Let's discuss France Fights On a.k.a. the Fantasque Time Line

[Hendryk]

The thing is I don't think thats particularly plausible. One can't simply handwave away a rotten out political and cultural system just by having one woman die. Nor in doing so magically provide a will to keep fighting, especially if it means the government has to go into exile.

Well, the system was rotten, but it had some fight left in it yet. About half of the cabinet did want to relocate to North Africa to continue the war, and Reynaud was one of them, so it really was a close call. But too much time was wasted before the decision was officially taken, and out of desperation the path of least resistance, as it were, was chosen instead. But there is solid historical evidence to back up the claim that things could plausibly have gone another way in June 1940.

 

[Mumby]

IOTL there was a certain belief that Algeria had been France's bastion during the war and that relinquishing it would be like cutting off her legs. Thats what made the whole Algerian independence debacle an, eeeerrrrr, debacle. People from across the political spectrum including erstwhile liberals became hardliners almost overnight, because they believed the fact that France had this place they could retreat to and prepare from had saved France itself.

That impulse will be a lot stronger ITTL, as it appears to have a lot more weight behind it than is the case IOTL. And given such sentiment gave rise to the OAS and other such unpleasantness IOTL...

 

[Burton K Wheeler]

IOTL there was a certain belief that Algeria had been France's bastion during the war and that relinquishing it would be like cutting off her legs. Thats what made the whole Algerian independence debacle an, eeeerrrrr, debacle. People from across the political spectrum including erstwhile liberals became hardliners almost overnight, because they believed the fact that France had this place they could retreat to and prepare from had saved France itself.

That impulse will be a lot stronger ITTL, as it appears to have a lot more weight behind it than is the case IOTL. And given such sentiment gave rise to the OAS and other such unpleasantness IOTL...

I'm way less interested in how the war itself goes than in the postwar situation. I've talked about this elsewhere, but it seems likely a lot more of Europe will fall to the Soviets with Germany having a persistent threat to the Mediterranean. The British and French will probably form a sort of EU along with the low countries and whatever pieces of Germany they can grab, maybe along the lines of the British Commonwealth. The question is how the Franco-British Commonwealth handles decolonization. They'd probably be depending on U.S. military aid to stand against the Soviets, which makes it even more tricky.

France Fights On doesn't address the actually interesting stuff, though. It's just all about a recognizable World War II but with more France in it. Or, rather, with a French Army made up of white soldiers instead of OTL's.

The thing is I don't think thats particularly plausible. One can't simply handwave away a rotten out political and cultural system just by having one woman die. Nor in doing so magically provide a will to keep fighting, especially if it means the government has to go into exile.

My understanding, while far from deep, is that the prevailing mood in France was more confusion than anything and a strong voice for falling back to Algeria could easily have made it happen.

 

[Japhy]

My understanding, while far from deep, is that the prevailing mood in France was more confusion than anything and a strong voice for falling back to Algeria could easily have made it happen.

Eh, a major chunk of the political left was for peace, a huge portion of the right was for collaboration, French troops were falling apart in Belgium even before the Ardennes offensive, and after decades of the Republic falling apart it seems to me that a decision to flee to Algeria wouldn't have much weight behind it. There really was a major, probably even majority feeling of support for Petain and I would say, not just because he was the only voice with weight behind it.

 

[Archibald]

Same as Hendryk - he nailed perfectly the Huntziger thing. Another example is Saint Exupéry. since France does not fall, he keeps doing more "Flight to Arras" dangerous reconnaissance missions, until February 1941, when he is shot down by the new 109F that can now catch the Bloch 174.
Hence he is definitively out of the war, exiled to America by the Algiers governement, write Le Petit Prince as per OTL

Up to this point, I'm ok with the whole thing. and then it goes into a spin (pun intended)

Saint-Exupéry can't be shot down at the controls of reconnaissance P-38 in July 1944 preparing Operation Anvil Dragoon... since no such things things exist ITTL, the war being mostly over !!!

So Saint Exupéry actually see the end of the war (in 1945) only to die in an aircraft accident the same year, flying a prototype aircraft on a propaganda mission... and he crashes in the Mediterranean sea near Marseilles (just at the same place as OTL !)

I can tell you Saint Exupéry fate was settled very early in the history of the FTL - before I joined the party in 2007, otherwise I would have given him a far, far better fate...

 

[Archibald]

Well, the system was rotten, but it had some fight left in it yet. About half of the cabinet did want to relocate to North Africa to continue the war, and Reynaud was one of them, so it really was a close call. But too much time was wasted before the decision was officially taken, and out of desperation the path of least resistance, as it were, was chosen instead. But there is solid historical evidence to back up the claim that things could plausibly have gone another way in June 1940.

