Pierre Laval had promised Adolf Hitler 350,000 skilled workers. Last week only some 50,000 French workers had arrived in Germany. Of these, a mere 15,000 were skilled. Germany needed men. Pierre Laval needed timetime to anesthetize France for Hitler's surgery.
He tried a super-duper advertising campaign to sell 85-year-old Marshal Henri Philippe Pétain to every Frenchman. Two hundred experts set up shop in the government hotel in Vichy. Men of art and literature went to work. The Marshal's profile, slogans and symbols appeared on stamps, china, ash trays, badges, hatbands, blotters, coins, bijoux and shaving mugs. A francisc, the Marshal's Frankish emblem,...
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