Word: laval
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...when Marshal Henri Philippe Pétain, Vichy Chief of State, failed to make a scheduled broadcast. That caused a spate of reports, some buttressed by "informed circles" in France, all adding up to the suggestion that Marshal Pétain was fed up with Nazi Puppet Pierre Laval, and anxious to set himself aright with anti-Nazi Frenchmen and the Allies. Finally, a Geneva newspaper published the text of the speech Pétain never made-a document purporting to promulgate a return to democratic government. At week's end, an aurora borealis of rumors flamed from Vichy...
...idea was to replace Laval by a gang of former politicians who would [privately] assure the Germans of their complete loyalty . . . appease public opinion . . . [and] provide a smoother transition should there be a successful U.S. landing. . . . Thus Pétain would no longer be regarded as the man who had wrecked the Republic; he would just have kept it in the twilight because of circumstances until he himself was ready of his own free will to restore democratic institutions...
...people of Vichy poured hysterically into the streets. There were tears, incoherent babblings, demands for details. The announcer had not known that his microphone was open. By personal order of Pierre Laval, he was arrested...
...nations which dominated the League had no will to use them. Those nations were Great Britain and France. European politicians came to believe that the League was no more than an alternate tool of the Franco-British balance of power-a belief that was ignobly confirmed when the Hoare-Laval pact, giving Mussolini a free fist in Ethiopia, put an effective end to the League's lone effort to apply not even military but economic force against an aggressor...
Back when the war was only a threat and appeasement was a strange new word, the name of Sir Samuel Hoare was a Symbol of abasement before fascism. As Britain's Foreign Secretary in 1935, he joined Laval in a deal to throw Ethiopia to Mussolini. As First Lord of the Admiralty in 1937, he helped throttle Republican Spain, thus paving the way for Franco. He applauded Munich loudly. Just before the fall of France he presented his credentials to Francisco Franco, became His Majesty's Ambassador to Spain. In Madrid he gave embryonic Falange salutes and watched...