France and the Nazi Threat: The Collapse of French Diplomacy 1932-1939 (7 page)

Léger had quiet charm and gentle manners. I found him sympathetic but he had not the strength of character of his predecessor, Philippe Berthelot.
⁴⁸

The heaviest responsibility belonged to General Maurice Gamelin. Concerning this unusual character we have, in addition to various documents, a long and optimistic work—his own memoirs
⁴⁹
—as well as a harsh and detailed study entitled
Le Mystère Gamelin
by Colonel Le Goyet.
⁵⁰
Since the end result of his seven years as commander in chief led to the most disastrous defeat in French history, we are entitled to ask the question: was Gamelin completely mistaken? Or was it rather that, having understood where the problems were but being unable to secure what he needed, he didn’t have the backbone to waive the threat of a shattering resignation? This book will offer some answers to that question.

When he became chief of the general staff in February 1931 and member of the supreme war council—the second in the French army after Weygand (on January 21, 1935), who in turn had replaced Pétain—Gamelin was still chief of staff and appeared to enjoy excellent prospects. He was born in Paris in 1872, the son and grandson of general officers of the army and attended Saint-Cyr at nineteen, graduating first in a class of 449. He was to have excellent grades and reports throughout his career. In 1889 he went to the École de Guerre and Lieutenant Colonel Lanrezac described him as:

[s]uperior intelligence…a keen, clear, methodical and highly cultured mind; shows quick and good judgment… Has a strong, loyal, determined and fiery disposition. Strong personality. Very active having great stamina … will be a first class officer. Must be encouraged.
⁵¹

Gamelin was an avid reader and a disciple of Bergson; in 1906 he wrote an Étude philosophique sur l’art de la guerre.
*
Once he became Joffre’s aide-de-camp in 1906, Joffre didn’t let him out of his sights and appointed Gamelin to join his own staff in 1914.

Extremely jealous of his authority, he saw in Gamelin someone rather modest and self-effacing who possessed another rare gift: he could listen. He also became the confidant and close assistant of the victor of the Marne.
⁵²

Gamelin played a key role in the famous decision to resume the offensive on the Marne rather than on the Seine. By the end of the war he
was among the most brilliant commanding generals in the French army. After the war he increased his awareness of the world beyond France during his missions to Brazil and the Near East. It looked as though he had everything going for him, including the support of his commanding generals, Buat and later on Debeney, as well as that of top political leaders such as Herriot, Briand and finally Daladier. We should also add that he was extremely brave, which he proved once more in 1925-1926 during the “war of the Druses” in Syria.

But does the fact that a general who is intelligent, competent, brave, perfect at following orders, well informed as an advisor, simple and popular as a person, necessarily ensure that he will also be a great commander in chief? The harsh law of history teaches us that to deserve such a title one needs, during the period leading up to combat, unbending resolve and strategic imagination. Gamelin was respectful of civilian control in the democratic sense. But shouldn’t he have risen to voice his opposition on vitally important issues?

Since he failed to understand this, Gamelin got stuck in a system where submissiveness no longer allowed initiatives that could rescue the situation. The philosopher in him overcame the man of action.
⁵³

* * * *

France, a country with an unstable political system, in the throes of an economic crisis it couldn’t control, would manage to avoid being tempted by the efficiency of fascism. However, there exists a democratic version of efficiency, that of Lloyd George, Clemenceau, Roosevelt, and Churchill. The carnage of 1914-1918 deprived France of its moral elite, and she failed to find the men who could have altered her destiny. We shall therefore examine seven years of what appears to be a fateful mechanism at work. The historian may only attempt an explanation. The philosopher will often ask why so many opportunities were wasted. At times men struggle successfully for a purpose against the workings of deep and blind forces. But that wasn’t meant to be part of France’s destiny; its leaders proved to be weaker than fate itself.

*
The Presidency of the Council of Ministers was in effect the Prime Minister’s inner cabinet. [NDT]

*
The number in 2003 is estimated at over 500,000. [NDT]

*
Philosophical study of the art of war. [NDT]

Chapter I

T
HE
R
ETURN OF
E
DOUARD
H
ERRIOT

(June–December 1932)

O
ur story begins on June 3, 1932, when Edouard Herriot, president of the Radical and Radical Socialist Party, succeeded André Tardieu as prime minister. Tardieu, Clemenceau’s former right-hand man, had been disowned by the “Tigre,” because he had accepted a ministerial appointment to Poincaré’s National Union cabinet in July 1926; he was viewed, wrongly no doubt, as the great hope of an uruly right wing. A short time before he took over, Herriot characterized him as being “irascible, passionate and aggressive.”
¹
His short time in office (he had only been in power since February 23) was more than eventful: Aristide Briand had died on March 7; Philippe Berthelot, secretary general of the Quay d’Orsay and a great friend of Herriot, was seriously ill; the elections of May 1 and 8 had returned a majority of the Cartel des Gauches; on May 7, Paul Doumer, President of the Republic, had been assassinated by a deranged White Russian named Gorguloff—his successor was Albert Lebrun, an engineer from the
École Polytechnique
and a longtime politician—and, most importantly abroad, Adolf Hitler had won 11.5 million votes, and then 13.5 million votes in the German presidential elections
of March 13 and April 10 (with 36.7 percent), leading to the elections to the Reichstag where, on July 31, the Nazis would increase their seats from 107 to 230 (37.3 percent of the vote).

