Our enemy's enemy

Abstract

This article focuses on representations of Britain to occupied France by the BBC French Service via its flagship programme Les Français parlent aux Français [The French speak to the French]. It first examines the establishment of the service and the formulation of a British propaganda strategy on occupied France. It then explores the service's efforts to foster French belief in Britain as France's friend and ally, and to rationalise key issues and incidents which challenged that narrative. Simultaneously, it positions French Service endeavours alongside the propaganda delivered on French national radio, known as Radio Vichy, in order to explore the exchanges about Britain between French propagandists who spoke on behalf of different Frances. In so doing, the article provides a close reading of the original French Service broadcasts which covers a larger corpus of material than has hitherto been documented in published collections, and which extends existing knowledge on the topic.

KEYWORDS:

• Anglo-French relations
• BBC French Service
• Vichy France
• radio broadcasting
• propaganda
• the Second World War

Speaking on the BBC French Service on 3 August 1940, Pierre Bourdan, who would broadcast from London throughout Germany’s Occupation of France, proclaimed to listeners back home: ‘We are in England because England remains the enemy of Germany’.¹ On 26 August, his colleagues Jacques Brunius and Pierre Lefèvre declared in unison: ‘I prefer to see the English in their country than the Germans in mine’,² a slogan authored by Jean Oberlé, another French Service luminary, which thereafter regularly featured in the schedules.³ Such words demonstrate the strength of feeling of those French who rejected the Armistice which France had signed with Germany on 22 June 1940, and who elected to continue to fight from Britain for an alternative France. Simultaneously, they symbolise a determination to counteract anti-British propaganda in France, which worked to capitalise on critical wartime events involving Britain within a sustained and bitter war of words with London for influence over opinion in France.⁴

This article investigates representations of Britain to occupied France on the BBC French Service. This subject arises only as a subsidiary question in research published to date on wartime broadcasting in French from London. The dominant strand of earlier work has been the powerful association between the French Service broadcasts and the wartime narrative of Free France and resistance, a theme sustained in popular memory by photographs of Charles de Gaulle speaking into a BBC microphone. Such images evoke 18 June 1940 when De Gaulle, recently arrived in London, broadcast his historic appeal to resistance to his compatriots back home, an important (but unrecorded) moment in the story of Anglo-French broadcasting, even if few actually heard it at the time. Equally, they conjure up 22 June 1940, when De Gaulle broadcast again (this time recorded), calling on ‘all Frenchmen who want to remain free to listen to my voice and follow me’.⁵ In her detailed study of the history of French-language radio during the Second World War, Eck privileges analysis of the ways in which broadcasting from London contributed to the construction of the legend of Free France and to support for domestic resistance. The theme of ‘voices of freedom’ also marks Luneau’s wide-ranging analysis of the work of Radio London (meaning the BBC French Service) between 1940 and 1944. Elsewhere, Stenton has studied Radio London and resistance in the context of British political warfare across occupied Europe, while Brooks has included the BBC French Service as one component within his study of the wider development and delivery of British propaganda to occupied France.⁶

By focusing on the portrayal of Britain by the French Service, this article sets out to extend such research, and so to offer a fuller understanding of the strategies of wartime radio propaganda in French. It first examines the establishment both of the service and of an official British propaganda strategy on occupied France. It then explores the French Service’s efforts to foster French belief in Britain via its flagship programme Les Français parlent aux Français [The French speak to the French], analysing the strategies employed in broadcasts to profile notions of Britain as France’s friend and ally, and to rationalise key issues and incidents which challenged that narrative. To that end, it is rooted in a close reading of the original French Service broadcasts, which covers a larger corpus of material than has been documented in the principal published collection, edited by Crémieux-Brilhac, where broadcasts profiling Britain are limited in number in an otherwise extensive anthology, and a wider period than in the more recent volumes published by Pessis, which are restricted in timeframe to the first two years of the Occupation.⁷ At the same time, the article assesses the French Service broadcasts in the light of anti-British propaganda from France. This was an extensive operation delivered not only on radio but also via newsreels, films, brochures and newspapers, aspects of which have been examined by Passera, Chadwick and Jennings, but in relation only to single incidents, or to shorter timeframes or different media than here.⁸ In aural propaganda, on which we will concentrate, Radio Paris and Radio Vichy were the main voices in the domestic broadcasting framework. The former, despite its French presenters, was under the direct control of the Germans and was consequently widely distrusted by the French listening public as the ‘microphone of the occupier’,⁹ a reaction sustained by the French at the BBC with another of Oberlé’s slogans, invented in September 1940: ‘Radio Paris lies, Radio Paris lies, Radio Paris is German’.¹⁰ This article therefore focuses predominantly on Franco-French exchanges, between French who spoke on behalf of different Frances, positioning BBC French Service endeavours alongside the propaganda delivered on French national radio, commonly known as Radio Vichy. Significant to its provision, as we shall see, was the period from 1942, when the arrival on Vichy airwaves of two subsequently high-profile speakers—Paul Creyssel and Philippe Henriot—marked the beginning of a combative broadcasting response to the French at the BBC.

