Word: laval
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VICHY--Chief of Government Pierre Laval demanded today that Britain release the nine French warships interned at Alexandria since 1940 and warned Britain and the United States that any attack on them might result in "grave consequences...
...should choose its own constitution. One thing certain is that the people will uphold the principles of democracy." With this addendum, General de Gaulle's statement was a strong bid for the Free French movement to be recognized as the custodian of French democratic ambitions. In France, Pierre Laval had just publicly declared what everyone knew: "I hope for German victory." He did not publicly admit, as he has privately, that it was to save his own oily skin, but piously attributed his hope to fear of "universal Bolshevism." Meanwhile Laval was practicing vicious blackmail on the French working...
Adolf Hitler already has some 160,000 French industrial workers in Germany. He wants more, to release still more German workers for the fighting forces. Laval declared that if French workers went to Gen many, French war prisoners would be sent home in exchange. Recruiting stations for workers advertised higher wages in Germany. But Pierre Laval was not depending on volunteers. He was also shutting down French plants not essential to the German war effort, thus pressing French workers into German cities scheduled for bombing by the R.A.F. Frenchmen were thus given the choice of: 1) risking their lives working...
...found a France quite unlike anything he had heard about within Königstein's walls. Marshal Pétain embraced him, then gave him a paper to sign, which among other things pledged him never to take up arms against Germany. General Giraud balked. Then Pierre Laval slyly suggested that the general could do France a mighty service by offering to return to prison in exchange for 400,000 married French war prisoners. General Giraud was amenable until he met Laval's bosses, the Nazi occupation authorities in Paris. Then he blew up, said he would trust...
...Nazis, of course, had the general at their mercy, but the general also held cards. The French people held him close to their hearts; Laval dared not turn him over to the Germans. Finally the Nazis had to content themselves with a promise by the general, who was in poor health anyway, that he would not interfere in Vichy-German affairs. Last week the general was living with his sister in Lyons...