FRANCE'S NEW DREYFUS CASE IN REVERSE
Barnes, Harry Elmer
First Of A Series Of Two Articles Frances New Dreyfus Case In Reverse By HARRY ELMER BARNES IT has been observed that chickens often come home to roost. This phenomenon is to be observed in...
...No retreat was necessary...
...I think I may say that I know as much about Petain and his policies as any American...
...deGaulle, in pre-war days, was more actively associated with the military and royalist crowd than Petain ever was...
...I have simply been shocked by the mendacity, bias, and ungallantry of Jiis assailants, some of whom were notorious collaborationists with the very forces and factions that undermined the military strength of France in the years before 1939...
...Finally, it was the strategy of Petain which laid the fatal trap for Ludendorff on July 15, 1918, that brought an end to the desperate German drive against Paris...
...5) that he was a leading French Fascist long before 1939...
...4) that he became a collaborationist with the Nazis after 1936...
...Later on, I read and edited everything that the Marshal ever wrote, as well as all his speeches, proclamations and edicts while Chief-of-State at Vichy...
...Foch would have been a great general in Napoleonic times, but he was never able to adapt himself to the realities of modern warfare...
...Yet any soldier worth his salt would have taken the precaution to prepare for one, and this is just what Petain did...
...They still wished to follow the Napoleonic strategy of a blind, rash offensive, in the hope of making,a break-through, failing to reckon with the changes in defense strength brought about by trenches, rapid-fire artillery, and machine-guns...
...consisted in drawing up a plan for orderly retirement, in case the defense proved impossible, thus preventing any disorderly rout of the retreating army...
...Thereupon, the French Army, which had been rehabilitated by Petain, was able to take the leading role in hurling back the Germans and forcing them to sue for an Armistice in November...
...THE verdict of fair and informed military historians is likely to be that Petain was one of the 3 military geniuses of the first order that the First World War brought forth, standing in this class with the German, Von Hoffmann, and the Russian, Brussilov...
...In company with an able Swiss scholar, I went through all the available sources on the Marshal and became well acquainted with the facts...
...There, he distinguished himself for the modernity and common-sense of his ideas, especially for emphasizing the necessity of modifying strategy and tactics in the light of the modernization of warfare and the growing intensity of gunfire...
...The more important charges levelled against Petain are: (1) that he was an incompetent defeatist in the first World War...
...Few of the Marshal's interests or beliefs charm me, with the possible exception of his passion* for the Essays of Montaigne...
...It became my conviction that probably no other figure in recent times has been so ruthlessly, unfairly, and deliberately slandered as Marshal Petain...
...The results of Petain's masterly reorganization of the Army showed up to the full when his brilliant shifting of the French reserves to aid the English had already broken the strength of Ludendorff's drive, late in March, 1918, before Foch was made the Allied generalissimo...
...Petain spent much of his military life before 1914 as a professor of military science...
...THOUGH Petain saved Verdun, after his predeces sor had all but lost this great key fortress, he has been accused of defeatism, even in this brilliant and stubborn feat...
...6) that he asked for an Armistice in 1940, when the French Army could readily have retired to North Africa and held out against the Germans indefinitely...
...This led to the mutiny of the French Army, late in April, 1917, that Petain had to deal with...
...But Petain is the one now selected to bear the brunt of the attack...
...3) that he frustrated the mechanization of the French Army recommended by deGaulle...
...More of that later on...
...No other French general could have succeeded, and the feat of Petain was one of the major achievements of the first World War, one to which Gen...
...While, like all literate persons, I read about Petain's defense of Verdun and his quelling of the serious mutiny in the French Army in the first World War, my first personal contact with the Marshal was in October, 1931, when he was here as the representative of the French Government at the 150th anniversary of the surrender at Yorktown...
...It turns out that his "defeatism...
...Actually, the facts would seem to prove that Gen...
...and (7) that, a Chief-of-State at Vichy, he deliberately and exuberantly sold out France to the Nazis...
...This phenomenon is to be observed in rather spectacular fashion in the trial of Marshal Henri Philippe Petain, now in progress in France...