Broadcasting to France: Provision, Policy and Practice

When France fell in June 1940, broadcasting in French at the BBC was still a fledgling service, dedicated mainly to the delivery of news bulletins in French. It had begun, unplanned, on 27 September 1938 when, at the government’s request and in order to prevent mistranslation by foreign broadcasters, the BBC responded rapidly to world events by swiftly translating Neville Chamberlain’s address to the nation on the deepening international crisis for immediate re-transmission in French, German and Italian.¹¹ Bulletins in French continued daily thereafter until war conferred a new importance on the service, bringing an increase in broadcasts and the expansion of the team (of, until then, just three announcers) with the recruitment of French nationals living in Britain alongside Britons fluent in French.¹² Correspondence received by the BBC from France indicates that, during the Phoney War, listeners turned to the BBC as a more reliable source of information than France’s state-run radio Radiodiffusion nationale (RN), appreciating the BBC’s provision of prompt and honest news, however disheartening its content, in contrast to what Vaillant terms ‘banalities from a censored public network at home’.¹³ In June 1940, and in response to the problems France faced in the delivery of news as her transmitters fell progressively into German hands, the BBC undertook to provide an ‘authoritative news service by arrangement with the French government for the French people’.¹⁴ Scheduled to begin on 17 June, this was delayed for technical reasons.¹⁵ But, from 19 June, the day after De Gaulle’s first appeal, six 15-minute bulletins were broadcast daily. The focal transmission was at 20:15, followed by a 15-minute ‘entertainment called Ici la France [This is France]—a programme in French, for the French, by the French’,¹⁶ which incorporated the voices of RN staff in London.

Once France had signed the Armistice, RN correspondents in London were summoned home, and the French Service thereafter assumed a new character. Cecilia Reeves, the BBC’s Senior Talks Assistant for the French Service, set out to put together a different type of programme ‘which would not just be in French, but which would communicate French thought and aspirations’.¹⁷ The daily news bulletins in French continued, but, in addition, Ici la France was doubled to 30 minutes from 30 June, and Michel Saint-Denis, the well-known theatre director who would operate at the BBC under the name Jacques Duchesne, was appointed to lead the project. The new programme was described by the BBC as ‘the first truly national programme broadcast by the BBC to an occupied European country’¹⁸—a profile reinforced by its rebranding as Les Français parlent aux Français on 6 September 1940—and used news as a springboard for the delivery of commentaries on wartime events, issues and personalities. Broadcast every evening at 20:30, and preceded by 10 minutes of news and by a 5-minute slot entitled Honneur et Patrie (Honour and Homeland, which gave the official political viewpoint of Charles de Gaulle’s ‘Fighting France’ movement), Les Français parlent aux Français would be at the heart of French Service programming for the next four years. It retained an almost exclusively French presence, one notable exception being Winston Churchill’s stirring declaration (in French) of British determination and of solidarity with the French, broadcast on 21 October 1940 as Vichy headed towards collaboration with Germany.¹⁹

From the start of the war, all media output which might concern military security was subject to British censorship. More generally, French Service broadcasts were subject to British editorial supervision in the shape of Darsie Gillie, a keen Francophile who had become BBC French news editor in 1940, and who was well regarded by the French on the team.²⁰ No British governmental strategy for propaganda to German-occupied countries was in place in June 1940, so the BBC initially operated without official guidance, determining broadcast content itself. Brooks demonstrates that official strategy, when it did begin to take shape in September 1940, corresponded with BBC practice to date, indicating that the latter was well conceived.²¹ Boosting French morale, restoring and maintaining belief in Britain (in terms of both her wartime and her post-war policy), fostering hatred of the Germans, and positioning Vichy as Germany’s instrument were central objectives. These goals subsequently informed the French Service ‘directives’ produced by the Political Warfare Executive (PWE), which, from August 1941, was responsible for British propaganda strategy towards enemy and occupied nations.²² At their heart lay the crucial message that what Britain was doing was in France’s interests, since France’s freedom depended upon a British victory. French Service broadcasts were officially subject to PWE directives, although it seems that their implementation rested on a negotiation around shared interests rather than on a requirement to execute British policy. A powerful card in the delivery of pro-British propaganda on the French Service lay in the fact that much of it was spoken by French nationals. However, they should not be thought of as puppets in British employ, although Henriot, their most infamous broadcasting rival in France, often defined them thus.²³ Notably, their BBC staff contracts included a ‘conscience clause’ according to which they could not be required to do anything they judged contrary to French interests.²⁴ But, more than this, and as agreed at a meeting on 3 October 1940 attended by Duchesne, Bourdan, Reeves and Gillie, while British interests necessarily influenced what could and could not be said, it was equally important that the French should represent their own national interests, having regard to French reception. Propaganda to France, it was concluded, must reflect a French attitude.²⁵

This decision demonstrates a judicious grasp of the workings of propaganda. Studies of its theory and practice, such as Ellul’s classic work, highlight that, for propaganda to have an impact, it has to have a receptive audience and be believed; moreover, to be fully effective, propaganda must connect with factual truth rather than with manifest falsehood.²⁶ On this basis, the French Service had to establish a bond with listeners. Broadcasts had to be based in truth, if they were not to lose credibility or be easily undermined by enemy propaganda, of which the team constantly had to take note. Consequently, they had to package high and low points realistically, neither over-selling military successes nor dwelling on losses suffered, respecting their task ‘to inform, to communicate good news and bad’.²⁷ The French in London also had to show that they were in contact with and sensitive to what the French were feeling and experiencing under German occupation in France. They had to appeal to those able and willing to resist the Germans, but not offend those who were unwilling or unable. Further, broadcasts had to negotiate tricky waters when the positioning of Britain as France’s ally sat uneasily in a context of potentially damaging events, such as British military action in parts of the French Empire or the RAF’s bombing of strategic targets within France, or when political incidents cast doubt on British intentions and on what a British victory might mean for the future of France and French sovereignty. Hence, as the PWE directive for 12–26 July 1942 stressed, broadcasts had to take ‘every opportunity of letting the French know as much as possible about the British people and their spirit and will in fighting this war’. But they also had to bear in mind that, in the prevailing circumstances, the French could be expected to take an interest in British actions and affairs ‘only in so far as these affect the liberation of France, and France’s own future’.²⁸

