Prison Journal, 1940-1945

Edouard Daladier, Jean Daladier

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN:
  9780367299729
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000308129
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

Even after fifty years, and in spite of the reams of documents now available,it remains difficult-especially in France-to form an objective view of what things were like in the period between the wars and in 1940.The greater, the swifter, the more unexpected the disaster, the less people are willing to deal with it squarely. Once a certain threshold of suffering,shame, and humiliation is reached, actual facts become unimportant,analyses become bothersome. History falls prey to myth and rumor.People refuse to hear any more, but they still need someone to blame. In France, the strangest of bedfellows have come to speak about it in one voice, and the good people have remained mute.

June 1940: The Departure for Morocco

DOI: 10.4324/9780429303012-1

Jean Daladier

The British had offered Daladier refuge in London, but he preferred to leave for Morocco and continue the struggle from there, as France’s leaders in Bordeaux¹ had agreed to do. He wrote the following:

1. In the face of the German advance, the French government had moved from Paris to Tours and from there to Bordeaux in June 1940.

“The government had stated that it would set up its base in North Africa and move all government offices there. Some members were to leave via various Mediterranean ports. Others, including myself, were to go to Le Verdon, where we would board the Massilia en route to Casablanca.

“I was anxious to meet with General Noguès.² I had appointed him Governor-General of Morocco and wanted to encourage him to carry on the fight.

2. General Charles-Auguste Noguès. After having requested and been denied permission from Pétain’s government to organize an insurgent military, General Noguès aligned himself with the Marshal. In 1942, Noguès’s forces put up armed resistance to the Allied landing. He later sided with Admiral Darlan when the latter came to Algiers. He sought exile in Portugal.

“In Le Verdon, half of the Deputies who had been present in Bordeaux boarded the Massilia, along with General Michel, government personnel, and even Herriot’s suitcases.

“We set sail on June 21, in spite of the German mines and the problems we had with the crew; they wanted to return to their families.

“We learned of the Armistice while at sea. The ship’s commander categorically refused to alter his course and make for England.

“When we arrived in Casablanca, we were forced to remain on board. It was during that time that the official turnaround in France took place. In the radio and press campaigns mounted against us, we were being accused of desertion.

“I finally met Noguès on June 27, in Rabat. ‘The Army didn’t lose the war,’ he said. ‘They never went to war.’ We both thought that it would be possible to carry on the fight from North Africa, as did all the other leaders, even those in Black Africa and the Middle East.

“We had 270,000 men at our command and the capacity to mobilize them rapidly. We had arms, and even 1,800 top-flight warplanes. Airplanes I had ordered from the United States were to be delivered to Morocco, where assembly plants had already been set up. The Franco-British fleet ruled the Mediterranean. Five admirals had come to Casablanca, among them Laborde and Marquis. Darlan³ had asked Noguès to set up a command post for him in Rabat.

3. Admiral François Darlan, who had become Commander in Chief of the Navy in August 1939.

“Spain was certain to remain neutral, given the exhausting civil war it had just been through and its need for American aid. On Tunisia’s border with Libya, there were the Mareth fortifications I had had built.

"Noguès had already cabled Bordeaux several times. He was seeking government authorization to break with official policy and fight on, even if the government had to disavow its involvement in the process.⁴ He agreed to send one final cable; it too went for naught.

4. While in Morocco, my father and I tried to meet up with the British and leave for London. A submarine was sent to pick us up off the coast of Casablanca. We were betrayed, however, and never found the skiff that would have taken us out from the beach. Other escape attempts failed as well. The Governor-General’s office in Rabat managed to foil them all. We were eventually forced—with Noguès’s consent, obviously—to leave Morocco under police escort and return to France, where my father was arrested. General Noguès would later order his troops to fire on the Americans as they landed. He went on to align himself with Darlan and, subsequently, Giraud. After the war, he went into exile. Strange fellow, this General Noguès, who felt he had to ask the government for permission to rebel.

