Pétain dies

During the Battle of France Pétain dies of any old age related disease aggravated by the stress of the war.
Good for him: he'll be remembered as a war hero.
What happens to France?

How likely is France to surrender without pressure from Pétain?
If France surrenders who would be placed in charge of Vichy France?
 
Without Pétain, the pro-peace faction of the government would lack of a figurehead. It is likely that the hardliners (De Gaulle, Mandel) would convince Reynaud to organize an evacuation to North Africa, and surely purge the government from defeatists.
 
Interesting, you could have de Gaulle using Petain's memory to reinforce his case to stay in the war.

"The Marshal would never have contemplated surrendering to the germans etc."

Yes the 2 hated each other but it seems just the sort of trick he would pull.

"Remember the Marshal", has good ring to it as a title don't you think?
 
If Petain dies the French government may relocate to North Africa as part of it did OTL only to be told to go back ASAP.

Even without much infrastructure in the colonies except navy bases the gold hoard is in Dakar and the moral/political implications of a France fighting on from the colonies could have great influence on the occupied countries as well as perhaps Finland!

Lots of aircraft did make it to North Africa as would the navy the problem is of course army units but even without France do have a sizeable army in North Africa that could put severe pressure on the Italians in Libya; Musso might even decide to stay out if the French are still alive and kicking.
 
I don't think Petain was the determining factor to sign an armistice with the Germans. Most of the cabinet did not agree with Reynaud that the government should flee to Algeria and continue to fight. Petain was simply an authority figure that served as the leader for that view.

Most of the Cabinet had accepted that France had been defeated and were looking to limit the damages done to the country. Almost everyone expected that Britain would quickly cease fighting, and that a permanent peace treaty would be done.

It is not that Reynaud needed to be convinced to fight on. He wanted to fight on, but his was the minority position. The majority wanted peace.

The armistice signed by France was extremely detrimental as it allowed French POWs to remain in camps until the final peace with Britain. It is strong proof that no one expected the British to continue to fight otherwise they would have refused to sign the armistice (the Germans had indicated that they would not make any changes to their terms at all).

If Petain is dead, then someone else becomes Premier of France after Reynaud resigns and the armistice is signed. Perhaps Camille Chautemps.

If the French had not been so defeatist, they would have realized that no honorable peace with Nazi Germany was possible. Petain certainly helped with that defeatism, but he did not create it.
 

Cook

Banned
Yes the 2 hated each other but it seems just the sort of trick he would pull.
This was entirely a consequence of Petain’s Collaboration and declaration of De Gaulle as a traitor during the war. Prior to that De Gaulle had been a protégé of Petain’s.
 
This was entirely a consequence of Petain’s Collaboration and declaration of De Gaulle as a traitor during the war. Prior to that De Gaulle had been a protégé of Petain’s.

De Gaulle commuting Petain's death penalty was a good example of his ambivalent feeling toward him, even after De Gaulle himself had been tried and convicted in absentia by Vichy.
 
Unfortunately, the French had to pull almost all of the ground forces that had much combat value out of North Africa and into the fight for metropolitan France in Weygand's attempt to hold a line after Dunkirk. They would have had to get forces back to Africa in order to hold out there.

I've toyed with a "French Hold Out in North Africa" scenario a few times, and it is difficult to make work. For one thing, any major weapons system that they get to North Africa (planes, tanks) quickly loses value because of lack of spare parts. They would have to rely on British and US production for anything beyond small arms.

Evacuation of ground forces runs into the problem that the French were barely holding the line in France to begin with. Moving substantial forces out of the line for evacuation would have hastened the collapse, and forces slated for evacuation might not have beaten the Germans to the ports of southern France. They could have called up the next class of potential inductees, or at least the ones in the part of France they still held, and sent them to North Africa to be trained and equipped, but raw recruits like that would be of little military value for six months or more. It would have been tough to make holding out there work, especially since the French would have had to worry about not just Italy but also Spain trying to grab pieces of French territory, plus the prospect of Arab revolts.
 
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