Oxford University Press: Info/about/policies/terms - JSP

The French Navy and the Appeasement of Italy, 1937-9
Author(s): Reynolds M. Salerno

Source: The English Historical Review, Vol. 112, No. 445 (Feb., 1997), pp. 66-104
Published by: Oxford University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/578508
Accessed: 15-03-2016 16:04 UTC
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/
info/about/policies/terms.jsp
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content
in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship.
For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Oxford University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The English Historical Review.
http://www.jstor.org
This content downloaded from 140.112.73.20 on Tue, 15 Mar 2016 16:04:17 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
English Historical Review
? Addison Wesley Longman Limited 1997 oo 3-8266/97/2528/oo66/$03.00
The French Navy and the Appeasement of Italy,
I937-9'
IN the spring of I939, Liddell Hart and Winston Churchill described
Italy as the Axis 'soft spot' and the Mediterranean as 'England's first
battlefield'.1 They would later become two among many statesmen and
scholars who lamented the Allied decision not to attack Italy in Sep-
tember 1939. Despite the vast literature on the origins and outbreak of
the Second World War in Europe, only a handful of works examine the
reasons why the Allies chose not to seek an early naval and military
decision in the Mediterranean theatre. What is striking about these few
'international histories' of Allied strategy in the Mediterranean is their
Anglocentrism. London invariably appears as the creator and manager
of Allied policy, while Paris becomes the follower desperately craving
British leadership and support: Allied policy in the Mediterranean has
become synonymous with British policy.2 Even those scholars who
have argued that French decision-makers pursued coherent foreign and
defence policies to meet the German threat in the light of France's
economic, political and strategic realities acknowledge that France suc-
cumbed to Britain's policy of appeasing Italy before the war.3
Robert Young and Nicole Jordan, in particular, have demonstrated
that the French Army Staff viewed Italy as strategically crucial to the
future war against Nazi Germany. A friendly or neutral Italy would
enhance the development of an eventual eastern front, facilitate the
passage of French troops from North Africa and allow France to reduce
its presence in the Alps in favour of strengthening the western front. But
in so doing Young and Jordan imply that the entire French military
establishment advocated correct relations with fascist Italy and a return
I would like to thank the following for their assistance in my preparation of this piece: Professor
Paul Kennedy, Professor Robert Young, Professor Zara Steiner, Professor Frank Snowden, Professor
Geoffrey Parker, Dr Brian Sullivan, Dr Peter Jackson, Dr Talbot Imlay and Mrs Kempley Salerno
Bryant.
I. Liddell Hart in The Times, 8 Feb. i939; National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, Chatfield
Papers, volume 6, file 4, Memorandum on Sea Power, Churchill to Chamberlain, Halifax and Chatfield,
25 Mar. I939 (also may be found in P[ublic] R[ecord] O[ffice], F[oreign] O[ffice files] 37I, volume
23982, W 572I/108/50 and in PRO, PREM[ier files] I, volume 345).
2. D. C. Watt, 'Britain, France and the Italian Problem, I937-39', Les relations franco-britanniques
1935-39 (Paris, I975); Lawrence Pratt, East of Malta, West of Suez: Britain's Mediterranean Crisis,
1936-39 (Cambridge, I975); Williamson Murray, The Change in the European Balance of Power,
1938-39: The Path to Ruin (Princeton, 1984); and Paul Stafford, 'Italy in Anglo-French Strategy and
Diplomacy, October 1938-September I939', (Univ. of Oxford, D.Phil.thesis, I983).
3. Elisabeth du Reau, Edouard Daladier 1884-1970 (Paris, I993); Martin Alexander, The Republic in
Danger: General Maurice Gamelin and the Politics of French Defence, 1933-40 (Cambridge, I992);
Robert Frankenstein, Le prix du rearmement francais, 1935-39 (Paris, I982); Pierre Renouvin, 'Les
relations de la Grande-Bretagne et de la France avec l'Italie en 1938-39', Les relations franco-
britanniques; and Robert Young, In Command of France: French Foreign Policy and Military Planning
1933-40 (Cambridge, MA, 1978).
EHR Feb. 97
APPEASEMENT OF ITALY, I9 3 7-9 67
I997
to the Franco-Italian 'alliance' of I935.1 In fact, beginning in 1937 the
leaders of the French Navy rejected many of the arguments made by
their colleagues in the Army and actively promoted a naval perspective
on foreign affairs among France's governing class. One of the most
important supporters of the Marine's position on Italian aims in the
Mediterranean, and the appropriate French response, was Premier
Edouard Daladier. Daladier's support in I937-9 for an early Mediter-
ranean offensive justifies an analysis of pre-war French naval strategy
and its influence on policy - an analysis that does not yet exist.2 By
examining Anglo-French-Italian relations from the perspective of
London, Paris and Rome,3 and focusing on the role played by the
French Navy in the formulation of French and Allied Mediterranean
strategy in 1937-39, this article attempts to begin filling that gap. Ulti-
mately, it aims to show not only that the French Marine had seriously
considered an assault against Italy long before the British, but that
France - in contrast to Britain - entered the Allied staff talks of the
spring of 1939 with a coherent and well-formulated Mediterranean war
strategy. Moreover, it was this aggressive French plan that prodded the
British into revising, if hesitantly and only tentatively, their own passive
Mediterranean strategy. Unfortunately, historians of Allied policy in
the Mediterranean have based their analyses of French Mediterranean
strategy in I937-9 largely on the French decision in August I939 to
adopt the policy of the British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, of
I. Robert J. Young, 'French Military Intelligence and the Franco-Italian Alliance, 1933-39', Histori-
cal Journal, xxviii (1985), I43-68; Nicole Jordan, 'Maurice Gamelin, Italy and the Eastern Alliances',
Journal of Strategic Studies, xiv (I99I), 428-41.
2. The literature on the French Marine during this period is limited to memoirs, biographies, official
operational histories and a work on the domestic political influences of the naval leadership: Paul
Auphan and Jacques Mordal, La Marine francaise dans la Seconde Guerre Mondiale (Paris, I967);
Philippe Masson, La Marine francaise et la guerre I939-45 (Paris, i991); Herv6 Coutau-Begarie,
Castex, le strategie inconnu (Paris, I985); idem and C. Huan, Darlan (Paris, i989); Chalmers Hood,
Royal Republicans: The French Naval Dynasties between the World Wars (Baton Rouge, LA, I985).
Mariano Gabriele, in his 'I piani della marina francese contro l'Italia nel 1939', Bollettino d'Archivo
dell'Ufficio Storico della Marina Militare iii (Sept. I988), I75-206, emphasizes that the French Navy
contemplated offensive operations against Italy in I939, but he overlooks both the historical de-
velopment of those plans and their influence on France's political leadership. With the exception of
Geoffrey Perett, 'French Naval Policy and Foreign Affairs, I930-39' (Stanford University, Ph.D.
dissertation, 1977), virtually nothing exists on French naval strategic planning and its effect on French
foreign policy in the late I930s. Much of Perett's work on the later period focuses on the developing
relationship between the Marine and the Royal Navy, which has been well covered by M. A. Reussner,
Les conversations franco-britanniques d'Etat-Major (i935-39) (Paris, i969).
3. All the historians who have written on Anglo-French-Italian relations during this period have
relied largely on documentation from only one of the concerned nations' archives: D. C. Watt, 'Britain,
France and the Italian Problem'; Renouvin, 'Les relations de la Grande-Bretagne et de la France avec
l'Italie'; Williamson Murray, 'The Role of Italy in British Strategy, 1938-39', Journal of the Royal
United Services Institute, cxxiv (i979); William Shorrock, From Ally to Enemy: The Enigma of Fascist
Italy in French Diplomacy, I920-40 (Kent, OH, i988); and Donatella Bolech Cecchi, Non bruciare i
ponti con Roma: le relazioni fra l'Italia, la Gran Bretagna e la Francia dall'accordo di Monaco allo
scoppio della seconda guerra mondiale (Milan, I986). The one exception to this national-centric rule of
Anglo-French-Italian histories is Stafford, 'Italy in Anglo-French Strategy and Dipolomacy', who has
written on this subject using documentation from all three nations' archives, though his French and
Italian research was noticeably less comprehensive than his British work.
EHR Feb. 97
68 THE FRENCH NAVY AND THE February
seeking Italian neutrality. While many agree that this French resignation
was the result of immediate circumstances during the summer of I939 -
Britain's determination to pursue Mediterranean appeasement and
France's crisis of confidence - historians have failed to recognize that
French fears about a rising Italian menace in I937-9 served as the
catalyst for the various permutations of Anglo-French Mediterranean
planning before the war.
To prevent a repeat of Germany's recent challenge to France's continen-
tal pre-eminence, the French tried in the aftermath of the First World
War to create a system that provided permanent security against a
revival of the German threat. In addition to the treaties of Versailles and
Locarno, which sought to restrict Germany to her existing borders by
international law, France signed a series of agreements with the new
states of eastern Europe - Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and
Romania - hoping that a second front could be created there in the event
of German or Russian aggression. The French supplemented these
accords of questionable worth with the League of Nations and its
commitment to 'collective security', drawing their old ally Britain into
France's loosely conceived security system. Finally, France constructed
what became known as the Maginot Line, a defensive barrier of varying
degrees of impenetrability that ran the length of the eastern frontier
along the Rhine from Luxembourg to Basle.1
The economic collapse of the early I930s and the rise to power of the
Nazi Party in Germany compelled France to re-evaluate its system of
national security. Adolf Hitler's abrupt departure from both the League
and the Disarmament Conference in October I933 convinced many
French statesmen that a future war against Germany was no longer a
worrying possibility but dreadfully unavoidable. But arming for this
inevitable conflict in the midst of French economic turmoil was almost
impossible. By 1935, French industrial production was one-third lower
than in 1928 and agricultural prices had fallen over fifty per cent. The
depression drove France's allies in the East so close to bankruptcy that
they could no longer establish a second front against Germany on their
own; assistance, in the form of men and materiel from France, was
required.2
The solution to the strategic predicament presented by the increasing
threat of a revanchist Nazi Germany and a weakened European security
system, according to Foreign Minister, and later Premier, Pierre Laval
and the French General Staff, was Italy. Not only had Benito Mussolini
I. Maurice Vaisse, Securite d'abord: la politiquefrancaise en matiere de desarmement (Paris, I98 ),
passim; Jean-Baptiste Duroselle, La decadence, 1932-39 (Paris, I979), pp.99-104; Young, In Com-
mand of France, pp. I3-32, 52-75.
2. Tom Kemp, The French Economy, I9I3-39 (London, 1972), pp.99-145; Alfred Sauvy, 'The
Economic Crisis of the I930s in France',Journal of Contemporary History, iv (I969), 2I-35; Richard
Overy, The Road to War (London, I989), p. I I7.
EHR Feb. 97
69
APPEASEMENT OF ITALY, I 9 37-9
I997
supported Austrian independence - most publicly in July I934 when the
Italian Duce ordered four divisions to the Brenner in the wake of the
assassination of Austrian Chancellor Engelbert Dolfuss' - but northern
Italy offered a dependable land route to the East. By sending supplies to
eastern Europe across Italy, France could retain the second front against
Germany. Determined diplomacy by Foreign Ministers Louis Barthou
and Laval resulted in the Franco-Italian agreement of January I935,
which traded a joint proclamation on the necessity of maintaining
Austrian sovereignty for a 'free hand' to Italy in Ethiopia. France and
Italy then held army and air force staff talks in May and June. A genuine
Franco-Italian alliance was in the making, or at least so many French-
men believed.2
Officials at the Naval Ministry in Paris were not among those in
France optimistic about relations with Italy. Military discussions be-
tween France and Italy in I935 did not extend to the two naval staffs. In
fact, Laval's talks with Mussolini intentionally avoided any mention of
the two nations' navies. The Italians had complained bitterly that France
had not begun reducing its fleet of battleships to the level stipulated by
the Washington and London treaties: I75,ooo tons of capital ships by
the end of I936. But naval parity with Italy was something that the
French Naval Staff categorically refused to consider. Both economic
hardship and the limits imposed by the naval treaties had conspired to
bring new construction and refitting of France's largest, most powerful
and most expensive ships to a virtual halt in the 192os and early I930s.
Between 1918 and 1932, French shipbuilding occurred in only the light
cruiser, destroyer and submarine categories; France built no new capital
ships and reconditioned only three of its World War I-generation
battleships during this period. Finally, in response to German ship-
building in 1933-4, France laid the keels of its first two post-war capital
ships. With these battleships still under construction and in the light of
the unsettled international situation, the Naval Staff in late I934 reiter-
ated its opposition to a large-scale scrapping programme. Under press-
ure from both Naval Chief of Staff Admiral Georges Durand-Viel and
Naval Minister Franoois Pietri, Laval agreed that negotiations with Italy
I. Jens Petersen, Hitler-Mussolini: Die Entstehung der Achse Berlin-Rom, I933-36 (Tiibingen,
I973), pp. 328-76; Renzo DeFelice, Mussolini il Duce, Vol. I: Gli anni del consenso, I929-I936 (Turin,
1974), PP- 512-24; Rosaria Quartararo, Roma tra Londra e Berlino: Politica Estera Fascista dal 1930 al
1940 (Rome, I980), pp. 80-5; Jiirgen Gehl, Austria, Germany and the Anschluss, I93I-38 (Oxford,
1963), pp. IO1-4.
2. For the Franco-Italian air pact, see Archivio dell'Ufficio Storico dell'Aeronautica, Rome, busta
68, Collaborazione Aerea Italo-Francese, 12 and 13 May 193 5. For details of the convention reached in
June between French General Maurice Gamelin and Italian General Pietro Badoglio, see Salvatore
Minardi, 'L'accordo militare segreto Badoglio-Gamelin del 1935', Clio (Apr.-June I987). For a
description of France's search for a military alliance with Italy in I935-36, see Robert J. Young,
'Soldiers and Diplomats: The French Embassy and Franco-Italian Relations, I935-36', Journal of
Strategic Studies, vii (1984).
EHR Feb. 97
THE FRENCH NAVY AND THE February
70
could not proceed until the Italians consented not to discuss naval
issues.1
It was not long thereafter that France's carefully constructed Euro-
pean security system began to crumble. In March I935, Hitler con-
firmed the existence of a German Air Force - Germany's first open
repudiation of Versailles - reintroduced conscription and announced
his plan for an Army of 50o,ooo men. Less than three months later
Britain signed a bilateral pact with Germany that sanctioned an almost
three-fold expansion of the Germany navy. Besides revising Versailles
and sparking a European naval arms race, the Anglo-German Naval
Agreement contributed significantly to the outbreak of the Italian-
Abyssinian war and the resulting Mediterranean crisis of I935-6.2
The Italian-Abyssinian conflict forced France to choose between her
ally of the Great War, Britain, and her newest ally, Italy. Laval reluc-
tantly sided with the British and imposed sanctions on Italy for attack-
ing a sovereign member of the League. At Laval's insistence, though, the
League decided not to impose the two punitive measures that might have
forced Mussolini to reconsider his East African adventure: an oil em-
bargo and the closing of the Suez Canal. Nevertheless, the Duce inter-
preted France's action as treachery and recognized that Italian foreign
policy was fundamentally opposed to that of Britain and France; Mus-
solini notified Hitler in January 1936 that Italy was willing to reconsider
its defence of Austrian independence in return for an Italian-German
understanding. The subsequent pusillanimous response of the western
powers to Germany's remilitarization of the Rhineland in March and
Italy's successful occupation of Addis Ababa in May showed Mussolini
that the democracies lacked the strength and will to oppose German and
Italian revanchism. The Fiihrer, impressed by the Duce's defiance of
Britain since the summer of 1935 and his support for Germany during
the Rhineland crisis with France, lent the Italians German submarines
for the Mediterranean and immediately began laying the groundwork
for the Rome-Berlin Axis of October I936.3
The course of the Italian-Abyssinian war led some in the French
Marine to become increasingly suspicious of Italy's intentions. After
I. According to French Ambassador Charles de Chambrun, the Italian decision of mid-1934 to lay
down two 35,ooo-ton battleships prevented any Franco-Italian agreement on naval issues: PRO, FO
37I/I9497, Ri I77/I/67, Lambert memo, 27 Mar. I935. France still had 238,925 tons of battleships,
which represented a fifty-three per cent superiority over Italy in the capital-ship category. The keels for
the 26,500oo-ton Dunkerque and Strasbourg were laid in I933 and I934, respectively, in response to
Germany's Scharnhorst and two Deutschland-class pocket battleships: Brassey's Naval and Shipping
Annual (New York, I935 edn.), pp. 29i-6;Jane's Fighting Ships (London, 935 edn.), pp. 171-4. For the
specific limits imposed by the Washington Treaty, see Brian R. Sullivan, 'Italian Naval Power and the
Washington Disarmament Conference of I921-22', Diplomacy & Statecraft, iv (I993), 220-48. For the
