The North African Imbroglio
The Americans had been preparing the ground in North Africa for several months.29 In line with Roosevelt’s policy of trying to win Pétainists over to the Allies, Roosevelt’s representative in North Africa, Robert Murphy, had approached local figures of influence. From his soundings emerged the so-called Group of Five who prepared a plan to neutralize French resistance to the landings. It remained to find a figurehead to rally support to the Allies. This had to be someone who could win over the army. Weygand, the obvious choice, refused. The decision fell upon General Henri Giraud who had become nationally famous after escaping from a German prisoner of war camp in April 1942. Giraud’s arrival at Vichy had not helped Laval in his task of winning German goodwill, but the General had refused to give himself up to the Germans. The most he agreed to do was sign an undertaking of loyalty to Pétain. As an anti-German Pétainist, he was the perfect symbol for America’s strategy in North Africa. Approached by the conspirators, Giraud agreed to help. But when the landings occurred, he was still in Gibraltar negotiating with Eisenhower. Owing to further delays caused by difficulties in transporting him to North Africa, Giraud did not arrive in Algiers for another twenty-four hours. Giraud’s absence was one hitch in the plan. More serious was the fact that the Americans were so keen to achieve surprise that they gave insufficient advance warning of the landings to their North African contacts. The Group of Five were therefore unable to assist them by seizing strategic points, and the Americans were met by armed resistance.
The news of the invasion reached Vichy at 3 a.m. on 8 November. Woken at 7 a.m., Pétain signed a message, drafted by Laval, calling for armed resistance. Laval stalled on German demands for a declaration of war on the United States, but had to accept an ultimatum that airbases in Tunisia be made available to the Germans so that they could transport men and material to North Africa. By midday on 9 November, the German planes had started to arrive.
Laval’s problem was that if France could not repulse the attackers alone, the Germans would intervene, threatening France’s sovereignty over her Empire. Laval, therefore, had to reassure Hitler that France could be trusted to defend North Africa or ensure that German assistance to France in North Africa was accompanied by guarantees about the future of the Empire. This was the last chance to win German concessions while Vichy still had something to bargain with. Laval may have been encouraged by a German message of 8 November calling on France to declare war on America and promising to stand by her ‘through thick and thin’. In fact, these final words were personally added by Abetz and meant nothing. Abetz again muddied the waters and raised Laval’s hopes. In December 1942, he was summoned back to Berlin, and remained there in semi-disgrace for a year.
Summoned to Hitler’s presence, Laval set off by car for Munich on the morning of 9 November, but bad weather delayed his arrival until the early hours of the next morning. Hitler kept him waiting several hours longer, and finally received him on the afternoon of 10 November. Laval’s hopes of winning Hitler’s confidence were compromised by Vichy’s lack of control over events in North Africa. Quite fortuitously, Darlan was in Algiers visiting his sick son when the invasion occurred. When it became clear on the evening of 8 November that further resistance in Algiers was impossible, Darlan authorized General Juin to sign a ceasefire for Algiers, although fighting continued elsewhere. Thus Darlan unexpectedly emerged as a key player with more influence than Giraud, who finally arrived on the afternoon of 9 November. During that day, the Americans pressurized Darlan to sign a total ceasefire in Algeria. He temporized, claiming that he could not act without orders from Vichy. On the morning of 10 November, however, he gave way since military resistance was no longer viable.
