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Author: George E Melton Publisher: Naval Institute Press ISBN: 161251880X Category : History Languages : en Pages : 281
Book Description
The two decades before World War II were some of the most unsettled in modern history. From Versailles to Mers el-Kébir examines one of the most unlikely—and perhaps least studied—relationships to form during that turbulent era: the alliance of the Royal Navy and the French fleet. Beginning from a global perspective and gradually narrowing, George E. Melton brings new insights to the diplomacy that led to this often strained cooperation and reinterprets some of the most important events of early World War II. By the mid-1930s the Royal Navy and French fleet had overextended themselves with global defense commitments, owing mainly to the collapse of the world war alliances and to an ominous shift in the balance of world naval power. To maximize their power, England and France combined their assets in a naval alliance. Successful in keeping both Italy and Japan neutral early in the war, that alliance brought the French and English success against German surface raiders and U-boat operations in the Atlantic. The two powers were on such good terms that in1939, during a joint operation to the north of Scotland, HMS Hood and its escorts served for a week under the command of Vice Admiral Marcel Gensoul, French commander of the Dunkerque. Afterward, the British seamen affectionately referred to the Dunkerque as “the friend of the Hood.” Still, the union was not an altogether happy one. The global defense imperatives of the Admiralty frustrated the regional ambitions of the Rue Royale. The union ultimately came to a violent end when the British attacked the French squadron at Mers el-Kébir in the summer of 1940 after France had signed an armistice with Germany. What followed was a poorly constructed cover up to mask the operation as a regrettable but necessary action. Melton’s study challenges this popular myth. Thoroughly researched and documented, From Versailles to Mers el-Kébir concludes that the operation was a disastrous failure.
Author: George E Melton Publisher: Naval Institute Press ISBN: 161251880X Category : History Languages : en Pages : 281
Book Description
The two decades before World War II were some of the most unsettled in modern history. From Versailles to Mers el-Kébir examines one of the most unlikely—and perhaps least studied—relationships to form during that turbulent era: the alliance of the Royal Navy and the French fleet. Beginning from a global perspective and gradually narrowing, George E. Melton brings new insights to the diplomacy that led to this often strained cooperation and reinterprets some of the most important events of early World War II. By the mid-1930s the Royal Navy and French fleet had overextended themselves with global defense commitments, owing mainly to the collapse of the world war alliances and to an ominous shift in the balance of world naval power. To maximize their power, England and France combined their assets in a naval alliance. Successful in keeping both Italy and Japan neutral early in the war, that alliance brought the French and English success against German surface raiders and U-boat operations in the Atlantic. The two powers were on such good terms that in1939, during a joint operation to the north of Scotland, HMS Hood and its escorts served for a week under the command of Vice Admiral Marcel Gensoul, French commander of the Dunkerque. Afterward, the British seamen affectionately referred to the Dunkerque as “the friend of the Hood.” Still, the union was not an altogether happy one. The global defense imperatives of the Admiralty frustrated the regional ambitions of the Rue Royale. The union ultimately came to a violent end when the British attacked the French squadron at Mers el-Kébir in the summer of 1940 after France had signed an armistice with Germany. What followed was a poorly constructed cover up to mask the operation as a regrettable but necessary action. Melton’s study challenges this popular myth. Thoroughly researched and documented, From Versailles to Mers el-Kébir concludes that the operation was a disastrous failure.
Author: Ryan K. Noppen Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing ISBN: 1472859715 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 204
Book Description
A fascinating analysis of the World War II battle between Great Britain and France to ensure French ships were kept out of German hands during World War II. Following France's armistice with the Axis powers, Great Britain realized that if Germany or Italy insisted upon the transfer of battleships, cruisers, and destroyers from the French Navy to the control of their own navies, the balance in the Mediterranean would immediately swing in their favour. Churchill decided that the Marine Nationale's most powerful vessels would need to be secured through diplomacy, coercion, or force. The French Navy commander-in-chief was equally eager to keep their ships out of Axis hands, but he also did not want the British to have them. These increasingly hostile circumstances led to Operation Catapult, which began on 3 July 1940, and saw the two nations battle for the ships. Expert naval historian Ryan Noppen analyses the Royal Navy Operation Catapult at Mers el-Kébir, the follow-up Operation Lever and the French retaliatory actions in the subsequent days. This book examines the rapid deterioration of Anglo-French relations and how the two former allies quickly fell into armed conflict. Fully illustrated with detailed maps, photographs and artwork that bring to life the British and French forces involved, it presents an engaging treatment of an often-forgotten episode early in World War II.