Even more threatening was the economic situation hanging over France like a black cloud, although France was probably suffering less than its neighbors in Germany, England, or the United States. Foreign capital, which had fled England after the 1931 devaluation, now flooded the French market where the Poincaré franc scrupulously maintained its parity (one-quarter and one-half of the gold franc). But those were floating funds. When the Cartel des Gauches came to power, the Stock Exchange immediately plunged at the beginning of May. What were foreign holders of French francs going to do? The budget presented by Tardieu reduced the deficit to 5 billion francs, which was still an enormous amount (out of a total budget of 41 billion).

The new Cartel des Gauches remained as orthodox as possible because the Socialists were refusing to take part in the government. Herriot wasn’t sorry that they chose to do so. In his opinion, if the Socialists had been in the government, it would certainly have encouraged the flight of capital. Germain-Martin, a “classical” economist if ever there was one, became finance minister, returning to a post he had previously held. Since May 1932, there was a slight decrease in unemployment, and a slow increase in industrial production although it still reached only 90% of its September 1931 level. Alfred Sauvy correctly points out: “The economic recovery in France owes nothing to the changed political majority since it hadn’t enacted a single important economic decision.” And since there was no national accounting system, neither the government nor the newspapers knew that a recovery was underway.
²

When he came to power, Herriot was very much aware of the three biggest problems France was facing and called them “so urgent, so threatening that good judgment forces us to apply all of our attention to solving them: first, the budget…then, abroad, Lausanne and Geneva.”
³

Regarding the budget, it must first be balanced once again. This matter would normally be outside the scope of the present study if one of the devices used, with the agreement of the minister of defense, Paul-Boncour, hadn’t been a reduction in the defense budget. Weygand, who at the time filled the highest post in the Army, bitterly complained about this.
⁴

In effect, defense spending did decrease in 1931–32. The decrease mainly affected armaments, which were broadly slashed between 1932
and 1934.
⁵
But Weygand also wrote that, in June 1932, he had to accept a one-twelfth reduction in the number of conscripts. This form of “spontaneous” disarmament came at the wrong time since what was being discussed at the international level by France’s partners were reductions from the current level and not from previous levels of armaments.

Lausanne
referred to the forthcoming international conference on German reparations. That conference held many pitfalls for France. The “Hoover moratorium” on debts between countries had suspended reparations payments for one year, ending on June 30, 1932. As early as January of that year, German Chancellor Heinrich Brüning had peremptorily announced that Germany would refuse to resume its payments. Both the United States and Britain supported him. France would certainly be isolated.

Geneva
meant the disarmament conference, which had opened in February. There too, between an ultra-nationalist Germany intent on rearmament and the Anglo-Americans hostile to what they called French “militarism,” France was not in a strong position.

Edouard Herriot, as he had done in 1924, decided to be his own foreign minister. He was quite a character—his jovial disposition, pipe and paunch and crumpled appearance made him instantly recognizable, yet he possessed the most refined and wide-ranging literary culture. His love for the city of Lyon, where he was mayor and his amazing ability to manipulate the Radical Socialists were well known. Was he the right man for the circumstances? Looking back, two contradictory images of Herriot emerge: on the one hand, he was an innovator
⁶
who truly wanted—cautiously—to bring France and Germany closer together and tried to develop France’s relations with the USSR; on the other hand, he made crucial concessions several times: first when he abandoned the Ruhr in 1924, then when he gave up on reparations in 1932 and, finally, when he endorsed the principle of “equal rights” for Germany to rearm.

In
Jadis
, the book Herriot wrote after the Second World War, he discusses his government of 1932 on seventy pages, fifty-three of them dealing with foreign policy.
⁷
They are a strange mixture of minutiae (probably because at that time Herriot had many documents at his disposal) and “detachment.” Those pages resemble a card file that Herriot reproduces, often without any attempt at a conclusion, as though the main objective were to build the author’s image. When he recounts the fall of his cabinet on December 12, 1932, over the issue of payment of war debts to America, he says, “I felt no emotion. I still think today that
the fall of the government brought about by my insisting on preserving the French signature was one of the finest moments of my entire public life.”
⁸

He preferred posturing to getting things done. François de Wendel, a powerful businessman and right-wing member of Parliament who hated Herriot, said “Very emotional, half sincere and half cunning” he created “the impression of a man without a plan, just drifting along.”
⁹
At the opposite end of the political spectrum, Paul Faure, a socialist, thought the radicals were “mere politicos, willing to accept every compromise, every retreat.”
¹⁰
And Herriot took this as a personal insult. Pierre-Olivier Lapie, who liked Herriot, but viewed him with an uncompromising eye, had some entertaining things to say about him in a chapter entitled “Preserving Glory,”
¹¹
concerning his penchant for the grand gesture, his “honest man’s vanity,” an “endearing…vanity.” Edouard Herriot, he wrote, is “so convinced of the correctness of his actions, he is so certain that his system is entirely justified that it becomes a defense against discouragement. Any course of action, because he has undertaken it guided by his intelligence, his careful consideration, his method and his heart, must be correct and if events go against it, then the events were wrong.” Our final witness, Jules Jeanneney, who was to become president of the Senate, did not hesitate in September 1939 to attack Herriot, who at the time was president of the Chamber, as follows: “The vast illusions you have entertained towards Germany and the concessions you have made to her are enormous. This is precisely what we must now repair.”
¹²