on.

The comments you do offer are about Hitler’s motivations and so the unlikelihood of an “honourable” deal rather than a humiliating one. Happy to agree with you there, but my question is not this.

If Hitler could have seen beyond his own desire for vengeance and offered France a peace formula that drew it into the Axis - (an example might be no loss of territory or the facade of sovereignty provided certain undertakings as to military support for the Axis, etc) - would the outcome of WW2 have been different?

My use of the word honourable was in “…” to delineate the facade of honour rather than the actuality.

You might feel that the concept of such a peace being achieved is too fantastical to merit considering the question. But what would France have agreed to in terms of supporting the Axis, given the humiliations they did accept and which they would have avoided? Plus remembering that support for the Axis even after humiliation was real in some French quarters.

If the question does merit consideration, what do you think?

Thanks for the clarifications.  The way I’d tackle the basic question you asked – which is an interesting one – would be re-phrase it slightly as follows.  Rather than considering whether Hitler might have offered France an “honourable peace” (which as I’ve said sounds to me like a highly improbable scenario), the two-part question to consider might actually be: Could Hitler have persuaded France after its surrender to join WWII on the Axis side, and if he had succeeded would this have altered the final outcome of WWII?

The answer to the first part of the question is, in my opinion, “possibly yes.”  There were two events in 1940 during which this possibility existed to some degree.  I’ll get to the first event in a moment.  The second event was the Petain-Hitler meeting at Montoire in October 1940, which was notorious for the photographs taken of the two leaders shaking hands.  The conference was important because it marked the official start of collaboration of the Vichy regime with Nazi Germany, but as far as I know there was no serious contemplation of France actually becoming an active Axis beligerent.  The first event, however, had a lot more potential to trigger such a scenario: the British attack against French naval forces at Mers-el-Kebir in July 1940, which I’ve already refered to.  It caused enormous resentment in France towards the British, and it just possibly might have pushed France into actually declaring war on Britain if matters had gone somewhat differently.  In the end, however, France simply broke off diplomatic relations with its former ally.

I’ll have to think about the second part of the question, but off the top of my head my guess would be that the participation of France in WWII as a beligerent on the Axis side would have complicated matters for the Allies and perhaps lengthened the war, but that the final outcome would not have changed.

Thanks Marc. :-)

Now that I know I am not up a gum-tree I might allow RJL’s poll to reach the end of it’s responses and then post my own with this question - or two questions as you lay out. So as not to detract from his thread more than I have already.

By the way, here’s an amusing footnote to this subject.  In August 1940, in one of his paternalistic newsreel lectures to the French people, Marshall Petain reprimanded them for having a short memory (“Francais, vous avez vraiment la memoire courte”) and accused his critics of being “les oublieux de notre histoire” (“those who are forgetful of our history”).  Ironically, however, the French people never forgot his October 1940 handshake with Hitler at Montoire (pictured below).  One French newsreel narrator proved it in 1945 when Petain was imprisoned at a fort in Montrouge to await trial: his commentary included the sarcastic zinger “Apres Montoire, Montrouge!” (“After Montoire, Montrouge!”).

Edit: Sorry, the picture is refusing to post for some reason.  My browser must be a Gaullist.  :)

Had France chose to fight to the last drop of blood the War would have played out much worse for the Allies. Paris would have been destroyed a second time in 70 years by the Germans.

The British may have been tempted to help crumbling cause of their ally by attempting a invasion of Brittany and holding a beachhead. This would have caused grave losses for the RAF and RN. Churchill would have done something bold and reckless, it’s his nature.

Italy and Germany would have taken the war to French North Africa. Germany’s price for an adventure into North Africa would have been Morocco. Morocco’s future would have been the only bait that could lure Spain into the War. I believe Italy and Germany cutting North Africa up like a Thanksgiving Turkey would have brought Spain to the dinner feast.

The war spreading into ‘tropics’ would have led to Germans fighting with Italy in Egypt. Both Germany and Italy would not have seen the need to demobilize the man power of the army back into the economy.

