Authors: Alistair Horne

To Lose a Battle (116 page)

BOOK: To Lose a Battle

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14
. For this, the American Ambassador in Paris, William Bullitt, must be held greatly to blame. In an age when Ambassadors carried weight and were more than merely the post-office clerks they tend to be today, Bullitt appears to have sinned by misleading both his own country and France as to the true situation in the other. Washington was persuaded by Bullitt that France’s fighting capacity was much greater than it was, while through him the French Government was led to expect far greater aid than could possibly have been forthcoming from the United States at that time.

15
. Churchill’s italics.

16
. Isabella was Queen of France from 1389 to 1435; she gave her daughter, Catherine, in marriage to King Henry V of England, whom she recognized as heir to the King of France, and is generally held responsible for the surrender of France to the English. Isabella was buried, without honours, at St Denis.

1
. Where it was later destroyed in an R.A.F. air-raid.

2
. Because of the confusion of the collapse, there are discrepancies here.

3
. It subsequently received orders from Keitel banning all such religious services.

4
. These were; Keitel (the O.K.W. Chief of Staff); Brauchitsch (Army C.-in-C.); Rundstedt, Bock and Leeb (the three Army Group commanders); Reichenau, List, Kluge, and Witzleben (Army commanders); and Milch, Kesselring and Sperrle from the Luftwaffe. Conspicuously absent from these so honoured was Halder; Shirer, watching the scene, thought him the ‘saddest figure’ there.

5
. Killed in Russia.

6
. Killed in the Western Desert, once again fighting under Rommel.

7
. ‘Knight’s Cross with Oak Leaves, Swords and Diamonds’.

8
. After the war, Manstein, sentenced to a lengthy imprisonment for war crimes, was at first reluctant to speak to any Allied interviewers. When he did, in old age, he would often express surprise that anything particularly brilliant should be seen in his plan,
Sichelschnitt
: ‘After all,’ he remarked once, ‘We just did the obvious thing; we attacked the enemy’s weakest point. The hopeless French reconnaissance won us the Battle of France; just that.’

9
. He had also escaped from a German P.O.W. camp in the previous war.

10
. As a further piece of irony, it was the statesman – Charles de Gaulle – who had sold to the French Government the amazing notion of an ‘indisoluble union’ between Britain and France in the darkest hour of June 1940 who kept the door to Europe barred to Britain while he lived.

1
. His reputation later became somewhat tarnished in the Lebanon.

1
. The findings of such inquiries as the Serre Commission are at best only partially satisfactory.

1
.
Geschichte der 7 Panzer-Division im Westfeldzug.