“And for Britain, in turn, Paris’s reaction to AUKUS just exposes France’s latent anti-American chauvinism, its fixation on long-lost grandeur, and its cynical strategy to use the EU as a vehicle for its doomed goal of returning to global relevance.”
Quote from “Atlantic Monthly”
President Charles de Gaulle
The closest Britain has ever come to a formal defensive alliance with France was the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation Pact (NATO) in 1949. Although having no formal defensive alliances with France before NATO, and despite the long history of hostility between Britain and France until the crushing defeat of Napoleon in 1815, Britain fought to save France from German invasion in World War I and World War II. These interventions by Britain to save France from German invasions were largely the result of the Entente Cordiale of 1904 and the Anglo-French Agreement of 1938, but these were friendly understandings between the two governments produced by a perceived need for the two countries to work together to resist German territorial expansion across Europe. They were not formal defence alliances.
The French repaid those British interventions to save France from German invasions with betrayal in 1940 that could have cost Britain the powerful core of its army and exposed Britain to greater risk of invasion by Nazi Germany.
Pursuant to the Anglo-French Agreement 1938, and immediately following the declaration of war by Britain and France on Nazi Germany on 3 September 1939 following the German invasion of Poland, the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) under General Viscount Gort, and comprising over two hundred thousand British soldiers, began moving to France on 4 September 1939. The BEF was stationed along the Belgian-French border to the left of the French First Army.
When Nazi Germany invaded Belgium on 10 May 1940, British and French armies moved into Belgium to confront this German threat to neutral Belgium. A simultaneous massive thrust by German Army Group A (comprising 45 divisions including 7 armoured divisions) through the heavily forested and lightly defended Ardennes swept French resistance aside and reached the English Channel on 21 May. This left the BEF, the French First Army, and Belgian Army cut off and facing capture.
British commander General Viscount Gort began planning for evacuation of all allied forces across the Channel from the French port of Dunkirk. The evacuation from Dunkirk proceeded from 26 May to 4 June 1940, and when it ended, about 198,000 British and 140,000 French and Belgian troops had been evacuated to England and saved from capture by the Germans.
The loss of the French First Army was followed by a collapse of French resistance. With German troops closing on Paris, the French government relocated to Bordeaux and declared Paris an open city for German occupation to save it from bombardment.
After only five weeks of fighting, French resistance to the German invasion of France collapsed and German troops entered Paris unopposed and welcomed by many French on 14 June 1940.
On 16 June 1940, French Prime Minister Paul Reynaud found most of his cabinet and French Commander-in-Chief Maxime Weygand supported surrender to Nazi Germany, and he resigned. He was replaced as prime minister by Deputy Prime Minister Marshal Phillipe Petain who was eager to offer Adolf Hitler an armistice.
Although he could have crushed the demoralised remnant of a French army, Hitler agreed to the armistice largely because he did not want the French continuing to resist from their North African colonies. The French government surrender would also prevent resistance from French colonies scattered around the world, and leave Hitler free to attack Britain.
In 1940, France possessed the most powerful navy in Europe after Britain. In one of his few concessions, Hitler allowed the Petain government to keep the French navy but insisted that it be disarmed. It is likely that Hitler allowed this concession from concern that seizing the French fleet could shame some French to fight on in French colonies.
The armistice was signed in Paris on 22 June 1940. Massively inflated French self-esteem required that the terms of the armistice include a reference to them as “a valiant opponent”.
The French Petain government agreed to collaborate fully with Nazi Germany and Hitler allowed the French to establish the authoritarian Vichy government under Petain in the south of Nazi-occupied France and bordering the Mediterranean Sea.
The disgraceful French collaboration with Nazi Germany from June 1940 led to Australian troops fighting Vichy French troops in Syria and Lebanon.
Worried by the speedy collapse of French resistance to German invasion and equally speedy collaboration of the French government with Nazi Germany, Winston Churchill sought assurances from Petain's Vichy government that the French navy would either be placed under British control or moved to the French West Indies to keep it out of Nazi German hands. These reasonable assurances were refused by the French Vichy government, which only promised to keep the seven battleships under French control.
