France Beaten By French Fascist High Command
HASTINGS, MALCOLM
France Beaten By French Fascist High Command By MALCOLM HASTINGS WE do not ask any longer whether France was betrayed. We know. We live in an epoch of treachery. "There were times worse than...
...self-aggrandizement...
...And all these political figures, who represent the civic element by the side of soup generals,'have without a single exception a peculiar feature in common : they* all were once so terribly 'aeft" that they practically stood to the left of themselves...
...Tank production limited to 30 a month from September to May and little effort made to meet the enemy's production of airplanes...
...With prophetic clarity be pleaded for a force equipped with modern weapons of offense, able to strike quickly and effectively in any direction against superior forces...
...GLASGOW, Scotland (Passed by the Censor).—If the British armies are still fighting when this is published—and they certainly will be, more strongly than ever—then tie worst crisis of the war is nearly over...
...In both his marriages he stuck by his class, despite his supposed democratic leanings...
...j ; AND yet all of...
...Indeed, the early gains accruing to,the...
...2» • * » WRITING hi the Nation for July 6, Heinx Po...
...But the traitors could never have achieved their purpose if it had not been facilitated by those who, loving France well but stupidly, had not deserted her for a cowardly, Phillistine pacifism and an entente-cordialle with Russian Communism...
...treachery bought in the French political and military high command...
...The treason ,to be sure, was- not entirely her own...
...and Socialists particularly, have good reasons for saving the democratic arrangements of Britain...
...every action which cripples Fascist France's military power is a most valuable contribution to the self-defense of democracy...
...Only one thing is clear (as we pointed out two weeks ago): this France of Laval is not merely a victim of, but from now on an active participant in the Axis' drive for Fascist world domination...
...But let us not weep for France: let us vow j to avenge her...
...The absence of this artillery Was an important controbutint factor in making necessary the withdrawal of French troops from that section of the Western Front along the Maginot Line where Gamelin had undertaken a half-hearted advance into the Saar in the early weeks of the war...
...In, 1934 they raised the most hell, accusing Leon Blum with not having done enough to overthrow the fascist plotters, who in February, 1934 attempted a putsch in Paris...
...Such is,Abraham Cahan..Such he was when he first set foot in this ^country as a Russian revolutionary refugee in 1882...
...In the House of Commons constructive criticism and helpful suggestion has taken the place of hostile enmity...
...The vital i[rdenne front—the region joining the Maginot Line with the Belgian frontier—was left uncovered as the French moved into Belgium, For two days the Germans marched through the Ardenne meeting virtually no resistance...
...And since in the Communist creed nothing counts but the success, the French Communists should treat Laval— two decades ago,their formal associate—with genuine respect...
...It was he who for many precious months had insisted that it was not necessary to place large airplane orders in the United States...
...Failure to extend it from Montmedy to the sea after Belgium had denounced her treaty of alliance with France in 1936, made it possible for the vastly superior, heavily mechanized German machine to outflank it without much difficulty...
...We cannot avenge France, we cannot save freedom until we cure ourselves...
...Information" brought from Switzerland by some of the French agents was that Hitler had no intention of attacking in the West this year at all, but planned to concentrate his efforts, military and diplomatic, in the Balkans and in the Near East...
...Italy, the land of Mazzini and Garibaldi, stabbing France—and Europe—in the back...
...And because we shall have, for the weeks to come, to deal very often with increasingly stupifying deeds of that regime, it might be useful to recall the background-and charac ter of its protagonists...
...La Chambre was apparently a simple incompetent and social dilletantev He was dismissed by Reynaud but too late...
...The latter used to be a high school teacher...
...These first-hand reports will shortly appear in The New Leader.' Labor-Dominated London Gov't Turns Britain Into Vast Arms Factory By JOHN DAVIS Glasgow...
...And I think they would be...
...The proper spending by the French of $500,000,000 on modern airplanes, tanks and anti-aircraft and anti-tank guns, from 1937 to 1939, might have changed the entire outcome...
