Word: gamelin
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Last week, no longer protected by the shadow of the once-great Code Napoléon, Blum and Daladier were en route to Germany. Paul Reynaud, Georges Mandel and General Gustave Gamelin had already joined General Maxime Weygand in Berlin, where a German "people's court"* awaited them...
...also as an ideal point of departure for an invasion of Germany. Amateur strategists pointed out that France's possession of the escarpments of Alsace-Lorraine, jutting east toward Germany, made her invasion chances vastly superior to those of 1914. The democratic world waited for General Maurice Gamelin to start. Few detected any symbolic menace in the frivolities of Paris, continuing despite blackout and mobilization. The city's latest dither was occasioned by an attempt by the couturier Mainbocher* to bring back the Victorian wasp-waisted corset, as ill-adapted to modern habits as was the French High...
Onetime Generalissimo Maurice Gustave Gamelin broke his self-imposed silence to testify that France had had more trained officers than Germany. His statement was virtually the only one during the week which indicated that France had been in any way prepared for war. Onetime Premier Edouard Daladier countered with a quotation from a preface to a book, published in 1939, entitled Is an Invasion Still Possible? The preface was written by Marshal Pétain...
...Dishonor. In a quavering voice General Gamelin read a declaration which implied that several times he had tried to resign in protest against the lack of war material. Having sacrificed himself, he could not bring dishonor on the Army by giving further testimony. It was obvious that General Gamelin's defense would be that no responsibility could be attached to him for "a regime which has disappeared...
...eloquent and intellectually keen as any in his long career. The raw edges of his mustache waved like flags as he charged that "the best-armed army in the world will go under if the commanders don't know how to inspire the will to fight." With Gamelin mute, said he, the onus of war guilt was on political leaders, and, if so, where were the still-imprisoned ex-Premier Paul Reynaud and ex-Minister of the Interior Georges Mandel...