622. The Nazis at War: The Fall of France (Part 3)

Summary

The Rest Is History – Episode 622: The Nazis at War: The Fall of France (Part 3)

Date: December 1, 2025
Hosts: Tom Holland & Dominic Sandbrook

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Episode Overview

In this gripping episode, Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook dissect the collapse of France in June 1940, a pivotal chapter in the Second World War that has shaped not only European history, but also modern conceptions of defeat, morale, and national destiny. Drawing on vivid personal accounts, expert analysis, and their trademark blend of insight and dry wit, Tom and Dominic chronicle the Nazi advance, the Dunkirk evacuation, the emotional fallout in France and Britain, and the psychological high-water mark of Hitler’s reign.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Hitler’s Triumphant Tour through Paris

[03:53]

• The episode opens with Albert Speer’s memoir of Hitler’s only visit to Paris after its fall; a surreal three-hour sightseeing tour at the peak of his power.
• Hitler openly savors the humiliation of France and fulfillment of a lifelong ambition.
• Tom frames it as “perhaps the single sweetest moment in Hitler’s life.”
  • Quote: “Three hours in Paris made him happy when he stood at the height of his triumphs.” – Albert Speer, recounted by Tom Holland [05:11]
• Dominic places this alongside the Anschluss as one of Hitler’s personal high points.

2. The Strategic Situation: Britain and France on the Brink

[06:25]

• German forces have cut off the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) and large French and Belgian contingents at Dunkirk.
• Tom and Dominic recap the rapid Nazi advance and the desperate predicament of the Allies.
• The episode picks up with Operation Dynamo, the audacious evacuation plan from Dunkirk, masterminded by Vice Admiral Bertram Ramsay.

3. The Miracle of Dunkirk and the 'Halt Order' Controversy

[11:28]

• The German advance pauses outside Dunkirk due to a halt order, a vital and much-debated decision.
  • “Why, with victory over Britain within Hitler’s grasp, does the order go out to the panzers to stop their advance?” – Tom Holland [11:39]
  • Dominic unpacks von Rundstedt’s concerns about terrain and troop exhaustion, as well as Goering’s boast that the Luftwaffe can finish the job.
  • Others, like Guderian and von Bock, protest the order as a catastrophic error.

Key Moment

• Quote: “I thought it was the biggest blunder of the war.” – Heinz Guderian, via Dominic Sandbrook [15:05]
• The Luftwaffe fails to annihilate the stranded Allies, suffering unsustainable losses. By the time the Wehrmacht resumes its advance, 338,000 troops—British, French, and colonial—have been evacuated (“a miracle of deliverance”).
• The event becomes a psychological and propaganda victory for Britain, despite being a military defeat.

4. The British Perspective: “A National Mood of Defiance”

[20:13]

• The hosts highlight the critical effect of Dunkirk on British morale; the “little ships” become a national legend of solidarity.
• Churchill’s oratory and the people’s reaction reframe disaster as redemption:
  • Quote: “The national mood of defiance which brought down Napoleon and would destroy Hitler too.” – John Horsefall (quoted by Dominic) [21:41]
  • Nella Last’s diaries capture ordinary Britons’ emotional embrace of shared struggle.
• Tom notes Hitler completely misunderstands this, expecting British capitulation.

5. The French Collapse: “A Sense of Crushing Misery”

[26:13]

• While Britain rallies, France is traumatized by a second invasion in a generation.
• Millions of civilians flee cities; towns are emptied in a refugee crisis described as the largest in Western European history.
• The French government, led by Paul Reynaud, is fractured and demoralized. Marshal Pétain and General Weygand advocate armistice to avoid anarchy and destruction of Paris.

6. Diplomacy, Drama, and the Failed Franco-British Union

[33:33]

• Churchill twice travels to meet French leaders, urging continuing resistance and even proposing a union of the two countries.
• Pétain and most of the French cabinet reject the idea, believing defeat is inevitable and a German armistice preferable.

Memorable Moment

• The dispute in Bordeaux, where Reynaud and his mistress Countess Hélène de Port become embroiled in intrigue (she is fiercely anti-Semitic, pro-fascist, and leaks confidential plans).
• Quote: “She was not chic, she was not charming, and she was not intelligent, but she behaved as if she had some vested right, whether constitutional or divine, in the government of the French Republic.” – Vincent Sheehan, quoted by Dominic [32:33]

7. Paris Falls and Hitler’s Revenge Fantasy

[40:11]

• Paris is declared an open city; government and population flee. Germans march in and symbolically hoist the swastika above the Arc de Triomphe and Eiffel Tower.
• Hitler stages the French surrender in the exact railway carriage in Compiègne where Germany had surrendered in WWI, exulting in the reversal of humiliation.
  • Quote: “Today it is afire with scorn, anger, hate, revenge, triumph.” – William Shirer describing Hitler’s face [60:36]
• The French are forced to sign terms dividing the country, instituting the infamous Vichy regime.

8. Aftermath: National Destinies Diverge

[63:55]

• In Germany, the victory unleashes euphoria; even critics and doubters are swept up:
  • Quote: “I feel exhilarated by happiness and enthusiasm. It’s an unbelievably great national change of fortune, the fulfillment of our long-held dreams.” – Luisa Solmitz, cited by Tom [65:25]
• For Hitler, this is the zenith of his career—celebrated like a messiah on his return to Berlin.
• Britain, now alone, braces for the next showdown—the Battle of Britain.
• France is left divided, some viewing the defeat as proof of national “sickness,” others blaming military mistakes.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Dunkirk:
  “A miracle of deliverance achieved by valor, by perseverance, by perfect discipline...” – Churchill, paraphrased by Dominic Sandbrook [19:35]
• On the nationwide British response:
  “It made me feel part of something undying and never old. Somehow I felt everything worthwhile...” – Nella Last, quoted by Dominic [21:41]
• On the French mood:
  “Let’s imagine the sense of crushing misery as you realize, it’s happening all over again on a greater scale than ever before.” – Dominic Sandbrook [26:13]
• On Pétain’s perspective:
  “You are asking us to agree fusion with a corpse.” – Marshal Pétain on the proposed union with Britain [48:57]
• On Hitler’s vengeance:
  “The disgrace is now extinguished. It’s a feeling of being born again, this sort of sense of vindication and revenge after the First World War.” – Goebbels, as recounted by Dominic [61:52]
• On the episode’s turning point:
  “The final German victory over England is now just a question of time.” – Gen. Jodl’s diary, as cited by Dominic [67:49]

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Timestamps for Major Segments

• 03:53 – Speer describes Hitler’s Paris tour; the apotheosis of Nazi ambition
• 08:07 – The encirclement at Dunkirk and Operation Dynamo begins
• 11:28 – The Dunkirk “halt order” and the Luftwaffe’s failed promise
• 17:24 – Outcome of the Luftwaffe’s failure; the Allies escape
• 21:11 – The impact of Dunkirk on British morale and myth
• 26:13 – France’s civilian crisis and government divisions; the exodus from Paris
• 32:33 – Countess de Port’s intrigues and the disintegration of French unity
• 40:11 – Germans enter Paris; the symbolic weight of defeat
• 57:07 – Hitler orchestrates the Railway Carriage surrender at Compiègne
• 62:18 – Details of the armistice; the Vichy regime
• 65:25 – National euphoria in Germany; the Nazi regime’s peak; what comes next

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Final Notes

• The episode skillfully contrasts the psychological consequences of Dunkirk and the fall of France—morale forged in defeat in Britain vs. moral and political collapse in France.
• Tom and Dominic emphasize the long shadows these events cast, from Churchill’s “finest hour” to the stain of collaboration under Vichy.
• The hosts end by previewing the next episode: the Battle of Britain and Hitler’s ill-fated plans for invading Britain.

