France – Old Magazine Articles

He Saw the French Defense Implode
(Liberty Magazine, 1940)

“Probably never before has a country with three quarters of its army intact and the majority of its civilian population untouched by war surrendered so completely…In Tours, I ran into a French staff officer I had met on a trip to the Maginot Line in the quieter days of the war. It seemed incredible that then we had believed those fortifications would render France invincible. As we waited in a traffic jam, he told me the real story of the Ninth Army, which held the section adjoining the end of the Maginot Line, and which broke with such disastrous results…”

Nazis Take Paris
(PM Tabloid, 1940)

Paris belongs to Adolf Hitler. Abandoned by the French and declared an open city to prevent its destruction, the capital of France was turned over whole to the Nazi invaders early this morning.

Click here to read about the 1944 liberation of Paris.

French Slavery Becomes A Reality
(PM Tabloid, 1942)

Petain clamped the chains of Nazi slavery on the men and women of France today. The aged Marshal, Pierre Laval, and their quisling cabinet, promulgated a decree ordering all French men and women to compulsory labor. The decree, which the Government frankly admitted meant slavery in Germany for thousands of Frenchmen, was signed by Petain on Friday night.

Click here to read about the enslavement of Europe…

Pierre Laval: French Premier and Traitor
(Collier’s Magazine, 1943)

French collaborator Pierre Laval (1883 – 1945) is remembered as the Nazi tool who presided over France between 1942 and 1944, allowing for the deportation of Jews and French laborers into Germany. On D-Day, Laval stood before the radio microphones cautioning his countrymen not to join in the fight against the German occupiers. His many sins would be known a year later during the liberation of Paris, but this writer was very accurate in cataloging all his many failings, both as a citizen of France and as a Human Being.

Laval was captured in Spain; you can read about that here…

CLICK HERE to read about Laval’s Norwegian counterpart: Prime Minister Vidkun Quisling…

The Capture of Laval
(Newsweek Magazine, 1945)

The game was up. At the Prat de Llobregat airfield outside Barcelona the traitor sat heavily on a camp stool, waiting for the reprieve. It did not come. The Franco government had found Pierre Laval too hot to handle… Laval shrugged: ‘I suppose if Petain can face the music, I can’. But later he shouted: ‘It is unfair… delivering me to my country.’

More about Laval can be read here

Laval’s France
(Newsweek Magazine, 1942)

An article from the Spring of 1942 concerning the efforts of Premiere Laval to fool the French citizenry into loving their Nazi occupiers and hating the Allies.

Laval’s handicaps in reconciling the nation to the ‘new order’ are his personal unpopularity – careful observers estimate that 90 to 95 percent of the population spurn his policies – and the determination of the Nazis to stamp out resistance with terrorism.

‘Guns On French Cliffs Shell British Ships
(PM Tabloid, 1940)

A British convoy in the Straits of Dover today ran the gauntlet of terrific cannonade of long range German artillery on the French cliffs from Calais to Boulogne. The spectacular Channel bombardment was witnessed by thousands on the Dover cliffs. They reported that none of the 18 ships in the British convoy appeared to have been hit.

‘Guns On French Cliffs Shell British Ships
(PM Tabloid, 1940)

Why France Fell
(Omnibooks Magazine, 1942)

On assignment for the Hearst papers, H.R. Knickerbocker (1898 – 1949) witnessed the total collapse of the French Army. He made his observations and conclusions available to American readers in his 1941 book Is Tomorrow Hitler’s?, which hit the bookshops shortly after Pearl Harbor.

If [The French] had ignored their low birth rate, been willing to spend lives, had retained the old offensive spirit traditional in the French Army, had known that they had to win or perish, had a Churchill to inspire and lead them, and had no traitors in their ranks, their comparative lack of weapons would not have mattered; they would still be fighting the Germans in France.

Click here to read the observations of U.S. Army Lieutenant Louis L’Amour concerning 1946 Paris.

Another article about a French general who collaborated with the Nazis can be read here…

The French Navy In The Balance
(PM Tabloid, 1940)

The Leader of Free France
(The American Magazine, 1942)

Almost literally,
he has built Free France from magnificent words. The miracle began on June 18, 1940, when he stepped before a London microphone with defiant, solemn appeal, beginning, ‘I, Charles de Gaulle, General of France’ – and ending superbly, ‘Soldiers of France, wherever you may be, arise!’.

The truth is that, to followers of de Gaulle, he is not a human being at all; he is a symbol, like the flag.

Blitzkrieg: In the Words of Nazi Officers
(American Legion Weekly, 1940)

An article by military historian and biographer Fairfax Downey (1894 – 1990) concerning the unique manner of mechanized warfare that the Germans had introduced to the world during the opening weeks of the Second World War:

Thunder rumbles, lightening flashes and strikes. Incredibly swiftly it is over. So, compared to the campaigns of the First World War, was the German Blitzkrieg, rumbling, flashing and striking down Poland, Norway, Holland, Belgium, and France. How did it work? What made it click?

Marshal Pétain on Trial
(Commonweal, 1945)

An irate editorial concerning the 1945 trial of French General Henri Philippe Pétain (1856 – 1951).

Whoever is managing the current spectacle in Paris desires us to think that the Petain trial is a revolutionary trial. The thesis is that the whole French nation has risen against the politicians who did not prepare for the war, against the Marshal who signed the the armistice, collaborated with the Germans and betrayed France. And so that trial is not a search for truth, it is a public exposure of truth, it is a simple demonstration…Look at them: Daladier, Reynaud, Weygrand – how they fight each one against the other. Because it is not just Petain who is guilty. It is Petain’s trial. But it is also the trial of all the witnesses… Everyone is guilty.