...But no .Benedict Arnold, no thousand Benedict Arnolds can betray a great nation into ignominous subjection, as Franee was betrayed if their treason is not made ripe by the nation itself...
...There are many examples to the contrary: genuine Socialists, who through all factional battles and through all errors always find their place in the ranks of human progress and true democracy...
...The common people, on the other hand, facing the threat of bombing raids, with gas masks, evacuation problems, air-raid shelters, to grimly alter their lives, are courageously carrying on...
...the time wasted by our pussyfooting appeasement premier has to be made good...
...IN this primary purpose of all our national effort there is almost r complete unanimity amongst our people...
...Was not the Maginot Line there—facing the German frontier...
...Wheri we exclude the heroic story of ?h"e Battle of the River Platte...
...The combat made uneven with the connivance of the traitors during the years preceding the conflict, when France was in a state of virtual civil war and when premiers, ex-premiers, diplomats, generals, journalists sought to serve not the interests of the Republic but of a ruling class for whom the Republic was but an instrument far...
...IJNBELIEVABLE faults were committed," ^ reported Premier Paul Reynaud to the Chamber of Deputies after the fall of Sedan...
...The spectacle of England shooting up the French fleet is symbolic of the tragedy...
...But one thinks of him also as a living specimen of that very wonderful group of Russian revolutionaries of the eighties of the last century, who halving spent a generation behind the bars of czarist prisons, had come out from behind their walls into the political darkness outside unscathed in soul, in mind, in vision of the future...
...Petain and Weygand are merely the Hindenburg and Ludendorff of the French and history, unable to produce some new gags, sometimes becomes just boring...
...His family are ancient land owners in Lancashire...
...Every year they offered new blueprints fof a thoroughly r-r-r-revolutionary and thoroughly anti-capitalistic program...
...This moved Gamelin to waste tremendous effort, large numbers of men and huge masses of material in organizing the great army of the East, based in Syria, under combattle, unceasing battle for the right, for the poor, for the injured and oppressed...
...Many similar instances could be cited as additional illustrations...
...It is in the British Isles and later this hemisphere, where" the matter will be settled finally...
...The whole of Europe, of Western civilization betrayed itself...
...Despite the widespread criticism of British unpreparedness, it is a fact that the British Army in France was much better organised, equipped and directed than the French...
...who seems to know what he is talking about, tells the story, confirmed by the official Temps, 'how cars loaded with heavy artillery ' stood jdle until mid-October in the Fifth Military area, particularly in the railway yards of Orleans, Bourges and Vierzons...
...The consequence : chaos and paralysis of the industrial and munitions system...
...when we exelude these incidents, and one :or two more, the story of the war has been one of defeat for our arms...
...Mowrer speaks of one shell factory, personally known to him, which operated at onethirtieth of its capacity until seven months after the war Started...
...But never before in the history of this nation has there ever been a Government with so much drive, prepared to scrap traditional ways.xrut red tape and time-honored precedents, in order to get down to the basic problem of fitting the nation to meet the needs of total war...
...Two ministers of air defense were obviously responsible for the debacle in this arm of the military establishment: Pierre Cot, under Blum, and Guy LaChambre, under Daladier...
...It w%s by virtue of this superiority1 that the British were able to give such an excellent account of themselves in the Battle of Flanders and to extricate their forces with consummate skill and daring from that trap...
...serious consideration given to strengthening the frontier by extending the Maginot Line...
...Miss Jennie Lee, ex-M.P., leading writer and speaker for the British I.L,P<rhas gone one further than any of her colleagues in facing the alternatives presented to Socialists by the present situation...
...Goering disporting himself in Paris...
...This week, to a world mourning defeat after defeat of democratic forces, came the heartening news that Leon Blum, Paul Reynaud, swathed in bandages, and scores of other French democratic leaders were in Vichy fighting to keep alive the French tradition of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity...
...There are not many more like Abraham Cahan left among.us...
...The neutrals, all in Hitler's vassalage because each of them had believed it could buy immunity for itself by waiting for the vulture to devour the other fellow...
