Paris 1935: Destiny's Crossroads Read online



  Paris 1935

  Destiny’s Crossroads

  Paul A. Myers

  Published by Paul A. Myers Books

  Copyright © Paul A. Myers 2011

  ISBN-13: 978-0-9825960-8-1

  Revised edition 2014

  All rights reserved.

  Please respect the copyright. This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment. Do not reproduce or otherwise distribute the book.

  Print editions available at US and international online retailers.

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  Additional information at https://www.myersbooks.com/

  AUTHOR

  Paul A. Myers lives in Corona Del Mar, California with his wife Minche. He is the author of the satirical novel Greek Bonds and French Ladies, the historical novels A Farewell in Paris, Paris 1934: Victory in Retreat and Vienna 1934: Betrayal at the Ballplatz, and the maritime history North to California: The Spanish Voyages of Discovery 1533-1603. More information at myersbooks.

  Paul A. Myers at Tuileries Gardens, Paris

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  Table of Contents

  Book One – The Hoare-Laval Pact

  Quai d’Orsay

  Hotel Matignon

  Berlin

  Palais de la Mutualité

  Fourth of July

  Place Malsherbes

  Bastille Day

  Budget Decrees

  Café de la Paix

  Quai d’Orsay

  The Colonel

  Finance Decrees

  The Booksellers

  The Writers

  Quai d’Orsay

  Geneva

  The Opéra

  Finance Commission

  Rue Monsieur

  Reichs Chancellery

  La Duchesse

  Hoare-Laval – Maneuverings

  Hoare-Laval – Saturday

  Hoare-Laval – Sunday

  Hoare-Laval – The Storm

  Facing the Commons

  Facing the Chamber

  Dinner Party

  American Embassy

  Book Two – The Rhineland Crisis

  New Government – Old Troubles

  Plotting Begins

  Soldiers March

  Diplomats Gather

  Ambassador’s Reception

  Hotel Matignon

  On Reflection – Some Words

  Some Sources

  Epigraph

  Lost Horizons

  The Peace Treaties should have enabled Great Britain and France, the two countries pursuing a joint and active policy for the defense of these Treaties under the auspices of the League of Nations, to be the masters of war and peace in Europe for half a century at least.

  Geneviève Tabouis

  Blackmail or War

  February 1938

  The pages which follow are concerned with relations between allies, and either joint or single negotiations with the dictatorships whose appetites then threatened peace and later led to war. The negotiations were for the most part a record of failure, but their lessons are important.

  Anthony Eden, Earl of Avon

  Facing the Dictators: The Memoirs of Anthony Eden

  1962

  Principal Cast of Characters

  Fictional

  Dexter Jones – an American diplomat

  Marcelle Lambert – a senior civil servant working in the premier’s office

  Suzanne Bardoux – a senior civil servant working in the foreign ministry

  Étienne – a lecturer at Sciences Po, a prestigious university on the Left Bank

  Secrétaire Général – the head of the permanent staff in the premier’s office

  Monsieur le Minister – a fictionalization of the finance minister

  Historic characters

  Geneviève Tabouis – diplomatic correspondent for a Parisian daily newspaper

  André Géraud, pen name Pertinax – political correspondent for a Parisian daily newspaper

  Pierre Laval – premier and foreign minister of France (and Time magazine’s Man of the Year for 1931)

  Alexis Léger – secretary-general of the foreign ministry and head of the permanent staff (later awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1960 as the poet Saint-John Perse)

  Anthony Eden – British minister to the League of Nations; later foreign secretary

  Stanley Baldwin – British prime minister

  Sir Samuel Hoare – British foreign secretary

  Sir Robert Vansittart – British permanent undersecretary of the Foreign Office

  Pierre-Étienne Flandin – French foreign minister from February 1936

  Albert-Pierre Sarraut – French premier from February 1936

  Cameo – André and Clara Malraux, Sylvia Beach, Adrienne Monnier, André and Lucy Chamson, Colonel Charles de Gaulle

  Book One

  The Hoare-Laval Pact