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The plan was never to actually do it. The last thing Vice Admiral Sir James Somerville wanted that summer of 1940, was to unleash his fleet on former allies, tearing through the French fleet at Mers-el-Kébir. Yet, after over ten grueling hours of negotiation, they were at an impasse.
Admiral Marcel Gensoul of the French Navy was insulted and infuriated by the betrayal. He refused to even meet the British negotiator. French sailors rushed to their battle stations. He signaled defiantly: (QUOTE) “The French ships will defend themselves with force,”
The radio crackled with a chilling message from the Admiralty to Somerville (QUOTE): “If the French will not accept any of your alternatives; they are to be destroyed.” He despised those orders; he was sure they would alienate any potential allies in the future, but as a military man, he was going to follow them anyway.
Desperate, he extended the deadline again, hoping Gensoul’s pride might give way before the unthinkable became unavoidable. Thousands of lives were on the line.
Time ran out. A stern warning over the radio (QUOTE): “Settle matters quickly, or you will have reinforcements to deal with.”
French and Italian forces mobilized across North Africa, bearing down on his fleet. Somerville’s blood ran cold. Against every instinct, he executed what Churchill would later call: (QUOTE) “the most unnatural and painful decision” of the war.
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Another one of churchills f n horrible decisions.
2/3 German troops were lost in Russia. If they hadn't invaded Russia, D-Day and any other Western campaign would have been a nightmare for the Allies.
One of the saddest allied moments of WW2 and you know the men commanded to do that deed were conflicted but there is no choice but to follow orders. Britain was up against the wall in those days and for many more years to come but in all reality if the French fleet fell into German hands it could have changed the entire outcome. With that fleet Operation Sea Lion may have actually happened, all conjecture now.
The full weight of this terrible action and the loss of life rests solely on the shoulders of one man who through arrogance incompetence and pride sacrificed his ships and men for nothing. They could have continued the fight against the Germans and he chose instead to be see his men slaughtered.