France and the Nazi Threat: The Collapse of French Diplomacy 1932-1939 (27 page)

Albert Sarraut, who was the quintessential Radical-Socialist and brother of Maurice Sarraut, the all-powerful publisher of
La Dépêche de Toulouse
, was called upon. Albert was outwardly full of energy but rather hesitant deep down. He put together a strange cabinet that included the right (Flandin at Foreign Affairs, Piétri at Marine, Mandel at the PTT, etc.), but where the radical socialists and independent socialists were by far the dominant element. Paul-Boncour was minister of state and permanent representative to the League of Nations. Georges Bonnet was minister of commerce and industry. Marcel Déat, a university professor and dissident socialist, became, due to his great experience no doubt, minister of air. Only General Louis Maurin among the military ministers had real experience. He was returning to the ministry of war once again, a position he had held after Marshal Pétain in the Flandin cabinet. He was a great artilleryman and had served under Joffre. We shall attempt to explain his role, which was different from Gamelin’s. Maurin and Gamelin were classmates at the École de Guerre (1899) and had both been among Joffre’s “special envoys” in 1914.

Such a government was paralyzed in every possible direction. Both those in favor and those opposed to the Popular Front could only reach a few compromise decisions that everyone could agree to. Since it knew beyond a doubt that it could not last, it had to delay the big decisions and take as little action as possible.

1.

I
NTERNAL AND
F
OREIGN
P
OLICY UP TO
M
ARCH
7, 1936

The potential for a Popular Front victory—which, contrary to the Cartel des Gauches, included the communists—caused some rather acrimonious friction. For some it represented an enthusiastic hope, while in others it brought out strong hostility that could sometimes turn violent. The event that startled the imagination of the French people the most before March 7 was the attack by the “camelots du roi,” who were returning from the funeral of Jacques Bainville, the Action Française historian, against socialist leader Léon Blum on February 13. Wounded in the head, he had to cease all political activity for several weeks. The attack prompted the Sarraut cabinet to dissolve the Ligue d’Action Française and its satellite organizations, a sure sign of the increasing tensions among the French people.

The war in Ethiopia fit squarely into this picture. The Popular Front was naturally anti-fascist and the right wing was generally pro-Italian, for ideological reasons among the small fascist groups, and out of colonial sympathy among most of the moderate right. The public followed military operations with great interest, the problems the Italians encountered in Ethiopia,
¹
renewed optimism surfaced in Rome at the beginning of February
²
and that month actually saw some key military successes.

But the problem was different as far as France was concerned. The issue was to assess whether the basically ineffective economic sanctions decided by the League of Nations in October 1935 could be reinforced by an oil embargo. Obviously there was a good chance for it to also not be decisive. Since the United States
³
and Germany
⁴
were not members of the League of Nations, they would not be compelled to observe it despite the “moral embargo” that had been proclaimed—uselessly—by U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull. Mussolini’s Italy, however, would certainly be very much affected. Once he found out about the new Sarraut government coming to power in France, Mussolini told French Ambassador de Chambrun that such an embargo “would have overwhelming consequences on Franco-Italian friendship” and he suggested that Sarraut take a reassuring position during his government’s policy statement.
⁵
Sarraut’s statement was completely vague and insignificant at best. He merely touched on “the respect for international commitments and the
development of collective security according to the principles of the League of Nations.”
⁶

