After Britain sues for an Armistice , France, standing alone against Hitler, seals its "special relationship" with America at St Pierre et Miquelon

In May 1940, Germany , reverting to its original invasion route,  has totally failed to break through the French lines and has subsequently suffered heavy losses.

A relatively unknown French general is now effectively in charge of the country,  after he so successfully rallied the badly commanded French troops, in heat of battle, to conduct a fiery take-no-prisoner defence of every inch of French soil.

In June, Germany successfully invades and occupied most of the English Home Counties , from Portsmouth to Watford to Clacton on Sea and now the Lord Halifax led Conservative government has sued for peace.

The price of that peace is that Britain has agreed to become Neutral .

And Britain also agrees to effectively cede the coastal portions of the Home Counties to the Germans,  as part of the German outer defence line against any French-led coastal invasion through the Low Lands and into the Ruhr.

But France is currently more worried about coastal invasions against itself than any future plans to invade and defeat Germany.

True, it had received many of the ships of the British Navy that weren't sunk during the invasion or that hadn't agreed to remain neutral at their bases .

But it has now to defend France alone against two potent navies - the Germans to the north and the Italian Navy in the south.

It has offered the newly frightened American isolationists the security blanket of an outer ring of American air and sea bases on French possessions in the New World from St Pierre et Miquelon in the north to French Guiana in the south , in exchange for 50 clapped out old American destroyers.

The unbalanced German navy has so few destroyers that even 50 additional (if clapped out) destroyers on the French side would spell certain doom to any German invading fleet.

After months of debate, the American Congress has reluctantly agreed.

But its narrow vote in favour had only come after an impassioned special address to it.

That speech , given by a descendant of the famous Lafayette, had so roused the state memberships of the various American veterans associations that a few nervous Congressmen and Senators (facing Fall re-election bids) had suddenly switched sides.

Privately, France also swung the reluctant deal by proposing to also give all of its most valuable scientific secrets to America - unconditionally and without charge - as a signal of its good faith.

All because France is determined to revive its centuries old "special relationship" with America, forged during the dark days of the American Revolution.

It believes only a Franco-American led coalition , cemented by the bonds of true friendship, can hope to defeat the Germans, Italians and potentially the Japanese.

So in the small main harbour of St Pierre et Miquelon, a few French and American sailors embrace and mug for the newsreel cameras as French crews prepare to take over the first of 50 four-stacker destroyers.

August 1943

With the recent fall of Fascist Italy and the Japanese's slow retreat back from their furthest advances , the German panzers' defeat at Kursk only add new woes to Hitler's nation as it reels under French and American daily bombing raids from forward bases in central eastern France.

The American-Franco led grand coalition, with the Free British in Canada a very much distrusted junior partner, can begin to think of the postwar world after Germany's defeat.

The public facade of good will remains very much intact , but behind the scenes, maneuvering for postwar 

hegemonic advantage is very much in evidence.

Adding to the fluid mix, both the French and American elites were themselves sharply divided internally on just what exactly that postwar world should look like.

This, before deciding which of the two nations' soft power cultural hegemony would dominate the postwar world.

The most valued of the science secrets that the French had shared with America was its early lead in both atomic energy and in Sulfa style chemically-created medications .

The two nations' elites remained particularly divided over how to (and who would) make the most use of these two postwar fruits of this terrible war.

Should it be France or America that develops and drop the first atomic bomb --- and then iron-fistedly rules the postwar world with an atomic fiat ?

Or should France (America) develop but then not use the atomic bomb in this war , keeping it only as a standby?

Something always ready for use, but only actually used if others used it first.

Both nations had already taken this position about the first use of their own massively expensive gas and germ warfare programs.

And which nation should reap the commercial and hegemonic benefits of possible exclusive patents on the new wonder drugs ?

Or should that lucky nation reject the potential of reaping high profits off the world's dying and sick --because holding the whip hand over a rare life-saving drug is no way to gain and hold soft power moral hegemony ?

How will this all pan out ?

Don't know ?

Isn't the best way to think about your subject, before writing a serious history of it ?

Think about your subject as if it was occurring from beginning to end,  with each day offering the various actors a choice of different roads to take - or not take.

But most history accounts take what actually happened as being simply inevitable ---- they then devote hundreds of pages simply detailing what did happen, as if the various actors slept walked through their roles ,without any volition of their own.

But I never will forget how a single simple phrase led the Conservatives to the greatest ever electoral win in Canadian history.

As the legend has it in the re-telling, then Opposition leader Brian Mulroney thundered that phrase at the Canadian Prime Minister John Turner on live national TV and the game was suddenly effectively over :

"You sir, you had a choice !"

As did all of WWII's players - big or small .

The Franco-American grand coalition recounted above never actually happened - but it very plausibly could have happened.

There was nothing at all inevitable about the Anglo-American special relationship that still largely rules our world .

Nothing inevitable about the decision to drop the atomic bomb but not the chemical bomb or the germ bomb.

Nothing at all inevitable that cheap abundant non-patented natural penicillin has given ten billion of us - so far - a sort of Herd Immunity against fatal bacteria diseases long endemic among those too poor to receive expensive drugs.

Pax Penicillia will always show you what choices the Allied leaders had during WWII , when deciding upon and acting upon their (ironically postwar-oriented) "War Aims" .

Because their choices made then - choices taken and choices not taken - still intellectually rule our world , as it faces its greatest threat yet : our addiction to carbon air pollution....