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I think I can find points of comparison pretty easily:
1) Change of leadership according to the appropriate mechanisms (the part you care about)
2) New leadership immediately exercises powers they dont have the power to exercise and orders the army to comply (the part I care about)
3) A group of soldiers refuse to follow the orders (the important consequence)
The reason I went with the extreme of "suspend elections and martial law" is because it casts in sharp relief the reason why we dont consider it treason to ignore illegal orders. This is true even if the illegal orders come from the appropriately selected leadership. Notice that in neither case do you need to say that the soldiers are creating a new country.
3 june 1943, when the CFLN (Comité Français de Libération Nationale) unified North African French and Free French.
Except that Petain seeking an armistice was legitimate. He was the clear legal successor to the French government and had clear authority (though who knows, maybe the Third Republic was weird) to engage in an armistice, if not a peace.
Either way however, Petain initially had a far greater legitimacy, both legal and popular, then de Gaulle.
Pétain had many flaws, but he was not the one that seeked the armistice. The Third Republic did.
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If the armistice was just a stop to the fighting and start surrender negotiations that would be true. But what they actually did was stop fighting and turn into Nazi lapdogs who gave large amounts of material efforts to the war effort. They didn't have a mandate to become Nazi allies.
But then Pétain was given his powers with a large majority, if they weren't for the armistice and what Pétain envisioned the deputies didn't show it
So the free french were obligated to follow illegal orders because of an illegal change in the constitution retroactively gave the authority for those orders?
The Problem here is that de Gaulle made his appeal to the nation on June the 18th 1940.
The armistice came into being june the 22nd, the national government moved to Vichy on July the 1st and the law (ratified by the national convention 569 to 80) that gave Petain dictatorial powers ws proposed on July the 10th.
De Gaulle mutinied to save the constitution from illegal orders almost a full month before those 'illegal laws' (which they were not; article 8 of the constitution specifies that the constituion can be changed by the national asembly with an absolute majority and 569 to 80 is a yes-vote of 88 percent) were enacted.
On the subject of political and legalistic legitimcay it is extremly difficult for DeGauell to justify any legitimacy even more so, since, for obvious reason, he was and could not be elected and legitimized by the French til after the liberation of France (and which point it had become very unhealthy to oppose him).
You probably could argue on either moral grounds (evil of Nazism) or popular sentiment by means of conclusive action, e.g. legitimization of De Gaulle by the intensifying guerilla activity (though again, most happened after Overlord).
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That's a good summary. He had the moral ground,a dn was on the victors' side so there wasn't much contestation but from the law/political point Free French were rebels supported by foreign powers, that at least until North Africa liberated and firmly controlled by gaullists and then the Résistance unified in the CNR.
A bold move which is justified by its end I'd say overall.
The French government, who represented France. Revisionist history is dangerous.
How can he be mutinying for not obeying an order to surrender which hasn't been made yet? France was asking it's soldiers to fight. De Gaulle wanted to fight.
You call him a criminal for not obeying the laws but say then you shift to a different set of laws a month later... So apparently he was illegally disobeying laws that didn't exist yet?
That goes both ways. I asked for a specific date that a legal action was taken by people who had the authority. The reason I asked for this is because I know damn well it didn't exist. The Petain regime surrendered and allied themselves with the Nazis despite not having the authority to do so. They certainly had a mandate to agree to an armistice and start surrender negotiations but that is not what they did.
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You can mutiny if you flee your post in order to protest the legal actions of your government.
And then, again before the magic cut-off date found your own military (25th of June) subject to a different country (the British) to continue waging a war that your government wants to end , while denying the legitimacy of your own government (19th June).
That is actually the very definition of mutiny and treason.
That alone, without any need for action by anyone, is enough to delegitimize de Gaulle.
Edith says:
Reading up, i dscovered that France never capitulated, never made peace.
All there ever was, was the Armistice of Compiegne; which according to Keynes 2.0 Petain and his people were perfectly legitimized to do.
And then, again before the magic cut-off date found your own military (25th of June) subject to a different country (the British) to continue waging a war that your government wants to end , while denying the legitimacy of your own government (19th June).
That is actually the very definition of mutiny and treason.
That alone, without any need for action by anyone, is enough to delegitimize de Gaulle.
Edith says:
Reading up, i dscovered that France never capitulated, never made peace.
All there ever was, was the Armistice of Compiegne; which according to Keynes 2.0 Petain and his people were perfectly legitimized to do.
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Your dictionary has a very odd definition of mutiny and treason.
This just in,
Abraham Lincoln Brigade = treason
Polish government in exile = treason
Czeck Legion = treason
Gee... you dont say.
Not what i meant.
You only need to use the conditions supplied for cases of treason to answer those yourself.
In short:
No
No (not for the WW2 timeframe; it gets more complicated post WW2).
Yes
You only need to use the conditions supplied for cases of treason to answer those yourself.
In short:
No
No (not for the WW2 timeframe; it gets more complicated post WW2).
Yes
De Gaulle and treason:
1. When he fled to England he was doing so with large numbers of French soldiers, which was an ally during a war, with the intention of continuing the war which was government policy at the time. Not treason.
2. When he made the appeal on the 18th the French were still at war with the Germans. His appeal was to continue that war. Not treason.
3. After the armistice on June 22nd he continued fighting. This is a clear cut case of de Gaulle disobeying the legitimate instructions of the legitimate government. Whether that is actually treason is debatable but it is certainly illegal.
