Plans for French intervention in Greece

[Andy H]

Anglo-French planners will still formulating plans as the battle for France raged. One of these plans concerned a Italian invasion of Greece and what Frances response would be. British Admiralty communications dated June 1st & 5th state that "4 French Cruisers in Beirut will be ready to embark troops for Crete, one day after 2 British cruisers land troops there. Also limited actions by French troops were proposed against Salonika, Milos, Salamis, Navarino & Argostoli"

Anything anyone can add about the above is appreciated

Regards

Andy H

[Jon G.]

This sounds like one of several plans to invade Europe via the Balkans. The French navy and Darlan in particular wanted to repeat the WW1 Allied landing at Salonika. The French navy had been transferring ships from Brest to the Mediterranean from March 1940, in anticipation of Italy's entry into the war on Germany's side.

Like you I am also interested in any and all additional info about this proposal, but frankly it sounds more like a contingency plan, to be executed in the event that Italy attacked Greece.

[Jon G.]

From an article which I just came across by Martin Thomas entitled 'At the Heart of Things? French Imperial Defense Planning in the Late 1930s' from French Historical Studies

...Until the pressing danger of a German thrust far into southeastern Europe emerged in 1939, the external security of the Levant rested, first, on Britain's ability to deny the Italian fleet access to the eastern Mediterranean and, second, on the continuation of cordial Turkish-Soviet relations. The Levantine military command in Beirut was thus able to contemplate a more offensive role in a European war. During Anglo-French staff talks on Mediterranean war planning conducted during 1938-39, hopes of a Salonika expeditionary force to establish a Balkan bridgehead were pinned on a three-division force made up of two infantry divisions from the Levantine army and the French Eighty-sixth Division, based in Algeria. During meetings with the Turkish chief of staff, Marshal Cakmak, Huntziger proved decidedly favourable to a full-blown tripartite convention with the Turks. The British chiefs of staff were delighted to learn that their French colleagues would assume the leading role in the planned Balkans operations, provided that the British Mediterranean fleet prevented Italian incursion into the Aegean and Britain's Cyprus air bases were put at French disposal for the protection of the projected Levantine expeditionary force. But as Italy did not immediately enter the war, the planned Balkan operations were not meticulously coordinated until, with Gamelin's backing, in January 1940 Weygand returned to the charge in a further round of Anglo-French staff discussions pursued through the Allied Military Committee. Ultimately, these came to nothing. The Salonika expedition was shelved, overtaken by events in Norway and the Low Countries in the spring of 1940...

It seems like a contingency plan which came up from the drawer, was refined, and then finally rejected.

[Bronsky]

Anglo-French planners will still formulating plans as the battle for France raged. One of these plans concerned a Italian invasion of Greece and what Frances response would be. British Admiralty communications dated June 1st & 5th state that "4 French Cruisers in Beirut will be ready to embark troops for Crete, one day after 2 British cruisers land troops there. Also limited actions by French troops were proposed against Salonika, Milos, Salamis, Navarino & Argostoli"

I'm not quite sure what exactly you're looking for, here.

Staff talks had taken place between Britain and France since before the war (early 1939 IIRC). Initially, they were a British concession to French demands in return for French acquiescence to the latest batch of Chamberlain-led appeasement, either in Spain or WRT Italy (I forget which, but could look it up if you're interested).

I've looked - briefly - at the original transcripts of these talks, though there was far too much material for me to read and take stock of in the limited time that I had available. From memory, they started as fairly vague and general, but moved to more specific stuff after IIRC March 1939 when the British decided that war was a real possibility. The essence was contingency planning in case of an Italian attack, and the broad outline were that France would attack Libya from Tunisia after a while, Britain made vaguer promise to do the same from Egypt (the British didn't have the troops, and the French were less interested in pushing that particular issue than in having British troops deployed in France), the French Navy was to secure the Western Mediterranean, i.e. west of Sardinia-Corsica, east of Gibraltar, with the Royal Navy having responsibility for the rest, both navies having plans for shore bombardment of the Italian coastline, submarine attacks of Italy to Africa traffic and other niceties.

