{"id":2949,"date":"2012-12-09T16:50:21","date_gmt":"2012-12-09T22:50:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/?p=2949"},"modified":"2012-12-10T22:15:02","modified_gmt":"2012-12-11T04:15:02","slug":"this-week-in-the-war-9-15-december-1940-laval-dismissed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/?p=2949","title":{"rendered":"This week in the War, 9&#8211;15 December 1940: Laval dismissed"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/?attachment_id=3076\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-3076\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-3076\" title=\"Pierre Laval (left) and Philippe Petain (right) [Public domain, wikimedia]\" src=\"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/Wlaval1-300x200.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/Wlaval1-300x200.png 300w, https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/Wlaval1-150x100.png 150w, https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/Wlaval1.png 637w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a>On 13 December 1940, P\u00e9tain fired <em>vice-pr\u00e9sident du Conseil<\/em>\u00a0Pierre Laval from the number 2 spot in Vichy France. (They are pictured to the left).<\/p>\n<p>It served the scruffy 80-a-day chain-smoking anti-Semitic Laval right for blowing smoke in the\u00a0Mar\u00e9chal&#8217;s face once too often.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/?attachment_id=3077\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-3077\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-3077\" title=\"Pierre Laval (left) with Nazi SS and Police Chief for France, Carl Oberg [Public domain, wikimedia]\" src=\"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/Wlaval2-300x260.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"260\" srcset=\"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/Wlaval2-300x260.png 300w, https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/Wlaval2-150x130.png 150w, https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/Wlaval2.png 615w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a>No one in Vichy&#8217;s upper echelons (e.g. Maxime Weygand or the Mar\u00e9chal himself) liked Laval too much. Perhaps he was too collaborationist. (He is shown in the picture to the right with Nazi Police Chief, Carl Oberg).<\/p>\n<p>Closer to the truth: Laval was a collaborationist who had failed to deliver. French prisoners-of-war still languished in German POW camps. A peace treaty had not been signed, only an armistice.<\/p>\n<p>Hitler, at the <a title=\"Montoire\" href=\"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/?p=2655\">Montoire<\/a> meeting, preferred\u00a0P\u00e9tain&#8212;relating to the old soldier ahead of the sleazy politician. (Lucky for Laval he didn&#8217;t blow smoke on the Fuehrer). Even so, Hitler was not pleased at Laval&#8217;s fall from grace. The German ambassador and a contingent of SS were dispatched to free Laval, who was under arrest in Vichy, and to bring him back to Paris.<\/p>\n<p>In April 1942, Hitler insisted that Laval get his old job back.<\/p>\n<p>He was fired permanently after the war, being tried and shot for treason, 15 October 1945. Even de Gaulle admitted that Laval died bravely.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On 13 December 1940, P\u00e9tain fired vice-pr\u00e9sident du Conseil\u00a0Pierre Laval from the number 2 spot in Vichy France. (They are pictured to the left). It served the scruffy 80-a-day chain-smoking anti-Semitic Laval right for blowing smoke in the\u00a0Mar\u00e9chal&#8217;s face once &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/?p=2949\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[326,65,109,113],"class_list":["post-2949","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-world-war-ii","tag-laval","tag-maxime-weygand","tag-petain","tag-vichy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2949","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2949"}],"version-history":[{"count":26,"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2949\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3259,"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2949\/revisions\/3259"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}