text: Metropolitan France was divided into a German occupation zone in the north and west and an unoccupied "zone libre" in the south. Pétain set up a collaborationist government based in the spa town of Vichy. he authoritarian French State, replacing the abolished French Third Republic, came to be known as Vichy France.


title: Military history of France during World War II

text: Charles de Gaulle, who had been made an Undersecretary of National Defense by Paul Reynaud, was in London at the time of the surrender: having made his Appeal of 18 June as an answer to Pétain's appeal of 17 June, he refused to recognize the Vichy government as legitimate – the position of President of France was vacant – and began organizing the Free French Forces. A number of French colonies like French Equatorial Africa joined de Gaulle's fight. Others, like French Indochina, were attacked by the Japanese or remained loyal to the Vichy government. Italy occupied a small area of France, essentially the Alpes-Maritimes and Corsica.


text: The first Free French pilots flew from Bordeaux to rally de Gaulle in England on June 17, 1940. These individuals served in British squadrons until there were sufficient pilots to create All-Free French RAF flights.


text: Thirteen Free French pilots (from France) fought in the Battle of Britain against the German Luftwaffe. Among these men were Adjutant Émile Fayolle, son of an admiral and grandson of French Marshal Marie Émile Fayolle. When the Armistice was signed on June 22, 1940, Fayolle was at the Fighter School at Oran, French Algeria. On June 30, he and a comrade flew to the British base at Gibraltar and from there sailed to Liverpool where they arrived on July 13 and joined the RAF. Flying with other squadrons from September 1940, in November 1941 Fayolle joined No. 340 (Free French) Squadron RAF, the first all-French fighter unit. Another pilot with a similar course was Adjutant René Mouchotte, eleven Free French pilots were posted to No.1 School of Army Co-operation, Old Sarum on July 29. Mouchotte was posted to Turnhouse as Deputy 'A' Flight Commander with 340 Squadron on November 10. On January 18, 1943, Captain Mouchotte returned to Turnhouse to form and command the 341 Free French Squadron.


text: In the summer of 1941, the British commander of the Fighter Command accepted the creation of the No.340 Free French (Fighter) Squadron (also known as "Groupe de chasse 2 "Île-de-France"", a Free French unit attached to the No. 13 Group RAF, equipped with Spitfire aircraft and formed at Turnhouse, Scotland. Other notable All-Free French RAF flights were the No. 327 Squadron RAF and No. 341 Squadron RAF.


text: The French State sent an expeditionary force, called "Légion des Volontaires Français Contre le Bolchevisme" (LVF), to fight the Soviet Red Army alongside the German Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front. This volunteer unit, including old men and 15-year-old children as evidenced by Nazi propaganda archives, took part in Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union, beginning November 1941.


text: The German designation for the LVF was "Infanterie-Regiment 638" ("638th Infantry Regiment") and it served under Field Marshal Günther von Kluge, commander of the German 4th Army. It fought in the Battle of Diut'kovo (maybe Dyatkovo), part of the Battle of Moscow, and the Battle of Berezina, as hinted by its flag. It suffered extremely high casualties to combat and frostbite.


text: The Vichy French SS battalion Charlemagne (remains of the French SS Division Charlemagne) under "Hauptsturmführer" (Captain) Henri Fenet was among the last defenders of the Nazi German capital, fighting against Soviet forces during the Battle of Berlin in April–May 1945.


text: A fighter aviation group named Normandie-Niemen fought on the Eastern Front as part of the Soviet air force. These French volunteers were equipped with first-rate Yakovlev Soviet-built fighters.


text: At de Gaulle's initiative, the Free French Air Force "Groupe de Chasse 3 "Normandie"" was formed on September 1, 1942, to serve on the Eastern Front. It flew as part of the Soviet 1st Air Army and served with distinction with Soviet aircraft and was awarded the supplementary title "Niemen" (from the Belarus river) by Joseph Stalin. Its first commander, was , was killed in action.


text: Normandie-Niemen evolved from a single squadron called "Normandie" to a full regiment which included Squadron Caen, Squadron Le Havre and Squadron Rouen. Their battle honors were Oryol 1943, Smolensk 1943, Orche 1944, Berezina 1944, Niemen 1944, Chernyakhovsk 1945 and Baltiysk 1945. By the end of World War II, the Free French unit counted 273 certified victories, 37 non-certified victories and 45 damaged aircraft with 869 fights and 42 dead.


text: On May 31, 1945, Normandie-Niemen squadrons were directed to Moscow by the Soviet authorities, who decided to allow them to return to France with their aircraft as a reward. The 40 French pilots still active with the regiment flew back to France in Yak-3 fighters .


text: They arrived at Elbląg, Poland on June 15, 1945, and in Paris Le Bourget, through Posen, Prague and Stuttgart, on June 21. Their arrival at Stuttgart and parade at Le Bourget were filmed.)


text: The 1st group, Ist Landing Corps ("1er groupement du Ier corps de débarquement"), later redesignated by as the French Expeditionary Corps ("Corps Expéditionnaire Français, CEF") participated in the Italian Campaign with two divisions and two separate brigades from late 1943 to July 23, 1944.


text: In the Italian Campaign, the Bernhardt Line (or Reinhard Line) was a German defense over the massif of Monte Cassino, defended by the XIV Panzer Corps ("XIV Panzerkorps") of the German Tenth Army ("10. Armee"). The U.S. Fifth Army reached it in early December 1943, and fought until mid-January 1944 to reach the next defence, the Gustav Line.


text: In 1944, this corps was reinforced by two additional divisions and played an essential role in the Battle of Monte Cassino. The Allied capture of Monte Cassino resulted in 55,000 Allied casualties, and around 20,000 Germans killed or wounded. After the Allies captured Rome the Corps withdrew from Italy and incorporated into the B Army ("Armée B") for the invasion of southern France.


text: The Allied Operation Diadem of the Italian Campaign in May 1944 successfully assaulted German Gustav Line defences in the Italian Liri valley, the primary route to Rome. Breaking through German lines, it eased pressure on the Anzio beachhead and tied German troops up in Italy to prevent their deployment against the Normandy landings. Diadem was supported by air attacks called Operation Strangle and by the British XIII Corps, and the French Corps, including Moroccan Goumiers). The opposing force was the German 10th Army. On 11 May 1944, elements of the British 4th Infantry Division and 8th Indian Infantry Division, with supporting fire from the 1st Canadian Armoured Brigade, performed a successful night crossing of the Garigliano and Rapido rivers, against strong resistance. The French Corps pushed through the mountains on 14 May, supported by US II Corps of the Fifth Army. On 17 May, Polish II Corps on the right attacked Monte Cassino.


text: The Germans fell back some 10 miles to the Hitler Line, where the four Allied units attacked again on 23 May, as well as the US VI Corps out of Anzio. The 1st Canadian Infantry Division's 4th Princess Louise Dragoon Guards breached the Hitler Line at Pontecorvo on 23 May. The Germans retreated northwest. The Germans fought a series of delaying actions and retreated to the Trasimene Line, then the Gothic Line north of the Arno river.


text: In June 1944 by the invasion of Elba followed the success of Operation Diadem. The 9th Colonial Infantry Division (9 DIC) and "Choc" (special forces) battalions of I Corps assaulted and seized the heavily fortified island, defended by German fortress infantry and coastal artillery troops. Combat on the island was characterized by close-in fighting, flamethrowers, well-ranged German artillery, and liberal use of landmines.


text: A force of 4,000 French Resistance (FFI) fighters proclaimed the Free Republic of Vercors opposing the German army and French Milice.


text: FTP forces ("Francs-tireurs partisans") under Georges Guingouin fought the "Wehrmacht" General Curt von Jesser's brigade.


text: By the time of the Normandy Invasion, the Free French forces numbered 500,000 regulars and more than 100,000 FFI. The Free French 2nd Armoured Division, under General Philippe Leclerc, landed at Utah Beach in Normandy on August 2 and eventually led the drive towards Paris later that month. The FFI (French Resistance) began to seriously harass the German forces, cutting roads, railways, making ambushes as well as fighting battles alongside their allies.


text: Operation Samwest (5–12 June 1944) was a large raid conducted by 116 Free French paratroopers of the 4th Special Air Service Regiment. Their objective was to hinder the movement of German troops from west Brittany to the Normandy beaches through ambush and sabotage attempts.


text: The first phase of the mission was to establish a secure base on the Breton Peninsula, near Saint-Brieuc in Duault. Their base was heavily attacked by German troops on 12 June and they were forced to disperse.


text: Only a few French infantry were involved in the Allied landing operations on June 6, 1944. There were 209- 177 commandos and 32 airborne troopers. Additional personnel include a hundred French air force fighter and bomber pilots and hundreds of sailors from the French navy.


text: Free French infantry fighting in the Normandy beaches on June 6 is limited to the 1er Bataillon de Fusiliers Marins Commandos (1er BFMC) under Free French Navy Major Philippe Kieffer.


text: The Free French Navy's 1er BFMC comprised 177 commandos and had been created at Achnacarry, Scotland after the British Commandos. This All-French unit, including many Bretons as Brittany was close to England, was attached to the British No. 4 Commando under Lieutenant-Colonel Dawson. It was the very first infantry unit to touch the sand of Ouistreham, (Normandy) in the landing full-scale Operation Overlord; preceding the 3rd British Infantry Division. This honor was a courtesy of 1st Special Service Brigade (S.S.B.) commander Scottish Brigadier Simon Fraser, 15th Lord Lovat who slowed down the British commandos landing crafts to let pass the French LCI 527 (Troop 1) and LCI 528 (Troop 8). The 1er BFMC's Normandy campaign lasted 83 days, casualty rate was high, from the 117 Kieffer commandos of June 6, only 24 survived.


text: The Free French Navy under Admiral Ramsay took part in Operation Neptune which was the naval part of Operation Overlord, a series of missions were fulfilled on June 6:


text: Another French mission from June 3 to 16, consisted in the shelling of Omaha Beach's defense by a fleet under Admiral Jaujard which comprised the 7,500 tons cruisers "Georges-Leygues" and "Montcalm", with their 10,000 tons tanker, and the cruiser "Duquesne". The three cruisers fired thousands of shells in four days.


text: Defense operations were also performed by the corvettes and frigates establishing a shuttle between English harbours and the French coast. They escorted the logistics maneuvers involving infantry landing crafts, medical evacuations from the battlefield and sought for any Kriegsmarine menace.


