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The Role of Rhetoric in Anglo-French Imperial Relations, 1940-1945

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The Role of Rhetoric in Anglo-French Imperial Relations, 1940-1945 1 Between Policy Making and the Public Sphere: The Role of Rhetoric in Anglo-French Imperial Relations, 1940-1945 Submitted by Rachel Renee Chin to the University of Exeter As a thesis for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History In September 2016 This thesis is available for library use on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. I certify that all material in this thesis which is not my own work has been identified and that no material has previously been submitted and approved for the award of a degree by this or any other university. Signature: 2 Abstract The long history of Anglo-French relations has often been acrimonious. After the German defeat of France in June 1940 the right to represent the French nation was contested by Philippe Pétain’s Vichy government and Charles de Gualle’s London-based Free French resistance movement. This thesis will examine the highly complex relationship between Britain and these two competing sources of Frenchness between 1940 and 1945. It will do so through a series of empire-themed “crisis points,” which contributed to a heightened state of Anglo-French tension affecting all three actors. This study uses rhetoric as a means to link decision makers or statesman to the public sphere. It argues that policy makers, whether in the British War Cabinet, de Gaulle’s headquarters at Carlton Gardens, or Pétain’s ministries at Vichy anticipated how their policies were likely to be received by a group or groups of individuals. These were individuals who contributed towards what decision makers believed to be public opinion. Perceptions of public opinion, in other words, played a vital role in policy creation. In turn, the desire to get one or more sectors of the public “on board” with a particular policy or wartime operation gave rhetoric a place of primary importance. Specifically, we will see how policy makers carefully constructed and revised public statements and speeches. When these external communications and explanations are placed side by side with internal official discussions, it will become evident that rhetoric is itself a vital strategic tool. The grammatical constructions and vocabulary that made up official statements and mass media responses shed light on broader wartime themes including victory and defeat, allies and enemies, power, sovereignty, neutrality and morality. Ultimately, acknowledging that rhetoric is an inherent part of policy making allows us to better understand the links between the governing bodies of a nation and those who have a stake in its policies. At the same time, it allows us to see how less tangible normative factors continue to impact this process. 3 What is it that prevents me from being useful as a doctor or a writer? I think it is not so much our privations or our wanderings or our constantly changing and unsettled lives, as the power in our day of rhetoric, of the cliché - all this "dawn of the future", "building a new world", "torch-bearers of mankind". The first time you hear it you think: "What wealth of imagination!'" But in fact the reason it is so pompous is that there is no imagination at the back of it, because the thought is second-rate.1 [They] will judge you by public opinion in your town, and this is shaped by the fools who by sheer chance were both noble rich and moderate. Woe betide you if you stand out from the herd!2 He talks a tremendous amount, with a strange, nervous volubility, in which you hear a dozen thoughts, ideas and memories muttering at once. Each thought remains uncompleted. He trails them behind him like so much torn paper, snagged on random words or images.3 1 Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago (London: Random House, 2002), 258. 2 Stendhal, The Red and the Black: A Chronicle of the Nineteenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 156. 3 Mihail Sebastian, For Two Thousand Years, trans. Philip Ó Ceallaigh (London: Penguin Books, 2016), 136. 4 Table of Contents Abstract .................................................................................................................................... 2 Table of Contents .................................................................................................................. 4 Acknowledgements .............................................................................................................. 5 Abbreviations ......................................................................................................................... 6 Chapter 1: Introduction ...................................................................................................... 7 Chapter 2: Justifying Defeat ............................................................................................. 35 Chapter 3: “The Real Question at Issue” ...................................................................... 71 Chapter 4: Making Mers el-Kébir Inevitable .............................................................. 93 Chapter 5: Justifying Military Failure at Dakar, September 1940 ................... 121 Chapter 6: Operation Exporter and the Struggle for the Levant ...................... 153 Chapter 7: Moral Failure and Operation Torch ..................................................... 187 Chapter 8: Under Pressure, The 1943 Lebanese Parliamentary Crisis ......... 221 Chapter 9: Renegotiating Empire at the Close of the War .................................. 249 Chapter 10: Conclusion .................................................................................................. 277 Bibliography ...................................................................................................................... 290 5 Acknowledgements This research contributes to the broader, Leverhulme-funded project “Rhetoric of Empire.” It would not have been possible without the generous financial support of this trust. Additional grants from the Economic History Society, the Royal Historical Society, the University of Exeter Postgraduate Research Fund and Santander Bank have allowed me to travel to France to complete extensive archival research and study French at L’Institut Français. The decision taken by the University of Exeter to cover the remaining cost of my international student tuition fees has allowed me to devote my full attention to developing the ideas and themes in this thesis. I am extremely grateful for the moral and professional support of my primary supervisor Professor Martin Thomas and my secondary supervisor Professor Richard Toye. Martin in particular has offered unending and instrumental advice on the value of a straightforward argument. Finally, I am thankful that for all of the times I have found Max, my lovely cat, warming himself on my keyboard, he has never deleted anything of great value. 6 Abbreviations French Equatorial Africa AEF British Expeditionary Force BEF Combined Chiefs of Staff CCS French Committee of National Liberation CFLN Chief of the Imperial General Staff CIGS French National Committee CNF Conseil National de la Résistance CNR Commission d’Action Militaire COMAC Chiefs of Staff COS Forces Françaises de l’Intérieur FFI International Relations IR Joint Planning Staff JPS Joint Planning Subcommittee JPSC League of Nations LON Middle East Command MEC Middle East War Council MEWC Mass Observation MO Ministry of Information MOI French Christian Democrat Party MRP Office of Strategic Services OSS French Communist Party PCF Permanent Mandates Commission PMC Special Operations Executive SOE Vice Chiefs of Staff VCS Vice Chief of the Imperial General Staff VCIGS 7 Chapter 1: Introduction History and Rhetoric Introduction The Second World War is often remembered as a period of rhetorical prowess. Churchill’s speeches and legacy as a great orator (a legacy which conveniently leaves out his numerous failures) continues to be recalled by modern-day politicians who seek, through reputational entrepreneurship, to persuade both themselves and others of their own greatness.1 Similarly, Churchillian rhetoric that denigrated the practice of appeasement has been and continues to be employed to suggest that a particular foreign policy is weak and abhorrent.2 Indeed, it is the rhetoric that stemmed from events: the preambles to “great” speeches, the stark radio addresses, and the voices that delivered them, that is most often remembered and enshrined (even if retrospectively) as a part of our national story. Employing rhetorical analysis from a historical perspective can offer new insights on the complex and often subtle ways in which language is employed to persuade, place blame or confirm, even, on occasion, to create a lasting national myth. It can shed light on cultural norms by examining how and why a particular event was described in the way it was. Most importantly, it can become the connective tissue between official policy making and the translation and discussion of those decisions within the public sphere. Negative connotations of rhetoric, as compared to the search for an objective (and scientifically rigorous) truth, have encouraged modern definitions that describe it as “ostentatious or empty expression.”3 However, classical definitions, including that of Cicero, who described rhetoric as “speech designed to persuade” in his dialogue De Oratore, associate rhetoric with the art form of language that has a persuasive element.4 Kenneth Burke’s numerous books based on literary criticism through rhetoric insist that rhetoric is “rooted in
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