Customer Reviews

England's Last War Against France: Fighting Vichy 1940-1942

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

England's Last War Against France: Fighting Vichy 1940-1942 by Colin Smith is a well written and informative overview of the battles fought between England and Vichy France in World War Two.

Following the German invasion of France in 1940 a new French government was established in Vichy, under Marshall Petain, to govern southern France and its foreign colonies. Vichy France was theoretically neutral but clearly "collaborating" with the Germans. As such it didn't declare war on England but Vichy's leaders were universally anti-English and seemed to take far too much pleasure at the thought of an England occupied by the Germans.

The book is divided into several sections. It begins with an overview of the creation of Vichy France, its leaders and their relations with the Germans. The second section deals with the English concerns about the French navel fleet, second most powerful in the world, falling into German hands and the subsequent sinking of much of that French fleet by the British at Mers el-Kebir (Algeria). The next section centers on the unsuccessful attempt by English forces to capture Dakar (Senegal) to prevent that port from being used by the Germans for submarine attacks in the South Atlantic. The next section concerns the English efforts to oust the Vichy forces in Syria and Lebanon to secure English positions in Egypt and access to Middle East oil. Another section deals with the English capture of the port of Diego Suarez (beloved by those of us who grew up reading pirate stories) and subsequently the island of Madagascar to prevent it from being used to support Japanese submarines, then threatening English routes to India. Finally the book concludes with the English-American invasions of Morocco and Algeria in order to cut off the Germany Army under Field Marshall Rommel. It was this final action which caused Germany and Italy to invade southern France and reduce Vichy France to figurehead status.

I felt that the author was successful in keeping a good balance amongst the material. The author includes the background, the personalities, the on-ground events and the individual stories without dwelling excessively on any element. Although the author is English I don't think there is any bias against the French per se. Stories of individual bravery are predominantly English but the French officers and forces are generally portrayed as professional. There is some implication that the French colonial soldiers might not have always behaved as professionally. Obviously the Vichy government has been labeled by history as "collaborators" and so negative (but not excessively harsh) portrayals of Petain and Laval are hardly surprising. Similarly de Gaulle is accurately portrayed but, hesitant to commit (Free) French to fight (Vichy) French but first in line to pick up the spoils in the name of France, is probably not attractive in the eyes of Anglo-Saxon readers.

These events were largely unknown to me and obviously there are other books that may cover events or personalities in more detail. All in all I felt the book was a very professional presentation of a relatively obscure aspect of World War Two and recommend it to readers interested in the subject.

I would highly recommend all of Colin Smith's books as he combines a roving reporter's eye with an erudite historical knowledge and weaves a story not only highly informative , but highly readable too , making his books a joy to read

Superb account of a twisted time in the history of WWIi. Well written and compelling. One of my better Amazon book purchases among many.

Thursday 02/11/2010

The undeclared war between Britain and Vichy France is covered in well written detail by this book. This is little known history and for most folks unknown history.

The information presented is well researched and has much to teach todays diplomats, government and military leaders.

I recommend this book be read with an open mind and objective point of view. The leadership France and Britain can't be judged 70 years after the fact.

Enjoy the book. I did!!

"England's Last War Against France: Fighting Vichy, 1940-1942" (every time I see that title, I feel the urge to somehow reach into the publisher's graphic design department and rearrange the title to "Fighting Vichy: England's Last War Against France, 1940-1942"; this is the only book I can recall where the sentence-like explanatory part is the main title rather than the subtitle) is Colin Smith's account of the war between the Commonwealth and Vichy France in the years between France's surrender in 1940 and the dissolution of an independent Vichy state in 1942, following the successful invasion of North Africa by Anglo-American forces. This is an aspect of World War II that is usually only given token coverage in the main narrative, with the popular memory holding Charles De Gaulle's Free French government-in-exile as the true successor to the Third Republic, with Petain's Vichy a suborned minion of the Fuhrer. As Smith reminds us, Petain, in the summer of 1940, was recognized as France's head of state by virtually the whole apparatus, including most of the military and colonial leadership. Petain's government, while not simply a pure puppet, was at odds with the United Kingdom, and Smith here gives us a comprehensive look at how the two erstwhile allies fought it out. It provides an invaluable new perspective on the war, particularly for the period when the British Commonwealth fought on alone.

