Chapter X: Part 10

A. First, a Pax Anglo-Americana, based on our naval control of the world. This may take one of several forms, including Union Now, Clarence Streit’s thoughtful plan for amalgamating the democracies. Its immediate purpose would be to unite the coercive power of the nations of good will to restrain those of ill will until time and repentance had made it possible to bring them into our second organization. This World Federation of some kind might be a resuscitated League of Nations, or it might have another name or form. All we know positively is that unless we organize for peace, we shall have war again; and we know now that the nations of good will on earth are not strong enough without the United States to impose peace on the world. We know that if we stay out of the peace we shall surely be drawn into the succeeding war. Perhaps by the end of this present struggle we shall have learned our lesson and will never again attempt to withdraw into an illusory isolation which must always bring us into the very war it tried to avoid. Perhaps for the first time in our history we will with open eyes and clear plan enter the strength of the United States into the organization of peace with the same zeal we use to make war. If we do, who knows but that the peace established after this war could endure for longer than we even dare to guess at this melancholy moment.

Q. _Is it a fact that because of the war England is becoming Socialist and will come out of the war with a government and social system just as repugnant to us as the Nazis’?_

A. It is true that the government and social system of England have become Socialist but in the Christian and democratic sense of the word. British society has become a Christian collective. If they could maintain after the war as ideal a spirit of cooperation and love of their neighbors as they have today under fire, we might call it the first step toward the millennium. Far from being a government and social system we disapproved, they would be worthy of our emulation. To compare such a system of voluntary, democratic, unselfish devotion to the common good as exists today in wartime England with the Nazi regime is to compare good with evil. Beaten by the blows of war the British people have attained in a period of months a degree of social progress they would not have reached in decades otherwise.

Britain was forced to adopt a system of wartime socialism, if you want to call it that, because that form of socialism under the inspiration of life-and-death battle can produce so much more than uncontrolled capitalism. Production is the materialist index of the value of any economic system. Under British wartime socialism, capitalists and workers genuinely pool their interests and restrict their demands to the minimum, while men and women of all classes risk and give their lives in battle for the community. Until we adopt such a system and are inspired by the same dire necessity which animates the British, our system of production, man for man, and unit for unit, will not equal British production. As for the Nazis, their system of Socialism, based on Terror and megalomania, aims to enslave the world; the British system of Socialism, based on free choice and democracy, aims to liberate the world. No, there is no possibility that any form of government should emerge in England after the war which would be “as repugnant to us as the Nazis’,” unless Britain is conquered and becomes a satrapy of Hitler.

Q. _Is this British wartime Socialism not really equivalent to Communism? How does it differ from capitalism?_

A. It is the sort of communism anyone would approve if it could work in peacetime, though it seems that it really works only in war. In wartime the motive that makes men work is defense of their lives, their families, their nation, against an enemy from without. This leads to a degree of self-sacrifice that is never even approximated in peacetime. Witness the invariable collapse of national morale after every war. One of the chief reasons, if not the chief reason, why communism in peacetime does not work, either in Russia or anywhere else, is because except under the duress of war, individuals primarily work for themselves. The Russian Bolshevik party tried for twenty-three years to make the Russians work for the community, but they never succeeded until now, when they have gone to war. No matter how the Battle of Russia turns out, when the war is over, if the Soviet Union is still Communist, it will revert to its accustomed slackness and poverty. If the British were to try to continue their wartime socialism into peacetime, they would find it impossible. Strikes would break out; employers would begin to reach out for profits and soon the old-time, though modified capitalism would return, with many of its faults, but still far more productive than peacetime communism anywhere in the world. Capitalism in peace; collectivism in war appears to be the law for democracies in our time.

5. FRANCE

Q. _Why did France fall?_

A. Because the French people were hypnotized by their low birth rate; because their Maginot line had imprisoned their army; because, ignorant of the character and intentions of their enemy, they did not know why they had to fight the Germans and so preferred to fight among themselves; because they had no Churchill; because they were betrayed by a powerful group of their leaders including senior officers of the Army; and because the French were stultified by their debased and venal press.

