alternatehistory.com

I came across this recently and was intrigued by what might have happened had it gone ahead.

To lay it out for anyone that hasn't come across it before, a couple of days after the fall of Paris on 14 June 1940 a proposal was drafted to merge Great Britain and France into one country. Churchill was initially sceptical, but was persuaded of it by Charles de Gaulle and the British Cabinet voted in favour. The French Prime Minister, Paul Reynaud, was strongly in favour of it and the French President, Albert Lebrun was also supportive. A British delegation was prepared to travel to Concarneau for a formal meeting of the two governments, but the plan was scuttled by a faction in the French government led by Philippe Petain (later leader of Vichy France) who favoured an armistice with Germany.

It seems like this was very close to happening so my thought is that it wouldn't take a dramatic shift for it to go ahead, perhaps had the proposal been made immediately after the fall of Paris rather than a couple of days later, or maybe if Petain wasn't around to argue against it (he was 84).

So if the proposal did go ahead, and the Franco-British Union was born at Concarneau in June 1940, what effects would that have?

I presume it would not stop the fall of metropolitan France, but it would mean that there would be no armistice so French military forces in the colonies would continue fighting. The [Franco]-British position would thus be strengthened, for example by the merging of the French fleet and the Royal Navy (with no British attack on French naval bases in North Africa). How much do you think this would change the course of the war?

With this precedent there, would the same offer be made to other allied countries too (Poland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Czechoslovakia, and later maybe Greece), and if so, would they accept? If Poland and Czechoslovakia did join a British-led United Europe, what would that mean for relations with the Soviet Union and the aftermath of the war?

What would the general political consequences after the war? Would the Union stay together, or would it quickly fall apart back into it's constituent countries?
Top