...the first a dentist, which in itself is, off course, no particular crime...
...mand of Weygand, strongly anti-British, a friend of the Cagoulards and advocate of a military dictatorship-for France...
...We shall then be coming more nearly equal in mechanical power to the joint forces of evil that has thrust wax on a peacerloving Europe...
...We need him now more than eyer...
...I have never known a period in my life where there was such unanimous support for any national administration...
...The member of parliament who was arrested, A. H. Maule Ramsay, is the great nephew of the twelfth Earl of Dalhousie...
...It is surely significant that the only saboteurs of national unity in this emergency are aristocrats...
...This is the first of a short series analyzing what occurred inside France...
...The only criticism that is voiced today is urged against the retention of members of the last Government: in fear that their council would weaken the thoroughness and drive of the present administration...
...Today the leading spokesmen for this group state frankly that they know of no way out of'the present difficulty of stopping' Hitler...
...As early as 1934, de Gaulle had warned of the need of a mobile motorized army of tanks, armored infantry and a superior air foree...
...It was only part of the story...
...Airplane factories stopped for lack of raw materials...
...forces —sealed the fate of France...
...THE overshadowing menace of Hitlerism has changed everything here...
...City Councillor...
...We have faced defeat upen defeat...
...General Maurice Gamelin and his staff were busy spending billions on their "classic" ideas of warfare, and not even after Munich, 1938, was any...
...The French purchasing commission in the United States wound in endless red tape, extending from Paris to New York, Washington and beyond...
...brought about the bloody uprising of . Canton—on order and for the benefit of Stalin, who needed just at that time a nice, though frustrated Chinese revolution to get rid of Zinoviev, his factional foe...
...But enough has come through concerning the events to make us tremble for the^ future...
...Strategic bridges on the Meuse and Somme were not blown up so as to facilitate the German drive toward Paris...
...Jacques Doriot was one of the founders of the French Communist Party, until 1925 leader of the Communist Youth International, until 1933 secretary-general of the French Communist Party,—thus France's Browder in a sense...
...The entire northern frontier was left shamelessly unprotected, except foe weals obstacles and pill boxes, while construction of such simple but effective devices as tank traps and earth shelters for machine gunners was neglected...
...fascist forces are the dividends that arise from the investment in bcmbs instead of butter oyer many years...
...It is not a_ big party...
...It was a true diagnosis, but by no "means complete, or fundamental...
...members of Parliament out of 615...
...Par* ticular, however, was the rofe~ these two men played—until 1W4 when they were expelled—within the French Socialist Party...
...These are the British counterpart of Belgium's King Leopold or the forty French, generals...
...But while so many of her colleagues in the left wing are nursing their pet dissensions it is heartening'to read this frank admission...
...If somebody were to reproach Laval, Doriot, Marquet and Deat for having turned renegades, they would answer I am sura, that virtually they did not change at all...
...The Fifth Column, on both its right and left wings, did its work well...
...Because of his incompetence and constant changing of orders French airplane production during the war did not rise much above the peace output...
...French democracy was lost on the battle field and it cannot be regained through legal disputes but on a battle field...
...weekly newspaper Miss Lee inserts an omission from an article in a previous issue as follows: ''But having reached this pass, we, none of us now, have any alternative hut to fight for our lives...
...This was the disease that afflicted a large portion of the French workers and middle classes...
...One suspects he did not say it without a degree of malicious satisfaction...
...Tartar Socialism usurping the place of the Commune...
...This is the real blue-blood brigade...
...retiral after retiral has been forced upon our fighting men with only a blink of brightness here and there to relieve the mojjotony...
...nnVinnr**, onH nrtnofVia---less wonderful nation was under Hitler's control—we cannot yet realize the amount of suffering, pain and even torture, that counr ter-revolution tnust bring to thousands of patriotic Frenchmen and political refugees from other nations, fantastically trapped in socalled unoccupied France...
...Behind these plotters then stood Laval...
...Unbelievable faults were committed...
