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Great Contemporaries: Paul Reynaud, Some Answers and a Question
- By ANTOINE CAPET
- | January 25, 2022
- Category: Churchill in WWII Explore Great Contemporaries
“My relations with M. Reynaud stood on a different footing from any I had established with M. Daladier. Reynaud, Mandel, and I had felt the same emotions about Munich. Daladier had been on the other side.”1
Reynaud and Churchill
All is said, or almost so, in Churchill’s Second World War memoirs, as he describes his state of mind in March 1940. In the waning weeks of the “Phoney War,” Reynaud, a moderate conservative, replaced the socialist Édouard Daladier as premier. Churchill, still First Lord of the Admiralty, rejoiced.
It is not widely perceived how close they were before the war. Churchill had first met Reynaud in September 1936, during a lunch with French foreign minister Pierre-Étienne Flandin and former prime minister Édouard Herriot. At the time, Reynaud, the former Minister for the Colonies (1931-32), was not in office. But in Churchill’s eyes, Reynaud had two great virtues. He strongly favored an Anglo-French alliance against Germany; and he was interested in military questions, notably in armoured units.
Two months later Reynaud went to London to speak to the Anglo-French Luncheon Club. One of his guests, Churchill invited him to a private lunch in his home the next day. During the well-filled days which Churchill spent at the British Embassy in March 1938, Sir Eric Phipps invited Reynaud to one of the lunches. One month later, Reynaud became Minister of Justice in a Government formed by Daladier.
The Czech crisis
One difference between them was fundamental. In September 1938 Reynaud, joined by Mandel, threatened to resign on the question of ceding the Czech Sudetenland to Germany. Churchill had hastened to Paris to dissuade them from doing so. He explained why in a private note which was only published in 1948: “Their sacrifice could not alter the course of events, and would only leave the French Government weakened by the loss of its two most capable and resolute men,”2 On 10 October, after the agreements had been signed, he wrote to Reynaud:
I cannot see what foreign policy is now open to the French Republic. No minor State will risk its future upon the guarantee of France…. You have been infected by our weakness, without being fortified by our strength. The politicians have broken the spirit of both countries successively…. Not since the loss of the American colonies has England suffered so deep an injury. France is back to the morrow of 1870. What are we to do?3
Paul Reynaud replied on the 20th, referring to his country’s defeat in the Franco-Prussian War: “France is, alas, in a worse situation than in 1871.”4
Darkening counsels
When Churchill went again to the French Riviera in January 1939, he made as always a stop in Paris. At the Trianon, he lunched with Paul Reynaud. Among other topics, the conversation bore on Mussolini, against whom Reynaud was especially incensed. They were to have another exchange of views in August 1939, this time on the telephone: Reynaud reassured Churchill about French intentions after the signing—just announced—of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. This promise of Soviet collaboration was Hitler’s final desiderata before attacking Poland.
On 4 November, with war declared but no land action, Reynaud was among Churchill’s guests at an official dinner at the Paris Ritz. He was likely invited as a friend more than as Minister of Finance, which he had been since November 1938. They also saw each other briefly in Paris just before Reynaud became President of the Council (Premier) on 20 March 1940. Their meetings were then to become increasingly frequent, accelerating after 10 May, when the Germans attacked in the West and Churchill became Prime Minister. In the tragic hours of June, they reached an almost daily rhythm.
On 22 March Churchill wrote Reynaud: “I rejoice that you are at the helm, and that Mandel is with you, and I look forward to the very closest and most active co-operation between our two Governments.”5 This was far more than simple diplomatic boilerplate. At last, Churchill thought, he had as an ally a former anti-Munichois and champion of a united Anglo-French front against Germany.
