Paris 1935: Destiny's Crossroads

by Paul A. Myers

Genevieve Tabouis in 1938

  Madame Tabouis extended her arm indicating for Dexter to take a seat; she sat down in a chair right next to it. She leaned forward and gave Dexter’s knee a familiar pat. “As you can well guess, I have many good sources in Berlin, often of many years standing,” and she laughed, “and an endless stream of young provocateurs from the German ministries ready to tell me the most amazing things just to be my new best friend.”

  Dexter laughed. He closely followed Madame Tabouis’s daily diplomatic column. He had become close to Madame Tabouis in Rome last January on Foreign Minister Laval’s triumphant visit to Rome to parley with Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. During the course of the conference, Madame Tabouis had ferreted out that Il Duce had wheedled out a promise of a “free hand” for Italy in Ethiopia from Laval. Italy was now on the verge of invading Ethiopia, an event deeply distressing to Great Britain, not the least because Great Britain suspected that France may have betrayed principle for expediency last January in Rome. Madame Tabouis had shared her information with her small circle; it was considered a rumor and not fit for publication. But the “understanding” circulated in the background, bigger than a fact, thought Dexter.

  Dexter replied, “Madame Tabouis…”

  She interrupted him, tapping him lightly on the knee like an aunt, “Geneviève, please.”

  “Geneviève, I am sure your sources in Berlin are better than mine.”

  “Maybe.” She paused. “My German sources say that Hitler personally is orchestrating German diplomatic maneuvers.”

  Dexter nodded. “He is a crafty manipulator.”

  “Yes, he encourages Mussolini in Ethiopia knowing that it will break up the Stresa Front. Italy will eventually break from France and Great Britain. Only Hitler will stand with Mussolini on Ethiopia. Then Italy will be his. He can then pick off Austria at his leisure. So much for Laval’s theory of a ‘chain of allies’ across Southern Europe.”

  Dexter had not really thought about Austria in this context; he nodded in thoughtful agreement. At some point, everyone knew, Austria was gone.

  Madame Tabouis then said, “My sources in Berlin think he will run the table.”

  Dexter looked inquisitively at Madame Tabouis. “What do you mean?”

  Madame Tabouis explained, “The secret deal with Mussolini puts distrust and distance between Paris and London. The failure to go to Ethiopia’s aid makes the League of Nations the home of the empty gesture. Great Britain mentally returns to its island. When France realizes it has lost Italy, and damaged its relationship with Great Britain, she goes to the East again and agrees to ratify Laval’s treaty with the Soviet Union.”

  Dexter silently nodded at her.

  MadameTabouis continued, an edge to her voice, “The Soviet treaty was always just bait in Laval’s mind to start talks with Hitler.”

  Dexter replied, “May be a little too clever.” A safe comment, he thought, since Laval was widely believed to be too clever, too expedient.

  Madame Tabouis then laid out her conclusion, “France ratifies the treaty, and Hitler then uses the treaty ratification as pretext to reoccupy the Rhineland with the German army.”

  Dexter asked simply, “When?”

  “A couple of months before next May’s general election in France.”

  Dexter looked at her. “And France does nothing?”

  Madame Tabouis responded, “The upcoming elections create hesitancy.”

  Dexter asked, “And Great Britain?”

  Madame Tabouis replied, “Great Britain does not commit, wants more consultation, suggests going back to Geneva. Now we can see that the admirable word ‘consultation’ becomes a trapdoor into which decisive action falls, never to reemerge.”

  Dexter nodded slowly in understanding; he could see where events were going. He raised his eyebrows to make a question mark.

  She replied gravely, “The moment for action is lost.”

  Dexter pondered the conversation. “Indeed,” he murmured, “Hitler will have run the table.” He filed the conclusion away for some future report.

  Madame Tabouis saw that Dexter agreed with the analysis. Therefore, she concluded, the Americans had no information to the contrary. Her Berlin sources checked out. Dexter had just provided the confirmation. She heard a knock at the door.

  She smiled at Dexter. “Albert will be letting the other guests in.”

  Dexter stood, as did Madame Tabouis. The two walked into the foyer. Madame Tabouis cooed out a warm greeting to two distinguished gentlemen handing their hats and sticks to Albert. Dexter recognized the two as foreign ministers from Eastern Europe, undoubtedly in Paris for Bastille Day.

  Another knock on the door; Albert opened the door, and some other gentlemen came in with several ladies. It will be a full table, thought Dexter.