This news reached Laval shortly before he was due to see Hitler, and he urgently telephoned Vichy that, if his negotiations were to enjoy any chance of success, resistance to the Americans must continue. Darlan was instructed to rescind his ceasefire order. He obeyed, declaring himself impotent to act, and constituted himself technically a prisoner of the Americans. This was too late to help Laval. He found Hitler in glacial mood, offering nothing and interested only in securing access to Tunisian bases. Laval had barely left the meeting and lit his first cigarette when Hitler ordered the occupation of the Free Zone without even telling him. Laval’s exhausting journey through the fog and snow, only to be snubbed by Hitler yet again, had proved futile. Even before meeting Laval, Hitler told Ciano that he intended to occupy the Free Zone. Laval’s problem was that France had nothing to offer which Hitler could not as easily take himself. Even if Hitler had believed in Laval’s good faith, he could see that Vichy had lost control in North Africa. At 7 a.m., on the symbolic date of 11 November, German troops crossed the demarcation line. All France was now occupied. The Vichy government instructed its armed forces to remain in their barracks and avoid provoking the Germans. Two weeks later, Hitler ordered France’s Armistice Army to be disbanded. Again there was no opposition.30
On the pretext that after the occupation of the south Pétain was no longer a free agent, Darlan could have now rallied to the Americans. But he waited two days longer to do this. For an opportunist, he was remarkably slow to seize his opportunities. This was all the more surprising because, during 1942, Darlan, losing confidence in German victory, had begun to put out feelers to America. His son Alain had contacted Murphy in March 1942. Nonetheless Darlan’s view remained what it had been in August 1941, when he told Leahy that only if the Americans were ready to arrive on the south coast of France in force—6,000 planes and half a million men—would he welcome them.31 Because he had not expected this before 1943, the events of November 1942 took him by surprise, and struck him as premature. His vacillation was, for once, a result of confusion more than duplicity.
When Darlan declared himself a prisoner of the Americans, Pétain had appointed the military commander in Morocco, General Noguès, to replace him as Vichy’s representative. Darlan, clinging to the fiction of obedience to the Marshal, refused to commit himself to the Americans before consulting Noguès. In Morocco, Noguès refused to treat locally with the Americans until he had met Darlan in Algiers, where he did not arrive until 12 November. The dithering of these French commanders irritated the Americans. Their forces had prevailed in Morocco as well as Algeria, and what they now required was that the French forces in Tunisia be instructed to resist the Germans.
The situation in Tunisia was confused. Vichy had ordered the local commanders in Tunisia to facilitate the arrival of the German forces. On 11 November General Juin told them to do the opposite, only to reverse this order a few hours later until he had heard what Noguès was going to decide. Noguès and Juin were petrified at the idea of being disloyal to Pétain. As Juin said on 12 June: ‘since the Americans are here, it is necessary to choose. I incline towards the struggle against Germany, but I will obey orders’.32 Desperate to prevent the Germans installing themselves in Tunisia, the Americans were ready to treat with any French commander who could help. The problem with their original protégé, Giraud, was that, despite his impeccable anti-German credentials, his early involvement in the conspiracy alienated loyal Pétainists and made them reluctant to obey his orders. With Darlan the terms of the equation were reversed: his anti-German credentials were suspect, but he was more likely to be obeyed by Pétain loyalists. On balance this made Darlan more useful to the Americans. As Darlan said on 11 November: ‘the Americans must understand that they can either have Giraud without the army or the army without Giraud’.33
Darlan wanted to sideline Giraud because he regarded him as a traitor to Pétain and because of his enthusiasm to re-enter the war. Darlan’s objective was not to re-enter the war on America’s side, but to preserve French sovereignty over North Africa and hang on to neutrality. His position in the face of the Americans in November 1942 was thus a mirror image of Laval’s in the face of the Germans: a desperate struggle to hang on to the shreds of French neutrality and sovereignty. Once Darla
n had ascertained that Noguès was prepared to follow his lead on the grounds that Pétain was no longer a free agent—there was no longer an independent Vichy government to be loyal to—a deal was struck with the American commander, General Mark Clark. On 12 November the Darlan–Clark agreement recognized Darlan as the head of the government of French North Africa. Giraud, with whom Noguès and Darlan would not shake hands, was authorized to raise a volunteer army to fight the Germans. But when the original conspirators—the Group of Five—saw that Giraud had been excluded, they despatched him to protest to the Americans. As a result Giraud’s status was upgraded, making him army commander under Darlan’s authority. The agreement was finally signed on 13 November, six days after the American landings. The whole affair had cost 479 American deaths and 720 wounded, and 1,346 French dead and 997 wounded.34
Even after the signing of the Darlan–Clark agreement, the hapless commanders in Tunisia, who had received such bewilderingly contradictory orders, were given no clear instruction to resist the Germans. Even Darlan probably no longer expected to be able to preserve French neutrality, and the further delay occurred because the Germans had now arrived in such force that French resistance would have been futile until the Americans were ready to move east and help. Darlan may also have felt the need to proceed cautiously because the Governor-General of Tunisia, Admiral Estéva, and the commander of the naval base at Bizerta, Admiral Derrien, remained faithful to Vichy. Had they been followed, there was the risk of a dangerous division within the French army. The army commander, General Georges Barré, however, decided to rally to Darlan, and the first French fired their first shots against the Germans in Tunisia on 19 November. But by then the Germans were firmly installed, and it would take six months to dislodge them.
