I understand that approximately 350,000 people were evacuated from Dunkirk in 1940. 100,000 were French soldiers, of which approximately 50,000 elected to return to France. (please forgive my approximations, I am always happy to be corrected). Can anyone tell me how the 50,000 French soldiers were re-patriated? presumably, it can't have been as simple as ferrying them home. I am assuming that the Germans may have re-buffed any attempts to do so.
Well de Gaulle formed a government in exile, and an army - who would take part in the Normandy landings. How many of the 50,000 troops were part of this I don't know!
I wonder if a number of them didn't choose to rejoin the "Vichy" government as well? Skipper shoud know this stuff. It could be those who were "repatriated", and ended up fighting as Vichy French troops in the colonies or something? Just guessing.
Nearly all of the French soldiers (not just half) were returned to France before the French sought an armistice with Germany, using Brest, Cherbourg and other ports in Normandy and Brittany which were not occupied by the Germans. ps: The number of French who had joined the Free French forces under De Gaulle by July 1940 was just 7,000
Of course, it might have been a little more than 7,000 if the British hadn't actively hindered de Gaulle's efforts at recruiting the French forces in England.
To be fair that was because De Gaulle wasn't actually legally able to recruit anyone until the French surrender, and even then he wasn't actually appointed by anyone in any position of authority. The British couldn't just support a 'renegade' Frenchman politically until it was clear that there was no government in exile that was on the allies side.
Excuses! Churchill constantly fought with de Gaulle, and Roosevelt hated him. They wanted someone else in charge of the French effort, even a Nazi collaborator or a brainless, self-absorbed nitwit.
That was largely my point - De Gaulle had no legal authority, and until there was definitely nobody else, he wasn't a serious candidate because he made everyone in power dislike him intensely. And the Nazi collaborators were all busy collaborating with the Nazis, so they weren't available for consideration either. You can't say De Gaulle wasn't self absorbed, although I personally believe that would have been necessary for anyone successfully 'applying' for his position, and he certainly wasn't brainless. For sure De Gaulle's lack of legality and acceptance made recruitment to the Free French forces less numerous than it might have been, but until France actually surrendered, very few Frenchmen wanted to abandon their country or their homes, so they went back to fight. those left in England were not restricted in joining by anything Churchill or Roosevelt did, even if they didn't support the idea. There were more groups than just De Gaulle's in the UK before he was finally accepted.
Not only were there the slightly less than 100,000 Frenchmen evacuated from Dunkirk, there were also the French that had been removed from Norway. They had not yet been returned to France at this point. There was even a tank battalion that was earmarked to go to Norway, but never made it. Apparently the British had taken on the responsibility of transporting the whole of the French Norway expeditionary force. Not legal? Churchill had already recognized de Gaulle as the one free representative of the French government and put him over the air on the BBC. Whenever de Gaulle's recruiters addressed a French unit in England, they were followed by French-speaking British officers who sternly lectured the Frenchmen on how they would be rebelling against their legally ordained government. I'm not sure, but I believe this happened even after the Petain Vichy government came to power. There were also incidents where de Gaulle and/or some of his senior officers were specifically barred from addressing French units in England. The Nazi collaborator I was referring to was Darlan, who ended up in Algeria at the time the Allies invaded. Roosevelt preferred him to de Gaulle despite his political taint. The brainless, self-absorbed nitwit was Giraud, who comes across as a selfish little child. The man argued for six hours - while people were dying - that if he was to command in North Africa, he was to command everything, including all the British and American forces presently invading. His arguements were along the lines of, "If you don't play it my way, I'm taking my ball and going home!" What intrigues me about France: If Reynaud had had an ounce of determination, or if de Gaulle hadn't been running around all over the place and stayed to put some backbone into Reynaud, the French government would have evacuated to Algeria instead of surrendering. Try to imagine how differently the war would have gone if the French had fought on even after their country was lost.
If you want to explore that last point, you should consider - was France really lost? There was no major disruption of the forces in the south and centre, behind the Maginot, and along the Pyrenees. Many people think Petain's surrender was premature. You are missing the point that De Gaulle was just a lowly (albeit up and coming) brigadier who few had heard of. He wasn't a major player.