To ensure that Petain's collaborationist Vichy government did not pass the French battleships into Nazi hands, Winston Churchill ordered an attack on four French battleships moored at the French naval base of Mers-el-Kebir in Algeria. The battleship Bretagne was sunk with heavy loss of life and two battleships ran aground. The Vichy government was outraged and claimed that French honour had been impugned by the British. Resentment against Britain festered for decades in France even after Britain played a major part in restoring French freedom from Nazi conquest.]
French shame over the speedy collapse of French armies was slightly redeemed by the gallant resistance of five French First Army divisions in the Battle of Lille (28-31 May 1940). Although heavily outnumbered, these five French divisions fought on for four days and blocked seven German divisions, including three armoured (panzer) divisions, reaching Dunkirk while the evacuation to England was still underway.
FRENCH HOSTILITY TO BRITAIN AND BRITAIN’S ENGLISH-SPEAKING FORMER COLONIES GOES BACK A THOUSAND YEARS
The French have been fighting the British on and off since 1066 when the French Duke of Normandy crossed the English Channel and conquered England for France. The conquest of England by a Norman-French army produced nearly one thousand years of hostility between Britain and France, and seemingly endless warfare as French attempts to dominate Europe and build empires across the world by conquest were frustrated by Britain.
The seemingly endless warfare between France and Britain appeared to end with the crushing defeat of French Emperor Napoleon at Waterloo in 1815 by an army led by Britain’s Duke of Wellington; but the French have never forgiven Britain for that defeat at Waterloo which crushed French self-esteem and produced the loss of much of a conquered French empire and the treasures looted from conquered countries by French armies.
French children learn at their mothers’ knee to blame the British for the loss of conquered French empires spanning the world, and this hostility to everything British continues in French schools where children are made aware of Britain’s role in diminishing the "Glory of France" by cruel acts such as denying France Canada and India as French colonies. French children are not taught that Napoleon’s French armies murdered, raped, pillaged, and looted art treasures in every country that they invaded and conquered.
Those with a grasp of world history were not surprised to learn that a comparatively recent survey of French adults found that as many as one in three despise anything British.*
* “The Sun”, UK edition, 7 October 2018.
We can gauge some measure of the continuing depth of French hostility to Britain from Foreign Minister Le Drian’s public description of Britain’s involvement in the AUKUS agreement as “opportunistic”, and his contemptuous dismissal of Britain as being only a “fifth wheel on the wagon”.
Notwithstanding crucial British support for France against German invasion in two world wars, French hostility towards Britain and anything that they perceive as British, including the English-speaking former British colonies Australia, Canada, the United States, and New Zealand, reaches into the twenty-first century. That hostility was embodied in continuing open French disdain for Britain as a fellow member of the European Union, and probably played a significant role in Britain leaving the European Union after forty-seven years of membership on 31 January 2020.
In their hostility to anything British, the French have shown by hostile treatment of Australia, Canada, the United States, and New Zealand (see below), that they are incapable of rationally distinguishing between Britain and its former English-speaking colonies.
FRENCH PRESIDENT CHARLES DE GAULLE ENCOURAGED FRENCH HOSTILITY TO BRITAIN AND ALL ENGLISH-SPEAKING COUNTRIES
World War II Free French general and later President Charles de Gaulle made no attempt to hide as president of France his pathological hostility towards the English and their far flung former empire that included the United States, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand.
In the Cold War, President de Gaulle rejected close ties with Britain and the United States despite their heavy involvement in freeing his country from Nazi occupation in World War II at massive cost in lives. De Gaulle elected instead for a close friendship with West Germany* that was cemented by the Elysee Treaty of 1963.
* Germany was still divided into West Germany and Communist East Germany.
De Gaulle twice vetoed Britain's entry into the European Economic Community (Common Market) which preceded the European Union. This rejection of Britain was prompted partly by de Gaulle’s pathological hostility towards anything British, partly by Britain’s close friendship with the United States, and partly by his fear that the large British economy would prevent France continuing to dominate the European Economic Community.
