Brave Genius Read online

It would be a mistake to predict what will happen in the New Year. That is all in the future. One thing is clear: It will be a hard year, and we must be ready for it … As we raise our hearts in grateful thanks to the Almighty, we ask his gracious protection in the coming year.

  THE SPEECH WAS reported and quoted prominently in the Paris papers. Le Matin described it as a “harangue.”

  Goebbels’s speech did not tip the Führer’s hand. Nowhere in the bombast was any specific hint about the plans for 1940. Would the Germans attack and, if so, when and where? Allied intelligence and the High Command had to weigh scenarios and plan accordingly.

  The one possibility that was thought to be least likely was a direct invasion from across the border with Germany, along which France had constructed the Maginot Line. The cornerstone of France’s strategy for the defense of the homeland, the Line was an extensive system of fortifications built along the entire frontier with Germany. The Line was born out of the costly experiences of the French military in World War I, when the French leadership was caught by surprise by the German invasion in August 1914.

  French forces suffered very heavy losses in the opening months of the war. In just a few weeks, the German Army had reached the Marne River, only forty-three miles from Paris. There was great fear that the capital would be captured. However, the deep thrust of the German armies had left gaps and weaknesses in their lines that French commanders identified and exploited. French and British forces counterattacked, pushing the Germans away from Paris and into defensive positions that began four years of stalemate on the western front. More than 2 million soldiers fought in the battle of the Marne, with the two sides suffering more than 500,000 casualties. The French alone lost more than 80,000 men. One key aim of the Maginot Line was to hold up any surprise invasion long enough for sufficient forces to be mobilized that could thwart the assault before it advanced deep into France.

  A second inspiration for the construction of the Maginot Line was the epic battle of Verdun in the late winter and early spring of 1916. The city was surrounded by eighteen large underground forts that had been constructed around the turn of the century; these would save its French defenders. Flanked on three sides by German forces determined to take the stronghold, the French forces led by Gen. Philippe Pétain endured massive artillery bombardments, including poison gas shells, while resisting the German offensive. Although they took several forts, the Germans were not able to sustain the attack and take the city. For his leadership, Pétain was hailed as a hero—the “Savior of Verdun”—and was named marshal of France after the war.

  Pétain’s experience in defending the Verdun forts and his great stature made him a key proponent for the building of the Maginot fortifications. Pétain believed very strongly that the Line would provide multiple strategic advantages. One of the foremost concerns of the French leadership was the conservation of manpower. During World War I, France lost 27 percent of all able-bodied men between the ages of eighteen and twenty-seven. This greatly reduced the birthrate in France, which was already considerably smaller in population (39 million) than Germany (59 million) at the end the war. Fortifications could be manned with fewer troops than open field formations. Furthermore, the Line would not only deter enemy forces from directly attacking France but force them to take routes through Belgium or Switzerland and therefore perhaps divert major battles from French soil.

  The Line stretched across the length of the German frontier, from Switzerland to Luxembourg, at a depth of ten to fifteen miles from the border to the French interior. It was comprised of a series of large fortresses and smaller forts that were spaced about ten miles apart in order to allow for mutual artillery support during battle. Each fort contained underground structures for housing, feeding, and arming the crews, as well as extensive networks of connecting tunnels, telephone lines, and supplies intended to last at least three months. The forts were connected by rows of antitank obstacles and dense barbed wire all along the front. The formidable challenges presented to attackers instilled great confidence in both the leadership and the public that the country was well protected.

  As early as 1935, however, some dissenting voices were making themselves heard. Col. Charles de Gaulle, who served under Pétain in World War I and was taken prisoner in the battle for Verdun, was concerned that the focus on defense compromised the opportunity to take the offensive. De Gaulle thought France needed armored forces capable of rapid offensive movement. That notion was rebuffed by the then minister of war, who stated, “How can anyone believe that we are still thinking of the offensive when we have spent so many billions to establish a fortified frontier!”

  De Gaulle continued to press the case for armored motorized divisions, to the point where his relentless advocacy earned him the nickname “Le Colonel Motor.”

  The protection of France’s northern frontier with Belgium, however, posed a different set of considerations. For centuries, the favored invasion route into France was through the Belgian plain, as it had been in 1914. Pétain, French minister of war in 1934, insisted that to meet the threat of an invasion, French forces “must go into Belgium!”

  Entering Belgium raised some sensitive issues. Because Belgium was a sovereign country, France was reluctant to enter preemptively without a request or permission from the king. The difficulty that waiting for permission posed was that Belgium might either decline to ask for assistance or refuse entry to Allied troops, as it did in the first days of World War I. Any delay on Belgium’s part could handicap the Allies’ war plans and increase France’s vulnerability.

  Some parts of Belgium were well protected. The Maginot Line connected to the Belgian fortification system, the strong point of which was Fort Eben-Emael, a fortress between Liège and Maastricht (the Netherlands) that protected key bridgeheads into Belgium from Germany. There were also some natural obstacles protecting Belgium’s frontier with Germany, including the Meuse River and the hilly Ardennes Forest. At the same Senate commission hearing in 1934, Pétain was asked about the possibility of an invasion through the Ardennes, which lay immediately northeast of Sedan, France. Pétain replied, “It is impenetrable, if one makes some special dispositions there. We consider it a zone of destruction … the enemy could not commit himself there. If he does, we will pinch him off as he comes out of the forest. This sector is not dangerous.”