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For Listeners New to the Story

This episode serves as a rich, human-centered account of one of the most consequential reversals in twentieth-century history. Through strategic analysis, first-hand accounts, and a lively repartee, Tom and Dominic show not just how France fell, but how nations respond to shock, defeat, and the challenge of destiny.

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Transcript

[Tom Holland]

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Of power, HIVE helps you finally know yours. Head to hivehome.com to find out more. Subject to survey and suitability. Hive app compatible with selected technology. Paid for surplus. Requires SEG tariff. We drove past the Madeleine, down the Champs Elysee, onto the Trocadero, and then to the Eiffel Tower, where Hitler ordered another stop. From the Arc de Triomphe, with its Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, we drove on to the Invalides, where he stood for a long time at the tomb of Napoleon. Finally, Hitler inspected the Pantheon, whose proportions greatly impressed him. The end of our tour was the romantic, insipid imitation of early medieval domed churches. The church of Sacre Coeur on Montmartre, a surprising choice, even given Hitler's taste. Here he stood for a long time, surrounded by several powerful men of his escort squad, while many churchgoers recognized him but ignored him. After a last look at Paris, we drove swiftly back to the airport. By 9 o' clock in the morning, the sightseeing tour was over. It was the dream of my life to be permitted to see Paris. I cannot say how happy I am to have that dream fulfilled today. For a moment I felt something like pity for him. Three hours in Paris, the one and only time he was to see it, made him happy when he stood at the height of his triumphs. So that was Adolf Hitler's architect and confidant, Albert Speer, the man who Hitler was going to commission to redesign Berlin as Germania and put Paris in the shade if he won the war. And Speer there is describing one of the most sinister sightseeing tours in history. Dominic, we are in Paris in late June 1940. France has fallen. Speer has joined Hitler for a three hour tour of the conquered French capital. And I guess it must rank as perhaps the single sweetest moment in Hitler's life. Do you think?

[Dominic Sandbrook]

I think so. Up to this point.

[Tom Holland]

I mean, this was a man who had fought against the French for four years and his generals had said it couldn't be done, this kind of attack on France, and everything has gone right.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

For him, yeah, I think there are probably two moments. There's the moment of the Anschluss when he was greeted in Austria, his homeland, as the man who had brought the sort of the. The fragments of the German nation together. I guess that was a happy moment for him. And this is another one. And that moment when he says to Speer that the dream of his life has been fulfilled, you know, that Hitler's a terrible man, but there is a man under there, right, with ideals and ambitions, as ghastly as they may be. And actually, when you think back, we've done the Nazi story in what, four series, over 18 episodes, went all the way from the late 19th century through the chaos of the First World War to the rise of the Third Reich. And, you know, we've shown how they've swallowed Austria and Czechoslovakia and Poland and whatnot, and crushed Norway and Denmark. And today's episode is about the apotheosis. It's the victory, as you said, that Hitler has been dreaming about since November 1918. It's revenge at last, against the French. So let's remind ourselves where we ended last time. In the last episode, we described him. On the 10th of May, which is the day Winston Churchill became Prime Minister of Britain, Hitler's troops had launched their invasion in the west of France and the Low Countries. They'd pulled off this extraordinary tactical feat of the sickle cut, where they went through the Ardennes and round and up to the Channel coast and basically trapped the British and French armies against the Channel. So that means 400,000 men of the British Expeditionary Force are trapped against the sea in this pocket.

[Tom Holland]

And that's the. Pretty much the entirety of the Expeditionary Force, isn't it, for the British?

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah, pretty much. And the British, I mean, they've never been a land power. They don't have loads of other troops to call on if these troops are all captured.

[Tom Holland]

They've got Captain Mannering, but that's about it.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Exactly. So Hitler is thinking, you know, we pull this off and it's pretty much game over for the British. That's certainly his mentality. And this scene of them trapped at the Channel ports, the panzers advancing and closing in on them. This is going to be, you know, it's going to be one of the most terrible moments in French history, the fall of France. And yet, counterintuitively, it ends up becoming one of the most stirring and moving moments in Britain's modern history. The subject of Christopher Nolan's film Dunkirk, which lots of our listeners may have seen that bit at the beginning, sense of impending doom and the Tommy's sort of running through the streets and they're picking up these leaflets that say, we surround you. German propaganda leaflets. That's exactly how it was. They were surrounded.

[Tom Holland]

Yeah. Kenneth Branagh on a long pier.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Exactly. Looking out to sea, thinking, no help will ever come, all of that. So let's pick up the story on the evening of the 23rd of May, two weeks into the German invasion. So that night, the first British troops start being evacuated from Boulogne, which is now under immense, relentless German attack. And the Germans have also begun the assault on Calais. And both Boulogne and Calais are doomed. They will fall a couple of days later.

[Tom Holland]

I mean, Dominic, it's been a pretty grim sequence hasn't it, for us on the Rest Is History, because England lost Calais under mary in the 16th century about two weeks ago, and now the British troops are being about to lose Calais again.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

I know any mention of Calais brings. Brings disaster on this show. So there's really only one major Channel port left, the port of Dunkirk. And there, almost half a million British, French and Belgian troops have taken refuge. Now, a few days earlier, in fact, four days earlier, on the other side of the Channel, the British have begun making preparations to get them out. And this is the operation that goes down in history as Operation Dynamo. So Vice Admiral Bertram Ramsey, who really ought to be a character in PG Wodehouse, he's based in these tunnels underneath Dover Castle. It sounds amazing, actually. His base is there and he has been trying to work out exactly how will we get these troops home.

[Tom Holland]

And is this where they come up with the idea of the little ships?

[Dominic Sandbrook]

The little ships, yeah, they're basically. Because the big ships can't get in really close. I mean, most people that were rescued were rescued by big ships. Spoiler alert. But the little ships, obviously, massive propaganda value. I mean, that's the point of the Christopher Nolan film, isn't it? The little ships.

[Tom Holland]

Little pleasure cruises and fishing ships and things.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah, exactly. It's such a moving story if you're British. Now, the stakes could not be higher. That evening, going back to the 23rd of May, Churchill told his staff in London, he said, we cannot leave our army to be slaughtered or to surrender. If we lose the men, then we lose the war. Our men must battle through to Dunkirk and when they get there, our navy will get them out. And that night, Churchill goes to see George vi, the Buckingham palace, and he tells him the same thing. We're going to try and get the army back, but as he knows, Hitler's tanks are now less than 20 miles from Dunkirk and they are closing in all the time. And realistically, it's going to be really difficult to rescue the troops before the Germans get there.

[Tom Holland]

But then. Then there is a pause, isn't there? And it is one of the key turning points in the history of the Second World War and also one of the most debated.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yes.

[Tom Holland]

Because I suppose the question is why, with victory over Britain seemingly within Hitler's grasp, why does the order go out to the panzers to stop their advance?

[Dominic Sandbrook]

So let's dig into this, because this, as you absolutely rightly say, this is one of the crucial turning points in the story of the Second World War. You could argue in the story of the Third Reich, the story of Hitler's regime.

[Tom Holland]

Right.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

If things go differently here, the whole story might play out differently. So the very next morning, the 24th of May, Hitler flew to Charleville, which is just inside the French border. And that's where General von Rundstedt, who's commanding the army group, has established his headquarters. And Hitler arrives at 11:30. And Rundstedt says, okay, here's the state of play. My advance guard are now just 15 km from the allied perimeter, and the British are doomed. But Rundstedt goes on. He says, the question for us now is, how do we finish them off? Personally, I don't want to risk the tanks. There's a lot of canals in western Flanders. It's kind of boggy.

[Tom Holland]

And that's one of the reasons why Dunkirk has been, you know, provides, to a degree, an effective kind of perimeter, doesn't it? Because the canals could stop the panzer advance. In that sense.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yes. And don't forget, the Germans have come an enormously long way very quickly. I mean, anybody who remembers our episodes about the first weeks of the First World War. Yeah. Will recall that basically, if you have a tremendous advance and a great offensive, the danger is that you'll basically just run out of steam because everyone will be just so exhausted.

