France and the Nazi Threat: The Collapse of French Diplomacy 1932-1939 (11 page)

The next installment was due on December 15. What could be done? First, establish a common front with the British. But Great Britain, despite the “gentlemen’s agreement,” and the “trust agreement” notwithstanding, intended to go it alone. Sir Frederick Leith-Ross, a treasury expert, told the French financial attaché, Jacques Rueff, and the assistant manager of commercial relations of the Quai d’Orsay, “the negotiations to be entered were to remain on a strictly individual basis. The British government would keep us confidentially informed, regarding the first steps it would take right after the November 8 elections.” This clearly showed the only reason for these fake agreements, which was to draw Herriot into the trap of concessions that Britain wanted made.
⁷⁵
The British method, all the way up to and including 1939, would remain unchanged—to not consult with France in advance, but to make a unilateral decision and then to communicate it to the French. There would be many examples of this, some of them rather dramatic.

On November 10, Herriot asked his ambassador to Washington, the poet Paul Claudel—who was also a staunch “Briandist”—to deliver a
note to the American government suggesting “a reappraisal of the debt question” preceded by an extension of the moratorium. France surely deserved as much. “The readiness showed in Lausanne…was clear proof that it is actively interested in Europe’s prompt economic recovery.”
⁷⁶

According to Claudel, this proposal had little chance of success. Certainly, the Eastern newspapers would favor a revision. But Congress “is unanimously opposed to the moratorium.” “Some degree of leniency is being shown to England but as to France many politicians indicate that it doesn’t deserve any.” In any case, the newly elected president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was only to take office in March 1933, didn’t seem very much inclined to show any generosity in the matter.
⁷⁷
On November 23, the American government answered the French diplomatic note of November 10 with the utmost clarity. No moratorium or suspension of payments could be granted by the December 15 deadline. An opening was hinted at: “If the payment is made, the chances for a positive review of the entire matter would be, in my opinion, greatly enhanced.”
⁷⁸

This last sentence may have appeared critical to Herriot. The banker Jean Monnet, although less well known in those days than he was to be later on, was already very friendly with an amazing number of influential American and British officials and businessmen. He advised Jacques Rueff, the financial attaché in London, to meet the deadline of December 15. “Default by France would make any collaboration between our two countries impossible for thirty years at least!”
⁷⁹

While contacts in Washington and in London were repeatedly being made—to no avail—and the legal advisors of the Quai d’Orsay issued more advice, Edouard Herriot decided on a course of action. France would meet its financial obligations—19.26 million US dollars, roughly 481 million francs, the equivalent of one twenty-fourth of the French budget—due on December 15. Public opinion was in an uproar. Everyone opposed the payment. The press, as well as the foreign affairs committee, and finance committees in Parliament and the Senate were either dubious or hostile.

The issue was debated from December 12 to 14. On the 14th, Herriot knew that Great Britain would make its payment. He delivered a moving speech on the 12th. “These commitments which France has taken were approved by the elected representatives of the French people. We must honor the law and honor our contracts…the honor of France lies in its defense of the eternal laws of political morality. I will not allow France’s signature to be invalidated.”
⁸⁰
This flight of oratory was met with much
applause on the left. But once the great principles were set aside, it was the money that mattered. On December 14, under the attacks of the right (with Louis Marin) and the socialists (with Vincent Auriol), “in a climate of feverish lassitude,”
⁸¹
Herriot fell. “You are going to isolate France. You are going to shatter our solidarity with England. You gentlemen, for 480 million, are going to destroy all that! At a time when dictatorial regimes are spreading in every direction… would you be willing to break up the alliance of liberty against dictatorship, for 480 million francs?”

The vote was 402 against, 196 in favor. The collusion between the socialists and the right (in spite of Paul Reynaud and Ybarnegaray) was a fatal blow to the payment of the war debts and to Edouard Herriot. He would later be part of the government several times, but never again as prime minister. A country is not governed by grand gestures, good intentions and approximation. This time the French parliament was expressing popular sentiment and was true to the nation’s chauvinistic, tight-fisted self, ignorant of the roundabout ways of Anglo-American moralism. “Herriot is low class,” wrote P.-O. Lapie.
⁸²
But he had wanted to elevate the nation to the same qualities of honesty that he lived by. The French people, outraged by what they considered to be American injustice, refused to follow him.