text: On June 9, the obsolete French cuirassé "Courbet" was disarmed and saborded – together with other ships – in the Hermanville-sur-Mer area to be used as artificial breakwaters.


text: Light bomber Boston equipped bomb group No. 342 Squadron RAF (GB 1/20 Lorraine), commanded by Michel Fouquet, supported the Omaha Beach invasion with a smoke screen campaign blinding and isolating the German defenders.


text: Heavy bombers of bomb groups GB 1/15 Touraine and No. 347 Squadron RAF (GB 1/25 Tunisie) and fighters of No. 329 Squadron RAF (GC 1/2 Cigognes), No. 345 Squadron RAF (GC 2/2 Berry), No. 341 Squadron RAF (GC 3/2 Alsace) and No. 340 Squadron RAF (GC 4/2 Île de France) serviced under Air Marshal Leigh-Mallory.


text: The Free French airmen were part of the first casualties of Day-D. These include the flying crew Boissieux-Canut-Henson from bomb group No. 342 Squadron RAF (GB 1/20 Lorraine) which left its base at dawn and was KIA when its Boston was shot down.


text: The 2nd Division landed at Utah Beach (Normandy), on August 1, 1944, about two months after the D-Day landings, and served under General Patton's Third Army.


text: The 2nd division played a critical role in Operation Cobra, the Allied breakthrough from Normandy, when it served as a link between American and Canadian armies and made rapid progress against German forces. They all but destroyed the 9th Panzer Division and defeated several other German units. During the Battle for Normandy, the 2nd Division lost 133 men killed, 648 wounded, and 85 missing. Division material losses included 76 armored vehicles, 7 cannons, 27 halftracks, and 133 other vehicles. In the same period, the 2nd Division inflicted losses on the Germans of 4,500 killed and 8,800 taken prisoner, while the Germans' material losses in combat against the 2nd Division during the same period were 117 tanks, 79 cannons, and 750 wheeled vehicles.


text: The most celebrated moment in the 2nd's history involved the Liberation of Paris. Allied strategy emphasized destroying German forces retreating towards the Rhine, but when the French Resistance under Colonel Rol-Tanguy staged an uprising in the city, Charles de Gaulle pleaded with Eisenhower to send help. Eisenhower agreed and Leclerc's forces headed for Paris. After hard fighting that cost the 2nd Division 35 tanks, 6 self-propelled guns, and 111 vehicles, von Choltitz, the military governor of Paris, surrendered the city at the Hôtel Meurice. Jubilant crowds greeted French forces, and de Gaulle conducted a famous parade through the city.


text: Subsequently, the 2nd Division campaigned with American forces in Lorraine, spearheading the U.S. Seventh Army drive through the northern Vosges Mountains and forcing the Saverne Gap. Eventually, after liberating Strasbourg in November 1944, defending against the German Nordwind counter-offensive in Alsace in January 1945, and conducting operations against the Royan Pocket on the Atlantic coast of France.


text: Free French airborne commandos, called "Jedburgh", were dropped behind Nazi lines in Provence in order to support the upcoming Allied landing (Operation Dragoon) and prepare the French Resistance. This Allied operation was in conjunction with the Free French intelligence service Bureau Central de Renseignements et d'Action (BCRA); famous French Jedburghs are Jean Sassi and Paul Aussaresses.


text: Operation Dragoon was the Allied invasion of southern France, on August 15, 1944, as part of World War II. The invasion took place between Toulon and Cannes. During the planning stages, the operation was known as "Anvil", to complement "Operation Hammer", which was at that time the codename for the invasion of Normandy. Subsequently, both plans were renamed, the latter becoming Operation Overlord, the former becoming Operation Dragoon; a name supposedly picked by Winston Churchill, who was opposed to the plan, and claimed to having been "dragooned" into accepting it.


text: The plan originally envisaged a mixture of Free French and American troops taking Toulon and later Marseille, with subsequent revisions encompassing Saint Tropez. The plan was revised throughout 1944, however, with conflict developing between British military staff — who were opposed to the landings, arguing that the troops and equipment should be either retained in Italy or sent there — and American military staff, who were in favour of the assault. This was part of a larger Anglo-American strategic disagreement.


text: The balance was tipped in favour of "Dragoon" by two events: the eventual fall of Rome in early June, plus the success of Operation Cobra, the breakout from the Normandy pocket, at the end of the month. Operation Dragoon's D-Day was set for August 15, 1944. The final go-ahead was given at short notice.


text: The U.S. 6th Army Group, also known as the Southern Group of Armies, commanded by Lieutenant General Jacob L. Devers was created in Corsica and activated on August 1, 1944, to consolidate the combined French and American forces that were planning to invade southern France in Operation Dragoon. At first it was subordinate to AFHQ (Allied Forces Headquarters) under the command of Field Marshal Sir Henry Maitland Wilson who was the supreme commander of the Mediterranean Theater. One month after the invasion, command was handed over to SHAEF (Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Forces) under U.S. General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the supreme commander of Allied forces on the Western Front.


text: The assault troops were formed of three American divisions of the VI Corps, reinforced by a French armoured division. The 3rd Infantry Division landed on the left at Alpha Beach (Cavalaire-sur-Mer), the 45th Infantry Division landed in the centre at Delta Beach (Saint-Tropez), and the 36th Infantry Division landed on the right at Camel Beach (Saint-Raphaël). These were supported by French commando groups landing on both flanks, and by Rugby Force, a parachute assault in the Le Muy-Le Luc area by the 1st Airborne Task Force: British 2nd Parachute Brigade, the U.S. 517th Parachute Regimental Combat Team, and a composite U.S. airborne glider regimental combat team formed from the 509th Parachute Infantry Battalion, the 550th Glider Infantry Battalion, and the 1st Battalion, 551st Parachute Infantry regiment. The 1st Special Service Force took two offshore islands to protect the beachhead.


text: Naval gunfire from Allied ships, including battleships "Lorraine", , , and and a fleet of over 50 cruisers and destroyers supported the landings. Seven Allied escort carriers provided air cover.


text: Over ninety-four thousand troops and eleven thousand vehicles were landed on the first day. A number of German troops had been diverted to fight the Allied forces in Northern France after Operation Overlord and a major attack by French resistance fighters, coordinated by Captain Aaron Bank of the OSS, helped drive the remaining German forces back from the beachhead in advance of the landing. As a result, the Allied forces met little resistance as they moved inland. The quick success of this invasion, with a twenty-mile penetration in twenty-four hours, sparked a major uprising by resistance fighters in Paris.


text: Follow-up formations included US VI Corps HQ, US Seventh Army HQ, French Army B (later redesignated the "French First Army") and French I and II Corps.


text: The rapid retreat of the German Nineteenth Army resulted in swift gains for the Allied forces. The plans had envisaged greater resistance near the landing areas and underestimated transport needs. The consequent need for vehicle fuel outstripped supply, and this shortage proved to be a greater impediment to the advance than German resistance. As a result, several German formations escaped into the Vosges and Germany.


text: The "Dragoon" force met up with southern thrusts from Overlord in mid-September, near Dijon. Operation Dragoon included a glider landing (Operation Dove) and a deception (Operation Span).


text: A planned benefit of "Dragoon" was the usefulness of the port of Marseille. The rapid Allied advance after Operation Cobra and "Dragoon" slowed almost to a halt in September 1944 due to a critical lack of supplies, as thousands of tons of supplies were shunted to NW France to compensate for the inadequacies of port facilities and land transport in northern Europe. Marseille and the southern French railways were brought back into service despite heavy damage to the Port of Marseille and its railroad trunk lines. They became a significant supply route for the Allied advance into Germany, providing about a third of the Allied needs.


text: French commandos assaulted German artillery position at . 300 German soldiers were killed and 700 were taken prisoner. The French commandos suffered 11 men killed and 50 wounded.


text: The French First Army under Jean de Lattre de Tassigny performed spectacularly in the capture of Toulon and Marseilles.


text: "The original plan intended to attack the two ports in succession. The accelerated landings of de Lattre's French forces, however, and the general situation allowed concurrent operations against both. De Lattre ordered Lt. Gen. Edgard de Larminat to move west against Toulon along the coast, with two infantry divisions supported by tanks and commandos. Simultaneously, a second force, under Maj. Gen. Goislard de Monsabert and consisting of one infantry division and similar supporting forces, would advance in a more northwesterly direction, encircling the naval port from the north and west and probing toward Marseille. De Lattre knew that the German garrisons at the ports were substantial: some 18,000 troops of all types at Toulon and another 13,000, mostly army, at Marseille. However, Resistance sources also told him that the defenders had not yet put much effort into protecting the landward approaches to the ports, and he was convinced that a quick strike by experienced combat troops might well crack their defenses before they had a chance to coalesce. Speed was essential.


text: On the morning of August 20, with the German command in Toulon still in a state of confusion and the Nineteenth Army more concerned with Truscott's westward progress well north of the port, de Larminat attacked from the east while Monsabert circled around to the north, quickly outflanking Toulon's hasty defenses along the coast. By the 21st Monsabert had cut the Toulon-Marseille road, and several of his units had entered Toulon from the west, penetrating to within two miles of the main waterfront. Between 21 and 23 August, the French slowly squeezed the Germans back into the inner city in a series of almost continuous street fights. As the German defense lost coherence, isolated groups began to surrender, with the last organized resistance ending on the 26th and the formal German surrender occurring on 28 August. The battle cost de Lattre about 2,700 casualties, but the French claimed 17,000 prisoners, indicating that few Germans had followed the Fuehrer's "stand and die" order.


text: Even as French forces occupied Toulon, Monsabert began the attack on Marseille, generally screening German defenses along the coast and striking from the northeastern and northern approaches. Early gains on the 22d put French troops within five to eight miles of the city's center, while a major Resistance uprising within the port encouraged French soldiers to strike deeper.


text: Although de Lattre urged caution, concerned over the dispersion of his forces and the shortage of fuel for his tanks and trucks, Monsabert's infantry plunged into the heart of Marseille in the early hours of 23 August. Their initiative decided the issue, and the fighting soon became a matter of battling from street to street and from house to house, as in Toulon. On the evening of the 27th, the German commander parleyed with Monsabert to arrange terms and a formal surrender became effective on the 28th, the same day as the capitulation of Toulon. At Marseille, the French took over 1,800 casualties and acquired roughly 11,000 more prisoners. Equally important, both ports, although badly damaged by German demolitions, were in Allied hands many weeks ahead of schedule."