[Tom Holland]

Well, unless you're. You're kind of munching on amphetamines that.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Have gotten through the Ardennes, that they can't do that forever.

[Tom Holland]

No, I suppose.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

And von Rundstedt says, my men are absolutely exhausted. Ideally, I would like to give them a break, just a little break before we turn south towards Paris to finish the job with the French. And Hitler thinks about this, and he says, yeah, I can see that we're, you know, really, I'd like to take Paris as quickly as Possible just completely knock the French out. So I can see there's some logic in giving your men a little break. But what is more, Hermann Goering, the colossal figure of Hermann Goering has assured Hitler that his Luftwaffe, the German air force, can easily deal with the British without any need to risk Rundstedt's tanks. So actually, you know, it's win, win. We can give the panzer commanders a rest, we can give the troops a rest, give Goering's fliers a chance to prove their mettle, and we'll wipe the floor with the British at Dunkirk.

[Tom Holland]

Well, I mean, I suppose that they're coming off the back of the bombing of Rotterdam with the Stukas and everything.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah.

[Tom Holland]

And that's been a tremendous success. So maybe they think that they can do the same with the British.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah, absolutely. And Goering is a massive braggart. Goering will never be honest with you about the limitations of his air force. He makes grand claims which, as we shall see, are not borne out.

[Tom Holland]

Hitler then says, okay, fine, and he approves Rundstedt's halt order that morning, and the tanks grind to a halt. And it's often said that it is Hitler himself who comes up with the idea. But it clearly isn't, is it? I mean, he's responding in a way that he often doesn't do to suggestions from kind of military heads.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

The only other thing, though, is you're absolutely right that Hitler is responding to Rundstedt's idea. But lots of other commanders think this is a terrible decision. So the lead tank commander, Heinz Guderian, who is one of the people who'd come up with the plan in the first place. Yeah.

[Tom Holland]

Achtung Panzer.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Achtung Panzer. Exactly. He could see Dunkirk very faintly in the distance. I mean, he could absolutely see. And when he gets the order to stop, he is, by his own admission, quote, speechless. He says, I couldn't believe it. I thought it was the biggest blunder of the war. The commander of the other big German army group in the West, Fedorg von Bock, when he was told, they've stopped, he said, what? And he immediately complained to headquarters and said, the order must be changed, quote, otherwise the English will transport whatever they want under our very noses from Dunkirk. And that afternoon, the commander in chief of the army, Walther von Brauchitsch, arrives in Charleville. Now, you'll remember him, he's a man with no spine, who's basically massively in debt to Hitler. And even he says, I just can't understand why the tanks aren't advancing on Dunkirk to finish the job. And Hitler and Rundstedt say, there is no need. The Luftwaffe are going to finish this off. Like, we'll leave it to Goering and his pilots. And this turns out to be one of the greatest mistakes in military history because Goering has completely misled them. The Luftwaffe are not up to the job. Part of this is because it's very cloudy, but it's also because Goering consistently underestimates the RAF and he overestimates his own planes and pilots. So in the next 10 days or so, the RAF, the British Air Force fight manfully to keep the Luftwaffe bay. It was often said. And you see this actually in the Christopher Nolan film, you see this played out at the argument. It is sometimes said, oh, the air force didn't help us at Dunkirk. Where were the air force? There's a scene in the film when someone shouts, where are the bloody air force? But actually, Christopher Lennon's film shows the air force were there. They flew 3,000 individual sorties, so they did give the troops air support. The British lost almost 180 planes, but the Germans lost far more planes. They lost 250. And as we will see next time, because German factories are much slower to build planes, these are losses that they can ill afford.

[Tom Holland]

And Dominic, I mean, the. Actually, there's a pretty continuous process of attrition for the Luftwaffe. So in all that, I mean, they end up losing almost 2000 aircraft during the Battle of France. And as you say, it wins them France, but it loses them Britain in the long run.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah, exactly, exactly. So Hitler doesn't rescind the halt order until the evening of the 26th of May, and the next morning the tanks start moving in. But those three days have been absolutely crucial and the damage has been done because that gives the British a chance to finalize their evacuation plans. So on the evening of the 26th of May, the same moment that Hitler is changing his mind, Churchill gives the order. Start taking men off the beaches. And in the next few days, the ships keep on coming. And to quote General von Bock, again, he's horrified. At Dunkirk, the English are continuing to leave. When we finally get there, they will be gone. The supreme leadership's halting of the tank units has proved to be a serious mistake. And he's right, because they then do not capture dunkirk for another 10 days. And by then, 900 allied ships, including the famous little ships, the fishing boats, the pleasure cruises, all of those, the steamboats, all of that, they have rescued 338,000 men, far more men than Churchill or even the most optimistic Allied commander had ever thought possible.

[Tom Holland]

So that's out of 400,000.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah.

[Tom Holland]

The rest are killed or taken prisoner. But even so, I mean, it is. It's not exactly a victory, as Churchill goes on to point out, but it is a fillip, isn't it?

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Oh, it's massive.

[Tom Holland]

It's redemption from seeming disaster.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah. It's not just the British who get rescued, by the way. It's sometimes thought the British get rescued and they leave the French behind. This is not right. Of those men, about a hundred thousand of them are French, Belgian, Senegalese, Moroccan and so on. So they're the kind of colonial troops of the Allied forces. So it's not all British troops, but the rear guard who defended Dunkirk to the end were French. And there was a lot of bitterness because they, of course, had been left behind. Now, as you say, the funny thing about it is this is an amazing German victory. The British have been driven off the mainland of Europe, just as Hitler wanted. And Churchill says in his common Speech, which is quoted at the end of the film, wars are not won by evacuations. Our thankfulness at the escape of our army must not blind us to the fact that what has happened in France and Belgium and is a colossal military disaster. And he's right, it is a disaster. But then the point of Dunkirk, the importance of it, is that it allows him to say what he says next, which is, there was a victory inside this deliverance, which should be noted, a miracle of deliverance achieved by valor, by perseverance, by perfect discipline and so on, blah, blah, blah, blah. And this is the remarkable thing about it, that Hitler's folly in endorsing the halt order and Goering's mad boasting about the Luftwaffe have combined to turn a total British disaster into, weirdly, a kind of psychological and moral victory.

[Tom Holland]

And I suppose the role played by the little ships, the sense that this is properly a national effort, that everyone is rolling up their sleeves and getting stuck in this, will kind of stiffen the sinews of the mass of British people, that this is a war, war worth fighting. And that is something that Hitler will never properly get a handle on, is it?

[Dominic Sandbrook]

He never understands that, I think, because he thinks that the British will come to terms after this. But after Dunkirk, it's clear they never will. And I think there's a couple of elements to it. So one of them is purely practical. As Ian Kershaw says in his biography of Hitler, imagine a world in which, you know, the230,000 British troops who got away had not got away, but had been captured. So a quarter of a million men in a prison camp, that would have made it very difficult, you know, maybe for Churchill not to do a deal with Hitler. At some point, you know, they'd have had to raise an entirely new army, they'd have lost all their equipment and they'd have all these men on the other side of the Channel in a Nazi prison.

