This is the expanded and corrected English version of the unhappy story of the fall of France first related by Pertinax (André Géraud) in his French text entitled "Les Fossoyeurs." The author has centered his narrative around the four key figures of Gamelin, Daladier, Reynaud and Pétain. There is also an epilogue on Giraud and de Gaulle in North Africa. Though he does not pretend that this is definitive history it is inevitably going to be one of the prime sources on which future historians will rely, for the author's wide knowledge of the events and persons he describes is unsurpassed.