...At that time, I was engaged by a distinguished American citizen, long resident in France and decorated for bravery and unusual services to France in the first World War, to edit a manuscript on the life and work of Marshal Petain...
...Since I revised this manuscript and edited the Marshal's writings and proclamations, a number of books have been published, all of which have bitterly attacked the Marshal, most of them repeating and elaborating the lies spread by his enemies at the time of the first World War...
...He was the only leading French military figure who had the courage and realism openly to oppose these rash offensives before they were ordered...
...But they did not all learn the lesson promptly, especially Mangin, Nivelle, and Foch...
...2) that he let the defenses of France lag after 1919...
...The undeniable facts, gleamed from the original sources, produce a complete and overwhelming exposure of the falsity of each and every one of these charges...
...In the trial of Marshal Petain, the | tables are turned...
...After they picked up the pieces, the French generals had to conform to Petain's philosophy of warfare or give up the fight...
...Shortly afterwards, it was Petain's generalship which saved Foch from disaster when he attempted several premature and reckless assaults on the German lines...
...It was also shown that there was no possibility whatever that France could have carried on the war instead of accepting the Armistice...
...20, 1931...
...It is veritably a new Dreyfus Case in reverse...
...When the rash and murderous impetuosity of Mangin and Nivelle had slaughtered and demoralized the French Army in April, 1917, and mutiny was wide spread, Petain was made commander-in-chief of all the French armed forces and was given the difficult task of quelling the mutiny and restoring the morale of the French Army...
...It gave me great pleasure to paddle the Marshal gently but firmly on this point in my column in the New York World-Telegram of Oct...
...From these studies I became convinced that Marshal Petain is a great soldier, a noble character, and a highly patriotic Frenchman...
...Frank Simonds has written that Petain was the only genera] on either side who made no mistakes during the whole war—and he surely did not escape making mistakes through inaction...
...But it was not until the Summer of 1942 that I once more came into personal contact with his career...
...The result was the disastrous and bloody Nivelle offensive of April, 1917, in which the French lost about as many men as in the heroic defense of Verdun, but gained nothing...
...In the first Dreyfus Case of 1894, i the nationalists, the royalists, the i Catholic nationalists, like Maurice \ Barres and Charles Maurras, the mil-| itary crowd, and reactionaries, gen...
...He fell afoul of the old fogies of the Napoleonic tradition, but in time his ideas won out...
...This disaster devastated the Gerk man forces and destroyed their morale...
...erally, ganged up on a liberal Jewish I officer...
...AT that time, when the Marshal was visiting New York City, he gave out an interview in which he , attacked those who held France in part responsible for the first World War and were criticizing the postwar policy of France...
...It was an anti-Republican | coup...
...By the Autumn of 1917, the morale of the soldiers had once more attained a high level and the French Army was in a position to withstand the great Ludendorff drive in the Spring of 1918...
...That is my only reason for giving a little attention to his case...
...Whether Petain was a greater military genius than Von Hoffmann and Brussilov, is a matter of opinion...
...In the course of the book, which has not yet been published, every one of the charges against the Marshal as a defeatist in the first World War were taken up and crushingly refuted...
...They received their bloody vindication in the Autumn of 1914, when the French Armies were saved from utter rout only by the inefficiency of the German High Command, particularly Von Moltke, the sick old incompetent who was Chief-of-Staff of the German Army...
...Pershing has paid a touching tribute...
...Incidentally, it is said that he was then accorded the most fulsome welcome of any Frenchman visiting America since Lafayette's historic visit in 1824...
...Whatever Petain stands for personally, he symbolizes the military and anti-Republican forces of France...
...The Republicans, I the radicals, the old Popular Front boys, and the Jews are ganging upon a military figure—the most distinguished soldier that France has produced since Turenne and Napoleon...
...The Marshal bobbed up again at the time of the Armistice in June, 1940, and I read about this also...
...There were a number of able second-string generals, such as Foch in France, Ludendorff and Von Macken-sen ih Germany, and Grand Duke Nicholas in Russia...
Vol. 9 • August 1945 • No. 34