Marine's opposition to the ratios established by the Washington Treaty, see Perett, 'French Naval
Policy and Foreign Affairs', 123-53.
2. Reynolds M. Salerno, 'Multilateral Strategy and Diplomacy: The Anglo-German Naval Agree-
ment and the Mediterranean Crisis, I93 5-36', Journal of Strategic Studies, xvii (I 994).
3. Manfred Funke, Sanktionen und Kanonen: Hitler, Mussolini und derAbessinienkonflikt, 1934-36
(Diisseldorf, I1970), pp. 45-7; R. A. C. Parker, 'Great Britain, France and the Ethiopian Crisis, I193 5-36',
EHR Feb. 97
APPEASEMENT OF ITALY, I 9 3 7-9
I997 71
the Italians had suffered a series of setbacks in Abyssinia in December
I935, the French naval attache in Rome suggested that Britain and
France tighten sanctions and concentrate their naval forces at Malta
rather than in the western Mediterranean. But the attache was soundly
rebuffed by both his British colleagues in the Royal Navy, who had no
intention of getting involved in this 'silly African business', and Admiral
Jean Decoux, head of the Marine's Section d'Etudes, who had long
advocated a Franco-Italian entente and now supported Italy's defence
of 'the cause of Civilization' in Ethiopia. Although the Marine in
January 1936 postulated that a future conflict with Italy was as likely as
war with Germany, Durand-Viel and his leading strategist, Decoux,
viewed this eventuality, which would stretch the Marine beyond its
capacity in both the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, as too dreadful and
potentially disastrous to consider seriously.1 Once the Germans had
reoccupied the Rhineland and the Italians had entered Addis Ababa,
Durand-Viel and Decoux became active proponents of lifting sanctions,
recognizing Italy's Ethiopian empire and signing a 'Mediterranean Lo-
carno' with Italy. Unwilling to hope for a return to the Franco-Italian
'alliance' of 1935, the two leading admirals at the Marine nevertheless
joined those in the French Army and Air Force who supported Laval's
Italian policy of facilite, or cheap appeasement. Yet many of the French
naval commanders and attaches in the field had begun to question the
viability of appeasing Italy and, instead, had developed an unmistakable
touch of Italophobia. This sentiment was often accompanied by a latent
resentment of the British, who were reluctant to consider joint oper-
ations in the Mediterranean but on whom France remained dependent
for any naval action in that theatre.2 These emotions would only become
more vituperative over the course of the following year.
The rift in Franco-Italian relations that had opened as a result of the
Italian-Abyssinian conflict became a chasm during the Spanish Civil
War. Mussolini had been hostile to the second Spanish Republic ever
since its birth in 193 i, so much so that the Duce had supported two failed
plots against it in I932 and I934. While ideological antipathy toward
liberals and socialists explains his hostility to the Republic, the Duce
provided arms and money to Army and Monarchy conspirators in Spain
principally to improve Italy's strategic position in the western Mediter-
ranean vis-a-vis France. Thus, when Franco declared war on the
ante, lxxxix (i974), 293-332; MacGregor Knox, 'II fascismo e la politica esteria italiana', La politica
estera italiana (i860-1985), ed. R. J. B. Bosworth and S. Romano (Bologna, 1991), pp. 323-6.
i. S[ervice] H[istorique de la] M[arine, Vincennes], serie iBB2, volume 15, Etude sur la repartition
des forces navales francaises en temps de paix et leur utilisation en temps de guerre, Io Jan. I936; PRO,
AIR [Ministry files] 2/i68i, Ivelaw-Chapman to Dacre, 31 Dec. I935; Amiral Jean Decoux, Adieu
Marine (Paris, 1957), pp. 281, 285, 328; Hood, Royal Republicans, pp. 154-5; Steven Morewood, 'The
Chiefs of Staff, the "Men on the Spot" and the Italo-Abyssinian emergency, 1935-36', Decisions and
Diplomacy: Essays in Twentieth-Century International History, ed. D. Richardson and G. Stone
(London, I995), pp. 89-95.
2. SHM, iBB2, 182, dossier i/A I6, m6mento, I4 Apr. 1936; SHM, iBB2, 20o8, N. 4I EMG/EAN,
Durand-Viel to Pietri, 9 June 1936; SHM, iBB2, 184, N. 57 bis EMG/EAN, note au ministre, 6 July
EHR Feb. 97
72
Republic in July 1936, and the French and Soviets offered aid to the
Republicans, Mussolini unhesitatingly sent twelve bombers and five
tanks to the Nationalists. By the end of August, the German and Italian
intelligence agencies had begun coordinating their aid to the National-
ists, resulting in not only a sharp increase in German and Italian materiel
shipments to Spain but an increasingly pro-German, anti-French Italian
foreign policy.1
The Fascist and Nazi intervention in Spain and the accompanying
reorientation of Italian foreign policy did not go unnoticed in France,
but was not addressed in a unanimous or coherent fashion. As Premier
of the Popular Front government that won the parliamentary elections
of May I936, Leon Blum initially focused his attention on arresting
France's mounting deficit, persistent inflation and crippling industrial
stagnation. In June, a wave of strikes paralyzed the country, leading to
rumours of an imminent Communist coup, a flight of capital from
France and a devaluation of the franc.2 Preoccupied with economic
issues, Blum was unprepared for the outbreak of civil war in Spain and
therefore had difficulty solving the desperate lack of domestic consensus
on foreign affairs that emerged from it. While the Communists and
Socialists argued for direct support to the Republicans at a level com-
parable to that provided to the Nationalists, conservative politicians
feared Comintern influence in France, opposed left-wing warmonger-
ing and favoured appeasing the Fascists. Blum steered the middle course,
choosing non-intervention but permitting arms and volunteers to move
across French borders.3 Although this approach allayed the domestic-
political conflict over Spain, it enhanced Mussolini's resentment of the
Jewish socialist Blum and the 'decadent plutodemocracy' France. Be-
sides Blum's deceitful endorsement of non-intervention, Mussolini
became convinced, as he had been in I932-4, that the French govern-
ment would sign a secret treaty with the Spanish Republic granting
France special privileges in the Balearic Islands and the Iberian
peninsula.4
I936. For Laval's policy toward Italy, see Fred Kupferman, Laval (Paris, I987), pp. I22-76; Jean-Paul
Cointet, Pierre Laval (Paris, I993), pp. 145-87.
i. A[rchivio] S[torico] D[iplomatico al Ministero degli Affari Esteri, Rome], A[rchivio di] G[abi-
netto], U[fficio di] C[oordinamento], bobina 9, fascicolo 44/I, Accordo Balbo-Barrera, 31 Mar. I934;
ASD, AG, UC, 9, 44/2, Accordo Canaris-Roatta, 26 Aug. I936; ASD, AG, UC, 9, 44/2, Colloquio
Ciano-Neurath, 21 Oct. I936. As of i Dec. I936, the Germans and the Italians had sent 28o aircraft and
95 tanks to the Nationalists: Ilprocesso Roatta. I documenti (Rome, 1945), p. 8 ; John F. Coverdale,
Italian Intervention in the Spanish Civil War (Princeton, I975), pp. I02-26; Knox, 'II fascismo e la
politica estera italiana', pp. 324-6.
2. Alexander Werth, The Destiny of France (London, I937), pp. 292-3I4; Martin Wolfe, The French
Franc between the Wars, 1919-39 (New York, I95 I), pp. 120-2; Frankenstein, Leprix du rearmement
francais, pp.65-79, I25-4I; Overy, Road to War, pp. I22-5.
3. Julian Jackson, The Popular Front in France: Defending Democracy, I93 4-3 8 (Cambridge, I988),
pp. 42-51 I; Carlos Serrano, L'enjeu espagnol: PCF et guerre d'Espagne (Paris, i987), pp. 9-36.
4. ASD, AG, UC, 9, 44/I, Verbale della riunione tenuta a Palazzo Venezia, 31 Mar. 1934; ASD, AG,
UC, 9, 44/4, Verbale della riunione tenuta a Palazzo Venezia, 6 Dec. I936. Also see Rafaele Guariglia,
Ricordi, I922-46 (Naples, 1949), pp. I86-9; Coverdale, Italian Intervention, pp. 40-54.
EHR Feb. 97
APPEASEMENT OF ITALY, 1937-9
I997 73
The increasing degree of Italian-German collaboration in support of
the Spanish Nationalists persuaded Durand-Viel in November 1936 that
joint planning with the Royal Navy was imperative. But the British
Admiralty responded negatively to his request and insisted that the
Italian threat in the Mediterranean was not as great as the French
claimed. In truth, the Admiralty shunned Anglo-French naval talks on a
coordinated anti-Italian Mediterranean strategy for fear of undermining
the success of Britain's ongoing diplomatic negotiations with Italy.
Stung by the British rebuke, the Marine decided to concentrate its forces
in the western Mediterranean, rather than the Atlantic, to prevent an
enemy conquest of the Balearics and to secure the transport of French
troops from North Africa. During its meeting of 4 December I936, the
French Navy's Conseil Superieur concluded that the Marine should
submit an extensive three-year construction programme to increase the
size of its fleet in response to German, Italian and British naval rearma-
ment.1 Blum approved the programme and French naval rearmament
began in earnest.
Admiral Franqois Darlan succeeded Durand-Viel as Chief of the Naval
Staff in January I937. Darlan had attracted the attention of Blum and
Defence Minister Daladier when the admiral headed a mission to
London in mid-I936 that intended to impress upon the Admiralty the
strategic threat posed to the Balearic and the Canary Islands by the
Italians and the Germans. Although Darlan's mission failed to persuade
the Royal Navy that these islands should be defended or preemptively
occupied, Blum recognized that Darlan 'thinks exactly as I do' about the
Italians and the Germans, and not as Durand-Viel, who was lobbying
for an agreement with Italy in the Mediterranean. Much to Durand-
Viel's dismay, and on the recommendation of Alphonse Gasnier-Du-
parc, the Naval Minister and also Darlan's cousin-in-law, Blum in
October I936 designated Darlan to succeed to the highest naval post in
France. In so doing, Blum passed over admirals with more combat
experience and more seniority than Darlan, choosing instead an admiral
whose views on foreign policy were sympathetic to the Popular Front
and who also championed the government's social reforms within the
navy.2
i. SHM, iBB2, 203, N. I40 EMG/o, Durand-Viel to Gasnier-Duparc, 4 Nov. I936; SHM, IBB2,
203, memento, 20 Nov. I936; D[ocuments]D[iplomatiques]F[rancais I932-39] (Paris, I964-86), serie 2,
volume iv, nos. io and 23; SHM, IBB2, 184, Abrial to Durand-Viel, 26 Nov. 1936; SHM, IBB2, 184,
Godfroy to Durand-Viel, 27 Nov. 1936; SHM, IBB2, i7o,N. 20 EMG/SE, 27 Apr. i937; Rene Sabatier
de Lachadenede, La marine francaise et la guerre civile d'Espagne, I936-39 (Vincennes, I993),
pp. 89-95. The Marine's I937 budget of 4,618 million francs increased thirty per cent over the 1936
budget of 3,564 million francs. For annual military expenditure statistics, see Frankenstein, Le prix du
rearmement francais, p. 303; Robert A. Doughty, 'The French Armed Forces, I918-40', Military
Effectiveness, Vol. II: The Interwar Period, ed. A. R. Millett and W. Murray (Boston, 1988), p. 5o.
2. Decoux, Adieu Marine, pp.337-8; Coutau-B6garie and Huan, Darlan, pp. I6-I9; Hood, Royal
Republicans, pp. 156-7.
EHR Feb. 97
74
Although both Durand-Viel and Darlan were conservative admirals
who fought hard for naval rearmament funding and the continued
independence of the Marine, their personalities, leadership styles and
ideas about the proper role that the Marine should play in the world
were quite different. While Durand-Viel was a soft-spoken, cautious
administrator who sought out advice from subordinates on issues from
staffing to strategy and deferred to his minister for major policy de-
cisions, Darlan was an extremely self-confident, resolute admiral who
monopolized every aspect of the Marine. By acquiring more authority
over the Marine than any other naval chief before him, Darlan entirely
reconceived French naval strategy in I937-40 and endeavoured to incor-
porate his strategy into the making of French foreign policy. In this
realm, Darlan exhibited a much more realistic understanding of the
priorities of the British Navy and adopted a much more aggressive
posture vis-a-vis Italy than his predecessor.1 Not only did Darlan
believe that Italy and the Regia Marina represented the greatest threat to
France and the Marine, but Darlan saw in propagating the Franco-
Italian conflict an opportunity to accelerate French naval rearmament,
enhance the prestige of the Marine in France and improve his own status
within the French government.
Making a change in the leadership at the Marine, however, did little to
arrest the falling French franc or the downward spiral in Franco-Italian
relations. By the spring of 1937, the franc had collapsed and Blum was
forced to make further cuts in spending on rearmament and domestic
social programmes. Unemployment soared and industrial production
plummeted. Blum, who had become the political scapegoat for France's
economic troubles, resigned in June.2 Although Mussolini's antagonist
in France was no longer at the helm of the French government, the Duce
saw no reason to abandon his Francophobia, for he believed the French
determination to counter Italian imperial aims extended deeper into the
French Republic than Leon Blum. Soon after the Italians had effectively
eliminated the last organized Ethiopian resistance in February 1937, and
in response to the Italian establishment of a large air base in the Balear-
ics, the French Deuxieme Bureau smuggled arms into Ethiopia from the
Sudan and encouraged revolt among disaffected Abyssinians, resulting
in the Gojjam uprising of August I937. France not only hoped to reverse
Italy's recent successes in Ethiopia but also sought to upset Italy's
position in the western Mediterranean - which imperilled French com-
munications with Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia - by pinning down
Italian soldiers in East Africa. Frustrated by French intervention but
oblivious to France's underlying strategic objectives, Mussolini aug-
I. Alain Darlan, L'Amiral Darlan parle (Paris, I952), pp. 11-43; Jules Th6ophile Docteur, Darlan,
amiral de la flotte: la grande enigma de la guerre (Paris, i949), pp. 39-40; Coutau-Begarie and Huan,
Darlan, pp. 12I-3 ; Hood, Royal Republicans, pp. 159-60.
2. Jean Lacoutre, Leon Blum (Paris, 1977), pp. 397-422; Overy, Road to War, pp. I25-8.
EHR Feb. 97
APPEASEMENT OF ITALY, I193 7-9
I997 75
mented his troop levels in Ethiopia and initiated Italy's merciless mus-
tard gas bombing campaign of late i937.1
Coinciding with the Gojjam revolt was Franco's request of Italy to
intercept Russian shipments of weapons and supplies steaming from the
Black Sea to Spanish government ports. Mussolini, who was optimistic
that a naval campaign might precipitate an end to the Spanish Civil War,
placed almost a hundred submarines, cruisers, destroyers and navy
auxiliaries in the Straits of Sicily, the Aegean and along the Spanish
Mediterranean coast, all with orders to attack any Republican ship, any
Soviet merchant ship and any merchant ship under a Republican escort.
From 6 August until 13 September, half of the Italian fleet - unmarked
and mostly operating only at night - patrolled the Mediterranean, firing
forty-three torpedoes at twenty-four vessels, sinking four merchant
ships and damaging one Republican destroyer.2 Although Anglo-
French intelligence confirmed that Italy's navy was responsible for these
assaults, no action was taken until 30 August when Italian submarines
unintentionally attacked the British destroyer Havock. Britain and
France, at the latter's behest, then met at Nyon on 10-14 September and
agreed to patrol the Mediterranean and destroy any unidentified sub-
marines. Although the 'pirate' submarine campaign ceased, Mussolini
had suspended offensive submarine operations in the Mediterranean on
4 September. And even though the Admiralty almost immediately
learned of this suspension from decrypted Italian signals, the British and
French went to Nyon anyway. The conference, as a result, succeeded
before it began.3
While Italy's 'pirate' submarine campaign infuriated, though it did
not surprise, many officials at the Marine, the fortification of an Italian
air base in the Balearics alarmed them. Since the start of the Spanish Civil
War, Mussolini had kept Italian bomber units on Mallorca weak to
avoid worsening tensions with Britain and France. Encouraged by the
western powers' lack of resolve at the Nyon Conference - Italy had
been invited to join the anti-submarine patrol of the Mediterranean -
and anxious to substitute aerial bombardment for his concluded sub-
marine campaign, Mussolini in September I937 sent twelve bombers to
Mallorca and ordered them to begin regular attacks on Republican
I. Brian R. Sullivan, 'The Italian-Ethiopian War, October I935-November I94I: Causes, Conduct,
and Consequences', Great Powers and Little Wars: The Limits of Power, ed. A. Hamish Ion and E. J.
Errington (Westport, CT, 1993), pp. I88-9.
2. ASD, AG, U[fficio] S[pagna], busta io, Franco to Mussolini, 3 Aug. 1937; ASD, AG, UC, o0,
46/I, Processo verbale della riunione a Palazzo Venezia, 5 Aug. I937; ASD, AG, US, io, conversazione
fra Cavagnari e Moreno, 7 Aug. I937; Franco Bargoni, L'impegno navale italiano durante la guerra
civile spagnola (1936-39) (Rome, I992), pp. 280-3 I7; William C. Frank, Jr., 'Naval Operations in the
Spanish Civil War, 1936-39', Naval War College Review (Jan.-Feb. 1984), 42-3; Brian R. Sullivan,
'Fascist Italy's Military Involvement in the Spanish Civil War', Journal of Military History, lix (I 99 5),
7i6.
3. ASD, AG, US, 95, Franco note, 3 Sept. I937; Galeazzo Ciano, Diario 1937-43 (Rome, i990 ed.), 4
Sept. I937, p. 33; Peter Gretton, 'The Nyon Conference - The Naval Aspect', ante, xc (i975), 103-12;
William C. Mills, 'The Nyon Conference: Neville Chamberlain, Anthony Eden, and the Appeasement
of Italy in 1937', International History Review, xv (I993), 1-22.
EHR Feb. 97
76
ports. By January I93 8, Mussolini had doubled both his bomber force in
the Balearics and the scale of Italian attacks on port facilities and
shipping.1
What had been feared by the French Naval Staff for more than a year
was now becoming a reality: Italy was attempting an overt seizure of the
Balearics in preparation for a future war against France. Although this
viewpoint was not widely shared in France, the Marine's concerns were
warranted. As early as I929-32, the Italian Minister of War Pietro
Gazzera admitted that Mussolini anticipated a military conflict with
France in the near future and Foreign Minister Dino Grandi acknowl-
edged that Italy's policy was fiercely anti-French. Then on the same day
that the Nazis invaded Austria, the Gran Consiglio del Fascismo - the