Darlan’s switch of sides had not even succeeded in bringing over the French fleet. After the Germans occupied the South, Darlan ordered Admiral de Laborde, commander of the fleet in Toulon, to transfer his ships to French West Africa rather than risk them falling into German hands. Laborde refused unless given the order by Pétain himself. When on 27 November, German troops moved into Toulon to take control of the fleet, it was too late to leave, and the fleet scuttled itself. Darlan’s most useful service to the Americans was to ensure the rallying of Equatorial Africa, whose Governor, General Pierre Boisson, had fired on the Gaullists and British in September 1940. With its key strategic base of Dakar, and an army of 75,000, Equatorial Africa was a major prize.
Darlan’s proclamation announcing his agreement with Clark ended with the words ‘Long live the Marshal’, but this did not stop Pétain on the next day condemning Darlan’s violation of his orders. Subsequently, Pétain’s defenders claimed that he had sent secret telegrams privately approving Darlan’s actions. The most important telegram, on 13 November, allegedly conveyed Pétain’s ‘intimate accord’ when hearing of the Darlan–Clark agreement. For years the existence of this telegram was contested, but it has now been discovered by Darlan’s most recent biographers. The telegram, however, does not mean what Pétain’s defenders claimed when it was only known about by hearsay. It was an answer to a telegram from Noguès explaining how the agreement with the Americans had successfully sidelined Giraud who wanted to ‘chase Germany out of Tunisia’. In other words, Pétain was giving his ‘intimate accord’ for a continuation of neutrality not a rallying to the Allies.35
Although Pétain did protest against the occupation of the south, he did not order the fleet to leave France or the Armistice Army to resist the Germans. Despite the urging of several advisers, he also refused to leave France for Algeria. During most of the crisis Pétain played an entirely passive role. For the first time since 1940, his age became a significant factor in a situation which changed every minute and demanded rapid reactions. His advisers had only woken him four hours after the news of the American landings in North Africa reached Vichy; nor did they wake him when Hitler’s message announcing the occupation of the South arrived at Vichy at 5.30 a.m. By the end of the eventful week, Pétain was overcome by mental exhaustion. But his decision to stay in France was in line with his belief since 1940 that he could best serve French interests by remaining on metropolitan soil. Up to November 1942, this was at least an arguable case, and had Pétain left then, he could have survived the war with his reputation intact, possibly even as a hero. If there was a moment when Pétain—however misguidedly—sacrificed himself for his country, it was not June 1940, when the ‘sacrifice’ was amply compensated by adulation and the likelihood of being on the winning side, but November 1942, when all that beckoned was obloquy and defeat, and everything Vichy had salvaged from the catastrophe of 1940 was irremediably lost: the fleet, the Armistice Army, the Free Zone, and the Empire.
