Free France

• 1. Introduction

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  Free France was born on the 18th of June 1940 from a single BBC radio broadcast. General Charles de Gaulle, a recently promoted brigadier general who had held a junior cabinet post for less than two weeks, spoke to his countrymen from London and told them France was not finished. The words he chose were simple and direct: "France is not alone! She has a great empire behind her!" Most people in France did not even hear that broadcast that day. Yet the Appeal of the 18th of June would become the most remembered voice of the entire French war experience. How did a movement with only about 7,000 soldiers by the end of July 1940 grow into an army of 1.3 million? How did a general tried in absentia and sentenced to death for treason by his own government end up liberating Paris? And how did a country that surrendered in six weeks reclaim its seat among the world's major powers? The answers stretch from the jungles of Chad to the streets of Greenock, Scotland, and from the deserts of Libya to the banks of the Danube.

• 2. The Fall and the Broadcast

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  On the 10th of May 1940, Germany struck France and the Low Countries. Within weeks, armoured units had cut through the Ardennes and trapped the Allied northern armies in a series of pockets at Dunkirk, Calais, Boulogne, Saint-Valery-en-Caux, and Lille. From the 27th of May to the 4th of June, over 200,000 British and 140,000 French troops were evacuated from Dunkirk, but this was not the end of the fighting. French evacuees were quickly returned to France and fought again in June. Contrary to what is often assumed, French morale was higher in June than in May. Contrary to the picture of total collapse, French forces easily repulsed an attack in the south by Fascist Italy. But with most of the armour lost in northern France and critical shortages of aircraft, the military situation could not hold.

  De Gaulle had long challenged accepted thinking. As far back as 1912, he had asked to be posted to Pétain's regiment, attracted by a tactical doctrine that ran against prevailing fashion. He had also championed the armoured warfare ideas later applied so devastatingly by the Wehrmacht, and personally commanded the 4th Armoured Division at the Battle of Montcornet. When Prime Minister Paul Reynaud sent him to London on the 5th of June 1940 as Under Secretary of State for Defence, de Gaulle was trying to negotiate a proposed union between France and Britain. That plan collapsed. Reynaud resigned on the 16th of June, and Marshal Philippe Pétain became President of the Council. De Gaulle flew to Bordeaux on the 17th, then returned to London the same day once it became clear Pétain had already agreed to an armistice.

  On the 18th of June, he made his broadcast. Some British cabinet members worried it might provoke Pétain into handing the French fleet to Germany. Prime Minister Winston Churchill, despite his own reservations, agreed to the broadcast anyway. De Gaulle's legal argument, laid out in a second broadcast on the 19th of June, was stark: because the French government had "fallen under the bondage of the enemy," the armistice it was about to sign was not merely dishonourable but illegal, and signing it was itself an act of treason. Pétain saw things differently and on the 22nd of June signed the armistice with Germany, followed by one with Italy on the 24th of June, both coming into force on the 25th of June. After a parliamentary vote on the 10th of July, Pétain became leader of what became known as Vichy France. De Gaulle was tried in absentia and sentenced to death.

• 3. A Force Built From Almost Nothing

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  By the end of July 1940, only about 7,000 soldiers had joined the Free French Army in Britain. Three-quarters of French servicemen in Britain had requested repatriation. The divisions within France were deep and often bitter. One French admiral, René-Émile Godfroy, explained in June 1940 why he would not bring his ships in Alexandria harbour to de Gaulle's side: his view was that a government still existed in France, supported by a parliament in unoccupied territory, and that supporting any alternative would simply be rebellion. Pétain's generals told Churchill in June 1940 that "in three weeks, England will have her neck wrung like a chicken." Few Frenchmen thought Britain would survive alone.

  The British attack on the French fleet at Mers-el-Kébir on the 3rd of July 1940 made recruitment even harder. Admiral Marcel-Bruno Gensoul had been given an ultimatum and, after a ten-hour discussion, rejected all options. British warships under Admiral James Somerville attacked and sank or crippled three battleships. More than 1,000 French sailors were killed. The bitterness this generated in France reinforced the old accusation of perfide Albion and discouraged many soldiers from joining de Gaulle.

  From the French Air Force, only around a dozen pilots made it to England that summer, volunteering to fight with the RAF against the Luftwaffe. Authorities on the mainland had made it plain that anyone acting on their own initiative would be classed a deserter. The navy responded somewhat better: about 3,600 sailors on 50 ships around the world joined the Royal Navy, forming the nucleus of the Free French Naval Forces. The FNFL suffered its first loss on the 7th of November 1940, when the patrol boat Poulmic struck a mine in the English Channel. Around 1,700 officers and men accepted the British offer of repatriation in November 1940, travelling home on a hospital ship under the Red Cross flag. Germany torpedoed it anyway, and 400 men drowned.

