Vichy, Resistance, Liberation: New Perspectives on Wartime France

01 Vichy

22/12/04

11:04 am

Page i

Vichy, Resistance, Liberation

01 Vichy

22/12/04

11:04 am

Page ii

01 Vichy

22/12/04

11:04 am

Page iii

Vichy, Resistance, Liberation New Perspectives on Wartime France

Edited by Hanna Diamond and Simon Kitson

Oxford • New York

01 Vichy

22/12/04

11:04 am

Page iv

First published in 2005 by Berg Editorial offices: 1st Floor, Angel Court, 81 St Clements Street, Oxford, OX4 1AW, UK 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010, USA © Hanna Diamond and Simon Kitson 2005 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the written permission of Berg. Berg is the imprint of Oxford International Publishers Ltd.

Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data Vichy, resistance, liberation : new perspectives on wartime France / edited by Hanna Diamond and Simon Kitson. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 1–85973–772–2 (cloth) 1. World War, 1939–1945––France. 2. World War, 1939–1945––Social aspects––France. 3. France–– History––German occupation, 1940–1945. 4. France–– Social conditions––20th century. I. Diamond, Hanna, 1962– II. Kitson, Simon. D802.F8V465 2005 944.081'6––dc22

2004028421

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN-13 978 185973 772 9 (Cloth) ISBN-10 1 85973 772 2 (Cloth) Typeset by Avocet Typeset, Chilton, Aylesbury, Bucks Printed in the United Kingdom by Biddles Ltd, King’s Lynn

www.bergpublishers.com

01 Vichy

22/12/04

11:04 am

Page v

Contents Acknowledgements

vii

Notes on Contributors

ix

1

2

One Historian and his Occupation: Rod Kedward Simon Kitson and Hanna Diamond H.R. Kedward: an Oral Profile Martin J. Evans

1

15

Part I: Collective Trajectories 3

4

5

6

7

8

Pacifists into Resisters? A Biographical Approach to Women in Wartime France: the Peace Petitioners of 1938 Siân Reynolds

35

‘Quite simply, Colonel …’: Gender and The Second World War Luc Capdevila, François Rouquet, Paula Schwartz, Fabrice Virgili and Danièle Voldman

51

Conflicting Identities in a Mining Community on Strike 1930–50 Hanna Diamond

59

Talk which was not Idle: Rumours in Wartime France Jean-Marie Guillon

73

Grammatical Notes: Surviving, and Memories of Jewish Life in Nice, 1939–43 Miranda Pollard

87

‘Fraternity among listeners’. The BBC and French Resistance: Evidence from Refugees Martyn Cornick

101

01 Vichy

22/12/04

11:04 am

Page vi

vi • Contents 9

‘Meeting Private Ryan’: a Franco-American Liberation Community Hilary Footitt

115

Part II: Individual Trajectories 10

11

12

13

14

Film and Cultural Demobilization after the Great War: the Two versions of J’Accuse by Abel Gance (1918 and 1938) John Horne

131

‘Like a wisp of straw amidst the raging elements?’ Daniel Guérin in the Second World War David Berry

143

‘Mal embarqué bien arrivé’: the Strange Story of François Perroux Julian Jackson

155

Homecomings: Paulette Bernège, Scientific Management and the Return to the Land in Vichy France Jackie Clarke

171

Demography at Liberation: Using History to Forget the Past K.H Adler

183

Rod Kedward and his bibliography

195

Index

199

01 Vichy

22/12/04

11:04 am

Page vii

Acknowledgements The current volume is intended as a collection of essays in honour of Professor Rod Kedward who did so much to shape the British perception of France during his forty years of teaching and researching at the University of Sussex. Both editors benefited from the superb educational environment offered at Sussex University. The postgraduate community in that institution is undoubtedly amongst the very best in the country. Sussex generously offered support to this particular project and we are very grateful to Saul Dubow for help in that respect. The editors are indebted to the numerous contributors who gave their time so willingly. It is a source of regret that, for reasons of space, we had to exclude so many other authors who wanted to contribute to this particular tribute. Special thanks go to Claire Gorrara whose support of this project has been unstinting and who helped us over a particularly challenging impasse. We would like to thank Berg for agreeing to take on the project and in particular to acknowledge Kathleen May, Caroline McCarthy and Felicity Howlett. In June 2001, the Maison Française in Oxford and its then Director, Professor JeanClaude Sergeant, generously hosted a major conference entitled ‘Rewriting History: The Second World War in France’, which was also supported by the Association for the Study of Modern and Contemporary France and the University of Bath. This conference provided an invaluable opportunity for several of the contributors to give their chapters a preliminary airing. Perhaps the biggest debt owed is to Rod and his family: Carol, Josh and Jessica. Rod’s intellectual qualities are familiar to all his readers. His personal qualities are just as impressive to those who actually know him. Few lecturers are as giving of their time, their energy and their enthusiasm. We would like to join countless other former students of his in wishing him an excellent and productive retirement.

01 Vichy

22/12/04

11:04 am

Page viii

01 Vichy

22/12/04

11:04 am

Page ix

Notes on Contributors K.H. Adler is Lecturer in Modern History at the University of Nottingham, and Editor of the international journal, Gender and History. She published Jews and Gender in Liberation France (Cambridge University Press) in 2003, which was based on a doctoral thesis carried out under H.R. Kedward’s supervision (University of Sussex, 1998). The foundations for that work were probably laid when he figured among her excellent teachers of undergraduate studies at Sussex in the 1980s. K.H. Adler is now working on a broader study of twentieth-century France. David Berry is Lecturer in French and European Contemporary History in the Department of Politics, International Relations and European Studies, Loughborough University. His D.Phil. at the University of Sussex was supervised by Rod Kedward. A reworked and extended version of this was published as A History of the French Anarchist Movement, 1917–1945 (Greenwood Press, 2002). A member of the editorial committee of the Journal of Contemporary European Studies and of the advisory board of Anarchist Studies, he has published widely on French politics and labour history and is currently working on Daniel Guérin (1904–88). For further information, see http://wwwstaff.lboro.ac.uk/~eudgb/. Luc Capdevila is Lecturer in Contemporary History at the University of Rennes2 and a researcher at the Centre de Recherche Historique sur les Sociétés et Cultures de l’Ouest Européen (CRHISCO). Author of a published thesis on the Liberation in Brittany, his research deals with cultural dynamics of societies at war. He is co-author of Hommes et Femmes dans la France en guerre (1914–1945) (Payot, 2003). Jackie Clarke is Lecturer in French studies at the University of Southampton. Since completing her doctoral thesis under the supervision of Rod Kedward she has published mainly on aspects of interwar France, particularly on the rationalization movement. Martyn Cornick is Reader and head of the Department of French Studies at the University of Birmingham. His research is focused on French intellectual history,

01 Vichy

22/12/04

11:04 am

Page x

x • Notes on Contributors in particular Jean Paulhan and the Nouvelle Revue Française, as well as aspects of Franco-British representations, including the Dreyfus Affair and the Occupation period. Hanna Diamond is Senior Lecturer in French history and European Studies at the University of Bath. Her D.Phil. thesis, published as Women and the Second World War in France 1939–48: choices and constraints (Longman, 1999), was inspired and co-supervised by Rod Kedward. She is preparing a monograph on the Provençal mining community and will also be publishing a book on the 1940 Exodus in France with Oxford University Press. Martin Evans is Reader in Contemporary History at the University of Portsmouth. He is author of The Memory of Resistance: French Opposition to the Algerian War 1954–62 (Berg, 1997) to be published in French by l’Harmattan. With Emmanuel Godin he is the co-author of France 1815–2003 (Hodder Arnold, 2004). He is the editor of Empire and Culture: The French Experience 1830–1940 (Palgrave, 2004), and the co-editor of War and Memory in the Twentieth Century (Berg, 1997) and The Algerian War and the French Army: Experiences, Images, Testimonies (Palgrave, 2002). He is a regular contributor to History Today. Hilary Footitt is Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Stirling and a founder member of the Group for War and Culture Studies. Her published work includes studies of the politics of Liberation, and of the representation of women in the Resistance and in postwar French politics. Her latest book is War and Liberation in France: Living with the Liberators (Palgrave, 2004). Jean-Marie Guillon is Professor of History at the Université de Provence. He is one of France’s leading specialists on the Resistance and has published widely on the Vichy period with particular reference to the south-east of France. Amongst his most recent publications are two edited collections: Sauvetage et résistance à Marseille. Varian Fry et le Centre américain de secours (1940 1941) (Arles, Actes Sud et Conseil Général des Bouches-du-Rhône, 2000) and (with Robert Mencherini) La Résistance et les Européens du Sud (l’Harmattan, 1999). John Horne gained his D.Phil. at the University of Sussex under the supervision of Rod Kedward (Labour at War: France and Britain, 1914–1918, Clarendon Press, 1991). He has published widely on the history of twentieth-century France and the comparative history of the First World War, his most recent book (with Alan Kramer) being German Atrocities, 1914. A History of Denial (Yale University Press, 2001). He is Professor of Modern European History at Trinity College

01 Vichy

22/12/04

11:04 am

Page xi

Notes on Contributors • xi Dublin, and a member of the comité directeur of the Centre de Recherche de l’ Historial de la Grande Guerre, Péronne. Julian Jackson is Professor of Modern French History at Queen Mary, University of London. He has written widely on the political and social history of France in the twentieth century. His recent publications include France: the Dark Years 1940–1944 (Oxford University Press, 2001), The Fall of France: the Nazi Invasion of 1940 (Oxford University Press, 2003) and De Gaulle (Haus Publishing, 2003). He is currently working on a study of the politics of homosexuality in France since 1945. Simon Kitson is Lecturer in French Studies at the University of Birmingham. In 1995 he completed a thesis on the Marseilles Police (‘The Marseille Police in their Context from Popular Front to Liberation’, D.Phil., Sussex, 1995) under the supervision of Rod Kedward. Since then he has published widely on occupied France and recently brought out a book on anti-German counter-espionage in Vichy France – Vichy et la chasse aux espions nazis (Autrement, 2005). He is British correspondent of the journal Vingtième Siècle. Miranda Pollard’s doctoral dissertation for Trinity College Dublin, for which Rod Kedward was the external examiner, was published as Reign of Virtue: Mobilizing Gender in Vichy France (University of Chicago Press, 1998). Previously Assistant Director of the Institute for Research on Women and Gender at Columbia University, where she worked for Carolyn G. Heilbrun, Pollard is an Associate Professor of History and Women’s Studies at the University of Georgia, where she teaches courses in feminist theory, queer studies, Modern France and the Holocaust. Her next book is a biography of Odette Abadi, the co-founder of the Réseau Marcel that saved over five hundred children from deportation in the Nice region during the Second World War. Siân Reynolds is Professor Emerita of French at the University of Stirling. She taught for many years at the University of Sussex where Rod Kedward was one of her most inspiring colleagues. Apart from translations (Braudel, The Mediterranean 1972–3 and other works), she has published widely on French and Scottish history (Britannica’s Typesetters, 1989; France between the Wars: gender and politics, 1996; Contemporary French Cultural Studies, 2000, co-ed. with William Kidd). She is working on a book on Paris and Edinburgh in 1900. François Rouquet is Lecturer in History at the University of Rennes-1, member of the Centre de Recherche sur l’Action Politique en Europe (CRAPE) and Associate Researcher at the Institut d’Histoire du Temps Présent (IHTP-CNRS). He has

01 Vichy

22/12/04

11:04 am

Page xii

xii • Notes on Contributors published L’épuration dans l’administration française (CNRS, 1993) and other publications, articles and chapters on the Second World War, gender and cinema. He is co-author of Hommes et femmes dans la France en guerre (1914–1945) (Payot, 2003). Paula Schwartz is Associate Professor of French at Middlebury College (Vermont, USA), where she teaches courses in French history and culture, women’s and gender studies, and international studies. She holds the Ph.D. in French studies from New York University. Paula Schwartz is the author of numerous articles on women and gender in the French Resistance, which have appeared in English, French and German. Her current project and forthcoming book deal with the politics of food and gender in occupied Paris. For many years she has drawn her inspiration from Rod Kedward, ‘a model scholar and human being’. Fabrice Virgili is a researcher at the Institut d’Histoire du Temps Présent, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique. He is a specialist on World Wars from a gender perspective. His thesis was published as Shorn Women: Gender and Punishment in Liberation France (Berg, 2002). He co-authored, Hommes et femmes dans la France en guerre (1914–1945) (Payot, 2003). He is currently working on French/German children born during the war and will publish a paper in K. Ericsson, E. Simonsen (eds), Children of World War II – The Hidden Enemy Legacy (Berg, 2005 forthcoming). Danièle Voldman is a Research Director at the l’Institut d’Histoire du Temps Présent (CNRS). Her main research area is the history of towns and architecture in the twentieth century. She contributed to Jeffry M. Dieffendorf’s, Rebuilding Europe’s Bombed Cities (Macmillan, 1990), and published La reconstruction des villes françaises de 1940 à 1954 (l’Harmattan, 1997). Her work on the World Wars includes a collaborative book with Luc Capdevila, Nos Morts. Les sociétés occidentales face aux tués de la guerre, XIXe-XXsiècle (Payot, 2002) and she is also co-author of Hommes et femmes dans la France en guerre (1914–1945) (Payot, 2003).

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 1

–1– One Historian and his Occupation: Rod Kedward Simon Kitson and Hanna Diamond

This text is intended as a tribute to the work of the historian Rod Kedward who was the thesis supervisor of many of the contributors in this collection including both editors. Rod Kedward has been writing history since the early 1960s. He has worked on the Dreyfus Affair, on comparative fascism, on the anarchists and has recently completed a general history of twentieth-century France. But it is his work on Vichy, the Liberation and particularly the Resistance which has become the centrepiece of his research. So it is to these aspects of his scholarship that both this collection and this chapter will be devoted. This chapter will outline first some of the characteristics of Rod’s work, underlining aspects which we believe make his work ground-breaking, inspiring and especially valuable. It will then explore how his work has been received by the academic community before finally outlining some of the ways in which the chapters in this volume have interacted with his research. Rod’s work has advanced scholarly debate on different levels, whether this be in its methodology or its subject matter. He has always demonstrated a preparedness to tackle subjects that others felt would be unrewarding or impossible. In his first major monograph on the Resistance, Resistance in Vichy France (1978), Rod set out to discover the ideas and motivations of resisters in the southern zone of France between 1940 and 1942. This subject was original in many ways. Up to that point the spotlight in historical research had been much less on motivations and more on simple descriptions of Resistance activity. In his study Rod moved the focus away from many of the most discussed forms of resistance: he gave less space to sabotage or intelligence gathering, and placed greater emphasis on ideological dimensions. Although this text looked at the Resistance in political terms, something which in itself was not new, it took an unconventional definition of ‘political’ going well beyond the simple actions of parties or parliaments. Resistance in Vichy France was also highly unusual in that it concerned resistance in an area of France which was not actually occupied and chose for its chronology the 1940–2 period, which was hardly the zenith of Resistance activity. This was important because it 1

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 2

2 • Simon Kitson and Hanna Diamond was in this unoccupied zone that most of the initial debates about the philosophy of the Resistance took place, and these would provide an initial blueprint for Resistance ideologies. The relative freedom of the unoccupied zone allowed a greater discussion of political ideas and raised interesting questions about how best to motivate people in an unoccupied zone of an occupied country. His second major monograph, In Search of the Maquis (1993), was as original as its predecessor. Here Rod offered the first scholarly debate into rural resistance. Shortly before completing it he gave an inaugural lecture following his promotion to professor in 1991, and in this lecture he recalled the reticence of town-based historians when he had informed them of his decision to switch his attention from urban to rural resistance.1 They expressed doubt that he would find much opposition to Pétain’s regime in a peasantry which had been so actively courted by Vichy. They voiced concern that Rod might end up working on right-wing regionalism and its hostility to urban, republican values. But Rod persevered, one suspects greatly enjoying challenging Jacobin orthodoxy. The Maquis, which had previously been the preserve only of local historians, had been moved clearly into the realm of scholarly debate. The historiography at last had to recognize the plural identities of rural France. A dilemma faced by historians is whether to place their period of study on a longer timescale, seeing it as part of more general trends in the development of a society, or whether to view it as a unique episode whose history merits being seen as exceptional. Rod does both. Having started his career working on the turn of the century he was very well aware of the issues shaping modern French history. He highlights that the Communist Party in the Second World War was drawing inspiration as much, if not more, from the French revolutionary tradition dating from 1789 as it was from the Russian Revolution of 1917. As his interest in local history developed he became increasingly fascinated by the way in which ordinary people draw on local myths and histories to inspire them in the present. To take one example to which Rod refers several times, the communities of the Cévennes sought resistance inspiration in the example of the Camisard rebellion against the forces of the King and the Catholic Church in the eighteenth century. Looking to historical examples of revolt was important. It not only provided models of action but also gave the Resister a sense of being part of a continuing struggle. If the historic event was seen as having been triumphant it could also have important psychological effects by making individuals feel that their own struggles might meet with successful conclusions. So Rod certainly puts his history on a longer timescale. But one of the central themes of his theoretical approach to the Vichy period is the idea of carnival. In this respect Rod was very much inspired by the ideas Mikhail Bakhtin elaborated in his classic Rabelais and his World.2 Carnival theory is often referred to as ‘the world turned upside down’. This involves a period of transient overturning of

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 3

One Historian and his Occupation • 3 power relationships, whether these inversions be generational or social. Rod explored these ideas particularly in his excellent piece on the culture of the outlaw in the book Vichy France and the Resistance.3 In that chapter Rod demonstrated that the traditional rule of law was inverted under Vichy. Official law imposed by the state was increasingly seen as corrupt and morally bankrupt with the result that resisters presented by Vichy as bandits or outlaws actually held the moral high ground. The Maquis thus took pleasure in subverting the official rule of law in the name of a higher justice. Rod also sees carnival in the extreme form of collaboration represented by the fictional character of Lucien in Louis Malle’s film Lacombe, Lucien. Here the young peasant Lucien becomes the king of the carnival by inverting traditional social roles. He enjoys power over older characters of higher social standing. Lucien dominates the bourgeois Monsieur Horn, humiliates Monsieur Horn’s landlord, holds the country doctor at his mercy and uses the poster of a dignified Pétain for target practice. But the final scene of Lacombe, Lucien also underlines another aspect of carnival. A caption appears on the screen to inform us that Lucien was captured and executed.4 The carnival, being a transient moment of inversion, must come to an end. For resisters the Liberation represented this moment of closure with a return to ‘normality’ and a series of frustrated hopes. Rod thus appears to be placing the Occupation on a short timescale by insisting that it is a moment of transgression. However, he also puts this idea of exceptional moments of history into a longer timeframe by describing carnival as a ‘recurrent pattern of public behaviour, ritualized in the Middle Ages and acted out as ritual ever since, but going back well beyond Christian festivals to patterns of controlled, or permitted, inversion in Greek and Roman times’.5 Rod never shuns complexity. An enjoyment of diversity was also a key component of his outlook. The superb BBC naturalist David Attenborough has always maintained that his interest in the natural world is fired primarily by the realization that all animals are faced with essentially the same dilemmas – finding a mate, finding shelter, finding food, averting danger – but that they have evolved a myriad of different and imaginative responses to these difficulties. Rod Kedward’s enthusiasm for the study of resistance reveals something of the same origins – Rod does not present the Resistance as a single model but rather as countless different responses. Rod has always stressed plurality in his research. He welcomed Denis Peschanski’s argument that there were numerous Vichys.6 He talked of the Resistance in the plural and generally preferred the expression ‘Liberations’ to Liberation. Rod’s fear is of a monistic world: ‘In an age when the values of history are challenged by a new and aggressive utilitarianism the historical profession must continue to insist that nothing is as simple as it seems’.7 Relativism was the theory through which he expressed some of his earliest beliefs on the Occupation period. He rejected positivist claims that truth is universal or absolute and insisted it could differ between individuals

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 4

4 • Simon Kitson and Hanna Diamond and cultures. This might seem obvious but in the 1970s when he began using the concept it was surprising how few historians were prepared to see behind the polemics of a question such as the attitude of the communists in the years 1939–41. For example, he was disappointed by a trend amongst non-communist historians who felt the need to systematically write off all that the communists said as false. This was not written from a communist perspective – Rod was never a communist – but rather from the stance of someone who believes that multiple historical truths can coexist. His research on communists, for instance, led him to the realization that there was not one centrally dictated policy which was uniformly adopted within the Communist Party during these years. Moreover, the individual communist was not just defined by his or her communism. He or she also had a local context, a job a milieu which helped dictate interpretation of communist policy. In today’s world in which globalization is seeking to impose uniformity, Rod’s history reminds us of the diversity of location, culture and individual experience. In fact Rod’s development as a historian has seen him increasingly interested in the diversity of locations. In 1978 he wrote: ‘my main interest was in types of motivation and ideas of Resistance rather than the particularities of local history’.8 By the 1990s his intention had become to ‘break down the disabling generalizations about town and country, in order to restore the local specificities of rural resistance and reveal the community structures which were central to the existence and survival of the maquis’.9 Integrating the diversity of locality into the whole was the massive challenge he had set himself. Rod’s interest is in the interface between community or individual identities and national politics. He has worked on national figures and personalities, in particular Philippe Henriot and Charles Maurras, but one senses his real passion is for writing the history of ordinary people. Kedwardian scholarship championed the concept of ‘history from below’. Rod ‘has tried to give a name, and where possible a voice’,10 to people and places who have long been marginalized or left anonymous in French history. Rod’s opinion is that these ordinary people have their own individual histories and that it was improper for a historian to try to appropriate these. Obviously, this provides a genuine challenge to the historian. In trying to tie strands together, in trying to present models and offer interpretations which may be of more general use, does not the historian run the risk of diluting an individual’s history? Rod answered this challenge by incorporating into each of his two principal monographs on the Resistance sections in which the individuals were allowed to speak for themselves, to offer their own visions of events. His interest in neglected categories within society led him inevitably into the realm of gender history. It is true that Rod’s early work was written as a masculine narrative. By 1978, however, he was beginning to display a much greater sensitivity to the question of women in history – an element which he has

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 5

One Historian and his Occupation • 5 promoted in his own research, in his postgraduate students and in the conferences he has organized. Particularly since Occupied France: Resistance and Collaboration, Rod has concerned himself increasingly with everyday life as a means of political expression.11 He has thus become one of the great practitioners of the sub-genre of history developed mainly in Germany where it was known as Alltagsgeschichte. Many historians ignore everyday life as a historical phenomenon. They view it as too ordinary. Even historians who have thought about everyday life during wartime often do so in ways which are purely descriptive: civilians were facing food shortages, they had to live with curfews or they had to make dresses out of curtains. There is a tendency to overlook the potential significance of what seems ‘ordinary’ or ‘natural’. Drawing his inspiration from anthropology, Rod has examined the ways in which time-honoured cultural activities could be converted into forms of action. Women for instance could use culturally accepted roles or behaviour to extend their resistance outside the home. The safest way of transporting documents or weapons was using shopping bags, children’s satchels and prams. It is precisely because the sight of women carrying shopping bags or pushing prams seemed so ordinary that it could escape police attention. Just as it often escaped the police so it often escapes historians. The focus on the diversity of location, on ordinary people and on everyday life has sent Rod on a quest for new sources. Rod was amongst the very first historians to apply oral history to the Second World War in France. At the time he began writing Resistance in Vichy France most French archives dealing with this period were still closed. But Rod’s decision to use oral history was not just born of the necessity to compensate for this lack of sources: for a book on motivations he could have confined himself to using clandestine newspapers and published memoirs. As he makes clear in the interview with Martin Evans which follows, Rod did not use oral history to be able to work on the Resistance – he worked on the Resistance in order to be able to use oral history. He recognized it as a tool for accessing the history of ordinary people. As he says in In Search of the Maquis: Oral testimony, even fifty years after the event, suggests hypotheses, provides personal details, reveals local colour, facilitates insights, and preserves individuality in a way that historians of an under-documented area of history cannot easily afford to ignore.12

Oral history could thus offer new insights to historians. When Rod was conducting interviews with former Maquisards he became very aware of a recurrent pattern in the way the interviews progressed. Rod was given a seat at a table opposite the Maquisard whose wife would invariably seem to hover in the doorway, bringing refreshments as required and adding correctives to the story of the interviewee. Increasingly it dawned on Rod that this was very probably the type of role that many a rural housewife would have performed during the war. Subsequently,

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 6

6 • Simon Kitson and Hanna Diamond evidence found in written archives began to confirm Rod’s theory of the ‘woman at the doorway’. Police reports made it clear that when the authorities came to the home of a Maquisard it was often the wife who greeted them at the doorway: she held the police or gendarmerie officers up by feigning ignorance and misleading them, thereby giving her husband time to sneak out the back.13 Of course oral history has its problems, but that is true of any source. All sources have an inherent bias whether they be prefects’ reports or oral testimony. Rod has always displayed an awareness of the potential pitfalls of oral history and uses it in conjunction with other archives as well as more theoretical sources of inspiration. In fact it could be said that one of the characteristics of Rod’s work has been a desire to make use of as wide an array of archives and ideas as possible, drawn from a range of disciplines. Interdisciplinarity has become a somewhat hackneyed catchphrase in recent years but Rod was one of its earliest pioneers. Since the early 1960s Rod has written not only about history but also about art, literature and cinema in relation to history and has drawn inspiration from all these disciplines. Both collections he edited about the Occupation and the Liberation contain chapters based around cultural rather than simply historical themes and techniques. Rod’s work also reveals someone well versed in philosophy with frequent references to philosophers as varied as Sartre, Foucault and, in a more critical light, Comte. Rod’s use of disciplines beyond just history highlights how his passions emerge clearly in his work. His love of cinema, literature, art and jazz are not even thinly disguised. Cultural references are a frequent backdrop as in this example from ‘French Resistance: a few home truths’: In the twentieth century the most potent symbol of unacceptable authority has been the invasion of the home, the violation of the family, and the brutal crossing of public force into the private sphere. There is the all-seeing television screens in Orwell’s 1984, and the arrest of Joseph K. in his bedroom at the start of Kafka’s ‘The Trial’. There is the terrifying painting at the end of the First World War by Max Beckmann, called ‘The Night’.14

There is a particular warmth towards France and French culture throughout but Rod is clearly very conscious of his status as an outsider looking in. Perhaps only he would have dared introduce one of his books by comparing his status as a foreign historian investigating the Maquis with that of an outsider being repeatedly initiated into the various tactics and strategies used in a game of boules. One can sense his excitement at driving endlessly through French villages, torturing his, then teenaged, children Josh and Jessica with cassettes of Charles Trenet’s ‘Que reste-t-il de nos amours?’ on the car stereo.15 His writing is usually littered with French words. Ironically it is his chapter entitled ‘Charles Maurras and the True France’ which contains the least French text, as apart from the words ‘maquis’, ‘pays réel’ and ‘pays légal’ only book titles are in French.

