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1 The British Embassy in Paris and the Fall of France
Rogelia Pastor-Castro
The British Embassy in Paris is one of the government’s most impressive diplomatic settings. Acquired by the Duke of Wellington in 1814 from Napoleon’s sister Pauline Borghese, it is one of the finest residences on the Rue du Foubourg St Honoré. In the library hangs a frame containing a seal which was fixed to the embassy entrance during World War II, stating that the embassy was under Swiss protection. The seal was removed on 3 September 1944, when the embassy staff began to return. Four years earlier, on 10 June 1940, as the German army approached Paris, Ambassador Sir Ronald Campbell and the reduced staff had departed from the embassy courtyard in six cars and followed the French government south. This moment marked a critical point in the war. For the French Third Republic it was a fatal blow. Franco-British diplomatic relations would decline to the point of rupture, and significantly, this episode would cast a long shadow, helping to shape enduring French and British perceptions of one another’s resilience and reliability at times of national trauma.
This chapter will assess the embassy’s capacity to deal with these crises, offering insights into several issues. At one level, the chapter contributes to the work on embassies and ambassadors in times of conflict and, more specifically, the difficulty for diplomatic relations precipitated by a fundamental realignment within a military alliance.1 Additionally, the chapter contributes to the many works on Franco-British relations during World War II.2 Historians have examined the estrangement between the erstwhile allies during this period and memoirs and biographies have added to the various interpretations.3 These works, however, focus on politicians’ key decisions and tend to overlook the pivotal role played by the embassy team. By stressing the signal importance of the resident embassy, the interventions by diplomatic actors in situ, and their influence on the political, military and humanitarian crisis, the chapter adds another layer to our understanding of Franco-British relations.4 Explaining the defeat has been the subject of intense debate.5 Historians have tended to blame the weak political institutions, the multitude of political parties and the instability of governments. Others argued that this criticism was unfair and that French politics did rise to the challenge and sought to confront the German threat. For Talbot, neither of these views fully grasps French domestic politics and he argues that ‘international events exacerbated existing cleavages and created new ones …’ The resulting divisions among and between France’s civil and military leaders fractured the machinery of state and undermined France’s ability to respond to the existential crisis of Germany’s invasion. This perilous situation was further aggravated by continuing arguments in government over how and where the battle for France should be fought.6 In his last dispatch, Ambassador Sir Ronald Campbell noted that once the early military confidence had given way to despair, the French government ‘ceased to have any real heart in the fight’.7 But, as this chapter reveals, confronted with a crisis beyond the embassy confines and without access to the inner networks of a collapsing French state inevitably shaped the ambassador’s perceptions. The fact that all the key players had fled from Paris before regrouping in Bordeaux – where, in a sign of things to come, the various French governmental factions ate at separate tables within the same restaurant – speaks to the significance of cultural precepts and emotional responses to any analysis of international history.8
During this crisis in 1940, the embassy faced a sustained political, military and humanitarian crisis working under increasingly difficult operating conditions. In Paris, the embassy had a traditional structure with political, commercial and military sections. Outside Paris, British consulates in places like Lille, Boulogne, Rouen, Nice and Bordeaux kept the ambassador informed and supported the embassy’s efforts during the crisis – albeit with ever-decreasing personnel as the crisis intensified. Following its departure from Paris the embassy operated with only essential staff, first from Tours, then from Bordeaux. More to the point, key actors were spread over the French countryside, and accommodation was basic. Meanwhile, with few resources the embassy found communications were limited and access to ministers hindered by the distances. These circumstances would test the embassy’s influence, resilience and adaptability. The embassy had to adjust continuously as it moved from conducting normal diplomatic relations with a close ally to dealing with an increasingly hostile regime. In a matter of weeks Britain and France transformed from a wartime alliance with a Supreme War Council, an Anglo-French coordinating committee for economic planning, and ambassadorial contacts with the French government on an