text: Moving north, the French First Army liberated Lyon on 2 September 1944 and moved into the southern Vosges Mountains, capturing Belfort and forcing the Belfort Gap at the close of November 1944. Following the capture of the Belfort Gap, French operations in the area of Burnhaupt destroyed the German IV Luftwaffe Korps. In February 1945, with the assistance of the U.S. XXI Corps, the First Army collapsed the Colmar Pocket and cleared the west bank of the Rhine River of Germans in the area south of Strasbourg.


text: In March 1945, the First Army fought through the Siegfried Line fortifications in the Bienwald Forest near Lauterbourg. Subsequently, the First Army crossed the Rhine near Speyer and captured Karlsruhe and Stuttgart. Operations by the First Army in April 1945 encircled and captured the German XVIII. S.S.-Armeekorps in the Black Forest and cleared southwestern Germany.


text: Free French "Normandie-Niemen" squadron's flag features Battle of Königsberg 1945 as battle honor and the unit was awarded the "Take of the Königsberg Fortress" medal.


text: General Leclerc's 2nd Division finished its campaigning at the Nazi resort town of Berchtesgaden, in southeastern Germany, where Hitler's mountain residence, the Berghof, was located. Leclerc's armoured unit was along the U.S. 3rd Infantry Division.


text: The ("'s") battleflag hints this Army of Africa Free French unit fought at Württemberg during the Allied invasion of Germany in 1945.


text: The operation began with the drop of 700 Special Air Service troopers of 3rd and 4th French SAS on the night of 7 April 1945. The teams spread out to capture and protect key facilities from the Germans. Advancing Canadian troops of the 8th Reconnaissance Regiment relieved the isolated French SAS.


text: Two French Light Infantry Battalions (J. Lawton Collins's VII Corps (United States)) and six French Light Infantry Battalions from Metz region (Troy H. Middleton's VIII Corps (United States)) fought the Battle of the Bulge. The 3rd SAS French 1st Airborne Marine Infantry Regiment battle honor bears the Battle of Bulge (""Ardennes Belges 1945"").


text: On 3 July 1940, Prime Minister Winston Churchill ordered the capture of French ships by the British as Operation Catapult. This included not only the enemy Vichy French ships in the Mediterranean (see Battle of Mers-el-Kebir) but also the allied Free French ships docked in Britain after the Dunkirk evacuation. The capture by force of docked ships led to fighting between Free French sailors and outnumbering British Marines, sailors and soldiers in the English harbours. A similar operation was executed in Canada. The British assault on the then World's largest submarine resulted in three dead British (2 Royal Navy officers and 1 British seaman) and one dead Free French (warrant officer mechanic Yves Daniel).


text: Commandeered Free French vessels included which was captured by the British at Plymouth. Because of the complexity of her handling and of the need to support the Free France, "Le Triomphant" was handed to the FNFL, on 28 August 1940, and put under the command of captain Pierre Gilly. Her aft gun was replaced by a British model. was under repair at Portsmouth after the Dunkirk evacuation when she was captured by the British. She was handed over to the Free French Naval Forces on 31 August. also under repair at Plymouth, along with her sister ship , eight torpedo boats, five submarines and a number of other ships of lesser importance. Britain planned to transfer her to the Polish Navy. The ceremony was to be held on 15 July 1940 and it was planned to rename the ship to OF "Paris" (OF – Okręt Francuski – "French ship") but due to lack of personnel the ship was never handed over to the Polish Navy and was used by the British as an accommodation ship in Devonport.


text: The commandeered was not returned to the Free French but instead was transferred to the Free Polish Navy on 17 July 1940. Until 30 April 1941 she sailed under the Polish ensign with pennant number H16, but as OF "Ouragan" (OF – Okręt Francuski – "French ship"), instead of the usual ORP prefix. It was only after 287 days that "Ouragan" was returned to her owner, on 30 April 1941.


text: After the capture of Allied French ships, Britain tried to repatriate the captured Free French sailors. The British hospital ship that was carrying them back to metropolitan France was sunk by the Germans, and many of the French blamed the British for their deaths.


text: Operation Catapult was called «"treachery"» by both the Vichy and Free French. The French State exploited this series of events in its anti-British propaganda which has a long-running history back to the Perfidious Albion myth.


text: The French Navy took part in the naval Battle of the Atlantic from 1939 to 1940. After the armistice of June 1940, Free French Naval Forces, headed by admiral Émile Muselier, were created and pursued the war on the Allies side.


text: The Free French Navy's submarine "Minerve" was involved in the Allied battle against the Allied battle against the "Bismarck".


text: On 24 October 1941 the attacked Allied Convoy HG-75, which was sailing from Almería, Spain, to Barrow-in-Furness, England. "U-564" fired five torpedoes, hitting and sinking three cargo ships: , and . There were 18 survivors from "Carsbreck", and all were rescued by the Free French "Elan"-class minesweeping aviso "Commandant Duboc" (F743).


text: Both the Vichy French Navy and Free French Navy fought the Battle of the Mediterranean sea. A notable action, the Battle off Ist, took place on the Adriatic sea on 29 February 1944, when a German naval force of two corvettes and two torpedo boats escorting a freighter, supported by three minesweepers, was intercepted by the Free French Navy operating under British command as the 24th Destroyer flotilla. Under Captain Pierre Lancelot the "Super" or heavy Le Fantasque-class destroyers and destroyed the German freighter and one of the corvettes before withdrawing with no casualties.


text: The British began to doubt Admiral Darlan's promise to Churchill to not allow the French fleet at Toulon to fall into German hands by the wording of the armistice conditions. In the end, the British attacked French naval forces in Africa and Europe, killing 1000 French soldiers at Mers El Kebir alone. This action led to feelings of animosity and mistrust between the Vichy French and their former British allies. In the course of the war, Vichy France lost 2,653 soldiers and Free France lost 20,000.


text: In German or Italian hands, the French fleet would have been a grave threat to Britain and the British Government declined to take this risk. To neutralise the threat, Winston Churchill ordered that the French ships should rejoin the Allies, agree to be put out of use in a British, French or neutral port or, as a last resort, be destroyed by British attack (Operation Catapult). The Royal Navy attempted to persuade the French Navy to agree to these terms, but when that failed they attacked the French Navy July 3, 1940 at Mers El Kébir and Dakar. This caused bitterness and division in France, particularly in the Navy, and discouraged many French soldiers from joining the Free French forces in Britain. Also, the attempt to persuade Vichy French forces in Dakar to join De Gaulle failed. (See West African campaign and Operation Menace).


text: In June 1942, British SAS C.O. David Stirling gave British captains George Jellicoe and Free French Georges Bergé a mission on the Greek island of Crete called Operation Heraklion. Bergé chose three Free French commandos, Jacques Mouhot, Pierre Léostic and Jack Sibard, and Lieutenant Kostis Petrakis of the Greek Army in the Middle East, a native of Crete, joined them.


text: They managed to destroy 22 Junkers Ju 88 German bombers at the Candia-Heraklion airfield. However their retreat was betrayed and 17-year-old Pierre Léostic refused to surrender and was killed, while the other three Free French were caught and transferred to Germany. The British and Cretan commandos escaped and were evacuated to Egypt. Jacques Mouhot tried and failed to three times to escape, but succeeded with his fourth attempt. He subsequently crossed Germany, Belgium, France and Spain to arrive in London on August 22, 1943.


text: The Vichy French navy sabotaged its docked fleet at Toulon in southern France, to prevent the German "Kriegsmarine" from seizing Vichy French ships and using their firepower against the Allies and Free French.


text: Operation Husky involved infantry, air force and armored cavalry forces from the Army of Africa including 4th Moroccan Tabor (66th, 67th & 68th Goums landed on July 13 at Licata) from the Seventh United States Army, French II/5 "LaFayette" Squadron with Curtiss P-40 Warhawks and "Nice" French Squadron with Spitfires (both from No. 242 Group RAF), II/33 Groupe "Savoie" with P-38 Lightning from the Northwest African Photographic Reconnaissance Wing and 131st RCC with Renault R35 tanks.


text: In September–October 1943, an ad hoc force (ca. 6,000 troops) of the French Ist Corps liberated Corsica, defended by the German 90th Panzergrenadier Division and the Sturmbrigade Reichsführer-SS (~ 30,000 troops). Although 45,000 Italians were also present, least some of them joined the Allies. Corsica became the first French "metropolitan department" liberated in World War II; the first liberated "département" was Algiers, in November 1942.


text: The Battle of Dakar, also known as Operation Menace, was an unsuccessful attempt by the Allies to capture the strategic port of Dakar in French West Africa (modern-day Senegal), which was under Vichy French control, and to install the Free French under General Charles de Gaulle there. De Gaulle believed that he could persuade the Vichy French forces in Dakar to join the Allies. There were several advantages to this: the political consequences if another Vichy French colonies changed sides, and also more practical advantages, such as the presence of the gold reserves of the Banque de France and the Polish government in exile in Dakar. Militarily, the port of Dakar had a better location for protecting the convoys sailing around Africa than Freetown, the base the Allies were then using.


text: The Allies decided to send an aircraft carrier, two battleships (of World War I vintage), four cruisers and ten destroyers to Dakar. Several transports would carry the 8,000 troops. Their orders were first to try and negotiate with the Vichy French governor, but, if this was unsuccessful, to take the city by force.


text: The Vichy French forces present at Dakar were led by the "Richelieu", one of the most advanced in the French fleet. It had left Brest on June 18 before the Germans reached it. "Richelieu" was then only about 95% complete. Before the establishment of the Vichy government, , an aircraft carrier, had been operating with French forces in Dakar. Once the Vichy regime was in power, "Hermes" left port but remained on watch, and was joined by the Australian heavy cruiser, . Planes from "Hermes" had attacked the "Richelieu", and had struck it once with a torpedo. The French ship was immobilised but was able to function as a floating gun battery. Three Vichy submarines and several lighter ships were also at Dakar. A force of three "Gloire" cruisers, "Georges Leygues", the "Montcalm") and three destroyers had left Toulon for Dakar just a few days earlier. The "Gloire" was slowed by mechanical troubles, and was intercepted by "Australia" and ordered to sail for Casablanca. The other two cruisers and the destroyers outran the pursuing Allied cruisers and had reached Dakar safely.