@CWO:

I did in fact take note of your previous question about the “honourable peace” concept, but I was reluctant to offer any opinions on the subject because I wasn’t sure from what angle the question was being posed.  Your new post today still leaves me unsure about what’s behind the question, but I get the impression – perhaps incorrectly – that it’s related to a subject that’s been raised in this forum many times: the theory (with which I disagree) that France, Britain and the U.S. should have realized that Soviet Russia was more dangerous to the world than Nazi Germany, and therefore that the western democracies should have been sensible enough to make a deal with Hitler rather than going to war against him – a deal that, at minimum, would have given him a free hand in dominating central and eastern Europe, and which ideally would have involved their joining him in a crusade against the USSR.  As I’ve said, this subject has been debated ad nauseum in numerous threads, so I’m not going to restate any of my previous arguments on the subject.

On the general concept of Germany offering France an “honorable peace,”  however, I will venture a couple of comments.  As I’ve said in one or two other threads, one of Hitler’s most powerful motivations for conquering France was to avenge Germany for its defeat in WWI – a defeat he had taken very personally in 1918, and which he resented deeply for the rest of his life.  He didn’t just want to defeat France, he wanted to humiliate it too…which explains such theatrical touches as the surrender at Compiegne in Marshall Foch’s old railway car, or the German victory parade through Paris which followed the exact route of the French victory parade after WWI.  Given all this, and given that the French government under Petain had no desire to keep fighting, why would Hitler have made any concessions to France when he was able to get everything he wanted without having to bargain?  Going easy on France would actually have contradicted one of his strongest motivations for subjugating the country in the first place – the revenge motive – and going easy on France wasn’t required to achieve the purely military objectives of the campaign because Petain’s government caved in and signed away the mortgage without any great fuss.

The theory (with which I disagree) that France, Britain and the U.S. should have realized
that Soviet Russia was more dangerous to the world than Nazi Germany

The more I learn, the more convinced I become that that theory is true. However, it is not relevant to this thread; and I will not debate it here.

As I’ve said in one or two other threads, one of Hitler’s most powerful motivations for conquering France was to avenge Germany for its defeat in WWI

Hitler’s most obvious motive for conquering France was that France had declared war on Germany. A second motive was that in 1935, France and the U.S.S.R. had signed a defensive alliance. Most people are not taught to see things from the German perspective. But when such an effort is made, it becomes clear that France represented a very serious security threat to Germany. Especially given the pro-war sentiments of its prime minister, Daladier.

After Poland fell, Hitler sought peace with France. Daladier refused. After Hitler failed to end the war with diplomacy, an end through military means was the next logical option.

He didn’t just want to defeat France, he wanted to humiliate it too…

There are several points worth bearing in mind:

• Germans often went hungry during the interwar, pre-Nazi years, due in large part to the massive reparations required under the Versailles Treaty.
• During the interwar years, the French government did little to prevent its soldiers from raping German women in French-occupied Rhineland.
• French insistence on a weak, disarmed Germany (the Weimar Republic) meant that Germany would be helpless against any sort of Soviet invasion. Neither France nor any other major Western democracy sent soldiers to Poland when the Soviet Union invaded in 1919-'20.
• For the past several centuries, France had pursued a consistently anti-German foreign policy. And had typically tried to keep Germany weak and divided.

Given these provocations, the French were extremely fortunate that during the early occupation years Hitler limited himself to victory parades and demolitions of monuments the French built to celebrate their victory in WWI. The early German occupation was considerably milder than the French had anticipated.

Going easy on France would actually have contradicted one of his strongest motivations for subjugating the country in the first place – the revenge motive

At least during the early stages of the German occupation, any German soldier accused of raping a French woman would be given a military trial. Conviction would result in the immediate execution of the soldier. Instead of repaying the French for the Rhineland rapes, Hitler’s initial occupation policy rejected “an eye for an eye.”

Things got uglier after Hitler invaded the Soviet Union. At that point, a number of pro-Soviet French resistance units appeared. Those units operated well outside the normally established rules of war. In Hitler’s view, that justified a German decision to operate outside those laws as well.