France The Dark Years 1940–1944
France
The Dark Years 1940–1944
Julian Jackson
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© Julian Jackson 2001
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First published 2001
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ISBN 0-19-820706-9 (hbk)
ISBN 0-19-925457-5 (pbk)
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To the Memory of My Mother
Preface
This book is inspired by the conviction that the time is ripe for a new history of France during the German Occupation. The last general history of this subject, by the French historian Jean-Pierre Azéma, appeared in 1973, but in the twenty-seven years since then a huge amount of research has taken place. My ambition in writing this study is to offer a new interpretative synthesis which takes account of the massive quantity of new work. What this means, therefore, is that this book could not have been written without the pioneering archival work of innumerable other historians. I hope that I have made my debts to them clear in the footnotes, but I would like to take the opportunity in this preface to mention by name some of those historians whose work has been of particular inspiration and stimulation to me: Philippe Burrin, Luc Capdevila, Daniel Cordier, Jean-Louis Crémieux-Brilhac, Laurent Douzou, Jean-Marie Guillon, Stanley Hoffmann, Roderick Kedward, Pierre Laborie, François Marcot, Robert Paxton, Denis Peschanski, Henry Rousso, Gisèle Sapiro, John Sweets, Olivier Wieviorka.
It can be seen that the majority of names on this list are French, and this fact perhaps needs underlining given the seemingly ineradicable belief outside France (and indeed sometimes in France as well) that the French are still unwilling to ‘face up’ to their past. While writing this book I lost count of the number of people who wanted to tell me about France’s voluntary amnesia about the Occupation and her predeliction for believing in heroic legends about the Resistance. The problem with such comments is not only the unwarranted condescension which underlies them—the assumption is that ‘we’, the British, would have faced up to things much better in similar circumstances—but also the fact that they are so patently false. It is true that the first important studies of the Vichy regime came from outside France, but French historians caught up long ago. Far from being years which French historians avoid, the Vichy period is probably at present the most intensively researched in French history even if it is difficult to say how far, and in what ways, the findings of the scholarly community have penetrated to the wider public. If anything, however, popular views of the Occupation in France have become excessively fixated on collaboration and anti-semitism while the most recent scholarly research has tended to focus again on the Resistance after some years of neglect. One of my aims in this book is also to bring the Resistance back into the picture while not in any way underplaying the bleaker aspects of the period.
I am most grateful to Tony Morris, formerly of OUP, for having encouraged me to write this book and supporting it so enthusiastically. When I told him that I wanted to write a short book about Vichy, he told me that I should think about writing something more ambitious. I am glad that I followed his advice, but if readers find this book too long, he must share part of the blame. Thanks also to Ruth Parr, Tony Morris’s successor at OUP, for continuing to back a project that was not originally her own, to Michael Watson for seeing it through the production process, and to Rowena Anketell for her extraordinarily efficient copy-editing. Much of the research for this book was carried out in the library of the Institut d’histoire du temps présent, and I am especially grateful for the helpfulness of the librarian Jean Astruc. I would also like to thank the staff of the BDIC library at Nanterre. One beneficial side-effect of the last stages of my research was that I even came to appreciate, if not to love, the new Bibliothèque de France: perhaps affection will come with time. I would also like to record my thanks to David Eastwood, my head of Department, who has given my work on this book such support, and has managed in our Department to preserve such a civilized and good humoured working atmosphere even in this unpleasant period of Blairo-Thatcherite permanent revolution in British universities.
I would also like to thank Frank Cherbé for his encouragement and for providing me with huge amounts of material about the reporting of the Papon trial in France. Eleanor Breuning was kind enough to help me proof read the entire text: her heroic efforts saved me from numerous solecisms. Three people kindly read the manuscript at earlier stages. Patrick Higgins read quite a lot of an early draft. His careful reading showed me how much more work there was to be done. But my debt to Patrick is much deeper than that. I have learnt so much from him in our twenty years of friendship, and one day I hope I will know half as much history as he does. Roderick Kedward read the whole of the finished manuscript and made numerous helpful suggestions. His encouragement has been very important to me, and the stimulus which his work and inspiration has given to the study of Vichy and the French Resistance in Britain is quite incalculable. Kevin Passmore read the manuscript at too late a stage to be able to make many detailed comments, but I tried to take on board those suggestions which he did permit himself to make. More generally, however, he has taught me a huge amount about inter-war French politics both in his writing and in our many conversations. Having him as a colleague in a university close to my own has been very important.
Finally, and most importantly, I would like to thank Douglas who has lived in closer proximity to this book than he would probably have liked at times. Unfortunately there are few activities that render one more self-centred and selfish than writing a book. I shall try harder to overcome this next time, but in the meantime I can only record my heartfelt gratitude for everything that 1 owe him.
Swansea, July 2000
Contents
List of Maps and Figure
Abbreviations
Introduction Historians and the Occupation
Ambiguities
Péguy’s Frances
1970s: Enter the Vichy Regime
1980s: From Regime to Society
Le Grand Absent: The Jews
1990s: The Resistance Returns
Part I Anticipations
Introduction
1 The Shadow of War: Cultural Anxieties and Modern Nightmares
Verdun: The Soldier-Peasant
Dénatalité: The Disappearance of France
Old Mother or New Woman?
America: Scenes of the Future
Le Rappel à l’ordre: The New Classicism
Modernist Nightmares: Morand and Céline
2 Rethinking the Republic: 1890–1934
Before 1914: ‘La Fin des notables?’
