Word: reynaud
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...were seriously outnumbered, as well as outgunned and outgeneraled. The Germans had not only their panzer units but also 130 infantry divisions. On June 7 the French commander Maxime Weygand told the government, "The battle of the Somme is lost," and advised it to ask for an armistice. Premier Reynaud declared, "We shall fight in front of Paris," but the government itself fled to Tours and then Bordeaux...
...Germans marched into deserted Paris on June 14. Reynaud fled to England, leaving the government in the hands of Marshal Henri Petain, 84, who was still revered as the man who had defended Verdun during World War I under the watchword, "They shall not pass." But on June 17 he asked Hitler for an armistice. Hardly noticed in the debacle was an appeal from London one day later by an obscure French general named Charles de Gaulle, who, in a speech that was to become the rallying cry for the Resistance, asked all Frenchmen to fight on under his leadership...