10

The Bordeaux Armistice

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.

WE 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.

When the War Cabinet met the next morning, we first addressed ourselves to the answer to be given to M. Reynaud’s request sent the night before for the formal release of France from her obligations under the Anglo-French Agreement. The Cabinet authorised the following reply, which at their request I went into the next room and drafted myself. It was despatched from London at 12.35 P.M. on the 16th. It endorsed and repeated in a formal manner the telephoned instructions sent to Campbell early in the morning.

Foreign Office to Sir R. Campbell.

Please give M. Reynaud the following message, which has been approved by the Cabinet:

Mr. Churchill to M. Reynaud.

16 June, 1940, 12.35 P.M.

Our agreement forbidding separate negotiations, whether for armistice or peace, was made with the French Republic, and not with any particular French administration or statesman. It therefore involves the honour of France. Nevertheless, provided, but only provided, that the French Fleet is sailed forthwith for British harbours pending negotiations, His Majesty’s Government give their full consent to an inquiry by the French Government to ascertain the terms of an armistice for France. His Majesty’s Government, being resolved to continue the war, wholly exclude themselves from all part in the above-mentioned inquiry concerning an armistice.

Early in the afternoon a second message in similar terms was sent by the Foreign Office to Sir Ronald Campbell (June 16, 3.10 P.M.).

Both messages were stiff, and embodied the main purpose of the War Cabinet at their morning meeting.

Foreign Office to Sir R. Campbell.

You should inform M. Reynaud as follows:

We expect to be consulted as soon as any armistice terms are received. This is necessary not merely in virtue of Treaty forbidding separate peace or armistice, but also in view of vital consequences of any armistice to ourselves, having regard especially to the fact that British troops are fighting with French Army. You should impress on French Government that in stipulating for removal of French Fleet to British ports we have in mind French interests as well as our own, and are convinced that it will strengthen the hands of the French Government in any armistice discussions if they can show that the French Navy is out of reach of the German forces. As regards the French Air Force, we assume that every effort will be made to fly it to North Africa, unless indeed the French Government would prefer to send it to this country.

We count on the French Government doing all they can both before and during any armistice discussions to extricate the Polish, Belgian, and Czech troops at present in France, and to send them to North Africa. Arrangements are being made to receive Polish and Belgian Governments in this country.

* * * * *

We reassembled at three o’clock that same afternoon. I recalled to the Cabinet that at the conclusion of our meeting the day before there had been some discussion on a proposal for the issue of some further declaration of closer union between France and Great Britain. I had seen General de Gaulle in the morning, and he had impressed on me that some dramatic move was essential to give M. Reynaud the support which he needed to keep his Government in the war, and suggested that a proclamation of the indissoluble union of the French and British peoples would serve the purpose. Both General de Gaulle and M. Corbin had been concerned at the sharpness of the decision reached by the War Cabinet that morning, and embodied in the telegrams already despatched. I had heard that a new declaration had been drafted for consideration, and that General de Gaulle had telephoned to M. Reynaud. As a result it had seemed advisable to suspend action for the moment. A telegram had therefore been sent to Sir Ronald Campbell instructing him to suspend delivery accordingly.

The Foreign Secretary then said that after our morning meeting he had seen Sir Robert Vansittart, whom he had previously asked to draft some dramatic announcement which might strengthen M. Reynaud’s hand. Vansittart had been in consultation with General de Gaulle, M. Monnet, M. Pleven, and Major Morton. Between them they had drafted a proclamation. General de Gaulle had impressed upon them the need for publishing the document as quickly as possible, and wished to take the draft back with him to France that night. De Gaulle had also suggested that I should go to meet M. Reynaud next day.

The draft statement was passed round, and everyone read it with deep attention. All the difficulties were immediately apparent, but in the end a Declaration of Union seemed to command general assent. I stated that my first instinct had been against the idea, but that in this crisis we must not let ourselves be accused of lack of imagination. Some dramatic announcement was clearly necessary to keep the French going. The proposal could not be lightly turned aside, and I was encouraged at finding so great a body of opinion in the War Cabinet favourable to it.

