Realpolitik

The following events take place between the Dunkirk retreat and the complete surrender of France:

“In operations rooms deep beneath London, plans are made and transmitted. At all costs, whatever the risks, the navy of France must not fall into enemy hands. Operation Catapult is born. Its aim is simultaneous seizure, control, or effective disablement or destruction of all accessible units of the French Fleet. Principal of these is the French Atlantic Fleet lying at Oran. (…)
(…) the Admiralty radio station sends a top-priority message to Gibraltar. It reads: BE PREPARED FOR CATAPULT. Aboard his flagship Vice Admiral Sir James Somerville is wakened. As he reads the message, his face hardens. Only a month before, he has sailed into the ravaged beaches of Dunkirk to rescue a hundred thousand French troops. Now he must destroy his friends.
Churchill well knows the burden he has placed on Somerville. The next night he reinforces his orders. YOU ARE CHARGED, the message says, WITH ONE OF THE MOST DISAGREEABLE AND DIFFICULT TASKS THAT A BRITISH ADMIRAL HAS EVER BEEN FACED WITH, BUT WE HAVE COMPLETE CONFIDENCE IN YOU AND RELY ON YOU TO CARRY IT OUT RELENTLESSLY. (…)
(…) By nine-thirty the next morning his great gray capital ships are riding off Oran, their guns menacing the port, their gun crews at action stations. In one thing at least the Italian Count Ciano is right: “The fighting spirit of His British Majesty’s Fleet is alive and still has the aggressive ruthlessness of the captains and pirate of the seventeenth century.”
Somerville sends a captain to parley with the French Admiral Gensoul. Gensoul will not meet him, but telegraphs the British demands to Darlan in Vichy. All afternoon Churchill paces the floor of his office. At 6:30 he sends a third order to Somerville: FRENCH SHIPS MUST COMPLY WITH OUR TERMS OR SINK THEMSELVES, OR BE SUNK BY YOU BEFORE DUSK.
When it is received, Somerville is watching heavy black pillars of smoke climb lazily into the African sky. He has unleashed the terrible power of his battle squadron on his former comrades. (…) More than a thousand of their crews lie dead or dying on blackened decks, behind twisted gunshields. It was, says Churchill, Greek tragedy.
As a result of the determined action, no French ship will ever be used against the British. And there is a more profound effect. Here was this Britain, Churchill writes, which so many had counted out, which strangers had supposed to be quivering on the brink of surrender to the mighty power arrayed against her, striking ruthlessly at her dearest friends of yesterday and securing for a while to herself the undisputed command of the sea. It was made plain that the British War Cabinet feared nothing and would stop at nothing. This was true.”