text: On September 23, the Fleet Air Arm dropped propaganda leaflets on the city. Free French aircraft flew off from "Ark Royal" and landed at the airport, but the crews were taken prisoner. A boat with representatives of de Gaulle entered the port but were fired upon. At 10:00, Vichy French ships trying to leave the port were given warning shots from "Australia". The ships returned to port but the coastal forts opened fire on "Australia". This led to an engagement between the battleships and cruisers and the forts. In the afternoon, "Australia" intercepted and fired on the Vichy destroyer "", setting it on fire and causing it to beach.


text: In the afternoon, an attempt was made to set Free French troops ashore on a beach at Rufisque, to the north-east of Dakar, but they came under heavy fire from strong points defending the beach. De Gaulle declared he did not want to "shed the blood of Frenchmen for Frenchmen" and the attack was called off.


text: For the next two days, the Allied fleet attacked the coastal defences, as the Vichy French tried to prevent them. Two Vichy French submarines were sunk, and a destroyer damaged. After the Allied fleet also took heavy damage to both battleships and two cruisers, they withdrew, leaving Dakar and French West Africa in Vichy French hands.


text: The effects of the Allied failure were mostly political. De Gaulle had believed that he would be able to persuade the Vichy French at Dakar to change sides, but this turned out not to be the case, which damaged his standing with the Allies.


text: The Battle of Gabon, in November 1940, was a successful attempt to rally the French African colony. On 27 October, Free French forces crossed into French Equatorial Africa and took the town of Mitzic. On 5 November, the Vichy garrison at Lambaréné capitulated. Meanwhile, the main Free French force under General Philippe Leclerc and Battalion Chief (major) Marie Pierre Koenig left Douala, French Cameroon to take Libreville, French Equatorial Africa. The British doubted De Gaulle, but eventually agreed to lend naval support.


text: On 8 November 1940, the Shoreham-class sloop "HMS Milford" found and pursued a Vichy submarine, "Poncelet". The "Milford" was too slow to intercept it, so Admiral Cunningham ordered his flagship, the HMS Devonshire, to launch its Supermarine Walrus biplane. The aircraft straddled the submarine with 100 lb depth charges as it dove, damaging it. The submarine and its captain went down off Port-Gentil,


text: Koenig landed at Pointe La Mondah on the night of 8 November with a force that included Senegalese, Cameroonian troops and French Legionnaires from the 13th Foreign Legion Demi-Brigade. On 9 November, Free French Westland Lysander aircraft out of Douala bombed Libreville aerodrome. Koenig's forces eventually captured the aerodrome, despite stiff resistance. Free French naval minesweeper "Commandant Dominé" and cargo vessel "Casamance" conducted coastal operations, led by Georges Thierry d'Argenlieu aboard the Bougainville-class aviso "Savorgnan de Brazza". "De Brazza" attacked and sank her sister ship, the Vichy French "Bougainville". The Free French took Libreville on 10 November.


text: On 12 November, the last Vichy forces at Port Gentil surrendered, and Governor Georges Pierre Masson committed suicide. Writers differ on the casualties. De Gaulle said "some twenty" died in this campaign, , 33. Eliane Ebako wrote that "dozens" died, while Jean-Pierre Azéma has said that "roughly one hundred" died. Another narrative says 35 Vichy troops were killed, and eight Free French, and yet another, that the Free French lost four aircraft and six men.


text: De Gaulle on November 15 invited captured soldiers—including General —to join the Free French. Most of the prisoners of war refused and remained for the rest of the war interned in Brazzaville, French Congo. With their control in Equatorial Africa consolidated, the Free French turned to the campaign in Italian Libya. De Gaulle sent General Leclerc to Fort Lamy, Chad to oversee the preparations. The fighting triggered a mass migration of Gabonese to Spanish Guinea. French Equatorial Africa cut ties with Vichy-controlled West Africa, and rebuilt its economy around trade with its British neighbors, particularly Nigeria. Tensions between Vichy and the Free French persisted long after this invasion, but its win in French Equatorial Africa gave Free France a new-found legitimacy; it was no longer just an exile organization in London.


text: The East African campaign of the Second World War was fought by Allies, mainly troops from the British Empire, against Italy and its colony, Italian East Africa, between June 1940 and November 1941. The British Middle East Command, with troops from the United Kingdom, South Africa, British India, Uganda Protectorate, Kenya, Somaliland, West Africa, Northern and Southern Rhodesia, Sudan and Nyasaland, participated in the campaign. These were joined by the Allied Force Publique of Belgian Congo, the Imperial Ethiopian Arbegnoch (resistance forces), and a small unit of Free French.


text: Italian East Africa was defended by the Comando Forze Armate dell'Africa Orientale Italiana (Italian East African Armed Forces Command), with units from the Regio Esercito (Royal Army), Regia Aeronautica (Royal Air Force) and Regia Marina (Royal Navy). The Italian forces included about 250,000 soldiers of the Regio Corpo Truppe Coloniali (Royal Corps of Colonial Troops), led by Italian officers and NCOs. With Britain in control of the Suez Canal, the Italian forces were cut off from supplies and reinforcement once hostilities began.


text: On 13 June 1940 an Italian air raid took place on the RAF base at Wajir in Kenya and the air war continued until Italian forces had been pushed back from Kenya and Sudan, through Somaliland, Eritrea and Ethiopia in 1940 and early 1941. The remnants of the Italian forces in the region surrendered after the Battle of Gondar in November 1941, except for small groups that fought a guerrilla war in Ethiopia against the British until the Armistice of Cassibile in September 1943, which ended the war between Italy and the Allies. The East African campaign was the first Allied strategic victory in the war; few Italian forces escaped the region to be used in other campaigns and the Italian defeat greatly eased the flow of supplies through the Red Sea to Egypt. Most Commonwealth forces were transferred to North Africa to participate in the Western Desert campaign.


text: Free French colonial forces from the Brigade of the East ("Brigade d'Orient") under Colonel Monclar, including the 14th Battalion Légion Etrangère (13th Foreign Legion Demi-Brigade) and the 3rd Battalion de Marche (from Chad), fought Italian troops in their colonies of Ethiopia and Eritrea, and the Vichy French Forces of French Somaliland.


text: The battle was fought from 5 February to 1 April 1941 between a mixed Italian army of regular and colonial troops and the attacking British, Commonwealth, and Free French forces.


text: Operation Torch, a large-scale Allied invasion of the French protectorate in Morocco and the French "départements" of Algeria, took place in November 1942. Naval and airborne landings opposed American and British troops to Vichy French forces. The French Resistance set up a "coup d'état" against both Vichy French governors. One failed and the other succeeded


text: Operation Torch rallied the Army of Africa to the Free French cause and also infuriated Hitler, who ordered the occupation of the rest of metropolitan France, the "free zone", as well as air raids against French Algerian cities, by the Libya-based Luftwaffe.


text: In July 1940, there were sufficient Free French pilots in African colonial bases to man several squadrons based in French North Africa. On July 8, 1940, were created the Free French Flight (FAFL) units based in Middle-Eastern French colonies. They were initially equipped with a mixture of British, French and American aircraft. From a strength of 500 in July 1940, the ranks of the "Forces Aériennes Françaises Libres" (FAFL) grew to 900 by 1941, including 200 fliers.


text: Besides the FAFL air force the Free French Naval Air Service also existed. On August 3, 1943, de Gaulle's Free French forces merged with Giraud's Army of Africa.


text: On the night of 7 November − the eve of Operation Torch − pro-Allied French General Antoine Béthouart attempted a coup d'état against the Vichy French command in Morocco, so that he could surrender to the Allies the next day. His forces surrounded the villa of General Charles Noguès, the Vichy-loyal high commissioner. However, Noguès telephoned loyal forces, who stopped the coup. In addition, the coup attempt alerted Noguès to the impending Allied invasion, and he immediately bolstered French coastal defenses.


text: The Northern Attack Group, Sub Task Force Goalpost, arrived off Mehdia, Morocco just before midnight 7–8 November 1942. The battleship and light cruiser took up station to the north and south of the landing beaches. The transport ships had lost formation as they approached Morocco, and had not regained it by the time they arrived. The Mediterranean landings were well advanced before those at Mehdia commenced. Surprise was lost.


text: Defenses at Mehdia were lightly manned. Naval crews operated two guns in protected positions, on the mesa above the village and near the kasbah. No more than 70 men occupied the fort when the attack started. Two guns were mounted on flat cars on the railroad running along the river. A second battery of four 75 mm guns came forward after the attack began, to a position on the high ground along the road from Mehdia to Port Lyautey.


text: At first light on the 8th, coastal batteries and warships began to fire and French airplanes to strafe. Colonel Demas T. Craw and Major Pierpont M. Hamilton went by jeep from the beach landing to Port Lyautey to see the French commander, Colonel Charles Petit.


text: They were to give him a diplomatic letter, in hope of preventing any hostilities. As they neared the town under a flag of truce, a French machine gunner fired point-blank, killing Colonel Craw. Major Hamilton was then taken to Colonel Petit, who had no conclusive reply. While sympathetic to the Allied cause and reluctant to fight, he lacked the authority to stop it. Units of the 60th Infantry Regiment began disembarking troops and supplies. The first wave of landing boats began circling and preparing to land, but were delayed as they looked for guidance from shore; yet the second wave pressed onshore as planned, on time, so the second wave began their attack, as the first wave started in toward its objectives. Confusion ruled. As the first wave made shore, small arms fire and cannon fire began from a kasbah. overlooking the area. On that first day the 60th Regiment achieved their first objective, securing the beach, but no others. That night of was stormy, men were trying to rest anywhere, and many searched through the blackness to find their units.


text: On the second day, 9 November, attacks on the kasbah continued. The attackers took the ground around the fortress, but it still successfully defended itself and repulsed a number of attacks. The American attackers had not yet succeeded. On the third day, 10 November, they captured the fortress and the local airfield, leading to a truce on 11 November.


