The drama of a coveted fleet

The attack of a French fleet by a British squadron on July 3 and 6, 1940 has left a deep wound in the mind of the survivors and of the families of the dead sailors. Too often in the past, their grief had been added to by a now largely irrelevant dispute among Frenchmen, although it is clear to all that the subject remains largely taboo. For fifty years the official ready-made truth had acted as a leaden lid over a disturbing matter and any differing opinion or new approach on how to construe the events were sternly condemned. This is the reason why the survivors and the families of the victims created an association which, now more than ever, works to vindicate the memory of the forgotten sailors of Mers-el-Kebir. Even if most historians, both English and Americans, now openly admit that the attack was a political error, one feels right in questioning what was and still is an unbelievable enterprise of disinformation with Reason of State in the background. As the years went by, there remained only the myths to sustain it.Such a tragedy cannot be understood without a minimum of background explanation since this dark and tragic period, full of turmoil and uncertainties, can be the object of widely diverse and even contradictory assessments. In this beginning of the XXI th century, 66 years later, is it at last possible to know how Great Britain came to striking a defaulting ally? To explain the process which led former comrades-at-arms to fight a useless, unjust, and bloody battle in which the only victims were French sailors ?

The circumstances of the tragedy

In this late June 1940 France has just lost a decisive battle and must submit to an armistice that the last government of the III rd Republic, presided by Marshall Petain has accepted to sign to Nazi Germany. Its conditions are severe and article 8 concerns the fate of the French Fleet, as yet unvainquished, and sheltered in British waters or in the ports of North Africa, in particular the raiding force now in the process of being disarmed in the the port of Mers-el-Kebir. This force is strong of 4 battleships (Dunkerque, Strasbourg, Provence, Bretagne), 1 seaplane carrier (Commandant Teste), and 6 destroyers (Mogador, Volta, Terrible, Lynx, Tigre, Kersaint). Article 8 of the convention of armistice is ambiguous enough to give the British leave to intervene in order to neutralise the French ships, should they fear the Germans are in a position to capture them. This they will eventually do... On July 3, 1940, admiral Darlan, the Minister for the Navy and Chief of Naval Staff being absent, it is his second-in-command, admiral Le Luc, who receives the message from the commanding officer at Mers-el-Kebir. In this message, admiral Gensoul, informs him that admiral Somerville is cruising offshore with a British squadron ( i.e. Force H ) and has just sent him an ultimatum demanding him to join the British forces or to scuttle his ships, and that he will use force if the French do not comply. Under the torrid sun of an Algerian summer, a somewhat surrealistic and at the same time pathetic negociation starts between the British who have serious doubts over the cogency of the orders they have been given, and the French who cannot believe that their friends of yesterday are going to fire upon them. At 17:30 (British time), after shuttling several times between the port and Force H, Captain Holland, who negociated with admiral Gensoul on behalf of the British, left the Dunkerque for the last time, deeply affected by the failure of his negociations. He had been running short of time since the British Admiralty, eager to come to a conclusion, had kept urging Somerville to engage hostilities. Crossing the bow of the battleship Bretagne he can see the officer of the watch saluting him and French sailors waiving to him : they do not know that within half an hour they will be dead... At 17.55 on board the battlecruiser HMS HOOD, the flagship of admiral Somerville, “Flag 5” is hoisted and a few seconds later the ship reels violently when the main guns open fire with a formidable roar. It is the first time her guns have fired in anger since the beginning of WW II, and this devastating fire is directed at allies, at comrades-at-arms with whom she had until recently been going on patrol in the North Atlantic. At 18h12, “Flag 6”, the order for “Cease fire”, is hoisted. It had taken a mere seventeen minutes for this one-sided action to complete the tragedy. The British 15 and 16 in. guns have fired on this fleet narrowly confined in the harbour at Mers-el-Kebir and in no position to defend itself in what was not even a battle. From the bridge of the HOOD, a british sailor described what he was seeing as “shooting fish in a barrel” ! Another quote from a British source speaks of “a true butchery” having taken place in such a short time: more than 1200 French sailors are already dead, either torn to pieces by the salvoes of the 15 in. guns, drowned, slowly asphyxiated in their upturned ship, or victims of the oil they swallow after jumping into the sea. Some are burned to death by steam, others lay wounded in the lower decks, trapped in the darkness created by the deadly smoke of fires. A direct hit causes the explosion of the Bretagne which capsizes the Mogador as she sinks; the Dunkerque and the Provence are hit. The escort ship Rigault de Genouilly will be torpedoed the following day, in violation of the cease fire. The battleship Strasbourg and five destroyers manage to escape and reach Toulon. The Commandant Teste suffers no damage. Three days later, the torpedo planes of the aircraft carrier Ark Royal come back to finish off the task and try to neutralize the Dunkerque, adding a further hundred victims to an already long list. The toll could have been higher still, and the survivors of this massacre are still wondering how they came out of this hell unscathed! And above all, how this unthinkable and unjustifiable deed ever came about...