Propaganda about Britain: First Endeavours

Throughout the Occupation, audiences in France were exposed to an anti-British propaganda omnipresent in printed and visual media.²⁹ Radio, then in its heyday, was no less a key medium for the communication of this message. The goal was to reactivate long-standing French suspicions of a perfidious Albion by asserting that Britain had again betrayed France, portraying the British as unfeeling killers of French, and feeding fears that Britain was seeking through this conflict to realise her enduring designs on the French Empire. Unsurprisingly, such propaganda capitalised obsessively on the British retreat at Dunkirk in June 1940 and Britain’s strike on the French fleet at Mers el-Kébir on 3 July. On 11 July, Philippe Pétain, Vichy’s Head of State, in one of his rare direct references to Britain in his speeches broadcast on Radio Vichy, alluded to both incidents when he accused Britain of first abandoning and then unjustifiably attacking France.³⁰ This speech came two days after Maurice Schumann in London had offered ‘a defence of Franco-British friendship’, asserting at the same time that Vichy had ‘abandoned defending what remained of France, begged for the Armistice, and obtained it on the most humiliating terms’, and now obeyed Germany in everything, including opposing Britain.³¹ These two broadcasts thereby defined points of reference which opposing French voices would repeatedly mobilise in their subsequent propaganda about Britain.

An official document on British propaganda to France outlines that, in 1940:

the first task of our radio propaganda to France was to counteract Anglophobia, to rebuild confidence in Britain’s power to continue the war, and to expose the attempts made by the Germans to separate France from England to create divisions amongst the French people themselves.³²

This approach was encapsulated in Duchesne’s broadcast on 2 August, when, with a nod to Franco-British historical differences, he urged the French not to fall for current efforts to set France against Britain, and thereby betray ‘the camp that fights for freedom’.³³ In this respect, striking the right note in propaganda terms was crucial in the aftermath of Dunkirk and Mers el-Kébir. With a view to inspiring French confidence in their neighbour, upbeat broadcasts offered a vision of an unconquered and resilient Britain which had the resources and the resolve to continue the fight against Germany alone. This came through especially strongly in the multiple broadcasts from August 1940 which extolled the RAF’s achievements during the Battle of Britain, predictably downplayed in propaganda from France, or which profiled the stoicism of Londoners in their bombed but defiant city, or which stressed that, although Germany had enslaved Vichy, she could not overcome Britain.³⁴ But it was equally important not to alienate a defeated and demoralised France whose forces could justifiably be said to have suffered at British hands, and, to that end, much effort was spent on explaining British actions and attitude towards France. Following the line established by Schumann on 9 July, a core strategy employed was to associate France and Britain closely, insisting that, despite everything, Britain was France’s friend, that she valued and respected France, was sympathetic to her position, and had no ambitions other than to see her liberated and restored to her former standing. On 25 July, Eve Curie reassured the French ‘You are not alone!’ and affirmed Britain as ‘the only great European country still free and strong, the only country to continue to stand as guarantor of France’s future’. These facts about Britain mattered, she concluded, not sentiment.³⁵ She continued the assault on 6 August, rubbishing the notion that Britain had betrayed France at Dunkirk, while, on 28 October, a refugee soldier insisted that Britain bore France no animosity over the Armistice.³⁶

Significantly, this set of broadcasts focused on people as well as nation, giving a human face to Britain which endeavoured to establish France and Britain as connected communities of ordinary citizens facing corresponding ordeals, and with shared hopes and goals. Hence, the trials of life in wartime Britain and the sterling work of Britons for the war effort juxtaposed recognition of the difficulties of life in defeated France and respect for French endurance of adversity.³⁷ Broadcasts spoke of the British welcome given to French refugees, countering propaganda from France that the British were preventing the return home of French soldiers stranded in Britain after Dunkirk.³⁸ Or they highlighted positive views of Britain from French in France, as detailed in letters received by the BBC, the content of which was broadcast back home.³⁹ Radio Vichy and Radio Paris claimed the letters were invented or exaggerated, but Reeves and Oberlé both confirm their authenticity, the latter emphasising that their moving tone could never have been fabricated.⁴⁰

In parallel, negative positioning of Vichy’s association with Germany was employed to frame positively the alliance between Britain and Free France, drawing a portrait (which would be sustained throughout the Occupation) of Free France as Britain’s partner and Vichy France as Germany’s subordinate. While Radio Vichy classified London as the bastion of dissident French, and Pétain on 13 August alluded to the French at the BBC as ‘false friends’ and so ‘true enemies’, they in turn asserted ‘Vichy is not France!’.⁴¹ Curie’s broadcast on 25 July had also neatly distinguished between ‘the French people’, defining Britain as their ally, and ‘the France of capitulation’, meaning Vichy France.⁴² Such declarations simultaneously dissociated ordinary French from Vichy and invited them to locate the true France in Free France, physically outside France in Britain but present via the airwaves. Britain and France may sometimes have been divided, the French team acknowledged, but ‘London is now the bastion of unoccupied France’.⁴³ Furthermore, collaboration—which Pétain announced to the French on Radio Vichy on 30 October 1940 after his meeting with Hitler at Montoire on 24 October⁴⁴—was defined as nothing short of ‘handing France over to the enemy’.⁴⁵ The argument repeated by London was that the enemy had no interest in France other than as a resource, and that France’s pain was Vichy’s fault. Focus rested on the 400 million francs which France had to pay Germany daily under the Armistice.⁴⁶ Moreover, it was frequently alleged that Germany was asset-stripping metropolitan France, and, unlike Britain, intended to prey on her Empire.⁴⁷

