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Philippe Pétain may have been 84 years old and no spring chicken when it came to warfare, but he was a complete novice where German-style Blitzkrieg was concerned. The “Savior of Verdun” was called out of retirement (well, pseudo-retirement…he was the ambassador to Spain) on May 17th (just a week after the German invasion of France began) by French Prime Minister Paul Reynaud. Reynaud’s hope was that the the aging hero could, once again, create a miracle out of the developing disaster.
Unfortunately, the situation was not one from which miracles would come. In fact, as Pétain was leaving Madrid on the 17th of May, he commented to Francisco Franco that the war, in all probability, was already lost. And as he sat in the meetings and listened to the generals, his fears were very much confirmed. Not only was the French army out-gunned on the ground and out-planed in the air, they were being soundly beaten from on a more basic level.
The French military simply had no answer for the German tactics being arrayed against them. The slow, plodding, trench-type war expected by the French was not what the Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe were bringing to bear. What’s more, the French citizenry simply had no stomach for the war. So France’s military was fighting a tactically inferior battle against a vastly superior foe with pretty much zero backing on the homefront.
Victory was impossible. On June 14, the German army entered the open city of Paris and took up residence. Two days later, on June 16, 1940, Prime Minister Reynaud resigned his post, as he promised he would rather than make peace with Germany, and Pétain was named his successor. Germany kept two-thirds of the French territory, while Pétain’s government, centered in the city of Vichy, held the rest. But it really was just a puppet government, and Adolf Hitler and his ministers pulled all the strings.
The Savior of Verdun would become a disgrace, imprisoned after the war for condemning French citizens to Nazi slave labor. His exploits in The Great War would save him from execution for treason, but he still faced a life term, and died in prison. The “Hero of Verdun” had become the “Zero of Vichy“.
Recommended Reading: Lightning War – Blitzkrieg in the West, 1940