At 3.55 P.M. we were told that the French Council of Ministers would meet at five to decide whether further resistance was possible. Secondly, General de Gaulle had been informed by M. Reynaud on the telephone that if a favourable answer on the proposed proclamation of unity was received by five o’clock, M. Reynaud felt he could hold the position. On this the War Cabinet approved the final draft proclamation of an Anglo-French Union, and authorised its despatch to M. Reynaud by the hand of General de Gaulle. This was telephoned to M. Reynaud forthwith. The War Cabinet further invited me, Mr. Attlee, and Sir Archibald Sinclair, representing the three British parties, to meet M. Reynaud at the earliest moment to discuss the draft proclamation and related questions.

Here is the final draft:

DECLARATION OF UNION

At this most fateful moment in the history of the modern world, the Governments of the United Kingdom and the French Republic make this declaration of indissoluble union and unyielding resolution in their common defence of justice and freedom against subjection to a system which reduces mankind to a life of robots and slaves.

The two Governments declare that France and Great Britain shall no longer be two nations, but one Franco-British Union.

The constitution of the Union will provide for joint organs of defence, foreign, financial, and economic policies.

Every citizen of France will enjoy immediately citizenship of Great Britain; every British subject will become a citizen of France.

Both countries will share responsibility for the repair of the devastation of war, wherever it occurs in their territories, and the resources of both shall be equally, and as one, applied to that purpose.

During the war there shall be a single War Cabinet, and all the forces of Britain and France, whether on land, sea, or in the air, will be placed under its direction. It will govern from wherever it best can. The two Parliaments will be formally associated. The Nations of the British Empire are already forming new armies. France will keep her available forces in the field, on the sea, and in the air. The Union appeals to the United States to fortify the economic resources of the Allies, and to bring her powerful material aid to the common cause.

The Union will concentrate its whole energy against the power of the enemy, no matter where the battle may be.

And thus we shall conquer.

Of all this Parliament was informed in due course. But the issue by then had ceased to count.

I did not, as has been seen, draft the statement myself. It was composed around the table, and I made my contribution to it. I then took it into the next room, where de Gaulle was waiting with Vansittart, Desmond Morton, and M. Corbin. The General read it with an air of unwonted enthusiasm, and, as soon as contact with Bordeaux could be obtained, began to telephone it to M. Reynaud. He hoped with us that this solemn pledge of union and brotherhood between the two nations and empires would give the struggling French Premier the means to carry his Government to Africa with all possible forces and order the French Navy to sail for harbours outside impending German control.

* * * * *

We must now pass to the other end of the wire. The British Ambassador delivered the two messages in answer to the French request to be released from their obligation of March 28. According to his account, M. Reynaud, who was in a dejected mood, did not take them well. He at once remarked that the withdrawal of the French Mediterranean Fleet to British ports would invite the immediate seizure of Tunis by Italy, and also create difficulties for the British Fleet. He had got no further than this when my message, telephoned by General de Gaulle, came through. “It acted,” said the Ambassador, “like a tonic.” Reynaud said that for a document like that he would fight to the last. In came at that moment M. Mandel and M. Marin. They obviously were equally relieved. M. Reynaud then left “with a light step” to read the document to the President of the Republic. He believed that, armed with this immense guarantee, he would be able to carry his Council with him on the policy of retiring to Africa and waging war. My telegram instructing the Ambassador to delay the presentation of the two stiff messages, or anyhow to suspend action upon them, arrived immediately after the Premier had gone. A messenger was therefore sent after him to say that the two earlier messages should be considered as “cancelled.” “Suspended” would have been a better word. The War Cabinet had not altered its position in any respect. We felt, however, that it would be better to give the Declaration of Union its full chance under the most favourable conditions. If the French Council of Ministers were rallied by it, the greater would carry the less, and the removal of the Fleet from German power would follow automatically. If our offer did not find favour, our rights and claims would revive in their full force. We could not tell what was going on inside the French Government, nor know that this was the last time we should ever be able to deal with M. Reynaud.

I had spoken to him on the telephone some time this day proposing that I should come out immediately to see him. In view of the uncertainty about what was happening or about to happen at Bordeaux, my colleagues in the War Cabinet wished me to go in a cruiser, and a rendezvous was duly arranged for the next day off the Brittany coast. I ought to have flown. But even so it would have been too late.

The following was sent from the Foreign Office:

To Sir R. Campbell, Bordeaux.