Q. _But I thought they lost chiefly because they lacked the proper weapons: airplanes and tanks._

A. They did not possess anything like the number of tanks and airplanes used by the Germans; but I would rank this deficiency at the bottom of any list of causes of the French defeat. If they had ignored their birth rate, been willing to spend lives, had retained the old offensive spirit traditional in the French Army, had known that they had to win or perish, had possessed a Churchill to inspire and lead them, and had had no traitors in their ranks, their comparative lack of weapons would not have mattered; they would still be fighting the Germans in France. The inferiority of their equipment consisted, as you indicate, in the lack of a sufficient number of planes and tanks, but if they had had the spirit to win they could have held the Germans until the deficiency could be made up.

Tanks cannot cross properly defended rivers, and there were several sets of rivers which the French could have held if they chose: the Meuse, the Somme and the Oise, the Aisne, the Marne, the Seine, and finally the Loire, but they held not at all at any of these natural barriers. At most of these rivers I was present during the retreat, and it astonished all of us, including United States officers, to visit a French position along a river one day and observe how strong it was, and how difficult it would be to take, and then the next day learn the Germans had taken it within a few hours of our departure.

Q. _But surely the reason was the German dive bombers who could fly across the rivers and drive the defenders away. I have heard that they were the principal weapon used to break the French who didn’t have enough pursuit planes to down them. It seems to me that if the dive bomber is anything like as lethal as it is said to be, you must put more of the blame for the French collapse on it than on the failure of French morale._

A. No, the dive bombers are not effective against brave determined troops. They are not as effective as artillery. I have an authority for that, General Charles Huntziger, now Minister of War of the Vichy government. I met him when he was Commander of the Second Army occupying the left wing of the Maginot line. It was about May 31, 1940 in the second week after the German break-through.

General Huntziger received me in his headquarters, an old fortress of Verdun. He explained that he had now taught his men how to meet the terrible German tank-plus-dive-bomber attack. He said that he had explained to his men that the dive bomber was not nearly so deadly as artillery, and that its effect was chiefly psychological, and that if the soldiers could master their first fright they could hold their ground and win. The great thing was to hold long enough to learn that your chance of being killed by dive bombers was much less than your chance of being killed by artillery fire, since artillery shells may fall uninterruptedly for an indefinite time, while a dive bomber has only one or at the most a few bombs to discharge, and once it has dropped them, has to return to its base for more, and the number of dive bombers is limited.

He emphasized that French soldiers had never been afraid to stand artillery fire, so why should they run from the less dangerous dive bombers? He said he instructed all soldiers not serving antiaircraft guns to go under cover for the few seconds while the dive bombers dived, but to emerge immediately upon hearing the detonation of the bombs, and meet the advancing tanks. If they were small thinly armored tanks, and the French possessed adequate antitank guns, they should attempt to destroy the tanks. If the tanks were too large and heavily armored, the French should permit the tanks to go through and emerge in time to stop the German infantry following the tanks.

General Huntziger admitted that it had been extremely difficult at first to persuade his troops of the comparative harmlessness of the dive bombers and mentioned the fact that in the first thirteen days of the German attack his troops had been overwhelmed and he had lost fifty per cent of his effectives, more than ninety per cent of whom were captured, but he believed that now the troops were experienced and could not be frightened as they were at first. As we were soon to observe, the French troops never did get used to the dive bomber which is truly the most terrifying weapon ever invented. General Huntziger compared it to a locomotive with its whistle wide open falling upon you from the sky.

“You are certain it is coming just for you,” the General said, “and you believe it is not merely going to drop bombs upon you, but you are sure the plane itself is going to crash upon you and leave you smashed like a beetle.”

The noise of the dive bomber is its most terrifying quality. An ordinary airplane diving makes a loud rushing noise familiar to everyone nowadays, but many of the German dive bombers were equipped with sirens attached to loud-speakers, so that when they dived each plane screamed with the noise of a score of ordinary diving planes. In addition to that they were often equipped with screaming bombs. General Touchon, commander of the Sixth Army, showed me one at his headquarters. It had four whistles, each about the size of a cannon cracker, in the vanes of its tail. They made each falling bomb sound as loud as four American locomotives with the whistles open. “But,” General Huntziger said, “all you have to do is to realize that noise doesn’t hurt anyone, and I have explained that to my soldiers and from now on they will stand firm.”