text: A battery of four guns (Grandes Pussances Filloux) sat on a hill west of Port Lyautey and southwest of the airport. The airport was defended by a single anti-aircraft battery. The infantry consisted of the 1st Regiment of Moroccan Infantry and the 8th Tabor (battalion) of native Goums. One group of nine guns had withdrawn from other infantry regiments and one battalion of engineers completed the defensive force. Reinforcements were sent to occupy the entrenchments and machine gun positions which covered approaches to the coastal guns and the fort and to occupy defensive positions on the ridges east of the lagoon.


text: In Operation Torch, the Allied invasion of French North Africa, 8 November 1942, Allied infantry landed in the Vichy French port of Algiers intending to capturing the port facilities before they could be destroyed.


text: As agreed at Cherchell, starting at midnight and continuing through the early hours of 8 November, as the invasion troops were approaching the shore, a group of 400 French resistance under the command of Henri d'Astier de la Vigerie and José Aboulker staged a coup in the city of Algiers. They seized key targets, including the telephone exchange, radio station, governor's house and the headquarters of 19th Corps. American ambassador Robert Murphy drove to the home of General Alphonse Juin, the senior French Army officer in North Africa, with some resistance fighters who surrounded the house, making Juin effectively a prisoner. Murphy tried to persuade him to side with the Allies. However, Admiral François Darlan, the commander of all French forces, was in Algiers on a private visit. Juin insisted on contacting Darlan, and Murphy was unable to persuade either to side with the Allies. In the early morning, the gendarmerie arrived and released Juin and Darlan.


text: Giraud's Army of Africa fought in Tunisia (late North African Campaign) alongside de Gaulle's Free French Forces, the British 1st Army and the US II Corps for six months until April, 1943. Using antiquated equipment, they took heavy casualties – 16,000 – against modern armour of the German enemy.


text: The Operation Pugilist involves the Free French Flying Column (X Corps (United Kingdom), British Eighth Army under General Sir Bernard Montgomery) and Leclerc's Force (2nd Division (New Zealand)).


text: France had fallen, her empire in tatters, but her flag still flew from the isolated but strategically important ex-Italian fort of El Tag, which dominated the Kufra oasis in southern Libya.


text: Colonel Leclerc and the intrepid Lt Col d'Ornano, commander of French Forces in Chad, were tasked with attacking Italian positions in Libya with the motley forces at their disposal in Chad, which had declared for Free France. Kufra was the obvious target. The task of striking at the heavily defended oasis at Kufra was made all the more difficult by the inadequate transport. The sand dunes and the rocky Fech Fech were considered impassable for vehicles. But Major Clayton of the Long Range Desert Group (LRDG) assisted, with his G (Guards) and T (New Zealand) patrols, a total of seventy-six men in twenty-six vehicles. They mounted a raid against the airfield at the oasis of Murzuk, capital of the Fezzan region of Libya. Ten Free French (three officers, two sergeants and five native soldiers) under d'Ornano met with Clayton's LRDG patrols on January 6, 1941, at Kayouge. Their combined force reached Murzuk on January 11. In a daring daylight raid, they surprised the sentries and swept through the oasis, devastating the base. The majority of the force attacked the main fort, while a troop from T patrol under Lieutenant Ballantyne engaged the airfield defences, destroying three Caproni aircraft and capturing a number of prisoners.


text: The success of the raid was tempered by the loss of d'Ornano and a T patrol member. Leclerc assumed overall command and marshalled his forces to take Kufra. A diversionary raid by mounted Meharistes colonial cavalry failed after it was betrayed by local guides, so Leclerc to relegated these men to recon duties only. Intelligence indicated that the oasis had two defensive lines based around the El Tag fort with barbed wire, trenches, machine guns and light AA (anti-aircraft) defences. The garrison was thought to comprise a battalion of Askaris (Colonial Infantry) under Colonel Leo, plus supporting troops. The oasis was also defended by "La Compania Sahariana de Cufra", a specialized mobile force and the forerunner of the famous "Sahariana" companies of the mid-war period. The company was composed of desert veterans crewing various Fiat and Lancia trucks equipped with HMGs and 20 mm AA weapons, together with some armoured cars. The company also had the support of its own air arm to assist in long range reconnaissance and ground attack.


text: Leclerc could not pinpoint the Saharianas, so he tasked the LRDG with hunting them down and robbing the defenders of their mobile reserve. Unfortunately for the LRDG, a radio intercept unit at Kufra picked up their radio traffic and they were spotted from the air. The defenders had been on their guard since Murzuk. G patrol had been kept in reserve and Major Clayton was leading T patrol, 30 men in 11 trucks. The patrol was at Bishara on the morning of January 31 when an Italian aircraft appeared overhead. The trucks scattered and made for some hills, and the plane flew away without attacking. The patrol took cover among some rocks in a small wadi at Gebel Sherif and camouflaged the trucks. The plane returned and circled over the wadi, directing a patrol of the Auto-Saharan Company to their location. The LRDG patrol came off second best to superior Italian firepower and constant air attack. After severe losses, the surviving seven trucks of the patrol withdrew, leaving behind their commanding officer, captured along with several others. Other survivors embarked on epic journeys to seek safety. After this defeat, the LRDG had to withdraw and refit, leaving Leclerc one LRDG vehicle from T patrol, crucially equipped for desert navigation. Leclerc pressed on, even though a copy of his plan had been captured with Major Clayton. After further reconnaissance, Leclerc abandoned his two armoured cars and took with him the remaining serviceable artillery piece, a crucial decision. On the 17th, Leclerc's forces brushed with the Saharianas and despite a disparity in firepower were able to drive them off, as the Kufra garrison failed to intervene. Following this, El Tag was surrounded, despite a further attack from the Saharans and harassment from the air, and the French laid siege to the fort. The lone 75 mm gun was placed 3000 m from the fort, beyond range of the defences, and accurately delivered 20 shells per day at regular intervals.


text: Despite their superior numbers, Italian resolve faltered. Negotiations to surrender began on February 28 and finally on March 1, 1941, the Free French captured El Tag and with it, the oasis at Kufra.


text: The Battle of Bir Hakeim was fought between the Afrika Korps and the Free French Brigade, with support from the British 7th Armoured Division. The German commander was Generaloberst Erwin Rommel and the French commander was General Marie Pierre Koenig. The outnumbered Free French Brigade heroically resisted for sixteen days, allowing Allied Forces to regroup and prepare for the battle of El Alamein.


text: The Germans attacked Bir Hakeim on May 26, 1942. Over the next two weeks, the Luftwaffe flew 1,400 sorties against the defences, whilst four German/Italian divisions attacked. On June 2, 3, and 5, the German forces requested that Koenig surrender. He refused and launched counterattacks with his Bren gun carriers. Despite the explosion of the defence's ammunition dump, the French continued to fight using ammunition brought in by British armoured cars during the night. Meanwhile, the Royal Air Force dropped water and other supplies.


text: On June 9, the British Eighth Army authorized a retreat and during the night of June 10/June 11 the defenders of Bir Hakeim escaped.


text: Free French forces faced Vichy Army of the Levant under General Henri Dentz during the Allied campaign set in French Mandate for Syria and the Lebanon.


text: The Battle of Kissoué (17 June 1941) was part of the Allied advance on Damascus in Syria during the Syria-Lebanon campaign in World War II. The battle is noted for the confrontation between Vichy French and the Free French Forces. The Free French met with stiff resistance from the Vichy French.


text: On 8 June 1941, the 5th Indian Infantry Brigade under Brigadier Wilfrid Lewis Lloyd crossed into Syria from the British Mandate of Palestine to take Quneitra and Deraa and clear the way for Free French forces to advance from there to Damascus. This was one of four attacks planned by Allied general Henry Maitland Wilson. By 12 June, Daraa, Sheikh Meskine and Ezraa on the Deraa-to-Damascus road had been captured, and the Indian and Free French forces were at Kissoué, a strong defensive position with plentiful cover for infantry and tanks, and strong defensive works on the steeply rising Jebel el Kelb and Jebel Abou Atriz. Boulder-strewn, virtually impassable except by road and difficult even on foot, the hills of Tel Kissoué, Tel Afar and Jebel Madani commanded the roads from both Quneitra and Daraa to Damascus.


text: By 1945 continued French presence in the Levant saw nationalist demonstrations which the French tried to quell. With heavy civilian losses, Winston Churchill in June despite being rebuffed by Charles De Gaulle ordered British forces into Syria from Jordan with orders to impose a ceasefire. British forces then reached the Damascus following which the French were escorted and confined to their barracks. With political pressure added De Gaulle ordered a ceasefire and France withdrew from Syria the following year.


text: In May 1942's Operation Ironclad, the Allies attacked the French colony of Madagascar, defended by Japanese miniature submarines and Vichy French forces. By March 1942, submarines of the Imperial Japanese Navy freely roamed the north and eastern Indian Ocean, and Japanese aircraft carriers raided shipping in the Bay of Bengal and bases in Colombo and Trincomalee, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka, driving the British Eastern Fleet to relocate to Kilindini Harbour in Mombasa, Kenya. Because of the range of Japanese Kaidai-type submarines – sometimes more than 10,000 miles (16,000 km) -- Japanese forward bases on Madagascar could have threatened Allied merchant shipping and the supply route of the British Eighth Army and the Eastern Fleet, and affected Allied lines of communication from Australia and the Pacific to the Middle East and as far away as the South Atlantic.


text: South African Air Force (SAAF) reconnaissance led to landings in assault craft, just west of the port of Diego-Suarez on the northern tip of Madagascar, by the British 29th Infantry Brigade and No. 5 Commando, followed by two brigades of the 5th Infantry Division and Royal Marines. Fairey Albacore and Fairey Swordfish torpedo bombers attacked Arrachart Airport and Vichy shipping, supported by SAAF planes and Grumman Martlets from the Fleet Air Arm. The Swordfish sank the armed merchant cruiser "Bougainville" and the submarine "Bévéziers".


text: Vichy governor Armand Annet led about 8,000 troops: about 6,000 Malagasy "tirailleurs", and most of the others, Senegalese. He had 1,500 to 3,000 Vichy troops around Diego-Suarez, but naval and air defences were relatively light and/or obsolete: eight coastal batteries, two armed merchant cruisers, two sloops, five submarines, 17 Morane-Saulnier 406 fighters and 10 Potez 63 bombers. He surrendered in November 1942.


text: Réunion was under the authority of the Vichy regime until 30 November 1942, when the island was liberated by the destroyer "Léopard" of the Free French Naval Forces.