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 7

One Historian and his Occupation • 7 The way historians write reveals much about their personalities and Rod is obviously no exception to this. Those who know him know how generous he is, how giving of his time and how munificent in his praise. Rod’s scholarship underlines this trait. It is unheard of for Rod to savage a colleague in his writings; he would prefer to attack an idea rather than the scholar. He is not an iconoclast in the sense of consciously setting out to destroy other people’s work but generally tries to build on it or to fill in gaps by offering something different. In his preface to Resistance in Vichy France he states that there are numerous good histories of the Resistance and that his own study does not replace these but rather should be read alongside them. He openly recognizes his debt to other scholars and acknowledges the value of their work, even where their findings differ from his own. Surely there is a lesson here for those inclined to petty squabbling and settling personal vendettas, or for young scholars determined to tuer le père without first looking to see whether the ‘Father’ was a good one. Rather than focusing his attention on those historians he dislikes Rod prefers to heap praise on those historians he appreciates. A few examples taken randomly from amongst many will suffice to demonstrate this. Paxton is described as ‘ahead of the field’, Siân Reynolds as ‘original and perceptive’, Pierre Laborie as ‘rich in original insights and ideas’, Paul Jankowski as ‘thoughtful and nuanced’, Henry Rousso is credited as the author of a ‘classic’, Jacques Duquesne’s book on the Catholics in occupied France is described as ‘excellent’, Paula Schwartz’s work on gender is seen as a ‘pioneering step’. Increasingly, the praise he bestows on his fellow historians has extended beyond mainstream historians to take in the local historians who are so often ignored by well-known university professors. Thus Madeleine Baudoin’s study of the Resistance in Marseilles is ‘extremely good’, and Henri Barthes is ‘yet another example of excellent local work’.16 Just as Rod has made plain his debt to fellow historians they have responded to his work with admiration. When Resistance in Vichy France was published its overall quality was universally applauded in all the reviews we have seen. Joanna Richardson found it ‘solid and imaginative’.17 Maurice Larkin described it as ‘stimulating and unpretentious’18 and John Horne praised its ‘admirable subtlety’.19 For G.M.Hamburg the book had captured Vichy France in all its complexity: ‘Kedward’s study of French idealism and opportunism gives a more complicated, but a more accurate picture of the motivations behind the resistance than is available in other histories’.20 Critics particularly enjoyed Rod’s linking of the history of the distant and recent past. Michael Foot underlined that: Mr Kedward’s great advantage when he writes about politics is that he understands history. One of his book’s main virtues is that he shows how much people of southern France in those years of defeat and despair were conscious of, and sustained by, the knowledge of previous national catastrophes and of the traditional remedies for them.21

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 8

8 • Simon Kitson and Hanna Diamond This view was reiterated by an anonymous reviewer in The Economist: ‘he thoroughly understands French history, and is able to show how people in a country in difficulties can come to terms with their present by reflecting on their past’.22 This same reviewer was full of praise for Rod’s methodology finding in him: ‘an exemplar to scholars of how to treat almost intractable material’.23 Using oral history had given considerable vitality to the study in the eyes of The Times Higher Education Supplement: ‘Kedward brings the period alive as a result of his many interviews with former résistants’.24 Rod had attempted to allow different voices to emerge but for Maurice Larkin he had been a little overindulgent in accepting the Communist Party’s stance: ‘He tries very hard to be fair to everyone – perhaps, some may think, a little too benignly in his account of communist behaviour in 1940–41’.25 Historians working on foreign countries usually hope to be recognized not only in their own homeland but also in the country upon which they are working. So how was Resistance in Vichy France received in France? Reaction followed a similar pattern to the 1940 reaction to de Gaulle’s speech of 18 June. Few initially knew of Rod’s book but clearly at least some of the initiated greatly appreciated it, and later, much later, its value came to be recognized more generally. One of its earliest champions in France was Henry Rousso who in 1982 described it as a ‘little known work, full of original ideas’.26 But it would probably be fair to say that Rousso was particularly open to foreign influence. Not only was he born outside of France (in Egypt) but he had also lived in New York, so he spoke fluent English. The book had to wait over ten years for a French translation. Julian Jackson explains this long wait by the fact that at that time the French academic community was much more focused on the study of Vichy, which Paxton had revitalized, than on reviewing the history of the Resistance. Paxton, he explained, ‘wrote the right book at the right time, Kedward the right one at the wrong time’.27 When at last the book did come out in France Jean-Pierre Azéma wrote a preface for it. Azéma began this by listing all the reasons why the book had not so far been bedtime reading in France. The first was obviously a linguistic one with few French scholars of Azéma’s generation showing much inclination to read in English. But there were also reasons related to the subject matter – Rod’s book was limited geographically to the study of the unoccupied zone and chronologically to the years 1940–2 which most would consider as the nadir of Resistance activity. Suffice to say that Azéma continued his preface with glowing praise for the book. He highlighted its originality, describing it as ‘a book of the highest quality which will become a reference’. He ended the preface by thanking the publisher for having given the French public access to a truly ‘pioneering study’. A similar baton was taken up by French reviewers once this translation became available. Jean-Pierre Rioux in Le Monde of 20 October 1989 described it as ‘a work which appeared in 1978 and has become a classic in the eyes of specialists and all praise

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 9

One Historian and his Occupation • 9 must go to Champ Vallon for having at last commissioned its translation’. He praised its challenge to received ideas and its ‘remarkable understanding’ of historical situations. In the mid-1980s Rod suffered a heart problem which almost killed him. The research on his next major monograph, which was drawing to a close at that point, was put on hold and it was not until 1993 that In Search of the Maquis came out. Again the reviews were very positive. Douglas Johnson underlined that it was a ‘book that is not only remarkably well-documented but also perceptive and moving’.28 The writer Francis Hodgson described the text as a ‘Maquisard history of the Maquis, and a very fine one’.29 According to John Simmonds ‘Kedward has written an extraordinary book, which maintains strong elements missing from much history of the times, such as the role of women in the Resistance’. Simmonds underlined the skill with which Rod conjoined different periods of history: his ‘ability to link this type of refusal with the revolts of the 18th Century Camisards in the Cévennes and the radicalism of 19th and 20th century rural movements’.30 Sarah Fishman described the book as an ‘exceptional historical analysis’. She praised its ‘nuanced and rich portrait of life in Vichy France’ and underlined that ‘Kedward’s sensitivity to issues of rhetoric and discourse leads to rich descriptions of the complexities and subtleties of public opinion’. For Fishman ‘Kedward’s work, in sum, is an eloquent and subtle example of the third phase into which historiography is moving. From mythmaking to mythbreaking’.31 Again the book was received well in France where it was translated more rapidly than his previous monograph, under the title A la Recherche du Maquis. In Libération on 23 September 1999, Olivier Wieviorka predicted classic status would befall A la Recherche du Maquis. Laurent Douzou in his review of the Maquis book for Le Monde of 10 September found it astonishing that a foreign historian should have such an intimate understanding and knowledge of rural France. Perceptively he added: ‘To pull off such a triumph, without doubt one must love this history, its actors and the countryside in which it was performed’. Academic recognition comes in many forms and Rod Kedward has been the deserved recipient of most of these. It is significant that even historians who disagree with aspects of his analysis feel compelled to cite him. Rod is regularly asked to participate in television and radio debates about various aspects of French history, and he was asked to present two programmes on BBC Radio Four about Vichy and the Resistance for the fortieth anniversary of the armistice in June 1980. It is no doubt significant that in his list of publications, the ‘chapters in books’ section is much larger than the ‘articles’ section. Research assessment bodies may not understand this but this is a mark of recognition – a sign that someone is being sought out to contribute to edited collections rather than having to initiate contact with journals. He has picked up research grants from all the major funding bodies in the UK, as well as from the French government. Admiration for him stretches

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 10

10 • Simon Kitson and Hanna Diamond well beyond his native Britain, as is shown in this collection with contributions from academics based in France, the USA and Ireland. In 1988, Rod was honoured by the French government with the Ordre des Palmes Académiques for ‘services to French culture’. In 1994, his text In Search of the Maquis was given the highly prestigious Philippe Viannay prize in Paris as an outstanding contribution to the history of resistance. He was one of only two British scholars asked to contribute to the festschrift for Robert Paxton. In the series of colloquiums organized in the 1990s by the Institut d’Histoire du Temps Présent (IHTP) on the theme of resistance, he was one of only a handful of Anglo-Saxon scholars invited to participate. Both of Rod’s major works on the Resistance have been translated into French and his book on the anarchists was translated into Dutch, French, Japanese and Spanish. This particular volume testifies to another level on which Rod is admired. He has the respect of those who have worked with or under him. That former students and former colleagues should actually choose to put together a festschrift is a mark of their esteem for him. The brief we gave them was simply to produce a chapter which in some way reflected Rod’s work. This led to many different interpretations as the following chapters show, but all of them encompass themes close to Rod’s interests. The majority seek to explore the experiences of ignored categories and groups which have been overlooked in the literature until now. Siân Reynolds’ chapter, for example, traces the wartime activities of the women peace petitioners of 1938. Her findings question the assumption that pacifists were homogeneous in their support of Vichy. Paradoxically however, while many of these women were active under the Third Republic in unofficial ways, their lack of access to networks or qualifications prevented them from becoming influential in Vichy circles even if they had wished to be so. John Horne provides an interesting parallel to the world of the pacifists and he does so by referring to one of Rod’s favourite media, the cinema, taking as his subject a comparison of two films by Abel Gance which were made twenty years apart. Fabrice Virgili, Paula Schwartz, Danièle Voldman, Luc Capdevila and François Rouquet pick up the other thread of Siân Reynolds’ chapter – the importance of gender during the Second World War. As we have seen, this was a major interest of Rod Kedward’s, and this chapter pulls together much of the current thinking about the importance of gender in discussions about this period. Several of the other chapters explore the trajectories of previously little-known individuals. Julian Jackson’s exploration of the economist François Perroux’s wartime activities sheds important light on how such intellectuals were able to justify their commitment to Vichy. He usefully contextualizes Perroux’s thinking within a wider strand of Catholic inspired anti-liberalism which emerged at both ends of the political spectrum throughout the last century in France. Jackie

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 11

One Historian and his Occupation • 11 Clarke’s analysis of Paulette Bernège, a member of the interwar rationalization movement, is equally revealing. Clarke shows how Bernège’s work identifies the rural exodus as a cause of the defeat. Karen Adler’s chapter introduces a third intellectual current, that of the demographers who gained considerable audience under Vichy and were masterful in their capacity to adapt their discourses to different political situations. So much so that at the Liberation, to their delight, they found the provisional government more, rather than less, prepared to implement their ideas. To move from right-wing intellectuals to the left, David Berry’s depiction of Daniel Guérin’s wartime experiences shows how these represented an intellectual turning point for the renowned anarchist’s political and ideological development. Guérin increasingly distanced himself from reformist socialism and Marxism and adopted a more libertarian understanding of the dynamics of social revolutions. Another group of chapters reflects Rod Kedward’s interests in using local or specific archives to put together micro-studies of particular groups and communities. Hanna Diamond’s chapter is an example of this. Her archival-based study of a Provençal mining community explores the emergence of a collective identity in the 1930s and shows how this identity was fragmented by reaction to the pressures of the Second World War and its immediate aftermath. This kind of bottom-up history is close to Rod Kedward’s concerns. Hilary Footitt is also interested in community, but in a more abstract sense. Her chapter deals with the Allied–French transnational communities. She combines previously separate French and Anglophone narratives and explores how the two communities developed understandings of one another. Her conclusions may surprise. Miranda Pollard’s oralhistory-based chapter uses the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust testimony to gain access to the experiences of another community, that of Jewish people in Nice during the war. Her chapter presents some of these testimonies and convincingly shows that despite some of the apparent contradictions, each of these survival stories deserves our respect and attention. Since Rod’s use of oral history has been a central characteristic of his work, when Martin Evans stated that he would like to offer his contribution to this volume in the form of an interview with Rod it seemed only natural to accept. To our knowledge it is virtually unheard of for festschrifts to include an interview with the person to whom they present a tribute. However, when you are paying tribute to an unconventional historian, unconventional approaches are acceptable. Indeed, this interview provides the invaluable insights that only oral history can bring, and enables us to understand better the intellectual development of the man whose work we celebrate here. Rod Kedward has always been interested in ordinary people and how their political interpretations of events are formed, and both of the following chapters engage with these issues. Martyn Cornick uses the BBC archive and analyzes interviews conducted with refugees who arrived in London during the war from France and French overseas territories. This material enables him to reconstruct the impact of

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 12

12 • Simon Kitson and Hanna Diamond the messages put across by the BBC on those listening in France. Jean-Marie Guillon’s chapter is also concerned with the impact of messages, and notes how some French people were ‘glued to the radio’ but in this case he is more interested in the uncontrolled and often illegal messages which spread throughout the population. He demonstrates that rumours were a targeted manipulation of information and that they represented the first and most elementary level of resistance, involving those who were not yet or only slightly involved. This participation compensated to a certain extent for their previous lack of action but was nonetheless part of the wider changes which generated representations, attitudes and involvements, other examples of which are present throughout Rod’s work. As can be seen from the above, these chapters are very diverse, which is something Rod Kedward encouraged in the two collective works he put together: Vichy France and the Resistance and The Liberation of France. At the beginning of these two edited collections he declared his reluctance to impose an overall conclusion on the volumes. As a mark of respect we have chosen, like him, to let the chapters speak for themselves and to allow the readers to draw their own conclusions.

Notes (works referred to are by H.R. Kedward unless specified otherwise) 1. French roots, inaugural professorial lecture at Sussex University, 31 October 1995. 2. Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and his world (MIT, 1968). 3. ‘The maquis and the Culture of the Outlaw’ in Kedward & Austin (eds), Vichy France and the Resistance (Croom Helm, 1985). 4. ‘The anti-carnival of collaboration: Louis Malle’s Lacombe Lucien’ in S. Hayward & G. Vincendeau (eds), French Film: texts and contexts (Routledge, 2000). 5. ‘Ici commence la France Libre’ in Kedward & Wood, The Liberation of France (Berg, 1995), p. 5. 6. Denis Peschanski, ‘Le régime de Vichy a existé. Gouvernants et gouvernés dans la France de Vichy: juillet 1940–avril 1942’ in D. Peschanski, Vichy 1940–1944, Archives de Guerre d’Angelo Tasca (Editions du CNRS, 1986), pp. 3–50. Referred to by Rod in ‘The Vichy of the other Philippe’ in G.Hirshfield & P.Marsh (eds), Collaboration in France (Berg, 1989), p 32. 7. ‘The Vichy of the other Philippe’ p. 32. 8. Resistance in Vichy France (OUP, 1978), p. vi. 9. French roots, 31 October 1995. 10. Ibid. 11. Occupied France: Resistance and Collaboration (Blackwell, 1985), pp. 13–15.

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 13

One Historian and his Occupation • 13 12. In Search of the Maquis (OUP, 1993), p. vii. 13. ‘Resiting French Resistance’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 1999, p. 276. 14. ‘French Resistance: a few home truths’ in W. Lamont (ed.), Historical Controversies and Historians (UCL Press, 1998), p. 7. 15. French roots, 31 October 1995. 16. Quotes taken from Resistance in Vichy France, In Search of the Maquis and ‘French Resistance: a few home truths’. 17. Joanna Richardson, ‘Resistance France’, History Today, April 1979. 18. Maurice Larkin, History, February 1979. 19. John Horne, ‘A nous la liberté’, Hibernia, 3 August 1978. 20. G.M. Hamburg, ‘Resistance’, University Publishing, spring 1979. 21. M.R.D. Foot, ‘From Evil’, New Statesman, 10 March 1978. 22. The Economist, 8 April 1978. 23. Ibid. 24. R.E.M. Irving, ‘Armies of the shadows’, The Times Higher Education Supplement, 7 July 1978. 25. Larkin, History, February 1979. 26. Henry Rousso, ‘La Résistance entre la légende et l’oubli’, L’Histoire, no. 41, January 1982. 27. Julian Jackson, France: The Dark Years (OUP, 2001), p. 17. 28. Douglas Johnson, ‘The guerrillas of Europe’, Independent on Sunday, 18 April 1993. 29. Francis Hodgson, ‘In search of the Maquis’, The Guardian, 8 June 1993. 30. John Simmonds, ‘In-depth view of the Maquis’, Modern and Contemporary France, January 1994. 31. Sarah Fishman, ‘The power of myth: five recent works on Vichy France’, Journal of Modern History, September 1995.

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 14

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 15

–2– H.R. Kedward: an Oral Profile Martin J. Evans H. Roderick Kedward (HRK) interviewed by Martin J. Evans (MJE), Brighton, 22 July 2002

Early Interests MJE: How did you first get interested in history? HRK: The location in which I grew up is probably as important as anything. That was in Kent on the edge of Romney Marsh. There was one splendid novel called Doctor Syn, about smuggling in Romney Marsh, based on an actual character. I started to find out where all the smuggling routes had been. That was probably my very first interest in history. MJE: How old were you when you did that? HRK: Probably my early teens. I was about fifteen when I began cycling round the Marsh doing watercolours, which was all very John Piper-ish. I did old ruins and remote churches. The first piece of research I did was when I was seventeen. It was on the history of Winchelsea in the thirteenth century, excited by the notion that the old Winchelsea was buried under the sea. My second interest was family history. On my mother’s side one of my very distant uncles had been the first county cricketer to bowl overarm, which was thought to be outrageous at the time. His name was Edgar Willsher and I knew that his portrait hung in the Long Room at Lords. On my father’s side my grandfather had been a Methodist minister in Bermondsey, a friend of Lloyd George and a Liberal MP. He was also a small landowner in Kent and was a leader of the anti-tithe campaign. He stood as a Liberal in a Tory stronghold in Kent and actually won in a by-election, and was later MP for Bermondsey for a short while. His anti-tithe militancy involved a sit-down protest at one stage. My third interest came even earlier through reading the Boys Own Paper and the history of colonial adventures. At eighteen I did actually apply to be trained as 15

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 16

16 • Martin J. Evans either a missionary or a district officer. I was turned down for both. This was a personal shock at the time, but I was clearly not seen as a good prospect for public service. I’d become very angry to discover that my father, who was a Methodist chaplain to the army by then, was living with someone else. He pretended he couldn’t come home more often because of his situation in the army, but he had effectively moved away, leaving my mother with very little money to look after my older brother who had learning difficulties. She was also a very imaginative drama teacher, part-time in a small school. My brother was bullied by other boys because he was different. When I tried to defend him in fights they were always much bigger than I was. A real anger about injustices was there by the time I was eighteen. MJE: Were you conscious of the Second World War as a backdrop? Did that have an impact as well? HRK: Yes. At a personal level. My father enlisted as a chaplain to the navy. I looked on him initially with a great deal of pride. I saw him as a war hero: he’d been in a ship that had been torpedoed and so on. As I found out about his other life I became aware that he was a great mythologizer and I began to distrust all the things that I ever before felt about him – ‘was it true, have you been torpedoed, have you done all these things?’ – and wanted to know from the men who’d been with him what he’d really done. MJE: Could you say a little bit about your educational experience and how that developed your interest in history? HRK: At school at Kingswood, the Methodist school in Bath, I probably always thought that I wanted to write. I thought of reading English at Oxford, or even Classics . . . MJE: Why then did you apply to do history? HRK: I think I felt that my interest in writing could be located in history. I’d written a sort of play at school on the Dreyfus Affair. It was the drama of the affair that captured me. I hoped that I could bring history and literature together. MJE: You were attracted to Dreyfus because it raised issues about justice and injustice which tapped into you personally? HRK: Exactly. I mean, I wasn’t really a rebel. I enjoyed Kingswood: it was a creative place where academic ideas were nurtured. And I also played a lot of cricket

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 17

H.R. Kedward: An Oral Profile • 17 and rugby: a conventional schoolboy. But underneath it all I had a feeling that the people in authority were probably always the wrong ones. I think this was very much my way of generalizing from my attitude to my father. MJE: Did you go directly up to Oxford? HRK: I was turned down for national service because I’d broken my arm very badly, but before that I’d been for officer training at Uxbridge. I used the week at Uxbridge to go to the Proms at the Albert Hall: everybody else, it appeared, stayed at the camp, so I was rejected as unsuitable officer material. I didn’t quite know what to make of that. Instead of national service I got a job teaching for a year in Oxford at the Dragon School. The year 1956 was a really formative one. It was the year of Suez and the Soviet repression of the Hungarian revolution, and I was involved in street protests about both.

Student Experience MJE: How did you characterize yourself politically when you became a student? Were you a member of the Labour Party? HRK: I’d been a liberal up to then because of family tradition. You have to remember that liberalism as I knew it was left-wing, the only opposition to the Tory stranglehold on rural Kent, and I’d always held my grandfather to have been an oppositional figure. It was only when I left school that I discovered that liberalism wasn’t quite like that. It was then that I joined the Labour Party, with a typical nonconformist conscience, still involved with Methodism. I’d always been amused and indignant that Anglicans in our small rural town in Kent thought we were uncultured. As a student I went out with others to take occasional services in the villages round Oxford. We went to one particular one, Murcott, which was said to be in one of the last areas to have a peasant revolt. It was Remembrance Sunday. Due to Suez I gave an anti-war sermon, which deeply offended many in the elderly congregation whose brothers or fathers had died in the First World War. Halfway through the sermon one of the congregation interrupted me – now, you don’t interrupt the preacher, you never do. She was trembling but she said she didn’t agree. I realized painfully that here I was, a really arrogant young student, telling them what to make of their own experiences. I look back on that as one of many turning points in my life. I couldn’t go round telling people what their history was. I had to listen to them. It didn’t mean that I agreed with her, but she had been an actor in a history which I barely knew.