Intense as it was, the success of Vichy’s anti-British propaganda campaign in the second half of 1940 seems to have been limited. Official reports for Vichy on the situation in the occupied zone, compiled from monitored postal and telephonic communications, and from intelligence supplied by different Vichy ministries, indicate that, from August 1940, public opinion was turning increasingly in Britain’s favour such that, by October, most French in the occupied zone desired a British victory.⁴⁸ Interestingly, the report dated 16 October posits that the majority held this view more out of growing hostility towards Germany than actual Anglophilia, thereby illustrating the logic of the theory of ‘our enemy’s enemy’. But it also judged the populations of Normandy and Brittany to be ‘in the avant-garde of Anglophilia’, welcoming recent British air incursions over their coastlines, and it noted that Parisians were freely commenting on ‘British radio’ in public, causing concern in official circles. This suggests that two things were being positively noticed by the French, at least in the occupied zone: continued British military action, and the BBC French Service broadcasts. Certainly, neither Vichy nor Germany discounted the BBC’s efforts. It cannot be known for certain how many French across France listened to the BBC during the Occupation, although Vichy’s reports refer generally to sizeable and increasing audiences from October 1940.⁴⁹ Correspondingly, Oberlé notes that the team knew by May 1941 that they were listened to across France, based on information from Free French intelligence services, on the letters the BBC received, and on what those recently arrived from France told them.⁵⁰ Of course, listening in itself is no indicator of the development of pro-British sentiment, since listeners may simply have wanted more accurate and faster news than Radio Vichy was judged to supply, qualities which Vichy intelligence noted that the French widely ascribed especially to the BBC.⁵¹ But listening is a prerequisite for impact, and both Germany and Vichy feared the BBC’s potential influence, as their actions reveal. In fact, Germany banned listening to the BBC in the occupied zone as early as 30 June 1940. Vichy followed suit on 28 October, when it banned listening in public in the unoccupied zone to the BBC or any other ‘anti-national’ station, then extending this a year later to listening to the BBC in private.⁵² Both introduced penalties of varying severity for non-compliance, although these seem to have been unevenly applied, if at all,⁵³ and the French listened nonetheless. No doubt aware of this, Radio Vichy and Radio Paris each determinedly attacked the French Service, which naturally saw their manoeuvres ‘as clear evidence that our team in London has huge influence in France’.⁵⁴

Argument and Counter-argument from 1941

Promotion of Franco-British friendship and alliance, and of Britain’s war effort, remained a consistently weighty part of French Service provision from 1941. Many such broadcasts were predictable in their positive content and confident tone, employing the classic propaganda methodology of message repetition to reinforce their upbeat reading of Britain. One set focused on the French who chose to be in Britain, intended to boost morale back home with the message that France was still fighting through these French, who were upholding French honour. Hence, broadcasts frequently featured French nationals who had recently arrived in London to join the battle for liberation, or portrayed French military personnel in training at bases across Britain, operating with loaned British equipment.⁵⁵ In addition, three weekly series are of note. From 3 January 1941, Courrier de France [Letters from France] formalised the earlier sporadic use of pro-Britain correspondence from France.⁵⁶ This ended in February 1943, after Germany had occupied all of France the previous November and moved to prevent correspondence reaching Britain. Courrier d’Angleterre [Letters from Britain] appeared in its place from 3 March 1943.⁵⁷ Ostensibly written by Britons to French friends, the letters were designed to profile daily life in Britain and to emphasise a line of long-standing Franco-British friendship. Unsurprisingly, Radio Vichy and Radio Paris disputed the authenticity of these letters, as they had those the BBC received from France. Reeves and Nina Epton (another British BBC employee), who had both lived in France, contributed letters,⁵⁸ suggesting that at least some were possibly addressed to real friends. But it is highly likely that they were intended for a wider audience and written to a brief, since the content gels closely with PWE objectives. Simultaneously, multiple broadcasts continued to record energetic civilian and military activity across Britain. Many of these appeared from March 1943 in a third series, Chronique d’Angleterre [News from Britain], celebrating, for example, women’s work in the Land Army, or the Royal Marines, or portraying a nation of resilient Britons well-prepared for the long haul.⁵⁹

Such positive profiling of Britain was solid but fundamentally easy propaganda which did not directly engage the French Service with opposing voices. It was thus comparable in approach to Vichy’s promotion to the French of its programme of National Revolution or of Pétain himself. More challenging for the French Service to handle were issues and incidents beyond but involving Britain, on which enemy propagandists had seemingly credible things to say to a traumatised people anxious about their own existence and their nation’s current and future status. These resulted in ‘connected’ propaganda which rested on argument and counter-argument, suggesting that each side considered it important to tackle what the other was saying, and to do so swiftly at especially critical moments. The substance and tone of these exchanges were crucial, since what was at stake was emotional identification with the French people, potentially a powerful factor in the struggle for influence over public opinion on the issues or parties involved. One recurring theme was the integrity of the French Empire. This had featured in exchanges in 1940, when Pétain had broadcast on Radio Vichy on 30 October that collaboration would ensure ‘French unity’, and the French in London had replied on 1 November that collaboration would bring demands from Germany that would chip away at the ‘intact French Empire’.⁶⁰ The argument was resurrected from May 1941, when Vichy allowed Germany to use air bases in the French mandate of Syria. The French Service pounced on the opportunity to attack Vichy’s propaganda that Britain had designs on French territory, arguing that this incident proved that Germany, not Britain, was the real threat.⁶¹ But this was disputed by Admiral Darlan, then Pétain’s second-in-command, speaking on Radio Vichy on 23 May, prior to a lengthy and strident statement on 31 May in which he outlined the ‘negatives’ of 20 years of Franco-British relations.⁶²

