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.