In Europe

“Can God allow one man to call down this whole catastrophe on Germany and the whole of Europe? And our sons? I am not prepared to sacrifice one of them for this war. Our family circle, the endless luxury of having children, all our pride – from the last war, I still know what that means: all gone. Then life continues and what was ours never, never comes back. New people come along who never knew the ones we were so proud of.”
    ‘She wrote that two days before he was killed.’

    A peaceful landscape becomes a battlefield, and after a while it is as though it never happened. I drive along the N43 from Sedan towards the sea, past gently rolling fields of yellow rape, through little villages, house after house tucked away behind deep, lush gardens. The chestnuts are in bloom, the cows are up to their bellies in buttercups. This road sprang up like a little stream somewhere close to Luxembourg, and now it meanders through fields and shy Inspector Maigret towns: an intersection, a
hôtel de ville
, a train station, three cafés, a hotel close to the station, a bakery. The houses all date from that hazy architectural period between 1880–1920. They are sooty and weathered, they have seen all of Europe passing by.
    At 8 p.m. I stop at Longuyon. The streets are filled with puddles, the trees still dripping from the spring shower. Swallows buzz the rooftops, the pigeons coo between the houses, a church bell chimes clearly, once. A fisherman walks along the gravel on the riverside. The earth in the kitchen gardens smells rich, the beans are well on their way. From the café comes a roar of laughter.
    Who would want to go to war on an evening like this? ‘Why die for Danzig?’ the French asked themselves in September 1939, and during the glorious spring days of 1940 their reluctance was even greater. They did not doubt the strength of their army, they were not resigned beforehand to defeat, but they were scared to death of seeing 1914–18 repeat itself. For more than two decades, their brothers, fathers and uncles had been talking about the trenches and the burning and thundering battlefields. Seven out of ten French soldiers had experienced Verdun first-hand.
    La dernière des ders
was what the French called the First World War, the last of the last. In winter 1939, when the war was already raging on paper but not yet in real life, they were hoping for
la Marne Blanche
, a diplomatic and platonic replay of the last war, but this time without passion or bloodshed. In Longuyon a war memorial of the falling-soldier-with-flag type had been erected as early as 1919, bearing 500 names – the city numbered 7,000 – and no one wanted to see a single name added to that. In the end, there would be another 150 names.
    Close to Longuyon lie the chilly corridors of Fort Fermont, thirty metres below ground. The fort was a vital link in the Maginot Line, the French wall that stretched from Basle all the way past Luxembourg to protect the country from the Huns to the east. Here you can see the dream of the 1916 foot soldier: a super-trench with bedrooms, canteens, workshops, an electric railway, secret trapdoors, sick bays, bakeries and even a cinema to help against the claustrophobia. Sealed off from the outside world, 700 men could stick it out here for months on end. On a shelf is a radio covered in mould, plastered in white flakes.
    The whole structure is dominated by the thought of winning the previous war. The same could be said of France's leaders of that day: they, too, were men of yesterday and the day before. The French commander-in-chief, General Maurice Gamelin – sometimes referred to as ‘General Gagamelin’ – was sixty-seven. His successor, General Maxime Weygand, was well into his seventies, and Marshal Pétain, at the moment of his appointment as vice-premier, was eighty-four.
    While the
Wehrmacht
's young staff members were busy developing all kinds of new weapons systems and tactics, nothing was happening in France. Around 1937, the Luftwaffe possessed more than a thousandMesserschmitt fighter planes, faster than anything belonging to either France or Britain. In that same year, a report to the French senate's defence committee said: ‘The German air force is in a position to fly over France with complete impunity.’ The enormous opportunities provided by the tank, the unparalleled possibilities for the dive bomber on the field of battle; the French army staff could not be bothered. Tanks do not change