On June 30, Members of Parliament were prevented from boarding ship and returning to France. They would not be allowed to do so until July 10, in order to deny them the possibility of voting in Vichy, where Pétain was granted plenary powers."⁵

5. General de Gaulle pushed strongly for Noguès to refuse the Armistice and come to London to serve under him.

1940

DOI: 10.4324/9780429303012-2

September 6, 1940

We were having lunch at La Vernue, deep in the countryside near Vichy. André Borie and his family had been my warm and generous hosts for several days. I said to my friends, “It won’t be long before I am taken into custody,” but they were a little skeptical. “Why would they bother arresting you? The trial is being held right here in Riom.¹ The authorities will know exactly where to find you, since you notified the Minister of the Interior yourself.”²

1. Site of the court established by the Vichy government, where Daladier and other leaders of the Third Republic were to be tried. 2. Daladier notified him because the Ministry of the Interior is primarily concerned with matters of security and law and order. It oversees general administrative matters within France, such as elections, and virtually all administrative matters for France’s territories overseas, but its principal function remains that of governing the nation’s various police forces.

I had been warned two or three days before that I could expect to be arrested. The leaders at Vichy had already made up their minds, and there was no time to lose if I hoped to get away. Nonetheless, in view of General Noguès’s decision not to make a stand in North Africa and the failed British attempts to spirit me to London, I was determined to face the ordeal in France. On September 3, a young inspector from the Sûreté even came to warn me that they would be coming to get me very soon. He offered to take me to Switzerland within a few hours. I thanked him but refused to go.

On September 4, the press published a statement issued by the government in which it claimed “the right to place in administrative detention those individuals deemed dangerous to national security or public safety.”

Nothing happened for the following two days. In fact, my friends at La Vernue were somewhat amused at my having gotten my papers together and carefully arranged them in two leather briefcases.

I harbored no illusions as to the impartiality of this supreme tribunal³ —my sentence would undoubtedly come down directly from Pétain—but I felt I owed the people of this country an explanation. Had France been betrayed and if so by whom? And how? I was also afraid that by staying with Borie, I would be endangering him, but he absolutely refused to let me leave.

3. La Cour Supreme de Justice: a Vichy institution created to try Third Republic Ministers et al. for entering and losing the war against Germany, in other words, to find scape-goats for the humiliating defeat of France.

We went on with our meal. Suddenly, the little blonde serving girl came running up, all excited. “Madame, several cars have pulled in and are stopping in front of the house.”

Brochet, the Director of the State Police, strode in. Looking important and solemn, he read aloud an order signed by Porte, the Subprefect of Monluçon, who had run for office in the Nièvre as a Popular Front candidate. In accordance with the law of September 4, 1940, and by virtue of the authority vested in Adrien Marquet,⁴ Minister of the Interior, I was to be placed under house arrest in the château in Chazeron.

4. Adrien Marquet had a hand in organizing Pétain’s government in Bordeaux, where he was Deputy and Mayor.

I dictated and signed a statement of protest, denouncing them for arbitrarily resurrecting a law intended to punish plots against the nation and acts of sabotage against the defense industry.

With the help of my son Jean and Dr. Mazé,⁵ and in the presence of a kindly but talkative policeman, I quickly packed two suitcases. I took leave of Mme Borie and her daughters, who had received me in their home and been so gracious and considerate. When I started blaming myself for not having left sooner, they stopped me and hugged me. I told my son Jean to notify his brother, Pierre, and my sister so that they wouldn’t be brutally shaken by reading the news in the morning papers.

5. Pierre Mazé, Secretary-General of the Radical-Socialist Party. As one of Daladier’s close personal friends, he organized several attempts to rescue him. He played an important role in the Resistance and was eventually arrested by the Germans. He was liberated in 1945.

We went outside. In spite of the gasoline crisis, there were five cars parked at the door, each of them packed with policemen. So much for the propaganda promoting a return to the land.⁶

6. To counter what Pétain claimed to be the decadence that had brought about France’s downfall, he promoted a return to the simpler, purer values of life in the countryside.