The reasons put forward

After the French debacle, the armistice and occupation of a major part of the French territory by the armies of the Axis, the Royal Navy remains for the British leaders their most important strategic component. It is superior to the Kriegsmarine and Italian navy combined. Yet the British would lose this advantage if our fleet came to fall into German hands ( some said at the time or still say today “join the Germans”, as if this monstrous and preposterous notion could have had any meaning then for sailors who had been fighting the enemy a few weeks earlier !). Thus what is at stakes is capital at a time when Britain fears an invasion. Moreover, it is true that on either side no one has really taken into consideration the other side’s frame of mind. The French have not fully grasped the degree of anxiety of the British as to the future of our fleet. As for the British, they have not perceived that a defeated France had other priorities than the soothing of their feelings. They want to prevent the Germans from taking the French ships, and are convinced that France will be unable to resist the Axis’s demands, and this in spite of the assurances of her leaders, notably admiral Darlan who had given direct orders to scuttle the ships in case of a German threat. ( Those orders will eventually be carried out in 1942 when the German army occupied the free zone ). This thesis of a “misunderstanding” is the one that history has retained while exonerating the British from any responsability. The burning of the Reichstag, the so- called weapons of mass destructions as a justification for the war in Irak, the surrendering of the French fleet to the Germans are here to remind us that the more outrageous a (State) lie is, the more it is repeated, the greater its chances are to impress the minds and bring acceptance to the decisions that derive from it.

The true reasons

It is only after the British archives were made public that one could perceive how much the responsability of Churchill, the true perpetrator of this tragedy, had been engaged. The man’s genius is to have been able to have his fears shared and to convince his public opinion –and that of the United States- that by signing the armistice France had joined the enemy, with the necessary consequence that her fleet ran the risk of being either delivered to, or seized by, the ennemy. It was unthinkable that a defaulting ally should build up the armies of the Axis without incurring an automatic and immediate sanction. Although the hypothesis of a surrender of the French navy to the Germans had not been proved, had even been contradicted by facts, by the documents and informations which the Admiralty possessed, it served as a pretext for a pre-emptive action to which as much publicity as possible was given. Through a manipulation of the War Cabinet, Churchill took upon himself the right to pass a verdict. He did not do it by accident and the action was carefully planned within operation “Catapult” aimed not only at Mers-el-Kebir, but at all the naval or civilian ships that after the debacle had sought shelter in British ports or at Alexandria, Dakar, Casablanca, or the West Indies. Only very recently appointed Prime Minister, Churchill had to strengthen a still fragile position. To do so, he had to make his mark at home first, with the War Cabinet to begin with where Lord Halifax, the Foreigh Secretary, seemed attracted by the idea of a separate peace with Germany, then abroad in order to convince the United States which shared his misgivings in naval matters. Prior to drawing them into the war he needed their material support and he had to prove to them his determination to resist. Those are the true reasons behind operation “Catapult”. They are to be found in Churchill’s desire to assert his authority by imposing a final silence to the “appeasers” while giving the Americans and the entire world a final proof of his iron will to carry on the struggle, even if the price to pay was treachery and the sheddind of the blood of yesterday’s ally.

The awakening of consciences

In spite of the undeniable success of this media manipulation carried out by Churchill, a master in the genre, there is today a majority of commentators who say that Mers-el-Kebir was a serious mistake that greatly prejudiced the allied cause. A proof lies in those great voices that have been heard on the British side trying to stop this dishonourable action, to begin with admiral Somerville himself. In Gibraltar, admiral North who knew that the French sailors would never surrender to the Germans and showed his disapproval was dismissed by Churchill. Lord Mountbatten had the courage to express regrets when he came to pay homage to the war graves at Mers-el-Kebir a short time before he was tragically murdered. And above all, admiral Sir Andrew Cunningham, who until he died in 1968 kept a firm opinion on what he called an inept and dangerous operation from a strategic point of view. More recently, access to war archives has made it possible for commentators and historians - of whom a significant number is British – to bring out the necessary material for an awakening of consciences. Thus those courageous lines from Richard Lamb, an government-appointed British historian: “ The verdict of history is undoubtedly that by ignoring the opinion of the Admiralty and provoking an undeclared war with France, Churchill prejudiced the allied cause. His refusal to believe the French when they asserted that they would never allow the Germans to seize the fleet was perhaps the most serious error he made in the entire war”. It is fit to remember the words of admiral Gensoul in the cemetery of Mers-el-Kebir in front of the coffins of his sailors : “ If there is a stain on a flag, it is not on ours”. The 1297 dead or missing, the 350 wounded, the hundreds of widows and thousands of orphans are an infinitely small number when compared to the the tens of millions of victims of Nazism during WW II, among whom those killed in the bombing of British towns. But contrary to those, the deaths at Mers-el-Kebir were not caused by the enemy, but by comrades-at-arm. It is an open wound that still haunts the grieving memories.

Between remembrance and forgiveness

Today, the souvenir of what happened is divided between the duty to remember and the acceptance of forgiveness. It will remain for a long time to come deeply imbedded in everyone’s memory, all the more so after the revolting spectacle of the recent vandalizing and profanation of the cemetery at Mers-el-Kebir that renewed the grief of all those concerned. That event brings a new urgency to the necessary repatriation of the remains of those sailors whose sacrifice demands that their country should give them a peaceful and dignified burial ground. As for forgiveness, years have passed and the time is now for appeasement. The presence of the ambassador of the United Kingdom and of a deputation of former sailors from HMS HOOD at Brest for the commemoration of July 3, 2006 is proof of a common will towards reconciliation. For the Association of the former sailors and families of the victims of Mers-el-Kébir, this ceremony has been the official posthumous acknowledgment, late as it was, of the sacrifice of those who died more than 66 years ago. It is not overstating the case to underline the historical nature of an event which many survivors have long expected, but to which only the few still alive were able to attend.