Word: petain
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...Value of Petain. In the beginning, Marshal Petain had been a natural for Hitler. The old man was a totalitarian and a collaborationist who was also known to many Frenchmen as a French patriot. With his help the French Fleet and the French African bases were neutralized, forming a buffer between Britain and Axis operations in the Mediterranean. With his help democrats were purged from the French Navy, Army and police - a purge which Laval may find very handy...
Meanwhile, and perhaps most important of all, the Petain Government approved full economic collaboration with Germany. French production of planes, tanks, artillery and munitions for Germany has increased, despite sabotage by slowdown and sometimes by violence. France has shipped to Germany 14,000 head of cattle a month, huge quantities of cheese, potatoes, sugar beets, wheat, fruit, champagne and wine reserves. Some 100,000 French skilled workers have been moved to Germany...
...Trouble with Retain. Despite this torrential milking of France, Marshal Petain's collaboration was never 100% satisfactory to the Nazis. Even a year ago the Nazi-kept Les Nouveaux Temps was howling: "Collaboration must be expanded from the economic to the political plane to be really productive. It can be accomplished only by Laval...
...Marshal Petain's senile totalitarianism harked back fondly to the ancien regime. It was monarchical, clerical, aristocratic. The Marshal wanted to expunge the memory of the French Revolution. But while he felt that French totalitarianism depended largely on the success of Nazi totalitarianism, he did not want his neofeudal France to be a neo-vassal state of Germany's. He kept making this clear to Germany with his creaking stubbornness about the sanctity of the French Fleet and the African colonies...
...More Nonsense. There is no feudal nostalgia about Pierre Laval's totalitarianism. It is of the most streamlined Nazi type - profoundly opportunistic and no nonsense about it. Whereas Laval may, and probably will, provoke twice as much resistance as Marshal Petain did, Laval will have the stomach to meet resistance with the firing squad, the guillotine or any weapon handy. Around him he has gathered a Cabinet of obedient bureaucrats...