Their Finest Hour (25 page)

I composed this in the Cabinet Room, and it was typed as I spoke. The door to the garden was wide open, and outside the sun shone warm and bright. Air Chief Marshal Newall, the Chief of the Air Staff, sat on the terrace meanwhile, and when I had finished revising the draft, I took it out to him in case there were any improvements or corrections to be made. He was evidently moved, and presently said he agreed with every word. I was comforted and fortified myself by putting my convictions upon record, and when I read the message over the final time before sending it off, I felt a glow of sober confidence. This was certainly justified by what happened. All came true.

The French
Government Moves to Bordeaux
—
General Weygand’s Attitude — Weygand and Reynaud — M. Chautemps’ Insidious Proposal — The French
Decision to Ask for Terms
—
British Insistence on the Safeguarding of the French Fleet
—
My Telegram to Reynaud of June
16
— A New Issue Arises
—
British Offer of Indissoluble Union with France
—
High Hopes of General de Gaulle that This Would Strengthen M. Reynaud
—
M. Reynaud’s Satisfaction — My Telegram of June
16
Suspended
—
Plan for Me to Visit Bordeaux by Cruiser with the Labour and Liberal Party Leaders Frustrated — Unfavourable Reception of the British Offer — Fall of the Reynaud Cabinet — Reynaud’s Resignation — A Conversation with M. Monnet and General de Gaulle in Downing Street
—
Marshal Pétain Forms a
French
Government for an Armistice — My Message to Marshal Pétain and General Weygand, June
17
— My Broadcast of June
17
— General Spears Plans the Escape of General de Gaulle — Further Talk of Resistance in Africa — Mandel’s Intentions — Admiral Darlan’s Trap
—
Voyage of the “Massilia” — Mandel at Casablanca — Mr. Duff Cooper’s Mission
—
Fate
of
the
French Patriots — A Hypothetical Speculation — My Settled Conviction.

W
E MUST NOW QUIT
the field of military disaster for the convulsions in the French Cabinet and the personages who surrounded it at Bordeaux.

It is not easy to establish the exact sequence of events. The British War Cabinet sat almost continuously, and messages were sent off from time to time as decisions were taken. As they took two or three hours to transmit in cipher, and probably another hour to deliver, the telephone was freely used by the officials of the Foreign Office to convey the substance to our Ambassador; and he also used the telephone frequently in reply. Therefore there are overlaps and short-circuits which are confusing. Events were moving at such a speed on both sides of the Channel that it would be misleading to present the tale as if it were an orderly flow of argument and decision.

M. Reynaud reached the new seat of government from Tours in the evening of the 14th. He received the British Ambassador about nine o’clock. Sir Ronald Campbell informed him that His Majesty’s Government intended to insist on the terms of the agreement of March 28, binding both parties not to make any terms with the enemy. He also offered to provide all the necessary shipping in the event of the French Government resolving to move to North Africa. Both these statements were in accordance with the Ambassador’s current instructions.

On the morning of the 15th, Reynaud again received the Ambassador and told him that he had definitely decided to divide the Government in half and to establish a centre of authority beyond the sea. Such a policy would obviously carry with it the removal of the French Fleet to ports beyond German power. Later that morning, President Roosevelt’s reply to Reynaud’s appeal of June 13 was received. Although I had made the best of it in my telegram to the French Premier, I knew it was bound to disappoint him. Material aid, if Congress approved, was offered; but there was no question of any American entry into the war. France had no reason to expect such a declaration at this moment, and the President had not either the power to give it himself or to obtain it from Congress. There had been no meetings of the Council of Ministers since that at Cangé, near Tours, on the evening of the 13th. The Ministers having now all reached Bordeaux, the Council was summoned for the afternoon.

