British Journal for Military History Volume 6, Issue 3, November 2020 Who Speaks for France? Vichy, Free France and the Battle over French Legitimacy: 1940-1942 Rachel Chin ISSN: 2057-0422 Date of Publication: 25 November 2020 Citation: Rachel Chin, ‘Who Speaks for France? Vichy, Free France and the Battle over French Legitimacy: 1940-1942’, British Journal for Military History, 6.3 (2020), pp. 2-22. www.bjmh.org.uk This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial- NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. The BJMH is produced with the support of British Journal for Military History, Volume 6, Issue 3, November 2020 Who Speaks for France? Vichy, Free France and the Battle over French Legitimacy: 1940-1942 RACHEL CHIN* University of Glasgow, UK Email:
[email protected] ABSTRACT In June 1940 the French metropolitan government signed an armistice with Hitler’s Germany, which effectively removed France from the conflict. At the same time, the little known French General Charles de Gaulle was in London establishing himself at the head of the Free French resistance movement. This set the stage for arguments over who represented the French nation and its interests. This article explores how the Vichy government and the Free French movement constructed their respective claims to legitimacy using legal, moral and historical arguments. And it considers how these claims were fought through armed clashes over French colonial territory. Introduction On 17 June 1940 the French General Charles de Gaulle and the British Liaison Officer to the French, Edward Spears, boarded a plane bound for England.