supreme organ of the Fascist government - endorsed Italy's collab-
oration with German foreign policy against France. In Genoa later that
spring, Mussolini not only proclaimed that Italy and France were on
'opposite sides of the barricade' in the Spanish affair, but he also extolled
the Anschluss, reviled the democracies, declared the Franco-Italian
friendship of I935 'dead and buried', and insisted that together the
Fascist and National Socialist revolutions were 'destined to set the tone
for this century'.2
At Darlan's insistence, Foreign Minister Yvon Delbos suggested to
British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden in late September I937 that
Britain and France either seize Menorca (currently in Republican hands)
or demand that the Italians cease their fortification of Mallorca by
threatening a French reopening of the Pyrenees frontier. After the
British rejected both of these ideas in favour of a conciliatory policy
toward Italy, the Marine desperately recommended stationing a joint
Anglo-French naval force at Port Mahon on Menorca, to do nothing
more than demonstrate the West's opposition to Italy's occupation of
Mallorca. In October, this proposal was also dismissed by the Admiralty
as infeasible and unnecessarily provocative.3
Darlan, who had long held Britain in contempt for the post-war naval
treaties' stipulation of Franco-Italian naval parity, was now infuriated at
Britain's reluctance to draw a connection between the current struggle in
Spain and a possible future conflict involving both Britain and France.
The nature of the Spanish war - including Italy's sale of four submarines
and four destroyers to Franco - Mussolini's visit to Germany in Sep-
I. Between September 1937 and March I939, German and Italian bombers sunk I I 5 Republican and
5 foreign merchant ships: Ferdinando Pedriali, Guerra di Spagna e aviazione italiana (Pinerolo, 1989),
pp. 70-92, 327-44; Paul Preston, Franco: A Biography (New York, I994), pp. 208-93; Frank, 'Naval
Operations in the Spanish Civil War', 46; Sullivan, 'Fascist Italy's Military Involvement in the Spanish
Civil War', 722.
2. A[rchivio] C[entrale dello] S[tato, Rome], S[egretaria] P[articolare del] D[uce], C[arteggio]
R[iservato], busta 32, fascicolo I6, 12 March 1938; Sergio Pelagalli, 'I1 generale Pietro Gazzera al
ministero della guerra (I928-33)', Storia Contemporanea, xx (1989), I040-5; Knox, 'I testi "aggiustati"
dei discorsi segreti di Grandi', Passato e Presente, xiii (1987), 97-I 17; Opera Omnia di Benito Mussolini,
xxix (Florence, I959), pp. 99-0I2.
3. DDF, 2, vi, no.465; DDF, 2, vii, nos. 54, 6i, 88, I38.
EHR Feb. 97
APPEASEMENT OF ITALY, 9 3 7-9
I997 77
tember, and Italy's withdrawal from the League and entrance into the
Anti-Comintern Pact in the following month proved to the Naval Chief
of Staff that two great imperial powers, France and Britain, might soon
find themselves at war with Germany, Italy, Japan and Spain. Even if
Franco chose neutrality, France should expect the Caudillo to grant the
Axis powers use of the Balearics. Not only should France add Spain to
the list of potential enemies, but the High Command must develop a
contingent strategy for the transport of French troops from North
Africa; an Axis base in the Balearics would represent a dire threat to the
Marine's existing plans. The Naval Staff demanded that France prepare
an indirect troop-transport route by accelerating the construction of the
naval base at Mers-el-Kebir and by contemplating the early conquest of
Spanish Morocco.1
The growing Italian peril and the increasing reluctance of Britain to
acknowledge it also motivated Darlan to seek an acceleration of French
naval rearmament. Durand-Viel and Blum had started this process in
1936, but Darlan contended that the naval budget had to reflect the
expansion of the Italian Navy that had occurred during I937. Although
France still enjoyed naval superiority over Italy, this luxury was quickly
coming to an end. The Regia Marina had just begun enjoying the fruits
of Mussolini's 1936 naval construction programme, which included the
modernization of two World War I-generation battleships and a new
fleet of submarines. The Italians had also laid the keels for two more
first-line battleships, which would give Italy a decisive capital-ship
advantage over France by July 1940. The Marine's Section d'Etudes
estimated that, without a significant expansion of the French naval
programme, the Regia Marina's total fleet tonnage would surpass that of
the Marine by the end of 1942. By presenting the Marine's proposed
supplemental budget as an imperative response to Italy's overt ship-
building agenda and as a critical element of French foreign policy,
Darlan in May 1938 gained approval for a new three-year naval pro-
gramme that accelerated the rate of shipbuilding and allocated funding
for two additional first-line battleships, one cruiser and an array of
heavy destroyers and submarines. 'If we continue to sleep', Darlan
explained, 'our country will be incapable of pursuing a strong foreign
policy. We will lose our friends and our alliances.'2
But Darlan did not content himself with advancing naval rearma-
ment. In late 1937, he argued for a comprehensive and geographic
reorientation of French foreign policy. To defend themselves against
I. S[ervice] H[istorique de l']A[rmee de la] T[erre, Vincennes], s6rie 2N, volume 24, N.
I49/EMG-SE, Campinchi to Daladier, 24 Nov. I937; SHM, IBB2, 204, 5, N. I6 EM.2, Bulletin de
Renseignements no. 4, de Belot to Marine, 2 Nov. I937; Sabatier de Lachadenede, La marinefrancaise
et la guerre civile d'Espagne, p. 306.
2. SHM, IBB2, 208, 12/I3, Darlan note, Composition et puissance de la flotte: son role dans la
defense nationale, 4 Dec. I937; SHM, IBB2, 220, 3/4, Situation actuelle, i Jan. I938; SHM, IBB2, 208,
I I, Darlan note, 7 Jan. I938; SHM, IBB2, 220, 1/2, Comparison des tonnages en service, 5 Feb. I938.
The Marine's 1938 budget of 6,I 5 million francs increased 33 per cent over the I937 budget of 4,618
EHR Feb. 97
78
Axis revisionism, Britain and France had to concern themselves with
littoral, imperial and continental security - especially in the Mediter-
ranean. Besides providing the route along which French troops from
North Africa travelled to France, the Mediterranean represented
France's most dependable link to eastern Europe, the Middle East and
the Orient: 'A significant part of British and French supplies and, in
particular, almost all of the oil extracted from the French, British and
Russian oil fields in the East depend on the mastery of the Mediter-
ranean. But, above all, the Mediterranean constitutes the only communi-
cation line with our Central European allies by which vital military
materiel may reach them'. French industry and the eastern front con-
cept, not to mention supplemental defence for the western front, relied
on secure Mediterranean transportation - a necessary prerequisite for
French national sovereignty.1
The Naval Staff then explained that because France's most important
foreign policy concerns were in the Mediterranean, the Mediterranean
should constitute France's first battlefield. 'If we consider, at the same
time, that the liberty of this sea is for Italy a question of life or death, and
even more so for us, it seems that any offensive action by our armies that
has not been preceded by the conquest of the Mediterranean will be
useless action'. Consequently, French war strategy should envisage first
conquering the Mediterranean and terrorizing Italy - destroying the
Italian fleet and occupying Libya, Spanish Morocco and the Balearics -
while remaining on the defensive in the east and north-east. Then, only
after the Mediterranean has been secured and provisions have been
assured, France should launch an assault against Germany.2
In presenting a blueprint for such a radical revision of French policy
and strategy, the Naval Chief revealed his disdain for the French defence
establishment and his naked ambition for political influence and power.
Although Darlan conceded that Germany remained the principal enemy
and understood that ignoring the Germans for any length of time
required jettisoning the one essential element of French defence - a fear
of Germany - he lobbied French politicians and lectured the General
Staff on the need to disregard the German threat until the Mediterranean
had been secured. Predictably, the French Army and Air Force coun-
tered that a Mediterranean orientation would either incite the Nazis to
attack France in the West or provoke a conflict with Italy that would
jeopardize France's network of eastern European alliances. Even worse,
such a strategy might precipitate both of these possibilities simul-
taneously. Instead of adopting a Mediterranean war strategy, General
Maurice Gamelin, head of France's armed forces and the Army Chief of
million francs. For annual military expenditure statistics, see Frankenstein, Le prix du rearmement
franCais, p. 303; Doughty, 'The French Armed Forces', p. 5o.
I. SHM, IBB2, 208, 12, Darlan note, Des conditions de la guerre dans la situation internationale
presente, I2 Nov. I937.
2. SHM, iBB2, 208, I I, Darlan note, Situation politique internationale, Nov. I937.
EHR Feb. 97
1997 APPEASEMENT OF ITALY, 9 3 7-9 79
Staff, argued that France should stimulate its attempts to re-establish the
Franco-Italian 'alliance'.1
It was Darlan's perspective, however, that was gradually endorsed by
Daladier in late I937. Daladier perceived in the Italian 'pirate' submarine
campaign and the Italian action in the Balearics not only an increased
Italian interest in the Mediterranean, but also a tightening of the Italian-
German partnership. At the November meeting of the Comite Perma-
nent de la Defense Nationale (CPDN), Daladier explained to France's
military leaders, who had previously only postulated a Franco-German
war, that they should not exclude a conflict breaking out in the Mediter-
ranean: 'The hypothesis of conflict, with the Mediterranean as the centre
of preponderant action, raises different problems for our foreign and
military policy ... What has been merely a variation until now risks
becoming the essential.' After Italy's departure from the League and
adhesion to the Anti-Comintern pact, Daladier emphasized that in war
the Axis powers will take advantage of Italy's presence in north and east
Africa to attack the British and French empires: 'Given the two-bloc
composition [in the Atlantic and the Far East] of the Franco-British
empire, an attack in the Mediterranean, the seam between these two
blocs, would allow Germany and Italy to obtain the most decisive
results'. Moreover, Daladier saw in the Mediterranean an opportunity to
tighten France's relationship with Britain, which was also vulnerable in
that theatre. According to the Defence Minister, 'the principal preoccu-
pation of the English at this point is the Mediterranean area ... It is only
there that we can try to tie them down... It is on this terrain that we must
act'. And by December, Daladier was convinced that French strategy
could no longer focus only on Germany. 'While in a position to face an
attack from Germany and to pin down its forces to the extent necessary
in order to allow action by us or our allies, France must remain ready to
pursue eventually, as a matter of first urgency, the defeat of Italy.' In
response to both the Defence Minister's concerns and intelligence that
confirmed Italy's hostile intentions, the Army Staff began considering
air and amphibious attacks on Sardinia and Sicily, land offensives across
the Alps and a drive against Libya.2 At the end of 1937, months before
the Anschluss, important elements of the French government perceived
a genuine Italian threat in the Mediterranean.
The unwillingness of some Frenchmen to embrace the aggressive
Mediterranean policy of Daladier and Darlan disappeared with Hitler's
I. SHAT, 2N, 24, Proces-verbal du seance de la CPDN, 8 Dec. 1937. Also see Nicole Jordan, The
Popular Front and Central Europe: The Dilemmas of French Impotence, 1918-40 (Cambridge, 1992),
pp. 282-3.
2. SHAT, 2N, 24, Proces-verbal du seance de la CPDN, 3 Nov. 1937; SHAT, 2N, 24, Note sur la
situation internationale actuelle et les repercussions sur la conduite de la guerre, Daladier to Gamelin,
Darlan, and Vuillemin, 12 Nov. 1937; SHAT, 2N, 24, Proces-Verbal du seance de la CPDN, 8 Dec.
1937; SHAT, 2N, 24, Daladier memo N. 789/DN.3, 22 Dec. I937. Also see Jordan, The Popular Front,
pp. 282-3. For the French Army's plans for operations against Italy, see Young, 'French Military
Intelligence', s5o.
EHR Feb. 97
80
annexation of Austria on 12 March I938. For most people in France, the
Anschluss foreshadowed an inevitable war in the Mediterranean and
emphasized the need for an alliance with Britain. That Mussolini refused
to support Austrian sovereignty without so much as a verbal protest
indicated to Foreign Minister Joseph Paul-Boncour that 'the entente
between Germany and Italy has never been more serious'. Gamelin on
14 March agreed that 'recent events confirm the solidarity, at least for the
moment, of the Rome-Berlin Axis' and argued that 'France, if she hopes
to defend her metropolitan territory and her African empire efficiently,
can only dream of leading a successful war effort with alliances'. Later
that spring, after Italian Foreign Minister Galeazzo Ciano publicly
reaffirmed the strength of the Axis, the French Charge d'Affaires in
Rome, Jules Blondel, asserted that negotiating with the Italians could no
longer be considered seriously: the Italian game of 'separating France
from Rome ... appears more clear than ever'.1
Darlan and the Naval Staff interpreted the Anschluss and Daladier's
subsequent, private admission that France could not militarily defend
either Czechoslovakia or Spain from an Axis invasion as a call to arms. In
late March, Darlan told the other French chiefs that the Marine would
soon be in a position to oppose an Italian landing on the northern coast
of Tunisia and engage in, if necessary, a general battle there. The Navy
was also prepared to attack 'with certain efficiency' Italy's Libyan
supply and communication lines. Despite discouraging words from
Gamelin and General Joseph Vuillemin, the Air Force Chief of Staff, on
the unpreparedness of their forces in the Mediterranean theatre, Darlan
arranged for joint aero-naval exercises to take place in the Mediter-
ranean as soon as possible.2 Genuine French planning for a Mediter-
ranean war had begun.
With the annexation of Austria complete, Hitler turned his attention
to Czechoslovakia. Faced with the prospect of a German conquest of
another independent eastern European state - this one a French ally -
Daladier, now Premier, was determined to raise both continental and
Mediterranean concerns with the British. Among other things, Daladier
sought Anglo-French naval staff talks. Although the British Cabinet in
early I938 had authorized air and army staff talks with France, it had
insisted that the international situation did not require contacts between
the two navies. The political implications of the ongoing Anglo-Italian
conversations and the British commitment of 1937 to send the main fleet
to Singapore if war broke out in the Far East had precluded talks that in
I. SHAT, 2N, 25, Proces-verbal du s6ance de la CPDN, IS March 1938 (also in M[inistere des]
A[ffaires] E[trangeres, Paris], serie P[apiers I9140, sous-serie Daladier, volume i); MAE, P40, Daladier,
i, Gamelin note, N. Io82, 14 March I938 (also in SHM, iBB2, 2 I, 5; and DDF, 2, viii, no. 432), original
emphasis; MAE, serie Eur[ope I9]30-[I9]40, sous-s6rie Italie, volume 3 I9, Blondel to Bonnet, 2 June
1938.
2. SHAT, 2N, 225, iDN3, reunion des Chefs d'EMG, I7 March 1938; SHM, IBB2, I30, N. 305
EMG.3, Darlan to C-in-Cs, 26 March 1938.
EHR Feb. 97
8i
I997
any way envisaged a war in the Mediterranean.1 When Chamberlain
argued that the Anglo-Italian Easter Accords of April 1938 - which
consecrated the status quo in the Mediterranean and promised British de
jure recognition of Italy's conquest of Abyssinia once the Spanish
question were 'settled', the Libyan garrison reduced in size and a
complementary Franco-Italian agreement concluded2 - eliminated the
possibility of Italian co-operation with Germany, the Premier objected.
Daladier believed that Italy's most recent contributions to the Spanish
war - including the terror bombing of Barcelona in March and the
Italian offensive across Aragon in April - her ruthless bombing cam-
paign in Ethiopia, her growing military presence in Libya and her refusal
to condemn the Anschluss all justified joint naval conversations. Hesi-
tantly, the Prime Minister consented 'in principle' to the French
request.3
Within a month, Britain's Committee of Imperial Defence (CID) had
established inflexible boundaries for the forthcoming naval staff talks
with the French. The British decided that the discussions should take
place at no higher than the attache level and their scope should be limited
to information concerning naval dispositions and various technical
details regarding signal codes and port facilities. His Majesty's Govern-
ment should also assume no new commitments: 'A hard and fast line
must eventually be drawn beyond which we cannot go without morally
committing ourselves to act with France in war.' Finally and most
importantly, the CID stipulated that 'Germany alone is to be assumed as
the aggressor, and the contacts do not envisage the extension of war to
other powers whether as potential enemies or potential allies'.4
These rigid guidelines made it clear to the French that the British were
not yet interested in planning for war as allies. Limiting consideration to
a hypothetical war against only Germany - excluding the Italian factor -
seemed not only strategically unrealistic but politically absurd. Hitler's
visit to Italy in May and ineffectual Franco-Italian conversations in
Rome demonstrated to Rene Massigli, Political Director at the Quai
d'Orsay, that Italy would support Germany militarily in war and that
I. The commitment to the dominions was made at the Imperial Conference of May-June 1937. See
PRO, CAB 21/700, E(37)I: Imperial Conference, 1937, 22 Feb. 1937. For the Chiefs of Staff's approval
of this commitment, see PRO, CAB 53/32, C[hiefs] O[f] S[taff] 59i: Far East Appreciation, 1937, i
June I937; PRO, CAB I6/I82, DP(P) 5 and COS 596: Appreciation of the Situation in the Far East, I4
June I937.
2. For details on the Easter Accords, see D. C. Watt, 'Gli accordi mediterranei anglo-italiani del
aprile I938', Rivista di studi politici internazionale, xxvi (1959).
