Something of the internecine hatred that had shed rivulets of blood in 1871, after the Franco-Prussian War—when Germans still camping around the capital witnessed French government troops crushing the Paris Commune—made itself felt in March 1939, when Hitler occupied all of Czechoslovakia. The gathering threat of war did not inspire a sacred union. Anti-Fascists and anti-Communists lambasted each other for France’s inadequate production of arms, its antiquated plants, its reliance on the United States for airplanes. It was all Édouard Herriot’s fault, Maurras claimed in L’Action Française. The onus of having withdrawn French troops from the Ruhr in 1925 fell on him and on Briand. “We shall continue to earn the ill humor of politicians who placed all their hope in the waters of Oblivion.… They dismiss our righteous evocation of their infamies as the apple of discord.”
France owed her present predicament as well, Maurras maintained, to messianic Jews heralding the dawn of a new age with the victory of the Popular Front in 1936. Zion cast an even longer shadow than Hitler. Blum and his coreligionists were the swine who had surrendered France to her mortal enemy. “There is no time to lose; national authority and political policy must be removed from the Sarrauts, the Mandels, the Paul Reynauds, the Dreyfuses, the Rothschilds. This Jewish power needs no more time than it takes to sign an order and the fatal choice will have been made, the iron die will have been cast. The ardor with which the slyest and most suspect of Israel’s servants endeavor to bring about a crisis, though it cost France her peace, is the measure of what they expect to gain from it. Beware of the Rothschilds, of the Louis Louis-Dreyfuses and the madmen who serve them.”5 Provincial newspapers offered more temperate versions of the same indictment. A Radical daily, L’Écho de la Nièvre, brought to book “the men who allowed disorder to reign after the election of May 1936, slowing the industrial production necessary for our national security, above all Léon Blum and Marx Dormoy.” That Zion cast a longer shadow than Hitler was borne out in December 1938, after Kristallnacht, when the German and French governments signed a declaration of mutual amity. Hitler’s foreign minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop, was fêted by the French foreign office at a grand banquet on the Quai d’Orsay that the two Jewish members of Daladier’s coalition cabinet, Georges Mandel and Jean Zay, might have chosen not to attend even if they had been invited. Mandel, like his fellow conservative (and Anglophile) Paul Reynaud, had vehemently opposed the Munich pact.
L’Humanité rebelled against press censorship, accusing Daladier, when the legislature granted him emergency powers, of exploiting Czechoslovakia to muffle his critics:
How many times in the past 150 years has a French journalist sat in front of a blank page full of vindictive indignation over measures that violate freedom of the press? These arbitrary acts have seldom brought luck to their authors. Charles X, Louis-Philippe, Napoleon III, and recently Doumergue had tales of woe. Now Daladier is trying to bring off a Napoleonic 18 Brumaire without seeing how desperately things will end. But Bonaparte waged the Italian campaign. All you did, Monsieur Daladier, was travel to Munich.6
Le Populaire proclaimed in bold headlines that the premier’s intention was, under cover of trouble abroad, to intensify his war against the proletariat at home. “Republicans,” it declared, “cannot abdicate in favor of a government whose parliamentary support consists for the most part of minority groups that tend more and more to penalize the working masses.” Did Léon Blum see in Daladier, his former minister of defense, an avatar of the “providential man” destined to subvert the Republic? “You are asking for powers which I understand to be more or less unlimited in nature and in time,” he argued during a parliamentary debate. “I consider this desperate resolution unwise. You wish to present us with a fait accompli, having consulted [no one]. Do you think it advisable to sow division at a time of grave events? to cast suspicion on Parliament and Republican institutions? and to do so not when you are riding a tide of success but in the wake of a diplomatic fiasco [Munich]?” Blum’s foes could have answered his remarks by quoting the column he had written five months earlier, after the Munich pact was signed: “There is not a woman or man in France who will refuse MM. Chamberlain and Daladier their just tribute of gratitude. War is spared us. The calamity recedes. Life can become natural again. One can resume one’s work and sleep again. One can enjoy the beauty of an autumn sun.”