Author: G. H. Bennett Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing ISBN: 1474268390 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 421
Book Description
This book thoroughly explores and analyses naval policy during the period of austerity that followed the First World War. During this post-war period, as the Royal Navy identified Japan its likely opponent in a future naval war, the British Government was forced to “tighten its belt” and cut back on naval expenditure in the interests of “National Economy”. G.H. Bennett draws connections between the early 20th century and the present day, showing how the same kind of connections exist between naval and foreign policy, the provision of ships for the Royal Navy, business and regional prosperity and employment. The Royal Navy in the Age of Austerity 1919-22 engages with a series of important historiographical debates relating to the history of the Royal Navy, the failures of British Defence policy in the inter-war period and the evolution of British foreign policy after 1919, together with more mundane debates about British economic, industrial, social and political history in the aftermath of the First World War. It will be of great interest to scholars and students of British naval history.
Author: Douglas Porch Publisher: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 1009204564 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 833
Book Description
In Resistance and Liberation, Douglas Porch continues his epic history of France at war. Emerging from the debâcle of 1940, France faced the quandary of how to rebuild military power, protect the empire, and resuscitate its global influence. While Charles de Gaulle rejected the armistice and launched his offshore crusade to reclaim French honor within the Allied camp, defeatists at Vichy embraced cooperation with the victorious Axis. The book charts the emerging dynamics of la France libre and the Alliance, Vichy collaboration, and the swelling resistance to the Axis occupation. From the campaigns in Tunisia and Italy to Liberation, Douglas Porch traces how de Gaulle sought to forge a French army and prevent civil war. He captures the experiences of ordinary French men and women caught up in war and defeat, the choices they made, the trials they endured, and how this has shaped France's memory of those traumatic years.
Author: Carlos Alfaro-Zaforteza Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 0429884044 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 302
Book Description
European Navies and the Conduct of War considers the different contexts within which European navies operated over a period of 500 years culminating in World War Two, the greatest war ever fought at sea. Taking a predominantly continental point of view, the book moves away from the typically British-centric approach taken to naval history as it considers the role of European navies in the development of modern warfare, from its medieval origins to the large-scale, industrial, total war of the twentieth century. Along with this growth of navies as instruments of war, the book also explores the long rise of the political and popular appeal of navies, from the princes of late medieval Europe, to the enthusiastic crowds that greeted the modern fleets of the great powers, followed by their reassessment through their great trial by combat, firmly placing the development of modern navies into the broader history of the period. Chronological in structure, European Navies and the Conduct of War is an ideal resource for students and scholars of naval and military history.
Author: Craig L. Symonds Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0190243686 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 793
Book Description
Author of Lincoln and His Admirals (winner of the Lincoln Prize), The Battle of Midway (Best Book of the Year, Military History Quarterly), and Operation Neptune, (winner of the Samuel Eliot Morison Award for Naval Literature), Craig L. Symonds has established himself as one of the finest naval historians at work today. World War II at Sea represents his crowning achievement: a complete narrative of the naval war and all of its belligerents, on all of the world's oceans and seas, between 1939 and 1945. Opening with the 1930 London Conference, Symonds shows how any limitations on naval warfare would become irrelevant before the decade was up, as Europe erupted into conflict once more and its navies were brought to bear against each other. World War II at Sea offers a global perspective, focusing on the major engagements and personalities and revealing both their scale and their interconnection: the U-boat attack on Scapa Flow and the Battle of the Atlantic; the "miracle" evacuation from Dunkirk and the pitched battles for control of Norway fjords; Mussolini's Regia Marina-at the start of the war the fourth-largest navy in the world-and the dominance of the Kidö Butai and Japanese naval power in the Pacific; Pearl Harbor then Midway; the struggles of the Russian Navy and the scuttling of the French Fleet in Toulon in 1942; the landings in North Africa and then Normandy. Here as well are the notable naval leaders-FDR and Churchill, both self-proclaimed "Navy men," Karl Dönitz, François Darlan, Ernest King, Isoroku Yamamoto, Erich Raeder, Inigo Campioni, Louis Mountbatten, William Halsey, as well as the hundreds of thousands of seamen and officers of all nationalities whose live were imperiled and lost during the greatest naval conflicts in history, from small-scale assaults and amphibious operations to the largest armadas ever assembled. Many have argued that World War II was dominated by naval operations; few have shown and how and why this was the case. Symonds combines precision with story-telling verve, expertly illuminating not only the mechanics of large-scale warfare on (and below) the sea but offering wisdom into the nature of the war itself.