3. N. H. Gibbs, Grand Strategy, Vol. I: Rearmament Policy (London, I976), pp. 636-41; Reussner,
Les conversations franco-britanniques d'Etat-Major, pp. i95-202; P. N. Buckley, E. B. Haslam, and W.
B. R. Neave-Hill, 'Anglo-French Staff Conversations, 1938-I939', Les relations franco-britanniques,
pp. 93-9; Philippe Masson, 'Les conversations militaires franco-britanniques (1935-I938)', in ibid.,
pp. I25-6.
4. PRO, ADM[iralty files] 116/3379, PD 06792/38, Danckwerts memo, 6 May 1938; PRO, ADM
116/3379, PD o6888/38, Danckwerts memo, 17 June 1938; PRO, CAB 53/38, COS 727: Staff Conver-
sations with France and Belgium, 20 May 1938; PRO, CAB 23/93, Cab. 26(38), Cabinet meeting, 25
May 1938; PRO, ADM I I6/3379, PD o6849/38, Danckwerts to Holland, i June I938.
EHR Feb. 97
'Rome is pursuing only one goal: to separate France and Britain'.1
Gamelin, however, reminded Daladier, who needed little reminder, that
even though an all-encompassing Anglo-French alliance was the pri-
mary French objective, it would not materialize easily or quickly.
Recognizing that fighting a war without British support would be
catastrophic, and that low-level restricted staff talks were better than
none, the French reluctantly accepted Britain's terms. The most reluc-
tant was Darlan. Even though the Naval Chief was less interested in
formulating a detailed Anglo-French naval war plan than in re-establish-
ing the extensive sharing of information that the two admiralties carried
out in I935-6 during the Mediterranean crisis, he was furious that the
British refused to consider the possibility of 'the would-be assassin who
tries to stab you in the back with his stiletto'.2
The most important foreign policy issue facing the French over the
spring and summer of 1938 concerned the future of Czechoslovakia.
The details of the crisis that led to the Munich agreement of September
I938 need not be discussed here.3 What is relevant to this essay, and what
historians have been less clear about, is how Munich influenced France's
grand strategy toward Italy.4
As many historians have indicated, the Munich conference acted in
Paris as the catalyst for a frenzy of diplomatic manoeuvres and military
preparations, all intended to improve France's position in the expected
war against Germany. It was well understood by most Frenchmen that
Munich had not prevented war but simply postponed it.5 Where Italy
would fit into this future war was less well understood, however.
Munich, in fact, sparked a heated debate in Paris on the future of
Franco-Italian affairs. While the Naval Staff accelerated planning for an
imminent war in the Mediterranean, the Quai d'Orsay redoubled its
efforts to ameliorate relations with Italy. It was left to Daladier to
reconcile these two contradictory positions.
The desire in Paris to avoid war with Italy, and war in general, was
identified most closely with Foreign Minister Georges Bonnet. Daladier
appointed the highly educated and experienced conservative politician
in April 1938 not because the two men had similar visions of Europe and
I. MAE, P40, Cabinet Bonnet, 9, Massigli note, 5 June I938.
2. SHAT, 2N, 227, 2, N. 93 EMG-SE, Darlan to Gamelin, 30 May 1938; PRO, ADM I 16/3379, N.
3/38, Holland to Phipps, Io June I938.
3. For works on France and the Munich crisis, see Henri Nogueres, Munich: ou la dr6le de paix
(Paris, 1963); Francois Paulhac, Les Accords de Munich et les origines de la guerre de i939 (Paris, I988);
Yvon Lacaze, La France et Munich: etude d'un processus decisionnel en maitere de relations inter-
nationales (Berne, I992).
4. Shorrock, From Ally to Enemy, pp. 233-55, has addressed this issue, but only from the diplomatic
perspective. By failing to take French military and naval strategy vis-a-vis Italy into account, he
presents a one-dimensional perspective of France's Italian policy and therefore misinterprets its
conception and implications.
5. Frankenstein, Le prix du rearmement francais, pp. 2oI-8, 27I-5; du Reau, Edouard Daladier,
pp. 234-87; Duroselle, La decadence, pp. 367-404; Young, In Command of France, pp. I92-220.
EHR Feb. 97
APPEASEMENT OF ITALY, I 9 3 7-9 83
I997
foreign affairs, but in order to maintain the centrist coalition in the
Chamber. While Daladier conceded in July I938 that France was not
prepared militarily to fight Germany, the Premier disagreed with
Bonnet's 'realistic' and insular views of the need to appease Italy.
Bonnet interpreted Mussolini's 'mediation' of the Munich agreement as
representative of Italy's interest in ensuring great power stability by
playing her traditional balancing role in Europe. The Italian public's
distaste for Nazism and Mussolini's desire for increased liberty of
manoeuvre vis-a-vis Hitler offered France an excellent opportunity to
draw Italy out of Germany's orbit. Moreover, Bonnet thought that if
Italy's 'moderate' foreign policy goals could be satisfied, Mussolini
would in turn mollify Hitler's ambitions and thereby preserve Euro-
pean peace.1
Bonnet, who had encountered much opposition to his policy of
seeking a Franco-Italian rapprochement, exploited the temporary lull in
international affairs that followed the Munich settlement by removing
some of his harshest critics from the Quai and reassigning to Rome one
of his most important advocates. Pierre Comert, chief of press services,
was replaced and Massigli was 'exiled' to Ankara to fill the post of
Ambassador. Only one prominent opponent of Bonnet's Italian policy,
Secretary General Alexis Leger - whom Bonnet judged too politically
powerful to be dismissed - remained at the Quai. Bonnet then trans-
ferred to Italy Ambassador Andre Fran?ois-Poncet, who believed as
strongly as Bonnet in the possibility and importance of reaching a modus
vivendi with Rome. Ending two years without official French represen-
tation in Rome, Franoois-Poncet presented his letters of accreditation to
Victor Emmanuel III on 19 November, addressing the monarch as both
King of Italy and Emperor of Ethiopia. Britain had officially recognized
Italy's Ethiopian Empire only days before, even though the Italians had
not yet satisfied the stipulations of the Easter Accords.2
The Bonnet/Franoois-Poncet solution to the Italian and Mediter-
ranean dilemma encountered opposition among most officials in
France's military and naval circles, who were not convinced that Musso-
lini had intervened at Munich to mediate between Germany and the
democracies in order to preserve peace. Not only did these strategists
interpret the publication of Italy's Manifesto of Race in July I938 as a
demonstration of Fascist Italy's solidarity with Nazi Germany, but they
also recognized that Mussolini's gradual reduction of Italy's Libyan
garrison had come to a halt over the summer. By the end of September,
Italy had doubled the size of its force in Libya; there was now one army
I. Anthony Adamthwaite, France and the Coming of the Second World War, 1936-39 (London,
1977), pp.95- 110, I41-3, 187, 255-7, 306-8; Shorrock, From Ally to Enemy, pp. 237-4I, 258-72.
2. Ren6 Massigli, La Turquie devant la guerre: Mission a Ankara, I939-40 (Paris, 1964), pp. 17-19;
Anatole de Monzie, Ci-devant (Paris, I941), p. 54; Shorrock, From Ally to Enemy, pp. 238-9; Ciano,
Diario, 7 Nov. 1938, p. 209.
EHR Feb. 97
84
corps facing Tunisia and another facing Egypt.1 Moreover, two weeks
before the Munich conference convened, the Marine division of the
Deuxieme Bureau received information from a dependable source that,
in the event of hostilities breaking out over the Sudeten crisis, Italy
would join Germany in war against the democracies. Anticipating war
with Germany and Italy, the French Navy fully mobilized in September
I938. Then, following Munich, the Gran Consiglio del Fascismo ap-
proved a 329 million lire supplemental I938-9 budget for new construc-
tion and refitting of existing ships. Darlan used all this information to
support his argument that, since the Axis' primary war objective would
be to destroy the Anglo-French imperial system and its corresponding
maritime communications, France 'must first of all neutralize or knock
out [abbattre] Italy, whose attitude is now not in doubt'.2
With the Nazi's acquisition of the Sudetenland, Gamelin recognized
that the Mediterranean had become a vital avenue to France's eastern
allies and, in fact, the only way to maintain an eastern front against
Germany. Gamelin also conceded that the likelihood of an attack on
France and her imperial possessions by both Germany and Italy had
increased since I937. These circumstances required a 'new orientation
of our military policy' that included fortifying France's position in the
Levant, improving relations with Turkey and Greece, creating bases in
the eastern Mediterranean, mobilizing French industry and ensuring a
strict military accord with Britain. Although the Maginot Line provided
dependable security from a German ground offensive, the French Ma-
rine should implement a construction programme that 'assures us an
incontestable superiority over Italy in the Mediterranean' and should
collaborate with the Royal Navy to guarantee communication and
imperial security there. Despite this reorientation of military thinking,
Gamelin continued to oppose, as he had in the past, any rash military
offensive against Italy that would distract attention away from France's
principal enemy and greatest threat, Germany.3
Faced with a Foreign Minister and an Ambassador who counselled
conciliation, a Naval Chief who demanded preparation for attack and an
Army Chief who recommended Mediterranean fortification, Daladier
sought outside assistance in formulating his Italian strategy. The Pre-
mier turned to his trusted friend and confidant, Louis Aubert, an
I. For Mussolini's order to reinforce the Libyan garrison, see Ufficio Storico dell'Esercito, Rome,
serie H-9, busta 2, fascicolo 3, Pariani promemoria N. o102, I4 July 1938. For details on the Manifesto
of Race, see Philip V. Cannistraro and Brian R. Sullivan, II Duce's Other Woman (New York, I993),
PP. 511 I-4; Jonathan Steinberg, All or Nothing: The Axis and the Holocaust, 194I-43 (London, i990),
pp. 223-5; Meir Michaelis, Mussolini and the Jews: German-Italian Relations and the Jewish Question
in Italy, I922-45 (Oxford, 1978), pp. I46-9I.
2. SHM, iBB2, 84, N. 574/EMG 2-R, De Villaine to Gamelin, 12 Sept., 1938; SHM, IBB2, 208, 14,
Darlan, Note au sujet de la politique francaise de defense nationale, 26 Sept., I938; SHM, IBB7, I I4,
Compte Rendu de Renseignements No. 32, 28 Sept. I938. For Italy's supplemental naval budget, see
ACS, SPD, CR, 32, i6, Foglio d'ordini: Gran Consiglio del Fascismo, 26 Oct. I938.
3. SHAT, 2N, 224, i, N. 853/DN.3, Gamelin, Note sur la situation actuelle, I2 Oct. I938. For a
different perspective on this same note, see Jordan, The Popular Front, pp. 289-90.
EHR Feb. 97
I997
historian and member of France's League of Nations delegation. By
identifying the Mediterranean as the linchpin of the Axis and the basis
for an Anglo-French alliance, Aubert reaffirmed Daladier's November
1937 considerations of Mediterranean affairs and thereby enhanced their
urgency. 'It is in the Mediterranean', wrote Aubert, 'where we must, as
soon as possible, concentrate our diplomatic activity and where we must
affirm our [military and naval] strength.' While a lack of strong indepen-
dent allies in eastern Europe, coupled with a powerful and determined
Germany, compelled France to adopt a 'waiting' strategy on the conti-
nent, Italy's extensive and largely undefended metropolitan coastline,
Italy's extraordinary dependence on certain sea-borne trade, especially
coal, and Italy's Libyan colony strategically located between Egypt and
Tunisia, all made Italy extremely vulnerable in the Mediterranean. As
Aubert explained, 'we must assert our force against the Axis and press
hard against its weakest point, Italy'. Moreover, repeating what Daladier
had said the year before, Aubert asserted that it was in the Mediterranean
where not only France depended on secure imperial communications
for supplies and troop transports to the metropolis, but also where
'British interests are entirely connected with ours'. Operations in the
Mediterranean, in contrast to those in eastern Europe, could draw
Britain and France together and prise Germany and Italy apart. Finally,
Aubert, who like Daladier had become enraged by Italy's anti-French
propaganda in North Africa and the Middle East, and by her refusal to
negotiate with France until Britain ratified the Easter Accords and
Franco defeated Republican Spain, rejected the Bonnet/Francois-Pon-
cet solution to the Italian problem: 'It is not the moment to ask if, when
or where concessions can be made to Italy. Any concession would be
incompatible with our security in the western Mediterranean.'1
Planning for an aggressive Mediterranean strategy also accelerated in
French military and intelligence circles during October and November.
The Deuxieme Bureau used this opportunity, which coincided with the
disbandment of the International Brigades in Spain, to co-operate with
the Comintern in sending anti-Fascist Italian veterans to serve as in-
telligence operatives for Ethiopian rebels in East Africa.2 At the same
time, the Marine's regional commanders were informed that a war
against Germany and Italy was now considerably more likely than one
against Germany alone. Darlan explained that the commanders should
plan during war to transport French troops from Casablanca and Dakar,
I. MAE, P4o, Daladier, 2, Aubert note, Politique exterieure de la France apres Munich, 21 Oct. 1938;
MAE, P4o, Daladier, 2, Aubert note, Politique exterieure de la France, I6 Nov. I938. Peter Jackson has
shown that Aubert also significantly influenced the development of Daladier's post-Munich decision
to resist Germany and remain committed in eastern Europe. See his 'France and the Guarantee to
Romania, April I939', Intelligence and National Security x (I995), 246-9.
2. Sullivan, 'The Italian-Ethiopian War', pp. I9I-2.
EHR Feb. 97
by way of the Atlantic, since the Mediterranean would be an active war
theatre.1
The preceding comments reveal that the indignant French reaction to
Ciano's speech of 30 November, in which Italy demanded Mediter-
ranean concessions from France, was a foregone conclusion. The
specific Italian claims on Tunis, Corsica, Nice and Djibouti did not force
a reassessment of France's Italian policies, as many historians have
claimed,2 but facilitated a shift that most French statesmen and strat-
egists had already seriously considered. The remarks and conclusions on
Italy and the Mediterranean from the December CPDN meeting re-
flected exactly those that Aubert had made and reached weeks before.3
The timing of Daladier's public visit to Tunis in January I939 and the
simultaneous French reinforcement of Tunisia and Djibouti may have
been inspired by the Italian propaganda campaign and the movement of
Italy's Ethiopian troops to the border of French Somaliland, but Dala-
dier's antipathy for Italy was not generated by the events of November-
December I938.
Where thoughts in Paris about Italy did change as a result of Ciano's
tirade was at the Foreign Ministry. Both Henri Hoppenot, Director of
the Quai's European department, and Charles Rochat, Adjunct Direc-
tor of Political and Commercial Affairs at the Quai, among others,
believed that Italy's calls for French concessions represented a new and
particularly menacing step for Fascist foreign policy.4 Although Leger's
unforgiving opinion of Mussolini and Ciano gained important support
at the Quai as a result of Italy's campaign against France, Bonnet and
Franqois-Poncet continued to preach moderation and patience with
Italy; they remained convinced that Italy eschewed armed conflict and
only pursued concessions through negotiation because of her inferiority
complex vis-a-vis Germany.5 But this position lost further credibility
when the Foreign Minister - motivated by the fall of Barcelona at the
end of January I939 - sent Paul Baudouin, director of the Bank of
Indo-China, on a secret mission to Rome to listen to Italian claims and to
offer certain non-territorial concessions. After the Italians rejected the
i. SHM, IBB2, I 5,N. i2o EMG.3,DarlantoCommanders-in-Chiefs, 26Nov. 1938; SHM, IBB2,
i28, N. 1 I22 EMG.3/OP and N. 1123 EMG.3/OP, Darlan to Commanders-in-Chiefs, 26 Nov. 1938.
2. For example, see Shorrock, From Ally to Enemy, pp. 24-5 1; Young, In Command of France,
pp. z26-3I; idem, 'The Aftermath of Munich: The Course of French Diplomacy, October I938 to
March I939', French Historical Studies viii (I973), 305-22; Adamthwaite, France and the Coming, pp.
25 5-6 i; Duroselle, La decadence, pp. 3 89-96.
3. SHAT, 2N, 25, 3, Procis-verbal du seance de la CPDN, 5 Dec. 1938.
4. A[rchives] N[ationales, Paris], serie 496AP, volume I I, dossier Dr2, sous-dossier sdra, Hoppenot
note, Revendications italiennes, 5 Dec. 1938; MAE, P4o, Rochat, 23, Visees italiennes sur la Tunisia,
Rochat to Bonnet, 9 Dec. 1938.
5. MAE, Eur 30-40, Italie, 309, N. 3565-77, Francois-Poncet to Bonnet, 3 Dec. 1938; MAE, Eur
30-40, Italie, 309, N. 566, Francois-Poncet to Bonnet, 3 Dec. I938; MAE, P4o, Daladier, 2, N. 3688-99,
Bonnet to Corbin, 27 Dec. I938.
EHR Feb. 97
APPEASEMENT OF ITALY, 193 7-9 87
I997
French appeal and betrayed the mission's secrecy, Daladier abruptly
halted these diplomatic efforts.1
In a note circulated within his government on the eve of the Cham-
berlain visit to Rome, Daladier reiterated his desire for Anglo-French
defensive co-operation against Germany on the continent and offensive
co-operation against Italy in the Mediterranean.2 The Premier, however,
did not define exactly what this 'offensive' strategy should entail, paving
the way for a variety of interpretations by France's military planners.
When the Chiefs met in early January, Darlan announced that the
Marine, in the event of an Italian attack on Djibouti, was prepared to
wreak havoc on Italian maritime communications to Libya and could
swiftly and effectively bombard La Spezia, Naples and Pantelleria. With
help from the British, the Marine could also neutralize Italian bases in
the Dodecanese. The Naval Chief of Staff proposed that this action
occur simultaneously with air and ground assaults on Tripoli and Italy's
north-western frontier. There was almost universal resistance to Dar-
lan's aggressive plans. Vuillemin thought that the bombing of Italian
towns should only be in response to Italian bombing of metropolitan
France. General Auguste Nogues, the Army's Commander-in-Chief in
North Africa, insisted that at least thirty-five days of preparation were