The French army were beaten and had given up. More importantly, the French leadership was beaten and had given up. Most of the French army units were in disarray and completely demoralized from constantly retreating. There are many reports of French soldiers throwing away their weapons and basically deserting. The troops in the Maginot Line had been surrounded by Guderian's forces, and had by that time surrendered en masse. Yes, but he had a major influence on Reynaud, who was the major player at the time.
Sadly a dozen De Gaulle's are unlikely to change the situation in France at the end of June 1940. As I recall Churchill proposed some kind of Franco-British union were both countries would become one and continue the war from there. You have to admit, Winston could come up with some doozies every now and again. The idea of course was rejected by Reynaud. Our friend Spartanroller is probably correct in the assesment that the French capitulation was premature. The Maginot line forts were cut off, but Germany had only limited luck in taking the outer forts and they remained active until the French surrender. They could have held for weeks incurring heavy German casualties to take by storm. The French army could have attempted a fighting withdrawl south to the Riviara with the hope that they could find a choke point in the southern mountains were they could make a stand. With the Maginot line holding out (and tying up significant numbers of German troops), and Germany at the end of its supply line in central France, a supreme effort by the 3rd Republic might have held a small portion of southern France at least for the short term. If defeated there they could then fall back to French Algeria/Morroco. This sounds quite reasonable to us today, especially since we know how the war turned out now. That does not take into consideration how the French viewed the situation at the time. France had watched Poland, Denmark, Norway, Holland and Belgium all fall quickly to German arms. They had watched their grand defence plan shattered in a matter of mere days, their best army, the 7th, routed almost without fireing a shot, the bulk of the BEF forced out of France and their primary defences (Maginot Line) rendered ineffective. Their remaining field armies were in retreat or surrounded, and thousands of civilians choked the roads trying to get away from the German juggernaught. Most of their industry needed to support an army in the field was already occupied by German troops. Nothing they had tried had stopped or even slowed the Panzers and Stukas, and Italy had just stabbed them in the back. It was all well and good for Great Britain to say they would fight on as they were not occupied and had the English Channel between them and Hitler's Panzers. If forced they could still fall back to their Dominion colony of Canada, seperated by the Atlantic ocean and under the defacto protection of the United States. Falling back to north africa did not seem to offer much as the French Empire was rather a poor relation compared to the British Commonwealth. In any event it would have taken a supreme effort of will from a government hastily formed during the crush of invasion. This keeping in mind that the governments of the late 3rd Republic were very weak in peacetime, let alone during the strain of a seemingly lost war. After all they had seen the French government had likely concluded that Britain too would also fall, or at least come to terms with Hitler, and their first responibility was to end the war and protect its civilian population. With all this in mind the Reynaud Government made the not unreasonable calculation that if they did not offer a fight to the death with Germany that there was the expectation, or at least hope, that they could get an honorable peace with Hitler. After all this was how it was done, trade a few provinces, pay an indemnity, suffer a brief and limited occupation, and then plan for revenge in a generation or two. It might have worked that way if England had come to terms with Hitler, but then neither Churchill or Hitler were playing by the old rules of European warfare anymore. Churchill and Hitler were making things up as they went along, which helps to explain the somewhat unorganized way the Free French army was formed under De Gaulle.
Reynaud did have some backbone. He twice determined on the evacuation of the government and some of the armed forces to North Africa. The second time he even gave orders for preparations to be made. Both times were influenced by de Gaulle encouraging him to. Unfortunately, Reynaud kept sending de Gaulle off on missions. His main problem was Weygand. This little S.O.B. did not want to go down in history as the person who surrendered the French continental army to the Germans. He insisted that the French government had started the war, so it was the French government that must surrender. Thus he engineered Petain and parts of the French cabinet to rise up against Reynaud and blocked his moves to continue the war elsewhere. So Weygand does not go down in history as the man who surrendered the French army, but the jerk who forced the whole French nation to submit to the Nazi boot. Except for this silly little man, the Second World War very likely would have been just another European conflict.