  Of France's global empire, only the French domains of Saint Helena (on the 23rd of June, at the initiative of honorary consul Georges Colin) and the New Hebrides (on the 20th of July) answered the initial call. The only aircraft carrier France possessed, the Béarn, was at sea with a cargo of American fighter and bomber aircraft when France surrendered. Unwilling to return to occupied France but also reluctant to join de Gaulle, the crew instead steered for Martinique. The Béarn sat there for the next four years, her aircraft rusting in the tropical climate.

• 4. Colonies Won and Lost

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  With metropolitan France under German control and the Allies too weak to challenge that directly, de Gaulle turned to France's overseas empire. He was optimistic about central and western Africa, where colonial trade links ran through British territories. His optimism was partly justified. Félix Éboué, the governor of French Chad, broke with the governor-general of French Equatorial Africa, Pierre Boisson, who supported Vichy. On the 26th of August 1940, Éboué pledged Chad's allegiance to Free France. By the end of August, all of French Equatorial Africa had joined, including the League of Nations mandate of French Cameroun, though French Gabon held out. These colonies brought vital manpower: a large contingent of African colonial troops who would form the core of de Gaulle's army.

  The attempt to take Dakar in September 1940, known as Operation Menace, was a humiliation. An Anglo-French naval force was repulsed by the local Vichy authorities, who got the better of the bombardment that followed. De Gaulle's sense of failure was so acute that he reportedly considered suicide. Better news came in November, when General Philippe Leclerc de Hauteclocque led Free French forces to victory at the Battle of Gabon and took Libreville. By the end of November 1940, French Equatorial Africa was fully under Free French control, but French West Africa had declared for Vichy and would stay there until November 1942.

  In Asia, French Indochina was invaded by Japan in September 1940 but remained under nominal Vichy control for most of the war. The colony of Guangzhouwan in South China stayed under Free French administration from June 1940 until February 1943, when the Imperial Japanese Army invaded and occupied it. The Republic of China had recognised the London-based Free French as the legitimate authority there, facilitated by the fact that the territory was surrounded by Chinese-controlled land. In the Pacific, French India, New Caledonia, French Polynesia, and the New Hebrides joined Free France in the summer of 1940, later providing vital Allied bases for the war against Japan.

  The most unexpected episode in North America came on the 24th of December 1941, when Rear Admiral Emile Muselier sailed to Saint-Pierre and Miquelon off Newfoundland with three corvettes and a submarine and brought the islands into Free France. The United States, which recognised Vichy as the official French government, objected to military force being used by a colonial power in the western hemisphere. President Roosevelt's profound distrust of de Gaulle, whom he believed aimed to set himself up as a dictator, shaped American policy throughout. Martinique, in the West Indies, did not defect from Vichy until July 1943.

• 5. The Symbol and the Navy

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  Capitaine de corvette Thierry d'Argenlieu proposed the Cross of Lorraine as the emblem of Free France. The choice was deliberate on several levels: it recalled Joan of Arc, patron saint of France, whose personal symbol it had been; it referenced the province where she was born, now partially annexed into Alsace-Lorraine by Nazi Germany; and it stood as a pointed counter to the Nazi swastika. On the 3rd of July 1940, Vice Admiral Émile Muselier, two days after assuming command of Free French naval and air forces, incorporated the red cross of Lorraine into the naval jack, replacing the ordinary design with one that broadcast the movement's identity at sea.

  A monument on Lyle Hill in Greenock, in western Scotland, was later raised by public subscription. Shaped as the Cross of Lorraine combined with an anchor, it carries plaques commemorating the Flower-class corvettes Alyssa and Mimosa, and a submarine. The Firth of Clyde was a departure point for Free French naval vessels heading into the Battle of the Atlantic, and the memorial stands as a record of what that cost.

  The FNFL, commanded first by Muselier and then by Philippe Auboyneau and Georges Thierry d'Argenlieu, served across multiple theatres. It escorted convoys in the North Atlantic, supported Operation Torch in French North Africa, assisted the French Resistance in Vichy-held territory, and took part in Operation Neptune in Normandy and Operation Dragoon in Provence. The French merchant marine that sided with the Allies counted over 170 ships. In total, around 50 major warships and several dozen minor and auxiliary vessels made up the Free French navy during the war, along with half a dozen battalions of naval infantry and commandos, and naval aviation squadrons including one anti-submarine Catalina squadron.

• 6. Desert War and Turning Points

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  General Marie Pierre Koenig and the 1st Free French Infantry Brigade held Bir Hakeim in the Libyan desert from the 26th of May to the 11th of June 1942 against the Afrika Korps under Generaloberst Erwin Rommel. They were outnumbered and eventually forced to withdraw as Allied forces retreated to El Alamein, but the resistance they mounted forced a reassessment. British General Claude Auchinleck said on the 12th of June 1942 that the Allied nations owed admiration and gratitude to these French troops and their general. Even Hitler commented, reportedly telling a journalist who had just returned from Bir Hakeim that the French were, after Germans, the best soldiers, and that even with France's current birthrate, she would always be able to mobilise a hundred divisions. Generalmajor Friedrich von Mellenthin wrote in his memoirs that in the whole course of the desert war, no one had encountered a more heroic or sustained defence.

