Word: laval
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Without so much as a diplomatic hesitation, the U.S. told Vichyfrance last week that a spade is a spade. When flabby, sinister Pierre Laval protested to the U.S. Chargé d'Affairs, S. Pinkney Tuck, that the U.S. bombings of Rouen and Havre were "odious aggression," Mr. Tuck did not even pretend to wait for an answer from Washington. Then & there, he told Laval that the U.S. did not aim to kill Frenchmen but all factories in Occupied France operated by or for Germany "would be bombed at every opportunity in the future...
...pleasure of ticking off Laval certainly appealed to elegant S. (for Somerville) Pinkney Tuck. Tall, handsome, with flecks of grey in his sandy hair, "Kippy" Tuck has always liked the social end of diplomacy, was best known for his correct parties, graceful dancing and pleasant, anecdotical conversation...
...another, burping warnings. The German Elite Guards with "new arms" had marched through Paris in "a westerly direction." An invasion of Europe was "bound to have disastrous results for the U.S. and England. It threatens dire calamity to the Anglo-American conduct of the war." In Vichyfrance, Pierre Laval chimed in, proclaimed to Frenchmen that any aid to invaders would be drastically dealt with...
...final chaotic note was supplied by Vichy's sweating, white-tied Pierre Laval. He apparently took the Schutzstaffel seizures as a rebuke to him for failing to recruit the 350,000 French workers whom Hitler wanted in Germany. Pierre Laval had been able to recruit a mere 18,000, including many unskilled French Arabs. Laval was hurt by his German bosses' lack of consideration. By way of characteristically weak-chinned protest he called Vichy's Paris agent, Fernand de Brinon, back to the unhappy...
...under the wear & tear of time. Hitler ages visibly from the bedraggled but hard-driving Chancellor (1933) to the double-chinned, snappish war lord (1941). Bombast and ostentatious health fade from Mussolini's naked dome after the debacle in Greece. From the present's point of view, Laval looks untrustworthy from the start. Irony stalks beside Winston Churchill and Admiral Darlan as they review French sailors together. The tread of marching armies forecasts the kind of fight they will make later on-the Germans, thudding, dour, professional; the Russians, massive, resolute, rough; the Italians, light, out-of-step...