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 18

18 • Martin J. Evans MJE: What was the nature of the syllabus at Oxford? Did that foster your interest in French history? Were there any particular tutors who influenced you? HRK: From my main tutor at Worcester College, Harry Pitt, I gained a great enthusiasm for history itself and enormous rigour of detail. He made me feel it was something I really wanted to do: basically, getting at the sources. I predictably decided to do the special subject on the English Civil War because of my nonconformity and interest in republicanism. France was not really apparent in things I did at all. The syllabus was narrowly stretched over 1,500 years of mainly English political history. During the winter of my third year I broke my collar bone. I couldn’t play rugby so I read more. I was impressed by Collingwood’s primacy of thought in history, and I read Marx for the first time, responding immediately to his use of the dialectic, a concept which I found liberating after the unilinear approach of most of my courses. I saw how revolutionary he was as a historian though I never became a Marxist. MJE: Why was that? HRK: I was suspicious of anything in politics which looked potentially authoritarian. This intensified when I began to read the work of Kropotkin and other anarchists. MJE: Were you at all influenced by the new left at this point in the fifties? Was that something you were really aware of? HRK: I became very aware of it as a graduate. As an undergraduate I was still wrestling with where to go from liberalism, and how to move from religion to something much more humanist. I hadn’t gone very far. It all took off as a graduate. MJE: How did that change you? Why did you decide to do graduate studies? HRK: I’d got a place at St Antony’s in Oxford. The big academic decision was to move into French history and I made it during the vacation after finals. I chose France partly because there was a brand new graduate course available called ‘Church and State in France’, with a wide range of European history. I had a real wish to do more of the theoretical reading which I had only just started. The ideal tutor for this at St Antony’s was James Joll. He was full of ideas. He sat there crosslegged, bouncing up and down about the Futurists. He talked about art and Nietzsche and this seemed to me exactly what I should now study. It was a wish to be rigorous and interested in theory, ideas, literature and art. St Antony’s was open to this. It was a stimulating place to be in 1960.

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 19

H.R. Kedward: An Oral Profile • 19 MJE: What particularly attracted you to Joll? HRK: He’d written about intellectuals and politics. He was also interested in France, as you can see from the series of St Antony’s Papers. He approached France in an intellectual way. He told me that I had to understand positivism if I wanted to work on France, so I went off to investigate Auguste Comte. It all seems so obvious now, but it wasn’t then. The connection between ideas and French politics contrasted vividly with my view of English history as events without ideas, though Raymond Williams and E.P. Thompson later shifted me profoundly from this. Joll fulfilled all those Collingwood notions that thought lay behind history. His knowledge of utopian socialism and Godwin was fundamental in propelling me towards an academic interest in perfectibility. This was the ideal way to transfer my optimism from God to people. Anarchism was, I would say, my first ‘enthusiasm’ in the sense used by History Workshop Journal. Paradoxically there was also Lewis Namier. It’s easy to forget how great an impact he made in the late 1950s with his evidence that eighteenth century English politics could be seen in terms of networks of preferment and ambition rather than political ideology. It was very much an expression of his resistance to the ideology of Nazism, and although he seemed to discount ideas, his very approach was itself a theoretical model, giving us new insights into why people went into politics. Theodore Zeldin was teaching at St Antony’s and I watched with fascination how he set about creating his highly original insights into France: his early work on the Second Empire had derived much from Namier. I remember thinking I should perhaps see politics in France not as a struggle of ideologues but as a network of individuals pursuing personal ambitions and outmanoeuvring each other while drinking pastis and playing pétanque. These different influences created a tension of opposites within which I began to work as a graduate. Ideas behind history on the one hand, and networks of personal motivation behind politics on the other. MJE: Does that explain your interest in individuals and motivations? HRK: It begins to explain that, but at the time of the early 1960s it explained much more my growing passion for opposites. It’s why I eventually wrote a book on fascism as a synthesis of opposites.1 Before that I went back to the Dreyfus Affair as a question of explaining the relation of opposites to each other. Why was Barrès on one side and Péguy on the other? I stayed rooted in dialectical thinking. Reading Freud was vital – revelations of the conflictual way in which our psyche worked, or didn’t. It was the internalization of opposites which made me interested in the mechanism of choice.

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 20

20 • Martin J. Evans MJE: When did you first go to France? HRK: I chose to work on Albert, duc de Broglie for my dissertation, after his memoirs fell on my head in a second-hand bookshop in Oxford. I found myself in Paris in 1961 researching this old aristocrat whom I didn’t like at all, but his moral order of the 1870s struck me as the kind of authoritarianism I would like to investigate. I went to see a Comtesse in the family, but was unable to get her to release any of her papers. I sat disconsolately in a bar and talked to a journalist there. I told him my problems in my broken French. He said ‘Oh these aristocrats, you just have to take them a large bunch of flowers.’ So I spent all my money on a large bouquet, took it to the Comtesse, who immediately opened drawers of private archives. I was in Paris at the time of the 17 October Algerian demonstration. I got to a fringe part of it, demonstrating against repression. I heard nothing about all the deaths until much later. During that winter the OAS began bombing Paris which pushed me into even more commitment against Algérie française and the war. MJE: What was your situation, politically and academically, when you came back from France? HRK: At that point my political interests were in anarchism generally, in Labour politics, the anti-apartheid movement and the CND (Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament). It was a small step later on to move from being against French torture in Algeria to protesting about the American bombing and napalm in Vietnam. At the time I really did begin to feel I’d made the transition from liberalism to a socialist or anarchist commitment. When I came back to St Antony’s I thought of going on to do a doctorate there, but in the summer of 1962 I was offered a job by Asa Briggs at the new University of Sussex.

The 1960s MJE: What was the intellectual climate of Sussex and how did that influence your development as a historian? HRK: We were only about five or six historians in what was the second year of the University. Martin Wight made sure I taught European history and Asa Briggs made me realize how much social history I had ignored. We had the opportunity of situating history within an interdisciplinary context, which was why I was so happy to be appointed there. The first lecture I gave was on Jung and his Individuation Theory. The following year I started teaching evening classes in Brighton on modern art. The connection was in images and symbols.2 Jung and

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 21

H.R. Kedward: An Oral Profile • 21 archetypes were a great fascination to me, which later comes out in my interest in carnival theory and inversion.3 Right from the start at Sussex I was an enthusiast for a course called ‘The Modern European Mind’ on which we were able to teach Nietzsche, Freud, Marx and Sartre. MJE: What was your role in the European School of Studies at Sussex? How does that relate to your history teaching? HRK: Probably the most influential experience was the interchange between history and literature. Beynon John, a literary lecturer in French, was also interested in the Dreyfus period. But we decided to teach a joint topic in Beynon’s specialist area, which was Sartre, with a course on the history and literature of the Occupation. It’s basically where my interest in resistance started . . . MJE: Which year was that? HRK: 1964–5. I was just finishing the little book on Dreyfus.4 I put together the historical side of this joint teaching and he produced all the literary texts, introducing me to Eluard, Aragon, Jean-Louis Curtis, Vercors and so on. We both found each other’s area more exciting than our own. MJE: You were doing the teaching – at what point did you make the decision that you now wanted to do in-depth research into this area? HRK: It was a major shift. The decision we made to move the history and literature forward coincided with my growing interest in the history of ordinary people, enormously influenced by E.P. Thompson’s The Making of the English Working Class. Ordinary people’s culture could be refound; their voices could be re-heard. If he could do it for the early nineteenth century then contemporary historians had even more opportunity. I was in the Bibliothèque Nationale one day and I asked myself, who could I meet who had been caught up in the Dreyfus Affair? Probably not that many, but there were people with similar polarized positions as historical actors in the 1930s and the war years whom I could perhaps meet. I made a sudden decision to move my research forwards. It was in the summer of 1966: I would stop work on conflict in the Dreyfus Affair, and start working on conflict during the Occupation. MJE: Was it already clear in your mind that you wanted to interview people, that you wanted to have oral history as a key aspect of your research? HRK: [long pause] As much as anything that was a result of my adult education teaching in Brighton. There was always someone who had been there in person.

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 22

22 • Martin J. Evans For example in a discussion on the Bauhaus, a voice with a German accent came from the back, ‘Do you mind if I say a word?’ She wasn’t part of the regular group, and she said ‘I was one of the first pupils at the Bauhaus. My tutor was Kandinsky’. The impact this made in a little room in central Brighton was incredible. It was the Murcott situation again, but without the embarrassment. Here were the voices of the past. Oral history seemed increasingly to me as something I could do that would be different. MJE: To what extent was that approach infused by the radicalism of the 1960s? HRK: Sussex was radical in terms of syllabus, intellectually very radical. It wasn’t radical in its student recruitment. It’s true that we contributed to the Labour victory in Kemp Town, Brighton in 1964. That victory by six votes, and the national victory overall, induced in some of us a new level of political and social awareness. We were looking for ways in which the University could reflect this. It was fashionable and young but we were failing to shift social access. By the time we got to 1968 many of us were ready for some kind of major change in attitudes to ourselves and to politics. May 1968 in France seemed to be an answer. I went over to Paris several times during the summer, knowing that I had a whole year’s research leave to come in 1968/69. The excitement of finding anarchist groups, defying authority with a huge amount of creativity, this really did measure up to what I imagined a cultural and political revolt should be. In research terms, it gave me new ways of looking at the Occupation. I saw how students came together in ways which made street action into a dynamic element in their own lives: people were politicized by their action. Nineteen sixty-eight made me much more aware of the reciprocal relationship between motivation and action in history. It moved me on from Namier. I’d read a lot of Sartre in 1967, and accepted that you are defined by what you do and the choices you make. The areas of action, choice, commitment became very important to me in 1968. I made my own choice: I decided to work on the grass roots of resistance, les gens de base – to make it into an area of oral research.

Oral History MJE: Why did you choose in particular to focus on a particular region? HRK: When I was over in 1968 I went to talk a couple of times to Henri Michel, the Director of the Comité d’Histoire de la Deuxième Guerre Mondiale. I already had the idea that I might be able to do something different if I worked away from Paris. Richard Cobb’s work was a major influence here: I didn’t know him personally at the time, but we later had amazingly rich discussions about local

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 23

H.R. Kedward: An Oral Profile • 23 archives and localities, though he much preferred the north to the south of France. Henri Michel was firmly against the pull of either north or south. He implied that I needed to be centred in Paris in order to make sure that I wasn’t misled by the provinces. Paris and Lyons were caught in a major debate at the time about centres of resistance. This seemed to me a challenge, and, to be fair to him, he gave me his encouragement once he realized that I really wanted to start in Lyons. He virtually said, ‘I’ll fully support you, but don’t expect to learn very much.’ MJE: Was he suspicious of oral history? HRK: Yes, very. He was the leading historian of the Resistance, who influenced all of us, but he told me that only oral reports collected at the end of the war were useful. He was worried by the problems of fabrication and fantasy. He believed the oral history I would be doing would be of that nature. MJE: What did you see as the aim of your research? HRK: I suppose theories of relativity were high in my interests at the time, picking up some things I’ve already said about both Namier and Sartre. Every time I met somebody there was an individual account of early resistance. They nevertheless claimed a common motivation: patriotism. Taking that as given, it was a question of getting beyond it, to build up individual profiles of motivation. Once they realized that the interview was not a test of their patriotism they talked far more freely. I started the hard way. In 1968–9, my main research was into the motivations of communists. Henri Michel had told me that communists would only give me the party line. So too, for different reasons, had the authorities in the Institut Maurice Thorez, the old Bibliothèque Marxiste, in Paris. But in the south I met communists who weren’t conscious of the party breathing down their necks. The way they talked about their past made me decide to research the gap between party leaders and localities in 1940–1, through local communist tracts and papers, looking closely at the nuances of meaning. It was clear that the structures of the French Communist Party (PCF) had broken down in 1940, allowing different communist voices to make their appearance. The party line had been retrospectively reimposed by the party, and was expected by non-communist historians. I felt I’d made a breakthrough to more relativist material.5 MJE: When you came back to Sussex did your teaching there help your research? HRK: Yes, but still more in the early 1970s I worked on an alternative newspaper, Brighton Voice, involved in such issues as squatting, anti-racism, individual rights, tenants’ protests, all from a local perspective. I did a survey, for example, of the

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 24

24 • Martin J. Evans ghetto-like streets in the poorer housing estates in Brighton. It was taken up by the organization Shelter. I continued also to be part of a radical faculty group in the University, pushing for more democracy. My conviction by then was that 1968 had been too indiscriminate: it had been exciting for that reason, but it had tried to transform everything. I felt the same ideals could go into trying to transform the specific area in which you find yourself. It was a great period of alternative local press all over the country, which gave a boost to oral testimony, as people spoke and wrote their own histories. This fed directly into my research. MJE: One question which might be asked in response to that is: do you think writing history can be objective? Do you think somebody could question the research that you’ve conducted by saying this is just a political project? HRK: I go back to the tension of opposites which was the framework within which I operated all the time. The opposite of this relativist, grass-roots, oral-based history was the academic model based mainly on archival research and written records. First of all, I found it vital to keep objectivity as an ideal: it cannot be perfectly obtained, but you keep it as an aim. I also found it crucial to move between oral history and the archives. I was always looking for something which increased the amount of truth available. In academic history at the time in Britain, very few people took the area of resistance seriously, except through military history or the study of national leaders. The impact of 1968, of E.P. Thompson, Raymond Williams, History Workshop Journal was to ask how ordinary people lived and made history. This was a way of enlarging the area of truth, not diminishing it. Secondly, if this was, in fact, going to expand the area of truth, to expand the area of objective historical questioning, then this had to be in such a way that people would respect its scholarship, the way it used evidence and the ways in which ideas are constructed. Occupation history in France in the 1970s was mostly centred on the Vichy regime, following the impact of Paxton. The historiography of the Resistance had come to a kind of stasis. A few of us therefore had a bit of a carte blanche to experiment, but it needed intellectual rigour if it was ever going to be taken seriously. My approach to oral history was not only to let people have their own voice but also to use it as a hypothesis for researching written evidence. So much of what we do as historians starts as hypothesis. Oral evidence is another starting point. In that vein I became very interested in what I called opinion-events: opinions which are, in a sense, the event itself. I looked at the drôle de guerre and the period of the Nazi–Soviet pact in this way.6 I was also interested in reassessing anecdotes as a shift of gear, of dimension, as a vital part of the way history is transmitted. People would say, ‘Why don’t you

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 25

H.R. Kedward: An Oral Profile • 25 turn off the tape recorder: it’s just an anecdote.’ I tried to keep it running, to keep anecdotes within the area of serious research. Later on, I began to ask how much of the police reporting in the archives was based on a system of bluff. Discovering what is, and what is not, deliberate misinformation in written records is still a major challenge to scholarship. To me, the criterion of ‘scholarly’ is not just empiricism: it’s also using relevant ideas and methodologies taken often from anthropology, critical theory, psychology and other disciplines. All the time it’s a question of enlarging the mantle of scholarship.

Resistance Studies MJE: Did you see your work as an attempt to relate resistance to the wider themes within French twentieth-century history? HRK: Absolutely, and more than that: wider themes of history from the Revolution onwards, ways for example the Communist Party used the history of revolutions, not Russian but French, to establish their own legitimacy within the Resistance. Their bidding for a central position in French history becomes very explicit during the Resistance. Similarly the role of liberal Catholics, moving from the fringe to the centre. There is a re-locating of much of French history during the Resistance. MJE: Do you see yourself as a pioneer of resistance studies, not just in France but on a much wider scale? HRK: I’d like to think I’ve contributed. Certainly my work dovetailed with work done by James C. Scott in his Weapons of the Weak, a marvellous book I only discovered comparatively late on, after I’d done most of my work on the Maquis. I’d also been a friend and colleague of Ranajit Guha who became identified with Subaltern Studies. It was wonderful to be able to introduce these parallel worlds to the first of the big series of conferences on resistance staged by the IHTP in the 1990s.7 MJE: Did you find any examples of the way in which your innovative approach of combining oral testimony with archives threw up new interpretative pathways which you hadn’t expected? HRK: Yes, indeed, through the impact of feminism. I realized in the mid- to late 1970s, partly through my involvement in alternative Brighton politics, but mainly through feminist colleagues and friends at Sussex, that most of the ways I’d been

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 26

26 • Martin J. Evans working were gender-blind. Oral work became even more vital for understanding Resistance history: it was a continuous revelation of women’s actions, which had been marginalized, but also of conventional gender roles, which had been used and transcended. It was only after Resistance in Vichy France that I started working on the idea of ‘the woman at the doorway’, which took me from interviews to new questions at the archives and then back again.8 I wish I had got there sooner. It led me into working on Maquis history as a question of communities rather than just ‘men in the woods’, and discovering the importance of home-based resistance and topography. I became very place centred. MJE: Did you set up models of resistance for the first book? HRK: I read Bourdieu quite early on and was stimulated by his theories of habitus, but there was never a question in my mind of doing a Bourdieu type of analysis, more a question of adopting and adapting his concepts. Similarly, much of the reading that I’d updated on existentialism led me to search for ways in which people created a personal identity (être) through Resistance action (faire). I was excited that John Sweets called his book on Clermont-Ferrand Choices in Vichy France. Looking at resistance through a range of models from non-historical sources was constantly enlightening. I never felt the need for a single model. I watched a lot of films in the 1970s and had provided the historical side to a psychological film in 1970 called Resistance by Ken McMullan. I was also doing very occasional television on visual imagery. The kind of film director you are determines the resistance you find: I tried to put this into a speculative article about the way in which I imagined how Claude Chabrol or . . . MJE: John Ford? HRK: . . . John Ford, might have handled similar scenarios. It was another way of opening up the relativity of history, through visual imagery. It helped me to think in terms of ‘local colour’ in the history-of-art sense of the term, something expected of the artist, or indeed the historian, but varying from image to image.9 MJE: Was that facilitated at the same time by working in an interdisciplinary context? HRK: Totally, yes.

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 27

H.R. Kedward: An Oral Profile • 27

Resistance in Vichy France MJE: So, Resistance in Vichy France had been published in 1978; it had been very well received both in the Anglo-Saxon world and in France . . . What path did your research follow in the early 1980s? HRK: I’d been partially involved in the Larzac protests in 1973–4 and had been down there at various times. One of the first things Mitterrand did in 1981 was to relieve Larzac of the presence of the military. I had felt there was something of local Resistance history still going on in the rural areas in the south. It was comparatively easy for me in 1981–2 to pursue the idea of the Maquis as ‘rural resistance’. I wanted to move from being urban-orientated. Resistance in the rural areas was much more of an unknown. When I went back to France in 1981 I was more conscious of the specificities of place, not just regions or towns, but villages, even parts of villages. During the 1970s, we went over as a family every year in the summer, Carol, myself and our two small children, often camping, or in a gîte, making very local friends for a period of a month or more. Camping in the south was one of the things I’d always thought of exploring, from the congés payés of 1936, through to the camping forcé of the exode10 and then life in the Maquis. We had more than a glimpse of how rebarbative the terrain actually was. The importance of the seasons made for an extra relativity in the study of the Maquis, introducing a different kind of chronology.11 Terrain and season were part of what I called the structures of the Maquis, as was the concept of the outlaw. Putting them all together resulted in the specificity of ‘outlaw culture’ and the places where it operated. There was a reluctance of many I interviewed to respond to direct questions about resistance as a cultural phenomenon: they saw the approach as intellectual pattern making. But it was nearly always the témoins themselves who drew attention to local traditions, practices and folklore relevant to the Maquis. That is how I became so conscious of the relationship of the Maquis in the Cévennes to the Camisard revolt, and the importance of oral transmission over time.12 MJE: Do you feel you had an advantage because you were from outside France? HRK: That’s a good question. Most people liked to think I came from the BBC, which was universally admired. The tape recorder was almost a passport. It’s interesting that the Maquis as a phenomenon in French history is still very much on the defensive. Old Maquisards and their communities frequently feel under attack in France. Once over that, they were able to explore what they had actually done. They believed that, as a foreigner, I would not plough it all back into French newspapers.

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 28

28 • Martin J. Evans MJE: So much of your recent work is concerned with locality, with region and with place. Historians of the left in France looked down on this because they were the product of a Jacobin tradition, is that right? HRK: It was more that ruralism after the war was associated with Vichy. Its connections with left-wing republicanism were ignored. So too were comparisons of the Maquis with patterns of behaviour in the counter-revolution, or with rural movements generally, not all on the Left by any means. I tried to confront this in the collective tribute to Paxton.13 MJE: I was very interested that you mentioned Larzac, because here again you have the emergence of regionalist movements in the 1970s which wanted to recover their local history from a left-wing perspective. To what extent was there any kind of relationship with the work you were doing? HRK: I was able to tap into the growth of a left-wing Occitan movement which developed from the Second World War onwards. Robert Lafont had done a great deal to show how this developed. It broke with the politics of Mistral and the Félibrige, though it’s respectful of their literary achievements. There was a borrowing from Catalan regionalism, which had been on the extreme left in Spain during the Civil War. Two of our closest friends in Montpellier, the Pougets, were members of the Communist Party, but also passionate regionalists – on the face of it a paradox. It was through them that I met a number of people involved in the Occitan movement, before the war, during and since. Regionalism is now a huge area of research activity but in the early 1980s when investigating the Maquis I had to be very careful of the way I used the word ‘regionalist’, very, very careful. It was thought to be an accusation of separatism. I’m still learning more and more about the polyvalence of regional cultures during the Occupation. MJE: Why did you initiate the two conferences at Sussex, 1984 and 1994? HRK: Precisely because we had such a vast range of things to learn from each other. Trying to resituate Vichy and the Resistance was a huge project, shared by an increasing number of researchers who often didn’t know each other’s work. The first conference stemmed from a decision made with Roger Austin in a restaurant in Mende sometime in 1982.14 People’s generosity with their work and ideas was enormously encouraging, and the possibilities afterwards were daunting. I began to envisage an international project on comparative resistances across time and place, and even worked out plans for a centre of resistance studies, but failed to see it through. Pressure of time and health, I suppose . . .

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 29

H.R. Kedward: An Oral Profile • 29 MJE: Nevertheless, why do you think resistance studies took off before the second conference? HRK: Resistances in Eastern Europe and in South Africa gave the studies a major boost. Even the planning in France for the bicentenary of the Revolution showed that there was already a decline in the heroic status of revolutions, and a shift towards resistance as a means of bringing about major change. Issues of resistance had also become vital to Holocaust studies. By the time we get into the late 1980s there’s already a phalanx of people pushing back the frontiers, and some wonderfully inventive graduates leading new research. Liberation, fifty years on, became an area of creative thinking, thanks to their work. There was the possibility of being even more theoretical; there was the intellectual necessity to bring gender and Outre-Mer perspectives to the centre, and there was no longer the need to prove that resistance was a generic concept. Nancy Wood and I wanted the Liberation conference to be more self-consciously critical as well as more inclusive.15 MJE: How do you see your research now? You’ve talked about there being a trilogy of books. HRK: In the 1990s French research on the Occupation shifted towards the Resistance, marked by the series of six conferences which started in Toulouse. Suddenly there was every kind of resistance specificity and relationship, an enormous richness of material and debate, creativity of research and imagination. A sociology of resistance had always been elusive, since it was difficult to show how it was representative of any social class or group. But you could now write a social history, a cultural history, a regional history of resistance in the ways in which we had been thinking way back in the seventies and the early eighties. This was now the agenda of the day. The conferences were unconstrained by any attempt at definition, until it was debated at the end. They were milestones in French historiography. I particularly valued the precision with which Jean-Marie Guillon referred to the continuing relativity of all our projects: ‘Est-il possible de définir la Résistance hors du contexte dans lequel elle s’inscrit?16 In my final book of the trilogy I hope to look at the structures of hiding, subterfuge, clandestinity, bluff, exile, transmission and expectation. There’s always the conundrum of unity and disparity as expressed in the old question, ‘Why is it that the same new joke appears in school playgrounds on the same day across the whole country?’ Is that itself an illusion, a telescoping of time, a denial of agency? What structures are at work? Fabrice Virgili has encountered this in his study of femmes tondues at the Liberation.17 Should we return to Jung and archetypes? Probably not, but it’s good to think that an old passion of forty years ago might still have a vigour of its own.

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 30

30 • Martin J. Evans MJE: Does that mean that you’re going to be looking at deeply embedded patterns of behaviour, thought and culture over hundreds of years? HRK: Huge advances have been made in the study of cultural transmission over time. I greatly enjoy the thought of trying to use these insights. But I’m too limited by my interest in existential choice and the unexpected impact of action to make any real contribution to Annales-type history, much as I admire it. There’s still a lot that has to be explained by the conjuncture of events, the ways in which events create new patterns of behaviour as well as intensifying old ones. Structures do not by themselves explain the nature of events. I just want to see how far they can go.

