WHY FRANCE FAILED

Mt Benger Mail, 16 October 1940, Page 1

WHY FRANCE FAILED

BY SHEPARD STONE

Mr Edward Taylor spent many years abroad as,, an American correspondent. From 1933 to 1940 he covered many of Europe’s outstanding events in Prance and beyond her borders. As Europe limped and then ran toward war be realised that perhaps the most important battlefront was the battlefront of the mind, where ideals, ideologies and' emotions clashed. Psychology, he came to believe, could" be a deadlier weapon than a gun., . He,saw the blitzreig of propaganda, using ■intimidation, tgrrpr, confusion and corruption, end in the blitzkreig of blood. Mr Taylor’s book “The Strategy of Terror,/’: just published in New York by Houghton Mifflin, wasy. tyidttgn' .before;,; G errnany broke the winter stalemate in April.withvthe;invasion of Denmark and Norway. Yet events 'since then have; largely; borne out his story. In; his opinion it is impossible to understand the mind of Western Europe to-day without going back to lhe‘crisis over Czecho-Slo .akia in 1938. He uses France as a case, history to 'demonstrate how domestic ' pro- • pa|anda%cOmbjned' witlFNazi propaganda helped ‘to shatter' the .morale of a people ; France in the summer of 1938, Mr Taylor says, was split info f;j ctions, > 0 Sections of the. French press wgr,e open to the highest bidder and 'to 4he iinscrupulous prop.agcindahbfkcertainipoUticians. Important business interests favoured! appeaS&mieht*. 7 f Members of /th'e 5 a ■Jekyil ■ and- : ‘Hyde game? 3 desiring a compromise yet not dhrilig to say so publicly, r . Rumourk Were spread abouf-f lie terrifying power .of; Germany. climax came when - politicians L gave . orders which were not intended' to be obeyed, leaders s sabotaged their own commands, j,;: communiques were falsified. The result was obvious: the" Werage Frenchman was pan-imstricken) ba.ft'led.a

Spread of Defeatism, i

After Munich France wabbled at the knees. Defeatism spread among .-politicians. ' There: was a revulsion against nationalism, patriotism and any ideal involving physical danger. The Nazis had always counted heavily on propaganda to spread social decomposition in the enemy’s camp. In the Munich crisis the French press and many French leaders, according to Mr Taylor, helped the Nazis wage their war. • Six months later,. <hi vthe 1939 crisis preceding the outbreak of war, Nazi propaganda in France was intensified and/ diversified. Nazi agents. French pacifists,. Communists and £ Others spread rumours. Some were defeatist —the French Army was no good, the German Army was invincible. Some were terrorist —German bombs wo. Id blow Paris off the map. In Brittany a separatist movement, supported by Nazi money and agents, made headway. French newspapers asked why Frenchmen should die for Poland. Morale fell so low that the Government was forced to take strong measures against espionage and propaganda. When war finally came there was no enthusiasm. ■ True, few Frenchmen blamed their Government for what had happened; most blamed Hitler. Yet the majority had no heart for war, for they had been unnerved by the propaganda of the previous year. A Luncheon Menu At the front, in the first months of war, German propaganda resorted to many devices. In general the Nazis tried to undermine the faith of the troops in their officers and leaders; they also tried to break the bond that made the men feel a part of a sociopsychological group,' Mr Taylor tells one story—he is not sure that it is authentic—of a visit paid by Winston Churchhill and Anthony -Eden to the front in February.' The visit was, of course, secret. An official luncheon was arranged for them at Lille. Yet half an hour after they sat down at the. table the menu was being read over the German loudspeakers across the tic in every detail. Another case. A French officer at the front told Mr Taylor that his infantry unit had become completely demoralised and had to be taken away from its sector when five minutes after its arrival German locdspeakers across the lines began to describe their num-

her, names, officers and where they.-had come from; French soldiers seeing these evidences of espionage began to suspect people behind their' backs. How did the Germans accomplish these tricks of espionage? Mr Taylor believes that spies and their sympathisers all over France had been supplied with pocketsize radio transmitters. These transmitters had a feeble radius, but their signals were picked up by German scouting aeronlanes lying over France for the perpose of catching the messages. During the first months of war, Mr Taylor says, the French police bagged at least twenty ’of these transmitters nightly, In March, as Mr Taylor was concluding his book, he found a recrudescence of the defeatist spirit.;" ; From the beginning of Hie ;war y small minority of Frenchman had been and remained frankly defeatist.