Lend-Lease for the Free French

On 24 November 1941 it was announced in Washington that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt had extended the Lend-Lease programme to the territories under General Charles de Gaulle’s Free France. The decision took the form of a letter to Edward Stettinius, administrator of the programme since the end of October, dated 11 November. In it Roosevelt explained that, in order to enable Lend-Lease aid to be arranged for the French Volunteer Forces (Free French) by way of retransfer from His Majesty’s Government in the United Kingdom or its allies, he found that “the defense of any French territory under the control of the French Volunteer Forces (Free French) is vital to the defense of the United States”. Such a finding was a condition that the Lend-Lease Act laid down for every recipient of aid.

Chronologies state briefly that the United States “granted Lend-Lease to the Free French”. That is true, but subject to the reservations contained in the letter itself. The aid did not go to de Gaulle directly but through the British, who could pass on to him equipment received from America. Nor did the president speak of de Gaulle’s movement as a government or as France, but of “territory” and “volunteer forces”. The United States did not recognise Free France and maintained full diplomatic relations with the government of Marshal Philippe Pétain in Vichy.

De Gaulle’s empire

When on 18 June 1940 de Gaulle broadcast his appeal from London to continue the fight, he argued that France was “not alone”, because she had an empire behind her and could, like England, draw on “the immense industry of the United States”. A year and a half later these resources were beginning to become available to him precisely thanks to the empire. At the end of August 1940 Cameroon, Chad and almost the whole of French Equatorial Africa rallied to Free France, and in November the Free French took Gabon. On 27 October 1940 in Brazzaville de Gaulle set up the Empire Defence Council, which governed these territories. After the campaign in Syria and Lebanon in the summer of 1941 they were joined, in an uneasy division of power with the British, by the mandated territories of the Levant. On 24 September 1941 de Gaulle created the French National Committee in London, with commissioners responsible for individual areas, which was already the nucleus of a government.

For the Allies Equatorial Africa mattered above all as a bridge. Through Chad and Fort-Lamy ran the air route from the port of Takoradi on the Gold Coast to Khartoum and Egypt. Along it aircraft were ferried to North Africa for the RAF, including more and more American machines. In the spring of 1941, when the Germans had entered Libya and Vichy was strengthening its hold on neighbouring Niger, de Gaulle feared an attack on this route. In June his high commissioner in Brazzaville, General Adolphe Sicé, asked the American consul in Léopoldville for transport aircraft, bombers and anti-tank guns. De Gaulle, for his part, passed to the Americans through their minister in Cairo a memorandum in which he argued that it was Central Africa, and not Britain or North Africa, that would be the best base for future American operations.

Aid yes, recognition no

On 28 June the State Department replied that military supplies for the Free French colonies would be treated as part of the aid to Britain, and that requests should be addressed to the British. In July the British ambassador, Lord Halifax, passed to the Under-Secretary of State, Sumner Welles, a memorandum from René Pleven, de Gaulle’s envoy in the United States, asking for economic aid and at least moral support for the movement. Welles replied that official recognition of the Free French would make it impossible for the United States to maintain relations with Vichy and, above all, to co-operate with the authorities of French North Africa. On 21 July, however, he agreed that supplies for the Free French territories should be treated as part of Lend-Lease aid to Britain, with the announcement put off until later.

This two-track approach stemmed from Roosevelt’s whole policy towards France. Since January 1941 Admiral William Leahy had been serving as ambassador in Vichy, with the task of restraining Marshal Pétain and Admiral François Darlan from handing over the fleet and the African bases to the Germans. In North Africa, under an agreement with General Maxime Weygand, the Americans had since February been supplying fuel and civilian goods, and their observers travelled around the ports there. In Washington’s eyes Weygand was a man who might one day resume the fight. De Gaulle, suspected in Washington of dictatorial ambitions, was not a partner the State Department wished to support openly.

In August Colonel Harry Cunningham was sent to Equatorial Africa as military observer, together with Commander John Mitchell as naval observer, who was to survey the air routes. On 25 August de Gaulle told journalists in Brazzaville that he had offered the United States the use of the ports of Equatorial Africa. The Americans arrived at Pointe-Noire on 2 October and were received enthusiastically as the “American mission”. Washington reminded Cunningham that he was not leading any mission and was merely to gather facts. The Vichy government saw things differently: on 6 and 19 November its ambassador, Gaston Henry-Haye, protested that sending serving officers to the “dissidents” was an unfriendly act.

The November shift

November brought two events that shifted the emphasis. On 18 November Pétain, under German pressure, recalled Weygand from North Africa, and the State Department suspended its economic aid programme for the region and began to rethink it. A few days later the decision on the Free French was announced. On the same day Washington and London made public the agreement to send American troops to Suriname, whose eastern neighbour was Vichy-controlled French Guiana. On 5 December Ambassador Henry-Haye, on his government’s instructions, lodged a formal protest against the aid being given to the Free French under Lend-Lease. Welles did not reply to it at all.

The practical significance of the decision was modest at first. The Free French were already receiving arms from the British, and Britain itself needed every American aircraft and gun. American equipment was also being sought by the Soviet Union, to which Roosevelt had offered a credit of a billion dollars at the end of October under the same programme. The political significance was greater: for the first time the American government officially stated that the defence of the territories under de Gaulle’s authority was in the interest of the United States.

Place in the war

Two weeks later the United States was at war. Relations with de Gaulle nevertheless remained cool. On 24 December 1941 Free French ships under Admiral Émile Muselier seized the islands of Saint-Pierre and Miquelon off the coast of Canada against Washington’s wishes, which provoked the anger of the Secretary of State, Cordell Hull. The Americans kept their embassy in Vichy until November 1942, and in North Africa they backed General Henri Giraud, not de Gaulle.

Aid to the Free French grew all the same. On 6 October 1942 Roosevelt amended his letter of 11 November 1941 and allowed aid to be given directly to the French National Committee, by then under the name of Fighting France, bypassing British mediation. After the Allied landings in North Africa in November 1942 the aid was extended to all French territories outside Axis control. By the autumn of 1943 the French army had received from America equipment for eight divisions, with which it fought in Italy, in Provence and on the Rhine. The decision of November 1941, issued without recognition and through an intermediary, opened the way for France to return to the war as an ally armed by America.