great conspiracy: First, Pétain, towering above all other figures and
forces; then the Deuxième Bureau, the famous Second Bureau in charge of
Intelligence of the French Army; General George and General Dusseigneur
and Colonel Eugene Deloncle; the Cagoulards, that secret society of
so-called Hooded Men, which most people considered merely absurd but
whose importance turned out to be greater than that of any French
secret society since the Revolution; the group operating the Fascist
weekly, _Je Suis Partout_; and on the German side Otto Abetz, now
Hitler’s ambassador to France, and the unlimited money and propaganda
of Himmler’s Gestapo, Goebbels’ Ministry, Ribbentrop’s Foreign Office,
and the Ausland’s Buro.
* * * * *
_Now I shall let my French friend talk. This is his report: from here
to page 262 he is speaking in the first person._
On June 17, 1940, I found myself standing outside a wayside tavern in
France. I was one of the millions retreating southward from occupied
Paris ahead of the German Army. I had stopped by the roadside because,
through the open window of the inn, I heard a radio broadcasting the
pathetic voice of an old man. Marshal Pétain was telling the French
nation that he had decided to ask Hitler to grant France an armistice.
Standing beside me was a young artillery lieutenant. As the last words
of the old Marshal died away, he turned toward me, pale as ivory, and
exclaimed: “Now I begin to understand! They forced us to retreat so
that we would have to accept this armistice, so that the Germans could
come in to do their dirty work for them!”
I didn’t dare understand. “How do you mean?” I asked him.
“Don’t be so naive!” he exploded. “Can’t you see what’s happened?
Don’t you remember that handful of enthusiastic young fools who were
always shouting ‘Pétain in power!’ Well, now he is in power. He can
govern with the aid of German troops. He has opened the way for them to
occupy the country. The Germans will make the arrests and carry out the
executions, and when their opponents have all been put out of the way,
Pétain and his friends will be in possession of the kind of Nazified
country they like. Mark my words--this is not the end, but only the
beginning. This is not war; it’s a domestic political maneuver!”
At that moment it seemed that only a man completely out of his mind
could have believed what the young officer had just said. A higher
officer who had been listening broke in to correct him. Pétain, he
said, was very old and possibly not very intelligent. But he certainly
could not be a traitor.
“His first consideration,” this officer went on, “will be to obtain
reasonable terms from the enemy. I doubt very much whether he will give
any time at all to internal political questions. All Frenchmen, all the
legislators, all the people, will be behind him in his struggle against
the Germans. What greater power could he gain by bringing about an
internal political transformation?”
I said nothing but I was deeply anxious. _Why had Pétain announced
publicly that he had asked for an armistice before he was sure
that honorable conditions would be granted?_ The mere fact of an
announcement’s having been made would complete the shattering of army
morale and all hope of further resistance, and make it impossible, in
case satisfactory terms could not be achieved, to reshape a fighting
army and resume the struggle. Pétain’s radio speech seemed at the very
least unwise--_unless its object were to eliminate the slightest chance
that the armistice might not go through_. And in that case, the young
officer was probably right.
Two dominant theories to explain the fall of France emerge: (1)
France’s rapid debacle was due to complete unpreparedness, both
physical and spiritual; (2) France was sold out, and what happened
is to be explained primarily by the operations of treason. Both
explanations are a part of the truth; neither of them is the whole
truth.
There was a lack of matériel of all sorts--infantry weapons and
artillery, ammunition, tanks, planes, etc. It was true also that
production in the munitions factories was increasing slowly, and that
the pace would have been insufficient if the intense warfare of the
last five weeks had had to be continued over a long period. But the
fact was that the period of intense warfare was very short; and it is
hardly logical to say that France was beaten because she would have
lacked ammunition if the war had lasted longer.
