From Versailles to Mers el-Kébir : the promise of Anglo-French naval cooperation, 1919-40 /

From Versailles to Mers el-Kébir : the promise of Anglo-French naval cooperation, 1919-40 /

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Bibliographic Details
Author / Creator:	Melton, George E., 1932- author.
Imprint:	Annapolis, Maryland : Naval Institute Press, [2015]
Description:	1 online resource
Language:	English
Subject:	Churchill, Winston, -- 1874-1965. Darlan, François, -- 1881-1942. Somerville, James, -- 1882-1949. Churchill, Winston, -- 1874-1965. Darlan, François, -- 1881-1942. Somerville, James, -- 1882-1949. Mers-el-Kebir, Attack on, 1940. World War, 1939-1945 -- Naval operations, British. World War, 1939-1945 -- Naval operations, French. Naval strategy -- History -- 20th century. World War, 1939-1945 -- Mediterranean Sea. Diplomatic relations. Naval strategy. Great Britain -- Foreign relations -- France. France -- Foreign relations -- Great Britain. France. Great Britain. Mediterranean Sea. History.
Format:	E-Resource Book
URL for this record:	http://pi.lib.uchicago.edu/1001/cat/bib/11908314

Hidden Bibliographic Details
ISBN:	9781612518800 161251880X 9781612518800 9781612518800 9781612518794 1612518796
Notes:	Includes bibliographical references and index. Print version record and CIP data provided by publisher.
Summary:	"This book concerns itself with one of the most unlikely relationships in the two decades before World War II: the alliance of the Royal Navy and the French fleet. By the mid 1930s, both fleets had overextended themselves with global defense commitments, owing mainly to the collapse of the world war alliances and to an ominous shift in the balance of world naval power. To maximize their power, England and France combined their assets in a naval alliance. The union was not an altogether happy one, but it survived in one form or another until the British attack upon the French fleet at Mers el-Kébir in 1940. George E. Melton brings new insights to the diplomacy that led to this often strained cooperation, and reinterprets some of the most important events of early World War II"--
Other form:	Print version: Melton, George E., 1932- From Versailles to Mers el-Kébir. Annapolis, Maryland : Naval Institute Press, [2015] 9781612518794

Description
Summary:	This is a ground-breaking study in Anglo-French naval relations after 1919 as they related to European diplomatic currents between the two World Wars, and to the balance of global naval power before World War II until the summer of 1940. The regional focus is on the Mediterranean, the only area where British and French naval power could be combined to support their diplomatic agenda and to restrain the weakest of the three Axis powers. In broader focus, the study suggests that shifting currents in the balance of global naval power left both the French and British fleets overextended in the late 1930's, so that their concluding an entente was their only option to redress the strategic imbalance.<br> <br> The book is a study of the troubled courtship between the two naval staffs leading to the conclusion in early 1939 of a naval Entente. The Entente enabled London and Paris to distribute their naval power in the Mediterranean to neutralize Italy and Japan and to combine their naval power in the Atlantic against the Kriegsmarine. But that alliance was not an altogether happy one, as the global defense imperatives of the Admiralty frustrated the regional ambitions of the Rue Royale intent upon unleashing combined Anglo-French naval power against Italy to seize control of the Mediterranean early in the war.<br> <br> The study concludes that the Entente enjoyed its greatest success in terms of naval operations in the Atlantic against German surface raiders and U-boats, and that the British attack upon the French squadron at Mers el-Kébir was more a product of the 1940 Franco-German-Italian armistices that of accumulated tensions in the Entente. Finally, the study concludes with the view that the attack upon the French fleet at Mers el-Kébir was a tactical failure and a strategic blunder that burdened the subsequent war effort and created a naval balance more hostile than that prior to the attack, and that the outcome of the operation demanded a carefully crafted cover-up that twisted the facts and concealed from the public the failure of the operation.<br>
Physical Description:	1 online resource
Bibliography:	Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN:	9781612518800 161251880X 9781612518794 1612518796