There is another explanation for Herriot’s downfall. Paul-Boncour hints that certain financial circles, with a lot of influence on many right-wing deputies, were only too glad to find a “nationalistic” pretext for Herriot’s downfall. His projected budget, however cautious, tended to increase direct taxation. Just as in 1924, the “wall of money” resisted attempts at reform by the Cartel des Gauches.

Chapter II

T
HE
Y
EAR OF
P
AUL
-B
ONCOUR

(December 18, 1932–January 30, 1934)

I
apologize for using an individual’s name as the title of some chapters. If the official responsible for foreign policy had a strong, dominating personality, the imprint of his “style” will be felt in his country’s overall diplomacy, with positive or negative results. But it is also true that individuals, however prestigious they may be, have limited room to maneuver and that some deep pressures are at work easing their task while other forces are actively countering them. Some of these men—and this is true for Joseph Paul-Boncour and Edouard Herriot—were emblematic and indeed the spokesmen for some fundamental trends operating in France, a country by then tormented by the world crisis, and ruled by a kind of compromise between powerful interests and the middle classes, which in turn controlled the outcome of any free election.

Nineteen thirty-three was one of the worse years of the prewar period regarding government instability, economic difficulty and financial scandals. From the fall of Herriot (December 14, 1932) to the “events” of February 6, 1934, there were five different cabinets that, apart from the first one (Paul-Boncour until January 1933) were all headed by radical
socialists: Edouard Daladier (January 31–October 24, 1933); Albert Sarraut (October 26–November 23, 1933); Camille Chautemps (November 26, 1933–January 27, 1934); and again Daladier (January 30–February 7, 1934).

Paul-Boncour was in charge of the Quai d’Orsay under each one of those governments (except for the two final weeks of the last Daladier cabinet). Only four other politicians were to keep their positions throughout that same period—Edouard Daladier remained at the ministry of war, Camille Chautemps at the ministry of the interior, Anatole de Monzie at the ministry of education and Pierre Cot at the ministry of air.

Short, with a thick white mane and gifted with a kind of lyrical eloquence almost equal to Briand, Joseph Paul-Boncour was certainly the most loyal and striking disciple of the “Apostle of Peace.” This was the reason he found himself fully agreeing with the new secretary general of the Quai d’Orsay, Alexis Léger. It had all started in 1924, during the year of the first Cartel, when Briand, escorted by Paul-Boncour, made his initial appearance at the League of Nations, which he would enthrall with his eloquent speechmaking. “Briand, Herriot and myself all practiced a similar foreign policy, each according to his temperament and to the circumstances. A policy based on the League of Nations and the establishment of peace through collective security, so that from 1924 to 1934, the same goals were being pursued; our efforts were sustained by the fact that, whatever the government in power was at the time, Briand and I were the permanent representatives of France at the League of Nations.”
¹
When Paul-Boncour picked his cabinet without asking Herriot to participate, that consistency became undone: “He who in the morning talked of the physical impossibility of separating our two destinies later let it be torn asunder.”
²
Herriot consoled himself by becoming chairman of the foreign affairs committee in Parliament, where he succeeded Paul-Boncour on February 8, 1933. Thus, the collaboration continued and Paul-Boncour would later send Herriot on important missions to the United States and the USSR. Paul-Boncour was personally behind an important change—a wide-ranging diplomatic rotation. In the spring of 1933, Charles Corbin took over from the aging Aimé de Fleuriau in London (March 13); Paul Claudel left Washington to fill Corbin’s post in the Belgian capital (March 13); Henri de Jouvenel was appointed (for six months) to Rome (January 22); and Charles Alphand was appointed to Moscow (March 13). Topping off these changes, Paul-Boncour named Alexis Léger, the number one “Briandist” and great backer of collective security, as secretary general (March 13).