Huntziger gave me a copy of his orders of the day. I cannot read it even now without feeling the terrible weight of despair that settled upon all of us as we realized that the end of France was near. It is dated May 18, 1940 and begins: “The war has commenced,”--it was to be all over in exactly thirty days--“and, in order to win, the enemy always attacks your morale. In this first shock, his tactic, his ruses of warfare and his weapons have but one object, _to demoralize you_. The enemy is reckoning only upon fighting you with fright. It is necessary therefore that you know this.

“Know also that the massive bombardments of the enemy aviation, no matter how impressive they are, make few victims, as you may have already noted. You know the total lost; they are a minimum. Take refuge when the enemy aircraft passes and immediately afterward take up again your combat post. Never forget our aviation protects you. _Even when you cannot see it._ Know that our airplanes have knocked down more than a thousand enemy machines in less than eight days and that among the enemy our bombers are giving blow for blow.

“Know that against infantry the tank is not able to accomplish big things if you hide yourself and the tanks cannot see you. Let them pass without showing yourself, then fire on the guides who accompany them. Without them the tank is almost blind; sooner or later it will have to abandon the field to refuel if our antitank guns have not already knocked it out.

“These guns are very efficient; they have given many proofs of it in the last few days.

“Do not allow yourself to be influenced by tales of parachutists but if you actually find some, remember that an armed man can always beat them. Guard yourself against imaginary dangers. As though you were in active combat, you have to defend yourself against false rumors which may be spread by a traitor or an imbecile seized with panic.

“If you listen to such tales they may be able to provoke serious defection. Listen to no one but your superior officers and those you know.

“A man can overcome his fear. It is his duty to surmount it and to combat the fears of others. If a man spreads fear he not only commits an act of cowardice. He commits treason.

“Know finally that the enemy is not so strong as some people think. Oppose to him your will. It is your will which will sweep the enemy away. Never forget what you are defending. If you let the enemy pass you will lose more than your life. You will be pitilessly separated from your families to suffer far from them a slavery worse than death.”

The intelligence and courage of Huntziger as displayed in these orders were of no avail, because he could not, as Churchill can, transmit his spirit to others. His soldiers listened to his talk and read his orders of the day but still they yielded to their fear. It must be seldom in military history that a commanding general has to devote his principal orders to adjuring his troops not to be afraid. The French Army was already panic-stricken.

Q. _You say there was treachery among senior officers of the French Army and among the government. Why do you say that and what proof of it have you?_

A. There were both treachery and treason. High French officers and officials conspired to overthrow the Republic. Pétain himself was their leader. They were so fanatical in their desire to destroy the Republic that they fell into the German trap and acquiesced in what the Germans told them would be a fake defeat, after which they would set up the Fascist government which they did set up at Vichy. After that Hitler would withdraw his troops and restore France to all her old power and glory, an equal partner and friend of Nazi Germany. They were of course deceived and now most of them must realize they were deceived, and that Hitler has no intention of ever allowing France to be a great power again. But this awakening is too late and the guilty men, many of them now in Pétain’s government, have a life-and-death interest in preserving their secret, since in the present temper of the French people if the truth were known many another assassination would follow the attempts on Laval and Deat.

This is a rough outline of what I believe to have happened in France. I will be glad to give you all the evidence I have, admitting that it probably is not sufficient to win a verdict of guilty in a court of law, but maintaining that it is convincing to one who witnessed the debacle and was bewildered by the lack of adequate explanation. You see, after we had added up all the other reasons for the fall of France, there was still something lacking; something to explain the fact that the French Army of nearly five million men, with its centuries of glorious tradition, and its reputation among experts as the best in the world, never once held firm after the Germans broke through the Low Countries, never once stopped the enemy for as much as a day, but steadily, day by day retreated, crumbled, broke up, and at the end of five weeks ceased to exist.

Review our list of causes now and see if all of them put together explain this phenomenon. Complacency and trust in the Maginot line and the softening effect of eight months of inactivity, comparative lack of leadership, man power and planes and tanks; lack of faith, anger, and the spirit to fight to kill; conflict between communists and conservatives. No, all these reasons together do not explain the conduct of the French Army between May 11 and June 17, 1940.