Notes (works referred to are by H.R. Kedward unless specified otherwise) 1. Fascism in Western Europe 1900–45 (Blackie and New York University Press, 1969). 2. ‘Modern Man in Search of his Art’ in J. Creedy (ed.), Art and Social Life (Tavistock Press, 1970). 3. ‘The anti-carnival of collaboration: Louis Malle’s Lacombe Lucien’ in S. Hayward & G. Vincendeau (eds), French Film: texts and contexts (Routledge, 2000). 4. The Dreyfus Affair (Longman, 1965). 5. ‘Behind the Polemics. French Communists and Resistance, 1939–41’ in S. Hawes & R. White, Resistance in Europe (Allen Lane, 1975). 6. ‘Behind the Polemics’ in Resistance in Europe. 7. ‘La Résistance, l’histoire et l’anthropologie: quelques domaines de la théorie’ in J.-M. Guillon & P. Laborie (eds), Mémoire et Histoire (Privat, 1995). 8. ‘French Resistance: a few home truths’ in W. Lamont (ed.), Historical Controversies and Historians (UCL Press, 1998), and ‘Resiting French Resistance’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 1999. 9. ‘The Maquis: Whose History?’ in M. Scriven & P. Wagstaff (eds), War and Society in 20th Century France (Berg, 1992). 10. ‘Patriots and Patriotism in Vichy France’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 1982. 11. ‘Le monde rural face au maquis’ in François Marcot (ed.), Lutte armée et Maquis (Annales Littéraires de l’Université de Franche-Comté, 1996). 12. ‘The maquis and the Culture of the Outlaw’ in Kedward & Austin (eds), Vichy France and the Resistance (Croom Helm, 1985). 13. ‘Rural France and Resistance’ in S. Fishman, L. Lee Downs, I. Sinanoglou, L.V. Smith & R. Zaretsky (eds), France at War (Berg, 2000).

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 31

H.R. Kedward: An Oral Profile • 31 14. Edited with Roger Austin, Vichy France and the Resistance (Croom Helm, 1985). 15. Edited with Nancy Wood, The Liberation of France (Berg, 1995). 16. Jean-Marie Guillon, ‘La Résistance au village’ in Jacqueline Sainclivier & Christian Bougeard (eds), La Résistance et les Français (Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 1995), p. 233. 17. Fabrice Virgili, La France ‘virile’ (Payot, 2000).

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 32

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 33

Part I Collective Trajectories

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 34

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 35

–3– Pacifists into Resisters? A Biographical Approach to Women in Wartime France: the Peace Petitioners of 1938 Siân Reynolds

This paper explores some of the ambiguities and contradictions of the ‘spirit of Munich’,1 with reference to a group of women campaigning for peace in September 1938. In a collection honouring the work of Rod Kedward, it takes its cue from his concern to balance the complexity of messy human lives with the broader movements of history. One cause that galvanized French women into political action in the 1920s and 1930s, despite their formal exclusion from political institutions, was that of peace. They joined both mixed and single-sex peace movements and crusades. Virtually all French people will have been ‘pacific’ to use Nicolas Offenstadt’s term,2 immediately after the First World War, but the cause of peace thereafter cannot be reduced to any simple formula. Some groups and individuals remained ‘unconditional’ or ‘integral’ pacifists, opposed to war at any price. But as international horizons darkened, others were increasingly moved by anti-fascism to qualify their support for peace. Political parties and organizations often split along these lines. By the time of the Munich crisis of autumn 1938, most of the French population was probably hoping for peace but expecting war. Opinions among the politically active hardened into pro- and anti-Munich positions. Many anti-fascists opposed any further concessions to Nazism, as did some right-wing patriots. Unconditional pacifists, on the other hand, were still signing petitions in favour of a negotiated peace, and rejecting war as the solution to international tension. Offenstadt’s study of ten petitions was the stimulus for this paper, which concentrates on twenty-eight individuals associated with an all-women appeal for peace launched in September 1938 (mentioned but not analysed by Offenstadt).3 Given the date, it would be a reasonable working assumption that such women embodied the esprit de Munich. This small-scale investigation had two aims: to see whether, as is widely assumed, those who favoured negotiations with Hitler at the time of Munich (and beyond) were more likely to sympathize with Vichy and even with 35

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 36

36 • Siân Reynolds collaboration, rather than with the Resistance; and secondly to reflect on the findings of a biographical approach where women are concerned.

Unconditional Pacifists – Unlikely Resisters? Norman Ingram remarks that French pacifism is commonly associated with ‘defeatism, collaborationism and the Vichy experience’.4 Prominent prewar pacifists such as André Belin, Felicien Challaye, Léon Emery and Marcelle Capy, who later worked for Vichy or wrote articles in the collaborationist press, are often cited to support the case, and prosopographical research lends further backing. Offenstadt identified 516 traceable pacifists (men and women), of whom 305 have an entry in the Dictionnaire Maitron (DBMOF). Of those, he calculated, only 7 per cent went on to be ‘active in the Resistance’, whereas 20 per cent, usually the most committed pacifists, ‘actively sided with Vichy and accepted collaboration’. The figures are suggestive, though for the great majority (73%) there was inadequate evidence. J.-P. Azéma has remarked similarly that the earliest resisters within the Socialist Party (SFIO) were ‘partly ex-Blum supporters who had opposed the unconditional pacifists before the war’. Studies of the factions within the prewar SFIO highlight the divisions between the supporters of Paul Faure, the ultra-pacifist secretarygeneral, and those of the more ambivalent pacifist Leon Blum, while ‘revolutionary pacifism’ led to the expulsion of the left-wing pivertistes, followers of Marceau Pivert. Those socialist députés who voted full powers to Pétain in July 1940 included supporters of Faure, some of whom subsequently supported Vichy and/or collaboration.5 Jean-François Sirinelli’s analysis of intellectual meritocrats in the interwar generation singled out the pupils of Alain (Emile Chartier), whose pacifist stance in the 1920s influenced many of his disciples all their lives. Several of Alain’s pupils did indeed support Vichy. Of those who did not, Sirinelli argues that it was their ‘old reflexes of laicité and republicanism which acted as a safeguard, preserving them from the deviations that swept away their pacifist comrades’.6 All these groups (peace campaigners, socialists and pupils of Alain) turn up in our sample of women petitioners for peace. On 22 September 1938, just before Munich, a manifesto signed by sixteen ‘women against war’ was printed in the leftof-centre daily paper L’Oeuvre. Advertised as from women of varying political horizons, it was accompanied by an article by one signatory, Germaine Decaris, entitled ‘Pour la paix jusqu’au bout!’The petition called for an ‘equitable revision’ of the 1919 treaties, and for governments to respect their Briandist rejection of war in 1928. It attacked the anti-fascist women of the Comité des femmes contre la guerre et le fascisme, who had advocated firmness over Czechoslovakia, and declared that as mothers, wives and sisters, the signatories would refuse to see

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 37

The Women Peace Petitioners of 1938 • 37 their menfolk massacred a second time. On 9 October, after Munich, virtually the same names appeared under the heading ‘League for peace: an appeal by the women of September 38’, appealing to women who had ‘responded with incalculable fervour’ to the original manifesto, and referring again to ‘our children, companions and brothers’. This article listed a temporary committee, including ten of the sixteen, plus an additional twelve names. The total of twenty-eight women was taken as the basic sample: see appendix for full list, with details.7 This call for negotiations indicated a committed faith in talks with Hitler’s government as late as 1938. Some women even signed (or had their names added to) Louis Lecoin’s pamphlet ‘Paix immédiate!’ in September 1939, which led to prosecution or professional sanctions. What follows is an outline of the political itineraries of these women before and after Munich. With hindsight, historians have tended to describe this kind of petition as a mark either of naive and idealistic humanitarianism, or of tolerance of Hitlerism and willingness to accept any kind of ‘enslavement’ to avoid war. How far is this borne out by the record? Secondly, can any general points be made about gender in this context?

Characteristics of the ‘Women for Peace’ of 1938 Principled pacifists often came from the older generation, old enough at least to have witnessed the First World War as adults, whether combatants or not. In our sample, the age range is certainly tipped towards the upper end, though not overwhelmingly. Of the nineteen cases where date of birth is known with certainty, six were born in the 1870s, though only one, Eidenschenk-Patin, was over seventy. Four were in their fifties in 1938; four were in their forties; and four were in their thirties or less. Of the nine others, informed guesswork suggests ages in the forties or fifties. Two women had lost a close relative in the war (Drevet, EidenschenkPatin) and several were already outspoken pacifists, falling foul of the authorities during the First World War (Alexandre, Pichorel, Colliard, Bigot, Martinet). Some were part of the famous ‘comité de la rue Fondary’. This commitment was not therefore new for them. But sufficient of the sample were aged under forty-five (at least six or seven) for it to be clear that this was by no means a ‘veterans’ petition’.8 Where signatories’ occupations are known, 50 per cent (fourteen out of twentyeight) were teachers, about equally split between primary (institutrices) and secondary teachers, the latter often highly qualified philosophy graduates. Prewar pacifism was notoriously widespread both in the teachers’ unions, particularly the SNI to which at least five belonged, and among philosophy graduates, where Alain’s influence was far-reaching. Socially, most were from modest backgrounds: some were the children of teachers, but for others education had been their path out of poverty and into politics. The non-teachers include a lawyer, doctor, post office official, novelist, three journalists and several of unknown occupation.

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 38

38 • Siân Reynolds Even more conspicuously however, and this turns out to be a crucial element, several of these women were ‘half of a married couple’. In virtually every such case, the couple was agreed over politics, and engaged in comparable levels of activity, with both partners addressing meetings, signing petitions, writing articles and so on. The sample links the Alexandres (Michel and Jeanne), the Emerys (Léon and Marie-Thérèse), the Lefrancs (Georges and Emilie), the Martinets (Marcel and Renée), the Modianos (René and Hélène), the Pazes (Maurice and Magdeleine), the Prudhommeaux (Jules and Marie), and the Weill-Raynals (Etienne and Sarah), accounting for eight of the twenty-eight women (over 25%). We might add the possible link between Marie and Georges Vidalenc, and the case of Madeleine Vernet, married to the socialist militant Tribier but rarely identified with him as part of a couple. These (heterosexual) couples were a political phenomenon of the time, and it is difficult retrospectively to disentangle the roles of each partner. Some, like the Alexandres and Pazes (of the older generation), or the Lefrancs and Modianos (of the younger), were regularly referred to as couples; in other cases (Emery, Martinet, Prudhommeaux), there is more historical evidence about the husband.9 In almost all cases however, contemporary sources make it clear that the female partner had an independent career and commitment, often in separate women’s organizations. Politically, almost all these women had been active in or had ties to left-ofcentre parties or organizations. Is it surprising that several older women had belonged to the French Communist Party (PCF) in the early 1920s, for varying lengths of time (between one and eight years): Bigot, Colliard, Pichorel, Paz, Hagnauer? Almost all quit it and developed close links with Pierre Monatte’s periodical Revolution prolétarienne, some because their feminism was judged ‘petitbourgeois deviation’ by the party.10 None of the twenty-eight was still a party member in 1938, and several were strongly anti-communist. One or two had personal links to Trotsky, though none is identified as a Trotskyist. By 1938, several of the ex-communists and a significant minority of the entire sample (about seven) were in, or had recently left, the SFIO, where they were affiliated to various factions. By September 1938 at least three (Audry, Modiano, Colliard) were pivertistes, recently excluded from the Socialist Party. None had links to the political right. While pacifism was undoubtedly stronger on the left, one might have expected some representatives of right-wing or politically neutral pacifism by 1938, but that does not seem to have been the case, with the possible exception of Louise Hervieu. Unsurprisingly, many signatories were long-standing members of one or other peace movement. In the Ligue des Mères et Educatrices pour la Paix (LIMEP), an all-women group, were Mme Eidenschenk-Patin, its president, and Marie Prudhommeaux, its secretary-general.11 From the Ligue Internationale des Femmes pour la Paix et la Liberté (LIFPL), a feminist, highly politicized organization which

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 39

The Women Peace Petitioners of 1938 • 39 had recently split between ultra-pacifists and anti-fascists, came signatories Drevet (its long-term secretary-general), Alexandre, Paz, Vidalenc, Martinet, Emery. From the Ligue Internationale des Combattants pour la Paix (LICP), a mixed and militant pacifist crusade, were Decaris, Drevet, Decroix, Lenoir, Vernet. One or two women were members of the Rassemblement Universel pour la Paix (RUP), an umbrella formation closer to anti-fascism.12 Several were also members of broadbased anti-fascist movements, such as the Comité de Vigilance des Intellectuels Antifascistes formed in 1934, and the long-standing Ligue des Droits de l’Homme (both groups had tended to fracture over the peace question). Several signatories were experienced trade-union activists at national level (Bonnin, post office) or local level (Decroix and Lenoir, both in Rouen); Becam, like several others, was in a teachers’ union. Of SFIO members or ex-members, at least two (Lefranc, Paz) had links to pacifist factions in the party, while two others (Audry and Modiano) were key members of the pivertiste Parti socialiste ouvrier et paysan (PSOP), and drafted its recent conference resolution on revolutionary pacifism.13 Overall then, the women in this sample, whatever else they might be, were not naive idealists, outside politics. They virtually all had considerable political and lobbying activity behind them, few being strangers to controversy. Several teachers had been suspended from their posts. Témoignages in the Maitron biographies or elsewhere speak approvingly of their militant qualities.14 Some wrote outspoken political journalism in the left-wing press (Paz, Clar, Decaris); others had edited and written for various papers, party or otherwise. A few had feminist links, e.g. Bonnin in the Ligue des Droits de la Femme. Most of them were both committed to various political causes and conscious of their marginal situation as women. They had reacted politically to events in the 1930s, though with one overriding aim: to avoid if possible a European war. What emerges with clarity, concealed by the convention of listing names in alphabetical order, is that such petitions drew on a complex of networks, in which personal ties also counted. The Révolution prolétarienne group of dissident communists, the 1915 comité de la rue Fondary and the LIFPL were all represented, as were the ultra-pacifist LICP, the LIMEP and the pivertistes; plus some freelance journalists/writers, perhaps valuable for their public profile.15 Almost everything about their previous commitments suggests that these women were predominantly anti-fascist, but saw peace as the more urgent goal. Had it not been for their pacifism therefore, one would expect people with such profiles to have been sympathetic to the Resistance, and to have been entirely out of sympathy with Vichy and all it stood for.

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 40

40 • Siân Reynolds

Wartime Destinies What happened to these women, once war broke out? Christine Bard, in her encyclopaedic account of interwar feminism, suggests that ‘leading lights of integral pacifism, such as Madeleine Vernet [in our sample] and Marcelle Capy [not in, but a leading orator for the LICP], never envisaged Resistance in any form’.16 We may nuance this judgement later, but first should note that pronouncements on individuals in wartime are fraught with uncertainty – particularly in the case of women, since documentation is often so incomplete. The history of the ‘dark years’ has to be approached as if it were painted in ‘varying shades of grey’. Clear cases of both collaboration and resistance concern only a minority of adults living in France during the Occupation. Over the years, historians have acknowledged that, for the bulk of the population, both acquiescence towards the Vichy regime and participation in the Resistance could vary, being episodic and discontinuous; that any individual could change allegiance; and that collaboration in particular divided one-time supporters of Pétain. What is more, estimating the presence of women in the Resistance has been singled out as a peculiarly difficult terrain, given their often constrained circumstances.17 The evidence about this sample has been gleaned piecemeal from a variety of sources, and remains fragmentary and at times speculative. Nevertheless it seems worth presenting, since the attempt at collective analysis throws up some general points. Let us start with evidence of pro-Vichy or collaborationist sentiments or actions, since that is the ‘default hypothesis’ offered by historians about pacifism, whether of left or right. It concerns about five women. Louise Hervieu, aged fifty in 1938, had recent notoriety as the prize-winning author of Sangs, a novel about hereditary syphilis, of which she was a victim. She had lobbied leaders of both left and right (both Blum and Pétain) in the cause of the carnet de santé, before the war. Perhaps this single-issue campaign explains a private document, undated but evidently from 1940, in which she gives the clearest pro-Pétain statement found in our sample: ‘But now under the guidance of our venerated leader, guide and saviour, the reconstruction of our unhappy country . . . and of the individual, is on the way. On the healing of the individual will depend the healing of the French race.’18 Hervieu was so handicapped by illness that her opinions appear to have been confined to private papers. Others in the sample went further. The journalist Germaine Decaris (the likely organizer of the September 1938 petition) continued writing articles in collaborationist papers during the war. While not apparently sanctioned by the épuration, she was a close friend of Léon Emery (b. 1898), who unequivocally expressed support for a rapprochement with Germany. Emery, a youngish, gifted and influential teacher at the Ecole normale in Lyons, was an integral pacifist. During the war, he taught at the Ecole des cadres of the (Pétainist)

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 41

The Women Peace Petitioners of 1938 • 41 Légion des Combattants, and wrote for Germinal, a German-financed paper. Not only that, but in private correspondence quoted at another postwar trial, he expressed pro-German sentiments. In 1945 he was imprisoned, but released on health grounds after a year (he was ailing and almost blind). His wife, MarieThérèse, is one of our sample, but information about her is, alas, sketchy. She received a sympathetic letter from Michel Alexandre in 1945, and supported her husband after the war by returning to teaching. The default presumption must be that she shared, or did not dissent from, her husband’s views. 19 A more tragic case in some ways is that of Emilie Lefranc. The Lefrancs were energetic participants in the CGT’s school for workers’ education throughout the 1930s, as long-time socialists and convinced pacifists, Georges being active in the SFIO in a ‘planiste’ faction. During the war, both taught secondary school. Georges approved the armistice, argued for a politique de présence in syndical circles under Vichy, and wrote occasionally for L’Oeuvre and other Vichy authorized journals. Emilie, failing to get a post in Paris near her family, unwisely accepted an office job at the Vichy Ministry of Labour, between 1941 and 1943. She later argued that she had used it to protect many trade unionists, but her record led to her imprisonment and professional dismissal in 1945 (tougher sanctions than for her husband). She was eventually reinstated as a teacher on appeal, but died soon after retirement, in circumstances thought to point to suicide.20 Finally there is the case of Charlotte Bonnin (b. 1887) a trade union official in the postal service and a militant pacifist. She carried on her syndical activities under the new Vichy institutions, in circumstances not recorded in detail, and for this received a sentence at the Liberation. 21 So of the twenty-eight, at least five show some evidence of support for Vichy, though in no case have we any evidence of personal support for collaboration. If we turn now to the other end of the spectrum and seek evidence for Resistance activities, the picture is similarly clouded by uncertainty, but nevertheless suggestive. In one case, that of Colette Audry, her Resistance role is referred to in every biographical text, though no primary source has been identified. Newly married and with a baby by 1940, she taught in Grenoble, and apparently contacted Lucie Aubrac before joining the local communist-dominated Resistance (despite her support for the POUM, Partido Obrero de Unificación marxista, during the Spanish war). Her role appears to have been one of writing propaganda. Shortly after the war, she worked on the screenplay of the famous Resistance film La Bataille du Rail, surely unthinkable without Resistance credentials.22 Lucie Colliard, whose itinerary had taken her from the PCF to the SFIO, then to the PSOP, was much older (b. 1877). However, she rejoined the SFIO during the war and was a socialist candidate to the National Assembly in both 1945 and 1946, eventually becoming a local councillor (once women were allowed both to vote and stand for election). She could hardly have been approved as a candidate if she had shown

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 42

42 • Siân Reynolds any sympathy for Vichy, so we must assume the opposite. With less evidence, one might surmise that Marthe Bigot and Marthe Pichorel, whose paths ran parallel to hers, sympathized with Resistance rather than with Vichy, since they were not troubled after the war, and remained closely associated with Révolution prolétarienne, which refused to attempt to publish during the war. Older women were of course less likely to take on active Resistance roles, but these three also exemplify the politics of the Révolution prolétarienne group. Vehemently anti-communist, they had condemned the show trials of the 1930s, defended Trotsky and Victor Serge, and would have found it particularly hard to join any resistance movement or network dominated by communists, while at the same time being opposed to the Gaullists. The men in the RP group (Rosmer, Chambelland, Monatte) took a similarly low-key stance during the war, but none is suspected of sympathy for Vichy. 23 In one instance, the evidence is circumstantial. Marie Vidalenc may be linked with Georges Vidalenc, who signed several peace petitions, and was an official of CGT-Force Ouvrière after the war. He was imprisoned in Dachau, for Resistance activity, while ‘his wife never returned from Ravensbrück’. If the identification is correct, this pacifist couple did indeed join the Resistance.24 Another couple where the evidence must be assumed to cover both, but is more visible for the husband, are the Weill-Raynals. Both were Jewish and vulnerable during the war, having campaigned for peace before 1939. Etienne, a Paul-Faureist pacifist in 1938, was interned for a while in Drancy in 1941, and thereafter, despite the danger, joined a clandestine Resistance group. After the war, he was a member of the Comité géneral d’études sur la Resistance. The assumption must be that his wife shared this option, though the evidence is yet to be found.25 Jewish identity is also a factor in the case of the Hagnauers, a cas-limite at the frontier between different positions. Roger Hagnauer (b. 1901) was Jewish, a cadre in the prewar primary teachers’ union, the SNI and an early dissident from the PCF, joining the Révolution prolétarienne circle. He and his wife Yvonne signed the Lecoin tract ‘Paix immédiate!’ and were immediately suspended from teaching, but Roger volunteered for the army medical corps (to avoid, he later said, being accused of cowardice). After the armistice, Yvonne, who was not Jewish, managed an orphanage at Sèvres, where Roger, taking a menial job for the Secours national, was protected – as were many Jewish children and staff. In 1943, he fled into hiding after being denounced. After the war, he was accused by communist members of SNI of Vichy sympathies (partly for belonging to the Secours national), but the case was dismissed. Fiercely anti-communist, Hagnauer was a difficult man with many enemies, but insisted that his pacifism had not led to any form of collaboration. Yvonne’s témoignage is not available, but she ran the Sèvres orphanage for many years, eventually receiving the Medal of the Just from the Israeli government for her wartime role, which must therefore unequivocally be seen as one of non-compliance with Vichy.26

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 43

The Women Peace Petitioners of 1938 • 43 Forms of resistance which involved sheltering Jews, resisters, refugees or Allied soldiers are of course particularly hard to quantify and in most cases to prove. These roles were quite likely have been played by women and were as dangerous as any others. One study of social workers during the war seeks to nuance the dismissive judgements of postwar historians who assumed that cooperation with the Secours national meant enthusiasm for Vichy policy. It suggests that social workers who wished to help the Resistance while avoiding political commitment opted for the humanitarian form of participation.27 Madeleine Vernet’s case may be one such. Aged sixty-two in 1940 and reportedly exhausted, she retired to a country house in Normandy. Christine Bard found no evidence of her resistance. However, her daughter Hélène, interviewed in Le Monde in 1976, reported that she sheltered British parachutists in Normandy during the war before being bombed out, while her husband, Louis Tribier, allowed their Paris apartment to become a safe house for the Resistance. 28 In our sample then, clear-cut cases of either pro-Vichy activity or prolonged Resistance activity are hard to identify: about five can hesitantly be placed in each category. But the surviving evidence points towards most of our sample being out of sympathy ideologically with Vichy. The picture is rendered particularly complex by the recurrent feature of personal vulnerability. A high proportion of these women were vulnerable, whether through their own illness or old age, that of their husband/partner, or through being Jewish/having a Jewish partner. Jeanne Alexandre had to support by her teaching her Jewish husband Michel, who was arrested, interned, released through the intervention of friends and went into hiding.29 Jewish identity may have been an element in the itinerary of the Modiano couple. When war was declared, they happened to be in Norway, where Pivert had sent them on an international mission. Electing to stay there, they were arrested briefly during the German invasion, but thereafter supported themselves by teaching, not returning to France till years later. 30 Sickness and old age could also be seen as inhibiting factors. Several women in our sample, whatever the politics of their husbands, spent the war in support roles, being the only or main earner or carer. Into this category came Jeanne Alexandre, Yvonne Hagnauer and Marie-Thérèse Emery. Renée Martinet was married to the ex-communist intellectual Marcel Martinet, a lifelong diabetic. (He was also linked to Révolution prolétarienne). Depressed and very sick, Marcel died in 1944.31 Emilie Lefranc had elderly parents as well as a son to care for – her move to Paris was motivated by family commitments; Marie Prudhommeaux had a husband in his late seventies, and Mme Eidenschenk-Patin was herself in that age group. In the cases of eleven women, we have no evidence about the wartime years. Of those not described in detail above: Eloise Becam was an official in the teachers’

