Shlaim - Prelude to Downfall - The British Offer of Union to France, June 1940

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Prelude to Downfall: The British Offer of Union to France, June 1940

Avi Shlaim

Journal of Contemporary History

, Vol. 9, No. 3. (Jul., 1974), pp. 27-63.

Stable URL:http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-0094%28197407%299%3A3%3C27%3APTDTBO%3E2.0.CO%3B2-I

Journal of Contemporary History

is currently published by Sage Publications, Ltd..Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available athttp://www.jstor.org/about/terms.html. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtainedprior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content inthe JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained athttp://www.jstor.org/journals/sageltd.html.Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printedpage of such transmission.The JSTOR Archive is a trusted digital repository providing for long-term preservation and access to leading academic journals and scholarly literature from around the world. The Archive is supported by libraries, scholarly societies, publishers,and foundations. It is an initiative of JSTOR, a not-for-profit organization with a mission to help the scholarly community takeadvantage of advances in technology. For more information regarding JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.http://www.jstor.orgMon Jun 25 18:46:36 2007

Prelude to Downfall:the British offer of Union toFrance, June

1940

Avi Shlaim

On

16

June

1940

the British Prime Minister, Sir WinstonChurchill, proposed to the French Prime Minister,

M.

PaulReynaud, an indissoluble union between their two countries.This union was to be based on common citizenship, a formalassociation of the two Parliaments and joint organs ofdefence, foreign, financial and economic policies.

A

singlewar cabinet was to be entrusted with the direction of theBritish and French forces. In short, this was a proposal forthe amalgamation of the two states into a single Franco-British Union.The offer was the prototype of complete union. Itsrealization wouId have involved the surrender of nationalsovereignty, including its ultimate bastion, which is thecontrol over the country's armed forces. Its all-embracingcharacter went further than anything before in the history ofwar-time alliances. Even in the subsequent history ofEuropean unity, no Government ever proposed a moreradical and far-reaching plan for supranational integration.The offer represented a momentous departure from theinsular traditions of British foreign policy and a remarkableepisode in the long and troubled course of Anglo-French rela-tions.The thesis here advanced is that the British offer, despiteits respectable intellectual parentage and its potentiallystaggering ramifications was no more than a last anddesperate effort to keep France in the war against theco,mmon enemy; that it was not conceived as part of any

CONTEMPORARY HISTORY

long-term political objective but dictated by the strategicimperatives of winning the war. In order to show this, it willbe necessary to explore both the remote, unofficial genesis ofthe project and its immediate, official origins and to sketchits brief but eventful course against the wider canvas of thecrisis in the relations between England and France and inparticular the trend towards a separate French armisticewhich this offer was designed to reverse. An attempt will alsobe made to account for the rejection of the offer by theFrench Cabinet and to examine its consequences.'The outbreak of the second world war transformed theAnglo-French entente into a war-time alliance with anelaborate infrastructure for the joint direction of the wareffort. At the highest level, a Supreme War Council was estab-lished in September 1939. The need for a joint machinery foreconomic planning led to the setting up of the Anglo-FrenchCoordinating Committee in December 1939 under the chair-manship of Jeanhlonnet. Its comprehensive structure made itthe 'high-water mark of achievement in the sphere of inter-Allied economic eff~rt'.~he conclusion of trade agreementsearly in 1940 was followed by the formation of an Anglo-French Industrial Council. In March 1940 Mr.

M.

hlacDonald,the Secretary of State for the Colonies visited his Frenchopposite number for the purpose of discussing cooperationbetween the British and French colonial Empires. A jointcommuniquk announced their resolution to establish regularmachinery for liaison between their ministries and to perfectcooperation in matters affecting the successful prosecution ofthe war.3

'My task was made less intractable by the contribution of other researchers inthe field.

I

owe a particularly profound debt to the following: kf. Leon Noel, LeProjet d'Union Franco-Britannique de Juin 1940,

Revue d'Histoire de laDeuxihme Guer~eMondiale,

No. ?1, Jan. 1956; kfax Beloff, The Anglo-FrenchUnion Project of June 1940,

Milanges Pierre Renouvin: Etudes d'Histoi~edesRelations Inte~nationules

(Presses Universitaires de France, 1966); and DavidThomson, The Proposal for Anglo-French Union in 1940 (The Zaharoff Lecturefor 1966, Oxford 1966).

I

have also made extensive use of the Foreign Office andCabinet papers which have recently been opened at the Public Record Office andwhich were not available to earlier researchers.

'W.

K.

Hancock and M.

M.

Gowing, The British War Economy (H.kf.S.0.London 1949), p. 187.'C4456/3652/17; Beloff, op. cit., pp. 199-200.

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