Some observers have imagined that France lacked munitions even for so
short a war, for it has been established that there were shortages at
many vital points. I talked with literally hundreds of soldiers and
officers during the retreat of June. Infantrymen complained that they
were given only three or four bullets per rifle; artillerymen said that
whole batteries were left without shells; tanks ran out of gasoline at
the very beginning of action and had no chance to refuel, and worst
of all (everyone stressed this as having been the most discouraging
factor), German planes had complete and undisputed freedom in the air.
Again and again soldiers told me that during engagements, with hundreds
of German planes above, on not one occasion did French aviation
come to the aid of the infantry. It was not surprising, under such
conditions, that morale gave way, and that the army was psychologically
prepared for the final collapse.
But was this lack of matériel at points essential to the defense the
result of a general shortage or simply of failure to get existing
munitions to the necessary centers? It seems indisputable that it was
the distributing system which was at fault. And was this breakdown
of the supply lines simply due to lack of organization, or to a much
more serious cause--treason? Whatever the case, it is a fact that the
retreating soldiers and officers, drawing their conclusions from such
facts as they had been able to witness, were unanimous in exclaiming:
“We have been sold out!”
Now listen to the story of a reserve officer, a captain of a
machine-gun detachment, one of the many with whom I talked.
“Don’t tell me,” he said, “that our General Headquarters lacked
experience in supply problems, or that they forgot to send us
cartridges for our machine guns. In 1914-1918 they had no trouble of
this kind. There were situations quite as complicated as this one
again and again during that war, but the ammunition always arrived.
This short action hasn’t exhausted our reserve of matériel. The depots
are still full. Yet we at the front lines had to destroy our machine
guns to save them from the enemy when we ran out of ammunition for
them and had to fall back. The same thing happened all along the
front, for machine guns, artillery of all calibers, and antitank guns.
You can call it disorganization, if you want. I call it intentional
disorganization--sabotage, directed, probably, from the same central
point. But I don’t dare yet to try to form any conclusions, to
understand why such sabotage took place. Perhaps one day we shall all
understand.”
On the roads choked with retreating columns and fleeing refugees,
where military trucks and civilian cars were inextricably mingled,
soldiers talked of their misgivings during the waits, often hours long,
for jammed highways to be cleared so that traffic could resume its
interminable southward crawl. Scores of times, caught in such blocks,
I heard soldiers or officers say: “Why are we constantly ordered to
retreat? We haven’t been in any real engagement since the Somme. We’re
not afraid to fight, but the retreat orders keep us moving to the rear
as fast as we can get over these encumbered roads. What is the cause of
this continual flight? Aren’t they ever going to establish a line of
resistance and order us to hold it?”
They never did. One June 16, two days after Paris had been occupied
by the Germans, I found myself on the right bank of the Loire, at the
Nevers bridge. My car, heavily loaded with the members of my family
and all our luggage, had developed motor trouble. Our most urgent need
was to get across that river; for we supposed of course, that the
retreating troops would stop on the other side of the natural line of
defense constituted by the Loire, which it should have been possible to
hold for weeks, and possibly forever. Across that bridge, we thought,
lay safety.
We tried to persuade passing cars to tow us across. All of them,
civilian and military vehicles alike, passed us by. Their occupants
intent on the pursuing Germans, had no thought for anything except to
get across that bridge themselves. So we all got out except a young
girl who took the steering wheel, and pushed the car over what seemed
to be the longest bridge in the world.
We felt better when we got to the other side, with the wide river
between us and the enemy. I found a colonel supervising the retreat
of his troops, and asked him if he could direct me to the officer in
charge of the sector, thinking that he could probably let me have a
mechanic to repair the car.
“There is no officer in charge here,” the colonel said. “We are all
passing through without stopping, so there is no organization at this
point. I’m sorry I can’t do anything for you. You had better get out
of here as quickly as you can. The Germans will probably be here in an
hour.” From these words I realized with a shock that the defense of
the left bank of the Loire was not even being considered, and that the
army was retreating indefinitely. I looked up and down the long banks
of the river. There were no fortified positions whatsoever. I saw only
one lonely soldier standing by the side of a machine gun. He seemed to
be wondering whether he had been forgotten there.
