To Lose a Battle (72 page)

‘Nous sommes trahis!’

Treason! Faithfully that terrible word reappears on French lips the moment there is a major disaster, revealing one of the less admirable national traits. Gallic pride can never admit that the nation has been collectively at fault; inevitably, she has been betrayed by an individual or a faction. Repeatedly during the Franco-Prussian War, and again in the most adverse moments of 1914–18, the expression ‘
Nous sommes trahis
’ – ‘We are betrayed’ – rings out sombrely across the ramparts. But the soil had never been more fertile for such an interpretation of France’s woes than in May 1940. Clare Boothe relates a conversation with an elderly Red Cross nurse, who asked her:

‘Madame… you are an American?’ I said: ‘Yes,’ and she went on: ‘Then you must tell me the truth:
qui nous a trahis
? Who has betrayed us?’… That was the first time I heard the word ‘
trahi
’ (‘betrayed’) in Paris. At first it was no more than a whisper, like the little winds that come in the dim days before the hurricane.

Then, as the débâcle at the front escalated, it became ‘a sullen roar’. All the suspicions and mutual mistrusts of Third Republic France bred by Stavisky, the
Croix de Feu
and the Popular Front now surged to the fore. On entering Paris with the victorious German Army at the end of June, William Shirer was assured that there had been ‘treachery in the French army from top to bottom – the Fascists at the top, the Communists at the bottom’. The Left accused the
Cagoule
¹⁰
of having conveniently established arms and fuel dumps for the Germans beyond the Meuse; the Right blamed the catastrophe there on Communist influence. The defeatists and ‘softs’ in the Government were men bought by German money; the right-wing generals were also bought. And so the nightmare fantasy of the pervasive Fifth Column spread, in ever-widening ripples. Even intellectuals such as Simone de Beauvoir seemed prone to believe in it (‘Had there been treachery?’ was her immediate reaction on hearing of Corap’s defeat. ‘No other explanation seemed possible.’), and from London General de Gaulle later cloaked it with historical respectability. For those in high places, treachery and the Fifth ‘Column provided an admirably convenient explanation for otherwise inexplicable disasters. Almost on the last page of his copious memoirs, Gamelin appends, and apparently endorses, a report blaming the break-up of the 55th Division at Sedan on those bogus orders put around by ‘parachutists’, and at the time he made repeated allegations about the responsibility of the Communists. Whatever the Communists may have done to augment demoralization, both inside and outside the French Army, they never, however, constituted a Fifth Column in its conventional sense. It was indeed ‘what is false within’ that principally betrayed France.

Real or imagined, however, the role played by the ‘Fifth Column’ in the defeat of France should never be underestimated. What it meant to the simple French fighting man was eloquently summed up by René Balbaud, a senior N.C.O.:

We felt ourselves spied on, betrayed on all sides… When we learned that the Germans had entered France, our first reaction was to think once more of betrayal. We talked of generals being retired, of the Commander-in-Chief being replaced. And so? But, real or imagined, these betrayals all had the same result: collapse of the Army’s morale. We talked of King Leopold… And our aircraft? Vanished into dreamland. Betrayed. And our equipment, said to be tip-top, but which we never saw a sign of? Betrayed. Well, why fight? Everyone we trusted had betrayed us.

The French Now Know: the Germans Are Heading for the Channel

18 May was the day that the French High Command at last knew for certain that the Germans were heading for the Channel – that they were swinging away from Paris, while covering their flank defensively along the Aisne. As already noted, on the 16th orders containing the complete itineraries for the Panzers were taken off a badly wounded German colonel near Rethel. There is some mystery about their subsequent fate; the German documents were apparently handed to General Touchon’s (Sixth Army) H.Q., but for some reason – perhaps simply the chaos existing in French channels of communication – they were immediately passed on to La Ferté or Vincennes. On the 17th, the
Deuxième Bureau
at Billotte’s No. 1 Army Group H.Q. intercepted a German signal in clear which also disclosed that the thrust was aimed at the Channel and not Paris; again, this intelligence does not seem to have made its way promptly back to G.Q.G. That same morning another German staff officer with similarly revealing orders destined for the 1st Panzer was captured by a formation of the French 2nd Armoured Division. The divisional second-in-command, Colonel Perré, set off towards Compiègne to take them to the Ninth Army Commander.
General Giraud. But Giraud could not be traced. Colonel Perré also seems not to have thought about transmitting this valuable booty directly to G.H.Q., reasoning that it would arrive too late to be of any use. Thus it was not until well on into the 18th that the sum of all this intelligence reached Georges or Gamelin, confirming the rumours of the previous day. By this time even the Germans were no longer making great efforts to conceal the true objective of
Sichelschnitt.
Shirer spotted an item in a Berlin newspaper hinting

