Uprising in the French Black Sea Fleet

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Insurgent sailors of the French Black Sea Fleet

A rebellion in the French Black Sea Fleet occurred in parts of the French fleet sent to the Black Sea in April 1919. In May 1919 it expanded into a naval uprising also in the French home ports and forced the French government to intervene directly in the armed forces Cease Russian Civil War . The sailors' uprising was the culmination of the "Hands off Soviet Russia" movement.

history

During the First World War , under the influence of the Russian February Revolution , mutinies had already broken out in the French army in 1917 , but the revolt in the trenches of the western front and strikes in the hinterland were initially suppressed with death sentences and shootings. After the war ended, the Clemenceau government sent parts of the French Mediterranean fleet to the Black Sea at the end of November 1918 to support the anti-Bolshevik forces in the Russian Civil War. About 5,000 French troops were put ashore and captured the port city of Odessa at the end of December 1918 . The aim was to occupy Kharkov and Kiev and to support the Ukrainian state . More and more Allied troops were landed, by mid-February the Allied troops in the Ukraine and southern Russia, under the command of the French General d'Anselme, had reached the strength of 150,000 men, 50,000 French and Greeks in the Odessa, Cherson and Sevastopol area alone. But after the exhausting years of war, the French troops were unwilling to fight, and within the French expeditionary corps, French socialists (including Jeanne Labourbe ) also carried out anti-war propaganda . In February 1919 there was another revolt in Bessarabia , where French troops had joined forces with Romanian troops, the 58th e régiment d'infanterie mutinied, and numerous French soldiers and sailors fraternized with the Bolsheviks. In March 1919, the 176th Infantry Regiment mutinied in Kherson and made contact with the sailors. After the French had to evacuate Odessa and Sevastopol under these circumstances at the beginning of April before the advancing Bolshevik Red Army, the high command decided on a counteroffensive, but numerous sailors and soldiers refused the order on April 9, 1919, and fraternization increased.

  • French battleship Jean Bart

  • French troops in Sevastopol

  • French evacuation from Odessa

  • French cruiser Waldeck-Rousseau

The attempt to crack down on cracks (including the shooting of Laborbes) instead led to the uprising spreading to the navy off Sevastopol. On the night of April 19-20, 1919, sailors under the leadership of chief machinist André Marty and machinist Louis Philippe Badina took control of the battleships Jean Bart and France . They hoisted red flags and demanded the immediate cessation of the fight against Soviet Russia. "Down with the war" and "an end to the murder of children and women" were their demands. The mutiny spread to other ships, such as B. on the battleship Vergniaud and the cruiser Waldeck-Rousseau , where Marty had been tried in vain to arrest. After four days of negotiations with the mutineers, Vice-Admiral Jean-François-Charles Amet agreed to withdraw the entire French fleet from the Black Sea.

  • Georges Clemenceau

  • Jeanne Labourbe

  • L. Badina and A. Marty

  • Vice Admiral Amet

Back in Toulon, however, the Admiralty arrested Marty and numerous sailors and sentenced them to long prison terms, and death sentences were also passed. As a result, the sailors' revolt spread to other parts in other war ports. In several port cities there were armed clashes between sailors and workers with troops loyal to the government. The rebel sailors received support from socialist and communist workers, and on May 1st the unions in Paris called for a general strike and demonstrations. The state of siege was imposed on the French capital, and with the deployment of troops loyal to the government against the demonstrating workers, Clemenceau was finally able to put down the uprising, further sentences and death sentences were imposed.

In the second wave of mutiny, the battleship Provence was at the center

In Toulon, the mutiny on the warships lasted until mid-June 1919. B. on the battleships Provence and Condorcet . In June, the Voltaire and some colonial soldiers mutinied in Bizerta .

See also

literature

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