Winston Churchill and the Fall of France

Submitted by Uzi Amit-Kohn (Israel), May 2, 2004 at 06:52

As usual, the interview with Daniel Pipes titled "The End of American Jewry's Golden Era" was insightful and educational. Unfortunately, it contained one major error of fact. Winston Churchill did not become Prime Minister as a consequence of the fall of France, but rather as a consequence of the fall of Norway. Churchill became Prime Minister on May 10th, 1940, the very day on which "the Battle of France" began, with the German invasion of the low countries. France itself was invaded two days later and did not fall for another six weeks.

In his war memoir "The Second World War", Churchill describes going over to France, as Prime Minister, to meet with the French political leadership and General Staff after having been told by his French counterpart that all was lost. At this meeting, he was shown where the Germans had broken through French lines. Churchill, an old military man himself, looked for the obvious operational answer: committing the forces held in reserve to block the German thrust. "Ou est la masse de manouvre, he demanded ("Where's the strategic reserve"), only to be glumly answered by the French Chief of General Staff, General Gamelin, "Aucune" ("There is none".).

(To quote the late John Belushi, "It's not bad luck; it's stupid luck!")

Churchill tried everything to keep France in the war, at least formally, including getting them to carry on the fight from French North africa, and even offering to form a union between Britain and France with a combined cabinet and a combined parliament, a united country-half occupied- that would stay in the war. But it was not to be. The French no longer had much fight in them. Turning their backs on Churchill and Great Britain, they turned to Marshall Petain and the surrender that haunts them to this day.

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