Bibliographic details and abstracts are available to all. Downloads of full-text dissertations are restricted to University of Portsmouth members who must login. MPhils may be accessed by all.

Abstract

This dissertation explores strategic, geo-political and statecraft motives of Winston Churchill and the British Chiefs of Staff in commanding the Royal Navy to open fire on French warships on 3rd July 1940 at Mers-el-Kébir in Algeria, killing nearly 1,300 French sailors, their allies of a fortnight earlier. Overtly, Operation Catapult was implemented to remove the risk of the French naval fleet coming under the control of the Axis powers following the June 1940 armistices of France with Germany and Italy. Additionally, a British propaganda coup was needed, at a critical juncture of the Second World War, to demonstrate to multiple audiences the resolve of the British leadership to continue the fight against Germany and Italy after the capitulation of the French government. ‘Audiences’ for this propaganda included the politicians, press and public in the USA and the UK and British Dominions, and other important target audiences around the Mediterranean. The dissertation establishes why Turkey was a key propaganda target for Operation Catapult as a spectacular act of ‘communications warfare’. Its position at the strategic and geo-political ‘crossroads’ between the Aegean and the Black Sea, the Balkan-Danube basin and the Middle East has been crucial throughout history and is of continued relevance in mid 2023. In the uniquely volatile circumstances of June-July 1940, it was essential to British strategic interests that Turkey should remain neutral, to retain control of the Turkish Straits and to continue to block geographical expansionism of Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union under Stalin, and Italy under Mussolini. The dissertation provides qualitative analysis of political, diplomatic, and naval archive material, within a conceptual framework of the inter-relationships of naval power with geo-politics, diplomacy, economic warfare, and propaganda.

Course: Naval History - MA - C2457P

Date Deposited: 2023-10-11

URI/permalink: https://library.port.ac.uk/dissert/dis14208.html