Could Vichy France join the Axis after the attack on Mers-el-Kébir
what would be the impact of this
How would this effect France post war
What would have to be offeredA lot more would have to be offered Petains government than was offered OTL, which was basically nothing.
What would have to be offered
IIRC one of the British official histories said that it was touch and go whether Vichy France would declare war on Great Britain for the week after Mers-el-Kébir but I won't be able to look for the page reference until this evening.Could Vichy France join the Axis after the attack on Mers-el-Kébir.
Hess offered colonial readjustment as part of his peace plan.France could be offered the Channel Islands, French Switzerland, maybe British possessions in the Middle East and Africa and other colonies of European powers such as the Belgian Congo but the major sticking point would be Morocco and those areas claimed by Spain and Italy. So you have to come up with a scheme that sorts out claims to various parts of Africa and the Middle East and Asia that gives France a prominent role. Maybe Italy gets East Africa while France gets Egypt and South Africa; Germany gets back its former African colonies. France and Spain get the various colonies in West Africa; Both France and Spain have claims to Morocco; I suppose that if France joined the Axis, then so would Spain so that Spain can assert its claims to British and African territory. Italy gets Malta, Libya, East Africa, and bits of Yugoslavia and Greece.
French Magazine Guerres et Histoire did à spécial on Mers El Kebir. It as lots of information on the French discussions. War was apparently closer than is usually assumed. It would have started with retaliation and escalated from there. The biggest butterfly is the impact of the French Air Force on Bob.IIRC one of the British official histories said that it was touch and go whether Vichy France would declare war on Great Britain for the week after Mers-el-Kébir but I won't be able to look for the page reference until this evening.
Not really. The Spanish discussion starts and ends with "can joining the Axis provide more food than we import by sea when the RN blockades all our ports? No, it cannot."French Magazine Guerres et Histoire did à spécial on Mers El Kibir. It as lots of information on the French discussions. War was apparently closer than is usually assumed. It would have started with retaliation and escalated from there. The biggest butterfly is the impact of the French Air Force on Bob.
A French/Italian/German coalition on the Med would change everything, and it would be a lot more tempting for Spain to join the war.
Not Really. That is the one minor aspect of the OTL discussion. This TL discussion starts with the French conducting large scale retaliatory action after the Mers El Kebir attack, leading to escalation and France in the Axis, leading to Germany promoting a "Lets divide the Med after we defeat Britain" conference with France and Italy and asking Spain if they want to be left out.Not really. The Spanish discussion starts and ends with "can joining the Axis provide more food than we import by sea when the RN blockades all our ports? No, it cannot."
This isn't the quote I was looking for, but it is nevertheless interesting. It's from Pages 215 and 216 of The Mediterranean and Middle East Volume IFrench Magazine Guerres et Histoire did à spécial on Mers El Kebir. It as lots of information on the French discussions. War was apparently closer than is usually assumed. It would have started with retaliation and escalated from there. The biggest butterfly is the impact of the French Air Force on Bob.
A French/Italian/German coalition on the Med would change everything, and it would be a lot more tempting for Spain to join the war.
Admiral Cunningham had intended to take the whole fleet to sea on September 25th in order to pass army and air reinforcements to Malta and to engage the enemy fleet if the opportunity occurred. He was prevented from sailing by the course of events elsewhere. On the 23rd an abortive attempt was made to land Free French forces at Dakar, and for some days it was uncertain whether this would not lead to open hostilities with Vichy. Instead, the French contented themselves with bombing Gibraltar on September 24th and 25th as a reprisal. All this naturally provoked a certain restlessness in the French naval squadron at Alexandria. Admiral Cunningham's agreement with Admiral Godfroy held good unless war was declared, but if it came to the point the French ships could no doubt be seized, though in the shallow water of the harbour they might be scuttled, and bloodshed would probably result. The Commander-in-Chief was most anxious to avoid any such outcome, but for the time being he felt obliged to stand guard at Alexandria with a substantial part of his fleet.
On 26th September the Admiralty informed him that as the Dakar operation had been broken off it was unlikely that general hostilities would begin. Two days later Cunningham was able to report that Godfroy had told him that if Vichy declared war he had no personal intention of taking offensive action, but would scuttle his ships if any attempt were made to seize them. On the 27th Radio Lyons announced that as the British squadron had ceased to attack Dakar the French Admiralty had ordered reprisals against Gibraltar to be suspended, and similar information came from American sources. Thereafter the situation gradually eased and Admiral Cunningham was able to resume his postponed operation on September 29th, though on a much reduced scale. Not for another ten days did he feel justified in taking all four battleships to sea.
Again this is not the quotation that I am looking for. However, it is a British assessment of the consequences of Mers-el-Kébir driving France into war against them. It is from Page 141 of the Mediterranean and Middle East Volume IFrench Magazine Guerres et Histoire did à spécial on Mers El Kebir. It as lots of information on the French discussions. War was apparently closer than is usually assumed. It would have started with retaliation and escalated from there. The biggest butterfly is the impact of the French Air Force on Bob.
A French/Italian/German coalition on the Med would change everything, and it would be a lot more tempting for Spain to join the war.
The "First Happy Time" lasted roughly from June 1940 to May 1941. During that time a few score of operational Kriegsmarine submarines were able to sink hundreds of thousands of tons of merchant shipping a month.The decision that, if all else failed, the French capital ships were to be attacked was as serious as it was repugnant, seeing that it might have driven France to war against us. Had this occurred, the naval situation, especially in the Mediterranean, would have become graver still. In all there remained under the Vichy Government's control one battlecruiser, one aircraft carrier, four 8-inch and ten 6-inch cruisers, thirty destroyers and seventy submarines. Numerous bases would have become available to the Axis. French air forces had flown in large numbers to North Africa, where there were now believed to be 180 French bombers and 450 fighters. Attacks could have been made on Malta and Gibraltar and any of our naval forces that might be in the Central or Western Mediterranean. Malta would have become more isolated than ever. Shipping bound for the Middle East by the Cape route would have been liable to attacks from naval and air bases on the west coast of Africa and from Madagascar, while the defences of the important convoy assembly port of Freetown would have required strengthening urgently. Various other defence commitments would have arisen in consequence of threats from neighbouring French territories, while in Egypt a large number of hostile French residents and officials would have been an embarrassment. Finally, if German and Italian action had compelled the withdrawal of the fleet from the Eastern Mediterranean, the transport of Axis forces to Syria could no longer have been prevented and this might have produced a very serious situation indeed.
Talking of Nigeria...Also read somewhere there was a proposal to offer Nigeria to France.
France fully in the Axis is a nightmare scenario for Britain.Again this is not the quotation that I am looking for. However, it is a British assessment of the consequences of Mers-el-Kébir driving France into war against them. It is from Page 141 of the Mediterranean and Middle East Volume IThe "First Happy Time" lasted roughly from June 1940 to May 1941. During that time a few score of operational Kriegsmarine submarines were able to sink hundreds of thousands of tons of merchant shipping a month.
How many more would have been sunk if the 70 Vichy controlled submarines had joined in? AFAIK the submarines weren't as good as the German Types VII and IX, but they were much better than the Italian submarines that operated in the Atlantic and AFAIK they had better trained crews.
France fully in the Axis is a nightmare scenario for Britain.
... it would double the submarine force for the Atlantic and give axis naval superiority on the Med.
That's why the attack on Mers El Kebir was such a stupid gamble. Not because the risk of an all out war with France was high (it wasn't) but because the consequences if that happened were so out of proportion with the risk the French ships posed.