François Darlan
Jean Louis Xavier François Darlan was a French admiral and political figure. Born in Nérac, Darlan graduated from the École navale in 1902 and quickly advanced through the ranks following his service during World War I. He was promoted to rear admiral in 1929, vice admiral in 1932, lieutenant admiral in 1937 before finally being made admiral and Chief of the Naval Staff in 1937. In 1939, Darlan was promoted to admiral of the fleet, a rank created specifically for him.
Darlan was Commander-in-Chief of the French Navy at the beginning of World War II. After France's armistice with Germany in June 1940, Darlan served in Philippe Pétain's Vichy regime as Minister of Marine, and in February 1941 he took over as Vice-President of the Council, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Minister of the Interior and Minister of National Defence, making him the de facto head of the Vichy government. In April 1942, Darlan resigned his ministries to Pierre Laval at German insistence, but retained his position as Commander-in-Chief of the French Armed Forces.
Darlan was in Algiers when the Allies invaded French North Africa in November 1942. Allied commander Dwight D. Eisenhower struck a controversial deal with Darlan, recognising him as High Commissioner of France for North and West Africa. In return, Darlan ordered all French forces in North Africa to cease resistance and cooperate with the Allies. Less than two months later, on 24 December, Darlan was assassinated by Fernand Bonnier de La Chapelle, a 20-year-old monarchist and anti-Vichyist.
Early life and career
Darlan was born in Nérac, Lot-et-Garonne, to a family with a long connection with the French Navy. His great-grandfather was killed at the Battle of Trafalgar. His father, Jean-Baptiste Darlan, was a lawyer and politician who served as Minister of Justice in the cabinet of Jules Méline. Georges Leygues, a political colleague of his father who would spend seven years as Minister of the Marine, was Darlan's godfather.Darlan graduated from the École Navale in 1902. During World War I, he commanded an artillery battery that took part in the Battle of Verdun. After the war Darlan commanded the training ships Jeanne d'Arc and Edgar Quinet, receiving promotions to frigate captain in 1920 and captain in 1926.
Thereafter Darlan rose swiftly. He was appointed Chef de Cabinet to Leygues and promoted to contre-amiral in 1929. In 1930, he served as the French Navy's representative at the London Naval Conference, and in 1932 he was promoted to vice-amiral. Subsequently, in 1934, he took command of the Atlantic Squadron at Brest. He was promoted to vice-amiral d'escadre in 1936.
Chief of the Naval Staff
In 1936, he went to London on an unsuccessful mission to persuade the Admiralty that greater Anglo-French naval co-operation was needed given the way that Germany and Italy had aligned as a result of the Spanish Civil War. On 5 August 1936, Darlan met with the First Sea Lord, Admiral Ernle Chatfield, where he expressed much concern about the prospect of Italy obtaining naval and air bases in the Balearic Islands and likewise Germany obtaining naval and air bases in the Canary Islands. Darlan argued for joint Anglo-French action to prevent the Axis powers from obtaining any bases on Spanish soil.During the Spanish Civil War, the Front populaire government of Léon Blum had pursued a pro-Republican neutrality while Italy had intervened on the side of the Spanish Nationalists, leading to acute Italo-French tensions. Blum stated that Darlan "thinks exactly as I do" about a potential Italian naval threat to France, and selected him as the next chief of staff of the Marine to replace the pro-Italian Admiral Georges Durand-Viel. In addition, Darlan was considered by Blum to be loyal to the republic and Darlan had spoken in favour of the Front populaire social reforms. Darlan had attracted attention within the Marine in the fall of 1936 with his advocacy of France's seizing the Balearic Islands to put a stop to the Italian naval and air bases under construction there as he argued that the prospect of Italian naval and air attacks from the Balearics on French shipping was an intolerable threat. Through Blum did not take up Darlan's suggestion, he did approve of him as an admiral with strong anti-Italian views, which he considered to be a refreshing contrast to Durand-Viel who advocated a Franco-Italian alliance. Blum's decision in October 1936 to appoint Darlan as the next chief of the naval staff over a number of admirals who had more seniority and combat experience was controversial.
