Internment camp for British and Commonwealth forces
Following the British Attack on Mers-el-Kébir (and elsewhere) against the French fleet on 3 July 1940, there was a state of war between Britain and Vichy France. From July 1940 until shortly after the Allied invasion of French North Africa on 8 November 1942, Laghouat was used as a de facto prisoner-of-war camp for British Empire and Commonwealth prisoners, mostly captured sailors and airmen. [3] The internees at Laghouat included fifteen Canadians and seven men from the Dominion of Newfoundland, one of whom was held there for 472 days. [4] There were also South Africans among the internees, [5] and the Royal Navy personnel included sailors captured after the running aground of HMS Havock off Kelibia, Tunisia, in April 1942, [6] and after the loss of HMS Manchester in August 1942. [7]
One interned serviceman described the Laghouat camp as a "Beau Geste style fort based about a Saharan oasis". Those held were treated well, except that there was nothing to do and they were not allowed to leave the camp. In any event, "any escape was virtually impossible, given the expanse of desert that surrounded them". [8] Another internee wrote to the Red Cross in Scotland from the Camp des internés britanniques Laghouat : "Technically we are not prisoners of war but up to the present have not been able to find a difference. Unfortunately 30 to 40 per cent of the articles sent in the batch of parcels were missing." [2] In his book There and Back Again: a navigator's story (2004), former Royal Air Force navigator Douglas Hudson of 101 Squadron reports that over five hundred Allied prisoners were held in the camp. He tells of inhumane living conditions and the construction of an escape tunnel. [9]
In November 1942 came Operation Torch, the Allied invasion of Algeria. By chance, Admiral of the Fleet François Darlan, the de facto head of the Vichy government, was in Algiers at the time and quickly made a deal with the Allies, ordering all French personnel in North Africa to join forces with the British and the Americans. [1] The interned servicemen were quickly freed by United States troops who arrived at the Laghouat camp with a convoy of trucks in November 1942. [8]
On 24 December 1942, Admiral Darlan was assassinated and was succeeded in his new command of French North and West Africa by Henri Giraud, who ordered the rounding up of a large number of residents, mostly Jews, and had them sent to Laghouat. He refused to give information to the Allies about those detained, or even to reveal the numbers involved, but British and American investigations in 1943 suggested that the total of detainees in the nine camps was then about 7,500, of whom a large number were described by the French authorities as communists. [1]
Operation Torch was an Allied invasion of French North Africa during the Second World War. Torch was a compromise operation that met the British objective of securing victory in North Africa while allowing American armed forces the opportunity to begin their fight against Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy on a limited scale. It was the first mass involvement of US troops in the European–North African Theatre and saw the first big airborne assault carried out by the United States.
Free France was a political entity that claimed to be the legitimate government of France following the dissolution of the Third Republic. Led by General Charles de Gaulle, Free France was established as a government-in-exile in London in June 1940 after the Fall of France during World War II and fought the Axis as an Allied nation with its Free French Forces. Free France also supported the resistance in Nazi-occupied France, known as the French Forces of the Interior, as well as gained strategic footholds in several French colonies in Africa.
Jean Louis Xavier François Darlan was a French admiral and political figure. Born in Nérac, Darlan graduated from the École navale in 1902 and quickly advanced through the ranks following his service during World War I. He was promoted to rear admiral in 1929, vice admiral in 1932, lieutenant admiral in 1937 before finally being made admiral and Chief of the Naval Staff in 1937. In 1939, Darlan was promoted to admiral of the fleet, a rank created specifically for him.
Henri Honoré Giraud was a French military officer who was a leader of the Free French Forces during the Second World War until he was forced to retire in 1944.
The attack on Mers-el-Kébir on 3 July 1940, during the Second World War, was a British naval attack on neutral French Navy ships at the naval base at Mers El Kébir, near Oran, on the coast of French Algeria. The attack was the main part of Operation Catapult, a British plan to neutralise or destroy neutral French ships to prevent them from falling into German hands after the Allied defeat in the Battle of France. The British bombardment of the base killed 1,297 French servicemen, sank a battleship and damaged five other ships, for a British loss of five aircraft shot down and two crewmen killed. The attack by air and sea was conducted by the Royal Navy, after France had signed armistices with Germany and Italy, coming into effect on 25 June.
The Battle of the Mediterranean was the name given to the naval campaign fought in the Mediterranean Sea during World War II, from 10 June 1940 to 2 May 1945.
Operation Blackstone was a part of Operation Torch, the Allied landings in North Africa during World War II. The operation called for American amphibious troops to land at and capture the French-held port of Safi in French Morocco. The landings were carried out by the 47th Infantry Regiment of the U.S. Army and took place on the morning of 8 November 1942 as part of a larger operation to capture Casablanca.