On the day of the debate, March 15, 1939, there was commotion of a different sort several blocks away from the Palais Bourbon at the Gare d’Orléans, where Marshal Philippe Pétain departed Paris to assume his duties as France’s ambassador in Burgos.7 A large crowd packed the vaulted hall of the train station and spilled out onto the Quai d’Orsay. Present were admirals and generals, including Maxime Weygand, retired chief of staff of the French army. An honor guard of gueules cassées—crippled and maimed veterans of World War I—formed up at the head of the staircase leading down to Pétain’s private carriage. A reverent reporter wrote in Le Figaro that the “hero of Verdun” presented “the physical image of perfect aplomb, of that imperturbable calm with which his name is synonymous.” Men doffed their hats when the engine fired up, and Pétain, at the entrance to his carriage, bade them farewell “with a courtesy and charm that seemed the garland of history.” Charles de Gaulle saw in all this the pitiable spectacle of an old man’s vanity.
The scene, though less frenetic, was reminiscent of Georges Boulanger’s departure for Clermont-Ferrand in the 1880s, when crowds gathered at the Gare de Lyon shouting, “He will return!” And the parallel runs deeper, for both departures had political implications. As Boulanger’s reassignment to a provincial garrison was tantamount to internal exile, prompted by the justified fear of anti-republican conspirators organizing a coup d’état, so Daladier may have sought to marginalize a threat to the Republic by relocating Pétain beyond the Pyrenees.
This was by no means Daladier’s only motive. Germany, which had lent Franco a mighty hand in overturning the Spanish Republic, continued to court favor with him and rewarded Spanish newspapers for portraying Hitler in the most advantageous light. Pétain’s principal task as ambassador was to keep Spain neutral in the event of war between France and Germany. The marshal who had received the Medalla Militar from King Alfonso XIII fourteen years earlier for subduing the Moroccan Rif tribes in concert with the Spanish army, stood a much better chance of finding favor with the “Caudillo” than a polished veteran of the diplomatic corps. Franco gave him a chilly welcome, but in due course Pétain accomplished his mission, with the help of gold bullion deposited by the Spanish Republic in the Banque de France, confiscated by the French Republic, and made available to the Fascists.
Pétain had no sooner established himself as ambassador than politicians, the best-known of whom was the former premier Pierre Laval, began courting him, much as Bonapartists and royalists had wooed Boulanger into political life. First it was proposed that he stand for election to the presidency in April 1939. The very notion “horrified” him, he wrote to his wife. He would entertain no more overtures. “I can work two weeks, I can’t work fifteen. I’m deaf and that troubles me.” No matter. He lent his suitors an ear, irritated by their self-interested importunities but pleased to be the object of their courtship.
On September 1, a week after signing a nonaggression pact with the Soviet Union, the Nazis invaded Poland. On September 3, France and England declared war against Germany. The calls for Pétain’s return became so insistent that Daladier, as much to thwart suspected conspiracies as to create a government of “national union,” offered him the War Ministry. Was he not, according to one of Daladier’s confidants, “an old fetish,” “the great moral figure of the last war, a humane, respected leader whose advice could be precious should disagreements arise between the government and the general staff”? Nothing came of discussions in Paris, during which Pétain, at Laval’s urging, insisted on an immediate entente with Italy. He did not tell Daladier that he was loath to serve in a cabinet of inept civilians. What he did
say was that much remained to be done in Spain. “Certain official milieux are still too obliging to German propaganda,” he wrote. “They do not wish to understand that the war in which we are engaged with Hitler’s Germany combined with Soviet Russia is but the sequel to that waged by Spain against Communism for the defense of Christian civilization.” It was Franco’s line, repeated verbatim.
The longer France and Germany temporized on the eastern front, camping opposite each other in what came to be known as the drôle de guerre or “phony war,” the more Pétain longed to make himself heard in councils of war. His wish was granted in May 1940. By then Paul Reynaud, a conservative finance minister, had replaced Daladier as premier and the phony war had turned all too real, with panzer divisions racing across the Ardennes under scores of German Stukas bombing French defenses, and the French army in full retreat. Panic-stricken officials at the Foreign Ministry made a pyre of diplomatic papers. “It was as if the ineffective past of the Third Republic were being consumed in a vast crematorium,” wrote General Edward Spears, Churchill’s personal representative to the French government. On September 18, Reynaud appointed Pétain minister without portfolio and vice premier. He announced his decision in a radio broadcast:
The victor of Verdun, thanks to whom the assailants of 1916 didn’t breach the line, thanks to whom the morale of the French army in 1917 was lifted to victory, Marshal Pétain, returned from Madrid this morning where he rendered many services for France.… Henceforth he will be at my side, placing all his strength and wisdom at the service of his country.
