During the fall of France, De Gaulle attack the Germans at Montcornet. What would had happen if he had been kill at the battle.
Charles De Gaulle dies at Montcornet.
- Thread starter Historyman 14
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I'd agree the Free French movement would be less forcefully led to 1943, and likely less relevant. Post 1942 the US was looking for a counterweight to British leadership in several political areas, so developing a French gonverment ndependant of Brit influence would be important. Also the US expected to mobilize a substantial French army. that would be easier with clear French political leadership. Finally, the US had little interest in the endless problems of occupation government. The headaches encountered in the first few times it was forced on the US Army reinforced that feeling. So a Free French government was likely in US policy. Note that DeGualle was definitely not the first or even the second choice for the US leaders. He got the position by default after Several other died or failed.
Initially it will be harder to rally in such places as Cameroon and Chad and Gabon which probably remain Vichy.
Any attempt to present the attacks on Dakar and Syria as Free French led operations would be much more pretend than they were OTL.
The butterfies on this can be great though and a more confident Vichy regime might be less willing to deal with Hitler over transit rights in Syria and Tunisia or demand more in compenstation, which could butterfly away the need to invade Syria.
And if west Africa looks solidly Vichy and with no one of consequence the British have to prop up, they might not do Dakar either.
Regardless, the Allies will do Torch at some point and will want to use the French forces gathered there so they will establish some sort of Free French regime by then at the latest. And Hilter will do Anton just the same. If the politics of Vichy France at the time allow the Toulon fleet to go to the Allies or if Vichy at that point just declared all its colonies to go over to the Allies, it could well still have a place at the victors table and an occupation zone still. Much still depends on the individual actions of Darlan, Petain, Laval and such actors and how much they change due to the POD.
Any attempt to present the attacks on Dakar and Syria as Free French led operations would be much more pretend than they were OTL.
The butterfies on this can be great though and a more confident Vichy regime might be less willing to deal with Hitler over transit rights in Syria and Tunisia or demand more in compenstation, which could butterfly away the need to invade Syria.
And if west Africa looks solidly Vichy and with no one of consequence the British have to prop up, they might not do Dakar either.
Regardless, the Allies will do Torch at some point and will want to use the French forces gathered there so they will establish some sort of Free French regime by then at the latest. And Hilter will do Anton just the same. If the politics of Vichy France at the time allow the Toulon fleet to go to the Allies or if Vichy at that point just declared all its colonies to go over to the Allies, it could well still have a place at the victors table and an occupation zone still. Much still depends on the individual actions of Darlan, Petain, Laval and such actors and how much they change due to the POD.
I am assuming this is because of the OTL Free French classic stand at Bir Hacheim. Presumably the British would have their overall forces limited by supply considerations and without the French to supply would have just stuck a British brigade there instead which could do almost as well.
Perhaps if Vichy controls Chad and Cameroon and such places there are just more die hards fleeing to British colonies to create such Free French units instead of having to garrison these places so maybe there is still a Free French brigade.
After reaching Alexandria, actually taking Alexandria in 1942 even with more German favorable things happening seems tricky, just stick one British Division in downtown Alexandria guarding the port, which in urban fighting conditions would be difficult for the Germans with limited supply to tackle in conditions where all their OTL desert tactical advantages disappear.
The problem with that reasoning is that Bir Hakeim was just one of a line of fortification, with nothing special to distinguish it for the others held by british or imperial troops. Yet Bir Hakeim was the only one which held (for 2 weeks rather than 2 days). The only difference was the quality of the troops. Why would the british waste first rate troops on this fortification when the others, equally or more important rated second rate troops at best. The point is that the british rated the 13eme DBLE as 3rd rate troops at best. Before De Gaulle started bitching, they had the 13eme DBLE guarding air bases in Egypt, far from any fight. As De Gaulle was making a nuisance of himself saying he wanted these french troops on the front line, the bitish command found an out of the way place to put them where their lack of fighting spirit would not hurt the british army. WHen Rommel attacked in that unexected place, all the british garrisons troops yielded or were routed. One held. Because it was held by the 13 eme DBLE. If it had been garrisonned with the same quality of troops as the british HQ wanted to put there (and thought they had), it would have lasted maybe 2 hours against the first italian attack, before falling. If that happens, Rommel takes Tobrouk 2 weeks before he arrives there OTL, before it an be garrisonned seriously and with a lot of supplies. He continues his blitzkrieg until the british can mass a suffiecient army. That will be in the Delta of the nile.
Basically, the British lucked out by having underestimated first rate troops as third rate and placing them just where Rommel attacked, with the other third rate troops, instead of with the first rate british troops, completely out of position.
Not quite. After his adventure with the 4th DCR in May DeGaulle was made a Assistant Undersecretary of Defense. His specific job was liasion with the British Defense Ministry for the French Secretary of Defense and made a trip there of several days. Returning to France he supported the French Prime Minister Reynauds plan for moving the French government to Africa. When Marshal Petain became Prime Minister & imeadeately announced for a armistice DeGualle returned to Britain and offered to form a French Government in exile. His status as a member of Reynauds former Cabinet, and previous contacts with the British government gave him name recognition and a degree of status the other military leaders did not have.