The subsequent British-led Allied campaign in Syria and Lebanon, which began on 8 June and was intended to prevent Germany from using the mandates as a springboard to attack Allied-held Egypt, gave Vichy propagandists an easy opening to charge Britain again with expansionist ambitions. But it also raised the sensitive and thus potentially trickier issue of Britain fighting against French forces loyal to Vichy. Both sides instantly undertook to speak in emotive terms to the French in France and in the Levant, each accusing the other of killing French nationals. The French Service positioned British and Free French forces as combat partners in Syria, entreated Vichy’s troops not to fire on their compatriots, and reignited questions about Vichy’s status vis-à-vis Germany by reflecting on ‘the extent to which Vichy will have succeeded in spilling French blood on behalf of Germany’.⁶³ Pétain’s counter-statement the same day criticised the Free French forces who, ‘supported by Britain’s imperial forces, do not hesitate to spill the blood of their brothers who are defending the unity of the Empire’.⁶⁴ A Vichy communiqué dated 11 June, and widely reported in the media, retaliated further, labelling Britain the ‘aggressor’, fiercely resisted by troops who had sacrificed themselves for the true France.⁶⁵ But, as claims flew back and forth over the summer, French opinion seems to have found Vichy’s argumentation less credible, since prefects reported that the majority of French considered Germany, not Britain, to be the primary cause of all problems.⁶⁶

Despite the USA’s entry into the war in December 1941, Vichy’s propagandists reserved a special venom for Britain, the old enemy who incarnated the wider Anglo-Saxon world. The war of words about British action in the French Empire intensified from May 1942 with Britain’s campaign to take Vichy-controlled Madagascar in order to prevent Japan taking it as a base. On 7 May, as the port of Diego Suarez surrendered to the British just two days after their invasion, the French in London broadcast that Madagascar remained French.⁶⁷ That evening on Radio Vichy, Creyssel, who had been named Vichy’s Director of Propaganda Services in April, strove to press Anglophobic buttons, soberly warning that British promises to restore Madagascar to France could not be relied upon, given Britain’s historical practice elsewhere.⁶⁸ Henriot, who had broadcast weekly since February unconstrained by a formal government brief, was rather more dramatic in his appraisal, as was his wont. In three consecutive broadcasts from 16 May, he lambasted the British as ‘highwaymen’, declared that Madagascar was another Syria and Mers el-Kébir, and made doom-laden predictions about British intentions for North Africa.⁶⁹ When Britain intensified operations in mid-September, Henriot continued his onslaught, describing Madagascar on 19 September as ‘fresh prey for British thieves’, then railing on 3 October against its ‘abduction’.⁷⁰ The French Service commented in restrained terms, explaining on 22 October that the total occupation of Madagascar was essential to protect Allied communications.⁷¹ It subsequently made much of the end of hostilities and of the handover of Madagascar to Free French authority to emphasise the island’s return to ‘normality’, and the message that Britain had no expansionist goals.⁷² Jennings suggests that Vichy’s printed propaganda on British intentions for Madagascar was counter-productive because it wearied audiences who had heard the same laboured arguments time and again since Mers el-Kébir.⁷³ In all likelihood, audiences felt much the same about Vichy’s radio propaganda, which peddled the same message. In terms of impact, the majority of prefects in the free zone reported in May 1942 that public opinion seemed instead to trust Anglo-American reassurances on Madagascar, while in September they commented that the renewed fighting had prompted no notable reaction in their regions.⁷⁴ This is not to say that the French were indifferent to the fate of their Empire. But, quite naturally in a time of domestic crisis, they were more likely to be engaged by incidents closer to home, within or affecting metropolitan France, events on which the rival propaganda machines would play hard.

In this respect, from 1942, argument raged especially over the Allied bombing of France. For the purposes of bolstering confidence in Britain, it was important that RAF action was positively profiled, as we saw earlier in the French Service’s representation of the Battle of Britain. But this became problematic when civilian deaths occurred. For example, when the RAF bombed the Renault factory in Boulogne-Billancourt, near Paris, on 3 March 1942, the French Service swiftly and repeatedly stressed the strategic nature of the target (which produced lorries for Germany), justifying the action in the interests of destroying the German war machine. But they were also careful to express regret for the heavy casualties among Renault’s French workforce, and to depict them as the innocent victims of German policy to compel France to work for the occupier.⁷⁵ Predictably, enemy propaganda held that Britain bombed indiscriminately and did not care for the consequences. For Henriot, a master of melodrama and scaremongering, Britain had simply progressed from killing French soldiers to assassinating innocent civilians. On 7 March, he sarcastically took issue with British promises to help France and contended that Britain had no excuse for bombing French factories while German ones remained operational.⁷⁶ It was a powerful argument for a suffering population, intended to shake confidence in British operations. That same day, Schumann worked a similarly emotive line, describing the Renault workers as victims of Germany in the same way as Gabriel Péri, a prominent French communist and resister shot by the occupier in December 1941. All were heroes who had died for France, Schumann proclaimed, and the whole nation was in mourning.⁷⁷