Q. _But the thesis you present is too astounding. That French Army officers should have conspired with the enemy is almost beyond belief. Do you mean the French General Staff?_

A. Yes, the French General Staff. Not all of it; only a few members were necessary. If you find it difficult to believe, remember that the French officers and officials concerned did not believe they were betraying France; they believed that Hitler would keep his word and restore France as soon as the Republic was overthrown. To make this aspect of the matter clear: suppose you were a young Frenchman today, would you think of it as treason if you worked to overthrow the Vichy government? Would you think of yourself as a traitor if you conspired with the British to throw out Pétain and reorganize a democratic government? No.

Well, in so far as one can credit such Fascists with sincerity, we have to admit that these men also thought they were serving the best interests of France when they conspired to overthrow the Republic. Remember that French officers as a class have generally been anti-Republican. Napoleon’s officers soon forgot Republican principles in their devotion to the Emperor. The hierarchy of the Army did not favor the equalitarianism of the French Republic. Aristocratic officers generally set the tone for the majority of the higher ranks. Time and again I was astonished to note that upper-class Frenchmen seemed to remember as though it had been yesterday the bloody events of the French Revolution, and were more afraid of their own working class than of any foreign enemy.

I visited once the famous deep cellar vaults of the Bank of France where they kept the gold, and while walking through the doorway, piercing its twenty-foot thick steel and concrete walls, I asked why they needed such formidable and expensive protection. Was it against the Germans? It could not be, because if ever the Germans occupied Paris, as they do today, no underground fortification such as these vaults could prevent them from getting the gold, especially since the Germans would be holding as hostages the men with the keys. No, it was not against a foreign enemy; the vaults were built against the Paris mob, against revolutionaries, against another 1789.

This spirit was shared by many French senior officers, and it is ironic that their conspiracy to bring about a feigned defeat in order to overthrow the Republic was greatly helped by the defection of the Parisian Communist troops in Corap’s Ninth Army at the Meuse. The very workingmen who had most to lose by the fall of the Republic and the establishment of a Fascist France, helped bring about their own downfall under the mistaken guidance of Moscow. The treachery to France came from the two opposite poles of French society.

Q. _How did this treason manifest itself in the operations of the army?_

A. I will give you one example, from personal experience and the testimony of French friends. You remember the Germans, when they broke through the Low Countries and across the Meuse, dashed with their Panzer divisions for the coast, pell-mell, at top speed, not bothering or wasting time at first to widen their column of penetration, which was still only a few miles wide for much of its length when the first German detachments reached the sea at Abbeville. North of this thin German column was the strong French Army under General Prioux, while south of it were the main French forces. It was the constant fervid hope of the French that their armies would cut across the German column, roll it up in two directions, and win not merely the battle of France but perhaps the war.

Military experts, foremost our own, thought it possible; some held it probable. This hope reached its climax after Weygand made an inspection flight to the Low Countries and returned to Paris. That day at the Ministry of Information as I was waiting in the office for Colonel Schieffer, in charge of American correspondents, the gaunt, one-eyed, black-monocled, fiercely patriotic Colonel came in with a bang, dropped his customary stillness and exclaimed: “Weygand says he won’t leave a German alive, not one. He’s going to cut the column and bottle them up and he says there won’t be left one living.” Like wildfire the word of Weygand spread through the building, through Paris, through France. It was the only bright moment in the whole Battle of France.

But it did not happen. Why didn’t it? A captain from General Prioux’s staff may have the answer. This is the story he told. “After the Germans reached Abbeville and cut us off from the South, General Prioux called us all together one day and said, ‘I have orders from General Headquarters that you must blow up your tanks and guns and retreat as speedily as possible to the seashore. I must tell you that personally I do not approve these orders. I am convinced we are strong enough to make an offensive southward and cut the Germans and reunite with our troops in France. However, orders are orders and one does not discuss orders. You will do as I have told you and I shall stay here where I am.’

“We did as we were told and Prioux became a prisoner of war. That was our last chance. The failure to cut the German column was the end of the Battle of France. We could have done it; we were ordered not to.”

Counterattack, always we waited for the famous French counterattack, the fulfillment of the French Army tradition of aggression, _à la baionette!_ but it never came. Orders stopped it.

