From la France profonde, troubling thoughts about Marshal Main

FRANK JOHNSON

Nr Pezenas, L Herault

The British who reach here — the Midi — from the pas de Calais through la France profonde at this time of the year think of the histoty through which they drive as cathedrals, abbeys and châteaux. There are plenty of those.

The great events of 20th-century France are associated with the north; say, the battlefields of the Somme. But, if they pass near it, or see it signposted, they should consider stopping for half an hour at Montoire-sur-le-Loir in the Vendome, where Ronsard was born, deep in the countryside of the châteaux de la Loire — not, though, for any château.

`Montoire,' says one of those white signs on one of those silent, narrow, deserted country roads that crisscross all central France — a sign spotted perhaps on the way to or from a restaurant recommended off the autoroute. At first nothing is thought of it. But wasn't Montoire a place visited by, of all people, Hitler? Isn't that where he had his only meeting with Marshal Petain just after he conquered France? No. Can't be the same one. There must be many Montoires. The one where those two met must be on the Franco-German border, hundreds of miles away. Why should Hitler have come here? Hitler in la France profonde? No.

But, of course, it is indeed the right Montoire. They met in its modest railway station waiting-room. 'Of Montoire, one will quickly forget the sadly famous railway station,' says the green Michelin guide to the region, 'in order to remember instead its beautiful old houses, its ravishing bridge, and its adorable chapel painted with frescoes in beautiful colours.' One does not have to be a sensationalist to think that Hitler's having once been in town is even more interesting to the passing Anglo-Saxon, or indeed German.

Not that they much advertise it locally. There is no mention of it in the window of the tourist office in the square. When we parked there for lunch, we had not consulted the entry in the green guide, and were still under the assumption that this could not be the right Montoire. But it seemed reasonable to call in on the tourist office and ask.

The place was deserted of customers, and dusty. The world did not seem to beat a path to Montoire-sur-le-Loir. For that reason, it seemed a blessed spot. An elderly woman looked up from the counter. The inquiry called for some diplomacy in case, as we had assumed, it was the wrong Montoire. Ercusez-moi, probablement non, Madame, mais est-ce-que votre vile — er, mire vile chatmante — le lieu du rencontre entre. . . . '

'Hitler et Petain,' she replied. We had the right Montoire, she reassured us. Was any written information available about it? Certainly, she said, cheerily. Now, where had she put it? She opened an old cupboard. She knew there was something on it somewhere. Eventually, she produced a pamphlet published in 1997 by the tourist office 'of the land of the poet Ronsard'. It was entitled 'The "handshake" of Montoire'. The one photograph issued after the meeting showed the two principals shaking hands.

The woman behind the counter seemed the right age. 'You are too young, but do you at all remember the meeting?' Of course. That morning, in October 1940, she had set out for school as usual. But the town was full of German soldiers and gendarmes. Someone said that there was to be no school that day. Everyone was to stay at home — adults too. The next morning they read in the newspaper and heard on the radio that Hitler had been in their town.

The pamphlet was strikingly good, offering all the basic information. The French motive for the meeting, it explained, was to try to improve the harsh conditions of the armistice signed at the fall of France five months earlier. The German motive was that Hitler, having drawn a lesson from his failure to invade Britain, had decided to break British lines of communication with the Mediterranean. For that, he needed the benevolent neutrality of, or an alliance with, Franco's Spain and a collaboration with France which still held North Africa.

It also had a paragraph headed Tourquoi Montoire?' The answer was that Hitler was travelling by train from Berlin to Hendaye near the Pyrenees for his one meeting with Franco. For the related meeting with Main, he needed a small town on the way which was peaceful, far from a city and had a railway station with a tunnel in which he could take refuge if there was a British air raid, which the leaflet noted was `assez improbable a cette époque de l'occupation.'

And so Montoire became one of those blameless places whose names, by history's chances and accidents, become symbols — often for the bad — like Vichy itself. On returning from Montoire, Petain delivered a radio address at Vichy containing words which, for much of the world, were to undo his reputation once Germany had lost: 'It is in honour and to maintain French unity, a unity of ten centuries, in the setting of constructive activity in the new European order, that I enter today down the road of collaboration.'

That was to destroy the reputation of Philippe Petain as assuredly as, a generation before, his victory at Verdun had created it. If only for the sake of a quiet life, most people, including perhaps most French, now assume that that is true. Few care to be blackguarded by today's liberal classes as apologists for right-wing authoritarians who collaborate with even more right-wing authoritarians. Petain and Montoire are consigned to history's dark side. Much for that reason, Main, and Montoire, have few defenders now.

But for at least a decade after the war, both did. In a second-hand bookshop, near here in the Midi, was to be found Montoire: Verdun Diplomatique, published in 1948 while Petain was still in prison for treason, by Louis-Dominique Gerard, a civil servant whom Petain had asked to be his chef de cabinet. Here was a different story: the marshal had defeated the Germans diplomatically at Montoire just as he had militarily at Verdun. For example, he had refused to enter the war in North Africa against the British. Thus Britain kept Gibraltar, and Germany lost the Mediterranean.

Today, such reasoning is scoffed at rather than refuted — refuting it being a harder task. Whatever the truth, vast events, then, from a little town on the way down from the Channel ports.