The Collapse of the Third Republic by William L. Shirer

Author:William L. Shirer [Shirer, William L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-7953-4247-9
Publisher: RosettaBooks
Published: 2014-03-10T16:00:00+00:00

In a secret session of the Chamber of Deputies on March 19 Flandin took the same line. He who had vehemently opposed France’s going to war with Germany over Czechoslovakia in 1938 and over Poland in 1939 violently attacked Daladier for not going to war with Russia over Finland in 1940. He reproached the government for not sending an army to Finland “the moment war broke out there.” Besides sending arms and an army to help the Finns on the main front in the south, he said, France should have sent an expedition to the Arctic Ocean, not only to recapture Petsamo but to attack the main Russian port at Murmansk. Then for several minutes Flandin castigated the Premier for not daring to break with Russia. “You did not want to break with her because you believed that we could bring Russia to the Allied side to help us against Germany,” he charged, arguing that such a policy was based on pure fancy. “You lost the support of all the forces in the world which consider Bolshevism the principal enemy. I defy you to explain why you make war against Germany and not also against Russia.” That Bolshevik Russia, not Nazi Germany, was the principal enemy, Flandin had no doubt. Like Laval in the Senate, Flandin was loudly applauded when he sat down.56

In both houses Daladier had defended himself and his policies at length, citing the refusal of Norway and Sweden to grant transit rights as the reason for the failure of an Allied force to reach Finland, and blaming the opposition of the British government for his inability to get a declaration of war against the Soviet Union.57 But at times, during the lengthy debates, he appeared worn and discouraged. In January, while weekending with Mme. de Crussol at a friend’s estate near Rambouillet, Daladier had been thrown from a horse and had suffered a fractured foot. The accident had immobilized him for several weeks and had hampered him in the conduct of affairs and also in parrying the intrigues he felt were being spun all around him.ccxlix Now he seemed exhausted by the effort to meet the assault on him.

To both houses he had said that if they did not approve of the way he was conducting the war they must say so and vote him out. The Senate had given him, despite the intervention of Laval, a vote of confidence of 236 to 0, with 60 abstentions. But feelings against him in the Chamber ran higher. The vote there on March 20 was 230 to 1. But 300 deputies abstained from voting. Daladier had lost his majority and though constitutionally the favorable vote cast enabled him to remain in office, he decided that since he no longer had the support of the majority, he would go. He resigned immediately after the vote.

PAUL REYNAUD AT THE HELM

Embittered by his unexpected overthrow in the fickle Chamber—at the previous secret session scarcely six weeks before, on February 9, it had

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.