IN DEFENCE OF WEYGAND

New Zealand Listener, Volume 20, Issue 508, 18 March 1949, Page 14

IN DEFENCE OF WEYGAND

Conversations with his son, Commandant J. _ Weygand, Translated by J. H. F. McEwen, with an introduction by Cyril Falls. Eyre eee ROLE OF GENERAL WEYGAND: and Spottiswoode. (English price, 12/6). ‘TWO days after being released by the Americans from imprisonment in German hands, Genéral Weygand, in May, 1945, was arrested on the orders of the French Government on a charge of having held office under Marshal Pétain. It was true that he had held office in the Vichy Government, first as Minister of National Defence and later as Commander-in-Chief and DelegateGeneral in French North Africa, but the

accusations against him had little foun. dation, and since this book was written he has been cleared of them. In any case, he had been a prisoner of the Germans since the Allied landings in North Africa in November, 1942. His son, Jacques Weygand, from detailed notes made in discussions with his father, has written this ‘account as an explanation and_ justification of his father’s motives and actions. The General is concerned not to vindicate himself nor to attack his accusers, but to give to the people of France a true picture of the situation as he saw it at the time, together with his reasons for the grave decisions he had to make. The book takes the form of replies to questions asked by Weygand fils, but Weygand pére does most of the talking. Recalled from Syria at the age of 73 to replace General Gamelin as Com-mander-in-Chief, General Weygand arrived in France by plane on May 19, 1940, to be greeted with the news that in a campaign then only ten days old more than two-thirds of the Allied armies had been cut off in Belgium and Northern France. His account of the events of the next four weeks and of his efforts first to halt the Germans and later, by seeking an Armistice, to prevent them from over-running the whole country, is vividly told, and the translator has managed to preserve from the French text much of the atmosphere and drama of the General’s narrative.

Probably of most interest to English readers are Weygand’s remarks on 20 years of Anglo-French relations from the disagreements. of Versailles to the incident of Mers-el-Kebir (Oran), as a result of which formal relations between the two countries, were broken off. Old wounds are opened and family quarrels revived, but the General is moderate in his criticism, fair in presenting the opposing point of view, and always ready to appreciate the reasons for -divergent opinions. But he had much to try his patience in May and June, 1940. Not only was there divergence of views among the Allied commanders"an evil which is inherent in all alliances, but usually only attains to serious ‘proportions when things are going badly" -but the two Governments engaged in a "series of not very edifying squabbles" over the exact proportion of each army

that was to be evacuated. Fairly enough, | he attributes these quarrels to each nation’s concern for its own survival and the natural anxiety of commanders to save their men from falling into enemy hands, but he is distressed by the lack of confidence shown in him by the Headquarters of the British Expeditionary Force and its commander (Lord Gort), criticises the poor allocation of R.A.F. support to the Battle of France in comparison with the numbers of aircraft retained in Britain for its defence, and is grieved by the misunderstandings over the disposal of the French Fleet which ended in the sinking of French ships at Mers-el-Kebir and Dakar. The book is a valuable one and the French point of view is well worth study. As Cyril Falls, Chichele Professor of the History of War at the University of Oxford, writes in his introduction: "There is a good deal in it with which I do not find myself in agreement-but I think

it should be read."

W.A.

G.