With few exceptions, the French press joined in a collective panegyric of the hero who eternally performs his epic feat, turning the tide of battle. Pétain, the “vanquisher of Verdun,” had in him the stuff of Coriolanus repulsing the Volsces, of Roland at Roncevaux, of Corneille’s Cid putting the Moors to flight, of Joan raising the siege of Orléans. Le Figaro declared that France felt “an immense impression of security.” The Breton paper L’Ouest-Éclair incanted the refrain “Verdun revealed him to the world” and informed readers that it was Pétain who, on February 26, 1916, uttered the rallying cry “Courage! On les aura!” (Courage! We’ll lick them!), breathing life into battle-worn troops. The article noted, “It is reported that at the funeral of King Alexander of Serbia, Marshal Goering, struck by the prestige of Marshal Pétain, walked a step behind him and couldn’t take his eyes off the sky-blue silhouette.”8 Louder than all flourishes was Maurras’s in L’Action Française: “At last! … Necessity proved as wise as reason. At last, the military hierarchy and the political hierarchy coincide.… Veterans of Verdun have all told us how faith and hope were restored to the most downcast when, on a frightful early winter morning, word spread from trench to trench: ‘Pétain! Pétain! Pétain is taking command!’ This memory spares us from having to insist upon the virtue of prestige. But in 1916 it shone only within our lines. In 1940 it will light up the sky and daunt the enemy.”9
On June 11, as German divisions approached the capital from the north, the French chief of staff, Maxime Weygand, proclaimed Paris an open or undefended city. One week earlier, the English general Edward Spears had implored Pétain in his office on the Boulevard des Invalides to oppose colleagues—Weygand among them—who demanded that the alliance with England be renounced and a separate armistice negotiated. Pétain demonstrated the hopelessness of France’s military situation on a battle map, then proceeded to blame politicians and exonerate the general staff—all except Charles de Gaulle, his protégé, his bête noire, and the author of La France et Son Armée, who, he felt, had not fully acknowledged his own contribution to the book. “Not only is he vain, he is ungrateful,” Pétain said of the stiff-necked brigadier. When Spears mentioned Joan of Arc, Pétain, apparently more interested in martyrdom than in victory, insisted on reading a commemorative speech he had given at Joan’s stake in Rouen. The Englishman found him “infinitely pitiable” and parted with the feeling that France was receding behind a glorious past evoked in the quavering voice of an old man.
No sooner did Weygand proclaim Paris an open city than the government moved south and established temporary quarters in the Loire valley. Churchill and Anthony Eden came over from London, circling beyond the range of German anti-aircraft fire but flying into the teeth of a dispute between résistants, notably Paul Reynaud, and capitulators who declared that an armistice was indispensable to France. On his return, Churchill described Pétain as a dangerous man “who had always been defeatist, even during the last war.”
Churchill conferred with Reynaud for the last time on June 13 in a lightning-quick visit. General Weygand informed the cabinet that German troops were expected to enter Paris the next day, whereupon Pétain read a document originally meant for Churchill’s ears stating that a government in exile would be no government at all. Treating separately with Germany was presented as virtue rather than perfidy, as the courageous stand of Frenchmen rooted in French soil rather than cowardice. Surrender would be painful, but the pain would make amends for the delinquency of a Socialist regime and the corrupting influence of internationalism. France would purge herself. She would recover her selfhood, a prisoner but within her own boundaries. “A French renaissance will be the fruit of suffering.… I declare, for myself, that I shall refuse to leave native soil, even if it means withdrawing from the political scene. I shall remain among the French, to share their pain and their miseries.” Only an armistice could save the life of “eternal France.”
