Stephen Harding - The Last Battle

His elevation came less than eight weeks before Germany launched Case Yellow, the first phase of its invasion of France and the Low Countries, on May 10. Like most of his countrymen, Reynaud was stunned by the rapidity of the German advance and by the failure of his nation’s armed forces—and the British Expeditionary Force—to mount an effective defense. Convinced that General Maurice Gamelin was incapable of reversing France’s military fortunes, on May 18 Reynaud replaced him with General Maxime Weygand. That same day Reynaud brought the eighty-four-year-old World War I hero Marshal Philippe Pétain into the government as minister of state.

The military and political changes could not stop the Nazi juggernaut, however, especially after the Germans launched Case Red, the second phase of their assault, on June 5. After flanking the Maginot Line, the Wehrmacht was slowed only occasionally by successive defensive lines set up by the overwhelmed Weygand. Reynaud and his government left Paris on June 10 for Tours and, ultimately, Bordeaux. German troops occupied the undefended capital on June 14.

Though Reynaud was convinced France could carry on the fight from its North African colonies, the pressure on him to surrender was intense—and much of it came from his mistress, the allegedly pro-German countess Hélène de Portes. [86] 1. As mentioned in the notes to chapter 2, de Portes had been Reynaud’s openly acknowledged mistress for several years, despite his continuing marriage to Jeanne Henri-Robert Reynaud. Often portrayed as the evil genius who controlled Reynaud—and thus, his government—from behind the scenes, de Portes’s actual influence over events during the months of Reynaud’s premiership is both open to debate and outside the scope of this volume. For a fascinating discussion of the countess’s relationship with Reynaud and influence on French politics, see Gates, The End of the Affair . When his cabinet voted on June 15 to ask Germany for peace terms, Reynaud resigned and was replaced by Pétain, who immediately announced his intention to seek an armistice.

Reynaud and de Portes stayed in Bordeaux until after the June 22 signing of the armistice and then left for Reynaud’s summer home on the Mediterranean coast. On June 28 their car left the road and hit a tree; de Portes died instantly, and Reynaud suffered a serious concussion. During his recovery at a hospital in Montpellier, German troops occupied northern France, and the Pétain-led government in Vichy proclaimed the elderly marshal “head of state” and replaced the Third Republic with an increasingly fascist regime only too willing to be Berlin’s lapdog. Pétain announced his intention to try members of the former government for their betrayal of France, and on September 6, 1940, agents of the Sûreté took Reynaud into custody.

Pétain ultimately decided that Reynaud and Mandel would not be part of the show trial and ordered them to remain imprisoned at the Fort du Portalet. They stayed there for just over a year, mostly in solitary confinement. Though cheered by visits from his adult daughter, Colette Reynaud Dernis, and his private secretary, twenty-eight-year-old Christiane Mabire, Reynaud knew that Vichy would turn him over to the Germans. That day came on November 20, 1942, when he and Mandel were transported to Berlin. The two Frenchmen were separated, and Reynaud was driven to Sachsenhausen concentration camp in Oranienburg. [87] 2. The first concentration camp in Oranienburg was established in 1933 and bore the name of the town but was subsequently closed and replaced by the nearby—and vastly larger—Sachsenhausen complex. In his memoirs, Reynaud refers to the camp by its earlier name.

Reynaud spent five months in isolation at Sachsenhausen. In February 1943 he discovered that Mandel was being held in a nearby cell. The two were able to steal a few moments of whispered conversation when one or the other was taken to the shower room. Those moments with Mandel came to a halt in mid-March, when Reynaud was taken to a section of Sachsenhausen known as “the Bunker” and installed in a large hut surrounded by a high-voltage fence. After a few weeks in his new quarters, he was joined by the tennis player and former Vichy official Jean Borotra.

On May 10 the two men were told to pack their few belongings, and within hours they were on the road, headed south toward Austria. When he stepped from the staff car in Schloss Itter’s front courtyard, Reynaud was shocked to see Daladier and Gamelin—both of whom he’d assumed had been executed after the Riom show trial—and Jouhaux, whom he’d known before the war. Looking around at his new home, Reynaud found it far more acceptable than his previous prison. As he later recalled, “Daladier, Jouhaux, and Gamelin had been there for some days. I fear that I must have shocked them when I cried out: ‘This is paradise!’” [88] 3. Reynaud, In the Thick of the Fight , 652. Though nearly seven hundred pages long, Reynaud’s memoir devotes just four pages to his time at Schloss Itter. He covers that period in exhaustive detail, however, in his Carnets de captivité, 1941–1945 .

It was an exclamation he’d come to regret.

Though Borotra’s initial impression of Schloss Itter was more restrained than Reynaud’s, he, too, found the castle a vast improvement over Sachsenhausen. And for the tall, lanky tennis star—a man for whom daily strenuous physical activity was as necessary as food and water—the most appealing aspect of this new prison was the pathway that encompassed the rear courtyard just inside its surrounding wall. Borotra realized that if his captors allowed him to run several circuits every day he would soon be back in the superlative physical condition that would be necessary if he was to attempt what he thought constantly about: escape.

Fitness had been a key aspect of Borotra’s life virtually from the day of his birth on August 13, 1898. [89] 4. Details on Borotra’s life are drawn from Smyth, Jean Borotra, the Bounding Basque . Born into a Basque family near Biarritz, he grew up walking the mountainous landscape of France’s border with Spain. At fourteen he discovered tennis while spending the summer of 1912 in England. Fast, agile, and competitive, Borotra took to the sport immediately, though the outbreak of world war brought a temporary halt to his development as a tennis player.

Deeply patriotic, Borotra enlisted in September 1916. As a fit and obviously well-educated young man—he was fluent in Spanish, German, and English as well as French—Borotra was trained as an artillery officer. Following his commissioning in April 1917, he saw extensive combat, won the Croix de guerre, and ended the war as a battery commander. Upon his release from active duty in 1919, he returned to school, graduating with degrees in engineering and law.

Borotra continued playing tennis and began winning tournaments throughout France. His highly athletic style—lightening-fast volleys and crushing overhead smashes intermingled with almost balletic leaps and spins—earned him the nickname “the Bounding Basque,” and he quickly became a crowd-pleasing favorite. And the crowds soon became international, as Borotra began representing both himself and his country in matches worldwide. By the late 1920s he’d won singles and doubles titles in most of the world’s top championships, including Wimbledon.

His athletic success did not keep Borotra from looking for opportunities in the business world. He realized that professional tennis wouldn’t provide a living wage and in 1923 secured a position as an engineer with a Paris-based firm. Over the next seventeen years his language skills, charm, social connections, business acumen, and celebrity allowed him to build a successful career as an international salesman. And by scheduling his international business trips to coincide with the major tennis tournaments, he was able to simultaneously pursue both his chosen careers.