In modern war a bird’s-eye view of the field of battle is no longer an essential to the military leader. The primary functions of a naval commander in chief are the coordination and analysis of information, and, in conjunction with the Ministries of the government and with the other services, the determination of a program of action, which is then transmitted to the various subordinate commanders for actual implementation. To fulfill these functions, it was not necessary for the Chief of Staff of the French Naval Forces to locate his headquarters either on board ship or in the Naval Ministry at the capital. The most important requirement for a headquarters location is that it provide an adequate communication and liaison network.
The Navy had pondered this problem for some time, and originally it had selected as headquarters several casemates of the old fort of Vincennes, an edifice erected by the kings of France in the 14th century, and located in the immediate suburbs of Paris. But the accommodations were clearly inadequate, and in addition the location was too close to the capital with all its intrigues, indiscretions, and political interference.
The Navy’s preference, Maintenon, was a charming village seventy kilometers west of Paris. Excellent national and international telegraphic and telephonic communications were assured by cutting in the Navy’s headquarters directly on telephone and telegraph trunklines laid underground to the capital. The radio network was equally satisfactory. High speed teleprinters provided permanent liaison with subcommanders. There was an airfield nearby. And finally, while the capital was reasonably near, it was not uncomfortably so.
In effect, life at Maintenon was very like life aboard ship. Personnel were forbidden to have their families in the village, and everyone had to obtain special permission before “going ashore,” as it were. The offices of the staff were a group of huts ranged under the trees of a beautiful park, though a circle of sentries surrounded all.
It was there that Admiral of the Fleet Darlan, Commander in Chief of the Naval Forces, and his staff would reside until the spring of 1940. To distinguish this command post or headquarters from the Ministry of the Navy, which would remain at Rue Royale in Paris, Maintenon was designated the “French Admiralty.” The three or four hundred people attached to the command were under the orders of the Chief of Staff (Rear Admiral Maurice Le Luc) and the Deputy Chiefs of Staff (Captain Paul Auphan and Jean Négadele). These three worked at the same table, to which was routed all incoming information and from which all outgoing orders emanated. In his free moments Admiral Darlan would join the group and watch his staff at work while he smoked his beloved pipe.
As correspondent at Paris the French Admiralty had a man who today would be called a “sage”—Professor Henry Moysset, who for twenty years had lectured at the Naval War College and who also had been the chief private secretary of Navy Minister Georges Leygues. Professor Moysset22 was intimately acquainted with Germany and the Germans, and his wide international contacts constituted precious sources of information.
In 1941 Moysset became Minister without Portfolio to Marshal Philippe Pétain.
In establishing his headquarters at Maintenon, on the opposite side of Paris from the battlefront, Admiral Darlan felt certain that he would never be forced to evacuate them, even though the frontlines should waver.
But the Admiral’s confidence was short-lived, for by June, 1940, the German invasion threatened to engulf it, and the French Navy’s headquarters moved to Montbazon, near Tours. Then, during the tragic days of the armistice, it moved successively to Dulamont, near Bordeaux, then to Nérac, and, finally, to Vichy.
1 Regulars—91,093, of which 5,486 were officers; Reserves—69,243, of which 4,820 were officers.
2 In 1941 Moysset became Minister without Portfolio to Marshal Philippe Pétain.
In September, 1939, the combined British-French naval forces were far superior to the German Navy. Outside of the North Sea, a zone of contact, all they expected to meet on the high seas were German submarines or occasional lone surface raiders. However, merchant shipping was as vitally important to France as it was to Great Britain, and the French Navy was determined to guard it well.
Ordinarily France received almost three-fourths of her imports by sea, mainly through Atlantic ports. War requirements would greatly increase French overseas purchases, particularly in America, where, without waiting for mobilization, she had placed large orders. On the side toward Germany, the frontier of course was already closed to traffic. Imports over the other land frontiers had never been very large. From an economic point of view France was almost an island like England. Her heavy industry was smaller than that of Germany, and her agriculture was seriously affected by the calling up of so many of the farmhands to the colors. The sea alone could assure the necessary food, arms, ammunition, petroleum, and other materials needed to supply the armed forces and civilian inhabitants, and to carry on the war.
Moreover France had to maintain close liaison with North Africa and the various colonies of the empire everywhere. It was not merely a matter of administering the colonial governments but also of transporting to Europe the immense resources of men and raw materials which these overseas possessions could contribute. All Navy men remembered that during the First World War the colonies sent to the assistance of the mother country some 500,000 fighting men and 200,000 workers. The lines of communication with Africa were as important to France as the great commercial shipping routes which brought the products of America.
Finally, transporting the British Expeditionary Force to France, along with the supplies necessary to maintain it, required the establishment of a convoy system linking Britain with French ports on the Channel or the Atlantic.
Strategically, France was the bridgehead of the Allies on the European continent—a fact brought home to the democracies, including the United States, in 1944 when the bridgehead no longer existed and had to be regained by a tremendous amphibious effort.
The problem of utilizing their merchant shipping to maximum benefit had been discussed between the two countries in the London meetings before the war. At that time the two navies had expected to have to face the Italian Navy as well as the German, and it had appeared necessary to have all the French light forces stationed in the Mediterranean in order to protect traffic with North Africa. Even then the ships available for escort would have been fewer than needed. Accordingly the French Admiralty had decided to permit its ordinary merchant ships in the Mediterranean to proceed unescorted, with routing varied according to circumstances, and to convoy only the troop transports and vessels with unusually valuable cargoes. In the Atlantic, French ships would join up with convoys which the British intended to form at regular intervals at Freetown (Sierra Leone), Kingston (Jamaica), and Halifax (Canada) for passage to the British Isles and return. The French Navy would participate in escorting certain convoys across the Channel.
Such were the plans of the French Naval High Command at the time hostilities began.
On the 1st of September, the French Admiralty, as a matter of precaution, had prohibited the sailing of any merchant ship from its ports. The following day this embargo was lifted—except for Atlantic traffic—as soon as Italy’s declaration of nonbelligerency permitted Mediterranean and coastal traffic to proceed almost normally. The Navy waited for positive information as to the whereabouts of the German Fleet before authorizing the resumption of transatlantic traffic, which it did on September 5.
One of the problems of the moment was what disposition to make of the Normandie. This magnificent liner of 80,000 tons, the pride of the French merchant marine, was in New York, scheduled to sail for Europe toward the end of August. Too large to be of immediate use as a transport, she would have to be put in a caretaker status either in France or in New York. The decision was to leave her in New York. Those who made that decision—including