He was appointed Chief of the Naval Staff from 1 January 1937, at the same time promoted to amiral. Darlan was close to Blum and the Defence Minister Édouard Daladier. As head of the Navy he successfully used his political connections to lobby for a building programme to counter the rising threat from the Kriegsmarine and Regia Marina. The American historian Reynolds Salerno wrote: "While Durand-Viel was a soft-spoken, cautious administrator who sought out advice from his subordinates and deferred to his minister for major policy decisions, Darlan was an extremely self-confident, resolute admiral who monopolized every aspect of the Marine". Salerno described Darlan as a conservative French nationalist who was committed to preserving France as a great power via a programme of building more warships for the Marine. Darlan's political views were inclined towards the right, but he worked well with the centrist Daladier and the leftish Blum.
After attending the Coronation of George VI, Darlan complained that protocol had left him, as a mere vice admiral, "behind a pillar and after the Chinese admiral". In 1939 he was promoted to Amiral de la flotte, a rank created specifically to put him on equal terms with the First Sea Lord of the Royal Navy.
Darlan saw the Regia Marina as the principal threat to France, and pushed hard for a naval expansion intended to make France the dominant power in the Mediterranean Sea. Germany had a population of 70 million while France had a population of 40 million; the numerical superiority of the Reich made it essential that the French transport a massive number of soldiers recruited in Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia to France to allow the French Army to face the Wehrmacht on equal terms, and so it was considered essential that France have command of the sea-lanes in the western Mediterranean. Darlan argued that the pro-German orientation of Italian foreign policy made it likely that Italy would enter another world war on the side of Germany and that France needed a strong Mediterranean fleet to defend the sea-lanes linking Algeria to France in order to win against Germany. French decision-makers believed that, given the numerical superiority of Germany at that time, then just as in the last world war, France would need a massive number of troops from the Maghreb in order to have a chance of victory, and without soldiers from the Maghreb France was doomed. In addition, Darlan argued: "A significant part of the British and French supplies and in particular, almost all the oil extracted from the French, British and Russian oil fields in the East depend upon mastery of the Mediterranean. But above all, the Mediterranean constitutes the only communication line with our Central European allies by which materiel may reach them". In contrast to Darlan, General Maurice Gamelin had argued for a rapprochement with Italy as he reasoned that a naval arms race would take away francs from the French Army. Blum and Daladier chose the course advocated by Darlan and in December 1936 approved of a naval construction programme designed to make the French Mediterranean fleet the dominant fleet in the western Mediterranean. In September 1938 during the Sudetenland crisis, Darlan mobilised the French Navy and placed the Marine on the highest state of alert. Expecting Italy to enter any war on the Axis side, Darlan reinforced the French Mediterranean fleet.
In the autumn of 1938 and the winter of 1939, Darlan continued to argue for a Mediterranean strategy, as he stated that France was secure behind the Maginot Line and should in the event of war go on the offensive against Italy in order to secure command of the sea in the Mediterranean. In particular, Daladier who was now serving as prime minister, was greatly impressed with Darlan's Mediterranean strategy. On 30 November 1938, demonstrations were organised by the Fascist regime in Italy demanding that France cede Nice, Corsica and Tunisia to Italy, which brought France and Italy to the brink of war. The acute crisis in Franco-Italian relations in the winter of 1938-1939 served to reinforce Darlan's arguments within the French government for an offensive strategy against Italy. At a meeting of the defence chiefs in January 1939, Darlan stated that, in the event of a war, the Marine should sever the sea-lanes linking Italy to its colony of Libya while French warships should bombard Naples, La Spezia, and Pantelleria. Darlan also called for the French to seize the Italian colony of the Dodecanese islands, to be used for a bombing campaign against Italian cities and for invasions from Tunisia into Libya and France into Italy itself. During the Danzig crisis, Darlan went to London on 8 August 1939 to meet the First Sea Lord, Admiral Dudley Pound, to discuss plans should the crisis end in a war. It was agreed at the Darlan-Pound meeting that the French fleet should remain focused on the Mediterranean with the majority of the French fleet to be stationed at the naval bases at Toulon, Mers-El-Kébir and Bizerte with only one squadron to be based at Brest on France's Atlantic coast as the Royal Navy was to take responsibility for the rest of the North Atlantic and the North Sea. Germany and Italy had signed an offensive-defensive alliance known as the Pact of Steel on 22 May 1939, and it was taken for granted in both London and Paris that, should the crisis result in war, that it was inevitable that Italy would enter the war on Germany's side at some point; hence Darlan's focus on the Mediterranean during the Danzig crisis.