  Madame Tabouis guided a couple over to Dexter, he guessed they were in their early forties, and turning to the gentleman she said, “Jean-Paul, I want you to meet Dexter Jones. He’s an American diplomat. Like you, he lives over on the Left Bank. Near the literary crowd, right Dexter?”

  Dexter replied, “Correct. On rue du Bac.”

  The woman gazed at Dexter with dark-eyed interest.

  Madame Tabouis turned to the woman, “Madeline, Dexter Jones.”

  She smiled warmly and said, “Enchantée.”

  Dexter gallantly gave a small bow and answered, “Enchanté.”

  Madame Tabouis quickly ushered the guests towards the dining room with her outstretched arms as if they were a flock of geese.

  Lunch and Virtue

  The guests filed into the dining room and took seats around a long table. Madame Tabouis seated Dexter to her right at the head of the table. That way she could put the two foreign ministers, one to the left, the other to the right, at the first seats on the long axis of the table. A nice point of minor protocol by Madame Tabouis, thought Dexter.

  Albert went around the table and poured white wine into tall glasses. An opening course was served.

  Madame Tabouis chatted with the two foreign ministers and then asked polite questions of those guests further down the table. She was quite convivial. Eyes flashing, a mischievous smile on her face, she looked down to the far end of the table and said, “Ah, Madeline, you are at what I call the ‘seat of virtue.’”

  The guests glanced at the woman and then looked up the table expectantly at Madame Tabouis, all faces smiling, sure that one of her famous anecdotes was coming.

  Madame Tabouis did not disappoint. “Several years ago, we had a distinguished group, just like yourselves, here for dinner. Foreign Minister Barthou was seated to my right, here where my dear American friend Dexter is sitting.” She was referring to Barthou, who had been killed in an assassination nine months before in Marseilles with the king of Yugoslavia.

  Madame Tabouis continued, “The foreign minister, as many of you already know, loved a good many women of his own generation, and even some who were younger,” and she smiled warmly down the table, “however, truth be told, he was really an inconsolable widower who lived quietly with his mother-in-law.”

  The guests knew of Barthou’s reputation with the ladies; their expressions betrayed skepticism about the “inconsolable widower” part.

  Madame Tabouis, eyes flashing, drew the listeners into her tale. “One night, here, while he was dining right at this very table, he said to me, in what was supposed to be an undertone, but which of course could be heard by the entire table, ‘I have been to bed with every woman at this table, I think. But that lady over there, sitting between the fat gentleman and the young girl—I don’t seem to be sure about her.”

  The guests all laughed out loud.

  Madeline, sitting in the supposed seat of virtue, looked a little askance, unsure if she was being mocked. Jean-Paul, her husband, smiled sardonically, lightly amused at the idea of his wife occupying a seat of any sort of marital virtue. She smirked at him. Obviously this couple had certain understandings, Dexter thought.
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br />   Dexter smiled inwardly and then turned to Madame Tabouis and said in a soft whisper, “Geneviève, you too were one of the women at the table?”

  She turned to him, eyes radiant under her soft blond hair, and batted her eyelashes coquettishly, saying, “So I was.”

  The two foreign ministers smiled in approving appreciation; one of them winked at Dexter. Down the table Madeline caught Dexter’s eye and gave him a pleasant nod of approval and an inviting smile.

  Which army will march?

  Dexter walked along the sidewalk on the Right Bank of the River Seine under spreading shade trees. Sunlight from the afternoon sun sparkled on the slowly flowing waters of the river. It had been a delightful lunch, but Madame Tabouis’s dark premonitions about the Rhineland nagged at his mind. Madame Tabouis was rapidly gaining the reputation as the Cassandra of European diplomatic correspondents. This, Dexter knew, brought her even more sources of inside information. In particular, she was rumored to be well connected with German dissidents. She would presume that he would include the information in his embassy reports. The American government stood informed.

  But if Madame Tabouis knew this information, then so would the French government. Dexter was sure of this. But Madame Tabouis had said nothing about the French government. Since last winter in Rome, it was always the gaps in what Madame Tabouis had told him that interested Dexter—the missing pieces of the puzzle. If the Germans remilitarized the Rhineland, why the French army could just cross the border and evict them. It was allowed by the Versailles Treaty; almost demanded by it, thought Dexter. The French army had done just that in the 1920s.

  Coming up towards the embassy, Dexter made a mental note of what he now thought was the big unanswered question in Europe’s destiny: would the French army cross the border and evict the Germans if they tried to remilitarize the Rhineland?