The funny thing is, more and more historical evidence (over the crucial period between May 20 and June 20 1940) has come since 2006 (when the FTL was imagined) making vichy looks more and more like a... nightmarish alt history. Badly written, as a kind of "French Hitler wank" and a very uninispired writer...

 

[Japhy]

The funny thing is, more and more historical evidence (over the crucial period between May 20 and June 20 1940) has come since 2006 (when the FTL was imagined) making vichy looks more and more like a... nightmarish alt history. Badly written, as a kind of "French Hitler wank" and a very uninispired writer...

Only if you ignore a lot of the trends that were at work in the decade before hand, which it seems more recent scholarship enjoys doing.

 

[Mumby]

Only if you ignore a lot of the trends that were at work in the decade before hand, which it seems more recent scholarship enjoys doing.

Waaaaaaay too many people believed Vichy could be somehow salvaged.

There was a certain subsect of people in Vichy who compared France's situation following the armistice to that of Prussia after its defeat at the hands of Napoleon. They believed that peace gave them breathing space to implement the 'National Revolution' that would purge the corruptions and anti-patriotic elements which had led to France's defeat. Then they could go back to war with Germany, and win.

Those anti-patriotic elements identified for destruction included Jews, socialists, and Freemasons; pretty much the same roster list of undesirables according to the Nazis. A world where these people are somehow rehabilitated to fight the Germans on the side of the Allies, is not a good one.

 

[Japhy]

A world where these people are somehow rehabilitated to fight the Germans on the side of the Allies, is not a good one.

Not sure if FFO or the fact that the Allies decided not to put France under a military occupation as they originally planned IOTL.

 

[aurinoko]

Only if you ignore a lot of the trends that were at work in the decade before hand, which it seems more recent scholarship enjoys doing.

True, but that doesn’t mean the Third Republic was irredeemably corrupt and was “bound to collapse”. That in itself is a rather old view as well. It’d go all the way back to the Battle of France itself, with L'Étrange Défaite. Cascading the Third Republic and its “ineffectual” leadership and “decadent/corrupt” culture/society etc.... is not in any sense, something new, and not what recent scholarships on Vichy and its inextricable relationship to the Third Republic are trying to say, for the most part.

 

[Japhy]

True, but that doesn’t mean the Third Republic was irredeemably corrupt and was “bound to collapse”. That in itself is a rather old view as well. It’d go all the way back to the Battle of France itself, with L'Étrange Défaite. Cascading the Third Republic and its “ineffectual” leadership and “decadent/corrupt” culture/society etc.... is not in any sense, something new, and not what recent scholarships on Vichy and its inextricable relationship to the Third Republic are trying to say, for the most part.

I'm not claiming my view is a new one though, simply that, at least in the English Language portion of the field a lot of what's come out in recent years is highly apologetic. The fact that there was ineffectual leadership cramped between the "Better Hitler then Blum" / Drunk on Reactionary Royalism Right and a Pacifist or Molotov-Ribbentrop Far Left meant that collapse and dictatorship was a far more likely outcome then not. When you have French soldiers turning their helmets around and fleeing in Belgium even before the Panzers are driving though the Ardennes, there are systemic problems, not just a cascade of tactical up to operational and then strategic defeats, and those defeats are certainly not on a politically balanced field.

My problem with FFO is that it pretends that there is a way out of that collapse that not only works in regards to creating a force that fights on but for it to somehow maintain the mass support and loyalty of the body politic in general. It creates a political will that just didn't exist. To the extent that its Point of Divergence is nearly a farce "Oh the Premier would have done the morally correct and painful thing and walked the path of a martyr if only his girlfriend was dead?" That's not how nations on the brink go about continuing to stand and fight.

 

[aurinoko]

I *do* wonder how the authors conceptualized and justified the “1940-1941 reforms” in Algeria, considering how Blum-Violette proposal was recieved with absolute hostility by the Pied-noirs in 1936, and most of the Radicals and substantial number of SFIO deputies. Thinking of what came out of Brazzaville Conference in OTL, I doubt Paul Reynaud or Charles De Gaulle is exactly a plausible figure to push through with such reform.

My problem with FFO is that it pretends that there is a way out of that collapse that not only works in regards to creating a force that fights on but for it to somehow maintain the mass support and loyalty of the body politic in general. It creates a political will that just didn't exist. To the extent that its Point of Divergence is nearly a farce "Oh the Premier would have done the morally correct and painful thing and walked the path of a martyr if only his girlfriend was dead?" That's not how nations on the brink go about continuing to stand and fight.

