Word: vichyfrench
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1940-1949
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Admiral Robert agrees and signs, all New World Frenchmen become a brand-new third kind of Frenchmen. Completely isolated from Europe, they will not be Vichyfrench, nor will they be Free French. This means a division of the French Empire into three main parts, not two. Just as unhappy as Laval was General de Gaulle, who was left out in the cold...
...purposes are anything but known quantities. Vichy's army strength in North and West Africa is a public mystery. Germany is said to have allowed Vichy to build up an air force of 1,000 planes, but its caliber is highly dubious. And although the size of the Vichyfrench fleet is fairly well established, both its fighting temper and condition are question marks...
...fleet's fire-control instruments, guns and engines would be unfamiliar to German crews (unless, contrary to report, such crews have long been aboard). Air coverage would also be a problem-Vichy has no carriers in the Mediterranean. Finally, the United Nations could counter the use of the Vichyfrench fleet by using "demilitarized" French warships now in their hands: the 22,000-ton battleships Lorraine, Paris and Courbet, four cruisers, an unknown number of smaller craft...
Laval is the father of Vichyfrench collaboration with Hitler and served as Vice Premier and Foreign Minister for the first six months after the fall of France. But in December 1940 Pétain found him at once so unpopular and so highhanded in his pro-Naziism that he cast him into outer darkness. His return to power is a tip-off of further collaboration to come, focussing all eyes again on the French fleet (see p. 23) which may hold the balance of sea power today...
While robust Ambassador Admiral William D. Leahy tugged for the U.S., Adolf Hitler threw into the contest Germany's best friend in France, the political contortionist Pierre Laval, a man so abhorred by masses of Frenchmen that no mention of his meeting with Marshal Petain was permitted in Vichyfrench newspapers...