Anglo French Command pre US Entry into the War
I’m
currently thinking about the ARCADIA conference (December 1941) and how the
APOD version might vary from OTL. One of the topics I’ll be covering is Theatre
Command.
The thing is, before I can tackle that subject from the Empire/French/US perspective I need to know how it was managed beforehand, hence this discussion thread.
NOTE TO MARK – I don’t pretend to have a handle on French thought processes/ Internal/external politics, so if you could contact some of the French team and ask them to look in/contribute the French viewpoint this will help stop this discussion from veering too much down an “Anglo” direction.
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Question of Command
OTL pre US entry into the vwar all of the “Free” Allied nations were dependent on the British for almost everything – their arms and equipment were largely British, such sea and air power as they had was again latrgely British and/or needed to be backed up by the British. While the National Governments retained control of their forces (for example, the British couldn’t unilaterally decide to redeploy a Belgian brigade from North Africa to the Far East without the (London based) Free Belgian Government in Exile’s approval), once in theatre “Free” Forces (including the French unquestionably plugged into the British Command arrangements, answered to the local British CinC and were (broadly speaking) deployed/used as he saw fit.
Now in APOD I don’t see this model holding good. France is still a (barely) self supporting nation, with a functional Government that aren’t just a bunch of refugees sheltering in London. She is still an independent player and one who brings a lot to the table. She can’t simply be treated the same as the Belgians.
In a lot of theatres you’re going to see major French and British units working together. If they can’t do this effectively it helps the enemy so there is a driver for working out a mechanism for co-operation.
But what mechanism would be suitable? – thats the subject of this discussion.