In March 1942, propaganda from Britain seemed the more influential, for it was reported by prefects in the occupied zone that, while deploring civilian deaths, most French there accepted the explanations given by British radio and regarded such incidents as the inevitable consequence of Germany’s exploitation of French factories.⁷⁸ From London, broadcasts thereafter nurtured this reading, encouraging the French to set the bombings in the wider context of the war and striving to communicate that French safety was a central British concern. As Bourdan declared on 2 June 1942: ‘The French judge and understand; they know that British air forces are accomplishing a sad duty in France’.⁷⁹ Moreover, much airtime was given to broadcasting British Government warnings, intended to avoid as far as possible ‘the spilling of French blood during our operations’.⁸⁰ Nonetheless, for the French team in London, the Allied bombings were ‘our nightmare’ and an issue on which Henriot was a weighty adversary.⁸¹ On 7 March 1943, for example, Henriot recalled Boulogne-Billancourt, labelling the British ‘harvesters of coffins’.⁸² On 27 March, from London, Oberlé employed similar ‘anniversary’ tactics, reminding listeners of the positive reaction of locals to the successful RAF attack on Saint Nazaire on 28 March 1942.⁸³ When the raids intensified in September and October 1943, Creyssel talked of ‘acts of piracy’, whereas Henriot spoke more forcefully of a British attack on French civilisation.⁸⁴ Then, in spring 1944, at the height of the bombings, Henriot evoked the whole of France as a cemetery, offering a terrifying vision of the price of liberation intended to alarm. A series of heated exchanges ensued. On 30 April, Boivin described the bombings as a tragic necessity.⁸⁵ Henriot retaliated on 6 May, accusing the French team of shameless hypocrisy. Bourdan hit back that evening, lamenting the civilian victims of the bombings, but alleging that Henriot regretted there were not still more.⁸⁶ In return, on 26 May Henriot denounced his rivals in London, pointing out that they were safe abroad, unlike the majority of French people.⁸⁷ The French team agonised over how to engage with Henriot on the bombings, for, theatrical as he was, his words were based in truth and they knew that his argumentation could appeal to those who had suffered directly.⁸⁸ Indeed, in spring 1944, prefects across France reported that opinion was turning against the Allies due to the intensification of the bombings, and they credited Henriot with reducing Anglophilia if not Germanophobia, a conclusion corroborated by Free French agents active in France.⁸⁹

Handling Allied military failures posed further challenges for the French in London, for these offered enemy propagandists an opening to allege incompetence, and denying the truth would have made the French Service look untrustworthy. The disastrous landing at Dieppe in August 1942, for example, resulted in 4098 Allied casualties and prisoners (in contrast to 591 German) and caused much disappointment in France. But French Service broadcasts did not dwell on the losses. Rather, they tried to focus attention on an upbeat if somewhat thin argument, which held that the landing of Allied troops weakened Germany’s claim that the coastline of occupied Europe was invulnerable. More convincingly, they located Dieppe within the wider war, promising that it ‘[was] not the main attack, but [was] one step closer to it’.⁹⁰ But, in propaganda terms, Dieppe was more valuable to their rivals. On 20 August, Creyssel emphasised that the raid was ill-prepared and he flagged the predominance of Canadian troops as a way of accusing Britain of shielding her own.⁹¹ Two days later, Henriot mocked more sharply the ‘landing turned re-embarkation’ as the Allies fled.⁹² In reply, the French team attempted a more optimistic counter-narrative, concluding ‘We will be back, and one day, fear not, it will be for good’, before again pitching Dieppe as a preparatory exercise for a main landing.⁹³ However, no doubt with the management of French expectations in mind, no hint of a timeframe was proposed. When the Allies did successfully land in North Africa on 7–8 November 1942, Oberlé profited to contest Vichy’s repetitive propaganda that the British were ‘lamentable’ and the Americans would ‘never be ready’.⁹⁴ The response was predictable. On 12 November, Creyssel decried the ‘occupation of our Africa by the Anglo-Saxons’, while, two days later, Henriot talked emotively of ‘the savage amputation of part of our Empire’.⁹⁵ Prefects in both zones noted that the landing in North Africa once more raised French hopes of an end to the war, but that morale soon dipped again, not least because of the subsequent total Occupation of France by Germany.⁹⁶

One controversial incident in North Africa gave Vichy propagandists the opportunity to foster doubts about Allied attitudes towards the status of Free France. This revolved around Vichy’s Admiral Darlan, who was in Algiers when the Allies landed and who ‘converted’ to become Head of French North Africa, with Allied recognition but in the face of Free French opposition. For the Allies, Darlan was a temporary expedient, recruited to secure swift French cooperation in North Africa. But, for the Free French, Darlan could be nothing but a traitor to the real France, despite his conversion. On 21 November 1942, De Gaulle’s ‘Fighting France’ acolytes declared they could no longer speak on the BBC, since this would suggest acceptance of the Darlan deal. Duchesne’s BBC team joined the walkout on 3 December, once Darlan’s position had been formalised,⁹⁷ not returning until after Darlan’s assassination on Christmas Eve,⁹⁸ which brought a sudden close to an otherwise seemingly insoluble issue. From a longer-term perspective, the incident demonstrates the limitations of the idea of ‘our enemy’s enemy’ when pragmatism collides with patriotism in a sensitive context. For Henriot, speaking on 27 December, in the wake of Darlan’s death, it was yet more proof that any French affiliated with the Allies were mere ‘bit players, extras, puppets’.⁹⁹

The future status of France was an equally delicate issue, given her wartime position as a defeated nation. Sensitivities heightened as the post-war period increasingly became the focus. On 14 July 1943, Anthony Eden, British Foreign Secretary, spoke on the French Service of the importance of ‘the restoration of France to her full sovereignty and to her natural place among the great powers of the world’.¹⁰⁰ But, on 25 November 1943, Jan Smuts, the South African Premier who had been co-opted to the British war cabinet, gave a speech in which he articulated the post-war disappearance of France as a great power. The PWE was concerned that the situation could seriously lower morale and shake French confidence in Allied intentions towards France.¹⁰¹ This appreciation manifestly lay behind the French Service’s explanation of events, broadcast between 5 and 9 December 1943, where realism was tempered with efforts to reassure. For as long as Germany remained a military threat, it said, political questions were ancillary. But the restoration of France as a great power was of primary importance to Britain, as Churchill had frequently said, and many in Britain disagreed with Smuts.¹⁰² The situation was nonetheless powerful fuel to Vichy propaganda that Britain intended post-war France to be a satellite, secondary nation, as trumpeted by Henriot on 13 December 1943.¹⁰³ As the PWE had feared, and despite the reassurances offered from Britain, Smuts’ speech caused indignation in France, and pro-British sentiment dipped as a result.¹⁰⁴

