@McTag,
McTag wrote:
I enjoyed, if that is the right word, a history programme on Channel 4 last night describing the events leading to Churchill's decision to destroy and neutralise the French fleet in 1940.
I did not previously know that we had shelled a group of battle cruisers in an Algerian harbour, killing 1200 French sailors.
Also Roosevelt's policies leading up to that were an eye-opener: he was negotiating with Canada to abandon Britain and save the USA only, leaving Britain to its fate.
That bit is left out of our history books, as far as I am aware.
These were very interesting (and tragic) episodes in history in which fear and worst-case analysis drove participants into actions that seem difficult to interpret later when the fear and dark possibilities that then motivated them are no longer a factor. The United States in 1939 and 1940 built a huge naval base, together with drydocks and repair facilities, in Puerto Rico - a facility we didn't need and which duplicated others in Charleston, Norfolk, and Narraganset Bay - expressly (as the folklore went) to accomodate the British & French Navys in the event of their defeat in a war with Germany. It was called "Roosevelt Roads". Subsequent events make it fairly clear that Roosevelt was a strong supporter of Britain, but not of the British Empire.
The truth is that public opinion in this country was decidedly against participation in yet another European War during this period. Had Roosevelt overtly engaged the country in preparations for a European war in 1939-1940, he would have run a good chance of losing his bid for reelection. Interestingly, while this was going on we were actively preparing for a war in the Pacific with Japan. An enormous network of naval bases, airfields, munitions depots and Army training bases was constructed on the West Coast during those years. Most of the Naval War College "gaming" and simulations in the 1930s involved a Pacific conflict with Japan, and almost all of our fleet naval exercises during the period involved similar scenarios. Interestingly this didn't appear to arouse much public outrage.
With respect to the attacks on the French Navy, chiefly at Mers el Kebir , it seems clear that fear and mutual confusion & misunderstanding were the chief drivers on both sides. Admiral Darlan's role, and his earlier assurances, personally given to Churchill, the the French fleet would not fall into German hands remains a bit of a mystery. He was assasinated soon after the Allied invasion of Algeria under somewhat murky circumstances.