needed after hostilities erupted before the Army could carry out an
attack on Tripoli. And Gamelin, who believed that a simultaneous
mobilization in North Africa and the Alps was impossible because of the
Army's responsibilities on the western front suggested that France
instead concentrate on passive forms of aggression, such as inciting
domestic political unrest in Italy and 'asphyxiating' Italy in the Mediter-
ranean by closing Suez and Gibraltar.3
The leaders of the French Army and Air Force had played a very high
card: Germany. The strength and menace of the German Wehrmacht
precluded any weakening of French defences in the north-east. More-
over, the Nazis would probably exploit the opportunity provided by a
French offensive against Italy to attack continental France earlier than
Germany otherwise would. Although most politicians in Paris found
such arguments quite compelling, Darlan refused to back down in the
face of the French military's 'tunnel vision' vis-a-vis Germany. He and
the Section d'Etudes presented a series of impassioned memoranda that
attempted to show that a short-term offensive against Italy was consis-
tent with, and in fact would contribute to, the long-term defeat of
Germany. 'The German volonte does not directly threaten any of our
interests. The Italian volonte, on the other hand, threatens our patri-
i. Adamthwaite, France and the Coming, pp. 26o-i; Duroselle, La decadence, pp. 393-4; Shorrock,
From Ally to Enemy, pp. 252-5.
2. MAE, P40, Daladier, 3, Daladier note, Aide a demander la Grande-Bretagne dans le cas oiu nous
aurions a faire face a une coalition germano-italienne, I Jan. 1939.
3. SHAT, 2N, 225, iDN3, reunion des Chefs d'EMG, i i Jan. I939.
EHR Feb. 97
mony and our essential interests. Above all we must conserve our
Empire; the rest is secondary'.1
This serious strategic disagreement in France on a proper approach to
the Mediterranean theatre was undoubtedly a major contributory factor
to the three-week delay in responding to Britain's 3 February proposal
for a formal alliance. In fact, on the same day that the French finally
accepted the British invitation for joint staff conversations that would
envisage a war against both Italy and Germany, Daladier called a meet-
ing of the CPDN to hear arguments for and against an offensive
Mediterranean strategy. Bonnet, who was clearly marginalized in the
debate over strategy, complained that contemplating any sort of ag-
gressive policy risked provoking an unnecessary war in the Mediter-
ranean. Gamelin repeated his preference for an indirect attack on Italian
trade and the fascist regime.
Darlan's offensive perspective had the support of new intelligence
that indicated Italy had increased the size of her Libyan garrison from
66,ooo soldiers at the beginning of January to approximately 8 5,000 less
than two months later. More than 7,000 tons of war materiel had also
been sent to Libya over the same period. In contrast, after reinforce-
ments in late February, France still had only 42,000 men under arms in
Tunisia and Britain only 28,000 in Egypt. Italy also possessed a signifi-
cant air-force advantage in North Africa: there were I 20 modern planes
in Libya and another I 5 in southern Italy and Sardinia, while France
and Britain each had fewer than o5 modern aircraft in North Africa.2
Moreover, at the Gran Consiglio del Fascismo in early February, Mus-
solini had demanded that Italy escape from her Mediterranean jail. 'The
bars of this prison are Corsica, Tunisia, Malta and Cyprus: the guards of
this prison are Gibraltar and Suez.' The fundamental aim of Italian
foreign policy must be 'to break the bars of this prison and ... march to
the ocean'.3 The Premier found both the military statistics from North
Africa and the news about the Gran Consiglio chilling and worthy of
increased vigilance of Italy, but not cause for a pre-emptive French
strike against Italy. Recognizing that the recent fall of Catalonia meant
certain victory for Franco and his Axis supporters, Daladier worried
that an attack on the Italian peninsula would elicit a Spanish attack on
France across the Pyrenees. Therefore, the Premier compromised be-
tween the Darlan and Gamelin strategies, proposing that France take an
offensive against Libya if Italy initiated operations against either Tunisia
I. SHM, IBB2, 208, L'Angleterre et la France peuvent-elles soutenir un conflit contre l'Allemagne et
l'Italie?, 24 Jan. I939.
2. AN, 496AP, I2, Dr2, sdrb, EMA-2zme bureau, Note sur les effectifs en Libye et en Tunisie, 16
Feb. I939; SHAT, 5N, 579, 3, Note sur la situation des forces italiennes en Libye et sur celle des forces
franco-britanniques en Tunisie et en Egypte, 22 Feb. 1939.
3. N[ational] A[rchives, Washington, DC], microfilm T586, reel 405, frame 0000oooo39-46, Relazione
per il Gran Consiglio, 5 Feb. I939; Brian R. Sullivan, 'The Italian Armed Forces, 1918-1940', Military
Effectiveness, Vol. II, p. I80.
EHR Feb. 97
APPEASEMENT OF ITALY, 9 3 7-9 89
I997
or Djibouti. No plans for attacking the Italian metropolis were
approved.1
The Naval Staff accepted this revision of its strategy the following
week in a note that outlined the Marine's endorsement of a limited allied
Mediterranean offensive: the Marine would defend French communi-
cations and troop transports across the Mediterranean; the Marine
would carry out attacks on Italian bases in the eastern Mediterranean
and the Red Sea; the Marine would sever enemy communications from
Italy to Libya and Ethiopia; and - conditions permitting - the Marine
would assist in attacking Italian territories in North Africa and the
outre-mer. The Naval Staff acknowledged that successful completion of
these tasks would depend on British co-operation.2 Gamelin then for-
mulated France's 'general strategic concept for war', which was pre-
sented to the British before the staff talks began at the end of March.
In a Franco-British conflict against Germany and Italy, it is against Italy that
the first Franco-British offensive efforts must be made. We will cover our-
selves on the German side and we can envisage certain diversionary offensives
to enhance the security of the eastern allied powers (Poland and Russia). We
must therefore: isolate the Italian-German coalition by the constitution of a
solid land front and by the interruption of maritime communications; if
possible, take the offensive against Italy simultaneously in the Alps, Libya and
Italian eastern Africa.
With Daladier's approval of this general strategic concept on 9 March, a
French war strategy acceptable to both Darlan and Gamelin had been
formulated.3 The next step for the French was to discuss their plans with
their new allies across the Channel.
Many historians describe the Allied war planning that took place during
the spring and summer of I939 as directed and dictated by the British
and accepted and abided by the French.4 While this may be true for the
issue of dispatching a British expeditionary force to the continent, it
cannot withstand the documentary evidence available on planning for a
Mediterranean war. As has already been shown, the French arrived in
London on 29 March for the start of staff talks prepared for and
committed to a general Mediterranean policy that had support at both
political and military levels in Paris. In contrast, Britain began these
negotiations without an established Mediterranean policy. The British
I. SHAT, 2N, 25, 3, Proces-verbal du s6ance de la CPDN, 24 Feb. 1939.
2. SHAT, 2N, 228, I, ttat-Major General de la Marine, Note sur la collaboration Franco-Britan-
nique, 2 March 1939.
3. SHAT, 5N, 579, 2, N. 424/DN.3, Gamelin to Daladier, 6 March 1939; SHAT, SN, 579, 2, N.
225/DN, 9 March 1939. Original emphasis.
4. Some examples include I.S.O. Playfair, The Mediterranean and the Middle East, Vol. I: The Early
Successes Against Italy (London, I954), pp. 23-38; Michael Howard, The Continental Commitment
(London, 1972), pp. 121-46; Brian Bond, British Military Policy between Two World Wars (Oxford,
1980), pp. 304-36; Donald Cameron Watt, How War Came: The Immediate Origins of the Second
World War, I938-39 (New York, 1989), pp. I64-5, 236-7; Corelli Barnett, The Collapse of British
Power (Atlantic Highlands, NJ, 1972), pp. 562-4.
EHR Feb. 97
90
had spent the month of March debating an appropriate Mediterranean
strategy, attempting to reconcile the position of Admiral Roger Back-
house, First Sea Lord and Naval Chief of Staff, in favour of a pre-
emptive aero-naval attack on the north-west coast of Italy, and that of
the Foreign Office in support of a passive Mediterranean policy that
would allow the fleet to be sent to the Far East. This debate was so
contentious that Admiral Sir Ernle Chatfield, Minister for the Coor-
dination of Defence and the chairman of the committee that the govern-
ment established specifically to resolve this conflict, the Strategic
Appreciation Subcommittee (SAC), decided that Britain had to consider
the French position before reaching a definitive conclusion on what to
do in the event of a Mediterranean war.1 As a result, the French set the
agenda and profoundly influenced the development of Allied strategy in
the Mediterranean.
One of the first subjects discussed was the problem of a hostile Italy.
Before the talks began, General Lelong, the French military attache in
London and the head of the French delegation, presented not only
France's policy and strategy for the Mediterranean, but also the specific
French proposal for early Allied operations against Italy. Given the
narrowness of the mountain belt between the Franco-Italian frontier
and the Po Valley, the overwhelming superiority of the Italian Air Force
and the demands for French defence on the western front, the French
argued that an attack on continental Italy was initially impossible. The
French, who reminded the British of the recent seizure by Italian forces
of the Mediterranean port of Alicante, envisaged an Allied offensive
against Libya from both Tunisia and Egypt and a simultaneous attack on
Italian sea communications in the central Mediterranean: 'It could be
rapidly launched and would require relatively few forces. It makes it
possible for Italy to be attacked on her most vulnerable front. Success
would have important repercussions, both in regard to control of the
Mediterranean basin, and in regard to the subsequent attitude of Italy in
the German-Italian alliance.' Lelong cited Britain's weak defences in
Egypt, Italy's ioo,ooo-man Libyan garrison, Egypt's access to Suez and
Italy's designs on the eastern Mediterranean as evidence to bolster the
French position.2
Britain's response was to downplay the apparent Italian threat. Ad-
miralty Planning Director Captain V. H. Danckwerts, the head of the
i. For the Admiralty's position before the negotiations, see PRO, CAB I6/209, SAC 4: The
Dispatch of a Fleet to the Far East, 28 Feb. I939; PRO, ADM I/9900, PD 07516/39, Backhouse to
Cunningham and Danckwerts, 2 March 1939. For opposition within the Foreign Office to this strategy,
see PRO, FO 37I/23981, W 3784/108/50; PRO, FO 37I/2398 , W 4683/o108/50; PRO, FO 37I/23544,
F I338/47I/6I; PRO, FO 371/238i6, RI2I3/399/22; PRO, FO 371/23793, RI379/7/22. For the SAC
meetings, see PRO, CAB I6/209, SAC ist meeting, i March I939; PRO, CAB I6/209, SAC 2nd
meeting, I 3 March 1939. For Chatfield's decision to defer any decision on Mediterranean strategy until
meeting with the French, see PRO, CAB 21/I426, COS 863(JP), 27 March 1939.
2. SHM, iBB2, i83, i, DF3: Apercu General d'une Action Offensive contre l'Italie, 3 March 1939;
English translation appears in PRO, CAB 29/160, AFC(J)23. For French intelligence on Italy's Libyan
garrison, see SHM, 2BB7, L5, N. 30, deLafond to Deuxieme Bureau, 3 March I939.
EHR Feb. 97
APPEASEMENT OF ITALY, I 93 7-9~ 91
I997
British delegation and an opponent of any sort of offensive Mediter-
ranean strategy, explained that without bases in the Indian and Atlantic
oceans, Italy could not interdict Allied trade diverted to shipping routes
outside the Mediterranean. Italy's weak forces and exposed communi-
cations in Libya made an Italian attack on Egypt and Suez difficult, if
not impossible. As Danckwert's colleague Brigadier Kennedy explained
to Lelong, 'we must remember, too, that the enemy in this case [are] only
the Italians'. And given the poor state of Malta's anti-air defences, the
Allies lacked a dependable base from which to launch offensive action
against North Africa. Thus, Britain had no plans to augment its existing
military position in Egypt. Instead of attacking Italy, Danckwerts and
Kennedy suggested that the Allies initially aim to secure Allied sea
communications and to interrupt Italian lines to Tripoli and Benghazi.
This could best be achieved by France concentrating the Marine in the
western Mediterranean while the British operated a naval force in the
eastern basin. Once her sea communications were secure, France alone
would be in a position to take some offensive measures against Italy's
western seaboard.1
On two essential considerations for joint Mediterranean planning -
reinforcements for Egypt and an offensive against Libya - the French
perspective inspired a serious reassessment in London. Despite what
Danckwerts had told Lelong, French concerns about Britain's weak
position in the Middle East resulted in a refortification of Egypt follow-
ing the first round of joint staff talks. The SAC in early April approved a
recommendation by the Chiefs of Staff that the Royal Air Force im-
mediately send one additional fighter and one additional bomber squad-
ron to Egypt, increasing the number of British fighters there from 42 to
72 and bombers from 72 to 84. One month later the CID expanded the
Middle Eastern command from one infantry brigade to a colonial
division. And by July, Britain had ordered one brigade of infantry with
artillery and ancillary troops from Palestine and four battalions from
India to bolster British troops in Egypt.2
At the same time, and again as a result of learning French views on the
subject, the British began abandoning the Backhouse conception of an
aero-naval bombardment of the north-western coast of Italy and began
considering an attack directed against Libya. In early April, Sir Cyril
Newall, Chief of the Air Staff, raised strong objections to Backhouse's
theory that bombing the Italian peninsula could quickly knock Italy out
of the war, especially if the French were reluctant to participate in such
I. PRO, AIR 9/Io4, AFC(J)5th Minutes, 31 March I939. Backhouse was unable to ensure that his
views were presented at the staff talks because he had fallen ill with influenza in March and was forced to
relinquish his duties gradually during April. Admiral Pound replaced him in May.
2. PRO, CAB 5 3/46, COS 8 5 8: Proposals for increases in the strength of the RAF overseas, 8 March
1939; PRO, CAB 6/209, SAC I I: Proposal for increases in the strength of the RAF overseas, 3 Apr.
1939; PRO, CAB I6/209, SAC 4th meeting, 6 Apr. 1939; PRO, CAB 2/8, CID 355th meeting, 2 May
1939; PRO, CAB 2/9, CID 364th meeting, 6 July 1939; PRO, CAB 2I/582, Newall to Gort, 31 July
I939.
EHR Feb. 97
an action. Chatfield agreed that French intentions in the Mediterranean
region significantly affected British planning there. The following week
the Chiefs conceded that they were so intrigued by French planning for
war in North Africa that they were willing to reconsider the idea: 'We
are not satisfied that the possibilities of offensive action against the
Italians in Libya have been fully investigated ... We propose, therefore,
to instruct the UK delegation to press the French delegation further on
this point, particularly in view of the desirability of making joint plans
for operations from Tunisia and Egypt.' By July, the British Chiefs had
adopted France's Mediterranean strategy, which aimed to make Italy's
position in Libya and Ethiopia untenable, but explained that initially
only France could carry out the plan.1
Where the British did not succumb to French pressure was on the
issue of defending the Far East. In fact, during the month of April, the
British became more resolute in their determination to support their
eastern Empire with a naval reinforcement despite French objections.
Under pressure from the French to define the size and timing of a fleet
redistribution out of the eastern Mediterranean, the SAC concluded
'there are so many variable factors which cannot be assessed' that
specific answers cannot be provided to France. However, the French
delegation was to be informed categorically that 'in the event of Japan
entering the war, it was the intention of the British government to send a
fleet to the Far East'.2 As a result, Danckwerts explained to Admiral
Odend'hal, the French naval representative for the second round of
joint staff talks, that 'the fundamental idea underlying British Imperial
Defence was to maintain the security of the British isles on the one hand
and Singapore on the other'. After expressing Britain's doubts that the
Allies could achieve decisive results against Italy before it became
necessary to send a British fleet to the Far East, Danckwerts asked if
France, reinforced in the western basin, was prepared to exercise control
over the entire Mediterranean. A stunned Odend'hal could only re-
spond that 'it was better to give up temporarily the position in the Far
East than to lose control of the eastern Mediterranean ... although the
loss of Singapore would certainly be a severe blow, the loss of war in
Europe would be infinitely more disastrous'. The official French reac-
tion the following month suggested that the Allies 'adopt provisionally
in the Far East a defensive attitude'. Since the French naval forces alone
were insufficient to prevent the reinforcement of Italian effectives in
Libya, much less to control the shipping lanes in the Mediterranean, 'a
diminution of British naval forces in the eastern Mediterranean would
I. PRO,CAB I6/209,SAC4thmeeting, 6Apr. I939;PRO,CAB i6/209,SAC r7(alsoCOS 877), 13
Apr. i939; PRO, CAB 53/1I, COS 29oth meeting, I9 Apr. I939; PRO, CAB 53/II, COS 3o9th
meeting, I9 July 1939.
2. PRO, CAB I6/209, SAC I6 (also DP(P)48), 5 April I939; PRO, CAB 16/209, SAC 6th meeting,
17 Apr. I939; SHM, TTA, 5, EMG/o, Resume de la seance du 3 Mars I939 apres- midi i l'Amiraute, 3
March I939; SHM, TTA, 5, EMG/o, Compte-rendu des conversations d'Etat-Major, Bourrague to
Darlan, 4 Apr. 1939; SHM, IBB2, 183, i, N. 56/S, Lelong to Gamelin, 5 Apr. I939.
EHR Feb. 97
APPEASEMENT OF ITALY, I 93 7-9~
I997 93
allow Italy freedom of movement in that basin and would have con-