[Tom Holland]

And their families in Britain, of course.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Imagine the diff, the difference in the public mood. But I think you are totally right that the mystique of the little ships, you know, the people's war, the people coming to the rescue of their troops, you know, that symbolized at the end of the Christopher Lennon film when the troops arrive and there are people clapping them and giving them tea and sandwiches and stuff, you know, that really happened. That absolutely happened. This wonderful quote, I think it's in Max Hastings's book from an officer called John Horsefall. And he says, basically, it was only when we got home and we're bedraggled and defeated and we. And there are people giving us cups of tea that we sensed, and I quote, the national mood of defiance, which brought down Napoleon and would destroy Hitler too. And you may say, well, this is of course romantic, patriotic fantasy after the fact. But we know from people's diaries at the time that they felt like this. The most famous one, there's a woman who wrote one of the longest diaries in history. She's called Nella Last. You know, her diaries were quite a big publishing sensation a few years ago. She's from Barrow and she wrote in her diary just the day after the operation ended, she said, I read the story and I forgot. I was a middle aged housewife who sometimes got uptired and had backache. The story made me feel part of something that was undying and never old. Somehow I felt everything to be worthwhile and I felt glad I was of the same race, meaning nationality, as the rescuers and the rescued. And that's, you know, that sort of very moving, rousing stuff, which is easy to sneer at, was obviously psychologically so important in those weeks in the summer of 1940 and which Hitler will not.

[Tom Holland]

I mean, he doesn't appreciate it. He doesn't appreciate the effect it's had on British morale. So he will find it puzzling that the British decide to fight on.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah, can't get his head around it.

[Tom Holland]

But this is kind of probably the key explanation, but also of course, there's a massive contrast with France because Britain and France were both very divided countries in the 30s. But in Britain, the miracle of Dunkirk and the little ships and everything helps to solidify national resolve. Whereas in France, defeat fractures society there even wider.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

I think you're dead right. I think Tom would be remiss of me not to point out that Britain was much more consensual than 1930s France, thanks not least to the wise and gallant leadership of Stanley Baldwin.

[Tom Holland]

Stanley Baldwin.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Stanley Baldwin, who presides over a much more settled and united country than French prime ministers do in the 19th century. 30s. But you're right, the obvious contrast is with France. Now, interestingly, in Britain, most accounts of this kind of in the popular imagination, they skip from Dunkirk straight to the Battle of Britain, but there's nothing in between. But that's not right. The Germans are now heading south towards Paris, and in the next couple of weeks, the French fight quite hard. So the Germans actually lose more men per day after Dunkirk than they did beforehand because the French are fighting desperately to defend their capital.

[Tom Holland]

Can I just cite one French colonel who leads a counterattack, and this is a colonel called Charles de Gaulle. He's in charge of the French 4th Armored Division, and he launches a counterattack at Abbeville on the. On the Channel coast. And the battle, he fails to dislodge the Germans, but it does succeed in halting the German advance, at least for a day or two. And this is actually very important for Dunkirk because it serves to distract German forces that otherwise might have added to the pressure on the front line at Dunkirk. So let's not forget de Gaulle.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Well, here's the thing. If you're de Gaulle, right, Or if you're somebody, a French patriots looking at this story, you say it's very nice the way these British podcasters tell the story, which is the way that people always tell us in Britain, from a French perspective, this is a story of the British running away as they had threatened to do in 1914 when things.

[Tom Holland]

Went badly and as they had been doing throughout the war. Right. I mean, you know, it happened in Norway and, right.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

The British have run away, saved their army. They've run away, and we are fighting desperately to defend our capital. And basically everyone laughs at us and says, you know, the French trophy cabinet is bare. But the truth is we fought very well against overwhelming odds and all the rest of it, because actually they are against overwhelming odds. The Germans have more divisions now because the French army is disintegrating. The Germans have better at using their tanks. The Germans have far more air power. And of course, the Germans have the discipline and morale that comes with being an advancing army. So by the 6th of June, the Germans have broken the French line and crossed the river Somme. By the 9th, they're in Rouen. By the 10th, they've crossed the river Aisne. So all these places that would have had such resonance in 1940, because these are all the place names from the First World War and the Germans are just steamroller ing past them.

[Tom Holland]

Yeah, I remember when I went to Ypres where my grandfather was gassed and they had rows and rows of graves, I think of Canadians, and they were peppered with bullet holes, you know, that had been fired in 1940.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Wow. Yeah.

[Tom Holland]

Oh, my God. You know, I mean, just imagine all that, you know, here we go again.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

This is, I think, what's underappreciated, possibly in the English speaking world, that for the civilians in Belgium and France, this is happening for the second time in a generation. Let's imagine the sense of crushing misery, you know, as you realize, it's happening all over again on a greater scale than ever before. And that is why, you know, as we said last time, people remember 1914. They've read the stories about Poland. They've read about things like Guernica and the sack of Chinese cities by the Japanese in the late 1930s. They're terrified of what will happen to them when the Germans get into their cities. And that is why these extraordinary stories of places like Lille. Lille 9. 10 of the population took to the countryside, fled the city. Chartres. Chartres, with its famous, you know, architecture and stuff. 23,000 people lived in Chartres. By the time the Germans get there, There are only 800 left. Everybody else is gone. And this is the biggest refugee crisis in Western European history. I don't know if some listeners have read the Suite Francaise books by Irene Nemirovsky. These books capture the scene of total chaos and terror. Carts in the streets, families rushing to find sanctuary and being pounded from the air by the Luftwaffe, you know, bodies everywhere. Yeah.

[Tom Holland]

The kind of Nazgulesque Descent of the Stukas with their terrifying wine. Yeah. Just horrific.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

So imagine being the people at the top. So to remind people, the Prime Minister, who's only been there for a matter of months, Paul Reno, very clever guy, but very. I said about say, but very short. Very clever and very short, I should say.

[Tom Holland]

Yeah, I'm glad you corrected yourself.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Now, since the 19th of May, they've had a new military chief who is Maxime Vagon. Who we described last time he's about is in his early 70s. He's been recalled from retirement. And another man who Renaud has recalled in France's Hour of Need is the great hero of the First World War. And this is the man who had rallied the troops, French troops at the defense of Verdun in 1916. He is now 84 years old, piercing blue eyes, ramrod straight and with very.

[Tom Holland]

Much a First World War moustache.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Still, hasn't he a proper, yeah, 1910s mustache. He is Le Vieux Marechal, the old Marshal Philippe Petain. And they've recalled him because they think he will be a symbol to the people of French defiance. Petain had been serving as ambassador to General Franco's regime in Spain. And Renault says, I want you to come back to France and be my deputy in have Hour of Need. Petain went to see Franco and said, I'm off to France. Franco said, don't bother, you've lost, no point in going. And Petan, perhaps rather ominously some listeners may think, said to him, my country has been beaten. They're calling me back to make peace and to sign an armistice. This is the work of 30 years of Marxism. They're calling me back to take charge of the nation. Now that might sound a bit ominous to people who are hoping that Petain is going to stiffen the sinews, to stand up to fascism. So as early as 8 June they discuss asking the Germans for terms. Reyno is against it. He says, we agree with London that we would never seek an armistice, you know, an independent armistice. We promised we wouldn't sign a separate peace. General Weygan says, what the British, I mean the British have totally let us down. They've left our rear guard behind. Both Weygan and Petain agree, it's all up. France is lost, we've lost the war. And Weygan says, listen, do you remember what happened when we lost to the Germans before? In 1870, 71, Paris was taken over by the revolutionary left wing Commune. There was then basically a little civil war. Thousands of people died as the army turned on the Commune and the streets ran with blood and all the animals.

[Tom Holland]

In the zoo got eaten.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Wow. No one wants that.

[Tom Holland]

Will no one think of the animals in the zoo?

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Exactly. And the animals in the zoo. And Vagon says, listen, that should be our priority, is making sure that doesn't happen again. We can't have anarchy. We must keep order. And basically we need to deal with the Germans, otherwise everything will collapse in chaos. And Petain says, I agree with Wegor. I don't think we should ask London. I think basically the British dragged us into this war and we spent too much time kowtowing to the British and basically France should come before anything else.

[Tom Holland]

And I would have thought also a consideration is the future of Paris. Right. Because bombs have already been dropped on the Air Ministry and the Citron works.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Not the Citron works on the Citron works.