The 1920s: The Maurrassian Moment
1919–1928: Missed Opportunities?
The ‘Jeunes Équipes’: 1928–1930
The Tardieu Moment: 1930
The Nonconformists: Liberalism Contested 1932–1934
3 Class War/Civil War
The 1920s: Defending the Bourgeois Republic
Fragile Consensus: 1926–1932
The Depression
The 1930s Crisis: The Right’s Response
The 1930s Crisis: The Left’s Response
The Consequences of the Popular Front
4 The German Problem
From Caillautism to Briandism: The Pragmatic Tradition
The Pacifist Consensus
Rethinking Pacifism: The Impact of Hitler
From Anti-Communism to Conservative Neo-Pacifism
After Munich: A New Sweden?
5 The Daladier Moment: Prelude to Vichy or Republican Revival?
After Munich: Anti-Communism and Imperialism
Daladier: The Authoritarian Republic
Foreigners and Jews
Race and the Republican Tradition
6 The Debacle
Causes and Consequences
Drôle de guerre and Anti-Communism
Defeat and Exodus
Armistice or Capitulation?
Enter Pétain
The Armistice
Enter Laval: The End of the Republic
Was Vichy ‘Legal’?
Part II The Regime: National Revolution and Collaboration
Introduction
7 The National Revolution
Vichy Governments
The National Revolution: Doctrine
The National Revolution: Sources
Conflicts I: Education
Conflicts II: State and Society: The Fascist Temptation
Conflicts III: The Economy
8 Collaboration
Involuntary Collaboration/Voluntary Collaboration
German Polyocracy: ‘What a lot of authorities’
Initiating Collaboration: Montoire
13 December: The Fall of Laval
The British Connection
Relaunching Collaboration: The Protocols of Paris
After the Protocols: Collaboration goes on
Economic Collaboration
9 Collaborationism
Fanatics, Criminals and Adventurers
Frères-Ennemis: Doriot and Déat
The Rank and File
Leftist Collaborationism
Circles of Influence
Collaboration as Hatred and Fraternity: Je suis partout
Drieu’s NRF: Literary Collaborationism
Drieu: Collaborationism as Self-Hatred
10 Laval in Power 1942–1943
The Authoritarian Republic
Tightening the Screw: Oberg, Sauckel, Dannecker, Röthke
The Vel d’Hiv:
July 1942 217 The Collaborationists Attack
The North African Imbroglio
Vichy 1943: Shrinking Power
Towards Terror: The Milice
Endgame
Collaboration: The Balance Sheet
Part III Vichy, the Germans, and the French People
Introduction
11 Propaganda, Policing, and Administration
Balkanization
Other Maps
Selling the National Revolution: Propaganda
Intermediaries
Repression and Administration
The Prefects: ‘Propagandists of Truth’
The Church: ‘Loyalty without Enthralment’
12 Public Opinion, Vichy, and the Germans
Public Opinion: From Disenchantment to Opposition
The Pétain Cult
Private Lives
Responding to the Germans
The Sociology of Opinion: Notables and Peasants
The Sociology of Opinion: Business
The Sociology of Opinion: The Workers
13 Intellectuals, Artists, and Entertainers
Reputations
Culture under Vichy
German Ambiguities
Glittering Paris: Temptations and Sophistries
Continuing France
The Cinema: Ambiguities and Paradoxes
14 Reconstructing Mankind
Moral Hygiene/Social Hygiene
Family Values
Women, Vichy, and the Germans
Remaking the Young: Aspirations and Reality
‘Pockets of Health’ (Mounier)
Twentieth-Century Utopia: An Architect at Vichy
Utopian Communities: An Economist at Vichy
15 Vichy and the Jews
Emulative Zeal: Vichy Anti-Semitism/Nazi Anti-Semitism
The Holocaust in France
Jewish Responses: French and Immigrants
Jewish Resistance
French Society and the Jews 1940–1942: Indifference and Hostility
French Society and the Jews 1942–1944: Solidarity and Rescue
Part IV The Resistance
Introduction
16 The Free French 1940–1942
Beginnings
Conflict: De Gaulle and his Allies
The National Committee
De Gaulle’s Ideology
De Gaulle and the French
17 The Resistance 1940–1942
Personalities
Glimmers in the Night
Consolidation I: Movements and Networks
Consolidation II: North and South
Towards Ideology
Other Voices I: Catholics and Socialists
Other Voices II: The Communists
Towards Unity
18 De Gaulle and the Resistance 1942
Moulin’s Plan
The Resistance and London: First Contacts
Moulin and the Resistance
The Resistance: Geography and Sociology
Resistance and the Population: How to Resist?
Competitors
19 Power Struggles 1943
Moulin, Brossolette, and the Movements
Moulin’s Victory: The CNR
De Gaulle and Giraud
After Caluire: The Resistance Fights Back
Communist Policy
Responding to the Communists
Communist Infiltration?
20 Resistance in Society
Diversification and Radicalization
The Disintegration of Vichy
The Maquis
The Peasantry and the Resistance
Women in the Resistance
Foreigners in the Resistance
Recruiting the Professions: Communists and Writers
Bringing in the Workers: National Insurrection
21 Remaking France
Vichy and the Resistance: Shared Values
Pétaino-Resisters: An Abortive Third Way
The New Elite
Making Plans