2 - ‘The Real Question at Issue’

Summary

This chapter explores the future of the French fleet in the wake of the Franco-German armistice. It focuses upon the fleet’s material and symbolic importance on both sides of the Channel. For Pétain’s newly minted government, the fleet was a mark of international prestige, a measurement of sovereignty and the guardian of the empire. For Britain, it was a strategic and symbolic liability. Its neutralisation would send a powerful message of Britain’s wartime resolve to audiences in Britain, metropolitan France and the United States.

Operation Catapult was conceived to remove the French fleet as a military threat, illustrate British power and justify an armed incursion against an erstwhile ally. By examining the content and proposed timing of draft press releases, which have not been discussed in any academic literature to date, this chapter reveals how policy-makers dealt with questions of violence and morality in wartime. It explores how these normative concepts precluded certain actions while allowing others. Finally, it assesses how British leaders justified action against the French fleet as both inevitable and necessary for the successful prosecution of the war.