June 16, 6.45 P.M.

The P.M., accompanied by the Lord Privy Seal, Secretary of State for Air, and three Chiefs of Staff and certain others, arrive at Concarneau at 12 noon tomorrow, the 17th, in a cruiser for a meeting with M. Reynaud. General de Gaulle has been informed of the above and has expressed the view that time and rendezvous would be convenient. We suggest the meeting be held on board as arousing less attention. H.M.S. Berkeley has been warned to be at the disposal of M. Reynaud and party if desired.

And also from the Foreign Secretary by telephone at 8 P.M., June 16:

Following is reason why you have been asked to suspend action on my last two telegrams.

After consultation with General de Gaulle, P.M. has decided to meet M. Reynaud tomorrow in Brittany to make a further attempt to dissuade the French Government from asking for an armistice. For this purpose, on the advice of General de Gaulle, he will offer to M. Reynaud to join in issuing forthwith a declaration announcing immediate constitution of closest Anglo-French Union in all spheres in order to carry on the war. Text of draft declaration as authorised by H.M.G. is contained in my immediately following telegram. You should read this text to M. Reynaud at once.

An outline of this proposed declaration has already been telephoned by General de Gaulle to M. Reynaud, who has replied that such a declaration by the two Governments would make all the difference to the decision of the French Government. General is returning tonight with copy.

Our War Cabinet sat until six o’clock on the 16th, and thereafter I set out on my mission. I took with me the leaders of the Labour and Liberal Parties, the three Chiefs of Staff, and various important officers and officials. A special train was waiting at Waterloo. We could reach Southampton in two hours, and a night of steaming at thirty knots in the cruiser would bring us to the rendezvous by noon on the 17th. We had taken our seats in the train. My wife had come to see me off. There was an odd delay in starting. Evidently some hitch had occurred. Presently my private secretary arrived from Downing Street breathless with the following message from Campbell at Bordeaux:

Ministerial crisis has opened…. Hope to have news by midnight. Meanwhile meeting arranged for tomorrow impossible.

On this I returned to Downing Street with a heavy heart.

* * * * *

The final scene in the Reynaud Cabinet was as follows.

The hopes which M. Reynaud had founded upon the Declaration of Union were soon dispelled. Rarely has so generous a proposal encountered such a hostile reception. The Premier read the document twice to the Council. He declared himself strongly for it, and added that he was arranging a meeting with me for the next day to discuss the details. But the agitated Ministers, some famous, some nobodies, torn by division and under the terrible hammer of defeat, were staggered. Some, we are told, had heard about it by a tapping of telephones. These were the defeatists. Most were wholly unprepared to receive such far-reaching themes. The overwhelming feeling of the Council was to reject the whole plan. Surprise and mistrust dominated the majority, and even the most friendly and resolute were baffled. The Council had met expecting to receive the answer to the French request, on which they had all agreed, that Britain should release France from her obligations of March 28, in order that the French might ask the Germans what their terms of armistice would be. It is possible, even probable, that if our formal answer had been laid before them, the majority would have accepted our primary condition about sending their Fleet to Britain, or at least would have made some other suitable proposal and thus have freed them to open negotiations with the enemy, while reserving to themselves a final option of retirement to Africa if the German conditions were too severe. But now there was a classic example of “Order, counter-order, disorder.”

Paul Reynaud was quite unable to overcome the unfavourable impression which the proposal of Anglo-French Union created. The defeatist section, led by Marshal Pétain, refused even to examine it. Violent charges were made. “It was a last-minute plan,” “a surprise,” “a scheme to put France in tutelage, or to carry off her colonial empire.” It relegated France, so they said, to the position of a Dominion. Others complained that not even equality of status was offered to the French, because Frenchmen were to receive only the citizenship of the British Empire instead of that of Great Britain, while the British were to be citizens of France. This suggestion is contradicted by the text.

Beyond these came other arguments. Weygand had convinced Pétain without much difficulty that England was lost. High French military authorities – perhaps Weygand himself – had advised: “In three weeks England will have her neck wrung like a chicken.” To make a union with Great Britain was, according to Pétain, “fusion with a corpse.” Ybarnegaray, who had been so stout in the previous war, exclaimed: “Better be a Nazi province. At least we know what that means.” Senator Reibel, a personal friend of General Weygand’s, declared that this scheme meant complete destruction for France, and anyhow definite subordination to England. In vain did Reynaud reply: “I prefer to collaborate with my allies rather than with my enemies.” And Mandel: “Would you rather be a German district than a British Dominion?” But all was in vain.