[Tom Holland]

But suppose the fate that was inflicted on Rotterdam is inflicted on the City of Light.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah.

[Tom Holland]

So the French government decide to declare Paris an open city, don't they? And on 10 June, the government flees Paris. And there's this famous description by an American broadcaster, Edward Severade, and he wrote, paris lay inert, her breathing scarcely audible, her limbs relaxed and the blood flowed remorselessly from her manifold cold veins. Paris was dying like a beautiful woman in a coma.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah. Now I'll tell you who's left Paris. Two million people, including the government. So they have fled Paris. On 10 June, Reno and company, they head towards the Loire and Reynaud establishes himself in the Chateau de Chise, which is just outside the very beautiful city of Tours. And he's brought not his wife, from whom he is estranged, but in very Gaelic style, he's brought his mistress.

[Tom Holland]

So actually quite Nelsonian style, I guess.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

So this is Countess Helene de Port and Helene de Port has quite a baleful influence on what happens next. Now, I hate to be seen to be being mean about a woman on the show, Tom, as you know, yet another mistress.

[Tom Holland]

The object of San Brukian, Aya.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

She has had the most terrible press, I think, of almost any woman we've ever done on the show. Charles de Gaulle used to call her the turkey, Churchill called her the parrot. And Churchill's chief diplomatic advisor, Sir Robert Van Sittard, called her, and I quote, a poisonous and promiscuous troll.

[Tom Holland]

That's a phrase to remember.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Even the American correspondent Vincent Sheehan wrote afterwards. She was not chic, she was not charming and she was not intelligent, but she behaved as if she had some vested right, whether constitutional or divine, in the government of the French Republic. Now why does all this matter? It matters because she's a massive anti Semite. She's also massively pro fascist and she is constantly, you know, by night she's constantly urging reyno, sack all your generals and do a deal with the Germans as quickly as possible. The Germans aren't that bad, so that's a bit of a problem, I think.

[Tom Holland]

So what does he See, in her.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

God knows, I mean, who can say? Remember Napoleon with Josephine, there was something called the zigzags, wasn't there?

[Tom Holland]

Yeah, the zigzags. And nobody knows what that was, but it was very. It was great fun and involved them going to bed together.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Maybe the zigzags have made their reappearance, I don't know. Anyway, so this is a slightly awkward environment. And the next day, 11 June, Winston Churchill joins the merry party.

[Tom Holland]

Well, it's never a party unless Churchill's there.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Exactly. With loads of champagne and Dundee cake. So he flies to a chateau near Oron where the French leadership are waiting to meet him. And for the next day and a bit, they try to hammer out a strategy. And Churchill says, I have an excellent idea. Why don't you go to Brittany, hold out in Brittany, you know, make it a redoubt, like Asterix. And Vagon says, you're mad.

[Tom Holland]

That would.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

That's an insane idea. That will never work. And Churchill says, a campaign of guerrilla resistance. And Peter says, that would destroy France. That, that's. That can't work either. And Vagon says to Churchill, now is the decisive moment in the war. The British ought not to keep a single fighter in England. They should all be sent to France. And Churchill then says to him, no, this is not the decisive moment. The decisive moment will come when Hitler hurls his Luftwaffe against Britain. If we can keep the command of the air over our island, then we will win it all back for you. Whatever happens here, we are resolved to fight on forever and ever and ever. And actually, Churchill is right that that's actually how Britain wins the war. Like, he's not wrong. The trouble is that's really not what a Frenchman wants to hear. Basically, you know, you have to fight on to the end. You'll lose, but eventually we'll win it all back for you. So don't worry. I don't think any patriotic Frenchman wants to hear that.

[Tom Holland]

Does this conversation determine Reyno's decision that, yeah, it's over, do you think?

[Dominic Sandbrook]

No. Because even at this stage, Reynaud has not quite given up. Because after he's gone, Churchill goes, and some of them clearly are very pleased to see the back of him. And then Reyno and co sit around and Reyno says, you know, clearly we are going to lose, but we could go into exile and continue the fight from London, very much like the Norwegians have done, let's say, or the Dutch. And Vagon says, that's. That's pointless. That old fool Churchill is talking rubbish because once Hitler is finished with us, then he will take Britain. He will get. He'll be in London before you know it. There's no point in us hiding in London. The British are doomed.

[Tom Holland]

He famously says, doesn't he, that Britain will have her, her neck wrung like a chicken.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yes.

[Tom Holland]

To which Churchill later responds, some chicken, some neck.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Exactly, exactly. And Vagon keeps going on, we have to stay here in France and stop the, the anarchy and revolution. And actually Von is telling Reno things that are not true. So Vagon is telling him, at this point, revolution has already broken out in Paris. The specter of a left wing commune has, you know, re has awoken from the grave. And that's actually not right. That hasn't happened. Anyway, the next day Churchill comes back, can't get, they can't get rid of him. He flies back to France. This time he goes to tour. There's been some amusing airfield action in earlier episodes, so I'm glad to have some more. He arrives at the airfield. There's nobody to meet him. They've all gone to lunch. Splendidly. So eventually Churchill and his entourage find two French Air Force officers who agree to give them a lift. And of course, Churchill being Churchill, they go straight to the Hotel Grand Bretagne to have lunch themselves. There are refugees outside staring through the windows and kind of rattling the doors. And Churchill is completely unperturbed by this and he says, you know, let them stare. It's very good for them to see the Prime Minister of Great Britain having his lunch. It should inspire them and all this kind of thing. Whether it does, I'm not sure. Anyway, he goes to the town hall to see Renault. By this point, Wegor and Peter are no longer coming to these meetings, which tells its own story because they basically think it's pointless. And Churchill is very emotional. He says to Reno, we ask you to fight on as long as possible. If not in Paris, at least behind Paris in the provinces, down to the sea, then if need be, in North Africa. The alternative is the destruction of France. And that of course is the rhetoric that Churchill is coming out with later about Britain. Right, you know, we're fighting on the landing grounds, all of that.

[Tom Holland]

But Peter has already said that actually that strategy would be the destruction of France because it would see, you know, her cities and her monuments destroyed.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Churchill would of course said, I'm sure I know what Churchill would have said to that. He would say nothing will ensure the destruction of France more than the collapse of her spirit and her morale. You can rebuild cathedrals, but the stain of defeat can never be wiped away.

[Tom Holland]

But he can say that because he has a strip of water between him and the Germans, I guess.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

But there's another man who agrees with him, who is French, who is there. And that is their new. You mentioned him earlier. He's just been appointed the Under Secretary of State for War, and he is an officer called Charles de Gaulle. De Gaulle is the only person who seems to agree with Churchill at these meetings.

[Tom Holland]

And Churchill kind of responds to him, doesn't he, and says, l' homme du d'. Estain. The man of destiny.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah, he whispers it, the man of destiny, to de Gaulle on the way out. And de Gaulle says nothing. He's just impassive, as he always is. I mean, that would make a great film, actually. People done loads of Churchill films, but they've never done Churchill and the French as a film. So there's one other amazing bit of high drama at this meeting. I mentioned Countess de Port, the promiscuous troll or whatever.

[Tom Holland]

The fascist troll, the worst kind of troll.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

She bursts into this meeting and she shrieks at the top of voice, Mr. Churchill, my country is bleeding to death. And then she launches herself at him and tries to scratch his face. And a French officer shouts, get that woman out of here. For the dignity of France. And basically Churchill's bodyguard, who's called Walter Tommy Thompson, he sort of has to wrestle this woman away from Churchill and drags her out of the room. And then when he searches her, he finds that she has a knife on her person, which is a very low moment, I think, in the history of the entente cordiale between our two great nations.