  In accord with Pétain’s analysis, only very sparse, light fortifications were constructed on the Franco-Belgian frontier. French war planning focused on countering an attempted invasion that was expected to cut through the Belgian plain. The centerpiece of the plan was for Belgian forces to delay the German advance while French and British troops rushed into Belgium to form a defensive line as far east as possible.

  IN JANUARY 1940, Allied intelligence and war planners were analyzing and debating invasion scenarios when the German plans fell into their laps.

  On the foggy morning of January 10, German major Erich Hoenmanns was flying another major, Helmuth Reinberger, in his Messerschmitt to Cologne when he lost power. Thinking he was over Germany, he attempted an emergency landing. He crash-landed in Mechelen-sur-Meuse, Belgium, a few miles from the border. Reinberger happened to be carrying detailed plans for an attack on Belgium and the Netherlands. Once the two majors realized where they were, Reinberger tried to burn the documents. But Belgian border guards arrived on the scene and salvaged some of the papers from the fire.

  Belgian intelligence officers were first concerned that the papers were a plant intended to throw them off the actual German plans. But after interrogating the prisoners and examining the documents, they concluded that the papers were probably authentic. The bits they could read indicated the Germans were planning to invade the Netherlands and Belgium, and to do so very soon (though not written on the documents, the planned date was January 17). The plan also included a diversionary attack on the Maginot Line.

  The German command learned of the plane crash and was deeply worried that its plans had been compromised. H
itler was furious. Rather than delay, he ordered that the attack go ahead as planned, before the Belgians, the Dutch, and their Allies could respond.

  The Belgians passed on to the French, British, and Dutch the information gleaned from the charred documents, as well as additional intelligence warnings pointing to an imminent invasion. Dutch and Belgian troops were put on alert, and France began to mass formations on the Belgian border in preparation for entering.

  The Germans, however, got wind of the alerts and realized that they had lost the element of surprise. Then the weather deteriorated. Chief of Staff Gen. Alfred Jodl explained to Hitler that for the attack to succeed, they would need at least eight days of good weather; he suggested that the attack be postponed until spring. Hitler agreed, telling Jodl that “the whole operation would have to be built on a new basis in order to secure secrecy and surprise.”

  The planned route of the German invasion was, in fact, exactly the one expected by the French command. They were satisfied that they understood the German command’s reasoning and methods.

  COLONEL DE GAULLE, however, was deeply concerned that the Allied plan to form a defensive line did not take into account the new capabilities of mechanized warfare.

  On January 26, just days after the crisis of the Belgian invasion had passed, he made one more attempt to alert the High Command of the need for greater mobility. He sent a memo to eighty high officials, an unusually brazen gesture for a lower-ranking officer.

  With the specter of Poland’s destruction still fresh, he warned:

  The enemy would take the offensive with a very powerful mechanized force both on land and in the air; … because of this our front could at any moment be broken; … if we ourselves had no equivalent force with which to reply there would be a grave risk of our being destroyed … The French people must not at any price fall into the illusion that the present military immobility conforms to the character of this war. On the contrary, the motor gives to the means of modern destruction a power, a speed, a range of action, such that the present conflict will be marked by movements … [the] speed of which will infinitely surpass the most amazing events of the past. Let us not fool ourselves! The conflict which has began [sic] can well be the most widespread, the most complex, the most violent, of all those which have ravaged the earth.

  The generals had long before heard enough from de Gaulle, and ignored his pleas.

  With hard evidence that Hitler had aimed to invade Belgium and the Netherlands—two neutral countries—and would in all likelihood try again, Premier Daladier took to the airwaves on January 29 to deliver a scathing assessment of the Nazis’ intentions. In a radio address to the French people entitled “The Nazis’ Aim Is Slavery,” he left no doubt about the nature of Hitler’s regime:

  At the end of five months of war one thing has become more and more clear. It is that Germany seeks to establish a domination over the world completely different from any known in history.

  The domination at which the Nazis aim is not limited to the displacement of the balance of power and the imposition of supremacy of one nation. It seeks the systematic and total destruction of those conquered by Hitler, and it does not treaty with the nations which he has subdued. He destroys them. He takes from them their whole political and economic existence and seeks even to deprive them of their history and their culture. He wishes to consider them only as vital space and a vacant territory over which he has every right.

  The human beings who constitute these nations are for him only cattle. He orders their massacre or their migration. He compels them to make room for their conquerors. He does not even take the trouble to impose any war tribute on them. He just takes all their wealth, and, to prevent any revolt, he wipes out their leaders and scientifically seeks the physical and moral degradation of those whose independence he has taken away.

  Under this domination, in thousands of towns and villages in Europe there are millions of human beings now living in misery which, some months ago, they could never have imagined. Austria, Bohemia, Slovakia and Poland are only lands of despair. Their whole peoples have been deprived of the means of moral and material happiness. Subdued by treachery or brutal violence, they have no other recourse than to work for their executioners who grant them scarcely enough to assure the most miserable existence.