text: "Léopard" sailed with 74 men from Mauritius on 26 November, and arrived at Saint-Denis on the 27th. The invaders took control, first of the government palace, then by evening the rest of Saint-Denis. They made contact with friendly elements, notably Communist leader . De Gaulle's governor, , arrived and broadcast a call for calm. The next day Communist cells seized the city hall, arrested the mayor, and elected Lépervanche leader of a "Committee of Public Safety". Next they tried and failed to capture the 95-mm battery at La Port, commanded by hardcore Pétainist Lieutenant Émile Hugot, who retaliated retaliated by opening fire on "Léopard". She retreated out to sea and fired back, killing two. Small arms fire from the Free French thwarted a sortie by the Vichyists and badly wounded Hugot. Fearing an attack by regular troops, the gunners retreated, the battery fell silent, and "Léopard" approached Le Port.


text: Governor had received no response from Vichy to repeated requests for instructions, and decided not to put up even a symbolic defense after he learned that the invaders were French and not British. But the captain of the "Leopard", increasingly nervous about enemy submarines and his ship's safety, threatened to destroy the island's factories. After lengthy negotiations with Capagorry, Aubert eventually agreed to surrender on condition that the French again threaten the factories, and so allow him to save face. The surrender was formalised on the 30th.


text: The French Far East Expeditionary Corps ("Corps Expéditionnaire Français en Extrême-Orient") (CEFEO) was created on paper by General de Gaulle in October 1943. Building a full-scale expeditionary force, however—the CLI/Gaur were small specialized units—dedicated to liberating outnumbered French Indochina from Japanese forces was delayed, as the European theatre of operations, and the liberation of metropolitan France, became a top priority for the deployment of France's limited forces.


text: The United States Chief of Staff also formally restricted the Allied support to French Indochina. Fourteenth Air Force Commander Claire Lee Chennault, a French-American, wrote in his memoirs: "I carried out my orders to the letter but I did not relish the idea of leaving Frenchmen to be slaughtered in the jungle while I was forced officially to ignore their plight."


text: In contrast, the British, who trained the first CLI/Gaurs, supported French Indochina through their Force 136, flew aerial supply missions for the airborne commandos, and delivered Tommy guns, mortars and grenades from their Calcutta base.


text: The FEFEO French expeditionary corps's C.L.I.s (or "gaurs") were airdropped by the British Force 136 and fought Japanese troops occupying the French colonies of Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia. The Gaur "Polaire" ("polar"). codename for Captain Ayrolles' commando unit airdropped into the Traninh to prepare for the arrival of the CLI, but were taken by surprise by the Japanese "coup de force" of March 9, 1945, and Cpt. Ayrolles changed the objective to sabotage. The Gaur Polaire blew eight bridges on the RC 7 ("route coloniale 7"), attacked Japanese detachments and convoys, blew up airstrip warehouses and storage buildings at the Khan Kai camp, and also destroyed a fuel and vehicle depot. A Japanese battalion pursued them, without success. This operation delayed the arrival of the Japanese in Luang Prabang for around three weeks.


text: On March 17, 1945, Captain Cortadellas's Gaur K parachuted into Dien Bien Phu (area of the famous siege in the Indochina War (1946–1954)). At French Commander Marcel Alessandri's request, Gaur K, supported by 80 remaining legionnaires from the 3/5th REI ("Régiment Étranger d'Infanterie"), was sent to the "arrière-garde" of the Alessandri column retreating to China for hundreds kilometers of tracks at high altitude. Battles ensued on April 11 at Houei Houn, April 15 at Muong Koua, April 21 at Boun Tai and April 22 at Muong Yo.


text: On October 9, 1945, Gaur Détachement C infiltrated Cambodia, restored the French colonial administration and staged a discreet coup d'état to restore the King of Cambodia's rule.


text: Gaurs were guerrillas who recruited and trained Mèo and Thai local commandos. Following World War II, the GCMA French airborne commandos, serving in the Indochina War, were created on the model of the gaurs (C.L.I.) who were themselves modelled on the British Chindit special forces.


text: Another French special operations force secretly fought the Japanese in French Indochina. These were forty former French Jedburgh volunteers who embarked at Glasgow with layover at Port Said, Bombay and Colombo, and gathered in a camp at Ceylon in November 1944. Notable Force 136 members dropped in Laos during 1945 are French Colonels (January 22), (February 28) and Jean Sassi (June 4).


title: Galois/Counter Mode

text: In cryptography, Galois/Counter Mode (GCM) is a mode of operation for symmetric-key cryptographic block ciphers which is widely adopted for its performance. GCM throughput rates for state-of-the-art, high-speed communication channels can be achieved with inexpensive hardware resources. The operation is an authenticated encryption algorithm designed to provide both data authenticity (integrity) and confidentiality. GCM is defined for block ciphers with a block size of 128 bits. Galois Message Authentication Code (GMAC) is an authentication-only variant of the GCM which can form an incremental message authentication code. Both GCM and GMAC can accept initialization vectors of arbitrary length.


title: Galois/Counter Mode

text: Different block cipher modes of operation can have significantly different performance and efficiency characteristics, even when used with the same block cipher. GCM can take full advantage of parallel processing and implementing GCM can make efficient use of an instruction pipeline or a hardware pipeline. By contrast, the cipher block chaining (CBC) mode of operation incurs pipeline stalls that hamper its efficiency and performance.


title: Galois/Counter Mode

text: Like in normal counter mode, blocks are numbered sequentially, and then this block number is combined with an initialization vector (IV) and encrypted with a block cipher , usually AES. The result of this encryption is then XORed with the plaintext to produce the ciphertext. Like all counter modes, this is essentially a stream cipher, and so it is essential that a different IV is used for each stream that is encrypted.


title: Galois/Counter Mode

text: The ciphertext blocks are considered coefficients of a polynomial which is then evaluated at a key-dependent point , using finite field arithmetic. The result is then encrypted, producing an authentication tag that can be used to verify the integrity of the data. The encrypted text then contains the IV, ciphertext, and authentication tag.


title: Galois/Counter Mode

text: GCM combines the well-known counter mode of encryption with the new Galois mode of authentication. The key-feature is the ease of parallel-computation of the Galois field multiplication used for authentication. This feature permits higher throughput than encryption algorithms, like CBC, which use chaining modes. The GF(2) field used is defined by the polynomial


title: Galois/Counter Mode

text: The authentication tag is constructed by feeding blocks of data into the GHASH function and encrypting the result. This GHASH function is defined by


title: Galois/Counter Mode

text: where "H" = "E"(0) is the Hash Key, a string of 128 zero bits encrypted using the block cipher, "A" is data which is only authenticated (not encrypted), "C" is the ciphertext, "m" is the number of 128-bit blocks in "A" (rounded up), "n" is the number of 128-bit blocks in "C" (rounded up), and the variable "X" for is defined below.


title: Galois/Counter Mode

text: First, the authenticated text and the cipher text are separately zero-padded to multiples of 128 bits and combined into a single message "S":


title: Galois/Counter Mode

text: where len("A") and len("C") are the 64-bit representations of the bit lengths of "A" and "C", respectively, "v" = len("A") mod 128 is the bit length of the final block of "A", "u" = len("C") mod 128 is the bit length of the final block of "C", and formula_4 denotes concatenation of bit strings.


title: Galois/Counter Mode

text: The second form is an efficient iterative algorithm (each "X" depends on "X") produced by applying Horner's method to the first. Only the final "X" remains an output.


title: Galois/Counter Mode

text: GCM was designed by John Viega and David A. McGrew to be an improvement to Carter–Wegman counter mode (CWC mode).


title: Galois/Counter Mode

text: In November 2007, NIST announced the release of NIST Special Publication 800-38D "Recommendation for Block Cipher Modes of Operation: Galois/Counter Mode (GCM) and GMAC" making GCM and GMAC official standards.


title: Galois/Counter Mode

text: GCM mode is used in the IEEE 802.1AE (MACsec) Ethernet security, IEEE 802.11ad (also dubbed WiGig), ANSI (INCITS) Fibre Channel Security Protocols (FC-SP), IEEE P1619.1 tape storage, IETF IPsec standards, SSH, TLS 1.2 and TLS 1.3. AES-GCM is included in the NSA Suite B Cryptography and its latest replacement in 2018 Commercial National Security Algorithm (CNSA) suite. GCM mode is used in the SoftEther VPN server and client, as well as OpenVPN since version 2.4.


title: Galois/Counter Mode

text: GCM requires one block cipher operation and one 128-bit multiplication in the Galois field per each block (128 bit) of encrypted and authenticated data. The block cipher operations are easily pipelined or parallelized; the multiplication operations are easily pipelined and can be parallelized with some modest effort (either by parallelizing the actual operation, by adapting Horner's method per the original NIST submission, or both).


title: Galois/Counter Mode

text: Intel has added the PCLMULQDQ instruction, highlighting its use for GCM. In 2011, SPARC added the XMULX and XMULXHI instructions, which also perform 64 × 64 bit carry-less multiplication. In 2015, SPARC added the XMPMUL instruction, which performs XOR multiplication of much larger values, up to 2048 × 2048 bit input values producing a 4096-bit result. These instructions enable fast multiplication over GF(2), and can be used with any field representation.


title: Galois/Counter Mode

text: Impressive performance results are published for GCM on a number of platforms. Käsper and Schwabe described a "Faster and Timing-Attack Resistant AES-GCM" that achieves 10.68 cycles per byte AES-GCM authenticated encryption on 64-bit Intel processors. Dai et al. report 3.5 cycles per byte for the same algorithm when using Intel's AES-NI and PCLMULQDQ instructions. Shay Gueron and Vlad Krasnov achieved 2.47 cycles per byte on the 3rd generation Intel processors. Appropriate patches were prepared for the OpenSSL and NSS libraries.


title: Galois/Counter Mode

text: When both authentication and encryption need to be performed on a message, a software implementation can achieve speed gains by overlapping the execution of those operations. Performance is increased by exploiting instruction-level parallelism by interleaving operations. This process is called function stitching, and while in principle it can be applied to any combination of cryptographic algorithms, GCM is especially suitable. Manley and Gregg show the ease of optimizing when using function stitching with GCM. They present a program generator that takes an annotated C version of a cryptographic algorithm and generates code that runs well on the target processor.


