Third Republic and the main pillars of the defeatist,
collaborationist, totalitarian regime of Vichy, which
Warner cites diplomatic memoranda that take account of the elements of Laval's foreign policy that were to control his actions throughout the 1930s and through World War II: "the anti communism, the suspicion of Britain, and the desire for European unity based upon a Franco German entente. It was the tragedy of his career that this vision was to find its apotheosis in Adolf Hitler's phoney European 'new order'" (9:24). Elsewhere, Warner notes, "There can be few things more antipathetic to the individualistic French peasant who has made good, which is essentially what Laval was, than Communism. In his view, anything was preferable to it" (9:420).
The anti communism did not prevent Laval, by this time a right wing foreign minister, from negotiating a the Franco Russian pact in 1935, although his reasons for doing so may have had less to do with authentic friendship toward Russia than with his ability to affec
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