We are assured that Reynaud’s statement of our proposal was never put to a vote in the Council. It collapsed of itself. This was a personal and fatal reverse for the struggling Premier which marked the end of his influence and authority upon the Council. All further discussion turned upon the armistice, and asking the Germans what terms they would give, and in this M. Chautemps was cool and steadfast. Our two telegrams about the Fleet were never presented to the Council. The demand that it should be sailed to British ports as a prelude to the negotiations with the Germans was never considered by the Reynaud Cabinet, which was now in complete decomposition. Here again there was no vote. At about eight o’clock Reynaud, utterly exhausted by the physical and mental strain to which he had for so many days been subjected, sent his resignation to the President, and advised him to send for Marshal Pétain. This action must be judged precipitate. He still seems to have cherished the hope that he could keep his rendezvous with me the next day, and spoke of this to General Spears. “Tomorrow there will be another Government, and you will no longer speak for anyone,” said Spears.

According to Campbell (sent by telephone, June 16):

M. Reynaud, who had been so heartened this afternoon by P.M.’s magnificent message, told us later that forces in favour of ascertaining terms of armistice had become too strong for him. He had read the message twice to Council of Ministers and explained its import and the hope which it held out for the future. It had been of no avail.

We worked on him for half an hour, encouraging him to try to get rid of the evil influences among his colleagues. After seeing M. Mandel for a moment we then called for second time today on the President of Senate, M. Jeanneney, whose views (like those of President of Chamber) are sound, in hope of his being able to influence President of Republic to insist on M. Reynaud forming new Government.

We begged him to make it very clear to President that offer contained in P.M.’s message would not be extended to a Government which entered into negotiation with enemy.

An hour or so later M. Reynaud informed us that he was beaten and had handed in his resignation. Combination of Marshal Pétain and General Weygand (who were living in another world and imagined they could sit round a green table discussing armistice terms in the old manner) had proved too much for weak members of Government, on whom they worked by waving the spectre of revolution.

* * * * *

On the afternoon of June 16, M. Monnet and General de Gaulle visited me in the Cabinet Room. The General in his capacity of Under-Secretary of State for National Defence had just ordered the French ship Pasteur, which was carrying weapons to Bordeaux from America, to proceed instead to a British port. Monnet was very active upon a plan to transfer all French contracts for munitions in America to Britain if France made a separate peace. He evidently expected this, and wished to save as much as possible from what seemed to him to be the wreck of the world. His whole attitude in this respect was most helpful. Then he turned to our sending all our remaining fighter air squadrons to share in the final battle in France, which was of course already over. I told him that there was no possibility of this being done. Even at this stage he used the usual arguments – “the decisive battle,” “now or never,” “if France falls, all falls,” and so forth. But I could not do anything to oblige him in this field. My two French visitors then got up and moved towards the door, Monnet leading. As they reached it, de Gaulle, who had hitherto scarcely uttered a single word, turned back, and, taking two or three paces towards me, said in English: “I think you are quite right.” Under an impassive, imperturbable demeanour he seemed to me to have a remarkable capacity for feeling pain. I preserved the impression, in contact with this very tall, phlegmatic man, “Here is the Constable of France.” He returned that afternoon in a British aeroplane, which I had placed at his disposal, to Bordeaux. But not for long.

* * * * *

Forthwith Marshal Pétain formed a French Government with the main purpose of seeking an immediate armistice from Germany. Late on the night of June 16, the defeatist group of which he was the head was already so shaped and knit together that the process did not take long. M. Chautemps (“to ask for terms is not necessarily to accept them”) was Vice-President of the Council. General Weygand, whose view was that all was over, held the Ministry of Defence. Admiral Darlan was Minister of Marine, and M. Baudouin Minister for Foreign Affairs.

