Paris After the Liberation_ 1944 - 1949 - Antony Beevor [6]
By Sunday, 16 June, Reynaud found resistance to the capitulards almost impossible to maintain. It was already hard for a civilian politician to challenge the opinion of military leaders, and he did not have de Gaulle’s support at this stage, having sent him on a mission to London. Marshal Pétain had a huge following in the country, and he knew the strength of his position.
Every hope rapidly proved false. An appeal for help to President Roosevelt turned out to have been ridiculously optimistic. Reynaud thought that Churchill’s last-minute proposal of an Anglo-French Union, which was backed by de Gaulle, might save the situation. The Pétain faction saw it as a plot by Britain to make France one of her dominions.* One Pétainist minister, Jean Ybarnegaray, exploded: ‘Better to be a Nazi province. At least we know what that means.’ To which Reynaud replied: ‘I prefer to collaborate with my allies than with my enemies.’ Pétain himself dismissed the whole idea angrily, describing it as ‘a marriage with a corpse’!
Reynaud’s opponents then went on to support the proposal of another minister, Camille Chautemps, that Hitler’s terms should be requested and considered. Chautemps, the Prime Minister in 1933, tainted by the corruption exposed in the Stavisky scandal, was one of the most notorious of those Third Republic politicians who treated their country ‘as if it were a commercial company going into liquidation’. Reynaud promptly offered his resignation to President Albert Lebrun. Afterwards, Pétain went up to Reynaud, offering his hand, and said that he hoped that they would remain friends. Reynaud was entirely taken in by his manner. He decided to stay in France in case President Lebrun called on him to form another government. The idea that Marshal Pétain would agree to his arrest within a matter of weeks, put him on trial, imprison him and later allow him to be handed over to the Germans was inconceivable.
At ten o’clock that night de Gaulle, who had flown straight back to Bordeaux from London in an aeroplane provided by Churchill, touched down at Mérignac airport still full of hope for the Anglo-French Union. He had not yet heard how things had gone at the Cabinet meeting. An officer waiting for him on the tarmac warned him of Reynaud’s resignation. The news that President Lebrun had appointed Marshal Pétain as the next Prime Minister followed half an hour later. The shock can be imagined. De Gaulle was no longer a minister. He reverted, at least in theory, to the rank of temporary brigadier-general. But Pétain’s appointment, signalling the victory of the defeatists, removed any doubt from his mind. Whatever the consequences, he must return to England to continue the fight.
To make sure that he left France safely, he had to be careful. Weygand loathed him, both personally and politically. Any attempt by an officer to continue the struggle which the commander-in-chief had been so keen to abandon would be treated as mutinous. Weygand would call for his court martial with the satisfaction which only moral outrage can bring.
Reynaud, in many ways relieved to be free of an appalling burden, encouraged de Gaulle in the idea when they met shortly before midnight. Ignoring the fact that he was no longer Prime Minister, he obtained passports and secret funds to provide the knight-errant General with his immediate expenses.
Early the next morning, Monday, 17 June, de Gaulle, accompanied by his young aide, Geoffroy de Courcel, met General Spears in the lobby of the Hotel Normandie. A short time before, a call had been put through to Spears’s room. It was the Duke of Windsor, asking for a Royal Navy warship to pick him up from Nice. The former king was told firmly but politely that no warship was available. Surely the road to Spain was open to motor cars if he did not wish to use the only other ship in the harbour – a collier.
The small party – Spears, de Gaulle and Courcel – drove to Mérignac and boarded the four-seater