Word: tain
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Thrifty, earthy Alsace parents sent young Pétain through St. Cyr military academy, later left him a small fortune. He took on the prevailing St. Cyr color-reaction, royalism, distrust of politics. He also developed a love of off-tune brass bands, climbing trees, skipping rope, floating paper boats in a tub of water, watching animals...
...start of World War I, Colonel Pétain, 54, was about to be retired. A careful planner and able artillery tactician, frugal with the lives of his men, he rose to command of the Second Army at the defense of Verdun in 1916. To him was credited the line: "They shall not pass." When the armies of the Crown Prince were crushed in 130 days of fighting that covered an advance of only four miles and cost 300,000 lives, Pétain emerged as a legendary hero. But numerous French leaders of the time later accused...
Before World War II, Pétain's name was involved with the fascist Cagoulard attempt to seize power. As Ambassador to Spain, he and Dictator Franco were as close as two eggs in a pan. In the spring of 1940 a cry for the "Strong...
...tain resounded through reactionary French circles. It was Pétain's voice on the stormy night of June 16, 1940 that informed the French people that their Government would not fight on from North Africa. His large, angular handwriting was on the armistice signed in the Forest of Compiègne. His governmental planning killed the French parliament, tried to impose on France a corporate state complete with antiSemitism...
Victim. The Pétain regime allowed French industry, wealth and manpower to be siphoned into the Third Reich. History will decide whether Marshal Henri Philippe Pétain aided Hitler deliberately or not. Last week the question, like his regime, seemed unimportant...