The matter, like all those requiring a decision from an undecided group, was going to drag on. The Committee of Eighteen at the League of Nations, which was tracking how the sanctions were applied was basically favorable—but only in theory—to an oil embargo. The committee asked a “sub-committee on oil” to study the issue during its meeting on February 3, 1936. At the Quai d’Orsay the feeling was that it would probably not reach “positive conclusions.”
⁷
Flandin was kept well informed about the disintegrating Ethiopian army by Bodard, the French minister at Addis Ababa—“an excellent agent,” he wrote
⁸
—and preferred to seek an “honorable solution” with an “appeal for conciliation addressed to the belligerent parties,”
⁹
meaning that he was ready to abandon Ethiopia to its sad fate. When Anthony Eden, as head of the Foreign Office, pressed him in Geneva to enact the oil embargo, he answered in a memorandum where he stated, “If the oil embargo were to be declared, Italy would leave the League of Nations. She will naturally seek a closer relationship with Germany…But there is a serious risk: Germany may be tempted to take advantage of the situation in the demilitarized zone.” The memorandum was dated March 3, four days before the German move. It is easy to see how strong that kind of argumentation was!
¹⁰
As for Paul-Boncour, he didn’t even mention that important issue in his memoirs, even though he was the minister of state in charge of the League of Nations.

The issue of ratification of the Franco-Soviet pact was being handled in much the same way. Following a long delay, which worried the USSR,
¹¹
the government presented the draft of the ratification bill following the usual procedure; most of the right-wing newspapers rejected the pact because, at the same time as the Popular Front, it helped reintroduce the Communist Party by creating space for it in French politics. Hatred of the USSR found its expression in some newspapers like
L’Action Française
: “a bad pact” wrote J. Delbecque.
¹²
By voting to ratify it “the Chamber voted for revolution and war.”
¹³
Similar thoughts were published in Léon Bailby’s
Le Jour
.
¹⁴
More often there was mostly a lot of suspicion about it. The left was mostly favorable; this became clear in the program of “demands of the popular groupings” that included the Communist Party, the SFIO, the Radical-Socialists and the
Union Socialiste et Républicaine
, the main labor union leadership, the CGT and CGTU, that were just about to merge, the League for Human Rights, the Vigilance Committee of Antifascists
Intellectuals, etc. The section entitled “Defense of Peace” was very abstract, and yet paragraph 7 stated: “Extend to the countries of Eastern and Central Europe the system of pacts open to everyone, especially the principles of the Franco-Soviet Pact.”
¹⁵

Yet there were some exceptions on the right where Paul Reynaud, for instance, defended the treaty and on the left where some pacifists were not too favorable, such as the socialist Paul Faure (“We have decided to vote in favor of the Franco-Soviet Pact but are determined to avoid being drawn into a system of military alliances”) and Marceau Pivert most of all, who was critical of the “alliance fever.”
¹⁶

Following a debate that need not be analyzed here, the Chamber of Deputies voted to ratify by a vote of 353 vs. 164 on February 27. The 93 Socialists, 10 Communists, and 141 out of 146 Radical-Socialists all voted in favor. To these 244 votes were added those of the other backers of the Popular Front, such as Marcel Déat’s
Union Socialiste et Républicaine (USR)
, some eighty moderate “realist” deputies who followed Paul Reynaud and Minister Flandin and approved the pact. On March 5 the foreign affairs commission in the Senate proposed ratification and the Senate voted to ratify on March 12—after Hitler’s coup—by 231 votes in favor to 52 against.

2.

T
HE
F
ORECASTS ABOUT THE
D
EMILITARIZED
Z
ONE

We have set aside one of the major points made by those opposed to the Franco-Soviet Pact, namely the threat coming from Hitler. The threat was a fact since his major speech of May 21, 1935, a few days after the Pact was signed; a June 1, 1935, memorandum by the Wilhelmstrasse was more specific regarding those points.
¹⁷
The Treaty of Versailles in articles 42 and 43 had forbidden Germany from keeping military units or building fortifications on the left bank of the Rhine and an area 50 kilometers wide on the right bank. With the 1925 Locarno Treaty, Germany on one side and France and Belgium on the other, agreed under a guarantee by Great Britain and Italy to respect each other’s borders and confirmed a clause which Germany agreed that the entrance of the Reichswehr into the demilitarized zone would be considered an act of aggression as
serious as the crossing of a border. Versailles was a
Diktat
but Locarno had been entered into freely.

