Word: petain
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...conferred with Petain and Laval, was rumored to have seen German officials, pledged allegiance to Petain, promised not to aid De Gaulle. Last week the aging escapist was reported to have offered to surrender, in return for release of 500,000 Frenchmen imprisoned in Germany. Since Frenchmen are a burden to Germany as prisoners and could be a boon as laborers for Laval, this looked as if it might be a very pretty answer to a very curious affair...
...Marshal Petain retains the innocuous title and role of Chief of State. Doubtless Pierre Laval would have no objection to the aged bulk of the Marshal walking, as Field Marshal von Hindenburg once walked, beside Adolf Hitler on the day of triumph...
...Laval hobnobbed with Herbert Hoover at the White House. Through daughter Jose, Laval reached into French aristocracy. Jose married young Rene de Chambrun, son of the onetime French Ambassador to Italy, descendant of Xa-fayette, nephew by marriage of Alice Roosevelt Longworth. Through the De Chambruns, Laval met Marshal Petain. Laval eventually rose so high as to be made a Papal Count...
...Petain intimates claim that in December 1940 Laval planned a coup d'etat which would have detained Petain in Versailles and shifted the Vichy Government to Paris. At any rate, Laval was arrested and imprisoned in his chateau at Chatel-don (the man who arrested him was Marcel Peyrouton, who last week resigned as Vichy's Ambassador to Argentina). Next day Otto Abetz, the German ruler of Occupied France, sped to Vichy in a huge Mercedes mounting two machine guns, demanded and got Laval's release. Then & there began the German pressuring for Laval's restoration...
...formidable weapon, is assembled between the Hook of Holland and Trondheim, Norway; 2) the British claim (probably extravagantly) that half the fighter strength of the Luftwaffe is drawn up near the invasion coast; 3) Germany's best Field Marshal, Gerd von Rundstedt, has been sent to France; 4) Petain is out and Laval and his Anglophobes are in; 5) British experts say that Germany has been building gliders and transports all winter long. Perhaps these things had no relation to each other; but perhaps they did. Hitler might...