South of the Loire, the bewilderment of the troops deepened, for all
of them had expected that that line would be held. Time and again I
heard the question asked: “Where are we going?” Those who clung to hope
to the last declared desperately: “The generals must have a plan. Our
orders are to retreat as quickly as we can. There must be reasons for
it.” But most of them simply gave up the attempt to understand what was
going on, and why no effort was being made to resist.
For three months after the armistice I remained in France. I wanted
to find out the story behind the defeat. What I have to tell is not
pure hypothesis. It is the only possible explanation which can be
deduced from a number of unknown or little known facts which I took the
greatest trouble to verify. Here is the story:
There has been ample occasion in recent years to observe Nazi
propaganda tactics, among them the method which consists in selecting
the most appropriate arguments to convince any group the Nazis wish to
win over, even when those arguments are directly contrary to those used
with another group. Such a procedure would seem on the surface likely
to defeat its own aims; but it is the tendency of each group to believe
what it wants to believe, that Hitler is telling the truth, while
deceiving its adversaries. It is the same state of mentality which
confidence men evoke in such tested swindles as the rosary game, in
which the sucker is led to see himself as the accomplice in victimizing
someone else and thus never imagines that he is marked for the role of
victim himself.
It was in this fashion that Germany laid the foundation for France’s
defeat by corrupting different groups of the population in different
ways. Agents of Berlin told the French Communists, for instance, that
Germany was Soviet Russia’s ally, and that if Hitler won the war, he
would not oppose a Communist Revolution in France. The new French
Soviet Republic could then conclude an alliance with Germany, Russia,
and Italy and take part in the totalitarian reconstruction of postwar
Europe. French Communist leaders swallowed this propaganda, and the
result was slowing down of production in munitions plants due to
insidious Communist propaganda against which the Interior Ministry
tried in vain to take effective measures.
There were many evidences that Communists believed they were working
in accord with Germany. After the armistice, Communist factory workers
in the occupied region on several occasions started the singing of the
_Internationale_ in the factories where they were employed with the
idea that this would please their new masters, and were surprised that
it didn’t.
During the war, the Communists had been given reasons for believing
that they were on the side of the Germans. Some of the French Bolshevik
leaders who deserted during the war fled to Germany. Findings of
French radiogoniometric services proved that Communist short-wave
stations broadcasting in French were operating from Germany. After the
German troops reached Paris, several young French writers known for
their Communist sympathies, who had remained behind when most other
Leftists had fled, were immediately given important places, such as
the editing of Paris daily papers, by the Nazi authorities. These
incidents demonstrate that the Germans had succeeded in establishing
relationships with French Communist leaders during the war; but it must
be recorded that the majority of Communist workmen remained definitely
hostile to the Nazis.
This failure to enlist the support among the Communist rank and file
which had been found among the leaders convinced the German secret
service early that there was no real chance of bringing about the
defeat of France by fomenting a Bolshevik revolution. If such a method
had been feasible, Nazi Germany would certainly not have hesitated to
apply it, just as Imperial Germany did not hesitate to send Lenin and
his companions in their famous sealed railroad coach into Russia in
1917.
Under the circumstances, the Communist movement was taken advantage
of by the Germans only to the extent of being employed to create as
much unrest as possible among French workers, who did not even realize
to what influences they were being exposed. The chief effort of
German secret agents was concentrated on conservative circles, which,
according to reports received at the Wilhelmstrasse, were in a much
better position to exert effective influence on the outcome of the war.
There was nothing contradictory about this willingness on the part of
the Nazis to cooperate with either the extreme Left or the extreme
Right, or even with both simultaneously, since their object, whatever
their dupes might think, was not to help them to victory, but to use
them as a tool to weaken the unity and the power of the government.
Nazi propaganda welcomed any loophole through which it might penetrate
into the vitals of a foreign country with the aid of any resistance to
the regime which might already exist there.