[Tom Holland]

And Dominic, meanwhile, on the very same day, so the Same afternoon at 3 o', clock, the Germans have reached the River Marne. And people who listened to our series on the First World War will remember that that was the key turning point in the early campaigns in the First World War. But not on this occasion. And from the River Marne, the Germans can see the Eiffel Tower in the distance. And Paris has already been declared an open city. And at dawn the next day, Friday, the 14th of June, 1940, the first German units start entering the center of the French capital. And the fall of Paris is the most emblematic symbol around the world of the catastrophe that has befallen the Allies.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Right? It is indeed so. By the evening, the Germans have hoisted a swastika over the Arc de Triomphe and they have climbed. The French cut the lift cables to try to stop the Germans getting to the top of the Eiffel Tower. So you know what the Germans did? They climbed 1665 steps of the tower to raise the swastika flag over the Eiffel Tower. Very soon that tower would be decorated with a vast banner, the words of which read Deutschland siegt auf allen Fronten. Germany is winning on every front.

[Tom Holland]

So one month and four days after the first German troops crossed the frontier into France, Paris has fallen and we will find out what happens next after the break.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

This episode is brought to you by NordVPN.

[Tom Holland]

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To get the best discount off your NordVPN plan, go to nordvpn.com restishistory Our link will also give you four extra months on the two year plan. There's no risk with Nord's 30 day money back guarantee. The link is in the Podcast Episode description box.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

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[Tom Holland]

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[Dominic Sandbrook]

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[Tom Holland]

That's auraframesaura.co.uk promo code history. This exclusive Black Friday Cyber Monday deal is their best of the year. So order now before it ends. Support the show by mentioning us at checkout. Terms and conditions apply. Hello, welcome back to the Rest is history. Paris has fallen to the Nazis and Dominic. Now for the leadership of France, the democratic leadership. The end is just days away, isn't it it?

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yes. So Paul Reyno and his ministers have now arrived in Bordeaux. They've gone. They're going further and further south. Bordeaux is a city in total and utter panic, crowded with hundreds of thousands of refugees. But Reau and his mistress, the Countess de Port check into the Hotel Splendid.

[Tom Holland]

That's a great name for hotel.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah, so they read they're normally in France, so they're not. They're basically. There's the Splondide, the Bristol and the Grand Bretagne. Those are the kind of traditional names for French hotels, aren't they? So on. I don't know why Bristol? What is it with Bristol? I think that's one of the most famous hotels in Paris. I mean mad, there's no hotel Norwich.

[Tom Holland]

Bristol's a fine city though.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah, it is. Okay, so on Saturday 15 June, the French Cabinet again discussed whether to surrender and Reyno really does want to fight on from abroad. He does not want to give up. But he is outvoted by his cabinet. Most ministers agree with Vegan and Peter that they should ask Hitler for terms. Reyno at this point wants to quit at once but he's persuaded out of it. And that night at dinner he has the most blazing row with Ellen de Port he has found in her bed. She's been hiding secret telegrams from London. She's clearly been reading them.

[Tom Holland]

Oh I see. So it's not secret telegrams that have been sent to her from spies and London?

[Dominic Sandbrook]

No, no. She's going to the stenographer's office and basically grabbing telegrams, nicking crucial communications. Exactly. They have a massive Row and he throws water over her at dinner in front of everybody to sort of punish her. So it's an, it's an awkward situation, you know, no one knows where to look.

[Tom Holland]

I suppose it's keeping people's minds off the fall of Paris.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

So it is, I suppose, yeah. So the next day is Sunday 16 June, an incredibly dramatic day. 7:30 that morning, Churchill is at Chequers in the English countryside and he is woken by his aide. Churchill hates being woken up early because of his ludicrous hours. And he's told Reyno is about to quit as French prime minister and he's going to be replaced by his deputy Marshal Peter. Churchill eats his breakfast very quickly. I mean he still has his breakfast. Fair play to him. And then he rushes to London and there an amazing thing actually, which is actually weirdly little known I think among the British public that the British cabinet approve a plan to merge Britain and France into a single country, a Franco British union which would have a common citizenship, common defense and common foreign and economic policies. And the point of doing this is not because they want to rebuild the empire of, you know, Henry II or something. It's because they think this will give them the legal powers to take the whole French army to Britain and to take control of the French Mediterranean fleet. And they sort of think that it might maybe stiffen some people in France's nerve, you know, that the British are really so committed they're going to merge their country with France. Anyway, they put this to de Gaulle who has flown to London as Reyno's representative and amazingly de Gaulle agrees. So you would think that the ghoul of all people, the man who vetoed Britain's attempt to join the Common Market would be against this. But he says fine, you know, an extremist, let's do it. And he rang Reyno that day and dictated it over the phone and Reno said fine. So that evening Reno puts this plan to his cabinet. It's meant to be a surprise, but actually Countess Deport has been up to her old tricks.

[Tom Holland]

Oh goodness.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

She has seen the stenographer's copy of the telegram and she's. And of the sort of document and she's leaked it to all Reynos ministers. Look at this. This is terrible.

[Tom Holland]

Do you know we've had loads of mistresses on, on the rest of history, but I think she's the worst.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

She's bad, isn't she? She's not great. Reyno's ministers hate this idea. They, they say come on, this just makes Us an appendage of Britain. We'll be a British dominion. And Paytown says, you are asking us to agree. Fusion with a corpse. You know, they've got it very clear in their heads that Britain is dying. Peters are clearly a bad man, Tom. And it's very clear, I think, that a lot of them, deep down, would rather have an armistice with the Germans. They would be a British dominion or anything of that ilk.

[Tom Holland]

Yes, because an armistice with the Germans will enable those on the right to come down hard on their compatriots who are on the left. So they're still, to a degree, thinking in terms of party politics rather than of national survival.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

And also, of course, they think the Germans are going to win the war. At this point, none of them think that Britain can win the war. They just assume the Germans are going to win. So the next day, 17 June, two more very dramatic developments. So overnight, Reynaud quits, as had been advertised, and Petain becomes Prime Minister. And at 11:30 that morning, Petain broadcasts to the French people, and he says, I'm going to ask Hitler for terms. He says, I've sent a message to the enemy commander to ask him if he would meet with me as one soldier to another, after the fight and honorably seek a way to put an end to hostilities.

[Tom Holland]

But, you know, what's not honorable is that he basically tells the French army to put down their weapons even before the armistice has been agreed.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah. And as soon as people hear that broadcast, they stop fighting. Lots of them, they're like, well, what's the point? Why carry on if we're going to lose anyway? Now, meanwhile, De Gaulle, who had once been Peter's protege, I mean, this is the thing. He had looked up to Peter as a mentor. He's come back from London, and when he comes back and he hears we're asking for peace, de Gaulle is totally devastated. You know, he'd wanted to fight on. And de Gaulle knows that basically Petain's taking power and that he, De Gaulle, as a hawk, will probably be arrested, because that's what happens to Peter's other critics and opponents within the regime. He goes to see Reyno, presumably the Hotel Spontide, and Reyno has not yet handed over this sort of. I don't know whether it's a briefcase or something that has the Prime Minister's secret funds in it. And Reyno gives de Gaulle a hundred thousand francs and says, take the money. Go to London. You know, do what you can. And that's what de Gaulle does. Even as Petain is speaking to the French people, de Gaulle is in a plane going back to London. And when he gets to London, there he makes the very famous radio appeal to the French people that all French school children are now very familiar with. He basically says to them, we appear to have lost. But it's not final. France is not lost. I, General de Gaulle, appeal to the French people to join me. The flame of French resistance must not be extinguished and will not be extinguished. It's, you know, one of the most stirring and defining moments in modern French history and now a huge part of French identity.

[Tom Holland]

But almost nobody hears it.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Right, yeah. Let's rain on that French parade. Nobody's listening is. They're all listening to Marshall Payton.

