Word: petain
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...showdown came at 7 in the morning. German General von Neubronn ordered his SS men to break down the door to old Marshal Petain's bedroom. To the half-dressed Chief of the Vichy State, he issued an ultimatum...
Last week Vichy was the hastily fortified ghost capital of a rapidly dissolving Government. Outside the town, French Forces of the Interior were in control. Telephone & telegraph lines were cut, road and rail traffic halted. Inside, the futile skeleton of what had been Marshal Petain's Government click-clacked through motions of governing which were really a dance of death...
...whereabouts of doddering old Chief of State Marshal Henri Philippe Petain was uncertain. Many Frenchmen were sure that he would be in Paris to meet the victorious Allies, if the Nazis did not kidnap him. But, a fortnight before, Petain had told diplomats still in Vichy: "Should it become known that I have left ... I wish to make it clear that I will not leave of my own volition...
...northern France, just behind the invasion fronts, saboteurs attacked the railways, did enough damage to enrage the Germans. Collaborationists began to flee; some were killed. Best estimate of the various undergrounds' total armed strength: 200.000. State of Vichy. The men of Vichy began to split. Marshal Philippe Petain. Chief of State, had just returned from a tour of bombed French cities. Propped up by occasional doses of benzedrine, the old man spoke less of collaboration than of unity and nationalism. But, at invasion showdown, he called upon French men to obey the Nazis. Pierre Laval, hated alike by Petain...
Today, in semiretirement in Montreal, Henri Bourassa is still slim, still wiry. His old voice has cracked a little, but he is thoroughly unreconstructed. Last winter he advised French Canadians not to believe German atrocity stories, told them that only an alliance between Franco, Salazar, Petain and Mussolini would save the world from Communism...