Guest Post: Franco-British Union

This post first appeared on Today in Alternate History.

Kent, Dover, June 10, 1940 -

In a joint address forever known to history as Toujours Ensemble ("always together"), Winston Churchill and Paul Reynaud paid tribute to the secret heroes of Operation Dynamo. These were the incomparably brave Franco-British Union soldiers who sacrificed their evacuation to defend the Dunkirk perimeter. This rearguard action had become necessary due to the collapse of the Western front and the surrender of the Belgian Army on May 28th. Emergency orders had then been issued "Every man for himself, make for Dunkirk." Franco-British commanders hastily met to establish a strategy for the defense of the Dunkirk beachhead itself. Churchill privately considered this outcome to be "a colossal military disaster," but he had no choice but to roll with the punches since he desperately needed Reynaud's cabinet to accept his offer of a complete merger of the two countries and thereby avoid French capitulation.

Absent this complicated political dimension to the problem, it would have made far more military sense to evacuate Allied forces earlier without such a narrow squeak. Both Churchill and Reynauld offered an unconvincing "Never Surrender" pledge, but French cabinet members had lingering fears of "fusion with a corpse." Meanwhile, other disgruntled figures on the periphery included General Charles de Gaulle, the "Man of Destiny" who had planned to form a Free French Army in the event of his government surrendering along with the Dutch and Belgians. The hero of Verdun, eighty-four year old Phillipe Pétain, wanted to avoid total destruction, threatening to veto the proposal because he preferred a Nazi dictatorship to being part of a French/UK government. Another minister muttered "Better to be a Nazi province. At least we know what that means."

In binary terms, the anti-Union faction of the cabinet considered the offer a simple choice between surrendering to Great Britain or to Germany. Given their resistance, it was just as well that the Union proposal had been voted on before Dunkirk. After all, the sense of defeatism would have only been super-charged by popular anger had thousands of French troops had been killed enabling the British Expeditionary Force to evacuate. This perceived abandonment at Dunkirk would have created a wedge between the two Allies with the threat of the French fleet falling into German hands. "I was somewhat surprised," wrote Churchill, "to see the staid, solid, experienced politicians of all parties engage themselves so passionately in an immense design whose implications and consequences were not in any way thought out". Churchill put his doubts aside and told the cabinet, "In this crisis we must not let ourselves be accused of lack of imagination."

Even if Churchill and Reynaud had aptly demonstrated the potential to coexist in harmony, the undeniable truth was that the nature of Union was a largely legal and symbolic one. After all many French military units had been forced to surrender because their positions were untenable. Even if France was a mostly defeated nation, and the Union brought French division home to England, the benefits obtained by Churchill were very tangible. The legitimate Franco-British government had the authority to order the French fleet to sail out of harm's way and join the Royal Navy's activities. Similarly, French colonies remained associated with the Allies. The outward appearance of strength was far greater without French capitulation, as Churchill had intended all along - a continuation of the national alliance for mutual defense. This strategy was not without risk because it tempted Hitler to accept Franco's ludicrous offer at Hendaye: a Spanish military alliance in exchange for French North Africa and Gibraltar, which would have been an unacceptable condition for a surrendering French government.

The Dunkirk perimeter had been replaced with a different kind of political encirclement that trapped Churchill and Reynaud. It would have been less confusing, if not outright better, if Reynaud had persuaded his cabinet colleagues to continue the fight from North Africa after the formation of a French government-in-exile. The military reality was that the Western front had been fought to a stop as obviously intended by the German Halt Order. Regardless of their unconvincing saber-rattling and bold rhetoric, a peace settlement between the belligerents was clearly in everyone's best interest. The Axis Powers had no realistic prospect of pressing for victory and actually wanted to completely re-focus their forces on the forthcoming invasion of the Soviet Union. Whereas, the nascent Union had a path to recovering the French mainland, and , potentially, breaking up the short-term government arrangements that had yet to properly form.

It was under these radically altered circumstances that Allied leaders were to face renewed pressure to seek terms with Hitler because the continuation of the war only threatened to bankrupt the nation without any obvious benefit. The Toujours Ensemble speech had included a wistful, hopeful reference to American intervention. In fact, U.S. President Roosevelt was yet to decide whether to declare a national emergency and re-invoke the Espionage Act of 1917 to control shipping in American waters and in waters near the Panama Canal Zone. FDR himself was under intense domestic pressure to act as ceasefire broker, a personally attractive route that would allow him to retire at the end of the year. Albeit the outbreak of war, the only reason to continue would have been to protect his legacy: the continuation of his social programs was at risk under the Republican Wendell Wilkie or indeed his own vice president, "Texas Jack" John Garner.

Author's Note:

In reality, apart from French Prime Minister Paul Reynaud, other French leaders were less enthusiastic about a declaration of union, considering it an alliance of circumstance. He resigned that evening without taking a formal vote on the union or an armistice, and later called the failure of the union the "greatest disappointment of my political career." Churchill's private secretary said, "We had before us the bridge to a new world, the first elements of European or even World Federation."

Reynaud later wrote in his memoirs, "Those who rose in indignation at the idea of union with our ally were the same individuals who were getting ready to bow and scrape to Hitler." As a result of these events, de Gaulle had the opportunity to recast himself as the leader of the Free French and the embodiment of French honor and pride.

Provine's Addendum:

Hitler's Operation Barbarossa, intended to be a quick victory like the Western Front, turned into a grueling, dragging battle across Eastern Europe and back. German forces initially did well, but the Soviet defense winnowed away their opponents while building a powerhouse farther east behind the lines that would push back. By 1947, Soviet troops had returned to what had been the border after the division of Poland in 1939. Many expected Hitler to call for an end, but the Fuhrer was determined to win. With Germany weakened, it became the ideal time for the Franco-British Union to liberate the occupied lands in Europe and North Africa.

While war raged in the east, the Unionists had been racing to build up its military. This third act of World War II began with a massive seaborne invasion across the English Channel alongside a naval battle in the North Sea to establish a blockade. Without German reinforcements available to support the Nazi-puppet government in France, much of the fighting fell to Spanish and Italian allies. These proved to be uninterested in supporting a Hitler-led world order that already looked to be doomed, leading to the liberation of France and its African territories within a few years. Italy, Spain, and ultimately much of Germany capitulated, the latter most in an effort to break free from the war-mad Hitler and gain Union protection rather than see all of Germany come under Soviet control.

By 1950, Europe was divided between the Union and its neighbors and the Soviet stronghold, which stretched as far as the Oder River. Tenuous peace settled as the Union focused on strengthening its control over its expansive colonies that covered Africa and nearly every territory touching the Indian Ocean. The Japanese Empire, meanwhile, continued to exert authority on East Asian countries, testing the boundaries of the United States and Soviet Union without ever provoking a full-scale war. Proxy wars soon broke out to weaken the Union's grip with Soviet-funded rebellion in India and Japanese-influenced resistance in Indochina. Meanwhile, the United States' foreign policy turned more fully to the Monroe Doctrine, exerting influence on Latin America to ensure that the Western Hemisphere maintained distance from the rest of the world.