I never understand why Krigersmarine don't request they terms from France

[Wolf359]

I never understand one thing from WW2 history:hmm:: When Germany conquer France and make capitulation/surrender agreement with it why Krigersmarine don't request they terms from France?

1. request absoluteness surrender of ALL THEY NAVAL FORCES, NAVAL BASES and PERSONAL
2. ALL they ships become PROPERTY OF KRIGERSMARINE
3. ALL THESE SHIPS GET NEW CREWS (from Krigersmarine) and new CAPTAINS

With France Ships and bases in they hands KM can defeat Royal navy forces on Mediterranean and cut out main British supply lines for North Africa Gibraltar, Malta, Crete, Greece and give General Rommel chances to destroy they land forces in North Africa and take a Cairo, Suez, and Middle East.

[Wolf359]

Here is some data about size of France navy:

Major ships of the French Navy at the beginning of German attack in May 1940:

* modern battleships: 2 (plus 1 in last stadium of fiting out)
* old battleships - dreadnoughts: 5 (including 2 training ones)
* aircraft carriers: 1
* seaplane carriers: 1
* heavy cruisers: 6
* light cruisers: 11
* big destroyers: 32
* destroyers: 26
* submarines: 77

Apart from these, there was one modern battleship advanced in construction; the second battleship, one aircraft carrier, numerous submarines and several destroyers were in different stages of construction.
I think that they can been good reinforcement for Krigersmarine...

[moscowexile]

Because Hitler believed that the United Kingdom and the British Empire were the natural allies of Fascist Germany and would eventually join the Fascists in their crusade against the "Mongol-Tatar" (read as: Untermenschen, i.e. subhumans) Bolshevik hordes, which hordes were controlled by Jews, as was international finance capital, all of which was part of a Jewish plot to subjugate non-Jewish people, including the "Aryan" race, and to hold the world in thrall to Jewry.

That was Herr Hitler's theory, anyway. (Not mine, I may add!)

Hitler believed that Germany could carve out an empire in the east to create "living space" (Lebensraum) for the German Folk, just as "England" had carved out for itself an overseas world empire.

Small problem: the Lebensraum was occupied by Slavic peoples. No matter: they were all subhumans, anyway; if Darwin's theory was correct, only the fittest would survive in the struggle for survival. The Aryans under German leadership, according to Hitler (and many others, including a large number of Englishmen and Frenchmen), were the supreme race and should win any struggle hands down.

Hitler couldn't understand why the UK declared war on Germany on September 3rd 1939.

To defend Poland?

How?

What for?

Hitler believed that he could come to an accomodation with the United Kingdom over his plans in Eastern Europe, which deal would run something like: if you let us play ball in the East and thereby do mankind a service eradicating the Jewish-Bolshevik virus there and, at the same time, setting up a huge German land empire stretching to the Urals, we'll let you keep your maritime Empire.

To keep an overseeas empire, however, Britain needed a huge fleet: that's how the Royal Navy came about. Ever since the end of Buonaparte's plan to make a French European hegemony, Britain had had a policy of maintaining a fleet that was at least twice the size of the next two biggest fleets combined. Any nation state that attempted to challenge British naval supremacy was deemed by British governments to be enemies, real or potential.

That's why the UK went to war with the German Empire in August 1914: the declaration of war made by the British goverment against the German Reich on August 3rd 1914 was not the result of the violation of Belgian neutrality by the German army in marching on Paris (that was just a propaganda trick to attain a position of moral supremacy) it was because German hegemony in Europe and the German Imperial fleet would be real threat to the "balance of power" that Britain enjoyed.

Hitler believed that Kaiser Wilhelm II had made a serious error in provoking the UK with his warship building policy and his demands that the arriviste German Empire have a "place in the sun". If the UK had not been provoked by Kaiser Bill's naval policy, it could well have been that the German army would have wiped the floor with the French (as they had done during the course of 6 weeks in 1870-1871) and the Russians would have then been dealt with accordingly and would have sued for peace.

If only this had happened! A quick German victory in the west followed by a negotiated peace with the Russian Empire would have meant no Bolshevik "revolution", no shameful Versailles Treaty terms for a defeated Germany, no fascists, no World War II.