As early as September 1933 War Minister Daladier had informed the Quai d’Orsay that if Germany reoccupied the demilitarized zone, “the foundations of our national defense would be deeply altered.”
¹⁸

On May 21, 1935, Hitler had again reiterated that he would abide by the Locarno agreements. It is true that at Locarno it had been stated that should Germany attack one of its neighbors that were France’s allies—Poland or Czechoslovakia—France would send its troops across the Franco-German border. The logic the Germans used was that, through the alliance with the USSR against Germany—according to Hitler this was the logic of an “encirclement alliance”—France was unilaterally adding a third instance that would allow her to cross the German border, that of German attack on the USSR (that didn’t have common borders.)
Therefore she would be in breach of the Locarno agreement
. “In this manner he [Hitler] keeps a door open and a way to claim, when he feels it would be appropriate, that other signatories meaning France, having breached the treaty, it would then become null and void.”
¹⁹

During the entire period from May 21, 1935 to January 1936, Hitler, von Neurath, Ribbentrop, and German diplomats never stopped attacking the Franco-Soviet Pact while they upheld Germany’s support for Locarno. At times they alluded to the fact that the ratification of the Franco-Soviet Pact would constitute a “breach of Locarno.” However, even though the French government had been warned, and was well aware that Hitler wanted to reoccupy the Rhineland for both military and psychological reasons, it could still legitimately wonder whether he would dare make the move.

The issue of information in the months of January, February, and the beginning of March 1936 thus became of paramount importance. When would Hitler make his move? Would it be sooner or at a later date? Would he proceed by using policemen in disguise or a brutal entry by the Reichswehr?

Since we know the outcome after March 7, 1936, we shall refrain from criticizing the ambassador for his many changing views. And yet these were expressed. It will suffice to carefully read the
Documents Diplomatiques Français
. We shall limit ourselves to a few examples.

Both Hitler on November 21, 1935,
²⁰
and Bülow on January 10, 1936,
²¹
offered assurances regarding Germany’s intention to abide by the Locarno Treaty while denouncing the Franco-Soviet Pact as a violation
of Locarno. The ambassador responded: “You behave as if you were seeking legal excuses early on to justify some future action that is already on your mind and could be, for example, to suddenly occupy the demilitarized zone.” By January there was deep concern. The remilitarization was to take place in 1937 at the latest (according to General Renondeau, military attaché in Berlin), perhaps in June 1936 when the Reichstag was scheduled to meet.
²²
Charles Corbin, the ambassador to London, predicted in 1936.
²³
On January 24 François-Poncet came to the conclusion that “Germany doesn’t intend to withdraw from the Locarno Treaty or to cancel it by placing us brutally in front of a
fait accompli
similar to that of March 16, 1935. That is not her intention
for now
. But the future remains uncertain.”
²⁴

Only the French consuls general in Cologne (Dobler)
²⁵
and mostly in Düsseldorf (Noël Henry), seeing many “technical” preparations being made locally, concluded that Germany would “without a doubt” respond to the ratification of the Franco-Soviet Pact.
²⁶

Despite these warnings, François-Poncet became more optimistic by February. “It is…probable that for the moment we will not be facing a
fait accompli
.”
²⁷
The occupation of the Rhineland “will not in all likelihood happen in the weeks to come.”
²⁸
“Nervousness and unease” in Germany, he wrote on February 27. But “she will
probably
avoid the irreparable step… She will not proceed with a sudden military occupation of the Rhineland area.”
²⁹
And on March 6 he still reports information coming from a British informer who “doesn’t think we should infer…that Mr. Hitler could be preparing the sudden occupation of the Rhineland at a very early date.”
³⁰
It is true that the ambassador always prefaced his reports by saying that Hitler was all-powerful, and that he was absolutely capable of making instantaneous decisions. “What will Hitler do?” he cabled on March 6 at 9:45 p.m. “We still don’t know which side will prevail in the last few days, between those in favor of moderation or violence.”
³¹