The Execution of Order B

In the early morning hours of Friday, Nov. 27, Marshal Petain was awakened in Vichy to receive a letter from Adolf Hitler. His eyes still bemused by sleep, the old man read the words that ended his last vain hope of building up a new French state on the terms of the armistice signed at Compiegne. Because of "treachery" on the part of high officers of the French armed forces, the Fuehrer wrote, he had ordered the demobilization of the remaining units of Vichy's Army and Navy. The great naval base of Toulon, last remaining bit of the free zone, was to be occupied, the warships stationed there taken or "annihilated" to prevent their escape to the Allies. Control of all France would pass into the hands of Field Marshal Karl Rudolf Gerd von Rundstedt, Commander of German armed forces in Occupied France and the Low Countries. The letter --many pages long--concluded with the "hope that cooperation thus is initiated from which we expect on France's part nothing but loyalty and understanding for the common destiny of Europe."

In the harbor of Toulon, spread out beneath the dark houses of the sleeping city, 62 vessels of the French Navy--battleships, cruisers, destroyers, submarines and France's only seaplane carrier--were lying quietly at anchor or tied up at their piers, as they had lain for nearly two and a half years since the summer when France fell. At the city's gates soldiers of the French Army stood on guard. To the east, the sky was paling with the first light of dawn.

With shocking surprise, the stillness was shattered. German armored forces and motorized infantry bore down on the town from all sides. Once inside they sped for the harbor. At the Porte de Castigneau, leading to the naval base, there was a brief, sharp skirmish with French soldiers before the entry was forced.

Simultaneously German bombers roared in over the docks, dropped flares, circled to identify the warships' positions. Over the roadstead leading out to sea parachute mines floated down to block the entrance. Aboard the French vessels, officers and crews sprang to their stations. Searchlights stabbed out, anti-aircraft batteries opened up from the ships and ashore. From the flagship of Vice Admiral Jean de Laborde, commander of the fleet, a signal was given:

"Carry out Order B."

Suicide of a Fleet. The first German armored force, having fought its way into the base, reached Milhaud dock where the battleship Strasbourg was lying. As German officers leaped from their cars and ran to the gangplanks, there was a flash and a roar and the great, 26,500-ton ship disintegrated before their eyes.

Roar followed roar from all parts of the harbor as ship after ship exploded. German troops raced for the Vauban Basin where the battleship Dunkerque had been tied up for repairs since the British attack on Oran in July 1940. Near by were the cruisers Algerie, Foch and Jean de Vienne; their docks were wrecked with them. Earth and air trembled as the beautiful ships destroyed themselves.

The Germans on the docks watched while some ships which did not blow up immediately were raked with gunfire from other vessels. They saw some which had slipped their moorings make for the harbor entrance; at least one blew up there on the German mines.* In the glare of explosions and searchlights the Germans saw the French masters, at rigid attention on their bridges, saluting the Tricolor as they went down.

Like echoes of the destruction in the harbor, explosions rolled down from the hills. Crews of the coastal batteries were blowing up their guns, destroying their ammunition stores and the concrete artillery emplacements. The great naval arsenal near the harbor mouth blew up before the Germans could reach it. At the docksides and yards smoke billowed from burning fuel stores. When dawn broke, Toulon harbor lay ruined, cluttered with sunken hulks wracked intermittently by dull explosions.

By midmorning it was all over. At 10 o'clock a message arrived in Vichy informing Marshal Petain that the fleet no longer existed. Occupation of Toulon by the Germans was completed without further incident. Martial law was clamped on the town; the Mayor decreed an 8 o'clock curfew for all public places.

All that day the citizens of Toulon saw their sailors, proud and grim under the bayonets of their captors, being transported through the streets on their way to imprisonment. The Gestapo, which followed the troops in, had long lists of suspects. First to be arrested were all those who had survived the destruction in the harbor; later many civilians were taken in the Gestapo roundup.

Proud Loss. The self-destruction of the French Fleet on that Friday morning was surpassed only by the German scuttling of the Kaiser's High Sea Fleet in June 1919 at Scapa Flow. Though it did not alter the balance of world naval power, it relieved the Allies finally of the threat that Adolf Hitler might gain the ships--which he unquestionably had attempted to do--and use them in the Battle of the Mediterranean. Since most of the French vessels had reportedly been blown up, there was little chance that the Germans could salvage them for their own use. But it was possible that remaining French units, demobilized since the Armistice at Alexandria and Martinique, might now come to the Allied side, thus increasing Allied naval superiority.

Though they wept for their ships, Frenchmen felt proud. For in its first and last encounter with the Germans, France's Fleet had given meaning to the words of General Charles de Gaulle: "France has lost a battle, but France has not lost the war."

*Four submarines succeeded in making their way out of Toulon: the 597-ton Iris turned up in Barcelona next day, was interned there; the Casablanca, of 1,384 tons, the Marsouin, of 974 tons, and another as yet unnamed, were reported to have arrived in Algiers.

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