siderable moral repercussions on the Balkans, Turkey and the Arab
world'.'
French indignation about Britain's Far Eastern priority derived from
a balance of naval power in the Mediterranean. Britain and France had
recently agreed that the Royal Navy would station as many as four of its
modern 3I,ooo-ton battleships at Malta and Alexandria. This British
Mediterranean concentration meant that the Marine only had to operate
two of its World War I-generation 22,5oo-ton battleships from Toulon
and could establish with its modern capital ships a Force de frappe at
Brest to protect the Atlantic shipping lanes from German raiders. But if
the Royal Navy evacuated the eastern Mediterranean for the Far East,
France alone would be left to deal with Italy's two 27,ooo-ton battle-
ships - vessels that had already undergone extensive gun refitting. And
by July I940 Italy would add two new 42,ooo-ton battleships and two
additional reconditioned battleships to its Mediterranean presence.
Even if France moved the entire Force defrappe into the Mediterranean,
Italy would still maintain a twenty-five per cent capital-ship advantage
over France.2 With this unsettling Franco-Italian naval balance in mind,
Darlan demanded and received a supplemental naval bill that committed
the government to replace immediately all those ships forced into
retirement over the next three years, adding more than I26,000 tons to
the programme adopted in I938. Darlan also obtained funding in April
I939 for a fleet of minelayers, minesweepers and floating docks specifi-
cally to counter the Italian submarine threat and to guarantee free access
to France's principal ports in the Mediterranean.3
The quickening pace of crisis in European diplomacy during March
and April I939 influenced and largely overshadowed these Anglo-
French discussions on the Mediterranean and the Far East. Two weeks
after the Prague coup, on 31 March, Chamberlain announced Britain's
guarantee of Polish independence. One week later, despite assurances
from Mussolini to the contrary, Italian forces shelled Durazzo and
Valona and invaded Albania. Greek intelligence then informed the
I. SHM, TTA, 5, EMG/o, N. CL 8, Odend'hal to Daladier, 8 May I939; SHM, TTA, 5, EMG/o,
Odend'hal to Daladier, 29 Apr. I939; PRO, AIR 9/104, AFC(J)iith Minutes, 25 Apr. I939; SHM,
IBB2, 183, 2, DFi6; Note de la delegation francaise sur les consequences d'une intervention Japonaise,
12 May I939.
2. The Marine's Section d'ltudes calculated that as of I July I940, with the entrance into service of
Vittorio Veneto, Littorio, Duilio and Doria, Italy would have I75,000 tons of capital ships in the
Mediterranean. With none of its four battleships under construction entering service until January
I94I and the retirement of Courbet scheduled for January I940, France would have an entire
capital-ship fleet of only 140,000 tons. SHM, iBB2, 220, 1/2, Comparison des tonnages en service, 15
Feb. I938; SHM, IBB2, 220, 3/4, Balance des forces navales normalement stationnees en M6diterra-
neen, I 5 Feb. I939.
3. The Marine's three-year shipbuilding plan now anticipated an overall fleet of 742, I07 tons by Jan.
1943. SHM, IBB2, 220, 4, Les constructions navales, 2I March 1939; SHM, IBB2, 222, 5/5, Credits
supplementaires en I939, 28 March I939; SHM, IBB2, 222, 5/5, Decret-lois, 28 March I939; SHM,
iBB2, 220, 3/4, Tranche de remplacement I940, 3 Apr. I930; SHM, IBB2, 220, 3/4, Darlan note,
Necessite d'une nouvelle tranche, 4 Apr. I939. The Marine's I939 budget of 10,493 million francs
EHR Feb. 97
British and the French that it anticipated an imminent Italian attack on
Corfu, to be followed by Italian action against Greece - plans that Italy
in the spring of I939 had, in fact, made. Following his conquest of
Albania, Mussolini implemented a large-scale road-building pro-
gramme to improve both Italy's acquisition of important Albanian
natural resources - especially copper, chromium, petroleum and iron
ore - and her overland access to Greece. Less than 15o kilometres from
Salonika, the Italians also established a large Army and Air Force
garrison to secure the total dependence of the Balkan states on the Axis.1
British and French reactions to the Albanian coup and the Corfu
threat were in stark contrast to one another. Daladier, who had earlier in
the month unsuccessfully requested an Anglo-French naval concen-
tration in the Mediterranean, ordered his service chiefs to take a 'variety
of indispensable precautionary measures'. Most importantly, Daladier
insisted that Darlan bring the entire Marine into or in immediate prox-
imity to the Mediterranean. The Premier explained that 'it is in the
Mediterranean where we must set to work, so that we are prepared to act
with maximum force against Italy initially'.2 Two days later the French
Chiefs received intelligence from a previously reliable source that on 20
April Germany and Italy would launch simultaneous offensives stretch-
ing from eastern Europe to the Middle East. Consequently, the French
Army and Air Force hurriedly finalized their plans for a Mediterranean
war and, by 14 April, the leadership of all three French services was
prepared for operations against Italy. In the hope that France and Britain
could respond to this news in a coordinated fashion, Daladier passed on
this information to the British.3
Chamberlain's government had no intention of starting a war over
events in the Balkans. The attack on Albania upset Chamberlain not
because it represented an Italian rejection of the Easter Accords or a
revision of the Mediterranean status quo but because Mussolini sought
international recognition from the act: 'What I had hoped ... was that
Musso[lini] would so present his camp as to make it look like an agreed
arrangement and thus raise as little as possible questions of European
increased 71 per cent over the 1938 budget of 6, 5 million francs. For annual military expenditure
statistics, see Frankenstein, Le prix du rearmement francais , p. 303; Doughty, 'The French Armed
Forces', p. 5o.
I. D[ocuments on]B[ritish]F[oreign]P[olicy, 919-39], series 3, volume v, nos. 97 and Ioi; DDF, 2,
xv, no. 332; PRO, CAB 53/I I,COS 288th meeting, 9 Apr. 1939; NA, T586, 449, 026903-07, Grandi to
Mussolini, 7 Apr. I939; MacGregor Knox, Mussolini Unleashed: Politics and Strategy in Fascist Italy's
Last War (Cambridge, 1982), pp. 40-2.
2. AN, 496AP, I i, Dr5, sdra, Proces-verbal des decisions prises au cours de la conference tendu au
Ministeres de la Guerre, 9 Apr. I939; C[hurchill] C[ollege] A[rchives, University of Cambridge,
Cambridge], Sir Eric Phipps papers, volume i, file 22, Phipps to Halifax, i Apr. 1939.
3. The same intelligence source had accurately predicted that German forces would enter Prague at
9:00 a.m. on 15 March I939. SHAT, 2N, 225, CSDN, R6union des Chefs d'EMG, iI Apr. I939;
S[ervice] H[istorique de l']A[rmee de l']A[ir, Vincennes], serie 2B, volume o04, N. 932 3-OS/EMAA,
Instruction particuliere sur l'execution des operations aeriennes initiales contre l'Italie, 14 Apr. 1939;
SHAT, 2N, 224, i, N. 707/DN.3, Gamelin to Daladier, I4 Apr. 1939; SHAA, 2B, I04, N. 1246
3-OS/EMAA, Vuillemin to Campinchi, 1 May 1939; PRO, FO 371/23740, R 2527/661/67, Phipps to
Halifax, No. I56, 9 Apr. I939.
EHR Feb. 97
I997 APPEASEMENT OF ITALY, I93 7-9
95
significance'.1 The political ramifications of the Albanian episode,
however, compelled the British and the French to offer guarantees to
Greece and Romania and to seek an alliance with Turkey. Publicly, the
guarantees were to demonstrate British determination to resist further
Axis aggression in eastern Europe and the eastern Mediterranean; in
reality, the guarantees did not reflect a British willingness, or even
readiness, to embark on a Mediterranean war. Foreign Secretary Lord
Halifax explained that the guarantees were designed to reinforce the
Easter Accords - which Britain refused to denounce despite the Italian
attack on Albania - by rallying Greek and Turkish advocacy to the
principle of maintaining the Mediterranean status quo. Moreover, the
Chiefs of Staffs claimed that Britain could not defend the long frontiers
of Greece and, in the event that Italy attacked Greece, Britain could not
offer anything more than material support: Britain should only offer the
guarantee if the Greeks were prepared to defend themselves.2 In con-
trast to the French forces, none of the British services took steps in April
to prepare themselves for a war in the Mediterranean.
The British decision to encourage France to make colonial con-
cessions to Italy provides additional evidence that Britain's leaders
worked in April to prolong Mediterranean peace, not to prepare for a
Mediterranean war. Facing resistance within their own government,
Fran9ois-Poncet and Bonnet had independently and repeatedly told the
Earl of Perth, the British Ambassador in Rome, and Sir Eric Phipps, the
British Ambassador in Paris, that 'the time is now right' for France to
begin negotiating in earnest with the Italians. The French diplomats
begged for Britain to place official, high-level pressure on Daladier to
settle Italian claims.3 Halifax presented the Bonnet/Franoois-Poncet
case to the Cabinet, arguing that Britain should persuade France that
'reasonable' concessions to Italy were appropriate and 'could not poss-
ibly be interpreted as proof of weakness'. Chamberlain, who agreed that
'the French were not doing their share in smoothing out their difficulties
with the Italians', directed Halifax and Phipps to 'urge these and any
other considerations that may occur to you on the French government
and do your utmost to induce them to reestablish contact with the
Italians'. Daladier promptly rejected Phipps' appeal because he feared 'a
trap laid purposely by Italian gangsters to destroy the wonderful feel-
ings of loyalty that now existed all over North Africa and even in Syria
towards France'. Despite this setback, Chamberlain remained confident
that Italy's demands on the French 'aren't too formidable' and that
i. PRO, FO 37I/23712, R 2564/1335/90, Notes of a conference of ministers held at io Downing
Street, 8 Apr. 1939; B[irmingham] U[niversity] L[ibrary, Birmingham], N[eville] C[hamberlain papers]
I8/I/1093, Neville to Ida, 9 Apr. 1939.
2. PRO, CAB53/47, COS 873(JP): Alliance with Turkey and Greece, I Apr. 1939; PRO, CAB
23/98, CP 19(39), Cabinet meeting, Io Apr. 1939; PRO, CAB 27/624, Foreign Policy Committee 42nd
meeting, i Apr. 1939; PRO, CAB 23/98, Cab. 20(39), Cabinet meeting, 13 Apr. I939.
3. AN, 496AP, 2, Dr3, sdrc, N. 1559-60, Francois-Poncet to Bonnet, 5 Apr. I939; AN, 462AP, 23,
Francois-Poncet to Bonnet, I9 Apr. 1939; DBFP, 3, v, nos. I94, 214, 226, 228.
EHR Feb. 97
96
his Mediterranean appeasement policy was correct: 'We shall have to
consider carefully what to do next, but my own inclination is to ap-
proach Musso[lini] again.'1
While the Anglo-French staff talks on the Mediterranean theatre pro-
vided an opportunity for British strategy to coalesce around a single
policy, they disrupted French unanimity on Mediterranean strategy and
induced an atmosphere of panic in Paris. No longer did the French
Chiefs and statesmen work together to create a single defensible French
strategic position. Instead, as the Danzig crisis unfolded and war became
more imminent, contradictory policy papers were dispatched to
London in a frantic attempt to find a viable and energetic Allied
Mediterranean strategy. This sudden deviation from the inter-service
coordination and co-operation that existed in early I939 reflects the
level of extreme anxiety that had consumed French officials by the
summer of I939.
The first divisive issue for the French was Italian neutrality. Danck-
werts' argument in May that a neutral Italy would enable Britain to send
a fleet of seven or eight capital ships to the Far East without jeopar-
dizing Britain's political responsibilities in the eastern Mediterranean
considerably startled French planners. All inter-allied discussions thus
far had focused on how Britain and France would respond to a hostile
Italy. Suddenly, the British had implied that such an eventuality was still
open to question. For the French Army and Air Force - dreading, in the
light of Franco's victory, the possibility of facing Germany, Italy and
Spain simultaneously - the British suggestion came as welcome relief
from a scenario that would have stretched resources far beyond ca-
pacity. Both Vuillemin and Gamelin admitted that a neutral Italy would
allow French forces to concentrate on the defence of the German
frontier and the provision of military assistance to Poland, Romania,
Greece and Turkey. The 'situation would be less disadvantageous and
the relation of forces less disproportionate if Italy were to remain
neutral at the beginning of the conflict'.2
Darlan's response to the question of Italian neutrality, however, was
considerably more circumspect and reasoned than those of the Army
and Air Force. The Naval Chief of Staff admitted that Italian neutrality
would be 'precious' if Italy 'openly disassociated herself from Ger-
many'. In that case, French maritime communications, the transport of
troops from North Africa to the metropolis and the continued avail-
i. PRO, CAB 23/98, Cab. 2 I(39), Cabinet meeting, I9 Apr. I939; PRO, FO 371/23794, R3077/7/22,
Halifax to Phipps, 20 Apr. 1939; MAE, P40, Leger, 12, Corbin to Leger, 9 May I939; PRO, FO
371/23795, R3i66/7/22, Phipps to Halifax, 22 Apr. I939; BUL, NC I8/I/I096, Neville to Hilda, 29
Apr. I939.
2. SHAT, 2N, 229, I, Note sur les consequences possibles d'une attitude initiale de neutralite de la
part de 1'Italie, 9 May I939; SHAT, 2N, 229, I, N. 937-DN.3, Gamelin to Darlan, N. 938-Dn.3,
Gamelin, to Vuillemin, io May 1939; SHAT, zN, 229, I, N. 1268 3.OS/EMAA, Vuillemin to Gamelin,
I5 May I939.
EHR Feb. 97
97
I997
ability of supplies by way of the Suez Canal would be easy to secure.
The Marine could concentrate almost exclusively on sinking German
raiders and submarines in the Atlantic and intercepting Germany's
sea-borne trade. However, Darlan insisted that all these advantages were
predicated on unequivocal Italian neutrality, a position that would be
difficult to achieve.
Italy, in declaring neutrality, may hope to put our vigilance to sleep and
induce us to denude the Mediterranean so that she might attack us suddenly
under more favourable conditions. If there were any presumption that this
was the Italian calculation, we would have to renounce completely any
advantageous redeployment of forces and then the benefit resulting from
Italian neutrality would be more apparent than real.
In other words, if Italy supported the German war effort without
declaring belligerence, or if France and Britain had to keep their forces in
the Mediterranean on the chance that Italy might eventually join the
war, there was no value in Italian neutrality.1
In composing France's official reply, Gamelin offered a rather confus-
ing French opinion on the subject. Perhaps in the interest of time,
Gamelin chose not to discuss the subject with France's ministers or even
at a meeting of the French Chiefs. Conscientious about fairly repre-
senting all the French services, though obviously uncomfortable with
demonstrating a definitive French position on the subject, Gamelin used
Darlan's words of caution at the beginning of his note but concluded
with those of the Army:
From the coalition point of view, it will always be a question, whether in the
West or in the East, of organizing at the outset long and solid fronts facing
Germany, which will compel the enemy to deploy the greatest possible
number of his forces ... Italian neutrality would permit the provision of men
and materiel for these fronts from the outset of a war and would facilitate the
constitution of the large reserves which would have to be collected before
undertaking a general offensive.2
In its entirety, the statement presented an ambiguous French opinion
about Italian neutrality. But the British, especially those in the Admir-
alty, placed emphasis on its encouraging conclusion. Since the French
recognized the benefit of Italian neutrality, they could be persuaded to
adopt a more conciliatory position toward Italy. Although the Chiefs of
Staff had authorized local commanders in North Africa, the Middle East
and the Red Sea to discuss with their French counterparts operational
directives for rendering Italy's position in Libya, and eventually in
Abyssinia, untenable,3 the Admiralty was simultaneously undermining
I. SHM, TTA, I4, Mai, N. 620 EMG-3, Darlan to Gamelin, 17 May 1939.
2. SHAT, 2N, 228, 3, DF23: Note sur les consequences de la neutralite eventuelle de l'Italie, 20 May
I939; English translation in PRO, CAB 29/I60, AFC(J)76, 25 May 1939.
3. PRO, CAB 53/I I, COS 29oth meeting, I9 April I939; PRO, AIR 9/ 17, Notes on discussion with
French General Staff at Rabat, 6 May I939; SHAA, 2B, 107, IIIB, N. 339/SA, Nogues to Gamelin and
Daladier, 7 May 1939; PRO, W[ar] O[ffice files] 106/2029, Report on the conference held at Aden, 3
EHR Feb. 97
the entire concept of a joint Mediterranean offensive. In his last major
dispatch from the Mediterranean before assuming his duty as the new
First Sea Lord, Admiral Dudley Pound argued that the strength of
Italian air power and the corresponding inadequacy of British anti-air
defences in the Mediterranean precluded any offensive allied action in
North or East Africa. Pound insisted that even a sea-based offensive
against Italy would have devastating consequences. The preponderance
of Italian submarines and aircraft, the vulnerability of Malta and the
weakness of the French Air Force all indicated that the Royal Navy
'shall undoubtedly be subject to attrition to a much greater extent than
the Italian [Navy]'.1
This defensive tendency in British strategic thinking had support in
London's political circles, where it was still widely held that Italy's aims
were limited and reasonable, and that Mussolini had an important
moderating influence on Hitler. If Italian colonial claims were met, the
Fascists would persuade the Nazis to seek territorial revisions peace-
fully. Despite the consummation of an Italian-German military alliance
in May and Daladier's promise that France had no intention 'to yield to
[Italy's] campaign of violence and blackmail', the Foreign Office urged
that Britain increase pressure on France to begin discussions with Italy
immediately. Chamberlain, who was now convinced that Leger
remained the only 'obstacle' in Paris to Franco-Italian rapprochement
and general European appeasement, approved this recommendation.
