Empire Defense Council

On 26 June 1940, four days after the Pétain government requested the armistice, General de Gaulle submitted a memorandum to the British government notifying Churchill of his decision to set up a Council of Defense of the Empire[1] and formalizing the agreement reached with Churchill on 28 June, which allowed the Free French forces to be recognized as a fully-fledged French authority by the British government: in the eyes of the British government, General de Gaulle was then the "Head of the French who are continuing the war". This memorandum led to an agreement on 7 August, but provided for the creation of a French Committee or Council as of 26 June.

The agreement of 7 August between de Gaulle and the UK, known as the "Chequers agreement", gave General de Gaulle all the financial independence and resources of a government in exile.[2] The British government considered it to have taken effect 11 July 1940, the day Marshal Pétain took full powers and signed into law the end of the Third Republic. By this act, the British government wished to indicate that it recognized that Free France, still being formed at the time, was the legitimate successor to the Republic that had just died, and was an ally of the United Kingdom in the war. It also undertook to reconstitute the entire French territory and "the greatness of France" after the war was over.

The formal recognition of the Empire Defense Council as a de facto government in exile by the United Kingdom took place on 6 January 1941; recognition by the Soviet Union was published in December 1941, by exchange of letters.[3]

In his view, General de Gaulle was ensuring the continuity of the rule of law and national defense against the Axis powers. This was made possible by the legitimacy he obtained from his appeal of 18 June, as well as by the rapid rallying of military units and French territories that wished to continue the fight (from 22 June, in the case of the Franco-British territory of New Hebrides).

De Gaulle's support grew out of a base in colonial Africa. In the fall of 1940, the colonial empire largely supported the Vichy regime. Félix Éboué, governor of Chad, switched his support to General de Gaulle in September. Encouraged, de Gaulle traveled to Brazzaville in October, where he announced the formation of the Empire Defense Council[4] in the Brazzaville Manifesto,[5] and invited all colonies still supporting Vichy to join him and the Free French forces in the fight against Germany, which most of them did by 1943.[4]

At the time, Free France had the bulk of its territorial base in its colonial empire, thanks to the rallying of various colonies : French India was the first to rally, followed by most of the territories of French Equatorial Africa, followed by the New Hebrides Condominium, French Polynesia and New Caledonia.[6] Félix Éboué, governor of Chad, announced his support on August 26.[4] He quickly received the support of Edgard de Larminat, Pierre Koenig and Philippe Leclerc. At the end of the summer, most of French Equatorial Africa, newly designated "Free French Africa", was in support of Free France.[7][4]

On 27 October 1940, General de Gaulle announced the creation of the Empire Defense Council as the decision-making body of Free France in the "Brazzaville Manifesto", from the capital of French Equatorial Africa.[5] This was part of his strategy to give the movement a political as well as a military character, both to attract supporters, and to provide support for his claim as a political as well as military leader of the French resistance.[8]

In the ordinances of 27 October 1940, De Gaulle defined the powers of the council, including: external and internal security, economic activity, negotiating with foreign powers (in article 2), as well as the "establishment of organs that would exercise the powers of jurisdiction normally devolved to the Council of State and the Court of Cassation" (article 4). However, the decision-making power rested with the head of the Free French (article 3), the Council exercising only an advisory role. Ministerial powers were exercised "by agency directors appointed by the Head of the Free French". This gave the Defense Council the nature of a consultative and representative body in the territories that joined with it. The Administrative Conference of the Free French (Conférence administrative de la France Libre), created by decree of 29 January 1941, served as the government, bringing together all the agency directors and the members of the Empire Defence Council.

The members of the council were chosen by Charles de Gaulle[9] because they "already exercise authority on French lands or symbolize the highest intellectual and moral values of the nation." (Brazzaville Manifesto)[5]

• General Georges Catroux
• Vice-Admiral Émile Muselier
• General Edgard de Larminat
• Governor Félix Éboué
• Governor Henri Sautot
• Colonel Philippe Leclerc de Hauteclocque
• Médecin-Général Adolphe Sicé
• Permanent secretary René Cassin
• Naval captain Georges Thierry d'Argenlieu[10]

