Word: reynaud
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...salon for journalists and politicians. Helene de Fortes was short, homely, plain, dark, nervous, jealous and not very bright; but she apparently had something for which Frenchmen would trade every grace. Widowed two years ago, she set her jib for a bright financier named Paul Reynaud. Soon Reynaud, who till then had been a good family man, separated from his wife. Under the administration of Georges Bonnet (then Minister of Justice) the divorce laws were altered and the financier expected to be free within one year instead of three...
...beyond the bounds of possibility. If Britain should be conquered in a swift invasion lasting only three or four weeks, its morale might collapse as completely as that of France. In that event Winston Churchill might find himself out, like Paul Reynaud in France, and Churchill's promise never to surrender the fleet might be forgotten as quickly as Reynaud's similar promises...
...question. They had no stomach for the war, but neither had the people of France. French industry, French labor and France's political leaders dawdled through nine months of war while Germany grew stronger & stronger. Laval the Appeaser had no place in the Government, but when Paul Reynaud, foe of appeasement, succeeded Edouard Daladier and made Paul Baudouin his Foreign Minister, the door was thus obliquely opened for appeasement...
After Sedan, Premier Reynaud was desperate. He called in Weygand, who said the battle was lost. Baudouin persuaded him to call in Pétain, who was mortally afraid of Communism if the war dragged on with France losing. Baudouin switched his allegiance from Reynaud to Petain, whose closest adviser was Pierre Laval. These men made peace and took over France with the tacit consent of Hitler-moved by what ultimate motives only history can judge...
...Frenchmen locked in Hitler's embrace might, for all the rest of the earth knew of their feelings and their fate, have been swept off the civilized world. The Gestapo doubtless had thousands of them in concentration camps. Mystery surrounded France's democratic leaders. Ex-Premier Paul Reynaud was suffering at an unrevealed hospital from severe head injuries resulting from a "motor accident"; former Premier 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...