France and the Nazi Threat: The Collapse of French Diplomacy 1932-1939 (47 page)

After serving as minister to Prague, where he had excellent relations with Eduard Beneš, Léon Noël was appointed to a difficult position at a delicate moment in 1935. The low esteem Corbin showed for Sir John Simon or Samuel Hoare reflected only on their policies and was not at all personal. In Warsaw, however, Noël had to deal with the strange and tortuous Colonel Beck who took an instant dislike to him.
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Naturally, he worked incessantly toward improving Franco-Polish relations. He quickly understood the abyss existing between Polish public opinion, largely pro-French, and the pro-German policies of the leadership, which he thought were insane. After Munich he suggested something of a weakening of the alliance, seeking to remove its “automatic” character.
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He did not believe in a real alliance with the Soviets. Léon Noël, said de Monzie, was “a paragon of diplomatic virtue… He observes to a maximum and recommends a minimum. He doesn’t get mixed up in the debates of the restless city.”
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Léon Noël had tolerable relations with Laval and Flandin
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whom he did not find very dedicated; they were good with Léon Blum and acceptable with Yvon Delbos.
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They deteriorated with Georges Bonnet in 1938–1939. As for Léger “and his clan,”
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he thoroughly disapproved of their policies. The worst would be that at a crucial moment in the spring of 1939, he was kept in the dark about negotiations in Paris between Bonnet and the Polish ambassador and between Gamelin and Polish military leaders. He did not hesitate to complain loudly in his telegrams about those happenings.

The impression one gathers in closing this quick survey is that the Quai d’Orsay produced some excellent ambassadors, eager to accumulate a wealth of information, having a mind of their own who would not depart from their assignments that involved recommending solutions and who kept their personal views strictly in tune with the policies of their state, while being expert at handling their local teams of diplomats and attachés.

However, one may legitimately ask whether the Quai d’Orsay and the minister of foreign affairs in particular always knew how best to use them. This was in part related to the minister’s relations with his envoys. We
have seen in several cases, for example, with Naggiar, Coulondre and Léon Noël that there was a serious lack of communication regarding negotiations taking place in Paris. François-Poncet would complain from Rome of being “by-passed” by a mission that Georges Bonnet entrusted to Paul Baudoin. He repeated his criticism—Coulondre would complain about it as well—regarding the contacts of pro-German journalist Fernand de Brinon and the Nazi leadership.

Whether it was Laval, whose world view was rather superficial; Delbos, who was hypnotized by a limited number of issues; or Bonnet, whose vision was much broader but who liked to use complicated and secretive methods, the proposals and plans offered by the ambassadors do not appear to have been followed. As for relations with the Quai d’Orsay, these would seem to have been better when Massigli acted as a counterweight to Léger, in a manner of speaking. Once the latter succeeded in removing his “rival” and in replacing him with the men of his “clan”—Charvériat and Rochat—relations became more difficult with the exception of Corbin, whose style was less confrontational than that of Naggiar or Léon Noël, and less authoritarian than François-Poncet. Massigli, a graduate of the École Normale Supérieure, was on a first-name basis with his fellow graduate François-Poncet. Léon Noël had nothing but praise for Massigli who was “always candid and insightful.”
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3.

T
HE
S
PECIALIZED
A
TTACHÉS

French embassies and legations overseas also had a number of attachés, along with the ambassadors or the ministers and their specifically diplomatic staff. In 1935 there were thirty-four commercial attachés, twenty-six military attachés, ten naval attachés, eleven air force attachés and three or four financial attachés. The distribution was not the same everywhere. Sometimes one military attaché covered several countries, which was also the case of the commercial attachés.

We shall not go into the detail of the work of the commercial attachés, which was mostly of a technical nature. During the period we are examining financial attachés were posted only in New York (Emmanuel Mönick from 1930 to 1934), London (Jacques Rueff from 1930 to 1936, then Emmanuel Mönick), Berlin and Rome (Roumillac).
They reported to the director of the
Mouvement général des fonds
at the Ministry of Finance (Wilfrid Baumgartner from 1935 to 1937; Jacques Rueff was appointed director general in April 1937).

