Word: laval
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That evening old Marshal Henri Philippe Pétain held a Cabinet meeting to consider the arrangements Pierre Laval had made. Laval appeared tired and anxious. Everything had been prepared, he explained. Hitler and Ribbentrop would be present at the ceremony in Les Invalides. Marshal Petain, as Chief of State, would also attend, as of course would he, Laval, as Foreign Minister. There would be a French guard of honor, as well as a German one. The ceremony would seal the rapprochement between France and Germany...
...Marshal balked, demanded to know by what authority his Vice Premier had arranged for him to leave unoccupied France. Laval replied that his portfolio of Foreign Affairs gave him authority to deal with Germany, insisted that Petain make the trip. Minister of the Interior Marcel B. Peyrouton, who recently created a Groupe de Protection for the Marshal after the pattern of Hitler's Elite Guard, asked for a specific guarantee of Pétain's liberty after he arrived in occupied France...
...Laval lost his temper. He upbraided the Marshal for his stubbornness and Peyrouton for his suspicion. He demanded that in the future his powers be precisely defined, that he be given executive authority, with Pétain as a figurehead. Then he stalked from the meeting...
Other members of the Cabinet remained. After a while they, too, departed. Members of Peyrouton's GP, wearing leather helmets and arm bands, appeared in the streets of Vichy. One hundred soldiers of the French Army surrounded the Hotel du Pare, where Laval was staying. Then three officers of the Surete Nationale entered the hotel. When they emerged, Pierre Laval was with them. He was placed in Marcel Peyrouton's own automobile and driven nobody would say where...
When they were resumed, a wild story burned the wires. The affaire de L'Aiglon had been a plot to seize or assassinate Marshal Pétain while he was in occupied France, whereupon Pierre Laval would have assumed the Office of Chief of State, set up a Fascist regime under the wing of Nazi Germany, and declared war on Great Britain. Whether or not this story had any substance of truth, Pierre Laval immediately became a pariah to the Government of France. Marshal Pétain broadcast a curt, messianic message to his people...