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 44

44 • Siân Reynolds union prewar (no further information); Betty Brunschvicg was a lawyer, a widow and long-time SFIO member, whose married name suggests that she was connected to a prominent Jewish family. Her role as political adviser to the Guy Mollet government of the 1950s almost certainly rules out a Vichy past.32 On Fanny Clar, a left-wing journalist, and Juliette Decroix, an agrégée and LIFPL and LICP member in Rouen, there is no information for the war years. Camille Drevet, the long-term international secretary of LIFPL, was on the committee of LICP in 1937–8, worked for Balkan refugees immediately prewar, published a book about the Balkans during the war and became a disciple of Gandhi. Jeanne AnceletHustache was and remained a respected medieval scholar. Hélène Laguerre was the daughter of long-term peace campaigner and feminist Odette Laguerre, whose grandson was lost in the Vercors Resistance. (He may have been Hélène’s son.)33 Madeleine Lenoir, another Rouen activist probably close to Juliette Decroix, was also a close friend of the Emerys, and there is no record of her war years; she remained a pacifist thereafter. Jeanne Martin was a trade unionist in the garmentmakers’ federation prewar – there is no record of her war years.34 Magdeleine Paz was well known in prewar socialist circles and a prolific journalist. Her husband Maurice was a Paul Faure socialist in 1938. The Maitron entry on her says she was ‘profoundly shocked’ by the outbreak of war, and gave up politics completely, publishing only literary works thereafter.35 Of Marie Prudhommeaux (the only woman who signed in her married name, as ‘Madame Jules Prudhommeaux’), we know only that her son was an active anti-fascist during the Spanish war, and took refuge in Switzerland after 1939.36

Conclusion This paper set out with two aims. On the first question, the links between pacifism and the Vichy/Resistance dichotomy, the evidence gathered here is extremely incomplete, and our sample is a small and somewhat angled one. It nevertheless suggests that assumptions of a link between pacifism and pro-Vichy sentiment cannot simply be taken as read. Only a small minority appear to have been actively pro-Vichy, and most seem to have been out of sympathy with the regime. Our sample can be contextualized by relating it to at least one study of the Resistance, which gives examples of ‘pacifists into resisters’. Olivier Wieviorka in his analysis of the group ‘Défense de la France’ offers a ‘corrective’ to the view that ‘pacifist views seem to rule out commitment to Resistance’. He quotes members of this movement as saying variously: ‘I was a pacifist at the time of Munich’; ‘I was ashamed of feeling relieved by Munich. But it’s the truth’; ‘I was an all-out pacifist between the wars’; ‘even in 39–40 I hoped there would be peace’. One woman explained that she saw that the French army had surrendered without trying to escape; ‘so if you want to know why after being an ultra-pacifist until I was 20,

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 45

The Women Peace Petitioners of 1938 • 45 I joined the Resistance, well that’s why’.37 At this level then, the findings urge us to be cautious with our assumptions about political trajectories. It is on the second of my two original questions that I wish to end, with some reflections on gender. Starting out on this project, I did not really know what to expect. Some of these names were known slightly to me from previous thematic research on women and politics. But only one or two are well known – Colette Audry is perhaps the clearest example. What does emerge from biographical detective work is that, during the late Third Republic, these women were part of a subterranean network of political activity, often all absorbing and well informed, but unofficial. Few of them had the qualifications or status to be involved in serious political or administrative activity, so paradoxically they were unlikely to be in any sense ‘Vichy careerists’, like some of the men close to them. Emilie Lefranc and Charlotte Bonnin are examples a contrario, showing that the more implicated in public life one was, the greater the possibility of being drawn early into the toils of the ‘legitimate’ Vichy government. On the other hand, the complications of private life seem to bite into all their lives. Most of them lived as adults through both World Wars and the difficult intervening years, displaying continuous political consciousness. Yet one has a strong sense that they were always obliged to be preoccupied with the everydayness of things, even in the middle of tragic events. We are not generally aware of such intrusions when considering the political trajectories of men – but perhaps we ought to be, especially since so many of these women were part of a ‘political household’. In Auden’s words, [suffering] ‘takes place/When someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along’. That ‘someone’ in these cases probably prepared the food, cleaned the window, walked along, perhaps to collect the children from school – but was at the same time also active in political expression with a world perspective. It is perhaps this ‘double life’ that close study of women’s biographies brings into better historical focus.

Appendix Appendix, giving full name, d.o.b., marital status, etc., links. A separate entry in DBMOF = (M); several husbands have Maitron entries also noted Jeanne Alexandre, née Halbwachs (1890–1980) (M), married to Michel Alexandre (1888–1952) (M); Jeanne Ancelet-Hustache (1892–1983); Colette Audry (1906–90) (M), married and divorced Robert Minder; Eloise Becam (no dates); Marthe Bigot (1878–1962) (M); Charlotte Bonnin (1877–1969) (M); Betty Brunschvicg (? before 1900–77) (M), married to, then widow of Goudchaux Brunschvicg (M); Fanny Clar (c.1880–?), married to Louis Diligent (M); Lucie Colliard, née Parmeland (1877–1961) (M), married to Henri Colliard (M);

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 46

46 • Siân Reynolds Germaine Decaris (before 1900–55) (M); Juliette Decroix (dates not known) (M); Camille Drevet (1880–1969) (M), married to, then widow of Henri-Paul Drevet, killed in WWI; Mme A. Eidenschenk-Patin, née Patin (1864–?) one son killed in WWI; Marie-Thérèse Emery (dates not known), married to (Paul) Léon Emery (1898–1981) (M); Yvonne Hagnauer, née Even (1898–1985) (M), married to Roger Hagnauer (1901–86) (M); Louise Hervieu (1878–1954); Hélène Laguerre (dates not known, probably b. 1890s), daughter of Odette Laguerre (1860–1956); Emilie Lefranc, née Lamare (1903–70) (M), married to Georges Lefranc (1904–85) (M); Madeleine Lenoir (1893–1978) (M); Jeanne Martin (1910–?) (M); Renée Martinet, née Chervin (1880s?–1973), married to Marcel Martinet (1887–1944) (M); Hélène Modiano, née Schulhof (1909–90s?) (M), married to René Modiano (1910–90s?) (M); Magdeleine Paz, (1889–1973) (M), married first to Henri Marx, then to Maurice Paz (1896–1985) (M); Marthe Pichorel, née Collard (1878–1968) (M); Mme Jules Prudhommeaux, née Marie Dallet (stepniece of Godin, of Familistère de Guise), married to Jules Prudhommeaux (1869–1948) (M), mother of Jean Prudhommeaux (M); Madeleine Vernet (1878–1949) (M), married to Louis Tribier (1884–1954) (M); Marie Vidalenc (dates not known: possibly married or related to Georges Vidalenc, if so, d. 1940s Ravensbrück); Sarah Weill-Raynal, née Leven (1887–1975) (M), married to Etienne Weill-Raynal (1887–1982) (M). Total 28.

Notes 1. J.-P. Azéma, La France des années noires (Seuil, 1999), I, p. 15. 2. ‘S’engager pour la paix dans l’entre-deux-guerres’, special number of Matériaux pour l’histoire de notre temps, Bibliothèque de Documentation Internationale Contemporaine (BDIC), Jan–March 1993, p. 53, hereafter Matériaux. Cf. Norman Ingram, The Politics of Dissent (Clarendon Press, 1999). 3. ‘Signer pour la paix en 1938–9: pétitions et pétitionnaires’, colloquium on Les Dictionnaires biographiques du mouvement ouvrier (Paris, 1993). The ‘Maitron’, the Dictionnaire Biographique du Mouvement Ouvrier Français (edited by J. Maitron and Cl. Pennetier, Editions Ouvrières, volumes for the interwar years, hereafter DBMOF) was the major source for both Offenstadt’s sample and mine. 4. Ingram, ‘Pacifism and the liberation’ in H.R. Kedward and Nancy Wood (eds), The Liberation of France (Berg, 1995), p. 209. 5. Azéma quoted in O. Wieviorka, Une certaine idée de la Résistance: Défense de la France (Seuil, 1998), p. 149. See note 37 below. Cf. M. Bilis, Socialistes et pacifistes 1933–9 (Syros, 1979); R. Gombin, Les socialistes et la guerre (Mouton, 1970); N. Castagnez-Ruggiu, ‘Les Paul-Fauristes: itinéraires mili-

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 47

The Women Peace Petitioners of 1938 • 47

6.

7.

8.

9.

10. 11.

12.

13.

14.

tants’, unpublished paper for colloquium (see note 3 above), and the same author’s contribution to Matériaux, pp. 48–52. See also Jean Rabaut, Tout est possible (Denoël, 1974). J.-F. Sirinelli, Génération intellectuelle: khagneux et normaliens (Fayard, 1988), p. 566, apropos Maurice Deixonne, and p. 603 for quotation by S. Weil on Alain’s pupils. Petitions also in Bibliothèque Marguerite Durand (BMD) under DOS 327 Paix; cf. Christine Bard, Les Filles de Marianne: histoire des féminismes 1914–1940 (Fayard, 1995), p. 308, who calls these signatories ‘ultra-pacifists’. Some also signed the SNI/PTT petition analyzed by Offenstadt, see note 3 above (Paz, Pichorel, Vernet, Hagnauer, Lefranc, Weill-Raynal). I have dropped from the sample Antoinette Drevet (presumably related to Camille), for lack of information; and added Renée Martinet, since other sources suggest she joined other ex-LIFPL (Ligue Internationale pour la Paix et la Liberté) members to set up the Ligue des femmes pour la paix in 1938. Dates of birth from DBMOF, or obituaries in Le Monde. The comité de la rue Fondary supported the Hague international women’s peace conference of 1915: Bard, Les Filles de Marianne, pp. 94–102. There are articles in DBMOF on these three men but not on their wives. Cf. all the entries on couples for evidence of equal activity but some imbalance of reporting. On Monatte and Révolution prolétarienne, see Colette Chambelland, Pierre Monatte (Editions de l’Atelier, 1999). On LIMEP, see F. Blum, C. Chambelland and M. Dreyfus, ‘Mouvements de femmes 1919–1940: guide des sources’ (special number of La Vie Sociale, 1984), p. 39. Odette Laguerre, mother of Hélène, was the secretary of this Ligue. Details and further references on all these movements in Matériaux, and in Blum et al., Mouvements de femmes. On LIFPL, see Ingram, Politics of Dissent, pp. 249ff. Cf. S. Reynolds, France between the wars (Routledge 1996), ch.7. See T. Hohl, ‘L’identité politique des courants et tendances de la SFIO du congrès de Tours aux débuts de la IVe République’, doctoral thesis, Université de Bourgogne, 2001, p. 510 (copy at OURS). Colette Audry and Hélène Modiano were on the bureau of the Gauche Révolutionnaire in 1937–8 and drafted a resolution calling for the rejection both of ‘abdication and servitude’ in the face of fascism and of resistance by armed conflict. Instead they urged fighting fascism with revolutionary syndicalism and propaganda. On Modiano see Rabaut, Tout est possible, p. 189. Of Colette Audry he wrote: ‘vigoureuse, brune et dure, probe et supérieurement agile d’esprit’. On Lucie Colliard, see quotation by Charles Tillon (DBMOF entry on Colliard); while

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 48

48 • Siân Reynolds

15.

16. 17.

18. 19.

20.

21. 22.

23.

24.

Marceau Pivert wrote in 1945 of ‘cette brave et fidèle Lucie Colliard’. Marthe Bigot ‘a laissé le souvenir d’une militante de qualité, combative, convaincue mais modeste’ (DBMOF entry). These include Louise Hervieu and Jeanne Ancelet-Hustache, a Catholic agrégée and academic who may have known some other signatories professionally. She was a German specialist at the lycée Fénelon in Paris. (Colette Audry was also linked to German scholarship, marrying a teacher of German, Robert Minder in 1939; they divorced after the war.) Bard, Les Filles de Marianne, p. 447. ‘Shades of grey’, Julian Jackson, France: The Dark Years 1940–1944 (OUP, 2001), p. 2. See pp. 87ff. for a discussion of pacifism in 1938–40. On women, cf. typology in Hanna Diamond, Women and the Second World War in France (Longman, 1999); and Paula Schwartz ‘Re-defining Resistance’ in M.R. Higonnet et al. (eds), Behind the Lines (Yale University Press, 1987) and ‘Partisanes and gender politics in Vichy France’, French Historical Studies, spring 1989. Hervieu’s dossier in BMD contains details and typescript document. Cf. interview, L’Oeuvre, 22 September 1938. On Decaris, see Offenstadt, ‘Signer pour la paix’, and DBMOF articles on Decaris (brief) and Emery (long). Decaris still wrote for L’Oeuvre after it had been taken over by Marcel Déat. Emery is a clearer case. Michel Alexandre was nevertheless prepared to write on his behalf after the war, as he did for Challaye, but thought Emery in particular had committed a serious ‘erreur’. BDIC, Fonds Alexandre, F delta Res 348. Emery was sheltered for a while by Decaris on release from prison. See DBMOF on the Lefrancs. Their case is discussed in Sirinelli, Génération intellectuelle, pp. 574–85. See the brochure Emilie Lefranc 1903–1970, n.d., a collection of témoignages and explanations (copy in Musée Social). On Bonnin, see entry in DBMOF. According to Bard, ‘elle a mal tourné’ and was sanctioned after the Liberation. See DBMOF article on Audry, an interesting and unduly marginalized figure; cf. Séverine Liatard, ‘Colette Audry: une intellectuelle dans le siècle’, DEA, Université de S. Quentin en Yvelines, 1995–6 (copy in OURS). Source DBMOF articles on all the named activists, male and female; these indicate a strong link between these three women and the Monatte circle, which included the Hagnauers. Revolution prolétarienne after the war contains obituaries and testimonies (copies in Musée Social). Oddly, there is no DBMOF article on either: Georges was active alongside the Lefrancs in the Institut supérieur, a pacifist prewar, an anti-communist afterwards, in Force Ouvrière and a historian of the labour movement. Reference to deportation in unsigned postscript to his posthumous La Classe ouvriere et

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 49

The Women Peace Petitioners of 1938 • 49

25.

26.

27. 28. 29.

30.

31. 32.

33.

34. 35.

36. 37.

le syndicalisme français 1789–1969 (F.O., 1969): Georges Vidalenc was deported to Dachau, while his wife died in Ravensbrück. Marie Vidalenc joined Jeanne Alexandre and Emilie Lefranc in leaving LIFPL in 1938, so all the signs point to a link. See the DBMOF articles on both: they say nothing about Sarah during the war, but she was active in the movement against alcoholism afterwards. Etienne Weill-Raynal, unlike Paul Faure, rejected pacifism in 1940, writing ‘The more attached one was to peace, the more one should be in the front line of the fight against Hitler’, quoted by J. Rabaut in Cahiers Edouard Depreux, April 1987 (copy in OURS). See DBMOF articles on both Hagnauers, and the typescript ‘Chronique de l’entre-deux-guerres’ at the Musée Social, unpublished memoir by Roger Hagnauer, defending both his own and his wife’s actions. Armelle Mabon-Fall, Les Assistantes sociales au temps de Vichy (l’Harmattan, 1995), p. 62. See Le Monde, 26 February 1976 (‘A Levallois-Perret, une vieille dame digne’). The Alexandres’ overriding loyalty was to the philosophy of Alain, whose writings they published in the journal Libres propos. Jeanne was related by marriage to Victor Basch, president of the Ligue des Droits de l’Homme who with his wife was murdered by the Milice in 1944. Cf. papers in the Fonds Alexandre at the BDIC. René Isaac Modiano appears to have a Jewish name. On the Modianos, see the literature on pivertisme; after their Norwegian stay they seem to have dropped out of political life altogether. See the DBMOF entry on Marcel Martinet. See the obituary in Le Monde, 19–20 July 1977, the entries in Who’s Who in France up to her death, and the brief entry in DBMOF. Possibly related by marriage to Léon and Cécile Brunschvicg, who were in hiding during the war and who both died shortly afterwards. On Camille Drevet, see the literature on LIFPL, and especially Gertude Bussey and Margaret Tims, The Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, 1915–1965 (Allen & Unwin, 1965). On the Laguerre family, see the file on Odette Laguerre in the BMD. See DBMOF entries on both. See the long entries on both her and Maurice in DBMOF. Like others in the sample, she was close to the Révolution prolétarienne circle, and very antiStalinist, after a brief spell in the early Communist Party. On the Prudhommeaux family, see the DBMOF article on Jules, and the Fonds Prudhommeaux at the BDIC. Wieviorka, Une certaine idée de la Résistance, pp. 149–54. See also some of the témoignages.

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 50

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 51

–4– ‘Quite simply, Colonel . . .’: Gender and the Second World War Luc Capdevila, François Rouquet, Paula Schwartz, Fabrice Virgili and Danièle Voldman

‘Quite simply, Colonel because the men had abandoned their weapons’.1 This was Marguerite Gonnet’s reply to the president of the military tribunal in Lyons in 1942 when asked how as a mother of nine children she could have taken up arms. She became departmental head for l’Isère of the Libération-Sud Resistance movement. This dialogue, which took place in a military court, underlined what seemed obvious to those involved. On the one hand the image of the courageous mother, a role which should have distanced her from an involvement with arms, and on the other that of the failure of the men unable to save their country from defeat and invasion. These opposing but concurrent visions of the role of each sex, one suggesting what you might call a traditional role definition of the woman at home and the man at war; and the other, presented just as simply, summarize the upheavals brought by the war. The intention here is not to juxtapose a history of men and of women grouped on each side of the biological frontier, nor to chart a masculine or feminine identity enclosed in an unchanging predetermined pose. Whatever place these invariables must hold as anthropology or psychoanalysis defines them, gender identities, because they are socially constructed, are sensitive to the development of relationships between the sexes. One’s self-image or the image of the ‘other’ as well as the relationship between men and women allow us to perceive even slight changes brought about or revealed by modern wars of the type which developed from the end of the nineteenth century. Gender is one of a number of determinants of identity (social, national, generational and cultural). In both the public and private sphere gender is a factor in everyone’s and every group’s interaction with the world around them. Both men and women were confronted with stereotypes for their role in wartime. These stereotypes were repeated frequently in contemporaneous discourse. During the Second World War the discourse attributing martial roles to men and domestic roles to women was particularly widespread.

51

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 52

52 • Luc Capdevila et al. This was undermined by the contradictions between a supposedly unalterable ideal and increasingly obvious changes in roles attributed to each gender. Not only did the events of the war place a large number of men and women outside or on the margins of these assigned roles, but they also highlighted the underlying changes in French society since the Great War. It is just as impossible to set gender identities in stone as it is to isolate them from other determinants of identity. Identities change and reflect the shared features of a group as well as each individual’s uniqueness. It is as much a question of ‘identifying oneself with . . .’, of conforming, as to ‘distinguish oneself from’, of being distinct. Inclusive and exclusive, identities are crucial for both an individual’s and a social group’s interaction with the world. They are enriched by lived experience and are involved in a permanent redefinition of a ‘Self’ and an ‘Us’, emphasizing different images of ‘otherness’ (‘the other’, ‘an other’, ‘others’, ‘the others’). All this assumes a toing and froing between a prescriptive pole which outlines the traditional role reserved for each sex, and a transgressive pole which groups together the numerous examples of departure from the established stereotype. The tension between these two poles expresses itself both symbolically and across imagined and lived experience. If political, social, private and intimate discourses are all taken into consideration as well as the situations that undergird them, it is possible to observe changes. The movement between the two poles, the transgressions and their effects on the social norms of the assigned roles bring us a new understanding of relations between men and women, as well as of the experience of the war in its most intimate details.

Women and Men as Always? Unlike identities, stereotypes are defined by their apparent unchanging quality; they assume an unvarying form. Stereotypes do not have to present tested truths, their proof comes simply through being expressed. In essence, stereotypes are durable; they are resistant to fact, simplistic and simplifying. They structure themselves around a prescriptive pole defining a group by an image which is both central and reductive, without flexibility. They are nevertheless sensitive to events. Stereotypes can have varying, even contradictory, forms depending on the particular society which produces them. They can be transformed, temporarily diminish, re-emerge and be used differently. Nevertheless, their reappearance is seen as a call to order, a condemnation of those who are not conforming, those who are approaching their margins and who infringe their limits. At work in society, they suffuse the collective imagination and help establish predetermined readings of reality. By producing a simplified image of the other, they have a classifying function which helps to define the ‘self’ in

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 53

Gender and the Second World War • 53 opposition to an ‘other’. In Britain during the Second World War national representations of the self and the enemy were extremely simplified; the situation was much more complex in the French case. In France the community was organized around the contrast between the French and the ‘Boche’. Figures of the ‘other’ (the soldier, the prisoner, the civilian, the fugitive, the hero, the heroine, the partisan woman, the partisan man, the terrorist, the cowardly, the brave . . .) were necessary for the assertion of each person’s identity, which seemed to define itself in relation to that of the enemy. But if these national stereotypes occupy an important place, they do not overshadow those which are related to social position, age or gender. Thus, the war also reduced the role given to each sex to its most cursory form, that of the soldier and his support, or the guardian of the home. The military topography of the war front and the home front was clumsily superimposed onto that of the private and public, the domestic and working spheres. From 1940, at a time when people lost their normal reference points, values and identities were blurred. It is possible to advance the hypothesis that the stereotypes mobilized by the propaganda of various different agencies constituted a range of competing mental images. These images were both rigid and reassuring, offering every individual a way of interpreting the world in a state of upheaval. If the vestal virgin and the warrior, presented in a number of ways, constituted what was at the heart of the representation of sexed norms, the assertion of a stereotype also posed a problem by its failure to limit itself only to a positive register. Among the most common figures, which obviously also existed in peacetime but whose contours were reinforced in wartime, are those of the fighter opposed to the coward, the housewife and mother as opposed to the ‘fille publique’ (prostitute), with the adjective ‘publique’ underlining the crossover from private to public sphere. From this point of view, model and counter-model functioned as a system to forbid all alternatives to the norm, even if they registered de facto the reality of the transgression. Thus, Vichy’s decision to give priority of employment to POW wives, and the glorification of women resisters or of the patriot mother at the Liberation was paralleled by the denunciation of ‘she who slept with the enemy’. Was the coexistence of these established models and newly minted counter-models no more than a temporary challenge to the established order of male domination? The question is whether the war, as an event outside the norm, confirmed the normative pole or not. In general, it can be said that the question of gender identity was part of a vast blurring process where the ordinary criteria which structured it became confused. This mixing up of social functions, the upheaval in relationships and in daily life, the breaking up of families and the intensification of emotions and traumas created the need for refuge (as demonstrated by the importance of rumours, the cult of the leader, religiosity . . .). But these conditions also provoked a parallel and partial recomposition of new identities, creating changes, whether superficial or deep-seated, in individual and collective gender perceptions. Perhaps

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 54

54 • Luc Capdevila et al. this recomposition of identities corresponded to a reinforcement and a modification which paradoxically sometimes coexisted. Thus, the change from a domestic identity to a political identity demonstrated that a woman’s new relationship with the world did not entail a denial of her maternal identity. Lucie Aubrac, the first woman member of the Consultative Assembly in Algiers, was first introduced and first introduced herself as a mother and happy wife, although she was also a Resistance fighter. Is this a sign that the war simultaneously reinforced and modified gender identities?

