Word: laval
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...Vichy, seat of the Government, Vice Premier Pierre Laval told the hastily summoned Chamber of Deputies: "I bring you, not the conviction, but the certainty, that if you want an honorable peace you must give Marshal Pétain what he wants...
What old Marshal Pétain wanted (on the advice of Pierre Laval) was for the Chamber and the Senate to vote themselves out of existence and empower him to write a new Constitution. This they meekly proceeded to do, with only three dissenters in the Chamber, one in the Senate. The one Senate dissenter was the Marquis Pierre de Chambrun, who holds honorary U. S. citizenship (under a Maryland law) by virtue of his direct descent from the Marquis de La Fayette, and whose nephew is Pierre Laval...
President Albert Lebrun quietly slipped into the background and 84-year-old Marshal Pétain in a decree beginning "We, Philippe Pétain, Marshal of France," designated himself as Chief of State, 57-year-old Pierre Laval as his successor. In his new twelve-man Cabinet, key posts went to the men who had surrounded him since France sued for peace: Ministry of Defense to General Maxime Weygand, Ministry of Interior to Neo-Socialist Adrien Marquet, Ministry of Foreign Affairs to Businessman Paul Baudouin...
...single dictator. It would probably abolish both the Senate and Chamber of Deputies, substituting for them a single assembly of powerful yes-men. Dispatches from Vichy forecast the establishment of a "corporative" state in which, under Marshal Pétain as titular Chief of State, Vice Premier Laval, General Weygand and Minister of the Interior Marquet would form a power-wielding triumvirate. A regime similar to that of Generalissimo Franco, with whom 84-year-old Marshal Pétain was "tremendously impressed," was generally predicted. While Berlin applauded approvingly, French Cabinet members denounced "unwieldy democratic procedure," demanded the reduction...
...Edouard Daladier, former Ministers Georges Mandel and Yvon Delbos were "at sea" on a ship long overdue and missing-according to Berlin. The only Frenchmen heard from were those willing to play Hitler's game, for Hitler's Gauleiter of Gaul was practical, nonliberal, Italophile Constitution-Maker Laval himself...