The scuttling of the French fleet at Toulon

Before dawn on 27 November 1942 German armoured columns drove into Toulon, the largest base of the French navy on the Mediterranean. They had a single aim: to seize intact the warships that had lain there under the flag of the Vichy government since the armistice of 1940. They were too late. As the tanks passed through the gates of the arsenal, the order to scuttle was sent from the flagship, the battleship Strasbourg. Within a few hours the crews sank, blew up or set on fire some 77 vessels – three battleships, seven cruisers, almost thirty destroyers and torpedo boats, a dozen or more submarines and dozens of smaller craft. The Germans captured only wrecks and minor vessels, most of them disarmed. A few submarines slipped out of the harbour and reached North Africa.

It is usually said that the French scuttled their ships to keep them out of German hands, and that they rejected the other option – joining the Allied fleets in North African waters. That is true, but it needs qualifying: the decision to reject that course was not taken on 27 November, but over the previous two weeks, when the fleet’s commanders refused to put to sea despite appeals from Admiral François Darlan; by the morning of 27 November it was too late to escape.

A fleet without a war

After the defeat of France in June 1940 its navy was almost intact and ranked among the strongest in the world. Article 8 of the Armistice of Compiègne provided that the ships would be gathered in ports and disarmed under German and Italian supervision, and Adolf Hitler “solemnly” declared that he had no intention of using the French fleet for his own purposes. Darlan, then head of the navy, sent his commanders a secret order: the ships were to remain French, and if anyone attempted to seize them, the crews were to scuttle them. The British did not trust these assurances and on 3 July 1940 attacked the squadron at Mers-el-Kébir. Almost 1,300 French sailors were killed, and a resentment of the English took root in the navy’s officer corps for years to come.

The most powerful force that Vichy retained was the Forces de haute mer – the “High Seas Forces” of Admiral Jean de Laborde, based at Toulon: the fast battleship Strasbourg, which had escaped from Mers-el-Kébir, heavy and light cruisers and large destroyers, several dozen of the most modern ships in all. Alongside them in the harbour lay vessels under the maritime prefect, Vice Admiral André Marquis – ships disarmed under the armistice, under repair or in reserve, including the old battleship Provence, the seaplane tender Commandant Teste and Dunkerque, Strasbourg‘s sister ship (both belonged to the Dunkerque class), which had been badly damaged at Mers-el-Kébir and had been in dry dock since 1942. The armistice required the ships’ tanks to be kept almost empty, but the crews, by falsifying reports and gauge readings, had built up fuel stocks that according to most studies would have been enough for the passage to North Africa.

Two weeks of hesitation

The Allied landings in North Africa on 8 November 1942 upset the fragile balance on which Vichy rested. Darlan, who happened to be in Algiers, ordered a ceasefire after three days of fighting and went over to the Americans. Hitler responded on 11 November with Case Anton: German troops marched into the hitherto unoccupied southern zone, and the Italians occupied Corsica and the eastern part of Provence. Toulon, however, was left alone. After talks with Vichy the Germans agreed that the base should remain an “entrenched camp” under French command, on condition that the fleet took no action against the Axis powers and defended the port against the Allies and against “Frenchmen who are enemies of the Marshal’s government”. On the evening of 11 November a telegram arrived from Hitler demanding the fleet command’s word of honour on this. Laborde assembled his senior officers and took their oath; on 12 November it was read out in the order of the day. Grand Admiral Erich Raeder believed that the French officers would keep their word. Hitler, however, had intended from the start to seize the ships, and on 19 November he ordered preparations for a strike on the base.

At Vichy the navy was now run by Rear Admiral Gabriel Auphan, Darlan’s successor at the ministry. On 11 November he sent Laborde and Marquis an instruction: they were to oppose, without bloodshed, the entry of foreign troops into naval establishments and aboard ships, to settle matters on the spot through negotiation, and, if that failed, to scuttle the ships. The demolition parties were initially to capsize the vessels, but the order was later changed so that the ships would settle on an even keel, which would make it easier to raise them after the war.