that the German armies now converging on Paris from the north-east may not try to take Paris immediately, as they did in 1914, but strike north-west for the Channel ports in an effort to cut off England from France.

Gamelin Still Hesitates and Pétain Arrives

The rumours that Hitler was turning away towards the Channel ports had provoked a fleeting, ill-founded elation among Parisians. Shares on the Bourse fluttered briefly upwards. ‘Maybe he’s going to England first’ were the whispers overheard by Clare Boothe. Gamelin himself may not have subscribed to this view, but there was no doubt that on the 18th he struck his staff as being ‘in better form than on the day before. Visibly the Commander-in-Chief had pulled himself together.’ In the mind of the faithful staff officer of Joffre, the man who had actually prepared the orders preluding the immortal victory of the Marne in 1914, a chord was struck. By swinging away from Paris and presenting such a long, open flank, were the Germans about to commit the same error as Kluck in 1914? Thoughts parallel to those which had plagued the minds of Hitler and Rundstedt now began to preoccupy Gamelin. At Vincennes it was sensed that the Generalissimo was about to produce his master-stroke. That afternoon (the 18th) aerial reconnaissance reported a ‘complete vacuum’ in the Laon-Montcornet area immediately behind the cutting tip of the Panzers. But still Gamelin hesitated.

Visiting La Ferté that morning, Gamelin affects to have found none of the newly regained composure which his own
staff were detecting in him. The atmosphere at Les Bondons struck his tidy mind as ‘extremely detrimental to regular ‘work’. In the office of Georges’s Chief of Staff, General Roton, ‘utter disorder’ reigned, with staff officers continually coming and going through it. The situation was hardly better in the room where Georges himself presided, and he betrayed to Gamelin ‘incontestable signs of lassitude’. The monastic Generalissimo wondered how his subordinate could possibly ‘dominate events’ in such an atmosphere of chaos where no reflection was possible. He voiced his misgivings privately to General Doumenc. After making conventional noises of loyalty to Georges, Doumenc expressed agreement and said he thought the time was approaching when Gamelin should take direction of the battle into his own hands. Gamelin replied, ‘Of course, let me know the right moment’ – as if this had not long since passed him by. After a further, inconclusive discussion with Georges about restoring the ‘continuity of the front’, Gamelin was warned that Reynaud and Daladier were coming to visit him at 1500 hours that afternoon, and he sped back to Vincennes.

At the appointed hour, Daladier arrived, but no Reynaud. On telephoning his office, Gamelin learned that Reynaud – accompanied by Marshal Pétain, newly returned from Madrid – had left a good hour earlier. Consternation! Had the Premier been involved in an accident? Finally, word came through (‘brusquely’, says Gamelin) that Reynaud and Pétain had gone to see Georges first. Gamelin and Daladier were to await their arrival. The two passed the time in ‘affectionate and confident conversation’, with Daladier (in the words of Gamelin) displaying ‘the soul of a good Frenchman’. It was, he admitted, ‘the first time for ten days that I had remained without any precise occupation’ – which seems a curious admission at such a moment in Allied fortunes.

At 1820 hours, after more than three hours had passed in chat between Gamelin and Daladier, Reynaud arrived with Pétain. According to Reynaud’s account, on the earlier visit to La Ferté, General Georges had

explained the situation to us on a large map, which, with his hand covered by a grey glove, he pulled up and down on its roller. We saw on the map the positions of the Armies, and, prominently marked, those of the ten Panzer divisions. Two or three times he broke off his account to tell us, his brown eyes brooding sorrow-fully on us: ‘It is a difficult situation.’