Reynaud might have done the same. For a few hours after support in the French legislature failed him he thought flee to Africa with a few loyalists and Form a government in exile. But, he was mentally exhausted by the events of the previous months & near collapse. Daladier was another possibility, but like Reynaud he was wrung out and may have been blaming himself for the military collapse. As minister of defense he had wanted to replace Gamelin & other senior Marshals months earlier, but had not garnered the political support quickly enough.
Of course all this was in the summer of 1940. The Brits despite everything were not ready to give up on the French, or at least on those who were still willing to fight Germans or Italians. Eventually that year, or in 1941 they would have found at least a few leaders, no matter how lame, to form a French government in exile. After the US joined the Allies Roosevelt would have insisted on a stronger Free French government and large military.
Cook
Banned
The suggestion that if de Gaulle had died there would not have been a Free French government is quite simply ridiculous. Regardless of de Gaulle there would have been a Free French for two reasons; firstly because there were French soldiers and sailors in England, many of whom still wanted to fight, they would have established some organisation to represent their interests. Secondly, and most importantly, because the British needed there to be a Free French government.
When de Gaulle landed in England there were 21,000 French troops there; men who’d taken part in the Norwegian campaign or who had been evacuated from Dunkirk. None of them had fought under de Gaulle and few would have known much about him or been inspired by what they did; de Gaulle had spent most of the First World War in a German prisoner of war camp, had been promoted slowly in the inter-war period, written a book on strategy that had been ridiculed in France, and his involvement in the fighting in 1940 had consisted of only a few days action. That had resulted in the armoured division he commanded being almost completely destroyed without even slowing the German spearheads (so ineffective was his attack that it wasn't even noted in the Wehrmarcht's official history of the campaign) before he’d been asked to join the collapsing Reynaud government as its most junior minister. As things turned out, less than a third of the French servicemen in England joined the Free French army, most preferring to either be repatriated to France or be interned in England for the duration of the war. Those that did join the F.F. did so for reasons other than enthusiasm for de Gaulle, as he him-self fully admitted. De Gaulle described their motivation as:
‘A taste for risk and adventure pushed to the pitch of art for art’s sake, a contempt for the cowardly and the indifferent, a tendency to melancholy and so to quarrelling during the periods without danger, given place to an ardent cohesion in action, a national pride sharpened to the extreme by their country’s ill-fortune and by contact with well equipped allies, and above all, a sovereign confidence in the strength and courage of their own conspiracy.’
Nor was de Gaulle any more successful in rallying French colonies to his banner; only French Equatorial Africa went over to the Free French cause, and for reasons entirely unrelated to de Gaulle’s leadership. At Dakar, the last campaign against the Vichy French where Free French forces took the lead and de Gaulle commanded in person, the allies were defeated. After that, allied forces led the campaigns in Vichy colonies, often without any prior consultation with de Gaulle. Nor did progressively greater success inspire more enthusiasm for the Free French cause; Vichy forces in Madagascar and the Levant fought bitterly hard to the finish and almost all declined to join the Free French, instead choosing to be repatriated.
The Free French forces fighting in the Levant and North Africa were not commanded in the field by de Gaulle, he was the political of a government, not a military leader; that government was serving a vital role for the British; they needed someone who they could hand over liberated Vichy colonies to, thereby avoiding the appearance of plundering the French Empire; the Fashoda complex. Nor was de Gaulle the British first choice, that had been the French Interior Minister Georges Mandel who General Spears had been sent to France to persuade to fly to England. Unfortunately Mandel, attempting to rally French resistance in North Africa instead, was arrested by Petain, handed over to the Germans and murdered by the Gestapo.
Without de Gaulle, someone else would have filled the position of political leader and the Free French would have proceeded much as they did. The shape of post-war French politics would have been different, possibly immensely different depending on who stepped forward to fill the gap, but during the war and in the allied conferences that decided the immediate post-war period, little would have changed; the French received a permanent seat on the new United Nations Security Council because of Churchill’s lobbying of the Stalin and Roosevelt at the Yalta conference, not because of any efforts by de Gaulle or because the Free French military contribution in any way merited it. This was despite the fact that by 1945 what little fondness for de Gaulle the British had was well and truly worn out.
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Cook
Banned
At no stage did Daladier want to replace Gamelin. Throughout his tenure as Premier and Defence Minister, Daladier was Gamelin’s champion in cabinet; he was convinced that Gamelin was a military genius right through until the Germans proved that he was anything but.
It was Paul Reynaud who wanted to dismiss Gamelin and made every effort to do so from the moment he replaced Daladier as Premier in March 1940. He was unable to due to the efforts of Daladier as defence minister. Reynaud became so frustrated by Daladier’s protection of Gamelin that he submitted his resignation as Premier to President Lebrun on the 9 May 1940 – the evening before the German offensive in the west commenced - but the prospect of the French government being headless precisely when the Germans attacked forced Lebrun to refuse Reyaud’s resignation, it also served to save Gamelin for another couple of weeks.
It is worth considering that if Lebrun had accepted Reynaud’s resignation, France and Britain would both have had new premiers and a cabinet reshuffle precisely when the Germans launched their attack on the west. Daladier would have become Premier again and Reynaud become his defence minister.
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