On 11 November and again the following day Darlan, who had proclaimed himself High Commissioner in Algiers acting “in the name of the Marshal, who is not free”, called on the Toulon fleet to put to sea, sail for Africa and return to the fight alongside the Allies. Laborde, who had been Darlan’s rival for years and regarded him as a traitor, refused; according to an often-repeated though hard-to-verify anecdote, he replied with a single obscene word. On the decks the mood was different. Among the sailors, distrustful of the Allies, an even greater dislike of the Germans and Italians was growing, and on Strasbourg and several cruisers there were cheers for de Gaulle and calls to put to sea. The authorities responded by arresting suspects and stopping shore leave. On 15 November Laborde met Marshal Philippe Pétain and Auphan at Vichy. In private Auphan urged him to lead the fleet to Africa, but Laborde declared that he would act only on a formal order from the government. No such order came. Auphan soon resigned, and Vice Admiral Jean-Marie Abrial became Minister of the Navy.

The hesitation also had practical causes. When army units left the Toulon area at the Germans’ demand, sailors had to man the coastal and anti-aircraft batteries, so the ships’ crews were dispersed. The cruiser Jean de Vienne was in dry dock, and Dunkerque was unfit to sail. Most important, however, was politics: for Laborde and most of the Vichy admirals, taking the fleet to sea without the Marshal’s order would have been mutiny, and going over to the Allies would have repeated Darlan’s “treason”.

Operation Lila

The plan to seize the base was code-named Lila. It was to be carried out by the 7th Panzer Division, reinforced by battle groups including a motorcycle battalion from the SS division Das Reich, together with a naval detachment that was to take over the ships and prevent them being scuttled. The columns were to enter Toulon from two directions: from the east, to take Fort Lamalgue, with the maritime prefect’s headquarters, and the arsenal in the Mourillon district; and from the west, to seize the main arsenal and the coastal batteries. German vessels were to wait outside the harbour, and the approaches to the roadstead were mined so that no ship could slip out to the open sea.

At about 4 a.m. on 27 November the Germans burst into Fort Lamalgue and arrested Admiral Marquis. His chief of staff, Rear Admiral Robin, nevertheless managed to telephone the commandant of the arsenal, Rear Admiral Dornon, who passed the warning to Laborde aboard Strasbourg. The surprised admiral ordered the ships to be prepared for scuttling and fire to be opened on anyone approaching their sides without permission. At about the same time, around 4.25 a.m., the German consul general at Châteldon handed Prime Minister Pierre Laval a copy of Hitler’s letter to Pétain, in which the Führer justified the seizure of Toulon by the alleged disloyalty of the French commanders and announced the dissolution of the Armistice Army – what remained of the French land forces.

The main German column lost its way in the maze of the arsenal and was about an hour late. At the gates the sentries played for time by demanding papers. At 5.25 a.m. the tanks passed through the gate of the main arsenal, and Strasbourg sent out by radio, signal lamp and runner the order: “Scuttle! Scuttle! Scuttle!” The crews went ashore while demolition parties opened the sea cocks and fired the charges. Several submarines, raked with machine-gun fire, cast off their moorings in order to scuttle themselves in deeper water or to escape.

At about 6.45 a.m. there was an exchange of fire around Strasbourg and the cruiser Foch; a French officer was killed and several sailors were wounded. When a German officer demanded that Laborde hand over his ship, the admiral replied that she had already sunk. Strasbourg settled on the bottom on an even keel, and her captain had charges fired that destroyed her guns and machinery and set her fuel alight. A few minutes later the cruiser Colbert blew up. Germans trying to board the cruiser Algérie argued with her crew that scuttling the ship violated the terms of the armistice, but the charges went off, and the ship burned for nearly three weeks. The captain of the cruiser La Marseillaise had his ship heeled over and blown up. Aboard Dupleix German soldiers managed to close the sea cocks, but the crew lit fuses in the turrets and the ship was wrecked by the explosion of her own torpedoes.

Jean de Vienne and Dunkerque were in dry dock. On the former the Germans defused the charges, but the ship flooded through the open sea cocks and blocked the dock. Dunkerque’s captain at first hesitated to carry out the order, but in the end his crew opened the makeshift patches over the holes left by the British attack of July 1940 and blew up the engine rooms. The officers of the battleship Provence and the seaplane tender Commandant Teste kept the Germans occupied with polite conversation until their ships went to the bottom. On the submarine Henri Poincaré German soldiers came aboard just as the crew were opening the valves; unfamiliar with submarines, they were unable to stop her sinking and only narrowly escaped drowning.