[Tom Holland]

I don't think it's raining on their parade because I think it's, you know, it's an acorn from which a mighty oak grows. And it actually makes the story of. Of the Free French all the more dramatic that nobody hears it, but it is. It is a single candle that is blowing in an almighty tempest.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yes, I think that's a nice way of putting it, because, I mean, an almighty tempest. My God. This is the most traumatic moment in French history, without a doubt. And how it happened has been argued about ever since the French collapse in the face of, you know, the German invasion. And Petain and his allies, right from the moment he takes office, say, we lost because we were sick, because there was a sickness in French society. And some historians have said that since, you know, that France was fatally divided and demoralized even before the war. War began. There are others. So there's a great historian called Julian Jackson who has written a brilliant book on the fall of France. And Julian Jackson says, you know, everything that you say of France, you know, you could say it of other countries, too. The truth is they lose on the battlefield because of bad intelligence and bad tactics.

[Tom Holland]

Yeah, I think that's clearly the case because had they bombed, for instance, the tanks as they were going through the Ardennes, then Germany would have lost, and we'd probably be having these discussions about the sickness in German society. Well, I mean, we do have discussions about the sickness in German society, but you know what I mean.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

I do know what you mean, exactly. I think it's true that the British and French generally are too cautious and they're too hesitant throughout the whole war. I mean, that's what a lot of military historians say, that basically the value of human life matters a lot to a British or a French general. You know, they're Very conscious of the lessons of the First World War. They don't want to be the butchers who send men, you know, advancing towards, you know, machine guns. The Germans are gamblers, and that comes from the top. And the French and the British are very reluctant to take decisions in 1940. And I think there's also a sense, though, that the French lack a bit of solidarity when things are going badly. This is a massive question, so any short take on it would be a bit simplistic. But even in the early days of the campaign, General Gamelin, who was Weygor's predecessor, said, it's clear that some of our soldiers don't really believe in the war. They're not massively fired up. They don't really believe in their leaders. Julian Jackson, in his book on the fall of France, quotes a young sergeant who had been, perhaps tellingly, on the far right in the 1930s, who said, what will really annoy me in this war is if I end up dying for values in which I do not believe.

[Tom Holland]

And Dominic, what is the name of that young officer?

[Dominic Sandbrook]

That young officer's name was Francois Mitterron. To the future Socialist president of France. But there are other examples. I mean, Jackson also quotes a philosopher called George Friedman, who was serving as a lieutenant. And Friedman said, you know, when I look at the people around me, I don't detect a huge amount of pain at the misfortunes of our country. More a kind of relief that it's all over. You know, thank God this that's done. I mean, maybe you could say there would have been people in Britain who would have acted similarly had they been defeated. Thank God that's over. I mean, I'm sure there would have been actually a few, but I think France is much more divided than Britain in the mid-1930s. And that lack of ideological cohesion, I think, does actually play a part, especially when things go badly. You know, they find it harder to fall back on a sort of patriotic solidarity, I would say. Richard Evans, in his books on the Third Reich, points out that there are French conservatives who had always despised French democracy, much as German conservatives had despised the Weimar Republic. You know, French conservatives had often admired Hitler and Mussolini and spoken of their, you know, the lessons that could be drawn from fascism. And so when they are beaten, they say, do you know what? Actually, this might be quite a good thing. We can rebuild our country. We can purge the left. You know, this is actually a necessary lesson for us, and we can, you know, learn from it.

[Tom Holland]

Which suggests that they haven't properly Understood what the Nazis are about, right?

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah. Or that they have and they're just terrible people.

[Tom Holland]

I think the former, because I. Because I think that the French, right, are patriotic. I mean, Peter was the great hero of France.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

He.

[Tom Holland]

He thinks that what he's doing is for the best for France. But it's mad to think that the Nazis will cut France any slack at all because for them, their triumph is so transcendent. I mean, they're interpreting it in racial and cultural terms, aren't they?

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Of course they are. Of course they are. Transcendence is the word. I mean, Hitler, when he heard Peter's broadcast, he was described by people there as literally slapping his thighs with joy. I mean, that's not an image anyone wants to see.

[Tom Holland]

His tight leather trousers.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

So Hitler assumes the war is over. The next day he flies to Munich to meet Mussolini. The Italians. The Italians, I mean, I know we've got some Italian listeners, actually. I mean, I'm sorry to say this, but the Italians absolutely disgrace themselves in both world wars for different reasons. So in this world war, they've done their traditional thing of sitting on the sidelines. At first. Mussolini's, you know, he's not really interested in the West. His ambitions are in the Adriatic, kind of Yugoslavia and Greece. But Mussolini is a total snake. And he declared war on Britain and France on the 10th of June. I mean, it's literally like, you know, taking part in a football match in the 85th minute or something.

[Tom Holland]

Do you know who would agree with you that Mussolini disgraced himself with his declaration of war?

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Ah, don't compare me with some hideous Nazi Hitler. Right back, I knew that was coming.

[Tom Holland]

To quote my brother in War in the west, he thought that Mussolini declaring war was pathetic. As far as the Fuhrer was concerned, one didn't make a declaration of war, one just got on and fought it. So Mussolini had really let himself down there.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

So Mussolini didn't even. I mean, he declares war just before the Germans capture Paris. And he said to his cronies, he said, basically, what I'm hoping is that 2,000 Italians will be killed and that will be enough for me to claim Corsica and Nice for Italy. I mean, he also said, mussolini, what kind of an ally is Mussolini? He said, I hope Britain doesn't surrender too quickly because I'd like to take some of the credit for it somewhere, and Hitler will get all the credit. And he also said, I hope that Hitler does end up attacking Britain and does invade Britain because I think he'll lose a million men and that would Be good for him. And it'll mean the Germans aren't too cocky after the war, when they've won anyway, they meet in Munich. And now, this is interesting thinking about Britain, because we know from the Italian Foreign Minister, Count Ciano, what Hitler thought was going to happen. He said, Hitler really wants to end this quickly. Now, he's like a gambler. He's bet all his chips, he's had a big winning and he wants to scoop everything up. Hitler says to Ciano, I really don't want Britain to fall apart completely and lose its empire, because Britain losing its empire would be great news for our other rivals, the United States, Japan and the Soviet Union, they would be the big winners, not Germany. So basically, I want Britain to keep its empire. Now, we will see how that plays out next time. But for the time being, Hitler's priority is to give the war in France the ending that he feels he deserves. Remember, I mean, you mentioned at the beginning how important the experience of defeat in 1918 had been to Hitler. You know the scene when he's in the sanatorium, in Passive Alka, wherever it is, and he's sobbing like a baby when he hears the news, he now he's going to have his revenge. And as soon as the German tanks had reached the Channel coast, you know, the beginning of the invasion, he'd said to his aides, when we win, I want to have the armistice negotiations in the Compiegne forest in the same spot where we surrendered in 1918. And not only that, we surrendered in a railway carriage in 1918 to Marshal Foch. I want to get the same railway carriage and then we'll force the French to be on the receiving end this time. And they did. They tracked it down to a museum. A German demolition crew broke down the walls of this museum with a kind of JCB type thing. They dragged out the railway carriage and they took it all the way to this forest and dumped it in the forest. And the ceremony is set for the 21st of June, 3 o' clock that afternoon, Hitler turns up with all the gang Goering, Ribbentrop, Hess, all these characters. He had a look at the French war memorial, which was in the forest, and he went into the carriage. The French had already arrived. They're sitting there in absolutely glum silence. Hitler sat exactly where the supreme allied commander, Marshall Foch, had sat in 1918. And the American reporter William Schira, who saw Hitler that day, said, I've seen that face many times at the great moments of his life. But today it is a fire with scorn, anger, hate, revenge, triumph. General Keitel read the preamble to the armistice, which said that basically the German people have been suffering and humiliated for 20 years, but that's over now and justice has been restored. And then Hitler just walked out. A gesture of contempt for the French. I will leave the rest to my aunt, the Lings.