  There is being created a world of masters and slaves in the image of Germany herself …

  For us there is more to do than merely win the war. We shall win it, but we must also win a victory far greater than that of arms. In this world of masters and slaves, which those madmen who rule at Berlin are seeking to forge, we must also save liberty and human dignity.

  The conflict between France and Germany had remained, however, largely a war of words. The frontier with Germany was quiet throughout a bitterly cold January, the third coldest on record. Many parts of Northern Europe were experiencing the coldest winter in a century. In mid-January, temperatures plunged to below zero in Paris, Amsterdam, and Berlin. Another severe cold wave struck in mid-February.

  By all conventional wisdom, the extreme cold and snow were deterrents to any potential overland assault. However, the six months of tension and inactivity since the declaration of war were wearing on the morale of the French troops. It was increasingly difficult for commanders to maintain discipline and a heightened sense of alert. Separated from their families, businesses, and farms, soldiers were granted more leave than regulations and circumstances normally would have allowed.

  WHEN THEY DID take leave for Paris, soldiers found a city in which citizens were trying to go about their normal routines, and planning for their futures, almost as if there were no war.

  The universities had remained open. Twenty-nine-year-old zoology doctoral student Jacques Monod had not been called up during the general mobilization. He had been excused from active military duty several years earlier due to a slight limp in his left leg caused by a bout with polio. He continued to teach his classes at the University of Paris (La Sorbonne) while pursuing his thesis research. After receiving his licencié ès sciences (equivalent to a bachelor’s degree) in 1931, Monod had spent several years drifting among laboratories in search of a scientific problem on which to focus. He hoped to finally complete his PhD in 1940.

  Handsome, an experienced sailor, and a talented musician, Monod lacked focus, not confidence. His father, Lucien, was a painter, engraver, art historian, freethinker, and scholar. His mother, Charlotte Todd MacGregor, was an American born in Milwaukee and descended from Scottish immigrants. The Monods instilled a love for literature and art in Jacques and his brother, Philippe. Lucien also greatly admired Darwin and passed that interest on to Jacques. The Monods were also passionate about music and encouraged Jacques’s development as a cellist and aspiring conductor. The question in the Monod household was not whether Jacques would achieve great things, but whether he would be the next Beethoven or the next Pasteur.

  He was a long way from either destiny; he was prone to many distractions. Having been raised in Cannes, he loved the sea. In the summer of 1934, he took the opportunity to sail on a natural-history expedition to Greenland on the Pourquoi-Pas? In 1936, he was again offered a berth on the Pourquoi-Pas? He elected instead to accompany one of his mentors, Boris Ephrussi, for a year at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, ostensibly to learn genetics in the laboratory of Thomas Hunt Morgan, the 1933 Nobel laureate for his pioneering discoveries about the nature of the gene. Morgan’s lab was then the world’s hub of genetics.

  Monod took advantage of opportunities in California, but not so much those of the scientific kind. He formed and conducted a Bach society that gave frequent concerts. He enjoyed an active social life, hobnobbing with the Southern California elite, but he accomplished nothing scientifically. Ephrussi was very disappointed. He thought Monod was gifted but terribly undisciplined. At the end of his stay, Monod was even offered a position as conductor of a local orchestra. Even though he did not make the most of his scientific conne
ctions while in California, it was a very fortunate choice to have gone there. The Pourquoi-Pas? sank in a hurricane off Iceland, and all but one crew member was lost.

  Monod decided not to stay in California. After returning to France, he finally settled upon a research project studying the growth of bacteria. But Monod was not close to Pasteur, either scientifically or temperamentally; he was not even at the eponymous institute. Monod was at the Sorbonne, which, despite having a storied history as an institution, was far behind the times in biology and not at all the peer of the esteemed Pasteur Institute. No one at the Sorbonne, not even his thesis supervisor, had the least interest in Monod’s research. He was completely on his own. He had to do all of the work himself, from preparing the sterile media and glassware to performing his experiments.

  And yet Monod did not abandon music. In 1938, he formed and directed a Bach choir, La Cantate, which performed in public to considerable critical acclaim. He did settle down, however, in his domestic life. That same year, he courted and married Odette Bruhl, an orientalist at the Musée Guimet near the Trocadero Gardens. An expert in Tibetan painting and an experienced field archeologist, Odette had a knowledge of art and music and a passion for the outdoors that were perfect complements to Jacques’s passions.

  The newlyweds became parents the following year when twin sons Olivier and Philippe were born on August 5, 1939, just four weeks before war was declared—a declaration that Monod did not think would happen. Only the day before Hitler’s invasion of Poland, Monod had written to his father, “There will be no war. Hitler is much smarter than Wilhelm II and he knows what it would cost him. His bluff having failed, put together with the complicity of the father of the people [aka Stalin; the German-Soviet nonaggression pact had been signed a week earlier], he will try to get way without too much damage. I only regret that the English are too polite with him. They should not have bothered writing him long letters. They should have told him to piss off, without any further explanation.”