Jacques Rueff wrote a very lively memoir of his experience as a financial attaché in London,
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where he was living when the world economic crisis began and of necessity became extremely active. He was at the same time “the representative of the French treasury to the British treasury” and an observer of economic and financial matters “in a financial market that still was then—like Washington today—the first in the world.” He administered the sterling accounts of the French treasury, maintaining excellent relations with London bankers and managed to have a “trusting collaboration” with the controller of the treasury Sir Frederick Leith-Ross, and his deputy, Sir David Waley, “his fraternal friends,” as he called them. He gave many lectures on economic subjects, was friendly with Keynes, led many missions to other foreign countries and prepared the big conferences, especially those of Lausanne in 1932 and London in 1933. Rueff shuttled constantly between London and Paris in an old Air France two-engine plane with an aluminum fuselage. Because of his expertise—this was also the case of Emmanuel Mönick—the financial attaché to London had a decisive influence over France’s general policies.

Mönick, Rueff and Baumgartner were younger men playing a more important role than their minister in monetary and international financial matters. We have described some facets of their work and shall examine them once more later on.

The mission of the attachés of the three branches of the military
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was basically to gather so-called “open” information about the countries they were responsible for. At times they also had officers of the intelligence service as “adjunct” attachés.

In 1935 there were twenty-six military attachés. Beyond their mission as representatives, they were also supposed to provide information while they were forbidden from engaging in any espionage. They were always supposed to submit their reports to the ambassador. The army, navy and air force attachés (these were created in 1920 and called
air attachés
starting in 1932) worked independently from one another but were supposed to share their information. Adjunct attachés could not gather confidential information about the countries they were accredited to but worked on neighboring countries. The only well-known example
was that of Captain Stehlin in Berlin, showing how easily that rule could be ignored with the connivance of the country itself. They were only supposed to inform the military attaché of the “general content” of information they gathered and sent back to the general staff in sealed envelopes in the diplomatic pouch. One of these attachés was Major Fustier, who was ordered out of Belgium in 1939.

The attachés themselves are of greater interest for our purposes. Their correspondence was addressed to the minister of their branch of the military. A copy was very often sent, however, to the Quai d’Orsay. While specifically focused on military forces, they often widened their observations to politics, social issues, and local economics, and it is very useful to compare their cables and reports to those of the ambassador who, in any case, was aware of their content. They generally had excellent relations with the ambassador and had an ongoing and even daily working relationship.

How were they recruited? Except in the smaller countries, they were generally at the lieutenant colonel rank and all of them had seen action in the First World War. As staff officers they had attended the
École Supérieure de Guerre
and sometimes for the very high positions were graduates of the Center for High Military Studies. They were theoretically expected to have excellent language fluency and experience of foreign countries. This could be acquired through inter-allied commission work or as liaison officers with foreign armies. For example, General Parisot, military attaché to Italy from 1933 to 1937, had been sent to the Piave front in 1917. He had learned the language and been on the staff of the Duke of Aosta. General Lelong, military attaché in London from 1936 to 1939, had spent time with Gamelin in Brazil. An odd case was that of General Renondeau, military attaché in Tokyo until 1928 after having served in a Japanese regiment for one year and becoming a distinguished Japan specialist. He was posted in Berlin (from 1935 to 1938), where he quickly mastered German. Major de La Forest-Divonne (adjunct attaché in Germany in 1935 and later attaché in Switzerland) had an Austrian mother. Captain Stehlin, originally from Alsace, was completely bilingual.

These officers would often rotate from one assignment to the next and once they had put in time as colonels in a command, they ended their military careers in these very special postings. Others went on to distinguished military careers after starting out as young adjunct attachés (Generals Bethouart, Mast, Ganeval, and Stehlin).