Ah, on that I’ll have to agree. Obviously I’ll have to read the actual timeline, but to creat an actually plausible “France fights on” TL would require an earlier and more substantial divergence.

 

[Archibald]

I'm not claiming my view is a new one though, simply that, at least in the English Language portion of the field a lot of what's come out in recent years is highly apologetic. The fact that there was ineffectual leadership cramped between the "Better Hitler then Blum" / Drunk on Reactionary Royalism Right and a Pacifist or Molotov-Ribbentrop Far Left meant that collapse and dictatorship was a far more likely outcome then not. When you have French soldiers turning their helmets around and fleeing in Belgium even before the Panzers are driving though the Ardennes, there are systemic problems, not just a cascade of tactical up to operational and then strategic defeats, and those defeats are certainly not on a politically balanced field.

My problem with FFO is that it pretends that there is a way out of that collapse that not only works in regards to creating a force that fights on but for it to somehow maintain the mass support and loyalty of the body politic in general. It creates a political will that just didn't exist. To the extent that its Point of Divergence is nearly a farce "Oh the Premier would have done the morally correct and painful thing and walked the path of a martyr if only his girlfriend was dead?" That's not how nations on the brink go about continuing to stand and fight.

Wow... where to start ? That old cliché again ? Seriously ? Oh well... I'm out of this thread. This is hopeless. Goodbye.

 

[Japhy]

Wow... where to start ? That old cliché again ? Seriously ? Oh well... I'm out of this thread. This is hopeless. Goodbye.

I'm not trying to make it out as some fracophobic thing. Frankly it's, and the collapse of the political system are pretty reasonable responses to the wanton slaughter of the First World War. Nor does it take away from the Free French who organized and kept on IOTL. I'm just saying that I don't see a way for the Third Republic to be the basis for the Free French and to keep the support of the Metropole.

But if we can't have an open discussion about that sorry to bother you.

 

[Burton K Wheeler]

I *do* wonder how the authors conceptualized and justified the “1940-1941 reforms” in Algeria, considering how Blum-Violette proposal was recieved with absolute hostility by the Pied-noirs in 1936, and most of the Radicals and substantial number of SFIO deputies. Thinking of what came out of Brazzaville Conference in OTL, I doubt Paul Reynaud or Charles De Gaulle is exactly a plausible figure to push through with such reform.

That's on the top of my list of questions. I don't think any sort of major reform would be politically possible, because by its very nature, the government in exile would be on a knife edge. Appeasing the pieds noirs would be even more important, so Algerian citizenship is even more impossible.

 

[aurinoko]

That's on the top of my list of questions. I don't think any sort of major reform would be politically possible, because by its very nature, the government in exile would be on a knife edge. Appeasing the pieds noirs would be even more important, so Algerian citizenship is even more impossible.

It should merit at least a major plotline for it to work plausibly. Pied-noir society pre-WWII - and let's be frank, post-WWII- was incredibly right-wing. Comparison to the American South or Apartheid South Africa is justifiable. Obvious epithet against Blum as the "Jew" and Maurice Violette as a "Pasha" were commonplace, far-right leagues were immensely active with little to no popular support for either SFIO or the PCA. There were this real siege mentality and persistent fear of being "outbred" by the Arab and Berber Algerians.

Relevant quotation:

"Immediately in Algeria the settlers unleashed a ferocious opposition to the proposal. A meeting of Algerian mayors voted against the proposal by a 300 to 2 vote. Senator Pierre Roux-Freissineng represent- ing the Department of Oran declared in a speech which won wide attention: "The French of Algeria will never accept such a project because . . . , in reality it would place them sooner or later under native domination." The passing of the Blum-Viollette law, he warned, would presage civil war in Algeria. A member of a delegation of colons arriving at the Hotel Matignon declared: "We shall never tolerate that an Arab be mayor of even the smallest commune." In reaction to the Popular Front a Rassemblement national consisting of right-wing parties such as Jacques Doriot's Parti populaire francais and Casimir La Rocque's Parti social francais formed in Algeria. Except for its advertised anti-Semitism and cries of "Vive Hitler" it had as a rallying cry the defeat of the Blum-Viollette project. As a leader of the Rassemblement Abbe Gabriel Lambert, the mayor of Oran and president of the federation of mayors of the province of Oran, became a powerful opponent of the reform. In the Department of Oran settler hostility was so great that when in 1937 a parliamentary commission arrived to hold hearings on the possibility of the Blum-Viollette law, police had to be called in to protect it against a settler-mob. In France, even before the project had been publicly proposed, several influential colonial organizations made clear their opposition. And the influential Temps denounced the projected law as depriving "the as depriving "the masses of Arabs who are sheep" of the French tutelage which they would need for a long time to come. Any reforms which seemed to loosen French control over North Africa were opposed by the French military staff. Envisaging the possibility of another European war it was concerned with the safety of military bases in North Africa; reforms in Algeria or any of the other North African territories, it feared, might lead to independence and perhaps to the establishment of Italian or German bases. General Armengaud, a retired officer with a long experience in North Africa, declared that French control over the colonies had to be absolute. In addition to the strategic advantage, in case of a European war France had to possess the ability to levy within a short period of time both troops and materiel in the overseas possessions for the defense of the endangered motherland. Although the Radicals were members of the Popular Front, they gave the Blum-Viollette law only lukewarm support. In Algeria the Radicals were violently opposed to it. Their newspapers denounced it, and influential senators like Roux-Freissineng, Paul Cuttoli, and Jacques Duroux opened violent attacks on the project."