For years before the war, the Nazis had established contact with
reactionary Rightist circles in France. One such circle which in
America has been accused of having been influenced by the Germans and
having perhaps contributed to France’s downfall is the Croix de Feu,
at one time generally considered as the future Fascist movement of
France. I must say that I could find neither proof nor indication that
the Croix de Feu had played Germany’s game. On the contrary, the _Petit
Journal_, published by Colonel François de la Rocque, the Croix de Feu
leader, assumed a more courageously anti-German attitude after the
armistice than did most other papers published under the control of
the Vichy government.
Two other less conspicuous, but perhaps more influential Right-wing
groups were, however, definitely approached by the Germans during the
prewar years. One of them was the secret revolutionary organization
popularly known as the Cagoulards (the Hooded ones); the other was the
group which published the weekly, _Je Suis Partout_. These contacts
were established chiefly by Otto Abetz, infamous “special delegate”
of Nazi Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop, who was expelled from France
shortly before the war. On his initiative, members of both groups
undertook several trips to Berlin between 1937 and 1939 to discuss
means of action.
The German secret service had a particular interest in these two groups
because, while entirely independent of each other, they had one thing
in common--far-reaching ties with the French Army.
The Cagoulard group was headed by French officers of high rank--majors,
colonels, and even generals. General Dusseigneur was among those
arrested when the Cagoulard movement was uncovered shortly before
the war after it had planted bombs in Paris. The dissolution of the
movement made its members more cautious, but its underground activities
continued.
If any further evidence of German support for the Cagoulards had been
needed beyond that already turned up by the French police, it was
provided by the Germans themselves. When they occupied Paris, one
of the first things they did was to demand that the French national
police turn over the files on the Cagoulard case. From these files, the
Germans learned the names of the police commissioners who had unearthed
the Cagoulard plot, and immediately arrested those who were in occupied
territory.
This was in striking contrast to the treatment of the arrested
Cagoulard leaders, all of whom had been released by the French
government by the beginning of the war. Shortly after the start of
hostilities I met in the train the brother of one of the Cagoulards
who had been arrested. In the ensuing conversation, I remarked that I
was astonished that responsible adults should have indulged at such a
time in what then appeared to have been a somewhat childish imitation
of a motion picture conspiracy. Nettled by my attitude, my interlocutor
answered:
“You don’t understand how serious this movement was. It was organized
by the Deuxième Bureau (the department of the army concerned with
espionage and counterespionage). It was at the instigation of the
military secret service that my brother and his friends organized the
Cagoulards. That can’t be told now, of course, but the day will come
when all the truth will be known, and my brother will be considered a
hero for the time he has spent in prison.”
“The Deuxième Bureau!” I exclaimed incredulously. “Why in the world
should the Deuxième Bureau want to foster a revolutionary movement when
it’s already so near the power itself?”
“Ever since the 1936 elections,” he answered, “important members of the
French secret service have been very much worried about the influence
the Communist movement has gained in this country, and so they decided
to take matters into their own hands. The Cagoulard movement was formed
to do that. The Popular Front ministers got my brother and his friends
put in jail, but you’ll see that they haven’t said their last word yet.”
_Je Suis Partout_, the weekly which was another outpost of German
propaganda in France, belonged originally to the publishing house of
Fayard, which put out books and another and more prosperous political
weekly, _Candide_. _Je Suis Partout_ was a money loser and publisher
Arthème Fayard decided several years ago to discontinue it. When
the news got out, Pierre Gaxotte, editor of the paper, proposed to
Fayard that he turn the paper’s name over to him instead of giving him
severance pay, since he thought he might be able to keep the magazine
going himself. Fayard agreed, and _Je Suis Partout_ continued to appear
without interruption, and so far as the public knew, without any change
in its control. Circulation did not increase. Advertising continued
low. The paper showed no signs of prosperity--but it did not show any
signs of having financial difficulties any more either.