After France's declaration of war in September 1939, Darlan became Commander-in-Chief of the French Navy. He was opposed to Daladier's plans for a revived Salonika front. At a meeting of the Anglo-French Supreme War Council on 22 September 1939, Darlan sided with the British in opposing Daladier's plans to take the Armée du Levant from Beirut to Thessaloniki with the aim of opening a second front in the Balkans as a way to aid Poland. Darlan argued that the plans for a new Salonika Front would distract from the blockade of Germany. Initially, Darlan had supported the British who believed that a naval blockade along with strategical bombing would be sufficient to defeat the Reich without any major land battles. The British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, believed that a combination of blockade and strategic bombing would induce the Wehrmacht generals to overthrow Hitler and thus bring the war to a close with no major land battles involving British troops. At the meetings of the Supreme War Council, Darlan along with Maurice Gamelin supported the objections of the British against the proposed expedition to the Balkans championed by Daladier and Maxime Weygand.
By late 1939, Darlan complained that the blockade had too many loopholes for neutral ships carrying war material to Germany and that the Allies needed a more aggressive approach. In particular, Darlan noted that, because of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, Germany had access to all of the vast natural resources of the Soviet Union, which rendered the Anglo-French naval blockade rather ineffectual. The Soviet Union was self-sufficient in virtually all of the natural resources needed to sustain a modern industrial economy, and German-Soviet trade defeated the purposes of the naval blockade. Starting in December 1939, Darlan started to advocate an Anglo-French expedition to Scandinavia to seize the Swedish iron mines that supplied the Germany with the high-grade iron that was used to make steel. Darlan argued that it was imperative to strike before Germany and the Soviet Union signed another economic agreement that would allow Germany to have access to Soviet iron, saying the time to deprive Germany of its access to Swedish iron was now.
Darlan was one of the main advocates of a Scandinavian expedition, arguing that seizing the Swedish iron mines would cause the collapse of the German economy no later than the spring of 1941. By January 1940, Darlan had convinced Daladier that the expedition to Scandinavia would win the war for the Allies. In January 1940, Darlan called for a joint Army-Navy expedition to sail via the Arctic Ocean to seize the Petsamo province of Finland recently occupied by the Red Army, even though it would almost certainly mean war with the Soviet Union, in the hope of provoking a German response which would allow French forces to occupy northern Sweden and hence deprive the Reich of its most important source of iron. Darlan had a blasé attitude towards the prospect of a war with the Soviet Union, arguing that the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact meant it made little difference if France were at war with the Soviet Union or not. The plans for a Scandinavian expedition drew strong opposition from Maurice Gamelin who argued that best place for French manpower was in defending France from the expected German invasion. However, Gamelin's inability to produce a convincing alternative strategy led Daladier to decide in favour of Darlan's recommendation. Unlike the plans for a new Salonika front, the British leaders, especially the then-First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, were keen on an expedition to Scandinavia. Likewise, Darlan supported what the French called the "Baku project" of having Anglo-French bombers based in Syria and Iraq bomb the oil fields in Baku in Soviet Azerbaijan as a way to cut Germany off from Soviet oil. Darlan also supported plans for French submarines to be sent into the Black Sea to sink Soviet oil tankers.