Vichy France (19 page)

On July 12 Darlan notified the Germans that Part II of the protocols (supplying Rommel through the Tunisian port of Bizerte) could only be fulfilled after extensive political and economic concessions had prepared public opinion and after extensive military autonomy had prepared France for the inevitable Allied reprisals. The Bizerte accord was, Darlan pointed out, just one part of a broader reorientation of Franco-German relations. Until the whole basis of collaboration had been changed into voluntary associations between equals, Part II of the protocols could not go into effect by itself.
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The Germans abandoned Part III for themselves. The French negotiations had already watered it down in the pre-protocol negotiations, suggesting on May 26 that it be carried out in two stages: in the first, German merchant ships could use Dakar and then supply German submarines at sea; only later would German submarines use Dakar directly. General Warlimont described this as “a step backward.” Late in June, however, Hitler
himself abandoned the use of Dakar “on political grounds.” Ribbentrop, always a hard-liner on French matters, proposed that a German air base be set up at Dakar since some British effort to seize the port seemed to him inevitable, and once it was lost to the French, the Germans would never get the use of its naval facilities. General Keitel opposed this scheme on July 8, arguing that the safest course was to keep Dakar neutral and avoid provoking Allied ripostes. In effect, let the French guard it.
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Keitel had come around to the French view, and the German center of interest had shifted to the east.

Darlan revealed on July 14, 1941, what he meant by the basic reorientation of Franco-German relations, the price of executing Part II of the protocols. That day his representative in Paris, Jacques Benoist-Méchin, handed the German embassy a
note verbale
containing the most ambitious French proposal of the Vichy period. (Note that it follows the supposed blockage of Darlan’s policy by Weygand and the cabinet on June 3–4.) The deal had ended with the military aid to Rashid Ali in Iraq, as far as Hitler was concerned. The deal had hardly begun, as Darlan saw it. The
note verbale
of 14 July 1941 asserted that the armistice of 1940 was no longer adequate to the new situation. France had gone to war and lost in Syria, British threats to the rest of the empire had increased, and French populations saw no concomitant political reward. Under these conditions, carrying out the rest of the protocols would expose France to further imperial wars and losses that must be compensated for by other means. So far, he seemed to respond to Weygand’s alleged pressures. Then Darlan proposed nothing less than releasing France from the restraints of the armistice and restoring normal relations with Germany. Furthermore, if French defense of her empire led to war with Britain and the United States, Germany must assure the integrity of France’s prewar borders (including Alsace, which Laval had given up, as well as Lorraine) and her African Empire, perhaps with compensation for necessary adjustments. After these concessions, in a “changed political climate,”
Darlan expected to be able to carry out the protocols.
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Officials in Berlin, unlike later historians, made no mistake about the scope of these proposals. The Army General Staff (OKH) tersely summarized it as “replacing the armistice with a new treaty providing for French sovereignty and cooperation.” Some German officials were tempted. Ambassador Karl Ritter had been saying since late June that France should be treated as a “budding ally.” Abetz had been rushing ahead with timetables for graduated concessions through late June, his usual enthusiasm heightened still further by a great project that would enhance the scope of his office. When Darlan began backwatering on Bizerte after July 8, however, he felt that any German concession before France had fulfilled Part II of the protocols was “extortion.” Ribbentrop saw the
note verbale
quite simply as “a naive French blackmail attempt.” He chose to see Darlan’s July 12 harder bargaining position on Bizerte as a rupture of negotiations rather than an attempt to broaden the negotiations.
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Ribbentrop’s hard line prevailed. The
note verbale
received no direct response, though Abetz told Benoist-Méchin on July 31 that the French government’s record was insufficient for the demands made. The real reasons for the rebuff appear in a briefing by Ambassador Karl Ritter for army staff on the 26th of July. Germany did not envisage “turning the Armistice into collaboration.” She did not wish to “influence or commit herself to the
future,” i.e., to a generous peace. Abetz was ordered to show more reserve to the French. Such low-level technical negotiations as occupation costs and the new plan by Paris collaborators for French volunteers for the Soviet front were to be handled in a “dilatory fashion.” On August 13 Ribbentrop told Abetz to engage in no “concrete negotiations” with the French. The threads of negotiation should not be broken, but if Frenchmen made proposals, they were to be told that Germany was completely involved in the Russian campaign. At about the same time, Unterstaatssekretär Woermann prepared a circular telegram on Franco-German relations for mission chiefs abroad. The French, he said, had asked for release from the armistice. They had not acted properly. The request was all the more impossible since all German strength was now turned against bolshevism. Germany held to the armistice. There was now a “stillstand” in Vichy-Berlin relations.
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Darlan was in an awkward position. His “new era” had lasted a shorter time than Laval’s new policy. France had gone to war against the Anglo-Gaullists, lost Syria, and come close to outright military collaboration. High-level opposition manifested itself in Weygand’s trip and Doyen’s letter, “Lessons of ten months at Weisbaden,” of 16 July, in which Doyen told Pétain that France had given too much and received nothing. Darlan had announced German concessions in two communiqués, May 6 and May 19, concessions that were not now going to be realized.
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In the fall of 1941, therefore, he followed an aggressive policy at home and abroad. At home, he weeded out the opposition and established a firmer control over the French government and armed forces between August and November 1941. Abroad, he labored to reopen the Protocol negotiations on a broader political basis.