The French Lebanon-Syria mandate was seen as a jumping-off point for either a repeat of the WWI Salonika expedition or an invasion force against the Italian-held islands in that area (Rhodes and the Dodecanese). From the French perspective, they were also insurance against an Italian attack should the British back out of their commitment.

Accordingly, one division was shipped from North Africa to Lebanon-Syria in late 1939. In February & March 1940, at the time of the Winter War, factions both within France and Britain agitated for an attack on the Soviet Union, particularly the Caucasus and the Baku oilfields. The British side was "operation Pike" IIRC and a book with that title was published a year or two ago. The French air force in Lebanon-Syria received reinforcements at that time (not so much new units as a priority for modern aircraft) in anticipation of such a venture.

These plans were overtaken by events, but by early June it was clear that Italian belligerency was only a matter of days, weeks at most, so inter-Allied plans for such a contingency were dusted up and, since the units involved were still mostly in place (with the exception of Tunisia and French North Africa in general, which had been largely thinned out of troops), they didn't need much alteration. The French collapse, however, forced a reassessment

[Andy H]

Anglo-French planners will still formulating plans as the battle for France raged. One of these plans concerned a Italian invasion of Greece and what Frances response would be. British Admiralty communications dated June 1st & 5th state that "4 French Cruisers in Beirut will be ready to embark troops for Crete, one day after 2 British cruisers land troops there. Also limited actions by French troops were proposed against Salonika, Milos, Salamis, Navarino & Argostoli"

I'm not quite sure what exactly you're looking for, here.

Hi Bronsky

I was looking for specifics concerning the proposed interventions by French assets against the listed objectives.

Regards

Andy H

[Andy H]

Found this in the journal English Historical Review (Feb'97):- The French Navy and the Appeasement of Italy 1937-1939 by Reynolds M Salerno

Italian pre-eminence in the eastern Mediterranean. The independence
of France's new ally, Turkey, would be directly jeopardized.
The prospect of Britain abandoning the eastern Mediterranean in favour
of the Far East, which made Italian dominance in the former region
more likely, persuaded General Maxime Weygand, commander of the
French forces in the Levant, to recommend a preventative French
occupation of Salonika. Despite vehement opposition from the Marine,
which argued that reliable security of the communication and supply
line to Salonika could only be assured if Italy were definitively neutral,
Gamelin attached great significance to the idea of a Salonika expedition:
he agreed with Weygand that 'the French flag should be at Salonika' to
discourage Italy from contemplating action in the eastern Mediterranean.
Surprisingly, Gamelin believed that a proposal to send troops to
the Levant, even if it lacked an endorsement from both the Marine and
the French government, would generate a consensus for joint Anglo-
French action in the Mediterranean. Having received approval from
only the Army Staff, Gamelin suggested to Lord Gort, Chief of the
Imperial General Staff, that the Allies plan a mission to Salonika in the
early stages of war.2
France's Salonika plan, which was not taken seriously by the British,
was quickly eclipsed by the outbreak of crisis in China.

Regards

Andy H

[Bronsky]

I was looking for specifics concerning the proposed interventions by French assets against the listed objectives.

I don't know of any detailed inter-Allied planning being conducted after the war on that issue, as opposed to general decisions like those mentioned above e.g. France would send X divisions to point Y, Britain would contribute a certain amount of air cover, etc.

I am fairly sure that the prewar staff talks did not include specifics, I may have missed them by going too fast through them but what I gathered was that the only specific data was shared intelligence about friendly and enemy forces in the area.

Salerno's book was available very cheaply (like $3) online at some point, and is a good book. He details how the British and the French changed their minds numerous times over various issues like that one. The archival sources that he lists are unlikely to contain any specifics because either I'm aware of them (and know that they don't) or they are high-level Navy archives i.e. something like First Sea Lord stuff, so unlikely to be all that specific. I'll look the book up and see if I find something juicy, which is why I had asked about your definition of juicy...