A footnote from World War II - analysis

• Author: MICHAEL COHEN
• Published date: 09 October 2021
• Publication title: Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel)

With that change of government, not only France but also French colonies around the world came under the rule of the Vichy government, including the islands of Saint Pierre and Miquelon, only 12 miles off the southwest coast of Newfoundland.

The two islands – 93 square miles with a total population of 6,500 – were some of the oldest French overseas possessions. From the early 16th century, ownership had gone back and forth between France and Britain, until 1815, when the Treaty of Paris established French sovereignty.

cnxps.cmd.push(function () { cnxps({ playerId: '36af7c51-0caf-4741-9824-2c941fc6c17b' }).render('4c4d856e0e6f4e3d808bbc1715e132f6'); });

>

Most of the citizens of the two islands were opposed to the Vichy government, but the French Prefect Baron Gilbert de Bournat, the administrator of the islands, was as Time magazine reported, "faithful to Vichy and Pétain." While there was concern about this new strategic asset of Vichy and the Nazis in North America, the response to this development was not uniform in Washington, Ottawa and London.

The United States was worried about the Vichy government's plans to hire Western Union to build a powerful transmitter on Saint Pierre that would have allowed the Nazis to broadcast directly into North America. Since Western Union was an American company, then-President Franklin Roosevelt was able to squelch that initiative. However, at that time the US was a nonbelligerent, and it recognized the Vichy government and moved the US embassy from Paris to Vichy in central France. Britain did not recognize the Vichy government and had great anxiety over what would happen to the French fleet. Assurances by the Nazis and the French were not enough for Churchill, and so a few weeks after the fall of Paris, the British – for the first time since the Battle of Waterloo – attacked French forces (in this case, the French navy in various ports in Western and Northern Africa).

Canada, while a part of the British Commonwealth, joined the US in recognizing the Vichy government. As with Britain, she was concerned with the French fleet coming under the command of the Nazis and hoped that by maintaining diplomatic relations with the Vichy government, Canada could keep the Vichy government from entering the war on the side of the Axis and prevent the transfer of the French fleet to the Nazis. The Canadians were also concerned with the growing number of ships being sunk in the western Atlantic by the Nazis.

THEY WERE convinced that...