When Britain was finally admitted to the European Union after De Gaulle retired from politics, France and Germany both pursued continuing hostility towards Britain that reached a crescendo with Brexit.
De Gaulle’s hostility towards Britain and the United States, of whom he spoke dismissively as “the Anglo-Saxons”, led to the “insufferably arrogant, Anglophobic, and rude”* French president withdrawing France from the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) in 1966.
* British Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s description of de Gaulle.
When de Gaulle called US Secretary of State Dean Rusk and told him bluntly that he was pulling France out of NATO and wanted all American troops out of France immediately, Rusk replied: “Does that include the 180,000 who are buried here ?"
Suggestions by French politicians and the French ambassador that Australia lied and treated with contempt a “friend”, “ally”, or “partner” over cancellation of the French submarine contract have been shown (at Item 20) to be utter nonsense.
No formal or informal alliance has ever existed between France and Australia except indirectly through Britain in World War I and before Australia achieved independence from Britain. The French have never shown themselves to be a natural friend or informal ally of Australia.
Australians fought at Gallipoli, and on the Western Front (France and Belgium) solely because Britain was doing so and because Australia was then a British colony. Despite never having had any formal or informal alliances with France, nearly 50,000 Australians lie buried in war graves in France and Belgium.
French lack of any gratitude to Australia for that sacrifice can be gauged by the petulant and lying outburst from French Foreign Minister Le Drian when Australia exercised its legal right to cancel the submarine contract after repeated failures by French contractor DCNS to meet critical contract deadlines. Le Drian denounced Australia to France 2 Television in these lying words:
"There has been duplicity, contempt and lies - you can't play that way in an alliance….and when you have an ally of the stature of France, you don’t treat them like that”.
France was driven out of its colony called French Indochina in 1954 after defeat at the hands of Ho Chi Minh’s communist army at Dien Bien Phu. This left Indochina separated into communist North Vietnam and non-communist South Vietnam.
When North Vietnam attacked South Vietnam, the United States with allies that included Australia supported the government of South Vietnam. President de Gaulle refused to support South Vietnam even though it had been part of the French colony called French Indochina for almost one hundred years. He also criticised the involvement of the United States and Australia in supporting the people of South Vietnam, and in 1967, as punishment for Australia ignoring his criticism, de Gaulle banned the sale of parts and ammunition for Australia’s French-bought Mirage III jet fighters.
De Gaulle’s denial of parts and ammunition for Australia’s French-bought Mirage III fighters left those fighters grounded, and effectively prevented the fighters supporting Australian troops in the Vietnam War (1962-1975). This appalling French behaviour towards Australia in the Vietnam War should have caused Canberra to think twice before placing the defence of Australia’s vital sea approaches in the hands of the French in 2016.
We also need to remember that France has not acted as a “friend” of Australia in the past over nuclear weapon testing. De Gaulle initiated testing of French nuclear weapons in the Pacific Ocean at Mururoa Atoll in 1966 despite protests from Australia and other Asia-Pacific countries. The French conducted 193 nuclear tests in the Pacific between 1966 and 1996.
With typical national arrogance, and ignoring the 50,000 Australian soldiers who lie buried in French and Belgian war graves from World War I, the French treated opposition from Australia and other Asia-Pacific countries to French nuclear testing in Pacific French Polynesia with contempt. The French could have conducted clean underground nuclear tests in France’s North African colonies but decided to do their dirty nuclear testing well away from Metropolitan France.
LEFT: Greenpeace "Rainbow Warrior" before French bombing in Auckland Harbour; CENTRE: Greenpeace photographer Fernando Pereira killed in French bombing; RIGHT: "Rainbow Warrior" sunk at berth in Auckland Harbour.