 

[Hendryk]

That's on the top of my list of questions. I don't think any sort of major reform would be politically possible, because by its very nature, the government in exile would be on a knife edge. Appeasing the pieds noirs would be even more important, so Algerian citizenship is even more impossible.

The logic is that the Pieds-Noirs lose a great deal of their political clout once the central government relocates to Algeria. They can no longer rule the place like petty colonial overlords with the cabinet, the army and the metropolitan elites looking over their shoulder. Since several members of the cabinet are the same people who first tried to implement the aforementioned reforms in 1936 (including Blum himself), there's a sense that "this time we're getting it done no matter what." There's a war on, what are local opponents going to do, take up arms against the government? Even then it takes until 1942 to finally abolish the Code de l'Indigénat and the practice of forced labor.

It wouldn't have been possible in peacetime (and indeed it wasn't) but with a reform-minded government acting under wartime powers, the situation is different. The kind of opposition that would have been crippling can be overruled, and the government deliberately starts building a support base among the Muslim majority by extending the franchise and revoking discriminatory legislation, so that eventually the Pieds-Noirs will simply be outvoted.

Whether that's plausible is up to debate, but that's what the authors went with, and I for one like the idea.

 

[Burton K Wheeler]

The logic is that the Pieds-Noirs lose a great deal of their political clout once the central government relocates to Algeria. They can no longer rule the place like petty colonial overlords with the cabinet, the army and the metropolitan elites looking over their shoulder. Since several members of the cabinet are the same people who first tried to implement the aforementioned reforms in 1936 (including Blum himself), there's a sense that "this time we're getting it done no matter what." There's a war on, what are local opponents going to do, take up arms against the government? Even then it takes until 1942 to finally abolish the Code de l'Indigénat and the practice of forced labor.

It wouldn't have been possible in peacetime (and indeed it wasn't) but with a reform-minded government acting under wartime powers, the situation is different. The kind of opposition that would have been crippling can be overruled, and the government deliberately starts building a support base among the Muslim majority by extending the franchise and revoking discriminatory legislation, so that eventually the Pieds-Noirs will simply be outvoted.

Whether that's plausible is up to debate, but that's what the authors went with, and I for one like the idea.

I really don't buy that. Why would that be something the Cabinet would try to push through even if the Pieds-Noirs are marginalized (which is the opposite of likely)? Why would they piss off the right wing in France proper for no particular benefit? I'd imagine something like the OTL Brazzaville conference.

This whole thing, the more I read about it, just looks like a nationalist fantasy about how things should have been.

 

[Hendryk]

I really don't buy that. Why would that be something the Cabinet would try to push through even if the Pieds-Noirs are marginalized (which is the opposite of likely)? Why would they piss off the right wing in France proper for no particular benefit? I'd imagine something like the OTL Brazzaville conference.

The army desperately needs more men, which means recruiting among the native population, which means providing incentives in terms of civil rights. It's a short-term calculation but with long-term consequences. Besides, OTL has amply demonstrated that De Gaulle had no qualms about throwing the Pieds-Noirs under the bus when they didn't get on with the program.

Metropolitan France is under German occupation, with an illegitimate puppet government of opportunists and extremists who (even more so than OTL) are constantly at loggerheads with each other. Nobody there gives a damn about what's going on in the colonies; there are more urgent matters do deal with such as finding enough food to survive.

This whole thing, the more I read about it, just looks like a nationalist fantasy about how things should have been.

Perhaps I'm just not explaining it very well.

 

[Japhy]

Perhaps I'm just not explaining it very well.

I don't think Burton means in a right wing political sense, but literally as a fantasy of a nation.