  From the 23rd of October to the 4th of November 1942, Allied forces under General Bernard Montgomery, including the Free French, won the Second Battle of El Alamein. This was the first major success of a Western Allied army against the Axis, driving Rommel's forces out of Egypt and back into Libya. Weeks later, in November 1942, the Allies launched Operation Torch: an Anglo-American force of 63,000 men landed in French Morocco and Algeria. They had expected token resistance from Vichy forces. They did not get it. After initial fighting, Admiral Darlan ordered a ceasefire, and Vichy French forces began joining the Allied cause. But Darlan was assassinated on the 24th of December 1942 in Algiers by the young monarchist Bonnier de La Chapelle.

  On the 3rd of June 1943, Henri Giraud and Charles de Gaulle became co-presidents of the French Committee of National Liberation, the CFLN, the provisional government that now unified French forces. In February 1941, Leclerc had led a raid into Cyrenaica, capturing an Italian fort at the oasis of Kufra. At that point his command was barely above company size. When the 2nd Armoured Division liberated Strasbourg on the 23rd of November 1944, it did so as a full armoured division, fulfilling the Oath of Kufra Leclerc had sworn almost four years earlier.

• 7. Liberation and the Path to Paris

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  On the 6th of June 1944, the liberation of continental France began with the Normandy landings. By that point, Free French forces numbered around 500,000. Some 900 Free French paratroopers landed as part of the British SAS Brigade. General Leclerc's 2e Division Blindée came ashore at Utah Beach on the 1st of August 1944. Its composition was roughly 10,500 French, 3,600 Maghrebis, and about 350 Spaniards, most of them Spanish Republican exiles, in one battalion of the Régiment de Marche du Tchad.

  Operation Dragoon struck the south on the 14th of August 1944. The objective of the French 2nd Corps was the capture of Toulon, France's largest naval port, and Marseille, its largest commercial port. The German troops defending these were mostly second-line static units. Within 12 days, both ports were secured and two German divisions were destroyed. On the 12th of September, French forces linked up with General George Patton's Third Army. Troops from the French First Army under General Jean de Lattre de Tassigny were the first Allied troops to reach the Rhine.

  In Paris itself, a general strike began on the 15th of August 1944, escalating into a full uprising by the French Forces of the Interior. Hitler, after the failed the 20th of July plot against him, had ordered Paris destroyed if it fell. General Eisenhower had planned to bypass the city. Under intense pressure from de Gaulle, Eisenhower agreed to detach the 4th US Infantry Division in support of a French attack. The Allied high command requested that the French force entering Paris be all-white if possible, a request that proved difficult given the large number of Black West Africans in Free French ranks. Captain Raymond Dronne commanded a small advance party given the honour of entering Paris first, ahead of the 2e Division Blindée. The 1er Bataillon de Fusiliers Marins Commandos, formed from naval infantry who had landed on Sword Beach, were also among the first Free French units to enter the city. The military governor Dietrich von Choltitz surrendered on the 25th of August, ignoring Hitler's orders to destroy Paris and fight to the last man.

• 8. From Exile to Republic

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  The Provisional Government of the French Republic, the GPRF, was officially created on the 3rd of June 1944, the day before de Gaulle arrived in London from Algiers and three days before D-Day. Among its most immediate tasks was ensuring France did not come under Allied military administration. After the liberation of Paris on the 25th of August 1944, it moved back to the capital and on the 9th of September 1944 formed a new government of national unity that brought together Gaullists, nationalists, socialists, communists, and anarchists.

  By September 1944, French forces stood at 560,000, including 176,500 white French from North Africa, 63,000 from metropolitan France, 233,000 Maghrebis, and 80,000 from Black Africa. Lend-Lease kept them supplied despite the economic disruption of occupation, and their numbers rose to 1 million by the end of the year. The French 1st Armoured Division was the first Western Allied unit to reach the Rhône on the 25th of August 1944, the Rhine on the 19th of November 1944, and the Danube on the 21st of April 1945. On the 22nd of April 1945, it captured Sigmaringen in Baden-Württemberg, where the remaining Vichy exiles including Marshal Pétain were being housed by Germany in one of the ancestral castles of the Hohenzollern dynasty.

  Pétain, the hero of Verdun who had become leader of Vichy France, was condemned to death after the liberation but his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. Pierre Laval, Vichy's prime minister during 1942-1944, was executed for treason. The GPRF also made significant domestic reforms: it granted women the right to vote, founded the École nationale d'administration, and laid the groundwork for French social security. At war's end in May 1945, the Free French forces comprised 1,300,000 personnel, roughly forty divisions in total, making France the fourth-largest Allied army in Europe behind the Soviet Union, the United States, and Britain. Approximately 58,000 men had been killed in the Free French forces between 1940 and 1945. The provisional government ruled until the establishment of the Fourth Republic on the 14th of October 1946, having secured France's status as a permanent member of the UN Security Council and its occupation zone in Germany, Austria, and the city of Berlin.