[Tom Holland]

That's again what Foch had done to the Germans, isn't it? So again and again it's treating the French how they had treated the Germans.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Exactly. And I mean, Hitler and his cronies don't disguise how personal this is, because that evening Hitler rang Goebbels in Berlin to talk it through. And Goebbels wrote in his diary afterwards, the disgrace is now extinguished. It's a feeling of being born again, this sort of sense of vindication and revenge after the First World War.

[Tom Holland]

So what terms are the French able to get?

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Well, the French have. Don't have a leg to stand on. They just have to take what they're given effectively, much as they sort of beg for better. So they lose Alsacerna reign, Germany takes them back. Northern and western France becomes a German military occupied zone. And then the southern two fifths of France will be governed by Marshal Petain from the spa town of Vichy. We know that the Nazis love spa towns. And Marshal Peter ends up presiding over this very reactionary, repressive, anti Semitic regime, which is a subject for another day, I guess. And when Hitler heard the news that the French had signed, I mean, again, it's the sign of the sort of almost like the malevolent teenage boy in Hitler, I think. Yeah, he said, turn out all the lights in the headquarters, everything in darkness and open all the windows. I want nothing to disturb, you know, the sound of the trumpeter marking the moment of the French surrender. You know, he just wants to absolutely wallow in that moment of vindication. So the same day, which is 22 June, the Wehrmacht organized this huge victory parade in Paris. You can see it on YouTube, actually, on German newsreels. Troops marching down the Champs Elysees, cavalry riding past the Arc de Triomphe. I mean, imagine being a German, you know, a nationalistic German back in Cologne or Hamburg or Stuttgart or whatever, watching this in the cinema with your compatriots. Yeah, that sense that Hitler has of vindication and revenge. That's what lots, millions of ordinary Germans thought at that moment.

[Tom Holland]

But also, presumably they're thinking Hitler was right. Everything he promised us has come to pass.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Of course they are. So the bells ring across the Reich for a week. The flags are hoisted for 10 days. You know, there had been massive celebrations with the reports of things like the fall of Paris. And we've talked many times in this series about how anxious Germans were about the another world war. But all their anxieties, it seems, have been put at rest. I mean, Hitler, this is. You're exactly right, Tom. What they think is even people who doubted Hitler now say, do you know what? He was right. He accomplished everything that he said he would. SS reports, we know from SS security service reports that even among people who were skeptical of the regime, who were even perhaps on the more dissident side of things now, are just full of admiration for what has been achieved in France. There's a brilliant example, Richard Evans, in his great books on the Third Reich, he has a number of diarists that he cites again and again. One of them is this woman called Louisa Solnitz. I think we mentioned her in previous series. She was a schoolteacher, she was conservative, but her husband was Jewish. So she was quite conflicted, as you would expect about the regime. But now she writes in her diary, she says, I feel exhilarated by happiness and enthusiasm. It's an unbelievably great national change of fortune, the fulfillment of our long held dreams.

[Tom Holland]

And Dominic, if she is feeling like that, how does Hitler feel?

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Oh, I mean like that, but only more so, you know, the way that again I compared him rather flippantly to a sort of teenage boy. But you know, what does Hitler do? He spends the next couple of days visiting battlefields in Flanders with old comrades, with his old company sergeant from the First World War and a fellow dispatch runner. And then that thing of the boyhood dream, visiting Paris. So as Speer described in that reading that you did at the beginning, he flew in with his favorite architects and a. His photographer, Heinrich Hoffman. They went to the opera first and they were showed round by a caretaker and they offered the caretaker a tip but the caretaker didn't, wouldn't accept it. You know, obviously he doesn't want to take German gold. They went to all those places that Speer mentioned, the Arc de Triomphe, the Aveli, the Pantheon and so on. Tomb of Napoleon. The interesting thing is Hitler said afterwards to Goebbels, you know, Paris wasn't as good as I thought it would be. I thought it would be more impressive. And then he said to Speer that evening, he said, I'd always thought we'd have to destroy Paris, but now I've realized that basically when we're done in Berlin, Berlin will be much better and Paris will only be a shadow, so we don't need to destroy it. So, weirdly, if Paris had been more impressive, Hitler would have destroyed it. And then, at last, he makes his triumphant return to Germany, choreographed by Goebbels on the afternoon of the 6th of July. And this really, I mean, we were talking at the beginning, weren't we, about what was the happiest moment, what's the high point of Hitler's life? This has got to be up there. Massive crowds, hundreds of thousands of people. They've strewn the streets with flowers. He goes all the way from the station to the Reich Chancellery in the center, and there General Keitel introduces him as the greatest warlord of all time. And people are screaming and sobbing and Hitler comes out again and again to salute them, the crowds. And he is at the summit. He is at the zenith now, because there's only one enemy left. Britain. He is preparing his final peace offer to Britain. If Churchill refuses that, then he will bring the British to their knees. And as the operations chief of his army, General Jodl, writes in his diary, the final German victory over England is now just a question of time.

[Tom Holland]

Or is it? We will find out in our final episode of this series. It's the great duel between Hitler and Winston Churchill, between the Luftwaffe and the raf, as we look at the Battle of Britain, the Blitz and the buildup to Operation Barbarossa. And members of the Rest Is History Club can, of course, of course, hear that episode right now. And if you would like to join them and hear about Britain's finest hour, then please do sign [e-mail] au revoir. Throughout time, celebration has meant giving. So the Romans at Saturnalia handed out all kinds of gifts. The three Magi handed out gold, frankincense and myrrh. And the Victorians absolutely loved wrapping things up in paper and then tying it up in string.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Tom, those are lovely gestures, but I wonder if they're a little bit too extravagant for the typical Christmas morning. So this year, here's my suggestion to our listeners and our viewers. Why not give something a little bit more enlightened? Why not give the gift of the Rest is History Club membership? It's the discerning choice for anybody who prefers a Hannibal to a hamper.

[Tom Holland]

It's ad free listening. You get a weekly bonus episode, you get early access to live shows, and you get exclusive Deep Dive series.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Also on top of that, this year's special gift edition of Rest is History Club membership comes with a sensational exclusive T shirt. It will make you the envy of all your neighbors and all the cool people in your neighborhood, if such people exist, will admire you and want to spend more time with you. So just head to therestishistory.com and click on Gifts, that is therestishistory.com & please click on gifts. And Doug Here we have the Limu emu in its natural habitat, helping people customize their car insurance and save hundreds with Liberty Mutual. Fascinating. It's accompanied by his natural ally.

[Tom Holland]

Doug. Uh, limu is that guy with the binoculars watching.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

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[Tom Holland]

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[Dominic Sandbrook]

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[Tom Holland]

K. Throughout time, celebration has meant giving. So the Romans at Saturnalia handed out all kinds of gifts. The three Magi handed out gold, frankincense and myrrh. And the Victorians absolutely loved wrapping things up in paper and then tying it up in.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

String. Tom, those are lovely gestures, but I wonder if they're a little bit too extravagant for the typical Christmas morning. So this year, here's my suggestion to our listeners and our viewers. Why not give something a little bit more enlightened? Why not give the gift of the rest is History Club membership. It's the discerning choice for anybody who prefers a Hannibal to a.

[Tom Holland]

Hamper. It's ad free listening. You get a weekly bonus episode, you get early access to live shows, and you get exclusive Deep Dive.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Series. Also on top of that, this year's special gift edition of Rest is History Club membership comes with a sensational exclusive T shirt. It will make you the envy of all your neighbors and all the cool people in your neighborhood if such people ex will admire you and want to spend more time with you. So just head to therestishistory.com and click on gifts that is therestishistory.com & please click on gifts.