Word: laval
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...Willing Men. The point missed by most critics, says Langer, is that Vichy was not simply Pétain, Darlan and Laval. They got the headlines, but "at all times [were] more than counterbalanced" by other Vichyites, mostly nameless, who were loyal Frenchmen at the least, and at most, zealously pro-Ally. Example: as early as spring 1941 the Deuxième Bureau (intelligence service) secretly agreed to send military reports to the U.S. Army in Washington, right under Vichy Ambassador Henry-Haye's nose. According to U.S. diplomats at Vichy, French officialdom was 85% on the Allied side...
...been even longer since the Davis Cup matches which established Borotra as one of tennis' all-time greats. In the interim, Borotra had been Minister of Sports for the Vichy government. Fortunately for him, he had been charged with working for the Resistance and fired by Laval in 1942, was in a German prison when France was liberated...
...early in 1940, of Sir Samuel Hoare as British Ambassador to Franco Spain evoked cries of protest not only from Liberal Englishmen, but from many Americans as well. With a long record of innocuous service in various Cabinet posts, and with the memory of his Italy-appeasing agreement with Laval in 1935 still rankling in the national breast, Hoare was denounced by many as too half-hearted and vacillating for the straight talking, firm-handed brand of diplomacy required in the Spanish mission...
...Last of the Hardys. As "L'Affaire 'Ardy" wore on, public sympathy swung heavily to Hardy's side. Paris' stuffy Court of Assizes (where Pétain and Laval had been tried) was crammed with veterans of the Resistance-and with their memories. Said one René Hardouin, owner of a coffee stall at a Paris railway station, who had sabotaged railroads under Hardy: "I don't know whether he denounced anyone. When they torture you, you give away anything, after a time. But Hardy is a hero, anyway." At the end of the trial...
...appalling," grumbled H. G. Wells, "that this blinkered, pleasant, gossipy, gullible snob," Sir Samuel Hoare should be named British Ambassador to Spain. Wells was not the only one to wince. The nauseous memory of the Hoare-Laval Deal to appease Mussolini (1935) was still fresh. That of the Hitler-sweetening at Munich was even fresher. In 1940 Britain needed someone to talk straight, not sweet, to Spain's Franco. Sir Samuel hardly seemed the man. He had passed "from experience to experience, like Boccaccio's virgin," said a wag, "without discernible effect upon his condition...