The only hitch apparently arose over M. Laval. The Marshal’s first thought had been to offer him the post of Minister of Justice. Laval brushed this aside with disdain. He demanded the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, from which position alone he conceived it possible to carry out his plan of reversing the alliances of France, finishing up England, and joining as a minor partner the New Nazi Europe. Marshal Pétain surrendered at once to the vehemence of this formidable personality. M. Baudouin, who had already undertaken the Foreign Office, for which he knew himself to be utterly inadequate, was quite ready to give it up. But when he mentioned the fact to M. Charles-Roux, Permanent Under-Secretary to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the latter was indignant. He enlisted the support of Weygand. When Weygand entered the room and addressed the illustrious Marshal, Laval became so furious that both the military chiefs were overwhelmed. The General fled and the Marshal submitted. The permanent official, however, stood firm. He refused point-blank to serve under Laval. Confronted with this, the Marshal again subsided, and after a violent scene Laval departed in wrath and dudgeon.

This was a critical moment. When four months later, on October 28, Laval eventually became Foreign Minister, there was a new consciousness of military values. British resistance to Germany was by then a factor. Apparently the island could not be entirely discounted. Anyhow, its neck had not been “wrung like a chicken’s in three weeks.” This was a new fact; and a fact at which the whole French nation rejoiced.

* * * * *

Our telegram of the 16th had made our assent to inquiries about an armistice conditional upon the sailing of the French Fleet to British harbours. It had already been presented formally to Marshal Pétain. The War Cabinet approved, at my suggestion, a further message emphasising the point. But we were talking to the void.

On the 17th also I sent a personal message to Marshal Pétain and General Weygand, of which copies were to be furnished by our Ambassador to the French President and Admiral Darlan:

I wish to repeat to you my profound conviction that the illustrious Marshal Pétain and the famous General Weygand, our comrades in two great wars against the Germans, will not injure their ally by delivering over to the enemy the fine French Fleet. Such an act would scarify their names for a thousand years of history. Yet this result may easily come by frittering away these few precious hours when the Fleet can be sailed to safety in British or American ports, carrying with it the hope of the future and the honour of France.

In order that these appeals might not lack personal reinforcement on the spot, we sent the First Sea Lord, who believed himself to be in intimate personal and professional touch with Admiral Darlan, the First Lord, Mr. A. V. Alexander, and Lord Lloyd, Secretary of State for the Colonies, so long known as a friend of France. All these three laboured to make what contacts they could with the new Ministers during the 19th. They received many solemn assurances that the Fleet would never be allowed to fall into German hands. But no more French warships moved beyond the reach of the swiftly approaching German power.

* * * * *

At the desire of the Cabinet I had broadcast the following statement on the evening of June 17:

The news from France is very bad, and I grieve for the gallant French people who have fallen into this terrible misfortune. Nothing will alter our feelings towards them or our faith that the genius of France will rise again. What has happened in France makes no difference to our actions and purpose. We have become the sole champions now in arms to defend the world cause. We shall do our best to be worthy of this high honour. We shall defend our island home, and with the British Empire we shall fight on unconquerable until the curse of Hitler is lifted from the brows of mankind. We are sure that in the end all will come right.

* * * * *

On the morning of the 17th, I mentioned to my colleagues in the Cabinet a telephone conversation which I had had during the night with General Spears, who said he did not think he could perform any useful service in the new structure at Bordeaux. He spoke with some anxiety about the safety of General de Gaulle. Spears had apparently been warned that as things were shaping it might be well for de Gaulle to leave France. I readily assented to a good plan being made for this. So that very morning – the 17th – de Gaulle went to his office in Bordeaux, made a number of engagements for the afternoon as a blind, and then drove to the airfield with his friend Spears to see him off. They shook hands and said good-bye, and as the plane began to move, de Gaulle stepped in and slammed the door. The machine soared off into the air, while the French police and officials gaped. De Gaulle carried with him, in this small aeroplane, the honour of France.

That same evening he made his memorable broadcast to the French people. One passage should be quoted here:

France is not alone. She has a vast Empire behind her. She can unite with the British Empire, which holds the seas, and is continuing the struggle. She can utilise to the full, as England is doing, the vast industrial resources of the United States.

