Syria–Lebanon campaign

• 1. Introduction

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  The Syria-Lebanon campaign of 1941 was a war fought between Allied and French forces - but the French on the other side of the line were not fighting for Hitler. They were fighting for Vichy France, a government that had made itself a vassal of Nazi Germany. Time magazine called the whole affair a "mixed show", and in the decades since, the campaign has remained relatively unknown, even in the countries whose soldiers bled and died there. It ended just after midnight on the 12th of July 1941, when a ceasefire silenced guns that had been firing for over a month. The armistice itself was signed two days later at the Sidney Smith Barracks on the outskirts of Acre. What set this war in motion? Why were Australians fighting Frenchmen in the Lebanese mountains in the summer of 1941? And what came of it all when the shooting stopped?

• 2. The Paris Protocols

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  On the 28th of May 1941, Admiral Francois Darlan signed an agreement in Paris on behalf of Vichy France that handed Germany access to military facilities in Syria. Darlan was, by his own temperament, a confirmed Anglophobe. He calculated that since July 1940, British forces had seized 167 French ships, and he saw the agreement with Germany as a form of reckoning. Under the protocols, German and Italian aircraft were to refuel in Syria, the French were to launch an offensive against British-held Iraqi oilfields, and German armaments could travel by Syrian railways to Iraqi nationalist fighters in Mosul. In return, Germany released 7,000 French prisoners of war, many of them professional officers and non-commissioned officers. The protocols were never formally ratified, but Vichy Minister of War Charles Huntziger sent orders to Henri Dentz, the High Commissioner for the Levant, to let aircraft of the German Luftwaffe and the Italian Regia Aeronautica refuel on Syrian soil. Those aircraft flew in marked as Iraqi planes to disguise their purpose. The arrangement was not just a matter of logistics. It brought the war in the Middle East to a new threshold, one that British commanders could not ignore for long.

• 3. Two Armies on the Eve

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  Henri Dentz commanded the Armee du Levant from Damascus, an army that mixed regular metropolitan colonial troops with indigenous Syrian and Lebanese soldiers called troupes speciales. His force totalled 35,000 troops, including 8,000 French and 25,000 Syrian and Lebanese infantry. British estimates put his tank strength at 90 vehicles. His air component started the campaign with 90 aircraft but swelled to 289 after reinforcement. The Marine nationale contributed two destroyers, Guepard and Valmy, a sloop named Elan, and three submarines. On the other side, the Allied force at the outset of Operation Exporter numbered about 34,000 men: roughly 18,000 Australians, 9,000 British, 2,000 Indian troops, and 5,000 Free French. Air support was thin. The RAF and RAAF together had about 50 aircraft available. The navy provided a landing ship, five cruisers, and eight destroyers. General Sir Henry Maitland Wilson commanded British forces to the south of Syria in Mandate Palestine. His plan called for four lines of invasion: two prongs from Palestine aimed at Damascus and Beirut, a third column pushing up the Euphrates from Iraq under Major-General William Slim, and a fourth force attacking north-eastern Syria. The Palmach, the strike arm of the Haganah, was tasked with going in first - cutting wires, ambushing guards on bridges over the Litani River, destroying culverts, and sabotaging roads before the main forces crossed the border.

• 4. Thirty-Three Days of Fighting

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  Hostilities commenced on the 8th of June 1941. Ten named battles followed in the weeks ahead, from the Litani River on the 9th of June to Damour between the 5th and the 9th of July, and finally the fall of Beirut on the 12th of July. On the 9th of June, the French destroyers Valmy and Guepard steamed in and fired on advancing Australians at the Litani River before shore-based artillery drove them off. In the air, the initial advantage held by the Vichy French air arm dissolved as Allied pilots adapted. On the 26th of June, Tomahawks from 3 Squadron RAAF strafed Homs airfield and destroyed five Dewoitine D.520s of Fighter Squadron II/3, damaging six more. The Vichy air force lost 179 aircraft from about 289 committed to the Levant; most were destroyed on the ground, where flat terrain and the absence of modern anti-aircraft artillery left them exposed. At sea, British torpedo aircraft sank the French destroyer Chevalier Paul on the 16th of June, as it carried ammunition from Toulon to Syria. Nine days later, on the 25th of June, a British submarine torpedoed and sank the French submarine Souffleur off the Lebanese coast. Almost simultaneously, British torpedo aircraft badly damaged the French tanker Adour, which was carrying the entire fuel supply for French forces in the Middle East. The campaign's decisive moment came on the 10th of July, when the Australian 21st Brigade stood on the verge of entering Beirut, and Dentz asked for an armistice.

• 5. Unexpected Resistance

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  General Archibald Wavell had not wanted the Syrian distraction. He told his superiors that forces in the Mediterranean were already overstretched, but pressure from Winston Churchill and the Chief of the Imperial General Staff left him with little choice. Free French assurances that any invasion would meet little resistance proved spectacularly wrong. The Vichy government ordered its soldiers to fight, and they did. Vichy propaganda within France framed the defence of Syria as a matter of national honour, urging the French people to resist the "hereditary enemy", meaning Britain. Reinforcements could only reach the Allied side in piecemeal fashion, because the resistance was harder than anticipated. The terrain - hot, dry, and mountainous - tested all the Allied formations. Indian Army units excelled in those conditions. The Australian contingent faced the worst country of all, yet carried out what was later described as the most effective attack, with what one assessment called "a good plan carried through with great determination". The scare that had driven the British to act - fear of a German parachute landing in Syria following their success in Crete - turned out to be overstated. Germany's airborne operations over the Netherlands and Crete had proven enormously costly, and the chances of establishing a bridgehead in Syria were slim. The Germans chose to withdraw from Syria rather than invite British intervention; the British invaded anyway and secured naval and air bases far north of the Suez Canal.

• 6. The Cost and the Aftermath

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  The Vichy authorities announced 6,352 casualties in August, of whom 521 were killed. After the war, Dentz revised the killed figure upward to 1,092. The armistice agreement led to the repatriation of 37,563 military and civilian personnel in eight convoys, from the 7th of August to the 27th of September, using three hospital ships and a gleaner ship. The Allied side counted roughly 4,652 casualties. Australians suffered 1,552 of those, with 416 killed and 1,136 wounded. Free French losses came to about 1,300 casualties and 1,100 men captured. Among the Allied soldiers who distinguished themselves, two received the Victoria Cross: Lieutenant Arthur Roden Cutler and Private Jim Gordon. Wavell did not survive in his post to see the repatriations begin. Churchill had already decided to remove him in early May over the Iraq dispute. Wavell was relieved on the 22nd of June, handed over command on the 5th of July, and left for India two days later. In late July 1941, Charles de Gaulle flew from Brazzaville to congratulate the victors. Free French General Georges Catroux took control of Syria and Lebanon, and on the 26th of November, shortly after assuming the post, Catroux recognized the independence of both countries in the name of the Free French movement. Lebanon became an independent state on the 22nd of November 1943, and declared war on Germany and Japan on the 27th of February 1945 - a trajectory that began in the summer of 1941 when the Australian 21st Brigade stood at the gates of Beirut.