Q. _Who gave the orders? Pétain was not an active officer then._

A. No, but General George was. I want to give you my evidence in the form of a firsthand quotation from a French friend, but before I do so it is important to point out that between General Gamelin, commander in chief of all the Allied land forces, and General George, commander of the French armies fighting against Germany, there existed a jealousy so strong that it amounted to hatred, and their headquarters staffs became so permeated with it that they actually withheld information from each other.

Here then, were the principal elements and forces involved in the 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.

The Cagoulard movement, although it had started in the Deuxième Bureau, soon succeeded through the interlinking relationships of high officers, some of whom supported its activities, in putting out tentacles into the first and third bureaus of the army as well--those concerned respectively with direction of operations and supplies--in other words the two departments which in June were responsible respectively for the orders to retreat and for the failure of the front-line troops to receive ammunition and aid from the aviation.

It may be noted also that several of these high officers who were sympathetic to the Cagoulard movement were in particularly close contact with Marshal Pétain who had his own devoted followers in the army, just as all other first-rank military leaders, like Gamelin and Weygand, had also, whether they were on the active list or retired.

All this may seem incredible. It is difficult to believe that French officers of high rank should have acted in the interests of Germany during the war, thus contributing to bring about their country’s downfall. Even though the Cagoulards, an emanation of the Deuxième Bureau, may have maintained contact with the Germans several years before the war; even if unsuccessful newspapermen like Gaxotte may have made up for deficits by accepting subsidies from the Nazis, it still seems fantastic that the military leaders of France, whose patriotism no one has ever doubted, should have acted as traitors in time of war. It seems to be a moral impossibility.

The explanation is simple. Neither the Cagoulards, nor the editors of _Je Suis Partout_, nor the French officers who were in relations with them, ever believed at any moment that they were traitors. If history sets them down as having betrayed France, the verdict will be incomprehensible to them. They believed themselves to be patriots. It is our privilege, if we wish, to see them rather as pitiful victims of German Propaganda.

What happened was this: Long before the war, the Nazi secret service realized that both the Cagoulards and the staff of _Je Suis Partout_ were worth cultivating because of their connections with members of the French General Staff, and with officers of influence close to such leaders as Pétain, among others.

Friendly relations were established, and the Germans hammered away with arguments like these:

“You Frenchmen consider that we Germans are your hereditary enemies. There’s no reason why you should think so. Our two peoples should be able to live and work side by side without friction. It’s true we’ve had trouble in the past, but why? Because England, who can only maintain her influence on the continent if the continental nations are divided, has constantly stirred us up against each other.

“Besides that, we have not fought against the real France. Our wars were against the French Republic. For 150 years that regime has usurped the place of the real France. In 1789 the English provoked the French Revolution to weaken your nation, and since then your people seem to have forgotten its great destiny.

“The Revolution of France started in the lodges of Freemasonry, which were implanted in your country by England. The Freemasons operated with English and Jewish help; for the last 150 years, you have been under the control of the same powers. For the last twenty years these powers have been cooperating with international Communism and thus have brought another danger into your country.

“Wake up! Denounce the English alliance, expel the Jews from important positions, suppress Freemasonry, as we have done in Germany. The danger of Communism will be over, and there will be no obstacle to a happy and peaceful understanding between France and Germany.”

This bait was eagerly taken. It made no difference that this account was inaccurate, and might easily have been refuted. It was the sort of thing that right-wing Frenchmen of anti-Republican and antidemocratic leanings were ready to hear, and it provided a moral basis for cooperation between them and the Germans. Supplied with a patriotic motive for destroying their domestic political opponents, convinced that in so doing they would not open the way to the hereditary enemy but on the contrary make him a friend, these Frenchmen no longer had any scruples about accepting subsidies for the arming of the Cagoulards and the publication of _Je Suis Partout_ from an ally in the common cause of continental peace and friendship.

The Germans had found the ideal sophism with which to gain friends within the French Army. They realized, of course, that they could not hope to influence a majority of General Staff officers, but they knew also that an active minority, so convinced it is right that it is willing to use any methods to achieve its aims, can arrive at its objectives at decisive moments by obstructing the course of action decided upon by the majority. And among the officers whom German propaganda had reached were many so placed that they could easily block the complicated intermeshing gears of the army machine at the critical juncture.