(2 of 6)
These were vague voices of propagandist explanation. No public announcement was made as to exactly what Adolf Hitler and Admiral Darlan had agreed on. Presumably there were many details left to work out. But the consensus of rumor held that:
> The line of demarcation between Occupied and Unoccupied France would be opened for the passage of goods, money, mail.
> The French daily payment of 400,000,000 francs for maintaining Germany's occupying Army would be cut as much as 25%.
> Some 250,000 of the 1,800,000 French war prisoners in Germany would be sent home in time for late spring sowing, and more later.
> The line of demarcation would be changed, giving Paris and four-fifths of France to Marshal Pétain, leaving Germany the coal and iron mines and industrial areas of the north, and the Channel invasion area.
> The Nazis would be allowed to pass through France and into Spain for an attack on Gibraltar.
> The Nazis would get control of the rest of the French Navy.
> The Nazis would get the full collaboration of France in the production of war materials, possibly full economic collaboration of all sorts. While in Germany last fortnight Admiral Darlan had talked lengthily with Germany's potent economic adviser, Dr. Hjalmar Schacht.
So much for rumors. These were facts:
> The Nazis were already in French-mandated Syria en route to Iraq and the Suez Canal. Last week Vichy lamely excused the alighting of Nazi planes on Syrian airports as "forced landings." >
> The Nazis were already heavily fortifying French Morocco, where General Maxime Weygand, Commander of the French North African Army, has winked at Nazi activities. The Moroccan port of Casablanca, on the Atlantic, was already in use as a Nazi submarine base.
It seemed beyond question last week that a considerable force of Nazis was already in Dakar on the West African coast, closest port in either Europe or Africa to the Americas.
To many, the Vichy-Nazi collaboration portended events far outreaching Europe and Africa—of the gravest world import.
Wrote Pundit Walter Lippmann:
"For the Americas the decisive phase of the war has begun with Marshal Pétain's announcement that France and the French colonial Empire are to be put, regardless of what the French people may think, at the disposal of Hitler. The French Empire . . . occupies positions of the greatest importance in the Caribbean . . . Atlantic . . Mediterranean . . . Red Sea . . . Indian Ocean . . Pacific. . . .
"The Vichy surrender is described by the German Foreign Ministry in Berlin as a blow to the United States. It is a blow to the United States. ... It is in fact the most serious threat to the independence and security of the Western Hemisphere that has occurred since Napoleon III invaded Mexico on the eve of the Civil War. For by the action of the Vichy Government Hitler ... is now facing the continents of the Western Hemisphere.' Every French officer who adheres to Vichy, every French diplomat who adheres to Vichy, and every gun, ship and airplane they can command, is now under the orders of the Axis."