4. After Petain assumes dictatorial powers on the 10th of July. The argument can be made that the Vichy regime is not legitimate due to some irregularities in the process of the 3rd republic dissolving itself. As such de Gaulle could legitimately argue that it was not the government of France.
Clearly, continuing fighting after your government has agreed to stop is major problem from a military commander. Imagine if an American commander attempted such a thing - breaking an armistice to continue fighting at their own discretion! It is the basis of all democracies that the civilian government is in charge and gets to make the decisions about when and where to fight wars and when and how to end them and military commanders must obey their instructions.
This is not to make excuses for the Vichy regime, who were fairly evil, even by the low standards of the 1930s and 40s. It is simply to say that de Gaulle's decision to fight on was not a legal decision for him to make. Only with the establishment of the Vichy regime was his leadership of the Free French in any way legitimate.
Of course the British didn't care about the legalities of de Gaulle's actions, they simply wanted someone to rally French forces against the Nazis. In the end the Free French became the government of France because when asked the question "you and who's army?" they could simply point to the hundreds of thousands of guys with guns marching through France.
1. When he fled to England he was doing so with large numbers of French soldiers, which was an ally during a war, with the intention of continuing the war which was government policy at the time. Not treason.
2. When he made the appeal on the 18th the French were still at war with the Germans. His appeal was to continue that war. Not treason.
3. After the armistice on June 22nd he continued fighting. This is a clear cut case of de Gaulle disobeying the legitimate instructions of the legitimate government. Whether that is actually treason is debatable but it is certainly illegal.
4. After Petain assumes dictatorial powers on the 10th of July. The argument can be made that the Vichy regime is not legitimate due to some irregularities in the process of the 3rd republic dissolving itself. As such de Gaulle could legitimately argue that it was not the government of France.
Clearly, continuing fighting after your government has agreed to stop is major problem from a military commander. Imagine if an American commander attempted such a thing - breaking an armistice to continue fighting at their own discretion! It is the basis of all democracies that the civilian government is in charge and gets to make the decisions about when and where to fight wars and when and how to end them and military commanders must obey their instructions.
This is not to make excuses for the Vichy regime, who were fairly evil, even by the low standards of the 1930s and 40s. It is simply to say that de Gaulle's decision to fight on was not a legal decision for him to make. Only with the establishment of the Vichy regime was his leadership of the Free French in any way legitimate.
Of course the British didn't care about the legalities of de Gaulle's actions, they simply wanted someone to rally French forces against the Nazis. In the end the Free French became the government of France because when asked the question "you and who's army?" they could simply point to the hundreds of thousands of guys with guns marching through France.
I wouldn't really mind.
You say "fighting" but for the very specific time frame you are talking about the more accurate description would be "organizing". During the 19 days between the armistice and Petains assumption of dictatorial powers, all De Gaulle was doing was appealing to French troops in Britain to rally to him and prepare to fight. He was doing this with the sanction and the funding of Paul Reynaud. I do not see the slightest bit of treason in this. He is simply trying to help his government to the utmost of his ability.
De Gaulle only became an enemy of the French government long after Petain assumed dictatorial powers and became a Nazi ally.
It depends on whether you accept that he did not know that Petain was going for an armistic when he (deGaulle) left for England.
If you accept that de Gaulle did know, then he left the country in an 'hour of need' to be at the side of a soon-to-be non longer ally with the intention of sabotaging the peace talks.
It would be interesting to know whether subordinate French commanders are usually expected and allowed to officially contradict government policy, or if we assume he did not know, express their opinion in times of war.
I doubt it.
Treason is defined in the laws of the 3rd republic, among other things as 'putting French troops under the authority of a foreign government'.
It is hard to argue that de Gaulle did not do exactly that.
Difficult. But sure, discussing the minutiae of the self-dissolution of the 3rd Republic probably leads to far here. Just because Vichy is illegitamte does not mean de gaulle is legitimate though.
It goes even farther.
France was no longer able to conventionally resist Germany in the Metropolitan area. They needed an armistice.
If de Gaulle had gotten his wish and caused widespread guerilla activity and completly delegitimized the government there would have been no armistice, there would have been no peace and instead there would have been guerilla warfare, which means killing collaborateures, razing villages, shooting hostages, etc. By 1944 France would have been a wasteland.
I disagree. While the Vichy Regime got quite evil, there not evil from the start... they slowly eviled up.
And this sliding scale makes it so interesting, at least to me, to think about when Free France becomes the France.
This had an interesting knock-on effect though. There had been a long-standing policy that 'rebel governments' were not legitimate.Of course the British didn't care about the legalities of de Gaulle's actions, they simply wanted someone to rally French forces against the Nazis. In the end the Free French became the government of France because when asked the question "you and who's army?" they could simply point to the hundreds of thousands of guys with guns marching through France.
The Rif rebellion had died because despite being the 'legitimate' government by League of Nation standards, they were a rebel government and therefore not to be negotiated with.
The whole decolonization process sped up quite a lot and cost Britain quite a bit of power because post-war everybody felt free to embrace whatever government would sell them the most mineral rights.
A lot of the precendent for the shit-shows in Africa, South America and Asia were laid by the financing and legitimization of European resistance movements by the Brits and later the Americans, who ironically would then face their biggest defeat in a war against resistance movement very similar to the French Resistance.
@Keynes:
Becoming a Nazi-ally as such does not de-legitimize a government. It is a very important part of international politics to be able to do things others do not like without losing legitimicy