General Doyen was forced out as French delegate to the Armistice Commission at Wiesbaden in the middle of July. As for General Weygand, the suspicion that had surrounded him in German circles from the beginning was intensified by Darlan’s rivalry with him and by Darlan’s eagerness to obtain direct control over the armed forces. Although it was a German ultimatum that forced the retirement of Weygand in November 1941, it is clear from German sources that Darlan had encouraged it. Darlan also established his direct control over the armed services in August 1941 when he assumed Weygand’s former office of minister of defense, over the opposition of other service leaders.
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Darlan’s efforts to reopen the broad political discussions with Germany that had been interrupted in July were less successful. Having announced the “first positive results” since the armistice, Darlan had to make good. He was desperate for a major breakthrough with the Germans. There is no doubt, from the German archives, who was the suitor and who was the wooed. On August 8 Darlan saw Abetz and stated France’s willingness for military collaboration with Germany. He outlined his plans for getting rid of Weygand and establishing his own control of the armed forces. On August 13, however, came new instructions from Ribbentrop: Abetz was to tell Darlan that Germany could not entertain his request for new negotiations on outstanding questions, because she was completely tied up with the Eastern front. Meanwhile, on August 12, the release of prisoners of war, announced so proudly in the French press on May 19, was halted. The “stillstand” imposed on Franco-German relations by the change of strategic interests and by Ribbentrop was complete.
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Marshal Pétain seconded Darlan’s efforts to reopen negotiations in a way that cannot be regarded as hesitant or ventriloqual. He was as clearly excited by the anti-Bolshevik turn that the war had taken as was Darlan. If Hitler would only make a gesture of equality to France, Pétain told a Rumanian visitor on August 15,
1941, Pétain would then receive the mandate from his people for close cooperation with Germany. On September 25 he told the same visitor that if French territory were unified under his administration (i.e., the Demarcation Line abolished and French administration fully operative in the Occupied Zone), France would work for the new Europe. Pétain now stressed Bolshevism as the common enemy of France and Germany, and their common interest in defending “a higher culture” together, as he wrote effusively to Hitler on the anniversary of Montoire, 22 October 1941. Hitler’s response was an ill-tempered diatribe against the assassination of Germans on French soil.
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Pétain spoke even more vigorously and unmistakably when the funeral of General Huntziger on 16 November 1941 brought a number of high-ranking German officials to Vichy. (It was the second and last visit of Abetz to Vichy, and the only friendly one.) The marshal reminded Abetz and Vogl of all that France had done against England and said that he was ready to acknowledge Hitler publicly as the leader of Europe. But he could move French public opinion only after agreement on some broad plan showing how the German victors foresaw the eventual Franco-German peace terms. Abetz understood this reference to a “plan” as a reversion to the 14 July
note verbale
, and he bristled. Germany also had a plan, he said: defeat the Allies and make peace afterwards. Only after total German victory could these more distant matters be discussed.

