Best Defense

Thomas E. Ricks' daily take on national security.

I didn’t realize how much fighting there was between French and English in WWII

I knew that the British had fought Vichy French forces during World War II, but for some reason I thought it only was at the very beginning of the war, and only out of fear of the French fleet falling into Nazi hands.

Bundesarchiv_Bild_183-H25217,_Henry_Philippe_Petain_und_Adolf_Hitler
Bundesarchiv_Bild_183-H25217,_Henry_Philippe_Petain_und_Adolf_Hitler

I knew that the British had fought Vichy French forces during World War II, but for some reason I thought it only was at the very beginning of the war, and only out of fear of the French fleet falling into Nazi hands. I had a vague recollection that also in fighting in Senegal in west Africa late in 1940, the Vichy French repelled British warships working with De Gaulle’s troops. And of course I knew there was a bit of French resistance to the American landings in Morocco in 1942.

I knew that the British had fought Vichy French forces during World War II, but for some reason I thought it only was at the very beginning of the war, and only out of fear of the French fleet falling into Nazi hands. I had a vague recollection that also in fighting in Senegal in west Africa late in 1940, the Vichy French repelled British warships working with De Gaulle’s troops. And of course I knew there was a bit of French resistance to the American landings in Morocco in 1942.

But I hadn’t known that the French bombed Gibraltar in retaliation for Dakar, or that the Brits sank a French destroyer off the coast of Syria in June 1941. Also that French resistance to the British lasted on Madagascar from May to November of 1942. (And, as noted, the more I learn about the Darlan affair, the more I am convinced that Churchill ordered at the end of 1942 that the French Vichy admiral be assassinated. As he notes in his memoirs, Darlan’s unplanned exit solved a lot of problems.)

All this must have made for some interesting conversations during the early days of NATO.

It makes me think that there probably is a good book to be written (if it hasn’t been already) on the skirmishing between the British and French from 1940 to 1942. French casualties must have totalled more than 3,500.

Also, things got nasty in Syria in May 1945 when the French went in with artillery to put down Syrians fighting for independence. Churchill told De Gaulle to back off. The French did, but only after killing about 2,000 people, Churchill writes in the last volume of this memoirs of World War II.

Bundesarchiv/Wikimedia Commons

Thomas E. Ricks covered the U.S. military from 1991 to 2008 for the Wall Street Journal and then the Washington Post. He can be reached at ricksblogcomment@gmail.com. Twitter: @tomricks1

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