Transcending Roles Vichy heralded the ‘eternal feminine’, the conservative image of the female. This was accompanied by an ‘eternal masculine’, a traditional model of the male built around a martial virility, associated with the figure of the family father and worker. This was, however, impregnated with a ‘gender imperfection’ brought about by the defeat, and the defeated, the prisoners and in a certain sense Vichy’s act of allegiance and submission to the German victor. Authors as different as Robert Brasillach and J.-P. Sartre have underlined the gendered nature of models in which defeated France was female and triumphant Germany male. Perhaps this goes beyond simply illustrating the link between discourses of power (or the aspiration to power) and masculinity, the question being to establish whether or not the war is a factor in levelling out inequalities between women and men. In France, from a political point of view, Universalism was seen as a masculine order prior to the edict of 21 April 1944 giving women the right to vote. It absorbed, masked or even ignored the female gender. Male domination was perceived as natural, except in a few marginal circles like the suffragists or feminists or amongst some nonconformist artists. Most of the discourses which defined the social order and the individual, those current in sociology and psychoanalysis for example, did not distance themselves from this male order. However, the traditionally assigned gender roles were repeatedly defined at all levels of discourses (intimate, private, social and political). Buttressed in this way, the masculine order did not need to go to the trouble of justifying and legitimizing itself. This repeated command to conform to gender norms was at variance with other realities but bears witness to the challenges and changes in relations between the sexes. The upheavals provoked by the war blurred the frontier between the sexes both in reality and in collective imagination, a blurring which either forced people to conform or allowed them to transcend their defined roles. Did not the defeat reveal the fragility of the masculine gender as powerfully as it revealed the uncertainties of the feminine gender? If historians have long thought of masculine identity as an unquestioned given and of feminine identity as problematic, an examination of the Second World War

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 55

Gender and the Second World War • 55 represents a privileged field of observation of the relations between the sexes and allows us to see the moments of extreme tension between conformity and nonconformity. The repetition of gender stereotypes can be considered both as the expression of real changes in roles and as a male perception of threat to their dominant position. Nevertheless, these discourses resonate in a context where the experience of men and women is substantially different and they probably offer a pertinent window through which to analyze the development of gender identity. To the extent that the war front and the home front corresponded to contradictory realities, a gendered examination of them is indispensable. Women on the home front found themselves in direct contact with the occupier. The general impact of bombing was that it blurred the distinction between the armed forces and civil society. The battles of the Liberation in towns and villages are another example and they affected a large number of inhabitants. The distinction between the war front and the home front was no longer the same as that between masculine and feminine. This was the experience of the nurse left by the Red Cross to ‘carry out any necessary services’ in the town of Falaise just after the Normandy landings. She found that the members of the local council had ‘scattered’ a gendarmerie brigade based in the countryside refused to restore order in the town, the doctors had all fled and the fire chief had been killed by the bombs. Completely alone, she approached the local Kommandatur on 12 June 1944 in order to obtain an evacuation order, then travelled throughout the already heavily bomb-damaged area in order to ‘instruct families to evacuate within the day’.2 In June 1944, in the town of Falaise, in the midst of the fighting and uncertainty about the political future of the country, a young nurse reacted on her own initiative to the threat of bombing and the absence of the men.

Towards an Elaboration of New Norms? This discrepancy, and more generally the weakening of the frontier between public and private, was revealed in numerous exceptional situations. Openings emerged in the whole range of sometimes vital constraints imposed by the war – new possibilities in social behaviour which were forbidden in times of peace. The fracture, however temporary, of many family, community or social frames of identity, the change in family, patriotic and national reference points, the needs of everyday survival: all these elements placed individuals in previously uncharted situations. Either alone or in recomposed social groups, people had to find the resources to get through the difficulties of the time. What had been considered exceptional in a time of peace, what could have been considered a transgression of normal behaviour became frequent, even commonplace. Examples of this include those prewar militants who adopted a wait-and-see approach and the men of Falaise who shirked

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 56

56 • Luc Capdevila et al. their responsibilities, as opposed to women resisters whose commitment involved carrying and even using weapons. The term ‘transgression’ seems slightly inadequate to qualify individual and collective behaviour patterns in a time of war. In fact, if we follow anthropological reasoning, men did not transgress any taboos by spilling blood, whereas women did. In armed conflict, spilling blood was not necessarily transgressing a taboo, since society follows a different rule in wartime, that of killing enough adversaries to defeat the enemy. And yet, in the context of total war and in the mobilization of the entire population, men and women who embrace this notion accept other value systems, other representations, even other roles – roles which are far removed from the identity constructions which operate in peacetime. In order to take on board what happens simultaneously on the female side and on the male side in a time of war, let us compare three imperatives of war that do not exist as such in peacetime, fighting, killing and self-sacrifice. These are acts which are expected by a nation at war; however, when the call for action concerns both women and men, they take different forms. Men are expected to leave civilian life, to join the armed forces and become fighters, in other words to bear arms. Killing, like self-sacrifice, therefore becomes an obligation for the defence of the country. The figure of the hero, far from being exceptional, is established as a model for men to emulate. Their role is to be fighters, prepared to kill and to die, behaviour which is unthinkable in peacetime but expected of them during war. It is one of the crucial tenets of patriotism. In the name of this same patriotism and despite the non-recognition of their political citizenship, women are also mobilized and no less involved in the nation at war. Their role is no longer limited to the private sphere. They participate in the war effort in the fields, in the factories, helping the injured, across the rubble, and sometimes they even fight. Women are only allowed to carry arms in very exceptional cases, but the main expectation is one of intransigence towards the enemy; they are expected to go hungry rather than compromise themselves, to show contempt rather than to seduce. Through total mobilisation for war, men and women were called upon to play a role very different from that of peacetime. Traditional gender attributions did not disappear, and their roles during the war remained very gender-specific. However, a discrepancy or shift can be observed which not only allowed but also required both sexes to adopt new patterns of behaviour. In spite of the strength of the discourses of mobilization, the reactions of each individual and within each group were far from homogeneous. Thus, some men and women refused the new roles and in a sense they remained in a time of peace, placing themselves outside events. For example, this was the case of rebels, draft dodgers or deserters in September 1939 who refused to carry arms out of conviction, fear or self-interest. Another example, during the Occupation, is that of those women and men who engaged in intimate relations with the enemy.

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 57

Gender and the Second World War • 57 Others found it difficult to integrate into a war community which was similar to that of the First World War. This was the case for the discharged soldiers, elderly men or, in another way, workers mobilized in industry. The same question can be raised with regard to prisoners of war, defeated fighters for whom the conflict took place more in their prison camps than at the front. The difficulties they experienced at the time of their return were due in part to being perceived as having failed in their role of defenders of the country. Can the Vichy discourse of the ‘eternal feminine’ also be interpreted as having been strongly influenced by gendered stereotypes derived from peacetime? Vichy seems to have wanted to ignore all evidence to the contrary and to play out events as if it were a time of peace. This situation made the failure to obtain the prisoners’ release at least until 1942 incomprehensible to their families and the overall effect was to lock everyone into their prewar roles. Finally, some individuals used the period of the war to extend their gender roles. Men and women could find themselves in extraordinary situations. Some found work with the Occupation forces, some were deported or volunteered to work in Germany, some took on sole responsibility for the daily survival of their families, others went into hiding, joined collaborationist organizations, turned to prostitution, slept with the enemy, joined the Resistance, were killed and died . . . As the Occupation wore on, this behaviour was classed with increasing relentlessness as either that of a ‘patriot’ or a ‘collaborator’. However, this behaviour also distanced one from social as well as gender norms. All of these patterns of behaviour, whether they were chosen or suffered by the individuals concerned, were a long way from traditional gender roles. What became of these transformations? From a political point of view, there is no doubt about the answer. In April 1944, French women acquired full citizenship and the 1946 Constitution affirmed that men’s rights should be extended to women. But identities cannot be reduced to the acquisition of new rights. Even more so since the matrimonial laws inherited from the Civil Code were not significantly questioned. However, the similarity of men’s and women’s experiences of war brought gender identities closer together. The war revealed that existing stereotypes were inadequate and this necessitated a redefinition of these identities, an idea that was perceived as a threat from the masculine point of view. The shaving of the heads of women accused of collaboration was one of the more spectacular manifestations of this perception. Although women were now seen as being responsible for their actions, by repressing “horizontal collaboration” (or sleeping with the enemy), men affirmed their authority and regained their control over women’s bodies. The gender realignments of the next generation would derive from the reappropriation of women’s bodies, one of the most contested sites of male domination.

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 58

58 • Luc Capdevila et al.

Notes 1. Quoted by Laurent Douzou, ‘La Résistance, une affaire d’hommes?’, in François Rouquet & Danièle Voldman (eds), ‘Identités féminines et violences politiques’, Les Cahiers de l’IHTP, no. 31, October 1995, pp. 19–20. This text begins with a description of the scene ‘An evening at the Graves’ home, April 1969’ from the film by Marcel Ophuls, Le chagrin et la pitié (1969) and works on the idea of the woman in the doorway, which Rod Kedward presented at the ‘Mémoire et histoire: la résistance’ conference in Toulouse, 1993. 2. ‘Croix Rouge Française’, a written letter by Melle C, 4 August 1948, Direction Générale – délégation en Allemagne (1947–8).

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 59

–5– Conflicting Identities in a Mining Community on Strike 1930–50 Hanna Diamond

This work-in-progress chapter seeks to analyze and understand some of the extremely rich material I collected in the archives of the mining basin of Provence in 2001–2.1 The definitive closure of this mine in February 2003 has made this work particularly valuable to the community as locals seek to understand and preserve their heritage. Miners in these coalfields still have a strong sense of their identity as Provençal miners, as opposed to miners from any other region of France, especially those from the north with whom they feel they have little in common. I am interested here in exploring this identity and in particular, the collective identity of this community and how it has expressed itself differently in specific historical contexts. Scholarly writing about miners initially presented an image of them as a homogeneous group of workers which operated as a united bloc and tended to display a ‘natural solidarity’.2 However, it is now recognized that the factors which were assumed to generate solidarity amongst miners (the dangerous and group nature of work underground and the monolithic composition of mining communities) were not necessarily empirically accurate and that there were also other influences which could act as forces of fragmentation and division among these communities.3 More recent writing about mining communities therefore emphasizes that each mining society is a product of a specific historical process which mixes a number of variables in an even greater possible number of combinations.4 The mining society under discussion here is of interest in view of its remarkably diverse composition. Like other mining areas of France, it absorbed a large proportion of foreign and migrant workers in the first half of the twentieth century, but its specificity comes from the enormous range of nationalities among these arrivals. Generally speaking, the role played by ethnic difference in the emergence of identity and consciousness in mining communities is not predictable or clearcut. Ethnicity could be a factor which divided or united miners in relation to their employers and hostility towards ethnic groups was often encouraged and exploited by employers in an attempt to fragment the labour force and prevent collective action.5 59

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 60

60 • Hanna Diamond This community offers an interesting case study of how the presence of significant ethnic populations impacted on the expression of collective identity at times of miners’ strikes in the 1930s and 1940s. I will argue that by the early 1930s, the unions had succeeded in building a strong sense of collective identity such that at this time migrant workers at the mine were explicitly identified both by the ‘local’ miners and the foreign workers as an integral part of the community. However, the events of the Second World War and the subsequent changes it brought in the composition of the community as well as the complex nature of the strikes of the late 1940s caused the collective identity of the miners to become seriously fragmented. It is appropriate here to explore some aspects of the individual and collective identities of the Provençal miners. These identities were strongly linked to place of work, even down to the specific pits, as well as the nature of the work they did. A sense of common allegiance grew very quickly between miners who shared underground shifts in dangerous conditions and who communicated in their local dialect, Provençal. Incoming migrants were often able to learn this dialect, particularly Italians whose own dialects were very similar; other immigrants, however, sometimes found that it was a barrier to their integration into the workforce. A further specificity of the Provençal miners was their strong attachment to territory. Most had peasant origins and continued to work their land in parallel to their work at the mine. This double affiliation, that of the peasant-miner, is quite peculiar to Provençal miners, and historically had protected them during difficult economic circumstances. Thus at times of slow production at the mine, they felt released to carry out necessary agricultural work. In the same way, strikes tended not to be experienced as a period of hardship because they were frequently timed to coincide with the harvest for example.6 However, by 1930 the number of foreigners arriving in the mining coalfields had increased dramatically and the composition of the community was changing. Many sought to acquire land soon after their arrival enabling them to have some agriculture base in the same way as their Provençal colleagues. Mine owners encouraged this and built extensive mining villages in an effort to fix their foreign workers and encourage them to stay. This policy was remarkably successful and many applied for French nationality and were naturalized. However, as the number of foreign workers grew, a differential emerged between those miners who were able to subsidize themselves at difficult economic times by falling back on their land, and those who were totally dependent on their work in the mine for their survival. The distinction between those who did or did not speak the local dialect also became more marked. What then was the composition of this community and who were the main immigrant groups involved? The mines of the Gardanne basin had long attracted migrant workers who originally came from Italy to work there, seasonally returning home to their villages for the harvest, and they were the most significant group of migrants in the area until the outbreak of the First World War. These

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 61

A Mining Community on Strike 1930–50 • 61 migrants appear to have been relatively easily integrated and increasingly they chose to stay in Provence. After the war, a number of miners were recruited from Eastern European countries; Poles and Czechs, but also some Greeks and North Africans arrived with contracts which had been negotiated with their consulates. Other migrants arrived, often fleeing difficulties in their respective countries. Armenians fled the 1915 genocide, and Italians who left the country when Mussolini came to power in 1922. In the late 1930s, Spanish Republicans arrived in massive waves escaping Franco’s regime, and a few refugees came from the east escaping Nazism. Most could find work easily in the mine, which was always eager to recruit labour and particularly workers who were prepared to go underground. This immigrant presence in the mines of Provence was of particular interest to the local police who saw Marseilles and the department of the Bouches-du-Rhône as a potential hotbed of communist and trade union activity. The large numbers of foreigners present both in the city and across the department were attracted to the port of Marseilles and the easy availability of menial work there. The arrivals of ‘politically active’ populations from Spain, Armenia and Poland were closely watched and followed by the police. Thus the police authorities kept extensive records of the attitudes and movements of these migrants, and the archives offer a detailed picture of the positions taken by these different populations during the period under examination here. In so far as these police reports can be taken at face value, they provide us with valuable insights into the tensions within this mining community and particularly among foreign workers. They enable us to identify the various feelings of allegiance and belonging experienced both by the immigrants and the Provençal mining populations and offer some clues to their notions of identity not just before the war, but especially in the immediate postwar years.

Building a Cohesive Collective Identity Collective identities emerge from a shared and interactive sense of common experience associated with common agency. It was therefore the task of the trade unions to attempt to foster this kind of shared concern. However, trade unions were often ambivalent about the arrival of foreign workers. Those who arrived between the 1920s and the mid-1930s had provoked considerable hostility in France, particularly in Marseilles, which in 1931–3 had more immigrants than ever before in its history. Foreign workers had traditionally been brought into the pits by employers to break strikes, so this recruitment of them in large numbers was bound to cause suspicion and resentment at the outset. The challenge for the local trade unions was to overcome these feelings and build a unified and cohesive collective identity amongst the miners so that they would act together to improve their situation. The miners’ unions were gaining increasing popularity at this time despite a schism in 1921 which established two main currents. In line with unions

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 62

62 • Hanna Diamond nationally, miners’ unions were divided between a reformist current which formed the majority and excluded the communist militants, the Confédération Générale de Travail (CGT), and a more radical minority wing which formed itself as the Confédération Générale de Travail Unitaire (CGTU) in 1922. After this division, miners’ allegiances tended to be related to preferences of their delegates, and villages often swung one way or another accordingly. Thus in some areas of the basin, miners followed the lead of the socialist mayor of Gardanne, Victor Savine, who also became leader of the CGT, whereas in the south of the basin the CGTU was more widely supported. Despite these differences, however, the Socialist Party remained popular across the region. Migrant workers, particularly those who were politically aware, were more likely to support the communist-oriented CGTU, and by 1930 foreign workers represented 60 per cent of its local membership. 7 Despite a fair degree of competition, both unions were becoming successful in provoking strike action and mobilizing miners around a number of grievances, although the CGTU was consistently reported as being more popular with foreigners.8 The miners’ demands increasingly focused on issues defined by the national leadership of the unions related to paid holidays, improved salaries and pension arrangements. However, as the recession hit France, sales in coal slowed down, and mine owners in Provence, as elsewhere, started to lay off foreign workers claiming that they were making redundant those who had been most recently employed, but in reality they only applyed this rule to foreign workers.9 The unions encouraged the miners to react immediately against this and the miners in one of the pit villages, Meyreuil, went on strike to prevent the redundancies of fifty foreign workers, forty of whom were male miners and ten were women employed above ground to sort the coal. These pit workers, of all origins, approached the mine owners explaining that they preferred to reduce their number of working days overall if it could prevent these redundancies.10 Foreign workers participated in this joint CGT/CGTU strike, but were not leaders of the movement. Indeed, even joining strike action was a dangerous step for a foreign worker. The son of an Italian miner who arrived in the mining basin in the early 1930s confirmed the difficulties of the atmosphere of the time: In 1933 – there were some serious conflicts; it was a black year and my father was a foreigner. The miners were on strike and my dad went on strike like everyone else. One night he got home and an hour later, the guard from the mine called round and said ‘Tomorrow Monsieur J. you should be at work, or you’ll get the sack’.11

Increasing numbers of CGTU members were elected as miners’ delegates as this union gained increasing popularity among the ‘French’ miners who were the only ones allowed a vote in union elections. By February 1935, the CGTU had gained a majority.12 The CGTU then organized a miners’ hunger march to Marseilles as a

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 63

A Mining Community on Strike 1930–50 • 63 way of consolidating its popularity. Until the very last minute the CGT tried to dissuade its members from participating, but the demonstration caught the imagination both of the miners and others. On 23 March 1935, over 1,000 miners, several of whom were affiliated to the CGT, marched in a peaceful demonstration through the streets of Marseilles and were joined on their way by all sorts of workers. The petition they handed to the prefect asked, among other demands, for the reemployment of miners whose pits were due to close and it particularly asked that foreign workers should be protected from redundancy.13 This unity of action on the part of the miners’ unions demonstrated an active playing out of the pact signed between the communists and socialists with a view to consolidating the Popular Front platform. But as the effects of economic slow down continued to cause serious poverty and distress among miners, redundancies of foreign workers were again threatened. The local paper Le Petit Provençal on 2 October 1935 explained to the local populations that: The question of the foreign labour force is one which is causing considerable concern to the unions . . . Today the mines of our region still employ a large majority of foreigners who, the unions have declared, should be kept. Their departure would threaten to ruin a number of commercial interests and would destroy any hope of reactivating the economy quickly.

Here we see how immigrant miners were projected by the unions as being a crucial part of the mining community; their presence was presented as an economic necessity for the survival of the coalfield. In a reaction to these redundancies, an unprecedented 3,096 miners went on strike from the various pits and companies across the basin, a figure which represented close to 95 per cent of them.14 At a subsequent public meeting held in Gardanne, the main coal town, on 2 February 1936 and organized by the different groups involved in what was to become the Popular Front government later in the year, the mine workers were encouraged to protest in mass ‘against the abusive expulsions of foreigners’ and to ‘manifest their solidarity towards the victims of capitalism who naively believed that the France of today has something in common with the France that participated in the great revolution of 1789’.15 This brief description of union activity in the 1930s suggests that the unions successfully fostered a sense of collective identity among miners who mobilized around the issue of redundancies of foreign workers. Unions were able to exploit the intimate links created between them as a result of their shared experiences of unemployment and increasingly difficult working and living conditions. However, this apparently cohesive collective identity was to be severely damaged during the later strikes of 1948.

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 64

64 • Hanna Diamond

From One Strike to Another The Popular Front government seemed to promise change in working conditions for the miners, but their hopes were quickly dashed as the international situation took priority over social concerns and the war was actively prepared. During the turbulent events of the ‘Dark Years’ which followed the humiliating defeat, the main concern of the mining community in general and migrant workers in particular seems to have been to avoid being noticed by either the Vichy authorities or the Germans. There is some evidence of resistance in the mining region but the major strikes of 1941 in the coalfields of the north for example were not apparent in Provence.16 The vast majority of miners preoccupied themselves with the difficult business of surviving. Overall, the police reports throughout the war present a picture of a community intensely focused on survival. The Liberation seems also to have been relatively calm. There was some mobilization of local Maquis, but open fighting was relatively short-lived. The output of the mine recovered quickly and by January 1945, production levels were reported to have returned to those of the year before. The board of directors of the mine expressed recognition that this was a remarkable achievement and much better than that which had been achieved in other French mines.17 Almost as soon as the new provisional French government started to find its feet, it turned its attention to the miners as key players in the rebuilding of the French nation. On 17 May 1945, Robert Lacoste, Minister for Industrial Production, made a direct appeal to miners in a radio broadcast. I address myself to you all, French miners. I want to draw your attention to the coal crisis. The lack of fuel currently represents a national danger . . . You must continue to work, we must emerge from this paralysis . . . to do this above all we need coal! French miners, we need you so that France can live.18

The battle for coal was launched! This intense pressure on the miners was accompanied by extensive propaganda, poster campaigns and rousing speeches. Auguste Lecoeur, Undersecretary for Production and Commerce, came to Gardanne in March 1946 to encourage the miners of Provence in person. In parallel to this, nationalization of the coal industry was having repercussions for miners across the country and it brought considerable changes in their working statutes. The miners’ statute voted in February 1946 introduced a number of longawaited improvements in the way the industry was regulated.19 For example, miners were to be granted higher salaries than workers in other industries and to have free accommodation; they were to be permitted to retire at fifty; they were to qualify for more paid leave than other workers; and they were to have their own specific social security and pension arrangements. These changes dramatically improved the working conditions of all miners and also had particularly important

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 65

A Mining Community on Strike 1930–50 • 65 outcomes for immigrant workers who gained more rights including the right to vote in union elections and strike ballots, which opened the way for them to gain positions as union delegates. But despite the very real and important improvements in the working lives brought by this statute, the work of the miner remained extremely dangerous, particularly in the mines of Provence where the machinery was old and run down. Even once mechanization arrived soon after the war, and the Provençal pits were to lead the way in terms of improved techniques for mining, these changes brought their own dangers, particularly as the innovative methods were tested, and the death rate in the Provençal pits remained remarkably high in these years.20

The 1947–8 Strikes However, hardly had the measures described above been voted in, than the eviction of the communists in 1947 marked a change in the direction of the government. The political climate degenerated and social discontent increased across the country. These tensions culminated in two long strikes which were played out particularly amongst miners, affecting the mining community of Provence very profoundly. When the nationalized board of the mine refused to agree to the salary increases jointly demanded by the unions, Provençal miners participated in the strikes of 1947, but returned to work after two difficult and bitter weeks without gaining satisfaction. The CGT had become dominated by communism, and a socialist offshoot had broken away as Force Ouvrière (FO). After the failure of the 1947 strikes, both unions were initially in agreement that miners needed to press for better salaries, however, the CGT was alone in pushing for further strike action in October 1948 when the miners again found themselves on strike – this time for eight weeks. Despite their record of failure in the previous year, most Provençal miners, irrespective of their origins, followed the second call to strike made by the CGT. Strikes spread from the south of the department, particularly taking hold in Marseilles, and from there, across the country. In a move which reeked of cold war anxiety, Jules Moch, the Interior Minister, immediately moved troops in to occupy mining basins. Confrontations between miners and law enforcement agencies were certainly less violent in Provence than elsewhere, nonetheless miners were faced with a heavy police presence in the coalfield villages and many workers were absent for several weeks. The riot police, Compagnies Républicaines de Sécurité (CRS), were brought in to control aggressive picket activity and to protect those who wished to return to work. Indeed, struggling to make ends meet, often surviving on the charity of locals and donations to their union, most miners found it difficult to stay out on strike. Hunger and frustration caused some miners to drift back to work, despite the disapproval of members of the CGT. As it became

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 66

66 • Hanna Diamond increasingly apparent that the government was not going to relent, the strike finally ended on 29 November, some six weeks after it had begun; the miners had failed to win their cause. Police accounts bear witness to the tensions within the mining community, both between its immigrant and non-immigrant members, and within the different populations of immigrant workers themselves. The situation was certainly more complicated than during the strikes of the 1930s when the foreign members of the community were seen as comrades who had to be defended. Here, an opposite effect emerged with members of the immigrant community singled out as being ‘different’ and more radical than others, often represented as forcing the miners to stay out on strike against their will. These strikes thus witnessed a severe backlash against foreign workers and there was little evidence of a cohesive collective identity unifying the miners. Police reports indicate that attitudes to the immigrant members of the community became openly hostile and the expulsion of foreign workers was demanded in some quarters. There were even those who went as far as calling for naturalizations to be reviewed.21 One miner was quoted as saying ‘If no measures are taken against some of the foreigners in Biver . . . we’ll never be able to go back to work. We have the impression here that foreigners are laying down the law and sadly, this does seem to be true’.22 The right to vote in union matters brought by nationalization was often commented on, and some miners complained that this was at the heart of the support for the Communist Party and the CGT, which was the main force behind the strike. It was suggested that the government would therefore do well to take voting rights away from foreign workers.23 The state (which as a result of nationalization was now also the employer) sought to foster this image of foreign workers as troublemakers and in line with Jules Moch’s belief that the strike was organized by foreign influence, it attempted to control them. The authorities apparently rightly guessed that many miners were remaining on strike out of fear of the consequences of returning to work. Posters directed at foreign workers were put up in all the pits warning them of the consequences of preventing those who wanted to work from doing so.24 Enormous pressure was brought to bear on the striking immigrant workers, encouraging them to return to work in no uncertain terms, as this letter sent to a certain Del-Rio Joaequin from the Prefect of the Bouches-du-Rhône demonstrates. For the last four weeks you have participated in the strike at the Provence Coal Mines, thus depriving your family of a salary and France of coal. You are a foreigner who has come to France as a country where you can live decently and find work. But don’t think that France is rich enough for you to live here without working: strikes produce misery, and you will be the first to suffer. What are you waiting for to return to work? I know that the same people who persuaded you to strike have threatened reprisals if you return to work. You will however

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 67

A Mining Community on Strike 1930–50 • 67 be aware that these threats have not intimidated a number of your colleagues who have never stopped working or who each day are returning to work. You will also be aware that the authorities have protected these workers effectively and that their attackers have been punished.25

The strongly persuasive tone of this letter was most effective and within two weeks, the number of foreign workers who had returned to work had doubled.26 Unsurprisingly, the different communities were not homogeneous in their reactions to the strike; differences emerged even within some of the national populations. Most were fearful, of the authorities, who could sanction them for failing to work, and of their ‘French’ mining colleagues who would think badly of them if they became labelled as strike-breakers, and of those within their own communities who were supporting the strike. One report from the early days of the strike noted that the Armenian members of the community were relatively passive. Many were sympathetic to Force Ouvrière, which had not supported the strike, but they were afraid to express these views openly. The Italians were very favourable to the strikes, but paradoxically the one pit which continued to work throughout the strike period was predominantly composed of Italian workers. The Poles were generally hostile to the strikes as were the Czechs. Spaniards were mostly against the strikes but were frightened of the extremists within their own community. The report concluded that most foreign workers were following the strike movement without conviction and that very few immigrant elements were actively involved.27 Immigrant workers often found themselves in an impossible dilemma. A report focusing on the 1,200 striking North Africans indicated that they were tolerating the strike more than they were supporting it.28 They had followed the movement against their will and many saw it as a political manoeuvre they had no interest in getting involved in. Several of them saw it as an opportune moment to leave the CGT. They had followed the orders to strike in 1947 without question but had been disappointed with the outcome of it, which did nothing but lose them money and reduce their families in Algeria to miserable circumstances. However, they were clearly not in a position simply to return to work. On 11 October 1948, it was reported that a North African miner who had attempted to do this was physically attacked by three other North African miners for doing so.29 There were certainly foreign workers who acted as ringleaders and organizers in the strikes. It cannot be denied that a small number of radical and communistinspired migrants had been able to take advantage of the changes brought by nationalization and the miners’ statute to become elected as delegates and participate in the CGT leadership. These militants, who were often Italian or Spanish in origin, were certainly visible during the strikes; they made numerous speeches and were present on the picket lines. This visibility contributed to the representation of the immigrant miner as extremely political and of communist tendencies.