At Vincennes, Gamelin treated Reynaud and Pétain to a similar run-down on the situation. When the eighty-four-year-old Marshal climbed back into his car, he clasped Gamelin’s hand warmly and murmured, ‘I pity you with all my heart.’ As Reynaud had made no reference to his intentions for the Generalissimo’s future, the full meaning of Pétain’s expression of sympathy was not apparent until the following day. Gamelin then returned to his office to sign the wordy report which he had been preparing at Daladier’s behest. He had still made no move to assume control of the battle.

For the French High Command, the 18th ended with extremely grave news reaching Georges’s G.H.Q. from General Billotte. ‘We had hoped to be able to contain them today, but we were twenty-four hours too late,’ said Billotte. Seeing little prospect now of sealing the hole which gaped between the French First Army and General Frère’s
ad hoc
Seventh Army, Billotte added ominously: ‘One must reflect upon the conduct to adopt in the event that our forces should find themselves separated.’ In his final order for the day, Georges spoke hopelessly of the importance of ‘envisaging the prolongation of our barrage along the Somme, from Péronne to the sea’ – a measure which in itself certainly ‘envisaged’ no means of halting the Panzers before the Channel. Finally, on the following day, de Gaulle’s 4th Armoured was to make another jab into the southern flank of the Panzers along the axis Laon-Crécy-sur-Serre.

On the political scene that Saturday, Reynaud invited Pétain to join his Government as Deputy Premier. Pétain accepted. According to Reynaud, when he told the Senate that the ‘Victor of Verdun’ was now at his side, there were widespread shouts of ‘At last!’ Spears, who had not seen him
since the First War, describes the eighty-four-year-old Marshal shortly after his return to France as being

still erect but so very much older, and in plain clothes which emphasized the break with the past… but he seemed dead, in the sense that a figure that gives no impression of being alive can be said to be dead… when occasionally I looked towards him he seemed not to have heard what was being said.

From now on this venerable but pessimistic old soldier, tragically recalled from the glorious past, was to play a role of increasing weight in France’s fate.

Upon Pétain’s acceptance Reynaud now proceeded to the first stage of reshaping his Cabinet. Daladier at last was ousted from the Ministry of National Defence, which Reynaud took over himself, handing to Daladier the Quai d’Orsay as a sop. The tough Georges Mandel, Clemenceau’s old hatchet man, was transferred from the Colonies to the Interior, a key post when civilian morale was gravely threatened. But to take the lead part in his reshuffle, Reynaud was still awaiting the arrival of General Weygand.

19 May: de Gaulle’s Second Chance

In his orders for 19 May, Guderian stated: ‘The Commander-in-Chief of the Army [Brauchitsch] has explicitly approved further advances by Group Kleist.’ His XIX Panzer Corps was to seize bridgeheads over the Canal du Nord to the west; at the same time, looking ahead to the second phase of the Battle of France, it was to establish bridgeheads over the Somme between Ham and Péronne, in order to make ready ‘to swing south-west when the time comes’. The progress registered on the 19th would, as it happened, be less spectacular than that of the previous day. The divisions’ technical priorities enforced a day essentially of badly needed consolidation and regrouping in preparation for the final lunge to the coast.

Despite all the good omens, the 19th began on an anxious note for Guderian. At 0135, XIX Panzer Corps H.Q. received a radio message reporting that the fuel depot at Hirson had been ‘burnt out’. This was extremely serious news, as it was
from here that Guderian’s tanks were to be refuelled that night. Consequently, they would have no more than
one day’s ration of fuel.
Later in the morning the 10th Panzer reported that its attack against Ham had failed. Then Luftwaffe reconnaissance revealed the massing of some hundred tanks south of Crécy-sur-Serre. This was accompanied by a report that one of the ‘blocking detachments’ had been overwhelmed by an enemy attack on the south flank.

De Gaulle had begun to move forward at dawn. The objective of his second attack was to strike across the Serre bridges near Crécy and then cut Guderian’s line of advance through La Fère. He had received further reinforcements in the form of an artillery regiment of ’75s, the famous cannon of the First War, and two squadrons of Somua tanks, bringing his armour to a total of some 150 tanks. Of these, however, only thirty were ‘B’ tanks, forty Somuas or D.2s, the remainder obsolete R.35s. The Somua crews consisted of a commander/gunner who had never fired the gun and a driver who had done no more than four hours’ driving. With only a single battalion of infantry he was once again poorly supported.