Word: tain
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Shifty Admiral Jean Francois Darlan, ex-collaborating Premier, heir-designate of Marshal Pétain and Commander in Chief of all French sea, land and air forces, had come to Algiers some time before the invasion, ostensibly to visit his sick son. In the Allied attack, the first step toward his country's liberation under Allied colors, Darlan the opportunist saw the great chance of his career...
...ordered the surrender of Algiers, followed this up with the "cease fire" order to all French troops in North Africa. Then, in an announcement broadcast by the Algiers radio, he took over the civil administration of the colonies in the name of Marshal Pétain-and with the approval of the U.S. authorities. He set up his own military command under the stanch old soldier and escapist General Henri Honoré Giraud (TIME, Nov. 16). Still in the name of Marshal Pétain, a virtual prisoner now in his own capital of Vichy, still with the approval...
Winds in Vichy. Darlan and his acts did not appear to be accepted by the Vichy Government. Marshal Pétain, under sudden and critical pressure, changed his course like a weathervane, finally succumbed in impotence when German armies, at Hitler's command, swept through Unoccupied France in a 24-hour dash to the Mediterranean.* From Vichy's radio, now fully under German control, came repeated repudiations of everything Darlan did and the injunction to Frenchmen to obey only Pétain's orders...
...there was good reason to believe that the Admiral was actually acting on Pétain's orders. There was a precedent: when General Maxime Weygand was appointed Delegate General of North Africa in January 1941, he carried with him orders from Pétain to defend the empire against aggression as he saw fit, and to ignore contrary orders which-if an attack took place-might be forced out of Vichy under German pressure. Darlan might well have carried similar instructions, which would get him obedience from local authorities. Darlan got such obedience: the men of Vichy rallied...
Pierre Laval and Marshal Pétain tried to keep up the illusion that there was food in France. Frenchmen knew that French food, like French heavy industry and French labor, was being transferred to Germany. Hitler was following Machiavelli's preachment: "He who becomes master of a city accustomed to freedom and does not destroy it may expect to be destroyed by it, for in rebellion it has always the watchword of liberty. . . ." In France last week the sound of the watchword was growing louder...