* * * * *

General Weygand had been for some days convinced that all further resistance was vain. He therefore wished to force the French Government to ask for an armistice while the French Army still retained enough discipline and strength to maintain internal order on the morrow of defeat. He had a profound, lifelong dislike of the parliamentary régime of the Third Republic. As an ardently religious Catholic, he saw in the ruin which had overwhelmed his country the chastisement of God for its abandonment of the Christian faith. He therefore used the power of his supreme military position far beyond the limits which his professional responsibilities, great as they were, justified or required. He confronted the Prime Minister with declarations that the French armies could fight no more, and that it was time to stop a horrible and useless massacre before general anarchy supervened.

Paul Reynaud, on the other hand, realised that the battle in France was over, but still hoped to carry on the war from Africa and the French Empire and with the French Fleet. None of the other states overrun by Hitler had withdrawn from the war. Physically in their own lands they were gripped, but from overseas their Governments had kept the flag flying and the national cause alive. Reynaud wished to follow their example, and with much more solid resources. He sought a solution on the lines of the Dutch capitulation. This, while it left the Army, whose chiefs had refused to fight any longer, free to lay down its arms wherever it was in contact with the enemy, nevertheless preserved to the State its sovereign right to continue the struggle by all the means in its power.

This issue was fought out between the Premier and the Generalissimo at a stormy interview before the Council meeting. Reynaud offered Weygand written authority from the Government to order the “Cease Fire.” Weygand refused with indignation the suggestion of a military surrender. “He would never accept the casting of this shame upon the banners of the French Army.” The act of surrender, which he deemed imperative, must be that of the Government and of the State, to which the army he commanded would dutifully conform. In so acting General Weygand, though a sincere and unselfish man, behaved wrongly. He asserted the right of a soldier to dominate the duly constituted Government of the Republic, and thus to bring the whole resistance, not only of France but of her Empire, to an end contrary to the decision of his political and lawful chief.

Apart from these formalities and talk about the honour of the French Army there stood a practical point. An armistice formally entered into by the French Government would mean the end of the war for France. By negotiation part of the country might be left unoccupied and part of the Army free; whereas, if the war were continued from overseas, all who had not escaped from France would be controlled directly by the Germans, and millions of Frenchmen would be carried off to Germany as prisoners of war without the protection of any agreement. This was a substantial argument, but it belonged to the Government of the Republic and not to the Commander-in-Chief of the Army to decide upon it. Weygand’s position that because the Army under his orders would in his opinion fight no more, the French Republic must give in and order its armed forces to obey an order which he was certainly willing to carry out, finds no foundation in the law and practice of civilised states or in the professional honour of a soldier. In theory at least the Prime Minister had his remedy. He could have replied: “You are affronting the Constitution of the Republic. You are dismissed from this moment from your command. I will obtain the necessary sanction from the President.”

Unfortunately, M. Reynaud was not sufficiently sure of his position. Behind the presumptuous General loomed the illustrious Marshal Pétain, the centre of the band of defeatist Ministers whom Reynaud had so recently and so improvidently brought into the French Government and Council, and who were all resolved to stop the war. Behind these again crouched the sinister figure of Laval, who had installed himself at Bordeaux City Hall, surrounded by a clique of agitated Senators and Deputies. Laval’s policy had the force and merit of simplicity. France must not only make peace with Germany, she must change sides; she must become the ally of the conqueror, and by her loyalty and services against the common foe across the Channel save her interests and her provinces and finish up on the victorious side. Evidently M. Reynaud, exhausted by the ordeals through which he had passed, had not the life or strength for so searching a personal ordeal, which would indeed have taxed the resources of an Oliver Cromwell or of a Clemenceau, of Stalin or of Hitler.