Vichy 1943: Shrinking Power
Vichy was now living on borrowed time. The existence in North Africa of an alternative French administration offered an escape route to those who no longer believed that Vichy had any raison d’être, but were unwilling to join de Gaulle, or too compromised to consider doing so. Those who defected to Algeria in May included such high-ranking figures as Pierre Pucheu and the civil servant Maurice Couve de Murville. By the autumn, only sixteen countries continued to have diplomatic relations with Vichy.36 The town itself was no longer the hive of activity it had been two years earlier. It was gloomy and semi-deserted— ministers found it hard to find chauffeurs—although there were now many Germans.37
A big conference to discuss the National Revolution was organized at Mont-Dore, not far from Vichy, in April 1943. Several of Pétain’s advisers were involved in these four days of fantasy.38 But André Lavagne, deputy director of Pétain’s civil cabinet, had no illusions. In a note drafted in March 1943, he admitted that the National Revolution was not for this world:
Still reeling from the blow she suffered in 1940, France immediately tried to set about renewing herself. She still had enough strength, enough freedom, to attempt this recovery … Two years passed in this way. France had believed in her resurrection, but resurrection is only possible after Golgotha … Contrary to what she believed, France had in 1940 scarcely begun her road of the cross … Now the end approaches. Everything has been used up. The last arms, the last resources, the last able-bodied men, the last colonies, the last possibilities of freedom, have one by one disappeared. Everything has fallen from her hands. Abandoned and immobile, France today does not participate any longer in the life of peoples. Her kingdom is no longer of this world … All alone, without fearing the incomprehension and insults of the watching crowds, an old soldier, covered in glories and victories, accompanies France step by step to support her cross.39
After the crisis of November 1942 Pétain become entirely a figurehead. Constitutional Act Twelve granted Laval the full authority to promulgate laws under his own signature. Pétain, whose powers had been compared to those of Louis XIV two years earlier, was now more like a Third Republic president. In March 1943, Laval reshuffled his cabinet, sacking Joseph Barthélemy, who was almost the last Pétain loyalist left in the government. The other one, Lucien Romier, remained, but he was too ill to offer Pétain much support.
To what purpose did Laval exercise the power he now possessed? In public, he still proclaimed that Germany was the only bulwark against Bolshevism. As late as December 1943 he announced: ‘the victory of Germany will prevent our civilisation collapsing into communism. The victory of the Americans would be the triumph of the Jew and of communism.’ But in private he was now less sure. In November 1943, he remarked:
Will the Germans win the war? I haven’t a clue, I am not clairvoyant! The more time goes on the less I think so … If the Germans are beaten, General de Gaulle will return. He is supported—and I have no illusions about this—by 80 or 90 per cent of the French people. And I shall be hung … There are two men who can save France now; and if I was not Laval I would like to be de Gaulle.40
Laval took sombre comfort in his unpopularity, as if it conferred the nobility of sacrifice upon him. I
t confirmed a tendency to self-pity, and a conviction that he had always been misunderstood.
Although Laval no longer believed in German victory, he clung to the hope of a compromise peace. He continued to work for an agreement with Germany, managing to obtain two meetings with Hitler—on 19 December 1942 and 29 April 1943—but they were as fruitless as the previous ones. On 19 December, having made the two-day journey to Hitler’s headquarters in East Prussia, Laval was barely allowed to open his mouth. On the second occasion, his last meeting with Hitler, Laval tried telling him that war must give rise to a United States of Europe. At these two meetings, Laval obtained a few concessions. In place of the defunct Armistice Army, the French were authorized to raise a volunteer force— the Phalange africaine—to defend what remained of the Empire. Crossing the Demarcation Line became a formality after March 1943, but because the whole country was now occupied, this mattered less than it would have two years earlier.41
These tiny concessions were nothing compared to the new burdens which France had to bear. The occupation costs were raised to 25 million Reichsmark. Sauckel pressed relentlessly for more French workers to be sent to Germany. In January 1943, no sooner had the first quota been fulfilled than he demanded another 250,000 by March. To meet these demands, Laval was forced on 16 February to introduce Compulsory Labour Service (STO) conscripting all young men born between 1920 and 1922 to work in Germany (apart from some exempted categories like miners, peasants, and police).
Thanks to STO, Sauckel’s new target was achieved by the end of March. He thereupon demanded another 220,000 workers by the end of June, and Laval had to agree, extending the categories of those liable for STO. But when on 6 August Sauckel demanded another 500,000 workers (including for the first time women) before the end of the year, Laval dug his heels in. Their meeting lasted six hours, and Sauckel was so truculent that Laval suffered a fainting fit, but he did not give in. Sauckel reported to Berlin that he had now lost all faith in Laval. Laval held firm because he knew that there was increasing criticism of Sauckel’s methods within Germany. After initially boosting the numbers of labour recruits, STO had quickly proved counter-productive. Thousands of those liable to be sent to Germany fled to the countryside, often swelling the ranks of the Resistance. In the first three months of 1943, 251,000 workers had left for Germany; in the next two, only 37,000. The German Armaments Minister, Albert Speer, was ready to rethink Sauckel’s crude policy.
B006NTJT4U EBOK Page 33