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Old 13-07-04, 14:01
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nuyt nuyt is offline
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Join Date: Feb 2004
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Default north africa

Quote:
I have no evidence of any connection between GM in France and Spain, especially as the Barcelona operation was effectively hamstrung by exchange control problems and thus never did get going after the technical re-opening in early 1939. The official history from 1944 states that the GM Plant in Port-de-Paris was run under military augis and was charged with assembling all of the 2,000 GMCs. This raises the query as to what did happen to those trucks that were delivered to French North Africa? Did Vichy 'sell' any to the Spanish Government? The big problem would have been lack of spare parts..the British had to spend millions of dollars on parts for the ex-French contracts in addition to the 'gift' of the trucks themselves.
The GMC's in Vichy Africa were all used by the French forces themselves, at least this is what I understand from the various French publications I have. It is unlikely they sold them to Spain.
First you would have to prove anyway that these types had already been delivered to France BEFORE the Fall of France (were they?).
Another possiblity of course would be that the Germans (under a military aid programme called Baer) provided the Spanish with captured trucks from France (there is no evidence of that at the moment).

Another question, did the Vichy govt try in any way to obtain material that was assigned to the allies after June 1940? Did they protest at the reassignment? After all, the official representative in the US must still have been the French Ambassador. At least in the beginning he must have been Vichy aligned, especially as the US were a neutral country where there would have been little pressure (not even from De Gaulle at that stage probably).

If he had any Talleyrand blood or Machiavellian virtues though he surely found the right moment to switch sides.

Nuyt
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