Greenpeace and other organisations sent protest boats into the nuclear test zones from Auckland, New Zealand, and in response, the French government resolved to sink the Greenpeace flagship vessel “Rainbow Warrior” in Auckland Harbour. The French secret intelligence agency DGSE developed Operation Satanic to destroy the Greenpeace flagship by attaching limpet mines to the vessel’s hull while it was moored in Auckland Harbour.
DGSE planted a female agent in the Greenpeace office in Auckland to monitor movements of the “Rainbow Warrior”. Three DGSE agents smuggled two limpet mines into Auckland Harbour on the French yacht “Ouvea”. Two agents posing as a newlywed couple collected the limpet mines from the yacht and delivered them to French DGSE divers Jean Camas and Jean-Luc Kister.
On 10 July 1985, the divers Camas and Kister attached the two limpet mines to the hull of “Rainbow Warrior” while it was berthed at Marsden Wharf in Auckland Harbour The mines were detonated ten minutes apart, and the explosions sank the “Rainbow Warrior” and killed Greenpeace photographer Fernando Pereira.
New Zealand Prime Minister David Lange denounced the French sinking of the “Rainbow Warrior” as an act of terrorism, and it could reasonably have been treated as an act of war.
Two senior French DGSE agents travelling on Swiss passports were captured by New Zealand police and pleaded guilty to charges that included manslaughter of the crew member. The two convicted French agents were sentenced to ten years in prison. Under pressure from the French government which threatened an embargo of New Zealand exports to the EEC if the convicted pair were not released to French custody, New Zealand agreed that the sentences could be served on Hao Atoll in French Polynesia. Hao Atoll was then the location of the French military base used to support French nuclear testing in the Pacific. The two convicted French agents spent a little over two years in very comfortable “detention” on Hao before being freed by the French government in flagrant breach of the detention agreement with New Zealand. The French treated their freed intelligence agents as heroes upon their release from “detention”.
France initially denied responsibility for this disgraceful bombing, but when the newspapers “The Times” and “Le Monde” claimed that the bombing had been approved by French President Mitterand, Defence Minister Charles Hernu resigned and the head of DGSE Admiral Pierre Lacoste was fired. French Prime Minister Laurent Fabius eventually admitted on 22 September 1985 that the bombing of the “Rainbow Warrior” had been a French government DGSE operation followed by an attempted cover-up.
In 1987, in response to international pressure, France finally paid compensation to Greenpeace and the family of photographer Fernando Pereira.
Despite a massive police manhunt, ten of the DGSE agents escaped from New Zealand and were never caught.
Canada has also suffered from unwanted and seriously inappropriate French interference. During an official visit to Canada under the pretext of attending Expo 67 but intending to deliberately encourage separation of heavily French populated Quebec from Canada, President de Gaulle addressed a large crowd at the Montreal City hall in Quebec State with the words: Vive Montréal ! Vive le Québec !" ("Long live Montreal, Long live Quebec!") and then added, followed by loud applause, "Vive le Québec libre !" ("Long live free Quebec!”). This was viewed by the Canadian government as a grossly inappropriate encouragement of Quebec separatism from Canada and alignment with or incorporation into France.
Canada’s anger was communicated to de Gaulle who cut short his visit and returned to France on the following day. The grossly improper interference in Canadian politics was not impromptu. De Gaulle admitted to associates in Paris that he went to Canada intending to encourage Quebec separatists.
If this is how France treats its so-called “friends”, one would not like to be treated by France as an enemy country.
The French response to AUKUS and Australian cancellation of a very dubious submarine contract should be viewed as a storm in a teacup. French anger is really about the puncturing of an easily injured and massively exaggerated French sense of self-importance in the context of an approaching French presidential election, and Australia needs to remind the French that many thousands of Australian soldiers lie buried in French war graves.
France has never been an ally, a friend, or an important trading partner for Australia, and the French were happy to take Australia to the cleaners over the ridiculous submarine contract. AUKUS should be viewed as a vital opportunity for Australia to continue working meaningfully with the United States and Britain who are proven close friends and allies. For myself, I will respond to French rudeness and ingratitude by not buying any products made in France.