One of the policemen, a pale, round-eyed, fat and fleshy fellow, tried to take a picture. Jean and Dr. Mazé lashed out at him, and he put down his camera.

I would never have guessed I rated a five-car procession. Marquet was doing things up right. We drove through Gannat, Aigueperse, and Châtelguyon, with people stopping in the streets, staring at us as we went by. One of the cops began telling the story of his years on the force. I lit up my pipe and sat back.

When we came into Chazeron, I could make out in the distance the château tower, the crenellated ramparts, and the old black walls surrounded by pine trees, all of it taken over now by ravens and owls for a nesting ground. The gate is rather handsomely crafted, but the courtyard, with its well and a few dilapidated buildings, is overgrown with weeds. The grounds were teeming with state troopers and inspectors from the Sûreté, strolling about and puffing on cigarettes. Dozens of workers were repairing and patching things up, nailing in doors, boarding up windows, and installing lovely, brand new, sharply pointed bars. Their prisoner had arrived before they’d finished readying his prison.

I was told that the illustrious M. Marquet, the Minister of the Interior, had graced this run-down château that the government had requisitioned by visiting it personally.

That was to be his last official function. A few days later, he was removed from office by Pétain and replaced by Peyrouton,⁷ a fitting reward for having betrayed the government in Bordeaux and having helped Pétain come to power. Word has it that he immediately set out for the Occupied Zone to spew out his rancor and offer his services to the Germans.

7. Marcel Peyrouton, Governor-General of France’s overseas territories prior to the war, Pétain’s Minister of the Interior in 1940, and Governor-General of Algeria after the Allied landing in North Africa. He was incarcerated at the end of the war.

I sat down in the courtyard, with a policeman still right behind me. The gate opened and a limousine rolled in. Policemen and troopers ran up to greet it, but it turned out to be just Chavin. Several years ago I had named him Prefect of the Vaucluse and then Prefect in Constantine, after having decorated him with the Légion d'honneur in between. He is now Director of the Sûreté. With a crowd milling around him, our M. Chavin pretended not to see me, even though our eyes met several times. He walked by, passing just a few feet away, on his way to a tour of the château and what passes here for gardens. Then, once he had finished visiting the grounds, he headed back toward the gate at an angle, and doffed his hat in my direction from as far away as he could. I replied by tipping mine.

I was officially welcomed by M. Bartelet, the warden of this Bastille. We chatted for a while. He is a veteran from Lorraine, twice wounded and twice decorated in 1914. Briefly and discreetly, he shared his feelings with me about France’s collapse, our surrendering in Bordeaux, and the path the Vichy government had taken since. Then he headed off to oversee the construction work.

Once the iron bars were finally secured, I moved into my cell, that is, my room. I was given two candles, since they hadn’t finished wiring electricity for lights. A policeman and a state trooper settled in outside my door. I was free again, alone at last with my thoughts.

This is where I shall have to muster my strength. Ever since the capitulation in Bordeaux, life has left little more than an ashen taste in my mouth. In Morocco, when I realized that all was lost, I occasionally had thoughts of putting an end to it.

I’ll have to fight the press, Laval’s⁸ slimy arrogance, and the Cour Suprême de Justice, even if I have to fight them on my own. I am alone with the lions; it’s up to me to charge forward and do battle without worrying about the outcome, so that the truth can be known.

8. As Vice Premier, Pierre Laval effectively shared power with Pétain in what was at best an uneasy association and at times an openly hostile one. He was the principal architect of both the dissolution of the Third Republic and the implementation of the policy of collaboration. Because of his closer ties with the Nazis and his more overtly anti-Semitic acts, he has remained a far less controversial figure tha...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword
• Preface to the English Edition
• June 1940: The Departure for Morocco
• Appendix A: France’s Principal Modern Weaponry
• Appendix B: The Riom Trial
• Appendix C: Biographical Timeline
• About the Book
• Name Index