Darlan was equally blunt on this occasion. He said he was disappointed that Germany had denied so many French requests. He told Abetz how eager he was to find a satisfactory solution to the Franco-German problem and suggested that the long-deferred offensive against British colonies in Africa, with German help, after Weygand’s removal, might be the occasion. Thus the Chad operation, over which Laval is supposed to have been dismissed in December 1940, was being discussed in Pétain’s presence in November 1941. Darlan amazed General Vogl
with his hatred of the British.
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But Berlin was still afraid to let Darlan buy France off.

German conditions for reopening Franco-German negotiations in the fall of 1941 were prompt French fulfillment of at least Part II of the Protocols of Paris. Darlan was unwilling to do this without a vision of a generous peace to come. It was General Alexander’s British Eighth Army and the hard-pressed Italians who finally reopened the stalled Protocol negotiations in November and December 1941. British victories in the desert made supply through Bizerte seem more essential than ever. Italy, who heretofore had always urged a harder line against France and who had to be reassured whenever Franco-German collaboration loomed as a threat to Italian aims in North Africa and Corsica, was willing in November 1941 to make some concessions in order to gain supplies through the Tunisian port. The post-Protocol negotiations finally revived on 19 December 1941, only to deadlock over Darlan’s insistence on putting political concession first: larger autonomy and replacement of the armistice with normal Franco-German relations, and the promise of a lenient peace.
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It is in the context of the permanent French campaign for general high-level negotiations that the famous Pétain-Goering interview at Saint-Florentin on December 1 must be viewed. More immediately, the Saint-Florentin meeting was an outgrowth of the dismissal of Weygand. Pétain asked on November 3 that he be permitted to meet some high-level German figure, such as Goering, to make the German removal of Weygand seem less humiliating. This was accepted on November 18, and Pétain acknowledged the “invitation” on November 21.
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On the French side, this was hailed as the breakthrough so long sought since the “stillstand” of July 15. Darlan and the cabinet ministers
prepared an enormous dossier of economic, social, and political steps that would normalize Franco-German relations. Each minister prepared a list of concessions needed in his area of responsibility. Pétain tried to deliver this memorandum to Goering, who wanted only to discuss the ways in which France could help the beleaguered Afrika Korps if Rommel had to retreat as far west as Tunisia. The meeting was a complete fiasco, and on December 4 the French government quietly withdrew the memorandum. It continued to circulate at Berlin, where a copy was annotated by Admiral Dönitz, until Ribbentrop ordered it filed and forgotten.
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The use of Bizerte was urgent enough, however, for new negotiations on Part II of the protocols to be opened on 19 December. General Alphonse Juin was sent to Berlin on December 21 at the same time to work out the military implications of Rommel’s retreat toward Tunisia.
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It is apparent that Berlin was interested only in French military aid in Africa, which they could obtain under the armistice without any of the concessions that Darlan was pleading for.

In the end the Germans got much of what they wanted from the Darlan regime. Since the British advance petered out before they reached Tunisia, the question of French hospitality for Rommel was never raised. But Vichy did supply military equipment to Rommel through Tunisia. Trucks, guns, and oil were delivered to German supply officers by French officers at the Tunisian-Libyan frontier in January–February 1942. United States observers found out about them, and U.S. pressures brought them to a stop. Darlan had been forced, however, to accept the German interpretation of Part II of the protocols. On the other hand, German bases had never in fact been established
in the empire. Germans had entered the empire or used it only as part of what Darlan hoped would be an important bargain. But in the end his bargaining led nowhere because Hitler had lost interest in the Mediterranean world. Hitler thought he did not need French voluntary assistance in a maritime and colonial program of joint interest.