On July 3, 1940, British ships attacked and destroyed the French fleet at Mers El Kebir, in French Algeria. Some 1,300 French sailors were killed and another 350 wounded; 1 battleship was sunk and another 2 damaged; 3 destroyers were damaged and another grounded. British losses were 2 sailors killed and 6 aircraft shot down.
The British attack came after France had signed armistices with Germany and Italy on June 22, 1940. The British feared that the new French state, called Vichy France, would hand over its fleet to Germany or that it would be seized by the German Navy. The British had opened negotiations with French authorities in North Africa to hand over the French fleet, or even continue the war against Germany. But these negotiations failed, prompting the British to launch the attack at Mers El Kebir; French ships docked in British ports were also attacked.
Another French fleet in Alexandria, in Egypt, was blockaded by the British Navy. After difficult negotiations, the French commander allowed his fleet to be disarmed and to remain in port until the end of the war.
(Excerpts taken from Wars of the 20th Century – Volume 6 – World War II in Europe) Aftermath of the German Invasion of France Despite Germany’s overwhelming military position at the end of hostilities, the armistice negotiations were conducted with consideration of other realities: for Hitler, that the French government and army could very well move to French colonies in North Africa from where they could continue the war; and for the French government, that it wanted to remain in France but only if the Germans did not impose “dishonorable or excessive” terms. Terms that were deemed unacceptable included the following: that all of France would be occupied, that France should surrender its navy, or that France should relinquish its (vast) colonial territories.
Not only did Hitler not impose these terms, in fact, he desired that France remain a sovereign state for diplomatic and practical reasons: in the first case, France had ostensibly switched sides in the war, isolating Britain; and in the second case, France, with its large navy, would maintain its global colonial empire, which Germany could not because it did not have enough ships.
Thus, in the armistice agreement, France was allowed to remain a fully sovereign state, with its mainland territory and colonial possessions intact, with some exceptions: Alsace-Lorraine became part of the Greater German Reich, although not formally annexed into Germany; and Nord and Pas-de-Calais were attached to Belgium in the “German Military Administration of Belgium and Northern France”. France also retained its navy, but which was demobilized and disarmed, as were the other branches of the French armed forces.
Because of the continuing hostilities with Britain, as part of the armistice agreement, the German Army occupied the northern and western sections of France (some 55% of the French mainland), where it imposed military rule. The occupation was intended to be temporary until such time that Germany had defeated or had come to terms with Britain, which both the French and German governments believed was imminent. The Italian military also occupied a small area in the French Alps. In the rest of France (comprising 45% of the French mainland), which was not occupied and thus called zone libre (“free zone”), on July 10, 1940, the French government formed a new polity called the “French State” (French: État français), which dissolved the French Third Republic, and was led by Petain as Chief of State.
The “French State” had its capital at Vichy, some 220 miles south of Paris, and was commonly known as “Vichy France”. Officially, Vichy France retained sovereignty over all France, but in reality, it exercised little authority in the occupied zones. Vichy France did have full administrative power in zone libre, and in the ongoing war, it maintained a policy of neutrality (e.g. it did not join the Axis), and was internationally recognized, and maintained diplomatic relations with the United States, Canada, the Soviet Union, even Britain, and many neutral countries.
The Vichy government imposed authoritarian rule, with Petain holding broad powers, which was a full turn-around and rejection of the liberalism and democratic ideals of the French Third Republic. Using Révolution nationale (“National Revolution”) as its official ideology, the Petain regime turned inward-looking (la France seule, or “France alone”), was deeply conservative and traditionalist, and rejected liberal and modernist ideas. Traditional culture and religion were promoted as the means for the regeneration of France. The separation of Church and State was abolished, with Catholics playing a major role in affairs, the French Third Republic was reviled as morally decadent and causing France’s military defeat, and anti-Semitism and xenophobia predominated, with Jews and other “undesirables”, including immigrants, gypsies, and homosexuals being persecuted. Communists and left-wingers, and other radicals were included in this category following the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. Xenophobia was particularly directed against Britain, with Petain and other leaders expressing strong antipathy with the British, calling them France’s “hereditary” and lasting enemy.
The Vichy regime was challenged by General Charles de Gaulle, who in June 1940 in Britain, formed a government-in-exile called Free France, and an army, the Free French Forces. De Gaulle criticized Vichy France as illegitimate, that it had usurped power from the French Third Republic, and that it was a puppet state of Nazi Germany. In a BBC broadcast on June 18, 1940 (the so-called “Appeal of 18 June”; French: Appel du 18 juin), he called on the French people to reject the Vichy regime and resist the German occupiers. Initially, de Gaulle received little support in France and among expatriate French, who regarded the Petain regime as being the constitutionally legitimate authority for France.
Despite the armistice agreement’s stipulation that deactivated the French naval forces, the British government feared that the French fleet would be seized by the Germans who then would use it to invade Britain. Thus, on July 3, 1940, British ships attacked the French fleet at Mers-el-Kebir (in Algeria), sinking or damaging several French ships, while the French squadron at Alexandria (in Egypt) allowed itself to be interned by the British fleet.
By October 1940, the Petain regime had began to actively collaborate in implementing the Nazi government’s Anti-Semitism laws. Using information of the poll registers on the Jewish population that earlier had been collected by the French police, French authorities and the Gestapo (German secret police), working together or separately, conducted raids where thousands of Jews (as well as other “undesirables”) were rounded up and confined in internment camps for eventual transport to concentration and extermination camps in Eastern Europe; many concentration camps also were set up in France. Of the 330,000 Jews in France, some 77,000 perished in the Holocaust, a death rate of 25%.
As the armistice agreement also required France to pay the cost of the German occupation, the French became dependent on and subservient to German impositions. French farm production and resources were seized by the Germans, resulting in the deterioration of the French economy and causing severe hardships to the French people, who suffered food and fuel shortages or rationing, curfew, and restricted civil liberties.
The Battle of France resulted in some 1.5 million French soldiers becoming German prisoners of war. To prevent Vichy France from re-mobilizing these troops, German authorities kept these French soldiers in labor camps in Germany and France, although some 500,000 were later released at various times, and the remaining one million freed by the Allies at the end of World War II.
By 1941, a French resistance movement comprising many small groups had emerged, with its memberships increased by the influx of communists following the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, and forced work evaders following the implementation of Service du Travail Obligatoire (“Obligatory Work Service”) in February 1943. The French resistance soon also made contact with de Gaulle’s government-in-exile, the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) and the U.S. Office of Strategic Services (OSS), which sent supplies and agents. The resistance conducted sabotage operations against military-vital targets, provided the Allies with intelligence information, and sheltered and helped escape downed Allied airmen, Jews, and other elements targeted by German and Vichy authorities.
In November 1942, following the Allied invasion of western North Africa, the German military also occupied the territory of Vichy France in order to safeguard the southern flank. The Italian occupation zone also was expanded. While France ostensibly continued its sovereignty over its territories, in reality, German military authority came into force throughout France, and the Vichy government exercised little power. The German occupation of Vichy France also ended the latter’s diplomatic relations with the United States, Canada, and other Allies, and also with many neutral states.