Phipps was directed to reiterate Britain's desire for a Franco-Italian
reconciliation, while Sir Percy Loraine, the new British Ambassador in
Rome, was allowed to inform Ciano that Britain was suggesting that
Paris make concessions.2
Another inter-service conflict in France was provoked by one more
prescient intelligence report from Athens in May that claimed the
Italians planned to launch operations from Italy's o9,ooo-man Albanian
garrison into Macedonia and Greece, with Crete, Corfu, Salonika and
Thrace as their objectives. Only a week earlier Ciano had admitted that
'the Duce is thinking more and more about jumping on [saltare addosso]
Greece at the first opportunity'.3 Combined with Italy's naval bases in
the Dodecanese, the new strategic positions in the Adriatic and Aegean
would establish indisputable Axis control of the Balkans and the Black
June I939; PRO, ADM 1/9898, Mo57I3/39, Report on the Anglo-French staff conference at Aden, 3
June I939; SHM, TTA, i6, N. 2-EM.Col, Compte-rendu de la conference tendue a Aden, 22 June 1939;
PRO, WO Io6/2030, JP 440: Franco-British Conference at Jerusalem on 2 June 1939, 29 June I939.
Also see Playfair, The Mediterranean and Middle East, 1.25-7.
I. PRO, ADM 16/3900, Mo4978/39, Pound to Stanhope, Io May I939.
2. MAE, P40, Rochat, i8, Notes prises au cours de l'entretien franco-brittanique entre Daladier,
Bonnet et Halifax, 20 may I939; PRO, FO 371/23795, R4278/77/22, Conversation regarding Italian
claims, 22 May 1939; PRO, FO 37I/23795, R4436/7/22, Loraine to Halifax, minutes by Noble,
Cadogan and Halifax, 23 May I939; BUL, NC I8/I/I I02, Neville to Ida, Io June 1939; DBFP, 3, v,
nos. 570, 593, 638, 650.
3. SHM, IBB2, I84, Balkans, Lahalle to Gaudin de Villaine, Ig May 1939; Ciano, Diario, 12 May
1939, pp. 296-7.
EHR Feb. 97
APPEASEMENT OF ITALY, 1937-9
I997 99
Sea, and Italian pre-eminence in the eastern Mediterranean. The inde-
pendence of France's new ally, Turkey, would be directly jeopardized.
The prospect of Britain abandoning the eastern Mediterranean in favour
of the Far East, which made Italian dominance in the former region
more likely, persuaded General Maxime Weygand, commander of the
French forces in the Levant, to recommend a preventative French
occupation of Salonika.1 Despite vehement opposition from the Marine,
which argued that reliable security of the communication and supply
line to Salonika could only be assured if Italy were definitively neutral,
Gamelin attached great significance to the idea of a Salonika expedition:
he agreed with Weygand that 'the French flag should be at Salonika' to
discourage Italy from contemplating action in the eastern Mediter-
ranean. Surprisingly, Gamelin believed that a proposal to send troops to
the Levant, even if it lacked an endorsement from both the Marine and
the French government, would generate a consensus for joint Anglo-
French action in the Mediterranean. Having received approval from
only the Army Staff, Gamelin suggested to Lord Gort, Chief of the
Imperial General Staff, that the Allies plan a mission to Salonika in the
early stages of war.2
France's Salonika plan, which was not taken seriously by the British,
was quickly eclipsed by the outbreak of crisis in China. On 14 June
Japanese soldiers and Chinese police under their direction blockaded
the British concession of Tientsin, prohibiting any person from leaving
and any goods except food from entering.3 After the Far Eastern depart-
ment of the Foreign Office demanded the immediate reinforcement of
British naval forces in the South China Sea, the Chiefs proposed dis-
patching seven capital ships to Singapore by mid-September.4 Although
the CID ultimately decided to withdraw British forces from Tientsin,
Britain reassured both Singapore and the dominions that the Far Eastern
commitment remained firm. Chamberlain, who speculated that war
would probably erupt in the Far East before Europe, then asked the
Chiefs to consider the strategic consequences of Italian neutrality.5 In
I. MAE, serie P[apiers d']A[gents] - A[rchives] P[rivees], sous-serie Massigli, volume 104, Rapport
du General Weygand sur sa mission a Ankara, 20 May I939; SHAT, 2N, 225, iDN3, N. 2242, Leger to
Gamelin and Daladier, 25 May i939.
2. SHM, iBB2, 2io, 5,N. 88 EMG-SE: Note sur l'interet d'une occupation preventive de Salonique,
2 June I939; SHAT, 2N, 225, iDN3, Reunion des Chefs d'EMG, 3 June I939; SHAT, 5N, 579, 9, N.
I I4i/DN.3, Gamelin to Daladier, 5 June I939; SHAT, 2N, 229, 2, Indications donnees par le General
Gamelin au cours des conversations franco-britanniques, 13 July I939.
3. For details on the Tientsin crisis, see Jennifer Yang, 'British Policy and Strategy in the Tientsin
Crisis I939' (Univ. of Oxford, M.Litt. thesis, 1994), pp. 97-173; Akira Iriye, The Origins of the Second
World War in Asia and the Pacific (New York, i987), pp. 76-8; R. John Pritchard, Far Eastern
Influences upon British Strategy towards the Great Powers, I937-39 (London, I979), pp. I54-68;
Christopher Thorne, Allies of a Kind: The United States, Britain, and the Waragainst Japan, I941-1945
(Oxford, 1978), pp. 31-40.
4. PRO, CAB i6/i83A, COS 928, The Situation in the Far East, i8 June 1939; PRO, CAB 53/I1,
COS 304th meeting, 20 June I939; PRO, CAB i6/I83A, COS 931; Situation in the Far East (also
DP(P)6i), 24 June I939.
5. PRO, CAB 2/8, CID 36oth meeting, 22 June I939; PRO, CAB 2/9, CID 362nd meeting, 26 June
1939; PRO, ADM 205/I, I4/31/72, Record of a meeting in the Prime Minister's room at the House of
Commons, 28 June I939.
EHR Feb. 97
IOO
the middle of July, the Chiefs declared their preference for a neutral
Italy; if Italy declared war, the Allies should divert their shipping
around the Cape, remain on the defensive, do nothing provocative and
concentrate on the economic strangulation of Italy by closing the en-
trances to the Mediterranean. The CID endorsed the Chiefs' position at
the end of the month.1 Britain had abdicated all Mediterranean initiative
to the Axis. It did not take long for the French to determine where
Britain now stood on Mediterranean affairs. On 13 July Chamberlain
made a direct appeal to Daladier for Franco-Italian reconciliation.2
Instead of opening negotiations with Italy, as Chamberlain wished, the
French strengthened their own troops in Syria to offset Britain's
'dangerously compromised' forces in Egypt.3
Darlan's relentless campaign for Anglo-French action against Italy
further exacerbated tensions in Paris concerning the Mediterranean.
Refusing to abandon its long-held conviction that vital sea communi-
cations compelled the Allies to act initially in the Mediterranean, the
Marine introduced revised naval Mediterranean war plans to the Royal
Navy without first receiving authority from the French Chiefs or
government. At an Anglo-French naval command conference at Malta
in July, France's Commander-in-Chief of the Mediterranean, Admiral
Olive, told Admiral Cunningham, the new Commander-in-Chief of the
British Mediterranean Fleet, that France was now willing - and, in fact,
planning - to bombard the western Italian coastline at the outset of war.
Specifically, the Marine suggested a series of operations against Genoa,
Savona and Palermo.4 Early in August Darlan informed Pound that 'we
remain convinced that naval success in the Mediterranean, as rapid as
possible, in the surest way of striking the principal enemy: Germany'.5
Darlan obviously hoped that, by agreeing to carry out the plans that he
knew the Admiralty, including Cunningham, had originally contem-
plated, France could procure consensus for a combined Mediterranean
offensive strategy. Perhaps Darlan, who was frustrated at the lack of
Anglo-French coordination for a joint Mediterranean policy, envi-
sioned establishing Anglo-French naval solidarity on a Mediterranean
strategy that could then be presented to the two governments as a
fait-accompli. Or perhaps Darlan, in light of Gamelin's unendorsed
declarations to Britain on Italian neutrality and a Salonika expedition,
I. PRO, CAB 53/1 I, COS 309th meeting, 19 July I939; PRO, CAB I6/i83A, DP(P)65 Revise: The
Attitude of Italy in War and the Problem of Anglo-French Support to Poland, 24 July I939; PRO,
CAB 2/9, CID 368th meeting, 24 July I939.
2. AN, 496AP, 12, Dr4, Chamberlain to Daladier, 13 July I939.
3. SHAT, 5N, 579, bis, Reunion des Chefs d'EMG, I7 July I939.
4. British Library, London, Admiral Andrew B. Cunningham papers, Vol. 52560 Cunningham to
Pound, 26 July 1939; PRO, ADM I/9905, Mo8874/39, Report of Anglo-French conversations at
Malta, Appendix II, 2 Aug. I939. For Darlan's instructions to Ollive, see SHM, TTA, I4, N. 653
EMG-3, Darlan to C-in-Cs, 26 May I939; SHM, TTA, I , N. 9oo EMG-3, Darlan to Ollive, I9 July
I939.
5. SHM, TTA, 9, I939/Plymouth, Memento de la conference de Plymouth, 8 Aug. 1939; SHM,
iBB2, 182, I, Resume de la conference entre Darlan et Pound, 8 Aug. 1939; Reussner, Les conversations
franco-britanniques d'Ettat-Major, pp. 287-9.
EHR Feb. 97
IOI
I997 APPEASEMENT OF ITALY, 9 3 7-9
believed that the prevailing state of international affairs made such
underhand measures appropriate.
What is most surprising, though, is not only that Darlan and Gamelin
were out of step with one another but that Daladier lacked the necessary
courage, certainty and leadership to garner unwavering foreign policy
support from his subordinates. The French Premier had not only re-
jected Chamberlain's 13 July plea to consider making concessions to
Italy but he also looked sceptically on Britain's interest in a neutral Italy
and opposition to an Allied Mediterranean offensive against Libya and
Italian maritime communications. Citing French naval intelligence that
claimed Italy would attack Yugoslavia and seek to occupy Salonika soon
after the outset of war, and opining that a neutral and sympathetic Italy
would enable Germany to circumvent an Allied blockade, Daladier in
August told Leslie Hore-Belisha, the British Secretary for War, that the
Allies must compel Italy to enter the war immediately. 'This would give
us a chance of an initial military success.'1 Despite the renewed clarity of
the Premier's position on Mediterranean issues, the Army Chief con-
tinued to pursue his own agenda and to undermine Daladier's. Gamelin,
who was distraught that London had been generally unreceptive to his
Salonika idea and who was increasingly concerned about the reper-
cussions of the deteriorating Danzig crisis and Franco's fortification of
the garrison in Spanish Morocco, informed the British over the summer
that the Allied plan for a French assault against Tripoli at the outset of
war was contingent on Spanish neutrality. Reiterating in late July what
the French Army representatives at the Rabat talks had alluded to in
June, Gamelin explained to the British that if Spain went to war against
the democracies alongside Germany and Italy, France would have to
capture Spanish Morocco before moving against Libya; France there-
fore preferred a neutral Italy.2
With Darlan's sudden interest in a naval bombardment of coastal
Italy, Gamelin's preference for a neutral Italy and a mission to Salonika,
and Daladier's support for an Allied ultimatum to Italy, the French
presented themselves as internally confused and hopelessly discordant
vis-a-vis Italy and the Mediterranean. The British, on the contrary, were
determined to pursue Italian neutrality. The viability of this British
policy was bolstered by Loraine's 22 August report that a 'well-
informed and reliable source' had learned that Italy 'has no intention of
being dragged into a general European war'.3 General Hastings Ismay,
Secretary to the CID, then sent an urgent appeal to the French, suggest-
ing that a neutral Italy 'would appreciably reduce our military
I. PRO, PREM I/329, Daladier to Chamberlain, 24 July 1939; CCA, Hore-Belisha papers, volume
5, file 64, Notes of conversations with General Gamelin and M. Daladier in Paris, 21 Aug. I939.
2. PRO, AIR 9/I 17, Notes on discussion with French General Staff at Rabat, 6 May I939; SHAA,
2B, 107, IIIB, N. 339/SA, Nogues to Gamelin and Daladier, 7 May 1939; PRO, CAB 53/I 1, COS 3o9th
meeting, 19 July I939; PRO, WO I06/2028, de Brantes to Cornwall-Jones, 2 Aug. I939.
3. PRO, CAB 2I/565, I4/6/26, Halifax to Campbell, 22 Aug. I939; PRO, FO ioI I/66, Loraine to
Halifax, 22 Aug. 1939.
EHR Feb. 97
I02 THE FRENCH NAVY AND THE February
commitments and our military risks' in North Africa, the Middle East,
the Balkans and the Mediterranean. The Allies should not take any
drastic action - even if Italy were technically neutral but overtly biased
toward Germany - 'which [is] likely to have the effect of bringing her in
against us'.1
On the same day as Ismay's letter arrived in Paris, 23 August, Daladier
called an emergency meeting of his closest diplomatic and security
advisers to discuss the situation in the light of the shocking Nazi-Soviet
pact. Gamelin cogently argued that a hostile Italy would significantly
decrease the duration of Polish and Romanian resistance. With the
possibility of a Franco-Soviet rapprochement now out of the question, a
hostile Italy would eliminate the Mediterranean/Black Sea supply route
to eastern Europe and effectively bury any hope of establishing an
eastern front. Moreover, France would have to weaken its position on
the western front to provide adequate defences in the Alps. Consensus
was eventually reached, and Gamelin telephoned London the following
day to say that France was 'in entire agreement' with the views expressed
in Ismay's letter. Similar messages were communicated to Italy's Am-
bassador in Paris, Raffaele Guariglia, and to Francois-Poncet in Rome.2
Faced with no coherent or coordinated Allied strategy for the Mediter-
ranean, and a stronger and more resolute ally, France had no choice but
to follow Britain's lead. Although France had provoked and directed
much of the debate on Allied Mediterranean strategy, Britain was
responsible for the strategy's final product.
Ultimately, Admiral Francois Darlan and the French failed to persuade
their allies that an Anglo-French land, air and sea attack on Libya and
Italy's communications to North and East Africa in the early stages of
the war would inflict severe military and psychological damage on
Germany's Axis partner without compromising Allied defence on the
western front. But this failure, disappointing as it may be to those with
the benefit of hindsight, should not overshadow the influential role of
Darlan and the Marine in recognizing the implications of deteriorating
Franco-Italian relations and impressing these realities on French
Mediterranean policy and on the development of Anglo-French
Mediterranean strategy in I937-9.
While Darlan exploited the Franco-Italian conflict to acquire his
position as Naval Chief of Staff, to accelerate the rate of the Marine's
rearmament in the late 1930S and as the basis for positioning himself as
the architect of a wholesale revision of French naval strategy and foreign
policy, we should resist interpreting his motives as entirely politically
self-serving. Darlan understood sooner than many Frenchmen and most
I. PRO, CAB 21/565, 14/6/26, Ismay to Jamet, 23 Aug. 1939, Ismay minute, 24 Aug. I939.
2. Ibid.; SHAT, 5N, 579, I, R6union des Ministeres de la Guerre, 23 Aug. 1939; MAE, PA-AP,
Hoppenot, 7, Journal de Bonnet, 26 Aug. 1939.
EHR Feb. 97
I03
I997
Britons that Italy's annexation of Ethiopia and Albania despite inter-
national condemnation, Italy's active assistance in Franco's overthrow
of Republican Spain, Italy's quiescent reaction to Germany's incorpor-
ation of Austria, the Sudetenland and Bohemia-Moravia, and Italy's
political and military agreements with Germany, were all part of Mus-
solini's programme to establish an Italian Mediterranean empire at the
expense of Britain and France. Darlan also recognized that, besides the
strategic benefit to Italy of having Germany fighting Britain and France
on the Continent while Italy challenged them in the Mediterranean,
Mussolini and Hitler were ideologically united in their hatred for the
world's democracies. Appeasing Italy in 1937-9 was a futile endeavour.
Darlan's righteous determination to impress his views of Italy's
Mediterranean ambitions on both Premier Daladier and the British was
at least partially motivated by a genuine concern for French security.
The adherence of Daladier to the security arguments put forth by his
Marine paved the way for a protracted strategic debate with the British,
who were opposed to an early Mediterranean offensive against Italy.
Although Admiral Backhouse had proposed an aero-naval bombard-
ment of Italy's industrial centres in the north-west, this idea had lost
most of its support by the time Anglo-French staff talks began in 1939.
Nevertheless, the French persuaded the British that the Allies should
consider at least some sort of aggressive action against Italy at the war's
outset. While the British refused to participate in joint action in the
Mediterranean, they endorsed France's proposal to make Italy's pos-
ition in Libya and Ethiopia untenable in the event of Italian belligerence
- a plan that was probably overambitious without British help. At the
same time, however, a few important French and British diplomats, who
were uncomfortable with the thought of France unilaterally attacking
Italy's African colonies while British forces were transferred to the Far
East, pursued a policy in London, Paris and Rome to ensure Italy's
neutrality.
The inability of the British and French staffs to reach an agreement on
a genuine Allied strategy for the Mediterranean strengthened the argu-
ments in favour of a general Mediterranean appeasement and weakened
those who claimed that a tranquil Mediterranean throughout the course
of a European or world war was fallacious. In the end, Chamberlain's
unflappable conviction in the correctness of his policy and the sense of
panic and despair that overtook Daladier and his military chiefs during
the final months before war - ironically brought about partially by
Darlan's determination to pursue a Mediterranean offensive - trans-
formed Britain's approach to Mediterranean affairs into the Allies'
policy for that theatre. Although Mussolini declared 'non-belligerence'
in September I939, the Duce helped Germany evade the Allies' econ-
omic blockade and remained committed to the Nazis' foreign policy
EHR Feb. 97
I04
agenda. Italy's uncertain attitude prevented an Anglo-French naval
redistribution outside the Mediterranean - exactly as Darlan had pre-
dicted - and consequently paralyzed the initial Allied prosecution of
war.
Yale University REYNOLDS M. SALERNO
EHR Feb. 97