title: Galois/Counter Mode

text: GCM has been criticized for example by Silicon Labs in the embedded world because the parallel processing isn't suited for performant use of cryptographic hardware engines and therefore reduces the performance of encryption for some of the most performance-sensitive devices.


title: Galois/Counter Mode

text: GCM is proven secure in the concrete security model. It is secure when it is used with a block cipher that is indistinguishable from a random permutation; however, security depends on choosing a unique initialization vector for every encryption performed with the same key ("see" stream cipher attack). For any given key and initialization vector combination, GCM is limited to encrypting bits of plain text (64 GiB). NIST Special Publication 800-38D includes guidelines for initialization vector selection.


title: Galois/Counter Mode

text: The authentication strength depends on the length of the authentication tag, like with all symmetric message authentication codes. The use of shorter authentication tags with GCM is discouraged. The bit-length of the tag, denoted "t", is a security parameter. In general, "t" may be any one of the following five values: 128, 120, 112, 104, or 96. For certain applications, "t" may be 64 or 32, but the use of these two tag lengths constrains the length of the input data and the lifetime of the key. Appendix C in NIST SP 800-38D provides guidance for these constraints (for example, if and the maximal packet size is 2 bytes, the authentication decryption function should be invoked no more than 2 times; if and the maximal packet size is 2 bytes, the authentication decryption function should be invoked no more than 2 times).


title: Galois/Counter Mode

text: Like with any message authentication code, if the adversary chooses a "t"-bit tag at random, it is expected to be correct for given data with probability measure 2. With GCM, however, an adversary can increase their likelihood of success by choosing tags with n words – the total length of the ciphertext plus any additional authenticated data (AAD) – with probability measure 2 by a factor of n. Although, one must bear in mind that these optimal tags are still dominated by the algorithm's survival measure for arbitrarily large "t". Moreover, GCM is neither well-suited for use with very short tag-lengths nor very long messages.


title: Galois/Counter Mode

text: Ferguson and Saarinen independently described how an attacker can perform optimal attacks against GCM authentication, which meet the lower bound on its security. Ferguson showed that, if "n" denotes the total number of blocks in the encoding (the input to the GHASH function), then there is a method of constructing a targeted ciphertext forgery that is expected to succeed with a probability of approximately "n"⋅2. If the tag length "t" is shorter than 128, then each successful forgery in this attack increases the probability that subsequent targeted forgeries will succeed, and leaks information about the hash subkey, "H". Eventually, "H" may be compromised entirely and the authentication assurance is completely lost.


title: Galois/Counter Mode

text: Independent of this attack, an adversary may attempt to systematically guess many different tags for a given input to authenticated decryption and thereby increase the probability that one (or more) of them, eventually, will be considered valid. For this reason, the system or protocol that implements GCM should monitor and, if necessary, limit the number of unsuccessful verification attempts for each key.


title: Galois/Counter Mode

text: Saarinen described GCM weak keys. This work gives some valuable insights into how polynomial hash-based authentication works. More precisely, this work describes a particular way of forging a GCM message, given a valid GCM message, that works with probability of about for messages that are bits long. However, this work does not show a more effective attack than was previously known; the success probability in observation 1 of this paper matches that of lemma 2 from the INDOCRYPT 2004 analysis (setting and ). Saarinen also described a GCM variant Sophie Germain Counter Mode (SGCM) based on Sophie Germain primes.


title: Federalism in the United States

text: Federalism in the United States is the constitutional division of power between U.S. state governments and the federal government of the United States. Since the founding of the country, and particularly with the end of the American Civil War, power shifted away from the states and toward the national government. The progression of federalism includes dual, cooperative, and new federalism.


title: Federalism in the United States

text: Federalism is a form of political organization that seeks to distinguish states and unites them, which assigns different types of decision-making power at different levels to allow a degree of political independence in an overarching structure. Federalism was a political solution for the problems with the Articles of Confederation which gave little practical authority to the federal government. For example, the Articles allowed the Continental Congress the power to sign treaties and declare war, but it could not raise taxes to pay for an army and all major decisions required a unanimous vote.


title: Federalism in the United States

text: The movement for federalism was greatly strengthened by the reaction to Shays' Rebellion of 1786–1787, which was an armed uprising of yeoman farmers in western Massachusetts. The rebellion was fueled by a poor economy that was created, in part, by the inability of the federal government to deal effectively with the debt from the American Revolutionary War. Moreover, the federal government had proven incapable of raising an army to quell the rebellion, so that Massachusetts had been forced to raise its own.


title: Federalism in the United States

text: On May 15, 1787, fifty-five delegates met at what would be known as the Constitutional Convention in the Philadelphia State House. There, the delegates debated the structure, provisions, and limitations of Federalism in what would be the Constitution of the United States. This was a clear development in federal thought.


title: Federalism in the United States

text: Preceding examples, such as in the Virginia Declaration of Rights, influenced the delegates whilst framing their ideas of Federal bicameral legislature (United States Congress), balanced representation of small and large states (Great Compromise), and checks and balances structures. James Madison stated in a pre-convention memorandum to the delegates that because "one could hardly expect the state legislatures to take enlightened views on national affairs", a stronger central government was necessary.


title: Federalism in the United States

text: Madison later wrote in Federalist No. 10 on his support for a federal government, "the smaller the number of individuals composing a majority, and the smaller the compass within which they are placed, the more easily will they concert and execute their plans of oppression. Extend the sphere, and you take in a greater variety of parties and interests; you make it less probable that a majority of the whole will have a common motive to invade the rights of other citizens".


title: Federalism in the United States

text: The convention had begun altering its original plan but then decided to abandon continued efforts of emendation, and officially set about constructing a new Constitution of the United States. Because George Washington lent his prestige to the Constitution and because of the ingenuity and organizational skills of its proponents, the Constitution was ratified in all states. The outgoing Congress of the Confederation scheduled elections for the new government, and set March 4, 1789 as the date that the new government would take power. Once the convention concluded and released the Constitution for public consumption, the Federalist and Anti-Federalist movements soon began publicizing their disagreeing beliefs in local newspapers and segments.


title: Federalism in the United States

text: The most forceful defense of the new Constitution was "The Federalist Papers", a compilation of 85 anonymous essays published in New York City to convince the people of the state to vote for ratification. These articles, written by Alexander Hamilton and James Madison, with some contributed by John Jay, examined the benefits of the new, proposed Constitution, and analyzed the political theory and function behind the various articles of the Constitution. "The Federalist Papers" remain one of the most important sets of documents in American history and political science.


title: Federalism in the United States

text: Those opposed to the new Constitution became known as the Anti-Federalists. They generally were local rather than cosmopolitan in perspective, oriented to plantations and farms rather than commerce or finance, and wanted strong state governments and a weak national government. According to political scientist James Wilson, the Antifederalists "were much more committed to strong states and a weak national government...A strong national government, they felt, would be distant from the people and would use its powers to annihilate or absorb the functions that properly belonged to the states."


title: Federalism in the United States

text: The Anti-Federalist critique soon centered on the absence of a bill of rights, which Federalists in the ratifying conventions promised to provide. Washington and Madison had personally pledged to consider amendments, realizing that they would be necessary to reduce pressure for a second constitutional convention that might drastically alter and weaken the new federal government. Madison proposed amendments that gave more rights to individuals than to states, which led to criticisms of diversion by Anti-Federalists.


title: Federalism in the United States

text: In 1789, Congress submitted twelve articles of amendment to the states. Ten of these articles, written by congressional committees, achieved passage on December 15, 1791 and became the United States Bill of Rights. The Tenth Amendment set the guidelines for federalism in the United States.


title: Federalism in the United States

text: After the first federalist movement achieved its aims in promoting the Constitution, an official Federalist Party emerged with slightly different aims. This one was based on the policies of Alexander Hamilton and his allies for a stronger national government, a loose construction of the Constitution, and a mercantile (rather than agricultural) economy. As time progressed, the factions which adhered to these policies organized themselves into the nation's first political party, the Federalist Party, and the movement's focus and fortunes began to track those of the party it spawned.


title: Federalism in the United States

text: While the Federalist movement of the 1780s and the Federalist Party were distinct entities, they were related in more than just a common name. The Jeffersonian or Democratic-Republican Party, the opposition to the Federalist Party, emphasized the fear that a strong national government was a threat to the liberties of the people. They stressed that the national debt created by the new government would bankrupt the country, and that federal bondholders were paid through taxes collected from honest farmers and workingmen. These themes resonated with the Anti-Federalists, the opposition to the Federalist movement of the 1780s. As Norman Risjord has documented for Virginia, of the supporters of the Constitution in 1788, 69% joined the Federalist party, while nearly all (94%) of the opponents joined the Republicans. 71% of Thomas Jefferson's supporters in Virginia were former anti-federalists who continued to fear centralized government, while only 29% had been proponents of the Constitution a few years before. In short, nearly all of the opponents of the Federalist movement became opponents of the Federalist Party. However, James Madison, who was one of the strongest proponents of the Constitution and a member of the first federalist movement, became a Jeffersonian.


title: Federalism in the United States

text: The movement reached its zenith with the election of John Adams, an overtly Federalist President. However, with the defeat of Adams in the election of 1800 and the death of Hamilton, the Federalist Party began a long decline from which it never recovered. What finally finished off the Federalist party was the Hartford Convention of 1814, in which five New England states gathered to discuss several constitutional amendments necessary to protect New England's interests in regard to the blockade of their ports by the British during the War of 1812. The threat of secession also was proposed during these secret meetings. Three delegates were sent to Washington, DC to negotiate New England's terms only to discover the signing of the Treaty of Ghent, ending the war with the British. Across the nation, Republicans used the great victory at New Orleans to ridicule the Federalists as cowards or defeatists. The Federalists were thereafter associated with the disloyalty and parochialism of the Hartford Convention and destroyed as a political force.


title: Federalism in the United States

text: The United States Supreme Court under Chief Justice John Marshall played an important role in defining the power of the federal and state governments during the early 19th century. As the U.S. Constitution does not specifically define many dividing lines between the layers of government, the Supreme Court settled the issue in New York. The question was answered particularly in the cases, "McCulloch v. Maryland", in which the court unanimously found that the states could not tax a federal institution that was deemed legitimate and appropriate, "Gibbons v. Ogden", in which Congress was confirmed control of interstate commerce under the commerce clause instead of the states, and "Marbury v. Madison", which broadly expanded the power of the national government. A notable instance in which the Marshall Court empowered the states under federalism was in that of "Barron v. Baltimore", a case which resulted in Marshall’s court unanimously concluding that the 5th amendment only applied to the federal government and not the states.