...It is true that this little party Still preaches peace by Socialism but when their spokesmen are confronted with the possibility of a Hitler win they admit that Socialism would be strangled by the Nazi...
...While Laval and Marquet, together with Weygand, represent also officially the totalitarian power, Deat is the one-manbrain-trust behind the scene and Doriot will be called upon to produce and to organize mass support...
...Lack of unity and.purpose, faulty organization, no leadership, no enthusiasm, no vision...
...it is a question of moral valae and personal decency, and the real front line crosses all parties, all groups, all classes and all creeds...
...When Weygand took, over after being .brought hurriedly from Syria he was reported to have declared that the military situation was "irretrievable...
...Our fighting men are earning that time for us...
...us in this country are completely confident of the final outcome of this struggle between totalitarianism and democracy...
...But^now tSat the nations 'which 'preferred butter to hombs have started seriously to attend to the provision of the mechanical needs of modern war the one-sided account of the activity will be changed.' It will probably take a long time before the full value of out tremendous industrial drive is seen in the battlefield...
...And the end ? Hitler at Napoleon's -tomb...
...But this willingness to sell out their own great nation was limited to the Bonnets, Lavals, Marquets— those who always peddled their political wares for the highest prices...
...They were specialists en "left*' opposition...
...HE military and organizational deficiencies * were entwined with an incompetent espionage service, which in important instances actually worked for Germany, combining the dissemination of German "disinformation" with actual treason...
...In 1920 Laval went to Moscow to discuss methods by which the French Socialist Party could be brought into the Comintern...
...By the way, there is another tie-up between these two gentlemen: before Browder was sent to China, to organize, the coolies for genuine democracy, Doriot had prepared the field...
...Not before we learn to understand that her treason is also our own —the treason of Europe and America...
...Deat...
...There was not a single party convention without violent opposition speeches of Marquet and Deat...
...And behind Laval today stands Andre Marquet and Marcel Deat I certainly did not want to preach that everybody who ones was taken over by the Bolsheviks or once criticized a Social Democratic Party leader, necessarily must end as a Fascist...
...The Labor Party, representing 400,000 individual members, two and a half million affiliated trade unionists, and eight million associated cooperators, has put its leaders into the Government to give it drive and make the changes necessary to organize the country for victory...
...In a recent issue of the small LL.P...
...The first consideration of all citizens is to preserve the country...
...The rest of the nation, perhaps the majority, willing to fight but confused, bewildered by the spectacle, and sent into battle with weapons not even remotely commensurate with the enemy's...
...He was educated at Eton and Sandhurst...
...In addition to these two old soldiers, lending the overthrown glory of a dead, powerful France to the shabby colors of the newest Fascist state, four politicians complete the cast: Laval, Marquet, Deat and Doriot...
...The Fifth Military Area was under command of General Michelin, a leader of the monarchist Cagoulards, and a member of the Teactionaiy family that owns the Michelin Works, largest automobile tire factory in France...
...It is a matter of time...
...The generals responsible for this situation were incompetent—and some of them probably worse—and the politicians no better than those who brought about Russia's collapse in the last war through incompetence, venality, crookedness and treason...
...Since history's oldest days generals who were beaten on the battlefield, were always eager to take revenge against their own peoples...
...Defeated Generals There is not much to say about Petain and Weygand...
...his present wife's father is Lord Redesdale...
...i . The only political party in Britain that opposed the war at the beginning was the I.L.P...
...The flowers wilted on the grave of Jaures—he who knew how to combine with superb statesmanship love of France, of the Great Revolution, with the cause of human emancipation everywhere...
...Precious months wasted after ethe example given by the German war machine in Poland, which told in terms painfully eloquent of the kind of war this was to be...
...His first father-in-law was Lord Curzon...
...And ¦ last but not least, the greatest traitor of them all, Russia, the land of the most promising revolution of our time, acting the handmaiden to Fascism...
...there are only three I.L.P...
...The . brass hats in the general staff clung tenaciously and stupidly to their archaic conception...