Oxford University Press: Info/about/policies/terms - JSP

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Oxford University Press: Info/about/policies/terms - JSP

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

The French Navy and the Appeasement of Italy, 1937-9

Author(s): Reynolds M. Salerno

? Addison Wesley Longman Limited 1997 oo 3-8266/97/2528/oo66/$03.00

The French Navy and the Appeasement of Italy,

IN the spring of I939, Liddell Hart and Winston Churchill described

decision in the Mediterranean theatre. What is striking about these few

'international histories' of Allied strategy in the Mediterranean is their

Anglocentrism. London invariably appears as the creator and manager

of Allied policy, while Paris becomes the follower desperately craving

British leadership and support: Allied policy in the Mediterranean has

become synonymous with British policy.2 Even those scholars who

have argued that French decision-makers pursued coherent foreign and

defence policies to meet the German threat in the light of France's

economic, political and strategic realities acknowledge that France suc-

cumbed to Britain's policy of appeasing Italy before the war.3

Robert Young and Nicole Jordan, in particular, have demonstrated

future war against Nazi Germany. A friendly or neutral Italy would

enhance the development of an eventual eastern front, facilitate the

establishment advocated correct relations with fascist Italy and a return

23982, W 572I/108/50 and in PRO, PREM[ier files] I, volume 345).

Diplomacy, October 1938-September I939', (Univ. of Oxford, D.Phil.thesis, I983).

relations de la Grande-Bretagne et de la France avec l'Italie en 1938-39', Les relations franco-

1933-40 (Cambridge, MA, 1978).

to the Franco-Italian 'alliance' of I935.1 In fact, beginning in 1937 the

leaders of the French Navy rejected many of the arguments made by

their colleagues in the Army and actively promoted a naval perspective

on foreign affairs among France's governing class. One of the most

important supporters of the Marine's position on Italian aims in the

Mediterranean, and the appropriate French response, was Premier

Edouard Daladier. Daladier's support in I937-9 for an early Mediter-

ranean offensive justifies an analysis of pre-war French naval strategy

examining Anglo-French-Italian relations from the perspective of

French Navy in the formulation of French and Allied Mediterranean

France - in contrast to Britain - entered the Allied staff talks of the

spring of 1939 with a coherent and well-formulated Mediterranean war

Mediterranean strategy. Unfortunately, historians of Allied policy in

the Mediterranean have based their analyses of French Mediterranean

strategy in I937-9 largely on the French decision in August I939 to

adopt the policy of the British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, of

Journal of Strategic Studies, xiv (I99I), 428-41.

Les conversations franco-britanniques d'Etat-Major (i935-39) (Paris, i969).

was the result of immediate circumstances during the summer of I939 -

Britain's determination to pursue Mediterranean appeasement and

France's crisis of confidence - historians have failed to recognize that

French fears about a rising Italian menace in I937-9 served as the

catalyst for the various permutations of Anglo-French Mediterranean

planning before the war.

To prevent a repeat of Germany's recent challenge to France's continen-

War to create a system that provided permanent security against a

revival of the German threat. In addition to the treaties of Versailles and

Locarno, which sought to restrict Germany to her existing borders by

international law, France signed a series of agreements with the new

states of eastern Europe - Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and

of German or Russian aggression. The French supplemented these

accords of questionable worth with the League of Nations and its

commitment to 'collective security', drawing their old ally Britain into

France's loosely conceived security system. Finally, France constructed

what became known as the Maginot Line, a defensive barrier of varying

degrees of impenetrability that ran the length of the eastern frontier

along the Rhine from Luxembourg to Basle.1

Nazi Party in Germany compelled France to re-evaluate its system of

and the Disarmament Conference in October I933 convinced many

French statesmen that a future war against Germany was no longer a