France’s darkest hour, through American eyes

François Valentin and Jorge González-Gallarza | 4th November 2021 | Uncategorised

A new book traces the panicked period in which the US recognised a fascist regime as France’s rightful government

After the Gestapo tortured and killed their author, the memoirs of French medieval historian and anti-Nazi resistance fighter Marc Bloch were published posthumously as Strange Defeat in 1946. But to use “strange” to describe France’s defeat by Germany in the summer of 1940 is a vast understatement. In the short span of six weeks through May and June that year, the entire paradigm through which Britain and America approached the nascent world conflict was turned on its head (so argued military historian Michael S. Neiberg in the latest episode of the Uncommon Decency podcast). The Chair of War Studies at the US Army War College, Neiberg is fresh off publishing a celebrated book on the subject, When France Fell: The Vichy Crisis and the Fate of the Anglo-American Alliance (2021). In it, he describes the state of utter panic that gripped the US military establishment upon seeing French defences crumble so swiftly under Nazi attack, a defeat that US War Secretary Henry Stimson would later ...

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