title: Federalism in the United States

text: Despite Chief Justice Marshall's strong push for the federal government, the court of his successor, Roger B. Taney (1835–1864), decided cases that favored equally strong national and state governments. The basic philosophy during this time was that the U.S. Government ought to be limited to its enumerated powers and that all others belonged to the states. Any powers that were not granted to the U. S. Government by the Constitution were handed over to the states through the Tenth Amendment. Dual federalism had a significant impact on social issues in the United States. "Dred Scott v. Sanford" was an example of how Taney's dual federalism helped stir up tensions eventually leading to the outbreak of the Civil War. Another example of dual federalism's social impact was in the "Plessy v. Ferguson" ruling. Dual federalism had set up that the U.S. Government could not legislate on moral issues. It was an issue that had to be decided by the states, and thus "separate but equal" could exist. Lastly, near the end of dual federalism's lifespan, both the Sixteenth and the Seventeenth Amendment bolstered the power of the national government, and divided state and federal power (Fuad Nor, 1977).


title: Federalism in the United States

text: The ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868 marked a significant transfer of authority from state governments to the federal government, declaring United States citizenship paramount to state citizenship. Over time, the application of the Fourteenth Amendment and incorporation of the Bill of Rights to the states strengthened the federal government’s power to protect against state intrusions upon individual rights. The 14th Amendment ensured the shielding of fundamental rights of the individual citizen against the threats presented by rights of the state by the Privileges or Immunities Clause.


title: Federalism in the United States

text: Still, in the immediate aftermath of the Taney court and the rise of Dual federalism, the division of labor between federal, state, and local governments was relatively unchanged for over a century. Political scientist Theodore J. Lowi summarized the system in place during those years in "The End of the Republican Era"


title: Federalism in the United States

text: This lack of change is nowhere more apparent than in Supreme Court rulings that addressed federalism against the backdrop of the laissez-faire, pro-business Gilded Age. In "United States v. E.C. Knight Co." (1895), the Supreme Court continued along the path of promoting dual federalism in striking down a provision of the Sherman Antitrust Act. In an 8–1 decision, the Court ruled that Congress lacked the authority under the Commerce Clause to regulate monopolies by adopting a limited interpretation of interstate commerce, a win for states’ rights. In 1918, a 5–4 majority ruled similarly in "Hammer v. Dagenhart," a challenge against the constitutionality of the Federal Child Labor Act of 1915. However, by 1941, this ruling was reversed in "United States v. Darby Lumber Company". The Court delivered another victory for dual federalism in "Coyle v. Smith" (1911), where Oklahoma’s effort to relocate their capital to Oklahoma City was halted. The state agreed to keep the capital in Guthrie until at least 1913 as part of the terms of their Enabling Act of 1906, which outlined the conditions for Oklahoma’s acceptance into the Union as a state. These cases illustrate the Supreme Court’s consistent willingness to rule in favor of states’ rights until "National Labor Relations Board v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corporation" (1937), which ushered in a new era of cooperative federalism for the courts.


title: Federalism in the United States

text: Despite the Supreme Court’s stubbornness on guarding states’ rights, much of the modern federal apparatus owes its origins to changes that occurred during the period between 1861 and 1933. While banks had long been incorporated and regulated by the states, the National Bank Acts of 1863 and 1864 saw Congress establish a network of national banks that had their reserve requirements set by officials in Washington. During World War I, a system of federal banks devoted to aiding farmers was established, and a network of federal banks designed to promote homeownership came into existence in the last year of Herbert Hoover's administration. Congress used its power over interstate commerce to regulate the rates of interstate (and eventually intrastate) railroads and even regulated their stock issues and labor relations, going so far as to enact a law regulating pay rates for railroad workers on the eve of World War I. During the 1920s, Congress enacted laws bestowing collective bargaining rights on employees of interstate railroads and some observers dared to predict it would eventually bestow collective bargaining rights on persons working in all industries. Congress also used the commerce power to enact morals legislation, such as the Mann Act of 1907 barring the transfer of women across state lines for immoral purposes, even as the commerce power remained limited to interstate transportation—it did not extend to what were viewed as intrastate activities such as manufacturing and mining.


title: Federalism in the United States

text: As early as 1913, there was talk of regulating stock exchanges, and the Capital Issues Committee formed to control access to credit during World War I recommended federal regulation of all stock issues and exchanges shortly before it ceased operating in 1921. With the Morrill Land-Grant Acts Congress used land sale revenues to make grants to the states for colleges during the Civil War on the theory that land sale revenues could be devoted to subjects beyond those listed in of the Constitution. On several occasions during the 1880s, one house of Congress or the other passed bills providing land sale revenues to the states for the purpose of aiding primary schools. During the first years of the twentieth century, the endeavors funded with federal grants multiplied, and Congress began using general revenues to fund them—thus utilizing the general welfare clause's broad spending power, even though it had been discredited for almost a century (Hamilton's view that a broad spending power could be derived from the clause had been all but abandoned by 1840).


title: Federalism in the United States

text: During Herbert Hoover's administration, grants went to the states for the purpose of funding poor relief. The 1920s saw Washington expand its role in domestic law enforcement. Disaster relief for areas affected by floods or crop failures dated from 1874, and these appropriations began to multiply during the administration of Woodrow Wilson (1913–21). By 1933, the precedents necessary for the federal government to exercise broad regulatory power over all economic activity and spend for any purpose it saw fit were almost all in place. Virtually all that remained was for the will to be mustered in Congress and for the Supreme Court to acquiesce.


title: Federalism in the United States

text: Cooperative Federalism involves a looser interpretation of the Tenth Amendment. More specifically, it supports the idea that the Tenth Amendment does not provide any additional powers to the states. It operates under the assumption that the federal and state governments are "partners," with the federal creating laws for the states to carry out. It relies on the Supremacy Clause and the Necessary and Proper Clause as constitutional bases for its argument. Court cases such as "United States v. Darby Lumber Co." and "Garcia v. San Antonio Metropolitan Transit Authority" expanded the role of Cooperative Federalism by forcing states to enforce federal labor laws.


title: Federalism in the United States

text: Although Cooperative Federalism has roots in the civil war, the Great Depression marked an abrupt end to Dual Federalism and a dramatic shift to a strong national government. President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal policies reached into the lives of U.S. citizens like no other federal measure had. As the Supreme Court had rejected nearly all of Roosevelt's economic proposals, the president proposed the Judicial Procedures Reform Bill of 1937 to add more members. The expansion of the Court, which never materialized, along with a Democrat-controlled Congress would tilt Court rulings in favor of Roosevelt's policies. Lowi notes three Supreme Court cases that validated the shift in power:


title: Federalism in the United States

text: The national government was forced to cooperate with all levels of government to implement the New Deal policies; local government earned an equal standing with the other layers, as the federal government relied on political machines at a city level to bypass state legislatures. The formerly distinct division of responsibilities between state and national government had been described as a "layer cake," but, with the lines of duty blurred, cooperative federalism was likened to a "marble cake" or a "picket fence." In cooperative federalism, federal funds are distributed through grants in aid or categorical grants which gave the federal government more control over the use of the money.


title: Federalism in the United States

text: Another movement calling itself "New Federalism" appeared in the late 20th century and early 21st century. Many of the ideas of New Federalism originated with Richard Nixon. New Federalism, which is characterized by a gradual return of power to the states, was initiated by President Ronald Reagan (1981–89) with his "devolution revolution" in the early 1980s and lasted until 2001. Previously, the federal government had granted money to the states categorically, limiting the states to use this funding for specific programs. Reagan's administration, however, introduced a practice of giving block grants, freeing state governments to spend the money at their own discretion. An example and the first case of this was "Garcia v. San Antonio Metropolitan Transit Authority" (SAMTA) (1985). Garcia was a worker for SAMTA and appealed that because SAMTA received federal money, that they had to abide by federal labor regulations. SAMTA argued that they did not because the money received was to be used at their own discretion and did not need to abide by federal statutes because they are locally operated and make decisions about the transit system. This gave more autonomy and power to the states by allowing them to use more discretion, not having to abide by federal regulations.


title: Federalism in the United States

text: Under New Federalism, the question that is asked is may the federal government constitutionally command the states to carry out federal policy? For this, the courts use the anti-commandeering principle. "The anti-commandeering doctrine says that the federal government cannot require states or state officials to adopt or enforce federal law." This became the principle by "New York v. United States" (1992). In this case, New York sued the federal government, questioning the authority of congress to regulate waste management. The courts ruled that it violated the 10th amendment because congress made the state of New York commandeer to federal regulations when states already take legal ownership and liability for waste treatment. Establishing this principle, giving states more autonomy on issues that fall under their discretion.


title: Federalism in the United States

text: A modern-day application of this rule can be found in "Murphy v. National Collegiate Athletic Association" (2018). New Jersey’s governor attacked the federal government's prohibition on sports gambling. The courts again used the anti-commandeering principle, allowing states to regulate sports gambling at their discretion. This is starting to become a trend because now states are passing laws on issues that are often federally prohibited or heavily regulated by Congress under the commerce clause, as in the areas of medical marijuana ("Gonzales v. Raich"), partial-birth abortion ("Gonzales v. Carhart"), gun possession ("United States v. Lopez"), federal police powers ("United States v. Morrison", which struck down portions of the Violence Against Women Act), or agriculture ("Wickard v. Filburn").


title: Federalism in the United States

text: The balance between state and federal power has fluctuated in the 21st century. In a 2009 Rockefeller Institute report by Martha Derthick, she argues that "the normal tendency of federal-state relations in the United States is toward centralization."


title: Federalism in the United States

text: About the Bush administration (2001-2009), Derthick stated "conventional federalism has survived the test of an aggressive presidency" in regards to military and emergency action, and further, the Bush administration was "in retrospect, more centralizing than militarizing." In a 2007 paper in "Publius: The Journal of Federalism", Sidney Milkis and Jesse Rhodes argue that "The Republican Party has traditionally stood for 'limited government', but Bush's principal legacy for federalism is centralization of power in the federal government and the executive branch." According to Thomas L. Gais on federalism in the Obama Administration, "effort to impose central control is nothing new: GWB Administration did much the same."