Conclusion

The French Service’s broadcasts strove hard, as we have seen, to explain and justify British action and policy, and to reinforce the message that the French could have confidence in Britain, both in time of war and in respect of the future. The reports on public opinion in both zones during the Occupation prepared by prefects for Vichy, alongside intelligence reports prepared for the Free French authorities, indicate that support for Britain in France did fall when the Allied camp suffered losses, as at Dieppe, whenever the RAF bombed France, but especially in spring 1944 in advance of the Normandy landing, and when issues related to France’s future seemed to cast doubt on British intentions. However, the reports equally demonstrate that support for Britain grew overall throughout the war.¹⁰⁵ Correspondence received from France by the BBC is divided between those French who felt positively about Britain and those who were more sceptical.¹⁰⁶ But most seemed to accept that Britain was a necessary ally, and hoped for an eventual British victory. The scale of anti-British propaganda in France during the Occupation is a measure of the support Vichy and Germany believed Britain to have, support which was undoubtedly reinforced by the work of the BBC French Service. On radio, Vichy’s propagandists worked hard to demonise the British, none more so than Henriot, whose rhetorical skill drew large audiences appreciative of his sparring with the French at the BBC, especially once he was Vichy’s top propaganda man from January 1944. But, in the end, even Henriot failed to convince, for few agreed with what he said.¹⁰⁷ Battering the British would never get the French to like the Germans. For Britain was, after all, if not a textbook friend, at least still the enemy’s enemy.

Notes

1. Institut d’Histoire du Temps Présent (hereafter IHTP), BBC French Scripts, June 1940–September 1944, B50-B101 (B52), 3 August 1940. Subsequent shortened references to this archive take the form (for example) IHTP-B52, 3 August 1940. Transcripts of the BBC French Service broadcasts may also be consulted at the BBC Written Archives Centre, Caversham (hereafter BBC-WAC). All translations from French are my own.

2. IHTP-B52, 26 August 1940.

3. Oberlé, Jean Oberlé vous parle, 50.

4. The French Service broadcasts generally use the terms ‘Angleterre’ [England] and ‘Anglais’ [English], although they are normally referring more widely to Britain and the British. Such usage remains common practice in France. When quoting in translation from the broadcasts, this article generally uses ‘Britain’ or ‘Briton’ to reflect their actual wider focus.

5. The French texts of De Gaulle’s broadcasts are available at: http://www.charles-de-gaulle.org/pages/l-homme/dossiers-thematiques/1940-1944-la-seconde-guerre-mondiale/l-appel-du-18-juin.php. Accessed July 21, 2014.

6. Eck, La Guerre des ondes; Luneau, Radio Londres; Stenton, Radio London; and Brooks, British Propaganda to France.

7. Crémieux-Brilhac, Les Voix de la liberté; and Pessis, Les Français parlent aux Français.

8. Passera, ‘La propagande anti-britannique’; Chadwick, ‘Across the Waves’; and Jennings, “‘Angleterre, que veux-tu à Madagascar’”.

9. Eck, La Guerre des ondes, 53.

10. Oberlé, Jean Oberlé vous parle, 50.

11. BBC, Voici la BBC, 7.

12. BBC, Voici la BBC, 24–5. The surviving schedules are held at the BBC-WAC in non-catalogued, chronological sequence. For details of the Service’s French and British personnel, see BBC-WAC, French Service Staff Lists, 1939–1945 (no reference number).

13. Vaillant, ‘Occupied Listeners,’ 153. Eck, La Guerre des ondes, 64–5, makes the same point. For letters received by the BBC, see BBC-WAC, E1/704. 200 of the more than 1000 letters in this file dated between 1940 and 1944 are published in Luneau, Je vous écris de France.

14. ‘Bulletins for the French.’ The Times, June 21, 1940.

15. BBC, Voici la BBC, 29.

16. ‘Bulletins for the French.’ The Times, June 21, 1940.

17. BBC, Voici la BBC, 31. See also Reeves’s unpublished memoir, BBC-WAC, 550/1.

18. BBC, Voici la BBC, 35.

19. IHTP-B54, 21 October 1940.

20. Oberlé, Jean Oberlé vous parle, 156–63.

21. Brooks, British Propaganda to France, 66–70, 104–5.

22. For the surviving directives, see BBC-WAC, E1/702/1, and Archives Nationales, Paris (hereafter AN), F/1a/3726.

23. See, for example, his broadcast ‘Les menteurs salariés’ [‘The salaried liars’], 13 June 1942, in Henriot, Ici Radio France, 38–9.

24. Eck, La Guerre des ondes, 62.

25. ‘Minutes,’ 3 October 1940. British Library, London (hereafter BL), MS81143.

26. Ellul, Propagandes, 259–302.

27. IHTP-B61, 28 May 1941.

28. BBC-WAC, E1/702/1.

29. Passera, ‘La propagande anti-britannique,’ 130–6.

30. Pétain, Paroles aux Français, 55–6.

31. IHTP-B51, 9 July 1940.

32. ‘British Propaganda to France,’ n.d., BL, MS81143. Although undated, the document’s content indicates that it was written after Pétain’s famous speech of 12 August 1941, in which he spoke of an ‘ill wind’ across France (Pétain, Paroles aux Français, 136–48).

33. IHTP-B52, 2 August 1940. The French Service broadcasts cited hereafter are representative but not isolated examples of the themes discussed.