After a short prologue, the first part of the book, "The Making and Breaking of the Entente Cordiale" covers roughly the first half of the 20th century, sketching broadly the political life of the latter years of the French Third Republic, the strains that were present in the Anglo-French alliance through World War I, the interwar period, and up until the collapse of the French Army before the Wehrmacht. Smith does a commendable job of giving the reader a good sense of why so much of France, particularly the senior members of the military, were so ready to simply give up the fight against Hitler, rather than do what the British hoped by setting up a government-in-exile in Algeria (which was, after all, considered part of France proper in this period) and continuing the war from there. The controversial figure of Marshall Philippe Petain, brought into government by Premier Paul Reynaud to stiffen some spines, only to be revealed to be among the bendiest men present, is of particular interest. Conservative and at least somewhat anti-Semetic, like much of the military and society in general, Petain thought that liberalism had weakened France, and that Britain had not pulled their weight and allowed France to fall (perhaps not without some cause, given the pathetically small army that Lord Gort had brought over). When Vichy came into existence, the Churchill (possessed of what Smith calls a "sliver of ice" that was probably necessary under the circumstances) ordered the Royal Navy to intercept and either capture, neutralize, or sink the French Navy before it could fall into Axis hands. Not an action calculated to win any popularity among the French (and, indeed, the memory of the Battle of Mers-el-Kebir would play into the Vichy collaborators' hands until the end), but as Smith shows, it met with widespread approval elsewhere, in the Dominions and in America. The following sections detail the seizures of French colonies/proctectorates in Syria and Lebanon (and the corresponding German-backed attempt to drive the British out of Iraq), the failed attempt to do the same in Dakar (French Ghana), the successful conquest of French Madagascar, and the final invasion of North Africa that put Vichy out of its misery.

There is always something of an extra challenge in reviewing a work of non-fiction, particularly in this sort of history, since on the one hand the principal goal is typically to convey information, but one is also looking for some style in doing so, and the two demands can often come into conflict. First of all, by the nature of the story that Smith is telling here, there is no real central narrative or "main characters" to follow. The switches between theatres essentially introduce whole new "casts" every few hundred pages, though obviously the big names on both sides recur in the background. If the book has a central figure, the best cases could be made for either Admiral Francois Darlan or former French Premier and collaborateur-en-chef Pierre Laval. As if trying to compensate for this, I think Smith indulges a little too much in the standard historians' device of giving us a raft of anecdotes about individual soldiers on the ground. We meet a few too many regular Tommies and Jeans who are just doing their jobs. Many of these people are interesting, but there's a bit too many of them cluttering up the pages, which I think impairs the effect (more generally, I think some of the combat descriptions likewise suffer from an overload of minor detail; we're exhaustively told about any minor firefight, how many people were wounded, etc.). There are times when the book seems to be skirting around potentially interesting subjects that would have added to the understanding of the story (most notably, after initially doing a good job of establishing the tenuous position of De Gaulle's Free French government through the period of the failed Dakar expedition, he more or less abandons him through the Mesopotamian and Malagasy periods).

Let us be clear, while the aforesaid issues are why I haven't rated this as a five star book, I would still very much recommend reading it (if we could give half-stars, I would probably give this 4.5). At a bare minimum, it sheds a lot of light on a phase of World War II that mostly goes unnoticed. And, notwithstanding earlier qualms, Smith is a very good writer. The more central players in the game, such as Frenchmen Darlan, Laval, Marshall Petain, and British officers like Sir James Somersett, the RN commander at Mers-el-Kebir whose evident disgust for his mission led to an almost comically extended attempt to avoid opening fire. Petain, archly conservative, comes across as almost sympathetic, though the consequences of his actions are hard to escape. Readers are far more likely to direct their dislike towards the oily Laval, who, as with Captain Renault in "Casablanca", blows whereever the winds are blowing. Yet more generally, Smith also hightlights the extent to which most of France was, during the Vichy period, content (if not always happy) to follow the Marshall, which seems (and, in Smith's opinion, definitely was in the case of much of the army) a psychological coping mechanism, latching onto the dear Marechal as a saviour in a time of trial. And we also see the extent to which this has been forgotten or rewritten in the histories, where everyone was a closet Gaullist. There's a tremendous sadness to much of the documented proceedings, of lives being wasted on both sides in a war that they shouldn't be fighting. Consider the case of Captain Leon Mercier, a French crusier commander who openly stated that only an Allied victory could save France - and yet he perished, along with over 500 other men, when ordered to make a suicide run out of North Africa into the guns of the US Atlantic Fleet; a run ordered, as Smith acidly notes, but a French fleet commander who did not even have the courtesy to lead this pointless operation himself, and just later toasted his new American allies, no mention made of all the men he'd sacrificed for nothing.

Overall, very much worth your while.

