THE COLLAPSE OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC :  An Inquiry into the Fall of France in 1940, by William L. Shirer (1969, Simon and Schuster, 1010 pages) 

The story of politics and administration during the 1930’s and 1940’s in France, and that includes the interwar period in Europe, has the government of France traversing various political milestones on the way to the dissolution of her constitutional republic that was forced, essentially, by gangsters from without and within the administration itself.  The materials that confirm this were subject to a “loi de cinquante ans” which kept relevant administrative records and files confidential for fifty years after the collapse of the Third Republic in 1940.  Among the confidential records that are applicable to the story of the government collapse are the details of Pierre Laval and Marshal Petain who abandoned the French constitution for their own, apparently traitorous, ambitions in tacit collusion with the nazis. 

France in June 1940 was subject to an invasion by Wehrmacht forces that used a “lightning war” against what was largely a superior French military that nonetheless was dependent upon field artillery whereas the Germans used innovative and more effective motorized infantry and armor.  The German strategy was to invade through Belgium and to concentrate on the French town of Sedan while completing their takeover of the Seine and Loire regions, then heading South for Paris.  On a number of occasions, including in the nazi path turning to Sedan and then again upon the turn South to Paris, the French missed the opportunity entirely to head off the German advance given the movements of German troop columns on a large scale.  Also encompassed by the invasion of France was a German army (supported by Luftwaffe from the air) contingent that turned North in pursuit of French military units headed by Charles de Gaulle and others in Brittany.  De Gaulle knew and preached before the French High Command for years previous to the German invasion that tanks were needed in addition to the Maginot line to stop an invasion from the nazis.  When the Republic was dissolved by traitors, de Gaulle escaped to Britain by plane. 

The invasion by the nazis through Belgium created eight million refugees on the interior of France, most of whom first headed to the country from various major towns including Paris and Lyon, and after that turned South toward Bordeaux where the invasion forced the government to relocate.  In mid – June 1940, the German invasion had been successful enough to allow for victories at Sedan and at the Somme, Meuse and the Aisne rivers, Seine and Marne; enough to open the road to Paris after a French retreat to the Loire.  Italy entered the war on the 10th of June, and the Maginot Line was abandoned on the 12th of June with four hundred thousand French troops, disorganized and retreating, and otherwise surrounded by the Germans.  The Germans entered Paris on June 14, and the French General Headquarters for the army had been moved South, East of Tours which prompted further embattled pursuit and further collapse (catastrophic) of the French army.  In mid – June, Marshal Petain was in control of the French government after the resignation of Paul Reynaud, then the French Premier.  A week after the Germans entered Paris, plus one day, French capitulation took place at Rethondes, in the same railroad car the German capitulation took place to conclude WWI on the terms of the onerous, punitive allied Versailles Treaty.  This capitulation in the valley of Compiegne by the French was used politically by the nazis to again promote the end of the old world, and the new world under the German Master Race – a construct based upon antithetical principles, deliberate and collective destruction, and scientific quackery that was used among other pursuits on a grand scale to deaden and to annihilate target races, including jews and gypsies, slavs and others, and further to promote so – called Master – race Aryan values and civilization.  This text is not of the Holocaust that ensued given Hitler’s wars as carried on against Western Europe, Britain and the world, but is an introduction to the perfidious and overall evils of nazi ideology that were used to construct the Blitzkrieg war machine that was first employed in the war, World War II, on Belgium and France, and that prevailed for several years during the 1940’s.  The text is full of details about how the nazis accomplished a great victory against their chief European rival, the French, and how the German war machine set up and implemented a battle plan to first conquer and then establish a nazi regime in destroying the French constitutional government and other establishments and institutions of European society through the victories on French territory.