The problem was that the policy of collective security now appeared like an anachronism. The Japanese military cynically demonstrated in 1931 and 1932 that it was totally ineffectual. Then, on January 30, 1933, something much more threatening took place when Hitler was summoned by the old president, Marshal von Hindenburg, and became the Reichs chancellor France was powerless to do anything about it.

1.

H
OW
D
ID THE
F
RENCH
R
EACT TO
H
ITLER
’
S
C
OMING TO
P
OWER
?
³

The French ambassador to Berlin, André François-Poncet, in office since October 1931, was an
agrégé
*
in German; he had been elected a deputy and served as undersecretary of state. He had spent much of his previous career as a journalist and was probably the most knowledgeable person in France regarding Hitler and national socialism. His hesitations in 1932 say much about the ability of the French to gauge the Nazis’ chances of coming to power. During the summer of 1932 he had warned of the unstoppable rise to power of the Nazi movement, but by September he and his colleagues were less sanguine. Lieutenant-Colonel de La Forest-Divonne, the deputy military attaché, soon to be posted to Switzerland, had this to say on September 27: “It is obvious that Hitler didn’t seize the moment, and a hard fall is bound to follow his meteoric rise.”
⁴
Knowing that Hitler no longer wanted to seize power through a putsch as he had attempted in 1923, and that he wanted to take over legally, François-Poncet felt optimistic about the situation when the Nazis suffered a relative defeat in the general elections of November 6, 1932 (196 Nazi deputies were elected, down from 230, or 33.1 percent compared to 37.3 percent). “A clear defeat,” “The spell is broken,” “The force of attraction seems…to have cracked.”
⁵
Throughout December his dispatches emphasized the internal divisions within the Nazi party and underscored the energy of the new chancellor, General von Schleicher. “The wait-and-see policy to which Hitler seems to have resigned himself can only be disastrous for his party.”… “In any case, the quarrel between Hitler
and Strasser should be seen as a fatal illness for the Nazi party.”
⁶
“The disintegration of the Nazi movement is continuing at a very quick pace.”
⁷
. Only after the Nazi success in the elections in Lippe, in January 1933, does the ambassador once again believe in the possibility of Hitler’s coming to power, which in fact happened two weeks later to the day.

Many French commentators shared the same conflicting impression. In the November 8 and 9, 1932, issues of
Le Populaire
, Léon Blum confidently wrote, “Hitler is now definitely cut off from power. He is even, if I may say so, cut off from the hope of coming to power.”
L’Œuvre
, dated January 1, 1933, proclaimed “Hitlerism’s sorry demise.”
⁸
On the same day, Oreste Rosenfeld wrote in
Le Populaire
, “Hitler’s disappearance from the political scene is likely.” These were left-wing newspapers; the right was no more enlightened. Hitler “missed the boat,” wrote Bernus in
Les Débats
. Delebecque, in
L’Action française
, spoke of “Hitler’s twilight.” “Does Hitler still exist?” asked Léon Bailby in the September 29 issue of
L’Intransigeant
. Pertinax thought that “The General Boulanger of Germany has lost his timing” (
Echo de Paris
, November 7, 1932), and he held to this idea in the
Echo de Paris
of December 16, 1932: “Hitler is on the wane… Supreme power will never come his way.”
⁹

Events were to invalidate these mistaken forecasts. Hitler, summoned by the elderly president von Hindenburg, was appointed chancellor legally on January 30, 1933.

After minimizing Hitler’s chances, the French newspapers acknowledged that Hindenburg had given in. They clearly understood the reasons why von Papen had maneuvered behind the scenes; the Junkers were rabidly opposed to von Schleicher because he seemed to threaten their large estates in eastern Germany. Finally, Hindenburg himself had been circumvented since he too had become a landowner through national gifts. All this was very surprising. But was it all that serious? The socialists denounced the German Communist Party’s policy of “class against class”; “the criminal split that Moscow wants and encourages continues to divide the working class.”
¹⁰
Conversely, the communists attacked social democracy’s “policy of the lesser evil,” and once again, denounced the treaty of Versailles, the reparations, the drawing up of arbitrary borders, the “impossible corridor,” and the belief in German guilt. Gabriel Péri declared “a battle against the Treaty of Versailles and Hitlerism, its bastard child.”
¹¹