...For' his pains he was dismissed from active service and reinstated' only after the start of the war...
...The politicians were voting the money and the generals were spending it as they pleased...
...Millions of men mobilized without regard to plan,' without consideration of the service for which individuals and groups were best fitted...
...Nevertheless, it is important for a correct understanding of the tragedy of'France's downfall that we see all the facts, the) effects as well as the causes...
...The government—-or a government—of France cooperating with Hitler Germany against England, breaking off diplomatic relations with England, perhaps declaring war on England...
...He is the seventh baronet...
...a ^To make sure of the collapse, a. diabolical campaign of promoting ill feeling and bitterness between the French and British troopfe was waged by reactionaries, monarchists and communists...
...Such he is a: eighty...
...The disease that laid France low is—in one measure or another—in all of us...
...All this was done, of, course, at the expense of the defense in France...
...We have lost so much ground already...
...Later he preferred another political color, as you know, but none of the other former members of the French Communist clan was finally as successful as Laval in reaching the original goal of French Communism: to destroy French democracy...
...There remains a great deal more to tell before we can understand why the sons of the heroes of Ve?dun failed to fight as well and as successfully as did their fathers, and why the leader of Verdun has lent his name and prestige to political counter-revolution shielded by the...
...Of Pierre Cot, close to the Communists and their masters in Moscow, there may be a great deal to tell— before long, we hope...
...Hundreds of American planes mysteriously shuttled to Casablanca and equally mysteriously "found" in Bordeaux when all hope of successful resistance was gone...
...Our classical war doctrine has been confronted by an absolutely new conception of warfare...
...He is most determined when hearts are breaking, most sure when others have lost their way...
...He is the eternal fighter, eternal hope, eternal youth—wise, confident, free of illusions but animated by unbending faith in the ultimate triumph of man over beast, of wisdom over stupidity, of common,1 sense over sophistry...
...the epic battle of Dunkirk and the saving of the vast bulk of our British Expeditionary Force in France...
...what only 6 weeks ago was the world's fifth greatest power...
...bayonets of the Nazi invaders...
...What are some of them ? After many years of ballyhoo concerning the "crack" French army, the seven weeks of fighting in Holland, Belgium and prance revealed that it was immeasurably inferior to the German in equipment, organization and generalship, the famous Maginot Line stood exposed as an illusion...
...Extension of the line to Dunquerqe might have saved France...
...The British navy compelled to play the executioner of its ally of yesterday...
...She has just been arrested...
...Whatever happens now, Herriot's courageous defense of his former colleagues—made under the surveillance of the Gestapo, will engender new hope in those countries still free to fight off Nazism, Communism, Fascism...
...In 1984 Doriot, (till the celebrated leader of the C. P. F., got into trouble with Moscow...
...It is not a question of party affiliation, in the past or today...
...fT remains a fact that France, in May and * June of this year, was defeated by probably less than 1000,00 German air, tank, infantry and artillery specialists," writes Edgar Ansell Mowrer, the very able correspondent of the Chicago Daily News...
...That scarcely one-half of the deputies were present, when Laval ordered their suicide, does not matter very much...
...Leon Blums was never radical enough for these two gentlemen...
...the rescue of our seamen from the "Altmark...
...But was there mere incompetence in the chaotic mobilization of the country, military and civil, upon the putbreak of the war...
...But how...
...Such was the picture that preceded the downfall of France...
...At the moment we are only in the preliminary stages of vast industrial and sociarchanges which will make what was once the "work-shop of the world" the greatest armament factory the world has ever seen...
...ll/E do not know as yet all the gloomy de- , " tails...
...perfectly right...
...That, in brief, is the tragic story...
...When reserve troops arrived to cover the gap they were found to consist of inferior, poorly trained contingents, under' incompetent officers and riddled with Fifth Columnists...
...It might never have existed...
...The civil population unprepared to play its part in a modern total war, lulled into the belief that the Maginot Line and the blockade would bring easy victory...