Other Frenchmen who wished to fight on were not so fortunate. When the Pétain Government was formed, the plan of going to Africa to set up a centre of power outside German control was still open. It was discussed at a meeting of the Pétain Cabinet on June 18. The same evening President Lebrun, Pétain, and the Presidents of the Senate and the Chamber met together. There seems to have been general agreement at least to send a representative body to North Africa. Even the Marshal was not hostile. He himself intended to stay, but saw no reason why Chautemps, Vice-President of the Council, should not go and act in his name. When rumours of an impending exodus ran round agitated Bordeaux, Weygand was hostile. Such a move, he thought, would wreck the “honourable” armistice negotiations which had already been begun by way of Madrid, on French initiative, on June 17. Laval was deeply alarmed. He feared that the setting-up of an effective resistance administration outside France would frustrate the policy on which he was resolved. Weygand and Laval set to work on the clusters of Deputies and Senators crowded into Bordeaux.

Darlan, as Minister of Marine, took a different view. To pack off all the principal critics of his conduct in a ship seemed at the moment to him a most convenient solution of many difficulties. Once aboard, all those who went would be in his power, and there would be plenty of time for the Government to settle what to do. With the approval of the new Cabinet, he offered passages on the armed auxiliary cruiser Massilia to all political figures of influence who wished to go to Africa. The ship was to sail from the mouth of the Gironde on the 20th. Many, however, who had planned to go to Africa, including Jeanneney and Herriot, suspected a trap, and preferred to travel overland through Spain. The final party, apart from refugees, consisted of twenty-four Deputies and one Senator, and included Mandel, Campinchi, and Daladier, who had all been actively pressing for the move to Africa. On the afternoon of the 21st, the Massilia sailed. On the 23d, the ship’s radio announced that the Pétain Government had accepted and signed the armistice with Germany. Campinchi immediately tried to persuade the captain to set his course for England, but this officer no doubt had his instructions and met his former political chief of two days before with a bleak refusal. The unlucky band of patriots passed anxious hours till on the evening of June 24 the Massilia anchored at Casablanca.

Mandel now acted with his usual decision. He had with Daladier drafted a proclamation setting up a resistance administration in North Africa with himself as Premier. He went on shore, and, after calling on the British Consul, established himself at the Hôtel Excelsior. He then attempted to send his proclamation out through the Havas Agency. When General Noguès read its text, he was disturbed. He intercepted the message, and it was telegraphed not to the world but to Darlan and Pétain. They had now made up their minds to have no alternative and potentially rival Government outside German power. Mandel was arrested at his hotel and brought before the local court, but the magistrate, afterwards dismissed by Vichy, declared there was no case against him and set him free. He was, however, by the orders of Governor-General Noguès rearrested and put back on the Massilia, which henceforth was detained in the harbour under strict control without its passengers having any communication with the shore.

Without, of course, knowing any of the facts here set forth, I was already concerned about the fate of Frenchmen who wished to fight on.

Prime Minister to General Ismay.

24.VI.40.

It seems most important to establish now before the trap closes an organisation for enabling French officers and soldiers, as well as important technicians, who wish to fight, to make their way to various ports. A sort of “underground railway” as in the olden days of slavery should be established and a Scarlet Pimpernel organisation set up. I have no doubt there will be a steady flow of determined men, and we need all we can get for the defence of the French colonies. The Admiralty and Air Force must co-operate. General de Gaulle and his Committee would, of course, be the operative authority.

At our meeting of the War Cabinet late at night on June 25, we heard among other things that a ship with a large number of prominent French politicians on board had passed Rabat. We decided to establish contact with them at once. Mr. Duff Cooper, the Minister of Information, accompanied by Lord Gort, started for Rabat at dawn in a Sunderland flying-boat. They found the town in mourning. Flags were flying at half-mast, church bells were tolling, and a solemn service was taking place in the cathedral to bewail the defeat of France. All their attempts to get in touch with Mandel were prevented. The Deputy Governor, named Morice, declared, not only on the telephone, but in a personal interview which Duff Cooper demanded, that he had no choice but to obey the orders of his superiors. “If General Noguès tells me to shoot myself, I will gladly obey. Unfortunately, the orders he has given me are more cruel.” The former French Ministers and Deputies were in fact to be treated as escaped prisoners. Our mission had no choice but to return the way they came. A few days later (July 1) I gave instructions to the Admiralty to try to cut out the Massilia and rescue those on board. No plan could, however, be made, and for nearly three weeks she lay under the batteries of Casablanca, after which the whole party were brought back to France and disposed of as the Vichy Government thought convenient to themselves and agreeable to their German masters. Mandel began his long and painful internment which ended in his murder by German orders at the end of 1944. Thus perished the hope of setting up a strong representative French Government, either in Africa or in London.