If, after the fall of France in 1940 the French navy had been absorbed by the Kriegsmarine, that would have signalled that the THird Reich intended to destroy the British and their Empire. Hitler never wanted this, hence the hands-off policy towards the French navy. Hitler waited for peace overtures from the UK and a negotiated peace in the west, followed by his crusade to the east.

If Churchill had not been Prime Minister and Halifax had (he almost was), Hitler would have probably got what he wanted.

The British response was to ask the French navy to amalgamate with the Royal Navy. The French would not comply, so the British attacked the French capital ships that had sought refuge in Algerian French bases, which attack was a clear signal from Churchill to Hitler that there was going to be no deal between the UK and Germany.

The sad result of all this is that more French sailors died during WWII at the hands of the British than of the Germans.

[3Jane]

As I understand it the ships at Toulon were scuttled as the Germans were arriving. Also, the Bristish shelled other elements of the French fleet to prevent them falling into German hands. But I'm not certain as to the sequence of events.

[Catfish]

Hello,
well i'm speechless. The more i read in the last years the more i come to what Moscowexile writes - not only about the "Lebensraum" in the east, slavic people and the jews, which is already well-known.

But also about the first world war, why it happened, and that what happened directly led to WW2, is an on-the-point description i never read before.

I would as well describe WW1 as a war of the monachies and their interests, after all Germany declared war to Serbia because of its treaty with Austro-Hungary - with all the known effects. Kaiser Wilhelm must have been surprized about the close-related England with his own royal relatives declaring war at "him" - after all he was a son of Queen Victoria. Indeed after France declared war the french armies tried to get back the region in the Alsace region before the war in northern France began.

Greetings,
Catfish

Originally Posted by 3Jane

As I understand it the ships at Toulon were scuttled as the Germans were arriving. Also, the Bristish shelled other elements of the French fleet to prevent them falling into German hands. But I'm not certain as to the sequence of events.

I read this too. I know the British knew when they were pushed into the sea that anything left was going into German hands. All the French boats they took out were about to become German boats. It was a smart move with Operation Sea Lion on the table.

[STEED]

All those French sailors killed by us, no wonder France was pi**ed at us, but what could have done? No choice in the matter it was war.

In the first place the KM had no say in the surrender terms that created Vichy and took France out of the war. Even in Germany war and peace were made at the political level and not by the military.

Secondly the French navy was widely scattered, with elements in French North Africa, Dakar, North America, Alexandria, Indo-China and the UK. The combat effective parts of the Fleet had been crippled by the RN at the battle of Mers el Kabr, 3 July 1940 which was after the French surrender. Other significant elements disarmed themselves and were laid up with French caretaker crews under British supervision. Still others got themselves interned in the US and were out of German reach.

Third I think that you might under estimate the ease in which foriegn warships can be integrated into a navy. Creating a combat effective warship is not just a matter of lighting off the boilers, doing a couple of turns around the harbour to see how she handles and then joining the war effort. Typically 12-18 months is common, all of the engines, weapons, ammunition, ship systems, fire control etc. would have to be replaced by domestic items (themselves in short supply) or learned from scratch. The KM was pretty small, subtracting leadership, sailors and shipwrights to get the French ships into service would probably effectively ended the U-Boat war. Resources that should have been working on submarines would have been syphoned off to refit surface ships of little value to the war effort. U-Boats were the only realistic strategic naval option open to Germany. Surface ships, no matter how cool, could never have won the war at sea for Hitler.

And lastly, I'll probably get flamed for this as well, but the French Navy does have a long and honourable history behind it even if it lacks the tradition of victory that the RN has. When Germany decided to seize the surviving French warships after occupying Vichy, many were scuttled by their crews. There is no reason to doubt that most ship captain's would have done the same in 1940.

Good Hunting

[3Jane]

You are quite right. The French ships were in the process of being scuttled as German tanks were arriving on the dockside.

[moscowexile]

After the fall of France in 1940, Churchill and his naval chiefs had, of course, no idea of the terms of surrender that were to be dictated to the French by the victorious Third Reich nor of the messages being sent to French naval commanders. Furthermore, although Churchill and RN chiefs paid lip service to the U-boat threat, they still considered the surface raider to be the major threat to British sea supply lanes. The RN chiefs were especially concerned about the modern French battle cruisers, Dunkerque and Strasbourg, and also about two unfinished battleships: Jean Bart, which was at Casablanca in French Morocco, and Richelieu at Dakar, French West Africa.