Tragic hours
The Prime Minister was only slowly disillusioned. It was on the very last days of the crisis, perhaps only on 16 June 1940, that he finally understood that Reynaud was going to yield under the immense strain. Churchill had done everything to support Reynaud and prevent him from resigning. There were his concessions on fighter squadrons, intended to defy the Anglophobes in the French Government. There were his hurried, dangerous flights to Paris, Briare or Tours to harangue the defeatists. And Churchill pleaded to delay any surrender until a reply had been received from President Roosevelt. Lastly there was the extraordinary proposal for an Anglo-French union. In his memoirs, written in the present tense, Paul Reynaud was to write with deep feeling:
I am [then] moved by the effort which Churchill, so impregnated with the powerful originality of his people, must have made upon himself to make such a proposal. He proposes Union, dual nationality, unity of government and command!6
In the final analysis, all was in vain and Reynaud resigned as France surrendered. Yet Churchill bore no grudge against him, and sent him the same telegram of victory as he sent Blum and Daladier in May 1945. The reason lies in Churchill’s resigned understanding of the weakness of human nature. By definition, people of exception are rare, and Reynaud, though full of loyalty and integrity, was not among them. Who can blame him? His own memoirs suggest as much:
Evidently M. Reynaud, exhausted by the ordeals through which he had passed, had not the life or strength for so searching a personal ordeal, which would indeed have taxed the resources of an Oliver Cromwell or of a Clemenceau, of Stalin or of Hitler.7
Never give in
Reynaud never accepted to have any truck with Vichy and its policies, which earned him the honour of spending the war in Pétain’s and Hitler’s gaols. This certainly maintained his esteem in Churchill’s eyes. As septuagenarians, and later octagenarians, they repeatedly met after the war: at The Hague in 1948, the Paris Embassy in January and September 1951, and finally on the French Riviera in 1959.
Significantly, Reynaud was invited by Charles Eade to contribute the chapter “Churchill and France” to a classic international tribute, Churchill by his Contemporaries (1953). Reynaud begins with high praise: “Of all men now living Sir Winston Churchill is incontestably the most popular in France. To the French he typifies resistance, tenacity in the face of odds, and victory.” He then devotes much of his text to correcting passages in The Second World War which discuss the French cabinet meeting of 16 June 1940. These, he says, were written by a Churchill “who was not at Bordeaux and received only a second-hand account of what happened there.”8 This contradictory version of events did not apparently affect their good relations, and Reynaud attended Sir Winston’s funeral in 1965. He died a year later.
Addendum 1: The Curious Case of the Bœuf Wellington
Perusing the menu of the famous Paris restaurant Lapérouse, I chanced upon the following:
LES GRANDS CLASSIQUES DE LA MAISON
Le bœuf Wellington pour deux
Servi en mai 1940 à Winston Churchill
[The Great Classic Dishes of the House
Beef Wellington for two
As served in May 1940 to Winston Churchill]
I immediately wrote to the management for details of the date and other diners. The assistant manager replied with little enlightenment, apart from the presence of Paul Reynaud:
Nous avons trouvé dans les mémoires de Monsieur Roger Topolinski, illustre propriétaire de Lapérouse de 1926 à 1968; le fait suivant: Winston Churchill est venu en 1940 déjeuner avec Paul Reynaud, président du conseil, et a acté de la capitulation de la France lors de ce repas. Nous ne savons pas hélas la date exacte.
[We found in the memoirs of Monsieur Roger Topolinski, the illustrious proprietor of Lapérouse from 1926 to 1968, the following fact: Winston Churchill came for lunch with Paul Reynaud, President of the Council (Prime Minister), and acknowledged the capitulation of France during that meal. We do not know the exact date, alas.]
Obviously Roger Topolinski got it wrong about the dates. If there was talk (which Churchill always repudiated) of “the capitulation of France,” it was in mid-June, not in May.
Churchill came to Paris on May 16, 22, and 31. Their Finest Hour does not leave much room for lunch outside the Quai d’Orsay and other ministries, where he met Reynaud and other officials. Allen Packwood, Director of the Churchill Archives, Cambridge, checked Churchill’s engagement cards for May 1940 (CHAR 20/19/1) and found no mention of lunch with Reynaud.
