Everyone in the French unoccupied zone either heard this broadcast or heard about it. There was naturally a good deal of guessing as to the name that would be given by the Germans. For my part, I made a bet that no name would ever be given by Stuttgart. My reasoning was this: That there was such a man or men I didn’t doubt for an instant. But I didn’t doubt also that he had not expected the terrible armistice conditions imposed upon France. He had led his country into what he had thought would be a fake defeat on the basis of his confidence in the honesty of the Germans. By then he had discovered that they were not honest, and that it was a real defeat that had been inflicted upon the country. He saw that the Nazis intended to treat the country with all the severity of genuine conquerors, and that he and his friends had been dupes.
I supposed then, that this man had tried to force the Germans to live up to their promises and to treat France as an ally. He would have pointed out that the new Pétain government had turned against England, as had been agreed. And he would have threatened to reveal everything if Germany did not hold to her bargain, thus ending the acceptance of defeat on the part of the French people by letting them know that they had not in fact been militarily defeated.
Germany’s answer was the Stuttgart broadcast. Her French agent had tried to threaten her. She simply returned the blackmail, reminding him forcefully that the Reich no longer cared whether the French people knew how it had been defeated or not, since the Army was disbanded, the strategic points occupied, and the people helpless to resume the fight. He was reminded also what his own position would be if the story came out. He saw that he had to keep silence to save himself, and the Germans, perfectly willing that silence should be kept, never honored their promise to reveal his name.
It was on the basis of this theory that I expected in advance that the Stuttgart radio would not follow up its announcement. Since it did not, I feel justified in assuming that the reasoning which enabled me to arrive at a correct prediction was probably correct itself.
As if to confirm all this, Pétain himself later made a very mild speech in which he timidly asked the Germans whether they intended to accept the new France as a full-fledged partner in the reconstruction of Europe. France’s new rulers have kept all the promises they had given the Germans. They have cut off relationships with England, dissolved the Freemasons, attacked the Jews, delivered up anti-Hitler German refugees, fought the British at Oran, Dakar, and in Syria. They have slavishly obeyed Hitler’s commands and now they are naively surprised because Hitler has not kept his promise to free France and make her independent again. With the true psychology of a dupe they had believed that Hitler might fool others, but never themselves.
That ends the statement of my French friend.
Q. How would you sum up Pétain? Is he a patriot or a traitor, or misguided, or what?
A. He is first of all a very old, too-old man. Only a man who had lost his judgment could surrender his country to Hitler as Hindenburg did and as Pétain did, both under a profound misconception of Hitler. Pétain is intensely religious and identifies Communism with anti-Christ, the only enemy, failing to perceive that the most powerful foe of Christianity to appear on earth since Christ lived is Hitler. It is a mistake to call Pétain a Fascist; he is a medievalist. He believes the principal goal of life is to prepare for the other world, and the man who can do that best is the man whose activity is closest to nature, the peasant, and the man whose mind is not confused by learning, the illiterate peasant. Therefore he wants a France of uneducated, devout peasants; he does not mind at all the plan of Hitler to abolish French industry.
He is a defeatist at heart; the affairs of this earth are not worth fighting for. It is on record that at Verdun he several times wished to surrender. As a defeatist he believes in superior force and can be as ruthless when he is in possession of it as he can be submissive when he has lost it. His suppression of the mutinies in the French Army was notoriously harsh; the statistics of the killed have yet to be published. He accepts the French birth rate as a fact of superior force to which France must bow and his experience of the bloodletting at Verdun reinforced his conviction that France ought not to try to maintain a predominant place in Europe.