...It touched only, the more immediate, not the deeper, side of the picture...
...France's Fascist "Big Four" All Were Extreme "Leftists" By WILLI SCHLAMM The French Chambre des Deputees has not fought better than the French army, and France, where the modern concept of human liberty was born, is now a Fascist state...
...The great American Republic standing unctuously aloof from the consuming flames...
...The result is that the common people in the country are prepared for any sacrifices to ensnre victory...
...We hope Cahan will be among us for many more years...
...They own large chunks of Manchester slums...
...The more salient ones have been supplied by able correspondents after the final act of the tragedy...
...Heavy tanks of seventy tons, possessing extraordinary power' and rapidity, remained idle in plants in the Fifth Area, where the Germans, after occupying Orleans, found them in June and used them against the retreating French...
...I ? AS regards the actual military operations, the *™ very first move of the French armies, dragging the British with them—for the French were in supreme command of the land...
...And they certainly are doing it...
...and sure enough, a few months later, the man who for more than fifteen years was Moscow's most famous and most dependable representative in France, founded so openly Fascist party of his own» Andre Marquet and Mace...
...Reynaud reorganized part of the personnel of the Intelligence Service atid hsd three of its high officials arrested...
...But enough has come through the grim Gestapo censorship to reveal that Hitler's only secret weapon was gold and the...
...Sir Oswald Mosley is the son of a wealthy baronet...
...It was in reliance upon "information*' sopplied by the French Intelligence Service that Daladier delayed plans for strengthening the Belgian frontier on the ground that Hitler did not intend to strike at France before disposing of England...
...f The Churchill-Attlee Government is a combination with courage to make every interest subservient to the";national need...
...His Socialism is not a narrow, sectarian Socialism but a deeply human, broadly social conception seeking the emancipation not only of a group or of a class but of "all the living and the suffering...
...The few military leaders of initiative and vision, like General de Gaulle, who understood that the war of 2940 would not and could not be fought with the methods and weapons of 1914 were voices eryinj> in the wilderness...
...In vain...
...We have always needed him...
...Reliance upon a "defensive war," a war of "limited liabilities"—without providing for adequate defense—brought unlimited disaster...
...Another article will appear next week) France's Tragedy IJISTORIANS in generations to ** come may go to the diplomatic archives and piece together the story of the stupifying crack-up of...
...French generals told me during the Flanders battle that with, 1,000 psora, jolanes, 1,000 more thanks and 3,000 "more "guhe Uiey" could have won...
...The collapse of the French armies rendered: the forces in the East useless...
...There were times worse than these but never so contemptible...
...It had hardly reached a hundred planes a month...
...One thinks of him as a great American,, an American by choice, by deliberate devotion, by deep conviction...
...The New Leader.is attempting to establish contact with some of its former correspondents on the continent to supplement analytical articles -with eye-witness observations...
...The wax situation from the point of view of the Allies has almost reached zero...
...Petain, the hero of Verdun, who said "They shall not pass," approving, directing the surrender...
...Let us be frank: France betrayed herself...
...What Miss Lee sees clearly now the rest of the British Labor Movement has seen for a long time...
...Although we have wholly expected the shamefully easy victory of French Fascism, nncp that...
...Reynaud, one of the few political leaders who understood the significance of de Gaulle's program, wrote a book in its support...
...His wife is the only daughter of the fourteenth Viscount Gormanton...
...Nothing is so criminal that We could not'expect the Laval' regime to commit...
...To meet the menace of Hitlerism the British people are prepared to wage grim relentless war, knowing that defeat will mean the end of civilization itself...
...in 1927 he was one of the three Moscow delegates who...
...France, the land of Danton, in the hands of weaklings who helped make her impotent, and traitors who waited only for the hour of uneven combat to hand her over to the enemy...
...Even the small section which was pacifist at the beginning of the war is now inclined to face the facts...
...But here is the story of French treachery, written by a prominent American newspaperman, one of this country's . most competent authorities on foreign affairs...
Vol. 23 • July 1940 • No. 28
