The Rooster's Glory
A Brief History of France - By Jean Bergeron
By June 1940 everything looked blim for the Allies and France in particular. All military doctrines, all the war propaganda and all hopes had failed, crushed under the ever fasting power of the Wermacht.
The French propaganda had boasted about how the Maginot Line would stop any future agression from Germany, yet there it was, it had been flanked, Belgium had fallen, the Allied forces had barely escaped at Dunkirk and the unthinkable was about to happened: Paris would fall.
The French government and military were beaten, defeatism plagued the conversations. Prominent and influential figures like Maxime Weygand, Phillipe Pétain, Paul Baudouin and even Prime Minister's Paul Reynaud partner Hélène de Portes, all of them called for the need of an armistice. Churchill had become increasingly worried about France signing a separate accord with Germany leaving Britain alone, for that reason he flew to France to the provisional capital of Tours to try to convince the French High Command to keep the fight at any cost.
What happened on that reunion wouldn't be the inflection point, but what happened after.
Memoirs of the Second World War - By Winston Churchill
June 11th 1940
My humour after what seemed at the moment as a futile reunion coul not have been worse.
Marshal Pétain
La sauveur de Verdun had given in to defeatism.
I tried to convince him that there were alternatives, a redoubt in Brittany, the guerrillas, a strategic retreat to Corsica and North Africa, everything was in vain.
When leaving the meeting a great weight fell on my body, the fate of the British Empire would depend on itself. Arriving on London I went to bed with a blank mind and fearing not only for the fate of Great Britain, but for our entire civilization before Hitler's barbarism.
But while I was sleeping, the Nazi evil, in all its madness and destruction, would commit a crime that would definitively seal its destiny. Depite of how controversial my statements have been received, I maintain without a doubt that what happened that night definitively sealed the fate of Germany.
The Call to Fight - By Charles De Gaulle
Over the years and despite any differences between us, Sir Winston and I always had a dark joke between us, dark even for the British acidic humour:
By killing the defeatists, Hitler had saved France.
On June 11th only a few hours after Churchill flew back to London, the
Boche would commit a despicable war crime, one of many that had already done and would continue to do over France.
At 2 AM the Luftwaffe attacked in a violent and indiscriminate bombing that would devastate the beautiful Tours. All of us woke up confused and in despair trying to find a safe haven. The explosions, followed by dust, screams and confusion continued throughout the night. No one knew if he would live to see another dawn.
By the time the first rays of the sun revealed the devastation and death that had fallen in the city, it was clear that there would be significant casualties in the city that housed the government at that time, but at that time no one imagined the magnitude.
Besides me, Reynaud, Blum, Lebrun, Mandel and other ministers had escaped, although not without injuries, Paul had a broken leg and Mandel had burns on his left arm. Several ministers were still missing for the afternoon, but the biggest surprise would come later.
While we were in a meeting at 6 pm, Paul continued in shock after learning that his partner Helene had not survived the attack, in her pain she tried to have a coherent conversation with the rest of us until they knocked on the door. The words of the cadet caused a silence as he had never heard: We have found them, they are dead.
Weygand and Pétain were dead, killed by the gaps, despite their erroneous decisions and thoughts, we could not help feeling a great anger and incomparable anger at the murders not only of our comrades and bosses, but also of the hundreds of civilians massacred . Even though each one of us did not know it, we all thought the same thing: We would not let their deaths be in vain, we would avenge them, no matter the cost.
A Brief History of France - By Jean Bergeron
The bombing of Tours combined with the deaths of France's best military commanders had larger implications than expected. Weygand and Pétain had seriously considered an armist with Germany to save France from the debacle and what they considered an imminent defeat. Their deaths would completely set aside such an option for the remaining members of the Government. On the next semi-chaotic days while the fate of France was being decided Italy declared war on France attepting to invade through the Alps and facing a tough resistance of the French army of the Alps. Paris fell to the Nazi forces on June 14th and the surviving members of government fled to Bordeaux, out of the reach of the Nazis forces ... for now.
On June 16, 5 days after the crime of Tours and after a long series of deliberations and meetings changes in the government were made. Paul Reynaud, suffering from stress and grieving the loss of his partner stepeed down as Prime Minister being replaced by Albert Lebrun, he quickly announced Georges Mandel as President of the Council of Ministers, Leon Blum as Minister of Economy and Charles De Gaulle as Minister of War.
In what Churchill called the
most decisive day in France's history, the ministers had made a stand, despite hours of arguments and counterarguments a decision was made: The battle was lost yes, but not the war, France would fight to the last consequences.
