In Europe

lead all the forces of France’ in continuing the struggle. The problem was, most of the French loathed him. He had opposed Munich – which had cost him the support of the moderate conservatives. He was in favour of the war – which had cost him the support of the right. He was a centrist democrat, but he survived only by grace of the socialist opposition's support.
    By means of all kinds of manoeuvres – one of which was to appoint Pétain to the post of vice-premier – he tried to broaden support for his cabinet. But he was inept enough to draw in more and more tired defeatists. ‘You have no army,’ Pétain sneered at the British minister of war, Anthony Eden.‘What could you achieve where the French army has failed?’ Duringthose weeks Churchill flew back and forth to France at least four times, desperately trying to convince the French to keep fighting. He suggested that they, with large-scale support from the British, set up a huge guerrilla organisation. ‘It is possible the Nazis may dominate Europe, but it will be a Europe in revolt.’ It was to no avail. Pétain felt that a guerrilla war would mean ‘the destruction of the country’. General Weygand claimed that, after the French Army capitulated, Britain would open negotiations with Hitler within the week, and that it would have ‘its neck wrung like a chicken’.
    On Sunday, 16 June, when Reynaud presented the French cabinet with the plan drawn up by Monnet, Churchill and de Gaulle, he was laughed at. Pétain called the union with Great Britain ‘a marriage to a corpse’. Other members of the cabinet feared that France would assume the status of a British colony. ‘Then rather a Nazi province. We know, at least, what that involves.’ Next it was proposed that the government begin negotiations with the Germans. The idea of forming a government in exile in North Africa had already been swept from the table by Pétain. He wanted, he said, always to ‘remain with the people of France, to share their suffering and misery’. Imperceptibly, he had begun to twist things around:
he
was the true patriot, those who went into exile and continued the struggle from abroad were the traitors. Later, de Gaulle was actually sentenced –
in absentia
– to death.
    Reynaud had no desire to stand by and watch it happen. On Monday morning, 17 June, the French heard Pétain's high voice on the radio stating that Reynaud had resigned, that he was his successor and that he would arrange a ceasefire with the Germans as quickly as possible. The French Army surrendered, burned its banners, buried its dead and – in so far as it was still possible – slunk off in the direction of home.
    Before me lies a dishevelled, yellowed booklet, published in 1946 by the Société des Éditions Franc-tireur under the title
L’étrange défaite
. It is little more than an essay, written in summer 1940 ‘in a deep rage’ by the French medievalist Marc Bloch. Bloch, a Jew and a Resistance fighter, died in front of the firing squad six months later. But his brilliant, unadulterated fit of rage from summer 1940 still forms the basis for almost every historical analysis of what is known as the ‘May War’.
    The French defeat of 1940 is generally seen these days as one of the crucial developments in the Second World War. It not only cleared the way for Hitler's occupation of Western Europe, but also for his campaigns to the east, his deportations, his slave-labour camps and his extermination industry. It is such a central event in the twentieth century that we have come to think of it as an inevitability. Nothing could be further from the truth.
    Bloch's account displays, first of all, complete bafflement. For the Europe of that day, the German victory was entirely unexpected. No one, including the Germans, imagined that this campaign could succeed so easily. The
Wehrmacht
's chief of staff, General Halder, wrote to his wife as late as 11 May that most of his colleagues considered the whole expedition ‘idiotic and reckless’. Even Hitler was counting on a fairly prolonged struggle.
    Among the French, on the other hand – and Bloch emphasises this forgotten aspect again and again – the mood was one of enormous self-confidence. In September 1939, a top French official reported to his superiors that ‘no one, or almost no one, in the population has doubts about victory, even if they are afraid of the price to be paid.’ People even wondered whether Hitler would actually