Word: marshalling
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Dates: during 1940-1940
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...roads led to Rome last week, and the Romans used them, lickety-split. Along a rock-&-gravel supply highway which Marshal Rodolfo Graziani had just completed from Sidi Barrani back to bases in Libya, Italy's Army of the stagnant Egyptian invasion ran for its life. Along an Albanian road hugging the cliffs spectacularly from Porto Edda to Valona, built by the Italians during the last war and subject of great engineering pride with them, Italy's Army of the reversible Greek invasion made further headway backwards. The Italians were so completely on the run that Adolf Hitler...
That evening old Marshal Henri Philippe Pétain held a Cabinet meeting to consider the arrangements Pierre Laval had made. Laval appeared tired and anxious. Everything had been prepared, he explained. Hitler and Ribbentrop would be present at the ceremony in Les Invalides. Marshal Petain, as Chief of State, would also attend, as of course would he, Laval, as Foreign Minister. There would be a French guard of honor, as well as a German one. The ceremony would seal the rapprochement between France and Germany...
...Marshal balked, demanded to know by what authority his Vice Premier had arranged for him to leave unoccupied France. Laval replied that his portfolio of Foreign Affairs gave him authority to deal with Germany, insisted that Petain make the trip. Minister of the Interior Marcel B. Peyrouton, who recently created a Groupe de Protection for the Marshal after the pattern of Hitler's Elite Guard, asked for a specific guarantee of Pétain's liberty after he arrived in occupied France...
Laval lost his temper. He upbraided the Marshal for his stubbornness and Peyrouton for his suspicion. He demanded that in the future his powers be precisely defined, that he be given executive authority, with Pétain as a figurehead. Then he stalked from the meeting...
When they were resumed, a wild story burned the wires. The affaire de L'Aiglon had been a plot to seize or assassinate Marshal Pétain while he was in occupied France, whereupon Pierre Laval would have assumed the Office of Chief of State, set up a Fascist regime under the wing of Nazi Germany, and declared war on Great Britain. Whether or not this story had any substance of truth, Pierre Laval immediately became a pariah to the Government of France. Marshal Pétain broadcast a curt, messianic message to his people...