Marseille, city of refuge: international solidarity, American humanitarianism, and Vichy France (1940-1942)

Anchored in the port of Marseille, this article studies encounters between international solidarity, American humanitarianism, and Vichy France’s nationalism in times of war and exile. Being the main free harbour in France after the country’s defeat against Germany in the spring of 1940, Marseille saw hundreds of thousands of refugees seeking refuge and exile on its shores. This massive flux gave rise to a local internationalism of humanitarian and solidarity networks bonded by an anti-fascist ideology. American humanitarians, diplomats, and radical leftist militants shaped this eclectic internationalism by providing crucial support for European refugees escaping the Nazi-backed state repression in France. Using the local archives of the department of Bouches-du-Rhône, this paper analyses how these actors and their ideologies met in Marseille and interacted with or against Vichy France’s nationalism. In the end, the extended historiography on refugees, American humanitarianism, solidarity networks, and French nationalism will be used to analyse global ideologies in a local context during the Second World War.

Germany Fails to Realign Turkey, 1941

This chapter studies Germany's failure to induce Turkey to defect from the British alliance and join the Axis in 1941. If Berlin were to convince Ankara to break its alliance with Britain and become a German ally, it had to deliver a handsome and credible package of rewards that advanced Turkey's most important revisionist aims in the region — namely, the (re)acquisition of territory in Bulgaria, the Dodecanese Islands, Syria, and Iraq. In seeking to divorce Turkey from Britain — and to use it as a pass-through for moving men and arms against British forces in the Middle East — Berlin intimated that such rewards were obtainable and initiated secret negotiations to find a bargain. But the negotiations ran into a wall. Ankara's price for realignment would require Germany to make promises that challenged important interests of its key allies at that time — Italy, Vichy France, and Japan. About to start a war against the Soviet Union, Berlin would not risk alienating those partners, so it abandoned the attempt. Its decision to retreat was made easier because German leaders did not then perceive Turkey to have high strategic weight.