According to some accounts, as early as about 5.45 a.m. an instruction from Laval and Minister Abrial reached Toulon from Vichy to avoid incidents and halt the operation. It was already too late: most of the ships were sinking or burning.

The toll

By midday only smoking wrecks remained in the harbour. Figures for the number of vessels sunk vary depending on how small and auxiliary craft are counted. The figure most often given is 77 ships: three battleships (Strasbourg, Dunkerque, Provence), seven cruisers, fifteen destroyers, thirteen torpedo boats, six sloops, twelve submarines, a seaplane tender, a training ship and dozens of auxiliaries, tugs and floating cranes. Other tallies speak of about 80 vessels and up to 16 submarines. French studies estimate that about 90 per cent of the ships at Toulon were scuttled, including every unit of the High Seas Forces, with a combined displacement of about 235,000 tonnes. The Germans captured 39 small vessels, most of them damaged or disarmed, together with the hulls of two obsolete battleships used as hulks. According to the most frequently cited figures, 12 French sailors were killed and 26 wounded in the clashes in the port.

Of the five submarines that left the harbour, three reached North Africa: Casabianca, which dived at 5.40 a.m., and Marsouin put into Algiers, and Le Glorieux into Oran. Iris reached Barcelona and was interned in Spain, while Vénus scuttled herself, as ordered, at the harbour entrance. One small auxiliary vessel also reached Algiers.

That same day the Germans disarmed and disbanded the Armistice Army – the last armed force that Vichy had retained in France. The Marshal’s government, which since 1940 had treated the fleet as its chief asset in dealings with Berlin and as the guarantee of its sovereignty, lost both in a single morning.

Reactions

For the Kriegsmarine command the operation was a failure. Hitler took it more calmly: after the loss of Bismarck he no longer attached much importance to large surface ships, and he considered that the destruction of the French fleet completed the success of Case Anton, since the ships could no longer go over to the Allies. The Italians, who had hoped that at least some of the French ships would strengthen their navy, were disappointed. They later raised several cruisers and destroyers, but did not manage to return any of them to service.

In London and Washington the news was received with relief. Since 1940 the fear that the Germans would take over the French fleet had been one of the British Admiralty’s gravest worries – it was this fear that had led to the tragedy at Mers-el-Kébir. Now the problem had vanished, although the Allies would have preferred the ships to join them. General Charles de Gaulle sharply criticised the Vichy admirals for failing to take the fleet to Africa, where it could have fought the Germans. Darlan, who had held power in Algiers for little more than two weeks, lost the card he had been promising the Allies.

Place in the war

The scuttling of the fleet at Toulon ended Vichy’s history as a naval power of any account and deprived Pétain’s state of its last trump card in its dealings with Germany. From then on Vichy had no territory free of occupation, no army and no fleet, and its dependence on Berlin became total. The strategic balance tilted in the Allies’ favour: there was no longer a fleet in the Mediterranean that could strengthen the Axis, and the British ships held in reserve against such a turn of events could be sent elsewhere.

The French navy did not, however, cease to exist. The ships stationed in North and West Africa, including the battleship Richelieu at Dakar, and in 1943 also the squadron interned at Alexandria since 1940, went over to the Allies and fought until the end of the war alongside the ships of the Free French. Casabianca later carried out secret operations off the coast of Corsica. After the war, however, France had to rebuild its fleet almost from scratch, and the wrecks at Toulon were still being raised years later. The Germans mounted the guns of the sunken Provence in a coastal battery on the Saint-Mandrier-sur-Mer peninsula, which in August 1944 shelled Allied battleships for more than a week during the landings in Provence.

The argument over 27 November 1942 went on long after the war. For some, the scuttling was an act of honour: the sailors had kept the promise of 1940 that the fleet would not fall into foreign hands. For others, it was a telling image of Vichy’s paralysis, whose admirals preferred to destroy their ships rather than lead them into battle alongside the Allies, even though they had the fuel and two weeks in which to do so. After the war Laborde was tried before the High Court of Justice; in March 1947 he was sentenced to death, the sentence was commuted to imprisonment, and in 1951 he was pardoned. In September 1943, after Italy’s capitulation, the Italian fleet did what de Gaulle had expected of the French at Toulon: it put to sea and surrendered to the Allies.