Notes

Sources

• Danan, Yves-Maxime (1972). "La nature juridique du Conseil de défense de l'empire (Brazzaville, October 1940) Contribution à la Théorie des Gouvernements Insurrectionnels" [The legal nature of the Empire Defense (October 1940) Contribution to the Theory of Insurrectionnal Governments] (PDF). Publications de la faculté de droit et des sciences politiques et sociales d'Amiens (4): 145–149.
• de Gaulle, Charles (16 November 1940). Déclaration organique complétant le manifeste du 27 octobre 1940 [Organic Declaration supplementing the Manifesto of 27 October 1940]. Brazzaville. OCLC 493620292.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
• France libre (1940). Documents officiels. [Manifeste du 27 octobre 1940, à Brazzaville. Ordonnances n ° 1 et 2, du 27 octobre 1940, instituant un Conseil de défense de l'Empire. Déclaration organique complétant le manifeste du 27 octobre 1940, du 16 novembre 1940, à Brazzaville. Signé: De Gaulle.] [Official documents. Manifesto of 27 October 1940, in Brazzaville. Orders No. 1 and 2, of 27 October 1940, establishing an Empire Defense Council. Organic Declaration supplementing the Manifesto of 27 October 1940, of 16 November 1940, in Brazzaville. Signed: De Gaulle.]. Brazzaville: Impr. officielle. OCLC 460992617.
• Jennings, Eric T. (8 July 2015). Free French Africa in World War II: The African Resistance. Cambridge University Press. p. 46. ISBN 978-1-316-44519-8. Retrieved 2 June 2020. In the fall of 1940, Gaullist legitimacy rested squarely and almost entirely on Free French Africa, a freshly invented designator that linked Cameroon to FEA more than ever. In the wake of his two telegrams on October 27, 1940, de Gaulle recycled his earlier formula, instituting the Empire Defense Council in Brazzaville 'on French land'.
• Munholland, Kim (February 2007). "chap 1. The Free French and the Americans before Pearl Harbor - The Empire Defense Council and the Allies in the Tropics". Rock of Contention: Free French and Americans at War in New Caledonia, 1940-1945. New York: Berghahn Books. pp. 19–. ISBN 978-1-84545-300-8. Retrieved 2 June 2020. While he was in Africa and on French colonial territory, de Gaulle decided to give his movement a more clearly distinct, political character when he created an Empire Defense Council on 27 October. This important initiative had far-reaching implications for his movement since it was the first step toward the formation of a provisional government and General de Gaulle's claim to legitimacy as the political as well as military leader of the French resistance.
• Shillington, Kevin (4 July 2013). Encyclopedia of African History 3-Volume Set. Vol. 1 A–G. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-135-45669-6. OCLC 254075497. Retrieved 2 June 2020. There was much support for the Vichy regime among French colonial personnel, with the exception of Guianese-born governor of Chad, Félix Éboué, who in September 1940 announced his switch of allegiance from Vichy to the Gaullist Free French movement based in London. Encouraged by this support for his fledgling movement, Charles de Gaulle traveled to Brazzaville in October 1940 to announce the formation of an Empire Defense Council and to invite all French possessions loyal to Vichy to join it and continue the war against Germany; within two years, most did.
• Venner, Dominique (15 April 2017). De Gaulle la Grandeur et le Neant. Editions du Rocher. ISBN 978-2-268-09133-4.
• White, Dorothy Shipley (1964). "XI The French Empire Rises". Seeds of Discord: De Gaulle, Free France and the Allies. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press. OCLC 876345256. Retrieved 3 June 2020.
• Wieviorka, Olivier (3 September 2019). The Resistance in Western Europe, 1940–1945. Translated by Todd, Jane Marie. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0-231-54864-9. Retrieved 2 June 2020. At the same time, de Gaulle was only one man, and had no eminent political supporters. He therefore had to broaden his base. An order of October 27, 1940, created the Conseil de défense de l'Empire (Empire Defense Council), which included, in addition to de Gaulle, the governors of the territories who had rallied to the cause (Edgard de Larminat, Félix Éboué, Leclerc, Henri Sautot) military leaders (Georges Catroux and Émile Muselier), and three personalities from varied backgrounds: Father Georges Thierry Argenlieu, a friar and alumnus of the E'cole Navale; Rene' Cassin, a distinguished jurist and prominent representative of the veterans movement; and the military doctor Adolph Sice'.

• Epstein, Sam; Epstein, Beryl Williams (1973). Charles de Gaulle, Defender of France. Century book (Champaign, Ill.). Champaign, Ill.: Garrard. ISBN 978-0-8116-4756-4. OCLC 730526. ...set up an Empire Defense council. He appointed men to represent him in various world capitals. He also sent representatives secretly into France.