OUR VICHY GAMBLE

Our policy towards Vichy France documented by an historian in considerable detail (too considerable for the average reader), his material based on official papers of the U.S. government made available for the first time. Here was the policy more criticized than any other -- largely on ideological, liberal grounds. He examines the development of our relations with France, following its defeat, through the Reynaud short-lived resistance, Laval's revolution and the Laval-Hitler meetings, the dellist movement and our inability to recognize de Gaulle as long as we did not want an overt break with Vichy, the Giraud negotiations, the North African landings and Giraud failure -- Darlan's succession and assassination. All this illustrates a policy of political and military expediency, an opportunism which was sensible only inasmuch as it succeeded. For study and reference shelves.