Appointments to secondary posts didn’t seem to follow any strict rules. There were more graduates of Saint-Cyr than of Polytechnique. Sophistication, appearance, and social relations could play a major role. Appointments were carefully examined both for the most important allied or neighboring countries (Great Britain, Belgium, Switzerland) the doubtful countries (USSR) or potential enemies (Germany, and Italy since 1936).

A few examples: Lieutenant-Colonel de La Forest-Divonne
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provided some very specific information regarding the Swiss army. He had an excellent relationship with corps commander Colonel Borel, head of the infantry and a dedicated Francophile (he had studied at the École Supérieure de Guerre), La Forest-Divonne feared that a pro-German officer, Colonel Wille, would be appointed to head the Swiss army. Actually it would be Colonel Guisan. From his observation post in Bern he was in the right spot to gather information about Germany.
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He also obtained intelligence on the Spanish Civil War, the Communist political movements and even the USSR. He was also concerned with a possible Nazi attack on France through Switzerland and was able
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to carry out unofficial negotiations with the Swiss general staff from 1936 to 1939.

From London General Lelong kept Paris informed in detail of the progress made by the British army. His relations with his British counterparts, Generals Lord Ismay, Ironside, and Gort, were excellent.
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He often discussed with them the conscription issue, which would only be implemented in April 1939, and he played a decisive role, starting in February 1939, in preparing for the smooth functioning of the French-English military conversations where he successfully created a positive atmosphere of comradeship and trust.
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In Italy General Parisot “didn’t confine himself to the simple role of observer and representative. He tried to play a key part in Franco-Italian relations, taking advantage of his “vague” instructions.”
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During the time of rapprochement in 1934–1935, he took advantage of his good relations with Marshal Badoglio whom he had met when he was on the staff of General Diaz in 1917. He thought of him as being “an outstanding man who consistently behaved in an extremely correct manner towards me.”
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Parisot, as a practicing Catholic, organized veteran pilgrimages to Rome. He attended maneuvers and took part in military meetings in 1935. He predicted the Ethiopian expedition as early as October 1934 and explained to the government the contradiction between the rapprochement policy and this new threat.

For three years (1934–1937) his assistant, Captain Catoire, kept a very important diary that described in detail the different “impressions” emanating from military circles in Rome. He was opposed to the Duce’s “militaristic and warrior spirit” and little by little witnessed the deteriorating relationship. On April 2, 1936, while the French embassy still believed it could keep Italy in the anti-Hitler camp, he noted “[t]heir common interests at this time will draw Italy and German fatefully closer to one another.” He could also see that Ambassador de Chambrun “had been kept unbelievably in the dark about the situation since March 7.”

At the same time Captain Stehlin met a group of Italian officers in Berlin by accident in a bar and found out some key information allowing him to convince François-Poncet that the two dictators were drawing closer together. We have already mentioned that incident.
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Therefore military informers did precede diplomatic reporting on occasion.

The Berlin team was quite outstanding, at least up to the fall of 1938. General Renondeau, the aeronautical engineer Léon Poincaré and, starting in 1937, Air Force Colonel de Geffrier were excellent specialists, progressively following the build-up of the Wehrmacht and the Luftwaffe. And then there was Stehlin, who had the advantage of speaking the language and of having been very well trained as an intelligence officer. His personal charm with women also led him to having several affairs and to forming friendships with his counterparts; Ambassador François-Poncet was “like a father” to him after a difficult beginning; as were German Air Force Generals Bodenschatz, Udet and Marshal Göring. A strange affair took place between Stehlin and one of Göring’s sisters, Olga Riegle. He became a friend of the family and as much as we may surmise—at least this was Stehlin’s own impression
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—Göring was pleased to pass on a number of real intelligence items that actually made a considerable impression and contributed to demoralize the French even more. The high point was reached during General Vuillemin’s visit to Germany in August 1938. Meanwhile, Stehlin was flying in German military planes and was on very friendly terms with many officers as he sent a lot of intelligence back to Paris—which was duly ignored—about the revolutionary air and ground tactics adopted by the Germans. “It was our duty to inform as completely, precisely and objectively as we could. We never once tried to alarm the French High Command.”
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