Pierre Gaxotte, as well as some other members of his editorial staff,
had begun his political career in the Royalist _Action Française_
movement, but had apparently decided to strike out for himself and
cut his own political tracks. Under Gaxotte’s direction, _Je Suis
Partout_ assumed a definitely pro-German attitude, arguing that France
and Germany should come to an understanding between themselves as the
two great continental powers, leaving England out in the cold. Paul
Ferdonnet, who won fame later as the “traitor of Stuttgart” delivering
propaganda broadcasts in French from the Stuttgart radio station during
the war (he is now supervisor of the French radio in Paris), was
also on the editorial staff until he went to Berlin to establish his
permanent residence and his own press syndicate there. From that time
on, he was the secret liaison agent between the German authorities and
Gaxotte’s paper.
The German sympathies of _Je Suis Partout_ were apparent enough, but
no one bothered much about it, for circulation was low and the paper’s
influence was considered to be negligible. This must have been the
viewpoint of the Daladier government also, for except for friendly
arguments with the censors, the paper was able to continue publishing
unhampered even after the war broke out.
When Daladier resigned and Paul Reynaud came in, he appointed Georges
Mandel Minister of the Interior, and thus head of the French police
organization. Although Mandel, zealous, patriotic, and uncompromising,
like his master Clemenceau whose secretary he had been during the
last war, undertook to hunt down defeatists of all descriptions, _Je
Suis Partout_ continued to appear as usual. Mandel also apparently
considered it too insignificant to be dangerous.
But one day a well-known French journalist brought to Mandel the
proof that the principal members of the editorial staff of _Je Suis
Partout_ were simultaneously agents of the Deuxième Bureau. Mandel was
astounded. He who knew all the undercurrents of French political life,
who for years had kept secret files about all public figures, had not
dreamed that any connection could have existed between this outspokenly
pro-German magazine and one of the most influential departments of
the French Army. He had put the editors of _Je Suis Partout_ down as
innocuous fools. He now realized that though the circulation of the
paper was small, the private influence of its editors might have been
both great and disastrous.
He did not hesitate an instant. He ordered immediately the arrest of
five members of the staff. Among them was an obscure journalist, not
generally known as a member of the staff, named Pierre Mouton, who some
years before had founded a small press syndicate called _Prima Presse_
in partnership with Ferdonnet. Mandel quickly obtained proof that the
two men were still cooperating. Mouton, while maintaining permanent
contact with _Je Suis Partout_, was also flooding the French daily
press with cleverly prepared pro-German articles which were supplied to
the newspapers free of charge.
With the known leaders of the _Je Suis Partout_ group in jail, Mandel
apparently thought that there was no immediate urgency for delving
further into this particular case when so many other vital matters
pressed for attention. The same attitude had been taken a few years
before in regard to the Cagoulards, who seemed to have been set down
as definitely muzzled because their figureheads had been imprisoned.
Neither the stern and Spartan Mandel, who had arrested the _Je Suis
Partout_ group, nor the vivacious and epicurean Albert Sarraut, his
predecessor, who had handled the Cagoulard case, imagined that either
of these two groups had achieved a real and lasting penetration into
the high command--a penetration which seems to have contributed largely
to the debacle of May and June.
Possibly the two cases had never been laid side by side so that the
telltale fact that both times a trail led to the Deuxième Bureau
had not been observed. Perhaps also the two Interior Ministers had
hesitated each time before venturing to have civilian authorities
investigate the most powerful of the military departments. The Deuxième
Bureau of the French Army was sometimes called “a state within the
state.” It might more exactly have been called “several states within
the state,” for it was a complicated organism with its own currents
and undercurrents, comprising a number of competing groups. Somewhere
within this complicated office existed the only link between the
pro-German _Je Suis Partout_ and the German-inspired Cagoulards; but
on the surface, at least at the beginning, no relation seemed to exist
between these two separate activities.