Churchill ordered that Force H at Gibraltar be sent to threaten French units in North Africa, while French warships in the UK were seized by British boarding parties. RN Admiral Cunningham protested and Churchill’s belligerence against the French fleet was not generally well received by the RN. Churchill’s order prevailed and by July 3rd 1940 the battle cruiser HMS Hood, the carrier HMS Ark Royal and the old battleships HMS Valiant and HMS Resolution were standing off shore at Mers-el-Kébir in Algeria, where most of the French fleet lay at anchor. The French were asked to either scuttle or join the RN under the flag of the “Free French” or sail to the West Indies.

The negotiations lasted for many hours, but the French finally refused and the British opened fire at point blank range: Dunkerque was hit with a salvo of 15 inch shells; the old battleship Bretagne was hit in the magazine and capsized with a loss of 997 of her crew; the old battleship Provence ran aground; Strasbourg escaped to Toulon with 5 destroyers and a sea-plane carrier, Commandant Tèste.

A couple of days later, French units at Dakar and Casablanca were attacked by the RN and Richelieu and Jean Bart were damaged.

At Alexandria, Egypt, a more subtle course was adopted by the RN and patient negotiation won the day, despite angry messages from London instructing Admiral Cunningham to speed things up. The gentlemanly relationship and good will between the British Admiral Cunningham and his French counterpart at Alexandria, Godfroy, even persisted after news of the events at Mers-el-Kébir had broken. The result was an agreed demilitarisation of the French warships: the battleship Lorraine, four cruisers and some destroyers and torpedo boats; fuel stores were sent ashore and breech blocks and torpedo detonators were put into the care of the local French consul.

The French naval units at Alexandria had a very peculiar “war”: Admiral Godfroy was permitted to use Vichy codes (the French puppet government of Nazi Germany had its administration at the spa town of Vichy in central France) and to communicate with his Nazi-collaborator masters. Admiral Godfroy’s men were paid by the British government and, unlike the Free French, were able to send money home to occupied France. French sailors under Godfroy’s command were also allowed to take shore leave in Alexandria as well as Vichy-ruled Syria and Lebanon. Whilst the Royal Navy was fighting a desperate war in the Mediterranean, these French ships at Alexandria – a battleship, four cruisers and three destroyers – remained unscratched. “The French ships looked brazenly sleek and shiny compared to the battered British fleet” wrote Artemis Cooper in “Cairo in the War, 1939-1945” (Hamish Hamilton, 1989).

Could the same peaceful agreement have been achieved at other French North African bases had Churchill shown more patience and allowed his admirals more latitude? Certainly, all three RN flag officers concerned in these actions against the French fleet thought so, but one of them who openly expressed that view in a letter to the British Admiralty was relieved of his command forthwith.

[Pablo]

Originally Posted by moscowexile

To keep an overseeas empire, however, Britain needed a huge fleet: that's how the Royal Navy came about.

I'd always understood that Britain needed a huge fleet because it other people (Saxons, Danes, Normans, various royal factions) had been landing or trying to invade from the end of the Roman Empire up through the Spanish Armada. As an island nation with a relatively small population, the fleet had been its best defense against invasion against invasion by the large land armies of countries such as Imperial Spain or Napoleonic France since Elizabethan times. A fleet big enough to defend the homeland against invasion was also big enough to do some serious exploring, colonizing, and defense of the colonial sea lanes.

Ever since the end of Buonaparte's plan to make a French European hegemony, Britain had had a policy of maintaining a fleet that was at least twice the size of the next two biggest fleets combined. Any nation state that attempted to challenge British naval supremacy was deemed by British governments to be enemies, real or potential.

That's why the UK went to war with the German Empire in August 1914: the declaration of war made by the British goverment against the German Reich on August 3rd 1914 was not the result of the violation of Belgian neutrality by the German army in marching on Paris (that was just a propaganda trick to attain a position of moral supremacy) it was because German hegemony in Europe and the German Imperial fleet would be real threat to the "balance of power" that Britain enjoyed.

