“Once the immediate shock had passed, the search for explanations began. Why had Napoleon’s heirs fallen so quickly? Many Frenchmen chose to blame insidious Fifth Columnists: Nazi and Communist agents who had supposedly undermined the homeland from within. (Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union were allies at this point.) Visiting Paris in May 1940, Clare Boothe heard constant talk of trahi (betrayed): “At first it was no more than a whisper…. And then the whisper became a great wail that swept through France, a great wail of the damned: ‘Trahi…trahi….’” Although a number of people were lynched as suspected enemy agents, in reality there were few German spies operating behind enemy lines, and their meager efforts can hardly explain the magnitude of the disaster that befell France….”
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