Colin Smith's "England's Last War Against France" is almost a great book. It is a wide-ranging and stylishly written account of the conflict between Churchill's England and Vichy France after the Nazi victory of 1940. Smith is a good writer of prose who apparently spared little effort in fully exploiting British sources and those French accounts available in translation. Primary accounts by French participants, however, are noticeably absent from the bibliography. Smith does not succumb to the traps often experienced by writers of history. Academics often reduce events to narratives so dry and accounts so cautious as to be virtually unreadable by laymen. Journalists tend to concentrate on a "good story" to the detriment of balance or the requirements of history. Smith creates a balanced work that should have earned him a five-star rating

"England's Last War Against France" should be a great book. It is not. It suffers from a regrettable lack of attention to detail in writing and production. The volume is marred by a surprising number of misspellings, typographical errors, and just plain mistakes of fact. These include:
- The German pocket-battleship "Graf Spee" is referred to as "Gruff Spee" on page 98.
- Noted Australian soldier and diplomat, Rhoden Cutler, winner of the Victoria Cross in Syria, is referred to as Butler on page 234.
- British ship classes are not printed as titles, e.g., "the flower class corvette Jasmine" should read "the Flower-class corvette Jasmine (see page 326) and the "county class cruiser HMS Devonshire" should be "County-class cruiser HMS Devonshire" on page 313.
- The maps are riddled with misspellings. Major Keyes' positions on the map on page 190 are listed as the positions of Maj. Keys. The map on page 292 shows Ambararaia rather than Ambararata Bay, while references to Antsirane and Antisarane move back and forth in the text and maps. There are even more map errors than those just listed.
- The sentence regarding Sir Samuel Hoare on page 143 only makes sense if the word flattery is changed to flatterer. On page 253 the sentence on the French Dewoitine aircraft only makes sense if "squadrons" replaces "squadron."
-On page 311 Venezuela's Lake Maracaibo becomes "Lake Maricibo."
-Unfortunately for the memory of the esteemed soldier and adventurer Fitzroy MacLean, Compton Mackenzie is given credit on page 238 for MacLean's "Eastern Approaches." Mackenzie's book, correctly listed in the bibliography, is "Eastern Epic."
- Many tankers of World War II would have been surprised to find out the M4 Sherman was a heavy tank (page 413). The Sherman was a medium tank.
- The leader of the Russian Provisional Government was Alexander Kerensky, not Karensky, as on page 19. Kerensky is spelled correctly in the index.

These errors may seem minor, but they undermine the credibility of "England's Last War Against France." The book is just shoddy work. Serious effort in copy editing and proofreading would have contributed greatly to the production of a fine volume of history with pride of place on the small shelf devoted to Britain's heroic stand against Vichyite collaborationism.

Smith performs a real service in giving us a well-balanced and illuminatingly detailed account of little known conflicts. He conveys the ambivalence of British and French military personnel about these battles. Men who had been killing each other rushed to give their opponents emergency medical care, and usually treated their prisoners with honor. He describes campaigns little known even to enthusiastic readers of history, such as the British seizure of Madagascar. He conveys both the bravery and the bad command decisions that cost unnecessary lives. The author mixes in the personal experiences of military personnel with the broader pictures of military campaigns. Clearly, he did a huge research job.

There are some minor errors, but they do not detract from the overall story. Some of the commentary is specifically English, using similes that may be unknown to most Americans. The maps are helpful.

The undeclared war against Vichy France has needed an overall treatment in a single volume. There are many good individual books on aspects of the conflict, but few that examine it as a whole. Despite this useful objective, this book suffers from being absolutely chock full of errors. Another review has mentioned some, to those you would add howlers like "the prairie boys of Ontario" (sorry, the Canadian prairies start a couple provinces west). To a Canadian, this sounds the way "the Highland lads of Sussex" would sound to a British reader.

Perhaps because the topic is one where I have better familiarity, it was jarring to see that almost every "fact" introduced regarding warships was wrong. A sample list of errors:

-Scharnhorst and Gneisnau are referred to as pocket battleships - at 33,000 tons they were at the very least battlecruisers and were not ever called pocket battleships
-Dunkerque and Strassbourg as described as having 13.5 inch guns - at 330 mm they are actually slightly under 13 inches
-Lorraine is described as having 15 inch guns - they were actually 13.4 inch
-HMS Hood is referred to as a "20 knot plodder" - it made 32 knots on trials and could still do 29 knots in 1940, only 1 knot less that the Strasbourg
-The WW1 era Blucher is referred to as a battleship - it was a rather large armoured cruiser
-Provence is referred to as a battlecruiser - it was a WW1 era slow battleship
-the loss of the Prince of Wales and Repulse is dated to February 1942 - it was actually 3 days after Pearl Harbor
-HMS Renown is described as having been damaged at Jutland - it wasn't completed until several months after that battle
-USS Massachusetts is described as having 8 16" guns - with three triple turrets, 3x3 does not equal 8
-several French destroyers described as having 5.7" guns actually had 5.5" guns or 5.1" guns - the French navy never fielded a 5.7" gun

Although the book covers many aspects of the conflict with Vichy with highly detailed descriptions, one has to wonder how accurate those descriptions really are, since the area I am familiar with is riddled with such errors as above.