In the discussions on the afternoon of the 15th, at which the President of the Republic was present, Reynaud, having explained the situation to his colleagues, appealed to Marshal Pétain to persuade General Weygand to the Cabinet view. He could not have chosen a worse envoy. The Marshal left the room. There was an interval. After a while he returned with Weygand, whose position he now supported. At this serious juncture M. Chautemps, an important Minister, slid in an insidious proposal which wore the aspect of a compromise and was attractive to the waverers. He stated in the name of the Leftist elements of the Cabinet that Reynaud was right in affirming that an agreement with the enemy was impossible, but that it would be prudent to make a gesture which would unite France. They should ask the Germans what the conditions of armistice would be, remaining entirely free to reject them. It was not of course possible to embark on this slippery slope and stop. The mere announcement that the French Government were asking the Germans on what terms an armistice would be granted was sufficient in itself to destroy what remained of the morale of the French Army. How could the soldier be ordered to cast away his life in obdurate resistance after so fatal a signal had been given? However, combined with the demonstration which they had witnessed from Pétain and Weygand, the Chautemps suggestion had a deadly effect on the majority. It was agreed to ask His Majesty’s Government how they would view such a step, informing them at the same time that in no circumstances would the surrender of the Fleet be allowed. Reynaud now rose from the table and declared his intention to resign. But the President of the Republic restrained him, and declared that if Reynaud went he would go too. When the confused discussion was resumed, no clear distinction was drawn between declining to surrender the French Fleet to the Germans and putting it out of German power by sailing it to ports outside France. It was agreed that the British Government should be asked to consent to the inquiry about the German terms. The message was immediately despatched.

* * * * *

The next morning Reynaud received the British Ambassador again, and was told that the British would accept the French request on the condition that the French Fleet was placed beyond German power – in fact, that it should be directed to British ports. These instructions had been telephoned to Campbell from London to save time. At eleven o’clock the distracted Council of Ministers met again, President Lebrun being present. The President of the Senate, M. Jeanneney, was brought in to endorse, both on his own behalf and on that of his colleague the President of the Chamber, M. Herriot, the proposal of the Premier to transfer the Government to North Africa. Up rose Marshal Pétain and read a letter, which it is believed had been written for him by another hand, resigning from the Cabinet. Having finished his speech, he prepared to leave the room. He was persuaded by the President of the Republic to remain on the condition that an answer would be given to him during the day. The Marshal had also complained of the delay in asking for an armistice. Reynaud replied that if one asked an ally to free one from an obligation it was customary to await the answer. The session then closed. After luncheon the Ambassador brought to Reynaud the textual answer of the British Government, of which he had already given the telephoned purport in his conversation of the morning.

* * * * *

In these days the War Cabinet were in a state of unusual emotion. The fall and the fate of France dominated their minds. Our own plight, and what we should have to face and face alone, seemed to take a second place. Grief for our ally in her agony, and desire to do anything in human power to aid her, was the prevailing mood. There was also the overpowering importance of making sure of the French Fleet. It was in this spirit that a proposal for “an indissoluble union” between France and Britain was conceived.

I was not the prime mover. I first heard of a definite plan at a luncheon at the Carlton Club on the 15th, at which were present Lord Halifax, M. Corbin, Sir Robert Vansittart, and one or two others. It was evident that there had been considerable discussion beforehand. On the 14th, Vansittart and Desmond Morton had met M. Monnet and M. Pleven (members of the French Economic Mission in London), and been joined by General de Gaulle, who had flown over to make arrangements for shipping to carry the French Government and as many French troops as possible to Africa. These gentlemen had evolved the outline of a declaration for a Franco-British Union with the object, apart from its general merits, of giving M. Reynaud some new fact of a vivid and stimulating nature with which to carry a majority of his Cabinet into the move to Africa and the continuance of the war. My first reaction was unfavourable. I asked a number of questions of a critical character, and was by no means convinced. However, at the end of our long Cabinet that afternoon the subject was raised. I was somewhat surprised to see the staid, stolid, experienced politicians of all parties engage themselves so passionately in an immense design whose implications and consequences were not in any way thought out. I did not resist, but yielded easily to these generous surges which carried our resolves to a very high level of unselfish and undaunted action.