The administration moved farther south, to Bordeaux, along with deputies, senators, civil servants, journalists, and petitioners (as in 1870, during the Franco-Prussian War, when the Germans besieged Paris). Ministers and officers hoping to salvage something of the general staff’s prestige with an armistice engaged the party of resistance in heated debate. The whole city became a rumor mill. After several days, Reynaud, who had hoped that Roosevelt would come to the rescue, admitted defeat, tendered his resignation, and on June 14 broadcast a final message to the French nation: “All Frenchmen, wherever they are, will have to suffer. May they prove themselves worthy of their country’s great past. May they treat one another fraternally. May they close ranks around the wounded fatherland. The hour of resurrection will come.” His last word as premier, recommending that President Albert Lebrun invite Marshal Pétain to assemble a cabinet, was spoken between clenched teeth. Armistice negotiations began immediately and resulted in a treaty the draconian terms of which avenged those imposed on Germany by the armistice of November 11, 1918.
The victorious German army parading down the Champs-Élysées, June 14, 1940.
News that a line of demarcation would slice across France’s midsection just north of Vichy in the Auvergne, with enemy troops also occupying the entire Atlantic coast, had not yet been published when Premier Pétain consoled and chastised his countrymen in a speech aired on June 25. His intention was to explain how and why the army had come to grief. The price exacted by Germany would tax everyone’s life. But France, he assured them, would not have dishonored herself. Her leaders would remain on French soil, unlike expatriates prating from London and North Africa. Their loyalty to the earth vouched for the truth of their words: “The earth does not lie. It will be your refuge.” Moreover, adversity was not without its blessings. Cognizant of his reputation as “the providential man,” Pétain insinuated that defeat may have been a fortunate fall. He repeated what he had said on the eve of Germany’s victory parade down the Champs-Élysées, that the French had brought defeat upon themselves: “It stemmed from our laxity. The spirit of hedonism leveled all that the spirit of sacrifice had raised. I invite you, above all, to a moral and intellectual housecleaning.”10 As in the 1870s after the Franco-Prussian War, when the Third Republic was struggling to survive its infancy under the rule of conservatives who promulgated a “Moral Order,” so the Republic in its death throes heard its last premier announce “a new order.”
The call for mea culpas and self-cleansing was echoed by La Croix.
“Why did God permit this frightful disaster?” asked the abbé Thellier de Poncheville. “Let us fall to our knees. We have many faults to expiate. An official enterprise of dechristianization which struck the vitality of our fatherland at its very source. Too much blasphemy and not enough prayer. Too much immorality and not enough penitence. The forfeit had to be paid one day. The hour has come to repent of our sins in our tears and our blood.” In Le Figaro, François Mauriac, Charles de Gaulle’s future champion, wrote that France had not heard a mere individual speaking on the radio but “the summons of a great humiliated nation rising from the depths of our History.” Pétain spoke for those who had fallen at Verdun. “His voice, broken by sorrow and age, uttered the reproach of heroes whose sacrifice, because of our defeat, had been in vain.” L’Action Française transmitted its sentiments through a satellite in Bordeaux: “Great fortune has crowned us in our immense misery. God had prepared a great leader for us. Marshal Pétain has gathered up France on the very day of its distress.”
General de Gaulle in England calls on his compatriots to continue the fight, after the Pétain government signs an armistice with Hitler. “Nothing is lost, because this war is a world war. In the free universe, immense forces have not entered the fray. One day they will crush the enemy. On that day, France must be present at the victory.”
On June 29, the peripatetic government evacuated Bordeaux, which became a German port. Deferring to its aged premier it reestablished itself in Vichy, a spa town well supplied with hotel rooms and enough mineral water to purge the diminished nation. On July 9, what remained of Parliament convened in Vichy’s casino to consider a proposal that the constitution be changed. Several deputies and senators who would have dissented—Daladier, Pierre Mendès France, Georges Mandel, and Jean Zay, among others—had boarded a ship bound for Morocco three weeks earlier when it was thought that the entire government would embark and continue the fight from North Africa.11 On July 10, the National Assembly, with only eighty senators and deputies objecting, authorized Pétain to promulgate new laws. On the following day the Third Republic died, all powers being assigned to Pétain as “chief of state”; the office of president being abolished; and Parliament adjourned.
The Embrace of Unreason Page 33