34. IHTP-B52, 14 August 1940; IHTP-B55, 7 November 1940; and IHTP-B53, 28 September 1940.

35. IHTP-B51, 25 July 1940.

36. IHTP-B52, 6 August 1940; and IHTP-B54, 28 October 1940.

37. IHTP-B51, 31 July 1940; and IHTP-B55, 13 November 1940.

38. IHTP-B55, 18 November 1940.

39. IHTP-B53, 7 September 1940.

40. BBC-WAC, 550/1, 28–9; Oberlé, Jean Oberlé vous parle, 151.

41. Pétain, Paroles aux Français, 60; and IHTP-B55, 19 November 1940.

42. IHTP-B51, 25 July 1940.

43. IHTP-B56, 31 December 1940.

44. Pétain, Paroles aux Français, 89–91.

45. IHTP-B55, 3 November 1940.

46. IHTP-B53, 24 September 1940.

47. IHTP-B55, 23 November 1940; IHTP-B56, 18 December 1940.

48. IHTP, Synthèses. See especially the 1940 reports dated 2 and 29 August, 4 and 16 October, 17 November.

49. Ousby, Occupation, 237, notes that Vichy statistics indicate that some three million radios in France were tuned to the BBC by the beginning of 1942. This is a plausible figure, but no source is given for the claim, and Vichy’s own official reports consulted give no such figure.

50. Oberlé, Jean Oberlé vous parle, 110.

51. IHTP, Synthèses. See, for example, the reports dated May 1941 and November 1942.

52. Brooks, British Propaganda to France, 119–22.

53. Eck, La Guerre des ondes, 57.

54. IHTP-B55, 14 November 1940.

55. IHTP-B58, 27 February 1941; IHTP-B73, 12 May 1942.

56. IHTP-B57, 3 January 1941.

57. IHTP-B83, 3 March 1943.

58. IHTP-B86, 9 June 1943; IHTP-B87, 28 July 1943.

59. IHTP-B83, 26 March 1943; IHTP-B84, 30 April 1943; and IHTP-B86, 9 June 1943.

60. Pétain, Paroles aux Français, 90; and IHTP-B55, 1 November 1940.

61. IHTP-B61, 19 May 1941.

62. ‘L’allocution radiodiffusée de l’Amiral Darlan’; and ‘L’Angleterre veut détruire la France’.

63. IHTP-B62, 8 June 1941.

64. Pétain, Paroles aux Français, 118.

65. See, for example, Journal des débats politiques et littéraires, 13 June 1941.

66. Laborie, L’Opinion française sous Vichy, 252.

67. IHTP-B73, 7 May 1942.

68. AN, F/41/306, ‘Madagascar,’ 7 May 1942. The surviving texts of Creyssel’s broadcasts are held in this file and in AN, F/1a/3795, Ministère de l’Intérieur, Écoutes radiophoniques, 1943. Selected broadcasts are published in Creyssel, Passion et mission de la France.

69. Henriot, Ici Radio France, 30–5.

70. Henriot, Ici Radio France, 66–9.

71. IHTP-B78, 22 October 1942.

72. IHTP-B80, 20 December 1942.

73. Jennings, “‘Angleterre, que veux-tu à Madagascar,’” passim.

74. IHTP, Synthèses, May 1942 and September 1942.

75. IHTP-B71, 4–6 March 1942.

76. Henriot, Ici Radio France, 9–10.

77. IHTP-B71, 7 March 1942.

78. IHTP, Synthèses, March 1942.

79. IHTP-B74, 2 June 1942.

80. IHTP-B77, 23 September 1942.

81. Oberlé, Jean Oberlé vous parle, 168, 211.

82. Henriot, Et s’ils débarquaient?, 283–5.

83. IHTP-B83, 27 March 1943.

84. Creyssel, Passion et mission de la France, 205–8; and Henriot, Et s’ils débarquaient?, 387–90, 399–402.

85. IHTP-B96, 30 April 1944.

86. IHTP-B97, 6 May 1944.

87. Chadwick, ‘Across the Waves,’ 345–7. For the texts of Henriot’s 1944 broadcasts, see Chadwick, Philippe Henriot: The Last Act of Vichy.

88. Oberlé, Jean Oberlé vous parle, 216.

89. IHTP, Synthèses, April 1944, May 1944; and AN, AG/3(2)/395, ‘Le danger de la propagande de Philippe Henriot,’ 31 March 1944.

90. IHTP-B76, 19 August 1942.

91. Creyssel, Passion et mission de la France, 55–7.

92. Henriot, Ici Radio France, 58–9.

93. IHTP-B76, 22 August 1942; 27 August 1942.

94. IHTP-B79, 8 November 1942.

95. Creyssel, Passion et mission de la France, 91–5; Henriot, Ici Radio France, 80–1.

96. IHTP, Synthèses, November 1942; December 1942.

97. Crémieux-Brilhac, Les Voix de la liberté, I, xxiv.

98. Eck, La Guerre des ondes, 109.

99. Henriot, Ici Radio France, 103.

100. IHTP-B87, 14 July 1943.

101. BBC-WAC, E1/702/1, Directive dated 29 November–5 December 1943.

102. IHTP-B92, 5–9 December 1943.

103. Institut National de l’Audiovisuel, Paris. Archives politiques: éditoriaux de Philippe Henriot, ‘Le Maréchal Smuts a fait un discours tapageur,’ 13 December 1943.

104. IHTP, Synthèses, December 1943.

105. IHTP, Synthèses; AN, F/1a/3743, Opinion publique; and AN, F/1a/3744, État d’esprit: contrôle postal.

106. BBC-WAC, E1/704; and Luneau, Je vous écris de France.

107. Chadwick, ‘Across the Waves,’ 349–50.