Fast landing craft are proposed to improve a Dunkirk-style evacuation by collecting troops directly from beaches and taking them across the Channel. The political proposal is to evacuate Paul Reynaud and other senior French leaders as well. Keeping those figures outside occupied France would give opponents of Pétain a more direct challenge to his claim of governmental legitimacy. That matters to the counterfactual because legitimacy influenced the choices of at least some French naval personnel. The argument assumes a changed evacuation and uses it to explore how military survival and constitutional authority could reinforce each other.
Notable Point · 4:33:14-4:35:02
Evacuating France's political leadership as well as its troops
A better evacuation could preserve French forces and political leaders whose authority would challenge Pétain's appeal to the navy.