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 68

68 • Hanna Diamond However, as police reports indicate, other foreign workers were not necessarily supportive of the strike action, but feared the possibility of reprisals if they failed to follow it. Nonetheless, immigrant miners were often among the first to return to work; the vast majority of them were in fact back at work by the middle of November about two weeks before the majority of miners returned to work and the CGT called off the strike.30 The tensions experienced by these migrant communities were not widely recognized or understood by the rest of the miners. As elsewhere in the country, the strikes were followed by a number of expulsions of foreign workers for strikerelated activities perhaps as much as an example to other immigrants as for their ‘crimes’!31 These actions by the authorities fed the image of immigrant workers as strike leaders and radicals. The vehemence of anti-immigrant feeling articulated during the strike should not surprise in the context of the time, though juxtaposed with the strength of the discourses of solidarity which successfully mobilized the miners some years before, the change is dramatic. The evidence collected here suggests that the collective identity of the Provençal miners which seemed to have emerged as a relatively strong force in the 1930s was much weaker by the late 1940s. The tensions which emerged during the strikes of 1948 led to a serious fragmenting of the mining community’s collective identity particularly in relation to its immigrant contingent. In contrast to the prewar strikes when the immigrant miners were represented as being important workers and part of a community whose duty it was to protect them, during these postwar strikes immigrant members were identified by other members of the mining community, sometimes mistakenly, as having different, even competing positions and needs from their own. There are a number of factors which help to explain this. The first of these is the nature of the 1948 strikes. Rolande Trempé has argued that the strikes of 1948 became violent because there was so much at stake. The much-vaunted gains brought by nationalization and the miners’ statutes were almost immediately undermined by the government.32 The hopes of the miners that they would gain more say in the organization of the mining industry were severely dashed. The state as employer became as demanding of them as the mine owners had been prior to nationalization and this explains the violence of the battles during the strikes. The positions taken by the unions and the support they were able to gain also have an important bearing on this discussion. At the eve of the strike, although the communist CGT was the most popular union among miners, there were two new unions on the scene. First, FO, which was increasingly gaining support and had come out against the strike. Secondly, the Confédération Française des Travailleurs Chrétien (CFTC), which was also against the strike and was particularly well implanted in the coalfield village of Gréasque, for example, where miners

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 69

A Mining Community on Strike 1930–50 • 69 continued to work throughout the strike.33 During the referendum of 2 October, which had polled the miners to see who wanted to strike, of the 6,182 miners employed, 3,180 voted and 2,730 supported strike action.34 Thus a large number of miners were less than enthusiastic about the strike from the outset, and the CGT was increasingly in competition with other unions for the miners’ allegiances. The CGT may therefore have been unrealistic about how long strike action could be sustained. Most miners ended up returning to work when they could no longer cope with the pressure of trying to make ends meet without a regular salary. Foreign workers were projected as being among the communist extremists of the CGT whereas the ‘French’ miners were allegedly closer to the FO and the CFTC.35 The presence of a large number of recently arrived migrants must also have been a factor which contributed hugely to the fragmentation of the miners’ collective identity. The composition of the mining community had changed enormously between the two strikes. At the end of the war, many of the skilled foreign miners who had come to Provence between the wars returned to their liberated home countries. The directors of the newly nationalized Provençal mines had to recruit massively to offset a diminishing labour force. At first they recruited German prisoners, for example, who were presented by the state authorities as an obvious short-term solution to these labour shortages. This rather bizarre workforce reached as many as 1,000 workers but by 1948 most had returned home or adopted the new status of free workers.36 These Germans were housed in guarded camps, which were kept very separate from the rest of the mining community. Although they followed the strikes, they did so in a very passive way, more concerned about their return to Germany than any of the issues at stake. This was not a migrant group able to participate in the collective identity of the community in any way. As these Germans left Provence, they were replaced by Italians and Algerians, who had been actively recruited by scouts.37 These Italian miners and their families were very different from those who had arrived before the war. Generally they were not as politically aware as the anti-fascists migrants who had now returned home. They had little time to forge any sense of common collective identity before they found themselves at the centre of the most acrimonious and difficult strikes in the history of French mining labour relations. Similarly, the Algerian populations had the added barrier of a different religion, which made their integration even more unlikely in a short space of time. These new arrivals were very different from the earlier migrant populations who had often bought land and learnt Provençal, which helped them to achieve acceptance and assimilation into the community. The Armenian populations, for example, like the North Africans were muslims, but soon after many had left the mine and moved into commerce, and their ownership of small business had made them a crucial part of the local communities. In conclusion then, this chapter raises a number of important points about collective identity in this particular mining community. The archives offer some

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 70

70 • Hanna Diamond interesting insights into the positions taken by the various ethnic groups during the strikes of 1948. The evidence from this community now needs to be tested against other mining communities in France in order to tease out aspects of miners’ identity construction specific to this region, and to establish whether wider conclusions can be drawn about the importance of ethnic difference in the construction of this identity. A number of questions are raised here which will be further addressed in future publications. Overall, however, this chapter appears to underline the fact that solidarity and collective identity are not acquired in a definitive way, but are in flux and vary enormously according to different given circumstances and historical contexts.

Notes 1. I am grateful to the British Academy for funding the research with a Large Research Grant, and this material will be used to put together a micro-history of the mining region. 2. Adrian Shubert, ‘A Divided Community: The Social Development of the Asturian Coalfields to 1934’ in Klaus Tenfelde (ed.), Sozialgeschichte des Bergbaus im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Verlag C.H. Beck, 1992), p. 284. 3. Dick Geary, ‘Rapport’ in Tenfelde (ed.), Sozialgeschichte des Bergbaus, p. 562. 4. Shubert in Tenfelde (ed.), Sozialgeschichte des Bergbaus, p. 284. 5. David F. Crew, ‘Rapport’ in Tenfelde (ed.), Sozialgeschichte des Bergbaus, p. 56. 6. Police reports acknowledge this in relation to strikes which took place in 1930, Archives Départementales des Bouches-du-Rhône (AD BduR), 1M981 (1868) and again in April 1933, AD BduR 1M982 (1869). 7. Gerard Piu, Mines et Mineurs de Provence (Editions Clair Obsur, 1984), p. 119. 8. AD BduR 1M981 (1868). 9. AD BduR 1M982, 23 May 1933, engineer’s report; see also Rolande Trempé, Les Trois Batailles du Charbon (1936–47) (Editions La Découverte, 1989). Between January 1931 and June 1936 workers in the French mines dropped by more than a quarter, only 16.4 per cent of those laid off were French, 39.8 per cent were foreigners. p. 98. 10. AD BduR 1M982 (1869), Rapport de Gendarmerie, Aix, 23 May 1933. This action persuaded the mine owners to postpone these redundancies for a time. 11. ‘Le Site du Puits Hely D’Oissel’, Centre d’Etudes, de Recherches et de Formation Institutionelles du Sud-Est, unpublished report, p. 78. 12. Piu, Mines et Mineurs de Provence, p. 133. 13. AD BduR 1M906 (1825).

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 71

A Mining Community on Strike 1930–50 • 71 14. Piu, Mines et Mineurs de Provence, p. 140. 15. La République Aixoise, 1 February 1936. 16. See Jean-Marie Guillon, ‘La Résistance dans les mines provençales’, Les Cahiers de l’Institut d’Histoire Social Minière, no. 4, September 1994, pp. 11–14. 17. Houllières du Bassin du Centre et du Midi (HBCM), Archives VT 429–16. 18. Gilbert Bagnis, Des Compagnies Minières . . . aux Houillères de Provence (Services d’Arts Graphiques Gardannais, 1990), p. 560. 19. See Trempé, Les Trois Batailles for an analysis of the importance of the miners’ statute, pp. 235–47. 20. HBCM V434–1. Note on security in the mines since 1920. This report dated 1950 noted that there were proportionally more deaths and accidents in the mines of Provence between 1920 and 1950 than in the other French mines. This percentage had actually increased as a result of nationalization. 21. Piu, Mines et Mineurs de Provence, p. 177. 22. AD BduR 148W396. 23. AD BduR 150W202. 24. AD BduR 148W396. 25. Document reproduced in Les Cahiers de l’Institut Sociale Minière, no. 15, September 1998, Grève Générale dans les Houillères. 26. AD BduR 148W396. On 6 November before the letter was sent, 301 foreign workers were recorded as being at work, by 17 November when the letter had been sent out to immigrant strikers, 611 were recorded as at work. 27. AD BduR 148W396. 28. Ibid. 29. Ibid. 30. Ibid. 31. Ibid. 32. Trempé, Les Trois Batailles. 33. AD BduR 148W397, 23 April 1949. 34. AD BduR 148W396, 4 October 1948. 35. AD BduR 148W396. 36. HBCM, VT 429–16 & 429.04 Rapports de Gestion, VT466–53, V410. This community of German ex-prisoners of war will be the subject of a later publication. 37. HBCM, V410 160.

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 72

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 73

–6– Talk which was not Idle: Rumours in Wartime France Jean-Marie Guillon

In their multitude of studies about the France of the ‘Dark Years’ historians have surprisingly overlooked the phenomenon of rumour. In fact this comment does not just apply to the 1940s. It is valid for the whole of twentieth-century history.1 It is all the more astonishing when one considers the remarkable research devoted to public opinion and representations. Undoubtedly, research on rumours has been discouraged by the sheer volume and dispersion of documentation on this theme. There has also probably been a reluctance to engage with a subject whose ‘scientific’ boundaries are difficult to determine. However, even if its contours are sometimes hazy and ill-defined rumours exist as a distinct entity, independent of other similar phenomena. Sociologists have not neglected it in their studies of contemporary societies and they offer some useful tools for understanding it.2 Rumour is primarily a social act which reveals the choices, the currents and the inclinations of collective imagination. It also shows how well informed the population are and their ability to anticipate events. It is a way of penetrating collective imagination. This chapter will explore these issues in the context of the Provence region, an area about which the author has already published. It is hoped that this will encourage others to pursue research in this area.3

Rumour and the War Years Rumours exist at all times and in all places because they are one of the most instinctive ways of transmitting information. They start with word of mouth, the ‘have you heard?’, a piece of news passed on, which might be true, or false, but which is always credible in the context of the moment, and meaningful for those who spread it. As Marc Bloch commented ‘the absurd rumour was believed because it was useful to believe it’.4 They may concern trivia – in which case they amount to gossip – or information of importance. Rumours vary in their forms, 73

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 74

74 • Jean-Marie Guillon their scale and their duration. Some disappear rapidly because they go stale, or are only of interest to a limited public, or else because they rapidly change status by becoming ‘official’ information. Others are recurrent and reappear regularly in different places and circumstances. These represent the long currents of collective imagination. To offer a rigid historical definition of a rumour would be to slice through its complexity in a haphazard way. How can one distinguish between real information or, for example, propaganda? Rumours exist, that is what matters; they circulate, and this is the thread which we must try to pick up. Rumours assume particular importance in situations of crisis and trauma. At these times anxiety over the future and fears for the present are paramount against a ‘magical’ and emotional backdrop. That is why rumour in the years of war and Occupation is so interesting.5 It also relates to the control of information in Vichy and occupied France, because rumours, humour and mockery represented a vital counterweight. This clandestine information, consubstantial as an alternative means of power in a dictatorial regime, is characteristic of a certain state of information supply. It is a way of calling into question that which is disseminated officially, which is not believed because of an age-old feeling, accentuated in these years, of not being told the whole truth, of being kept in the dark and of being lied to. The ‘official’ account is less believed than ever. Information must therefore be obtained through alternative means. What makes rumours appear so valuable is that they are or seem free from official control. The fact that they bypass official channels, and have an unofficial character gives them additional worth. Information which is classified or presumed to be so is more than ever the principal ingredient of ‘the black market of information’.6 In the ideological war which the regime’s opponents wage, the battle for public opinion is an essential one. The place occupied by manipulation, propaganda and disinformation is well known. For both Vichy and the occupying forces the control or at least the knowledge of rumours is essential. That is why the authorities are so concerned about those which represent a risk or which allow a better understanding of shifts in opinion. Never before had they been so precisely monitored. Reports written by the police – in particular those of the political branch, the Renseignements Généraux – or by the gendarmerie, investigations carried out by semi-official organizations like the Veterans’ Association, the Légion or by collaborationists, as well as the interception of private correspondence organized by the Contrôle Technique all allow the authorities to chart the development of opinion. For the historian, these developments can also be gleaned from examining diaries and private notebooks as well as the press of the period. This makes it possible to follow, week by week, the state of this copious creation of collective imagination.

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 75

Rumours in Wartime France • 75

The Creation of Rumours Each stratum of society undoubtedly has its own rumours, but, despite the fragmentation of France into different zones of occupation, key rumours spread throughout the country. Madeleine Gex Leverrier, who was editor of Europe Nouvelle before the war, noted that ‘information spread with unexpected speed, like in a desert. Within it, there was undoubtedly much fiction. It was as if everyone in the prison of the occupied zone was trying to spread anything which might affect the future of the country’.7 The means of mass information and the constant movement of people (to work, to get supplies or to find shelter, etc.) served to disseminate rumours, with slight intervals across different parts of the country. But comparative studies are lacking making it difficult to chart precisely the origin and circulation of a particular rumour or its regional variants. According to Marc Bloch, during the previous war, rumours began at the battle front, in the trenches, and then spread to the home front.8 But, between 1940 and 1944, in this conflict when everyone was a witness, a victim, even sometimes an actor, the battle and home fronts were not clearly distinguishable; the struggle for daily survival was no less important for people than the battles afar, even if the diplomatic or military news from the principal war fronts provided their share of hopes and fears because everyone knew that it was there that the collective future was being decided. In the hierarchy of information and therefore of rumour, no one is under any illusion. The authorities monitored what was essential for public order but also for morale. Daily problems of course, but above all issues affecting the powers that be and the course of the war, were used in the Allied enemy’s propaganda, which systematically exaggerated facts likely to blacken the image of Vichy and the occupiers. In the creation of rumours, radio, particularly clandestine radio, played a decisive role. Never had there been such a thirst for information and never had the ‘news’ been so listened to, but not just any news – news from abroad, especially the BBC. This is why the postal censors described the population as ‘saturated by foreign and dissident radio broadcasts’.9 Even if this news from abroad was received with a degree of circumspection, it was certainly seen as more ‘truthful’ than the information transmitted by radio stations controlled by French and German authorities, which rapidly fell into disrepute. For the authorities, this propaganda was one of the primary sources of rumours. For the police in the Var, there is no doubt that the detailed information given by British radio and ignored by the official French press was ‘disseminated by many listeners who are not always acting with propaganda objectives in mind and who repeat it to their friends on the sly so as to avoid any sanctions’.10 But, in general, it was the opposition circles (Jews, Gaullists, etc.) which the authorities blamed for the spreading of rumours. In June 1941, the Maritime Prefecture of Toulon accused the Jews in a warning published by the press:

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 76

76 • Jean-Marie Guillon ‘Toulonnais, beware of vicious talk’.11 But the rumour mill did not cease and the regime’s supporters continually condemned the rumours by labelling them as ‘lies’ or ‘false news’. For them these rumours were always ‘totally unreliable’ or ‘totally preposterous’.12 In the climate of suspicion which dominated the period, these condemnations undoubtedly had the opposite effect to that desired. The Occupation authorities in their turn tried, just as ineffectually, to halt the flow of clandestine information, even going as far as to impose a generalized confiscation of radio sets by way of punishment. The value of these rumours was demonstrated by the campaign organized against them by authorities considered by most as illegitimate. The correspondence of the Vallotton sisters, who were active in offering humanitarian aid to political prisoners, gives a good indication of the sort of information exchanged in a cultured and open-minded milieu. As early as June 1940, the members of the family were ‘glued to the radio’. They were already spreading a prophecy of Nostradamus predicting a spectacular British victory in 1942. This prophecy also referred to the intervention of a General called ‘Cock’ – suggestive of the ancient region of Gaul which had this bird as its symbol and therefore making one think of De Gaulle.13 The following 25 August, one of the sisters admitted her incredulity about a report announcing that ‘in the space of 10 days 170,000 Huns had died trying to cross the Channel’, but she passed it on all the same. A year later she demonstrated what might seem a striking example of gullibility: ‘there is no smoke without fire’ she wrote when reporting that there ‘had been disturbances in Vichy and Marseilles and that Darlan’s chauffeur had been killed in Paris’.14 As can be seen here word of mouth is transmitted through correspondence. It is complemented and amplified on paper (in personal written correspondence or in the press) but also by more technical means (telephone and radio). Far from ruining the spoken word these tools fed it and at the same time gave it a greater impact. A systematic analysis of interceptions by the postal and telephone censors gives a clearer idea. From this analysis the mechanisms of diffusion and amplification of rumours can be seen in action. During one of the biggest protests of the moment, the housewives’ demonstrations in the south of France during the winter of 1942, which H.R. Kedward was one of the first to draw attention to,15 an inhabitant of St Tropez recounted the local protest and offered a very exaggerated account of 2,000 participants attacking the town hall. In Toulon, four days later, a woman described the day’s gathering in an even more dramatic (and fanciful) way, relating that some women demonstrators had been killed by members of the Veterans’ Association (Légion des Anciens Combattants), and an attempt had been made to set fire to the sub-prefecture.16 The authorized press and radio could contribute involuntarily to the spreading of these rumours when, for example, Radio Vichy let slip that the demonstrators had obtained satisfaction.17 It should be noted that telephone and radio introduce an element of uncertainty into the process of rumour circulation because word of mouth could now be

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 77

Rumours in Wartime France • 77 carried rapidly over considerable distances. The distinction which Michel Vovelle made, with regard to the 1789 Revolution, between the long circuits (official dissemination) and the short circuits (spontaneous dissemination) appears all the more valid.18 Locally, rumours were relayed in the usual places of contact and exchange: the home (where collective listening to foreign radio broadcasts took place), the workplace and public places (cafes, public transport, town squares, fairs and markets, etc.). Other locations for transmission were born of circumstances, for example the queues which formed in front of shops to obtain scarce rations or outside administrative buildings to fulfil the increasing bureaucratic requirements. Circles of friends and neighbourly contacts as well as the family (indeed sometimes before the family for certain types of information) represented the first networks of rumour. In effect, each public place and the milieus associated with it played a part in this mechanism, sometimes with a relative specialization in the production of rumour. Food supply was a constant topic of conversation, but even more so in places where people came to collect their rations. It was not only fears over the German requisition of labour that were present in the workplace, but it was also here above all that rumours circulated about the ‘real’ working conditions in Germany or the risks inherent in going there; just as it was here that information circulated about how to escape forced labour. It is significant that it was in the naval shipyard in La Seyne that the Veterans’ Association chose to organize a talk aimed at undermining the ‘lie’ that all requisitioned workers would be shot once they arrived in Germany.19 Internment camps, and, to a lesser degree, the other places of incarceration (POW camps, etc.) may be considered as ‘laboratories’ for the study of rumours, because they concentrated and magnified the phenomenon. The Jews interned at Beaune-la-Rollande, for instance, in a piece of wishful thinking, gathered on 2 August 1941 because the rumour had done the rounds that the Russians had won the war, that the Parisian police had been disarmed and the camp’s guards had fled. For Denis Peschanski who related this anecdote, ‘Radio Rumour’ was ‘one of the major characteristics of life in the camps’.20 The antiNazi writer Lion Feuchtwanger, interned in the Milles camps near Aix-enProvence, wrote some poignant lines on the subject. He noted pertinently that ‘the first person to know a rumour felt filled with self-importance’ and that some people, in particular interpreters, had privileged access. He described the mechanism in the following way: Rumours were born early in the morning, at daybreak, in the washroom or near the toilets. As the sun rose, they gained in strength. By about three pm they were no longer rumours, they were facts. From four o’clock they began to wither, by six o’clock they were dead. At six-thirty, one person would bawl another out for having believed a rumour and having spread it. The following day, the whole process started again.21

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 78

78 • Jean-Marie Guillon Sociologists specializing in protest or in the media certainly tend to ‘modernize’ social trends much too quickly and to underestimate complexity. In this respect ‘war rumours’, like many other individual or collective behaviour patterns of this period, give rise to a better understanding of the effects of social or technological change. The ‘Dark Years’ were characterized by their regressive nature, regressive on all levels whether it be material, political or on the level of mentalities and attitudes (and of course on that of morality). The importance of food and the constantly regenerated ‘famine conspiracies’ bore witness to this long after the Liberation.22

The Meaning of Rumour The objective here is not to undertake an exhaustive analysis or synthesis of rumours in the 1940s, even in a limited milieu. For that it would be necessary to establish a typology by theme, mechanisms of diffusion, milieus in which the rumour originated and their magnitude. It would also be necessary to draw up a chronology, because even if there was no respite in rumour production between the beginning of the war and the Liberation, it was obviously in situations of extreme emotion and action that it accelerated. In the Var between the autumn of 1940 and the summer of 1944, police sources mention at least 204 rumours of which 171 concern the period November 1942–June 1944 for which sources are more regular and homogeneous. The rumours listed belong to the ‘political’ category, that is those which revealed the tendencies of public morale and could represent a risk for the authorities. Most of the material collected concerned the course of the war, its repercussions in France, the various episodes of French political life (in Vichy, Paris and increasingly London and Algiers). Rumours concerned with daily shortages were only accorded limited space in this source but we know that this was an omnipresent preoccupation. It seems that the police did not bother to note them down systematically, perhaps because they had become so commonplace and had lost their revolutionary potential. In its own humorous way the daily newspaper Le Petit Var confirmed this in its regular gossip column concluding on 3 January 1944 that morale was rising because conversations in trams had returned to their favourite topic of food supply, which had been momentarily abandoned following the deadly Allied bombing of Toulon in November. One way of categorizing rumours would be according to their degree of truthfulness. In effect, many merely anticipated news which was later confirmed. They gave clandestine dissemination to the news before it was officially disseminated. All the major events were thus announced before they happened: for example, the arrest of Laval in December 1940, or the German attack on the USSR. In his war diary Jean Malaquais briefly described the emotion caused by this attack and its

