British military plotted to arm pro-Nazi WWII Vichy French regime, new documents reveal

Newly-revealed documents from World War II show that British military chiefs secretly approved plans to arm the Vichy French regime and intended to hide the plot from then Prime Minister Winston Churchill and the leader of the free French forces, Charles de Gaulle. 

Fuente: Wikipedia.

The documents, which were discovered by a history professor Eric Grove from the University of Salford in north-west England, show the chiefs wanted to arm eight French divisions of the supposedly neutral Vichy regime, to take part in the liberation of France.

In an interview with the BBC, Grove said “his eyes widened” when he unearthed the documents.

“Having been fighting the Vichy French in Syria in 1941, and indeed, in May 1942, we were actually fighting Vichy forces in Madagascar, and here we are talking about arming their colleagues in France itself,” he said.

The plan involved allied forces landing at occupied Bordeaux and La Rochelle on France’s west coast before securing a corridor through to unoccupied Vichy France with the help of Vichy forces.

Churchill and De Gaulle were not told about the plan because of fears over how they would react.

The plan was quietly dropped by November 1942, when the lack of Vichy resistance to the allied invasion of French north Africa, which led to the Nazi occupation of Vichy France, killed it off completely.