Greater Vichy French combat

OTL, Vichy French military (such as it was) was more concerned with suppressing the resistance than cooperating with Germany in their wars, with most French participation being in small volunteer militias (the biggest I saw was the Legion of French Volunteers Against Bolshevism, which had a size of about 6,000 men in the East).

Would it have been possible for the Vichy French to raise more forces to fight abroad, or would it have only inflamed tensions with German authorities?
 
OTL, Vichy French military (such as it was) was more concerned with suppressing the resistance than cooperating with Germany in their wars, with most French participation being in small volunteer militias (the biggest I saw was the Legion of French Volunteers Against Bolshevism, which had a size of about 6,000 men in the East).

Would it have been possible for the Vichy French to raise more forces to fight abroad, or would it have only inflamed tensions with German authorities?

The Middle Eastern campaign of the allies and Free French against Vichy France comes to my mind. Also there had been a few battles between US and Vichy troops in Northern Africa.
 

Archibald

Banned
Common, Vichy was a bunch of morons unwilling to fight, which Air Force was mediocre at best, landforce had been cut to the bone, and the Navy ended scuttled at the bottom of Toulon harbor. Main hobbies in Vichy was to lick Pétain ass and chase jews just to rise in the hierarchy. There was a lot of far-right nuts who hated each other and happily stabbed others in the back. Royalists, antisemits, anti-communists - the scum at the bottom of the toilet.
 
What happened to the ~2 million French (+Dutch+Belgian) PoWs the Germans captured in the invasion of France? Could they have been used to lessen the German occupation burden, plus select volunteers for the Russian campaign?
 
Re the Syrian campaign. The French were moving significant numbers of reinforcing French troops by rail through German controlled Yugoslavia and Greece to Salonika with a view to shipping them to Syria where German and Italian aircraft were being refuelled. The Germans and Italians were not going to loose air and sea resources by shipping them and the Royal Navy had sunk or driven off French naval support. The Turks stuck to their neutrality. Had they not then these troops and military supplies would have reached Syria by rail through Turkey and the battle to take Syria with an improvised force would have been lost. Only about 1 in 7 French soldiers captured in Syria after the surrender chose to join the Free French. The rest returned to the Vichy French forces.
 
Ah! Not happening. Pétain was an active collaborationist. He was the one who initiated the French antisemitic laws before the Nazis even asked for them. He tried to peddle the lies he had actually done his best to protect the French population from Nazi harshness at his trial and a hack of a historian, Robert Aron, who should have known better since he was involved in the Free French, relayed that in his theory of 'the sword and the shield', de Gaulle being the sword, Pétain the shield. When a proper researcher like Robert Paxton used the archives in Germany, he proved very fast just how deeply in bed Pétain and his government were with the Germans. Suffice to say, Pétain was one of a clique of reactionaries who saw the Occupation as the perfect opportunity to roll back everything they felt was wrong with France. And according to some of them, the rot had begun to set in in 1789.
 
Common, Vichy was a bunch of morons unwilling to fight, which Air Force was mediocre at best, landforce had been cut to the bone, and the Navy ended scuttled at the bottom of Toulon harbor. Main hobbies in Vichy was to lick Pétain ass and chase jews just to rise in the hierarchy. There was a lot of far-right nuts who hated each other and happily stabbed others in the back. Royalists, antisemits, anti-communists - the scum at the bottom of the toilet.

True, and they had low morale because they had nothing to fight for. Why would Frenchmen be willing to die for Germany? Most of them were either cowardly or greedy and fled from battle the moment anyone with a gun showed up.
 
WI Vichy France decided to retain thier colonies in Indo-China?
Could they field enough white officers?
Could they recruit enough locals to fill the ranks?
Could France supply enough beans and bullets?
How would they communicate with Paris?
 
WI Vichy France decided to retain thier colonies in Indo-China?
Could they field enough white officers?
Could they recruit enough locals to fill the ranks?
Could France supply enough beans and bullets?
How would they communicate with Paris?


Germany would likely taken over Vichy France right there and then. Japan was an ally while Vichy France was a mere colony for all practical purposes.
 
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Ah! Not happening. Pétain was an active collaborationist. ....

This decision is not exclusively in Petains hand. Not all the French leaders favored nuetrality, or collaboration. Barre the commander of the Tunis garrison refused to disarm his soldiers or confine them to barracks, withdrew his battalions into the countryside, & established communications with the Allies, while under orders to cooperate with the Germans & resist the Allies. His refusal to surrender a bridge across the Medjb al Bab River led directly to the first fighting between the Germans & French in Tunisia. In the same week of November a French general in the unoccupid zone was relieved of command as he had been preparing his unit to attack the German garrison in Bourdeux. Nougues the military governor of Morroco thought it necessary to arrest and confine French officers who he thought were threatening French nuetrality by cooperation with the Allies if the invaded. Had Darlan acted decisively on 6th or 7th November there would have been German soldiers killed establishing a lodgement in Tunisia & a lot fewer Allied soldiers killed. There are several others who thought the Germans or Italians a greater threat than Parisian communists or conspiring Jews.
 

Wallet

Banned
Hitler orders the French to raise an even larger army to fight the Soviets, or Paris is burned
 
This decision is not exclusively in Petains hand. Not all the French leaders favored nuetrality, or collaboration. Barre the commander of the Tunis garrison refused to disarm his soldiers or confine them to barracks, withdrew his battalions into the countryside, & established communications with the Allies, while under orders to cooperate with the Germans & resist the Allies. His refusal to surrender a bridge across the Medjb al Bab River led directly to the first fighting between the Germans & French in Tunisia. In the same week of November a French general in the unoccupid zone was relieved of command as he had been preparing his unit to attack the German garrison in Bourdeux. Nougues the military governor of Morroco thought it necessary to arrest and confine French officers who he thought were threatening French nuetrality by cooperation with the Allies if the invaded. Had Darlan acted decisively on 6th or 7th November there would have been German soldiers killed establishing a lodgement in Tunisia & a lot fewer Allied soldiers killed. There are several others who thought the Germans or Italians a greater threat than Parisian communists or conspiring Jews.

Laval was even worse. Weygand was an incompetent and a coward with not a bit of fight left in him from WWI. Laborde who was in charge at Toulon sunk his fleet rather than turn it over to the Allies because he still couldn't get over Mers-el-Kébir. His only achievement was not to let it fall into Germans' hands. And so on.
 
Laval was even worse. Weygand was an incompetent and a coward with not a bit of fight left in him from WWI. Laborde who was in charge at Toulon sunk his fleet rather than turn it over to the Allies because he still couldn't get over Mers-el-Kébir.

A battle which Darlan was given a number of face saving options that would have spared his fleet and its various crews.
 
A battle which Darlan was given a number of face saving options that would have spared his fleet and its various crews.

Oh, much I can dislike the old dinosaur on occasion, I will be the first to agree that Churchill was right to order Mers-el-Kébir to proceed. It's just that it gave an ass-covering excuse to a lot of French naval officers to behave disgracefully. Usually, they keep that kind of behaviour when in battle, but they actually managed to do it while in port that time.
 
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