José Aboulker was a French Algerian Jew and the leader of the anti-Nazi resistance in French Algeria in World War II. He received the U.S. Medal of Freedom, the Croix de Guerre, and was made a Companion of the Liberation and a Commander of the Légion d'honneur. After the war, he became a neurosurgeon and a political figure in France, who advocated for the political rights of Algerian Muslims.
Fernand Bonnier de La Chapelle was a royalist member of the French Resistance during World War II. He assassinated Admiral of the Fleet François Darlan, the former chief of government of Vichy France and the high commissioner of French North Africa and West Africa, on 24 December 1942.
Numerous internment camps and concentration camps were located in France before, during and after World War II. Beside the camps created during World War I to intern German, Austrian and Ottoman civilian prisoners, the Third Republic (1871–1940) opened various internment camps for the Spanish refugees fleeing the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939). Following the prohibition of the French Communist Party (PCF) by the government of Édouard Daladier, they were used to detain communist political prisoners. The Third Republic also interned German anti-Nazis.
The following events occurred in November 1942:
The French State, popularly known as Vichy France, as led by Marshal Philippe Pétain after the Fall of France in 1940 before Nazi Germany, was quickly recognized by the Allies, as well as by the Soviet Union, until 30 June 1941 and Operation Barbarossa. However, France broke with the United Kingdom after the destruction of the French Fleet at Mers-el-Kebir. Canada maintained diplomatic relations until the occupation of Southern France by Germany and Italy in November 1942.
The French Committee of National Liberation was a provisional government of Free France formed by the French generals Henri Giraud and Charles de Gaulle to provide united leadership, organize and coordinate the campaign to liberate France from Nazi Germany during World War II. The committee was formed on 3 June 1943 and after a period of joint leadership, on 9 November it came under the chairmanship of de Gaulle. The committee directly challenged the legitimacy of the Vichy regime and unified all the French forces that fought against the Nazis and collaborators. The committee functioned as a provisional government for Algeria and the liberated parts of the colonial empire. Later it evolved into the Provisional Government of the French Republic, under the premiership of Charles de Gaulle.
Events from the year 1942 in France.
Vichy France, officially the French State, was the French rump state headed by Marshal Philippe Pétain during World War II. It was named after its seat of government, the city of Vichy. Officially independent, but with half of its territory occupied under the harsh terms of the 1940 armistice with Nazi Germany, it adopted a policy of collaboration. Though Paris was nominally its capital, the government established itself in the resort town of Vichy in the unoccupied "free zone", where it remained responsible for the civil administration of France as well as its colonies. The occupation of France by Nazi Germany at first affected only the northern and western portions of the country, but in November 1942 the Germans and Italians occupied the remainder of Metropolitan France, ending any pretence of independence by the Vichy government.
Operation Flagpole was part of the run-up to Operation Torch, the planned Allied invasion of North Africa during World War II. It involved arranging for and carrying out a top-secret high-level meeting between U.S. General Mark W. Clark, representing the Allies, and Général Charles E. Mast, the leader of a group of pro-Allied Vichy France officers in French North Africa, to secure their cooperation with the invasion.
Rear-Admiral Nigel Hugh Malim was a Royal Navy officer who served in the Second World War. He survived his ship being sunk, and was later commander engineer on the Royal Yacht Britannia, district engineer for Scotland, deputy director of marine engineering, captain of the Royal Naval Engineering College Manadon and chief staff officer (technical) to the commander-in-chief of the Western Fleet.
Operation Kingpin was part of the run-up to Operation Torch, the planned Allied invasion of North Africa during World War II. It was a successor to Operation Flagpole, in which a secret meeting between U.S. General Mark W. Clark and diplomat Robert Murphy, representing the Allies, and General Charles E. Mast, the leader of a group of pro-Allied Vichy France officers in French North Africa, was arranged to secure their cooperation with the invasion. In Operation Kingpin, French General Henri Giraud, code-named "Kingpin", was released from confinement and brought to Gibraltar to meet with Operation Torch commander General Dwight D. Eisenhower and Clark in order to secure his cooperation with the invasion.
The Géo Gras Group was a French resistance movement that played a decisive role during Operation Torch, the British-American invasion of French North Africa during World War II.
The French Civil and Military High Command was an administrative and military governing body in Algiers that was created in connection with the Allied landings in French North Africa on 7 and 8 November 1942 as part of Operation Torch. It came about as a result of negotiations between the Americans and two military figures from Vichy France whom the Americans believed could assure safe passage for the landing forces, namely Henri Giraud and François Darlan.
