A Sword for Peace and Liberty Volume 1: Force de frappe - The French Nuclear Strike Force and the First Cold War 1945-1990

This book reconstructs the solid continuity of the nuclear strategy of the Republic of France, one of five permanent members of the Security Council of the United Nations. Over the last 60 years France has developed its own indigenous nuclear capability, including not only nuclear warheads, but the delivery platforms for them: strategic bombers, tactical aircraft, tactical ballistic missiles, nuclear-powered submarines, intercontinental ballistic missiles, and space assets. The trauma of the German Blitzkrieg from May 1940 informed the vision of the leaders in which French sovereignty was mandatory –in political, military, and technological approaches. The resulting effort was massive in financial terms yet shared both by the left- and right-wing of the political landscape: it progressively even obtained the support of the French Communist Party! The spirit of resistance drove the ambition, with the motto, ‘no more military invasion’. That said, and as this book highlights, much of the resulting projects were – secretly or openly – run in cooperation with the United Kingdom and the United States of America. Indeed, diplomacy was obliged to find its way between Washington and London.