hourly basis, to a situation where the ambassador was cut off from the French government and left uncertain about its intentions. In tense, wartime conditions, diplomacy became an instrument to exert pressure regarding two critical issues. In March 1940, Britain and France had signed an undertaking not to conclude a separate peace but, as the military situation deteriorated, the embassy pressed the French government to continue the fight and, in the event of France signing a separate peace, the embassy would have to ensure that the French fleet would not end up in enemy hands.9 However, embassy political operations became more challenging as the divisions among French leaders hardened and the defeatists came to prominence. As the French collapse approached, the embassy also faced a humanitarian crisis. As millions of refugees from Belgium and northern France moved across the country, the various consulates sought to provide assistance and evacuate thousands of British subjects and refugees under challenging conditions.10
Leading the embassy during this crisis was Sir Ronald Campbell, who had arrived in Paris in 1939 to replace Sir Eric Phipps, whose antiwar stance during the Munich Crisis had caused consternation at the Foreign Office. To emphasise this new direction, in December 1939 Oliver Harvey arrived as first minister, having served as principal private secretary to Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden and his successor Lord Halifax. Both men had served at Paris before: Campbell as minister before his appointment at Belgrade, and Harvey as head of chancery between 1931 and 1936. Both men had an intimate knowledge of France and had built political networks among the French government and foreign policy elite. In May 1940, Prime Minister Churchill, who also assumed the newly created ministerial position of minister of defence, appointed General Sir Edward Spears as his personal representative to French Premier Paul Reynaud. Although there was some concern about how Spears’s role might affect the ambassador, he offered reassurances that his mission would not interfere with Campbell. Although Spears saw Campbell as ‘rather reserved and diffident’, he also described him as ‘infinitely painstaking, contentious, sound and straightforward’.11 In fact, Harvey noted that Spears was, indeed, useful in dealing with the French and providing a connection to Churchill.12 This contributed to a good working relationship between Spears and the embassy as they coordinated their efforts to keep France in the war.
Reporting the crises
At the beginning of 1940 the embassy’s analysis of, and reporting on, the French situation was accurate but also grim. As well as the workaday analysis of the French political situation, the embassy updated London on French military morale by collating information from the different consulates.13 Alongside their reports on the military situation, embassy staff began to make preparations for evacuating the embassy and British subjects in France. Although the public pronouncements from the French political elite on Franco-British unity sounded optimistic, embassy reporting depicted an increasingly febrile situation.14 The main problem was the worsening polarisation of French politics. Following the Munich agreement, Prime Minister Edouard Daladier took the Radical party into a centre-Right and Right coalition. Although his popularity was high, the Socialists and the Communist Party were critical of the government. After September 1939, Daladier rallied the nation under the Union sacrée in order to confront the imminent danger, but this initial unity soon gave way to continued political divisions.15 At the very top, any working relationship between Daladier and Paul Reynaud, minister of finance, broke down.16 By mid-March embassy reportage revealed mounting concern that these political divisions were undermining France’s capacity to withstand a German offensive, a view openly expressed by those grouped around Pierre-Etienne Flandin and others in government who favoured accommodation with Germany. The French Senate, meanwhile, demanded increased energy in the conduct of the war, but there was no consensus on how this would be achieved.17 Daladier’s resignation as prime minister in early April, which saw him replaced by Reynaud, resolved nothing, as Daladier became minister of defence, meaning that the toxic relationship between the two continued.18
The Foreign Office handled Reynaud delicately, supporting him in continuing the war effort, while at the same time trying to avoid backing him at Daladier’s expense. Some reports placed little confidence in Reynaud, portraying him as ‘unreliable’.19 Oliver Harvey, for one, had a clear sense of the key political actors in Paris who were undermining the French position. They were the ‘bad men of French politics’, double-crossing and playing politics disgracefully. One such was former Premier Pierre Laval, who had mounted the attack on Daladier, Flandin and foreign minister, Georges Bonnet.20 In late March, Campbell, who had previously...
