3

MAY 16, 1940

PARIS, FRANCE

5:30 P.M.

Winston Churchill has come to save France.

It is six days since the German onslaught. Two days ago, as General Erwin Rommel was crossing the Meuse, the Netherlands harbor city of Rotterdam was leveled by the Luftwaffe. Nearly nine hundred civilians were killed and eighty thousand made homeless. The German officer accepting the Dutch surrender, a small, corpulent Prussian named Dietrich von Choltitz, was unrepentant about the devastation. Knowing the German mindset toward such all-out war, Churchill shudders to think that a similar fate awaits Paris.

Britain’s newly elected prime minister strides into the French foreign minister’s office here at number 37 Quai d’Orsay, followed closely by three of his top military commanders. The bonfires of burning government documents remain lit, smoky sweet smell of burning paper wafting in through the open windows. An oversized battlefield map balances on an easel. The mood among the assembled French dignitaries is grim.

Yesterday morning, Churchill awoke to a frantic phone call from his French counterpart, Paul Reynaud. “He spoke in English, and evidently under stress: ‘We have been defeated,’ ” Churchill will later quote Reynaud. “As I did not immediately respond he said again: ‘We are beaten; we have lost the battle.’ I said: ‘Surely, it can’t have happened so soon?’ But he replied: ‘The front is broken near Sedan: they are pouring through in great numbers with tanks and armored cars.’ ”

So it is that Winston Churchill has flown to Paris to meet with the Anglo-French Supreme War Council. He wears a bow tie and waistcoat. His breath is Romeo y Julieta cigar and luncheon champagne, wreathed in Penhaligon’s Blenheim Bouquet aftershave.

Churchill’s ambition is to find ways Britain can help stop the German advance. He is upbeat, certain there is a way to reverse France’s stunning battlefield fiascos. The sixty-five-year-old prime minister remains standing as the French commander in chief, General Maurice-Gustave Gamelin, steps forward to brief the group on the war status.

“At no time did we sit around a table,” Churchill will recall. “Utter dejection was written on every face. In front of Gamelin, on a student’s easel was a map, about two yards square, purporting to show the Allied front. In this line was drawn a small but sinister bulge at Sedan.

“The General talked perhaps five minutes without anyone saying a word.”

General Gamelin is a polished intellectual, able to speak freely on painting and philosophy. The portly Churchill is just five feet six inches but fairly towers over the diminutive general with the white bristle mustache and pale raccoon rings around his eyes.

During World War I, Gamelin helped plan the counterattack that led to victory at the pivotal First Battle of the Marne. This success and many others during the war propelled him up the career military ladder. Yet many who know Gamelin comment about his “soft” handshake and reclusive behavior more befitting an academic than a soldier. Prime Minister Reynaud, known for his strong opinions, openly considers his top general “gutless.”

But this enigmatic persona is no longer an issue, for General Gamelin’s days as a figurehead are all but over. At sixty-seven, the mortifying defeat at the Meuse ensures that this is his last command. No one in the room knows that the general suffers from an advanced form of syphilis, which affects the brain, causing lapses in judgment, memory, and concentration, yet they have seen clear evidence of that behavior in the last five days. Brief completed, there is nothing for Gamelin to do but stand next to his battle map and answer questions.

In addition to Winston Churchill, British generals Sir John Dill and Hastings “Pug” Ismay, as well as Air Chief Marshal Sir Philip Joubert de la Ferté, are in attendance.*

The downhearted French contingent consists of Gamelin, Prime Minister Reynaud, and French defense minister Édouard Daladier. These seven men are the Allies’ most influential military minds. The fate of France—and likely England—rests upon decisions that must be made in this room tonight. Now is the time to speak up.

Yet, “there was a considerable silence,” Churchill will recall.

As awkward as this moment might be, General Gamelin’s humiliation will soon run far deeper.

The heavy stillness continues as Churchill leans forward to study the battle map. He is a former cavalry officer and graduate of Sandhurst, Britain’s military academy. Twice in his lifetime, he has served as First Lord of the Admiralty, sending men and ships into combat. He also knows what it is like to fail horribly, ordering thousands of men to their deaths, as during his unsuccessful Gallipoli operation in World War I, a horrific debacle that saw Churchill banished from power for twenty long years.

So battle maps are nothing new to Winston Churchill.

The prime minister scrutinizes the ominous red line denoting the Nazi advance. Most troubling is the fact that the lead German elements are now outside Laon, less than a hundred miles north. Paris could fall in a day—perhaps even tonight. Nazi Germany controls Poland, Czechoslovakia, Austria, Norway, Luxembourg, and Denmark. Conquering France and the Low Countries will place all of western Europe in the hands of Adolf Hitler. Should that occur, England stands alone, the certain target of Hitler’s next invasion.*

Yet Churchill seizes upon one glimmer of hope. The battle can still be won—but only if the reserve troops held back to defend Paris rush immediately to the front. General Gamelin, of all people, knows this. Such a stand by the Ninth Army won the pivotal First Battle of the Marne in September 1914. French legend holds that six thousand reserve infantry troops traveled from Paris to the battlefield in a convoy of six hundred taxicabs, then launched the counterattack designed by Gamelin himself. As recently as a week ago, the French reserve consisted of their Seventh Army, a collection of divisions under the command of the dashing and self-absorbed General Henri Giraud. A force this powerful can surely stop the Germans.

Then Churchill notices a mistake. No one has marked the current location of the soldiers who will make this last desperate stand.

“Where is the strategic reserve?” asks Churchill. He says the words in English, then repeats them tentatively in his poor French, his voice a combination lisp and growl. “Où est la masse de manœvre?”

“Aucune,” answers Gamelin.

None. There are no reserves. Gamelin has already sent Giraud’s Seventh Army to the front.

In disbelief, the prime minister asks how the general plans to launch a counterattack.

General Maurice-Gustave Gamelin can only shrug.