* * * * *

Although vain, the process of trying to imagine what would have happened if some important event or decision had been different is often tempting and sometimes instructive. The manner of the fall of France was decided on June 16 by a dozen chances, each measured by a hair’s-breadth. If Paul Reynaud had survived the 16th, I should have been with him at noon on the 17th, accompanied by the most powerful delegation that has ever left our shores, armed with plenary powers in the name of the British nation. Certainly we should have confronted Pétain, Weygand, Chautemps, and the rest with our blunt proposition: “No release from the obligation of March 28 unless the French Fleet is sailed to British ports. On the other hand, we offer an indissoluble Anglo-French Union. Go to Africa and let us fight it out together.” Surely we should have been aided by the President of the Republic, by the Presidents of the two French Chambers, and by all that resolute band who gathered behind Reynaud, Mandel, and de Gaulle. It seems to me probable that we should have uplifted and converted the defeatists round the table, or left them in a minority or even under arrest.

But let us pursue this ghostly speculation further. The French Government would have retired to North Africa. The Anglo-French Super-State or Working Committee, to which it would probably in practice have reduced itself, would have faced Hitler. The British and French Fleets from their harbours would have enjoyed complete mastery of the Mediterranean, and free passage through it for all troops and supplies. Whatever British air force could be spared from the defence of Britain, and what was left of the French air force, nourished by American production and based on the French North African airfields, would soon have become an offensive factor of the first importance. Malta, instead of being for so long a care and peril, would at once have taken its place as our most active naval base. Italy could have been attacked with heavy bombing from Africa far easier than from England. Her communications with the Italian armies in Libya and Tripolitania would have been effectively severed. Using no more fighter aircraft than we actually employed in the defence of Egypt and sending to the Mediterranean theatre no more troops than we actually sent, or held ready to send, we might well, with the remains of the French Army, have transferred the war from the East to the Central Mediterranean, and during 1941 the entire North African shore might have been cleared of Italian forces.

France would never have ceased to be one of the principal belligerent allies and would have been spared the fearful schism which rent and still rends her people. Her homeland no doubt would have lain prostrate under the German rule, but that was only what actually happened after the Anglo-American descent in November, 1942.

Now that the whole story is before us, no one can doubt that the armistice did not spare France a pang.

It is still more shadowy to guess what Hitler would have done. Would he have forced his way through Spain, with or without Spanish agreement, and, after assaulting and perhaps capturing Gibraltar, have invaded Tangier and Morocco? This was an area which deeply concerned the United States, and was ever prominent in President Roosevelt’s mind. How could Hitler have made this major attack through Spain on Africa and yet fight the Battle of Britain? He would have had to choose. If he chose Africa, we, with the command of the sea and the French bases, could have moved both troops and air forces into Morocco and Algeria quicker than he, and in greater strength. We should certainly have welcomed in the autumn and winter of 1940 a vehement campaign in or from a friendly French Northwest Africa.

Surveying the whole scene in the afterlight, it seems unlikely that Hitler’s main decision and the major events of the war, namely, the Battle of Britain and the German surge to the East, would have been changed by the retirement of the French Government to North Africa. After the fall of Paris, when Hitler danced his jig of joy, he naturally dealt with very large propositions. Once France was prostrate, he must if possible conquer or destroy Great Britain. His only other choice was Russia. A major operation through Spain into Northwest Africa would have prejudiced both these tremendous adventures, or at least have prevented his attack on the Balkans. I have no doubt that it would have been better for all the Allies if the French Government had gone to North Africa. And that this would have remained true whether Hitler followed them and us thither or not.

One day when I was convalescing at Marrakech in January, 1944, General Georges came to luncheon. In the course of casual conversation I aired the fancy that perhaps the French Government’s failure to go to Africa in June, 1940, had all turned out for the best. At the Pétain trial in August, 1945, the General thought it right to state this in evidence. I make no complaint, but my hypothetical speculation on this occasion does not represent my considered opinion either during the war or now.