I'm not so sure. The other part of British strategy was indeed that no hegemonic European power could be allowed to control the coasts of what are now Belgium and the Netherlands; however, absent the provocation of Germany's invasion of Belgium and Belgium's decision to resist the Germans, a declaration of war on Germany would have bitterly divided the people and Parliament, which had no interest in sending British soldiers to die for France (with whom they had no treaty or alliance) in the slaughter of a general European war over Serbia, but they were willing to defend their commitment to Belgian neutrality. It wasn't just a progaganda trick.

Without the invasion of Belgium, I think it's pretty likely Britain would not have intervened in August 1914, just as it had not intervened in the Franco-Prussian War, when Bismarck specifically assured Prime Minister Disraeli that Germany would not attack Belgium. The German General Staff knew attacking Belgium would bring Britain into the war, but they just didn't care since they felt its army's contribution would be minimal at best. Oops.

Hitler believed that Kaiser Wilhelm II had made a serious error in provoking the UK with his warship building policy and his demands that the arriviste German Empire have a "place in the sun". If the UK had not been provoked by Kaiser Bill's naval policy, it could well have been that the German army would have wiped the floor with the French (as they had done during the course of 6 weeks in 1870-1871) and the Russians would have then been dealt with accordingly and would have sued for peace.

I think the effect of Kaiser Wilhelm's (or rather, Admiral Tirpitz's) naval policy was that it caused Britain to reconsider its centuries-old enmity for France in the face of German weltmacht, for no appreciable gain to Germany, rather than actually provoking Britain into declaring war. I suppose Germany's real problem was that they needed a first-class strategic thinker, like Bismarck, but all they could manage was Kaiser Billy.

There's a reasonably good recounting of all this in Robert K. Massie's book, Dreadnought: Britain, Germany, and the coming of the Great War, which is currently in paperback at Amazon.com.

Pablo

[moscowexile]

When I said that the British Empire was the raison d'etre of the Royal Navy, I had in mind the twice-as-big-as-the-next-two-combined-fleets navy patrolling the sinews of British seaborne free enterpise trade and not King Harold the Great of Wessex's or Elizabeth I's wooden walls.


'We are entering a general European conflict because of German beastliness in its rape of poor little Belgium" was the cry of the British government in August 1914 and I still maintain that it was largely propagandist in nature: witness the British political cartoons of the time. Furthermore, Britain's noble defence of Belgium neutrality in 1914 was contradicted somewhat by the Salonika expedition of 1915 when French and British forces landed in Greece in order to bolster up Serbia by attacking Bulgaria. In that year, Serbia, whilst having bravely defended herself against the Austro-Hungarian Empire (the Serbs suffered the greatest losses in relation to population size of any participant in World War I), faced imminent defeat after having been attacked by Bulgaria, which had joined the Central Powers in order to expand, at Serbia's expense, in the Balkans. Problem was: Greece was neutral. Lloyd George disingeniously argued at the time that "there was no comparison between going through Greece and the German passage through Belgium."

The all too prescient Jackie Fisher hit the nail right on the head at the beginning of the 20th century when asked for a possible date for the outbreak of a general European conflict: his answer was that a general European war would start when the Kiel canal had been widened to facilitate the passage of dreadnoughts. He was almost spot on in his prediction. The canal widening began in 1907: it was completed in June 1914. A Royal Navy squadron was invited to the re-opening of the widened canal by Kaiser Wilhelm II, a grandson of Queen Victoria. The celebrations were cut short by the announcement of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Hapsburg Empire, in Sarajevo by a Serbian nationalist.

The Royal Navy squadron promptly left Kiel to take up war stations. On leaving Kiel the squadron signalled to the Kaiser and his fleet: Friends today; friends in future; friends forever.

How tragic!

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by Catfish

Kaiser Wilhelm must have been surprized about the close-related England with his own royal relatives declaring war at "him" - after all he was a son of Queen Victoria.

Grandson. Wilhelm II and George V were first cousins.

Which makes the First World War something of a family feud.

[Catfish]

Hello,
Sailor Steve you are certainly right with grandson.
Anyway he was early inclined to ships.



Greetings,
Catfish

[gord96]

crazy stuff. every interesting and mind boggeling at the same time