Word: petain
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...collaborationists in Paris and the men of Vichy wrestled manfully with the mess. Collaborationist Jacques Doriot's newspaper called for an immediate French declaration of war against Britain. Marshal Petain, proclaiming a day of national mourning for the dead, declared: "The bloody attack . . . striking only at the civilian population, will arouse general indignation and take on the character of a national catastrophe." These sentiments Ambassador Gaston Henry-Haye echoed in Washington to a totally unimpressed Sumner Welles, who called the raid "legitimate" and who three days before had said that the U.S. would recognize Free French New Caledonia...
With all the ghosts that were coming to life, a secret sitting might be the only way to prevent the Riom trial from turning into a trial by proxy of Petain and Vichy...
Like ghosts in clanking chains, the tanks which France once had to hurl against the onrushing Germans began to haunt the men of Vichy. Old Papa Petain squirmed. Only 20 miles away, in the almost forgotten village of Riom, a story was unfolded that the world had never heard before. It was an appalling story. If true, it snatched the cloak of guilt from scapegoats facing trial in Riom's Palais de Justice, placed it snugly over the Marshal's own aged shoulders...
...court seemed unsure of itself. It refused to let Daladier speak of French-Polish military agreements, and ruled that events long antedating the declaration of war were not subject to survey. But the men in Vichy had reason to crawl when Daladier read into the record that in 1934, Petain had refused to strengthen fortifications at Sedan (where German troops first broke through in May 1940), that it was Petain who in 1934 slashed a military appropriation from 600,000,000 to 400,000,000 francs, that the Supreme War Council had refused to consider new types of guns...
From Unoccupied France, the Vichy radio chimed in on the South American beam. Vichy's Ambassador to Paris, Fernand de Brinon, was heard intoning: "The Marshal [Petain] believes that Bolshevism is the greatest enemy of all, and therefore earnestly desires a German victory. . . . Washington leads the alliance of Jewish capitalists and Soviet Communists." This must have made curious listening for the U.S. State Department, which still sought to avoid giving Vichy " excuses" for falling inert into Hitler's arms...