Author: Philip Towle Publisher: Springer ISBN: 3319779591 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 156
Book Description
This book argues that popular culture has been transformed in a silent revolution from emphasising history’s heroes to its victims. While city squares and stations were named in the nineteenth century after military victories, now the equivalent airports are named after the victims of violence. Where war reports used to focus on the leadership of the generals and the bravery of the troops, now they are mostly about casualties, refugees and destruction. History, Empathy and Conflict examines the diplomatic consequences of such a revolution in sensibility. Many governments have responded by apologising for their country’s historic actions. History teaching in schools has sometimes been revised to reflect the new emphasis and to build confidence between nations and respect for domestic minorities. Not least of the reasons for these changes is the difficulty or impossibility of making restitution for past wrongs. But history can also be used by the media and governments to justify intervention to protect victims of civil wars only to come to be seen as victimisers themselves. The past is always difficult to interpret but is the basis of all our decisions and all institutions try to twist it to their own convenience. Sympathy with history’s victims is a great moral advance but it can be used by dissatisfied nations to justify their revisionist policies and with the election of President Trump in 2016, all the Great Powers claim to be history’s victims.
Author: Hugues Canuel Publisher: Naval Institute Press ISBN: 1682476308 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 316
Book Description
The Fall and Rise of French Sea Power explores the renewal of French naval power from the fall of France in 1940 through the first two decades of the Cold War. The Marine nationale continued fighting after the Armistice, a service divided against itself. The destruction of French sea power—at the hands of the Allies, the Axis, and fratricidal confrontations in the colonies—continued unabated until the scuttling of the Vichy fleet in 1942. And yet, just over twenty years after this dark day, Charles de Gaulle announced a plan to complement the country’s nuclear deterrent with a force of nuclear-powered, ballistic missile-carrying submarines. Completing the rebuilding effort that followed the nadir in Toulon, this force provided the means to make the Marine nationale a fully-fledged blue-water navy again, ready to face the complex circumstances of the Cold War. An important continuum of cooperation and bitter tensions shaped naval relations between France and the Anglo-Americans from World War II to the Cold War. The rejuvenation of a fleet nearly wiped out during the hostilities was underpinned by a succession of forced compromises, often the least bad possible, reluctantly accepted by French politicians and admirals but effectively leveraged in their pursuit of an independent naval policy within a strategy of alliance. Hugues Canuel demonstrates that the renaissance of French sea power was shaped by a naval policy formulated within a strategy of alliance closely adapted to the needs of a continental state with worldwide interests. This work fills a distinct void in the literature concerned with the evolution of naval affairs from World War II to the 1960s. The author, drawing upon extensive research through French, British, American, and NATO archives (including those made public only recently regarding the sensitive circumstances surrounding the French nuclear deterrent) maps out for readers the unique path adopted in France to rebuild a blue-water fleet during unprecedented circumstances.
Author: George E Melton
Author: George E Melton
Author: Ryan K. Noppen
Author: G. H. Bennett
Author: Douglas Porch
Author: John D. Grainger
Author: Douglas Porch
Author: Carlos Alfaro-Zaforteza
Author: Craig L. Symonds
Author: Philip Towle
Author: Hugues Canuel