of the Navy were the only ones in existence in France—and these were placed at the Army’s disposal for service on the Oise River front.
The Navy also had some very good anti-aircraft weapons (75-mm., 90-mm., and even 130-mm. on the Dunkerque), but these were sadly handicapped by lack of radar. Except for this lack, the naval base at Toulon, some 200 kilometers from the Italian front, was one of the best defended against air attacks. In 1940 the 90-mm. batteries of the Navy were called upon to defend Paris, as the Army had nothing equivalent to them. The main weakness in the Navy’s anti-aircraft defense—other than lack of radar—was an insufficiency of machineguns and light guns of 25-mm. or 40-mm., for use against low-flying planes and dive bombers. The need of such weapons would be bitterly felt in the Norwegian expedition and later off the northern coast of France. One difficulty was that the Navy was dependent upon the Army, which was charged with furnishing her with light automatic guns. And the complete lack of divebombing and low-flying attack planes in the French Air Force was not conducive to impressing the Army with the critical need for an adequate number of short-range anti-aircraft weapons.
Time will not be taken here to relate the Navy’s struggle even to retain its status as a distinct service. Sometimes proposals were made to incorporate the Navy into a super-ministry of National Defense, which, of course, would be completely dominated by the Army. Again the proposal was to subordinate the Navy High Command to an over-all Commander of the Armed Forces. Only the stubborn intelligence of the Navy frustrated these attempts.
Only when there is unity of strategic aim should there be a single command. But the problem of France in case of war with the Axis powers was twofold, with each part having no relation to the other. It was the Army’s mission to prevent the invasion of the country, and, if possible, to carry the war to the enemy. The Navy, on the other hand, had the mission of keeping the sealanes and the seaports open so that the country and its fighting men could receive the supplies they needed. Only at places where sea and land fronts joined was there any problem requiring single command.
Such a place was Dunkirk in 1940, when a single command was set up there at the time of the evacuation by the French and the British.
As for the rest, all that was needed was coordination and cooperation between the services, and the Navy considered this sufficiently well taken care of by the Committee of the Chiefs of Staff (Comité des Chefs d ‘Etat-Major). In 1939 the presiding officer of this Committee was General Maurice Gamelin, Commander in Chief-designate of the Army, who was assisted by a staff made up of officers from all three services. General Gamelin held the title of Chief of Staff of the National Defense, which made him the principal military adviser of the Government. In this connection he, of course, had the benefit of the advice of his colleagues. But the conduct of naval operations remained entirely outside his jurisdiction.
These operations fell within the province of the Chief of the Navy General Staff who, merely a collaborator of the Navy Minister in time of peace, assumed the title of Comander in Chief of the French Naval Forces in time of war. In 1939 the Chief was Admiral Darlan.
Experience had vastly matured this officer. Among other assignments he had commanded the Atlantic Squadron with brilliance. Chief of the Navy General Staff at the time, he had attended the coronation of King George VI, as did the chiefs of all the foreign navies. But he did not appreciate the protocol which, as he said, placed him during the coronation service “behind a pillar and after the Chinese admiral.”
At that time the two highest permanent grades in the French Navy were vice admiral and rear admiral. Although wearing an extra star as Chief of the Navy General Staff, Darlan’s permanent rank was only vice admiral, which ranked him after all regular four-star admirals, be they Chinese or Panamanian. Darlan came to the conclusion that there was only one step to take, so upon his return to Paris he had himself elevated to the rank and dignity of Admiral of the Fleet, equivalent to the Royal Navy rank of that name. Thenceforth when Darlan spoke at international meetings in the name of France, he had insured himself an equal footing with anyone else present.
Later on, the French naval officers of that time were reproached with being individualistic, aloof from the rest of the country. Some politicians even accused the Navy of being hostile to the political institutions of the day.
This may partly be attributed to the conflicting attitudes the French were to take at the time of the armistice and during the German occupation. The truth of the matter was that the Navy of those days was a tightly knit and homogenous group of dedicated officers and men—a Navy in which all were proud to serve and in which everyone obeyed without question the orders of their superiors, and these superiors in turn unhesitatingly carried out the directives of the Government, regardless of the political party which might for the moment be in power. Differently from the Army, whose strength lay mostly in mobilized reservists, eighty-six per cent of the Navy’s personnel was made up of volunteers, reenlistments, and career petty officers. If the Navy seemed aloof from the general public, it was mainly because they did not engage in politics, and because, as professional seamen, their viewpoints were on a worldwide basis rather than confined to the limited horizons of the average Frenchman.
The French Navy of 1939 may best be described by the four words which for over a century have been lettered in gold above the quarterdecks of all French men-of-war. On one side of the panel there appears the motto “Honor and Country,” and on the other side, facing it, the words “Valor and Discipline.” Not one of those four virtues but would be needed by the seamen of France in the ordeal to come.
1 In 1924 the Navy presented to Parliament a program calling for 175,000 tons of battleships, 60,000 tons of aircraft carriers, 360,000 tons of light craft, and 96,000 tons of submarines—a total of 691,000 tons of combatant ships (the same tonnage as in 1914, excluding auxiliaries). The program never passed.
2 By “surprises” is meant new inventions, new ship designs, or development of entirely new classes which would outmode existing ships possessed in superior numbers by another power.
Regardless of how much they may have been anticipated, and plans made for all foreseeable eventualities, wars frequently break out in an unexpected manner. In 1870 a cleverly worded—and therefore misinterpreted—news dispatch, the famous Ems dispatch, so inflamed French public opinion that the national cry was, “On to Berlin!” In 1914 it was the assassination of the Archduke of Austria at Sarajevo that set up a chain of reactions which a month later provoked the First World War. In 1939 it was for remote Danzig that the Western democracies were willing to go to war. But for years the cause of peace in Europe had deteriorated.
In 1935 Mussolini’s invasion of Ethiopia had roused Britain’s opposition to the extent that the entire British Fleet had been concentrated between Gilbraltar, Alexandria, Haifa, and the Red Sea. Concerned over the threat of the Italian Fleet and Air Force to her naval forces in the constricted Mediterranean, Britain had asked the French Navy to guarantee her free use of the naval bases at Toulon and Bizerte. This accord was quickly given, and although hostilities between the powers did not then materialize, technical contacts had been established between the two navies which would bear fruit. Furthermore the British thereafter made no further attempts to limit French naval power.
When, in March, 1936, German troops entered the Rhineland in flagrant violation of treaty agreements, the contacts between the two navies were quickly reestablished. Neither the French Government, nor the British—especially the latter—desired or dared to react with force. Furthermore the bulk of the British