* * *
Also, why Beef Wellington, surely a poor choice for people eager to promote Anglo-French entente? Cita Stelzer, an expert on Churchill’s key dinners, has seen nothing suggesting his taste for this dish, whose origin is somewhat unclear.
But then, this meal with Beef Wellington as the pièce de résistance (as the French do not say; we say, plat de résistance) may well have been derived from a private joke between Churchill and Reynaud. And it may well have taken place on some other occasion, since they repeatedly met in Paris (and London) in their long lives.
Thus: Monsieur Roger Topolinski, as he aged, may have embroidered the story, a common thing. There is no substance in the May 1940 date, still less the discussion of capitulation. But it seems highly unlikely that he should have completely invented this mystery lunch at his famous establishment. Perhaps the truth will someday surface. It remains all very puzzling in the meantime.
Addendum 2: Hélène de Portes
Churchill in his war memoirs omits Countess Hélène de Portes, Reynaud’s mistress since 1930, and her obnoxious interference in Anglo-French resolve. Did he believe it was irrelevant, or wish to pass over an unpleasant subject? It would have embarrassed Reynaud, who remained a friend after the war. Yet Churchill had been more than annoyed by her “hysterical” scene during his final 1940 meeting with Reynaud at Tours on 13 June. Andrew Roberts writes that she repeatedly tried “to enter the final Supreme War Council meeting, until a French naval officer shouted, ‘Get that woman out of here, for the dignity of France!’”9
What happened next is described by Churchill’s bodyguard Walter Thompson, who mistakenly refers to Portes as a duchess:
She was standing, waiting in the courtyard. She had no gun (though we found a knife on her person later). You could look into her eyes and tell two things: that she was a killer and that she was after Churchill. I stood where I could watch her but where she would never notice me. I drew my gun and nonchalantly moved down upon her in the courtyard. All she realized was that I was not Churchill. She ignored me. Churchill did not know he was in danger. He never knows from us—almost never. For a duchess she could surely move. She seemed to go through the air after him. I caught her and silenced her hysterics. She was certain this was the Englishman who was responsible for the present condition of France. I have never been so rough with a woman since the suffragettes in World War I.10
Two weeks later Hélène de Portes met her end, fleeing south from the oncoming Wehrmacht with her lover. Their car, driven by Reynaud, hit a roadside tree and she died instantly. Reynaud lived on, his respect for Churchill undiminished.
Endnotes
1 Winston S. Churchill, The Gathering Storm (London: Cassell, 1948), 454.
2 Ibid., 237
3 Martin Gilbert, ed., The Churchill Documents, vol. 13, The Coming of War 1936-1939 (Hillsdale, Mich.: Hillsdale College Press, 2009), 1208.
4 Ibid., 1209.
5 Martin Gilbert, ed., The Churchill Documents, vol. 14, At the Admiralty, September 1939-May 1940 (Hillsdale College Press, 2011), 909.
6 Paul Reynaud, Mémoires (2): Envers et contre tous (Paris: Flammarion, 1963), 428. Original reads, “Je suis ému par l’effort que Churchill, si pénétré de la puissante originalité de son peuple, a dû faire sur lui-même pour faire une pareille proposition. Il nous propose l’union, la double nationalité, l’unité de gouvernement et de commandement!”
7 Winston S. Churchill, Their Finest Hour (London: Cassell, 1949), 178.
8 Paul Reynaud, “Churchill and France,” in Charles Eade, ed., Churchill by His Contemporaries (London: Hutchinson, 1953), 212, 220.
9 Andrew Roberts, Churchill: Walking with Destiny (London: Allen Lane, 2018), 557-58.
10 Walter Thompson, Assignment Churchill (New York: Farrar, Straus & Young, 1955), 193-94.