Status Updates From Assignment To Catastrophe. ...

"The [French] Ministers would not accept [Premier Paul Reynaud] as a substitute for Churchill, ... They naturally believed that [as of June 13th, 1940] a defenceless Britain could not succeed where their Army, which they had thought so strong, had failed. Only Churchill could have persuaded them that Britain not only had a chance but genuinely believed in ultimate victory." - p. 232.

-- p. 134.

"[General] Weygand [commander of the French armies in the West] had ... informed [Lord] Lloyd [a Conservative M.P.] that he had taken upon himself [on June 10th, 1940] the decision to declare Paris an open town, and had written to [Premier Paul] Reynaud to tell him so. The politicians could not make up their minds, and he [Weygand] was not going to allow Paris to be destroyed for no purpose." -- p. 134.

"The sketchy news of the fighting that came in driblets in the late evening [of June 6th, 1940] did not sound very good. The enemy had reached the Bresle River south of Tréport, and appeared to have gained a footing on the heights overlooking the Aisne. Again the Chemin des Dames of horrible memory [from the First World War] was mentioned." - p. 100.

"A French General Staff note of June 6th, 1940, gave the French losses in Belgium and at Dunkirk as 370,000. It was claimed that 150,000 escaped, of whom two-thirds were evacuated from Dunkirk and the remaining third fell back behind the Somme." - p. 37.