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 79

Rumours in Wartime France • 79 passage from rumour to information: ‘Marseilles is buzzing with news. It’s true. It’s false. It’s crazy. It’s certain. Hitler has thrown his Panzers against the USSR!’23 Pierre Nicolle claimed that this rumour had been circulating ‘in veiled terms’ since the 19 June!24 These premonitory rumours ‘announced’ events before they had actually taken place, because these events appeared logical or were hoped for or feared. The total occupation of France was one of the rumours which did the rounds most regularly. From the end of 1940, rumour had it that Toulon would be occupied soon and would bring with it a Germano-Italian takeover of the arsenal, and the placing of Italians in the naval base at Saint-Mandrier. This rumour of imminent occupation of the whole country or just the Mediterranean coast recurred regularly.25 It was so widespread that on 5 December 1941 L’Emanicipation Nationale, the weekly of the fascist PPF party in the southern zone, denounced it at the same time as the one which attributed shortages to German requisitioning. Obviously the occupation passed into fact in November 1942, whilst in Toulon, the only part of the territory which remained ‘free’ on 11 November, the population suffered no illusions about the future. The same mechanism took place with regard to the various Allied landings. As early as the summer of 1942 there was talk of a Mediterranean landing and this hoped for and expected event was the subject of frequent subsequent rumours in spite of momentary dips in morale. Other rumours which seemed unlikely at the time but which later turned out to be true can be put in this same category. In effect, in this war nothing was impossible, anything could be true, even what seemed the most unimaginable. Jean Malaquais mentioned the rumours amongst POWs in July 1940 and the difficulty in believing all that one heard, particularly when it seemed inconceivable. For example, one rumour claimed that German officers were provoking black prisoners in order to be able to kill them in cold blood. Malaquais wrote about the murder of an Arab: ‘I didn’t want to believe it, but yesterday at nightfall I saw it’.26 Who could tell the degree of truth in rumours circulating about massacres taking place in Eastern Europe? But the true meaning of rumours is not in their truthfulness but rather in what they reveal about the expectations and predictions of public opinion. And above all they are about public fears. Fear was the single biggest collective phenomenon. The requisitions of labour and the round-ups which accompanied them, the occupier’s repressive actions, Allied bombing, the evacuations of coastal areas and shortages were the principal sources of anxiety revealed by rumours. From 1942, rumours announced an imminent Allied bombing of Toulon, sometimes with staggering levels of precision (‘it’ was announced for 15 March 1942 or one absolutely must take shelter in the first weekend of July 1943, etc.).27 Coming from the skies, bombings had a kind of magic about them which gave rise to surprising pieces of information. The most curious was a claim that a plane had drawn a V for victory and a six with its trail and rumour interpreted this information to mean that the

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 80

80 • Jean-Marie Guillon Allied landing in Provence would take place on 6 June, although this was in 1943.28 Requisitions of labour for the Germans caused such ongoing fear that they featured in rumours across all social categories, in particular young people and women, and continued even after the departures of forced labour workers had ceased for several weeks. Rumours which were considered to be or proved fanciful, which magnified and exaggerated as in the case of the women’s demonstrations, were numerous but not as much as might be believed. These rumours were often worrying, dramatic, speaking of revolts, of attacks and, of course, of deaths. There was talk of mass shootings in Paris in the autumn of 1941 and when Marseilles was affected by the dramatic evacuations from its old districts around the port, rumour erred towards the dark side (Pierre Limagne claimed that 250 were shot).29 Shortly before, there had been talk of a full-scale battle in Toulon at the time of the scuttling of the French fleet. It is as if a violent ‘other place’ and a near future even more tragic than the real situation experienced were being invented in order to exorcize and ward off the threat. Obviously, psychological warfare was never far from these rumours but what is interesting is that the rumours, were passed on, which suggests a certain amount of belief in them. A recurrent fear was the possibility of a change of alliances. A Churchill–Pétain agreement was rumoured at the end of 1940. Later, in 1943 and 1944, rumour stirred up fears of a new Hitler–Stalin alliance or for some hopes of a common anti-communist front between the Anglo-Saxons and the Germans.30 In this case one must remember that one person’s meat was another’s poison. This scenario or rumours being interpreted in contradictory ways depending on social milieu was not rare. In conservative circles, in particular amongst employers and managers of large companies, worrying rumours circulated about workers’ revenge and revolutionary unrest. This fear reflected a shift in the power struggle. Already, in circles close to the regime and favourable to collaboration, conscious of being in disrepute, predictions started to emerge of trouble. After the success of the demonstrations of 14 July 1942, in Toulon as elsewhere in the unoccupied zone, the belief spread that something was brewing for the commemoration of 10 August, then for that of Valmy. With lucidity, the prefect of the Var noted that these ‘rumours circulated by members of the Veterans’ Association, of the SOL [Service d’Ordre Légionnaire], the PPF and the franciste movements are not based on any specific intelligence, and have merely served to worry the population unnecessarily and have attempted to make believe that if serious trouble occurred the authorities would most likely not fulfil their functions fully’.31 As time went by fear grew in Vichy ranks where hostile rumours were easily blamed on opponents of the regime. They exaggerated the strength of these and tried to shock and regroup ‘right-minded’ people, whilst at the same time coming to believe their own myths. In the autumn of 1943, something overheard in a Marseilles bar worried the war veterans of the Brignol region, because it announced a communist attack

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 81

Rumours in Wartime France • 81 against the town halls (or – according to another version – against the Vichy personalities of the region).32 Slightly afterwards, in November, PPF members announced both an Allied landing and worrying details of a gathering of ‘terrorist bands’ in the region and the circulation in London of lists of Miliciens.33 The origin of these rumours was of course attributed to opposition circles. Behind the rumour there was often the idea of a clandestine leader and a conspiracy myth. One of the most symptomatic rumours was the one which took shape in the Var in the autumn of 1943 which blamed shortages, either of vegetables (in Toulon) or of meat (in Draguignan), on the Veterans’ Association, which had set out to punish the population after the failure of the events organized at the end of August for the third anniversary of its creation.34 That this rumour should enjoy so much success underlines the dislike, or even hatred, which the Pétainists incited. In fact Pétainists were now few in number and they would have been quite incapable of this punitive initiative even if they had such an aberrant intention. This case was closely linked to the systematic suspicion towards the regime. One of the most widespread rumours claimed that foodstuffs were being left to rot in stations or warehouses. Behind the rumour, one can often find a questioning of the authorities. It was a means of protest. The true sense of rumours is also in their target which were generally the ‘others’, those responsible for the hardships affecting ‘us’. Those particularly targeted were: the ‘privileged’, those seen as not sharing the common suffering, the powerful, the masters who govern ‘us’. Most of the population viewed all government initiatives with suspicion. Even air raid warnings were considered suspect since it was said that young men might be rounded up for the forced labour draft as they came out of the air raid shelter. As the ‘Relève’ labour scheme was being set up, the rumour spread in Toulon that the volunteers to work in Germany who came in significant numbers to register in the German recruitment offices were actually only extras paid to give the impression that the scheme was successful.35 Rumours drew attention to those considered responsible for the hardships of the period but they also reflected a search for a saviour, a miracle or at least a slight improvement. Even if in times of war and crisis the tone of rumours is generally on the dark side, optimism was not entirely absent.36 It was necessary to maintain morale. Some pieces of information, which might appear trivial, offered hope: the announcement of the releasing or arrival of food stocks for example. The liberation of POWs was a regular dream. At the beginning of 1943, the Jews of Marseilles told themselves in veiled tones that the Italian zone of occupation would be a haven of security.37 This rumour was truthful and generated a migration towards the Alpes-Maritimes which was to have tragic consequences when the Germans took over the occupation of that zone. The hope of an imminent return to freedom was maintained by the episodes of the fighting, especially after the Allied landing in North Africa. The Italian collapse was announced well before it actually

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 82

82 • Jean-Marie Guillon took place and from July 1943 the various acts of this particular occupier engendered in the Var numerous rumours which turned out to be accurate anticipations of future events. In essence what everyone was hoping for was the extraordinary event which in one fell swoop would put an end to the nightmare. It was from this hope that the repeated belief in an imminent end to the war emerged as well as the constant calculations about the Allied landings which had to take place. But even in relation to this, hope mingled with fear as it would inevitably be accompanied by bombings and fighting. The ideal situation would be for this to take place ‘elsewhere’, thereby sparing people the risks whilst still giving them the expected denouement. People who contributed to the production of these rumours were not necessarily taken in or that gullible. Weariness shone through sometimes as did an element of self-mockery. Benjamin Vallotton, describing the occupation of the Var coast after the war, mentions the attitude adopted by both himself and others towards the threat of evacuation in 1944: ‘It had been spoken about for so long and in such precise terms but remained an unfulfilled hope so that the landings easily turned into a joke subject’.38 But even distancing yourself in this way was part of the same mechanism: it was a way of preventing yourself from believing that which you nevertheless wanted to believe, i.e. that the evacuation would take place and the Allied landing too.

Rumour and the Choosing of Sides Rumours constitute an open window on the world of collective representations and perceptions. There are true rumours which anticipate subsequently confirmed information. There are relay rumours which spread hidden information. There are millenarian rumours announcing catastrophe or deliverance. There are accusing rumours which invent conspiracies. There are positive rumours which create heroes. All these types of rumours circulate and reveal what is going through people’s minds as well as referring back to some basic myths.39 That of conspiracy is omnipresent, but even more so the myth of salvation and apocalypse, which underlies most of the beliefs on which the rumours circulating between 1940 and 1944 were based. In fact, the general meaning was very clear. Rumours played a role in the reconstruction of national unity shattered before the war and in the rebuilding carried out by the Allies and the Resistance – a Resistance in which the majority of the population did not participate but which they adopted verbally by positioning themselves as the ‘us’, the ‘patriots’, against the ‘they’, ‘them’, ‘the collabos’, the enemy, and this was vital to the process of rediscovering unity. Rumours thus mapped out the world, allowed people to situate themselves and linked daily solidarity – that of ordinary public places and ordinary words – with the exceptional solidarity of

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 83

Rumours in Wartime France • 83 shared risk for a good cause. The production of rumours reflected this participation – although platonic and virtual – of a whole section of the population in the fighting. By manipulating information in which one believes and adding substance to it by repetition, rumours represent the first and most elementary level of resistance, involving those who were not yet or only slightly involved. This section of the population participated in a resistance limited to words, which compensated to a certain extent for their less flattering lack of bravery or their prudence. It was often only a fleeting and isolated form of protest but was nonetheless part of the whole, and of wider changes which generated representations, attitudes and involvement. Words are a form of fighting, however meagre. This means that rumours played a role in the politicization of a large part of the French population as it rediscovered some common beliefs about the future. They helped to reconstruct a shared identity, affecting particularly milieus and individuals for whom politics was not a primary concern. They prepared changes in a public opinion which was being penetrated by ideas and representations of the Resistance before fully identifying with it at the Liberation. Rather than inventing a triumph of opportunism, a suspicious enthusiasm designed to cover up past attitudes, as a way of describing public attitudes at that time, it would be far preferable to look back more closely on their feelings during the Occupation. The cliché of a fickle and servile public opinion, which was put about very readily by disappointed or bitter resisters and so often adopted subsequently, allows no understanding of the means by which the public came to identify with the Resistance. Researching rumours, analyzing their development and their transmission, as well as the representations they convey is a much safer way of comprehending these fundamental changes of opinion.

Notes 1. François Ploux makes the same remark for the nineteenth century: ‘L’imaginaire social et politique de la rumeur dans la France du XIXe siècle (1815–1870)’, Revue Historique, no. 614, April–June 2000, p. 395. 2. In particular, Jean-Noël Kapferer, Rumeurs, le plus vieux média du monde (Seuil, 1987). 3. By the present author: ‘Le Var: la pénurie, c’est les autres’ in ‘Le temps des restrictions en France (1939–1949)’, Cahiers de l’IHTP no. 32–3, 1996, pp. 439–452, ‘Le retour des “émotions populaires”: manifestations de ménagères en 1942’, Mélanges Michel Vovelle (Presses de l’Université de Provence, 1997), pp. 267–76 and ‘Sociabilité et rumeurs en temps de guerre. Bruits et contestations en Provence dans les années quarante’, Provence Historique, fasc. 187, January–March 1997, pp. 245–58. 4. M. Bloch, Apologie pour l’histoire ou le métier d’historien (Armand Colin, 1961), p. 46.

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 84

84 • Jean-Marie Guillon 5. See the research done for the USA: Kapferer, Rumeurs, p. 107 and Paul Fussell, A la guerre (Seuil, 1992), p. 54. 6. Kapferer, Rumeurs, p. 19. 7. Madeleine Gex Leverrier, Une Française dans la tourmente (Editions Emile Paul Frères, 1945), p. 70. 8. Bloch, Apologie pour l’histoire, especially p. 50. 9. Departmental Archives (AD) of the Var 1 W 27, 30 June 1943. 10. AD Var, cabinet 600, departmental analysis conducted by the Renseignements Généraux, August 1942. 11. Le Petit Var, 15 June 1941. The PPF weekly L’Emancipation nationale also published it. 12. Pierre Nicolle, Cinquante mois d’armistice (Ed. André Bonne, 1947), uses the expression at least six times. See also the daily Le Petit Var of 10 November 1941: ‘Le faux bruit répandu par les adversaires de la Révolution nationale’, which claims that the Germans are requisitioning leather coats. 13. Gritou and Annie Vallotton, C’était au jour le jour (Payot, 1995), p. 88 (23 June 1940). 14. Vallotton, C’était au jour le jour, p. 115 ( 25 August 1940), and p. 171 (2 August 1941). 15. H.R. Kedward, Naissance de la Résistance dans la France de Vichy (Champ Vallon, 1989), p. 225. 16. AD Var 1 W 26–27, dossier from February 1942, interceptions of the 17th for St Tropez and the 21st for Toulon. 17. AD Var 1 W 10, report from the Commandant of the Gendarmerie for the Var, 21 February 1942. 18. Michel Vovelle, Découverte de la politique (La Découverte, 1992), p. 150. 19. AD Var 1 W 60, police report, 5 October 1942. 20. Denis Peschanski, La France des camps (Gallimard, 2002), p. 417. 21. Lion Feuchtwanger, Le diable en France (Jean Cyrille Godefroy, 1985), p. 50. 22. Steven Kaplan, Le complot de famine (PUF, 1997) and Richard Cobb, La protestation populaire en France (1789–1820) (Calmann-Lévy, 1975), p. 233. 23. J. Malaquais, Journal de guerre suivi de Journal du métèque 1939–1942 (Phébus, 1997), p. 279. 24. Nicolle, Cinquante mois d’armistice, volume I, p. 274. 25. The journalist Pierre Limagne mentions such a rumour as early as 14 November 1940: Ephémérides de quatre années tragiques 1940–1944 (Ed. de Candide, 1987), volume I, p. 48. 26. Malaquais, Journal de guerre, p. 186. 27. AD Var 1 W 26–27, postal interceptions. 28. AD Var 1 W 88, postal interception of 31 May 1943. 29. Limagne, Ephémérides de quatre années, volume II, of 28 January 1943.

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 85

Rumours in Wartime France • 85 30. Jean Guéhenno, Journal des années noires (Gallimard, 1947), p. 345 (entry for 22 June 1943). 31. AD Var 6 M 18 7, report of Secretary of State for the Interior, 14 August 1942. 32. AD Var 1 W 54, letter from Mayor of Tourves (Var), 30 October 1943. Confirmation by the Renseignements Généraux, on 5 November 1943. 33. AD Var 3 Z 4/13, information collected between 3 and 6 November 1943. 34. AD Var 1 W 23, Renseignements Généraux notes of 10 and 25 September 1943, corroborated by various telephone interceptions, notably the one claiming the Toulonnais have been ‘put in quarantine’ (AD Var 1 W 27, 30 September). 35. AD Var 3 Z 4–22, information of 29 June 1942. 36. Fussell, A la guerre, p. 66. 37. Boris Schreiber, Un silence d’environ une demi heure (Le Cherche Midi, 1996), p. 545. 38. B. Vallotton, Fascistes et nazis en Provence (Mercure de France, 1945), p. 152. 39. Raoul Girardet, Mythes et mythologies politiques (Le Seuil, 1986).

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 86

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 87

–7– Grammatical Notes: Surviving, and Memories of Jewish Life in Nice, 1939–43 Miranda Pollard

[The French] had abundant everything. It was just paradise returned – especially in Nice which was paradise to begin with. We were like on a permanent vacation. Nobody thought of war. Everybody thought because the Germans had taken what they wanted already this was going to be it–it’s going to stop now and everybody’s going to live happily ever after. (Harry Burger, 1938)1 It was like a scene from Casablanca . . . played for real in Nice in the Café de la France. (Kurt Lenkway, 1939)2 The Germans set up the Vichy government. (Ruth N.)3

Introduction These three observations about Vichy France come from Jewish refugees who lived in Nice during the war.4 The first two grab our attention. They use familiar language and images. The vision of Nice as a permanently sunny resort paradise is as resonant as that of Casablanca as a seedy, clandestine market for overpriced but life-saving tickets away from the reach of Nazism. The third comment – that Vichy was created by the Germans – is by now a much-abused myth, but it was certainly a tenacious one, not only held by apologists for Pétain. Yet when we realize that Harry Burger’s sixteenth birthday fell on 10 May, 1940, the day Germany invaded the west, Kurt Lenkway was a young man just of military age and Ruth N. was nine years of age, we may pause before these retrospective accounts. Was it really like that in Nice? Or are these survivors misremembering in their need to communicate to us? Who are ‘we’, the imagined audience of these témoins? Are we surviving participants too, or are we already distanced by age, experience or the sceptical voices of historical scholarship? Official archives and newspaper stories can readily be summoned to support Burger’s and Lenkway’s accounts, just as historians can be called upon to 87

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 88

88 • Miranda Pollard contradict Ruth N.’s assertion about Vichy. But the issue remains: how are stories of surviving told and retold, and whose history is deemed ‘real’? ‘Grammatical’ according to one definition in the New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary is ‘of a language: relying more on diversity of inflection than on richness of vocabulary’. This chapter tells a story through a set of Holocaust testimonies related to Nice, which I will argue are largely ‘grammatical’. They employ a common language but are not especially innovative in image, vocabulary or metaphor. Yet they are critically necessary memories, in so far as they oblige us to reflect on the diversity of existential inflections, of small human differences, of tone and emphasis.5 In the face of recurrent anti-Semitic violence and Holocaust denials, the historian must be diligent about evidence as well as extraordinarily alert to the power of representation.6 So how can we best incorporate subjective testimony? How can we treat this evidence critically? Traditional historical narratives cannot of themselves sustain the burden of imaginative recreation required to think and rethink the savagery which was Nazism’s war against the Jews. In this context, both audiovisual and written testimonies are vital to creating not simply better linear narratives about those who were rounded up, deported and murdered. These testimonies are also vital to writing the parallel micro-histories of the Holocaust which convey the terrifying doubts, ambivalence, fears and complex responses of those Jewish men, women and children who, through luck and circumstance, were able to avoid the fate of the majority but who survived in the shadow of a historical cataclysm like no other. As Lawrence Langer suggests in Holocaust Testimonies: Ruins of Memory: ‘videotaped oral testimonies provide us with an unexplored archive of “texts” that solicit from us original forms of interpretation’ and ‘each testimony is true, even when the testimonies contradict one another’. Unlike written memoirs which are destined for publication – for an audience – as Langer asserts, ‘witnesses’ chronic frustration and scepticism about the audience’s ability to understand their testimony is almost a premise of these encounters’, producing a question of ‘whether anything can be meaningfully conveyed’.7 These witnesses from Nice almost exclusively managed to evade deportation and thus did not have to endure the labour or extermination camps.8 Instead, they survived the hunting of men, women and children which would have brought them there. These stories are thus about surviving, rather than ‘survivors’. If the reality of survival is more closely examined as the dreadful and almost entirely arbitrary fate that it was, then these men and women who escaped death deserve to have their stories and experiences heard again and again, with open minds, and not with preconceived accolades of heroic virtue or, worse, heard within simplistic schema of victimization. These témoins have merited their own grammatical history. Their stories reflect the inflection of sadness, loss and silence which intersperses itself between

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 89

Jewish Life in Nice, 1939–43 • 89 mundane images and vocabulary. Aided and abetted by Roderick Kedward’s profoundly empathetic work on local and oral histories, which has so often inspired a reworking of the very language and concepts we employ to write French history in this period, this brief account illuminates the contradictory grammar of Jewish memory about staying alive in wartime Nice up until September 1943.

Nice at War On 3 September, several dozen Austrian and German male refugees in the AlpesMaritimes, including Kurt Lenkway and his brother John, were arrested and interned. Austrians and Germans, Jewish refugees and pro-Nazi sympathizers were interned together at Antibes. The French authorities regarded all refugees as an undifferentiated mass of foreigners, a threat, ironically both because of their potential pro-German sympathies and at the same time because of their status as enemies of Nazism. Lenkway notes the ‘prejudice among Jews too’ against Russians and Poles, and latterly against the Germans. His hurt is almost palpable. He especially remembers that the Rabbi in Nice refused to lend a Torah for use at the internment camp on the High Holidays.9 Such details lend pathos but also an edge of veracity to his story telling, as if Lenkway were anxious that his audience might think he was not telling the truth. Referring to the ‘large number of homosexuals’ among the internees from the Côte d’Azur, for example, he insists, ‘At that time, it might sound strange, but I was there, therefore I can talk about it, if they knew you were not interested in their type of love, they would never bother you or would [not] try to convince you’. This observation positions Lenkway among a heterosexual majority–presumably like his audience. It also provides an opportunity to present himself consciously as interpreter of events and eyewitness: his audience may think it unusual that these homosexuals were ‘the best friends and most helpful people you could find’, but because he was present in that place, at that time, he can speak of it, without embarrassment or discomfort. Similarly, his ‘heroes’, despite the fact that they were two of his jailers, were the two French prison guards who showed him and his brother where to hide to avoid deportation. With the outbreak of war the lights on the Promenade des Anglais and the main streets were turned off. Over the next days and weeks as the war progressed, the inhabitants of Nice were requested to behave appropriately. But most refugees were not concerned with gambling, cards or frequenting the beach. As Maximilian L. commented in his 1987 interview, ‘Nice is a beautiful resort town now but they didn’t look at it from that point of view’ after arriving from the chaotic ‘Odyssey’ of the exode.10 The desperate search for exit visas continued. In July 1940, the US Consulate in Nice noted in a telegram: ‘Work extremely heavy . . . and increasing. In June quarter nearly 1,500 protection cases, 3,200

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 90

90 • Miranda Pollard protection interviews, 4,000 miscellaneous interviews and 1,500 interviews with French officials’.11 On 18 June, Nice heard Maréchal Pétain’s radio announcement that he was seeking an armistice. The fact that German forces had withdrawn to the ‘Occupied Zone’ beyond the new demarcation line, that the Italians had not been allowed to seize Nice or Menton, and that the revered First World War hero Pétain was offering ‘the gift of his person’ and the National Revolution to France reassured most of the inhabitants of Nice that the worst outcome – Nazi or Italian Fascist occupation – had been averted. But in Nice the growing ‘Jewish community’,12 already trying to deal with feeding and accommodating foreign and French refugees fleeing the Nazis, existed within a city increasingly open to the antiSemitic blandishments of right-wing activists (and thugs) and to the pro-Pétainist zeal of a new, hand-picked prefect, Marcel Ribière.

Vichy’s Nice Harry Burger says he knew the difference between living in Vichy controlled Nice and living within the Third Reich: ‘We were not chased in the streets yet, like in Germany, or arrested . . . [but] the immigrants [had] to come to the police station, present themselves and show that they had enough money to live on.’ Like most recent Jewish immigrants, the Burgers were not allowed to work and had to prove they had sufficient resources to support themselves. The issue of the black market is recalled by two témoins, reminding us how inappropriate it is to moralize on the subject. Maximilian L. recalls that he helped his family to survive by scrounging, smuggling and ‘running errands’ on the black market. Oscar A. similarly points out that Jews were not allowed to work and that he made money to support his family from clandestine wheeling and dealing, like so many ‘braves hommes’ at the time.13 Such language brings us down to earth. These criminals under Vichy’s legal code were actually just ‘decent guys’. Stereotypical imagery is used to invoke an antonymous reality. Despite their newly destitute status, as Burger notes, Jews in Nice were ‘supposed to be very rich’. Burger remembers an ingenious system of getting around the burden of proving financial stability: ‘there was a big bundle of money that traveled from one Jewish family to another and they showed it to the police . . . and the police renewed your permit’.14 Summoning up the graphic image of ‘a big bundle of money’ attaches the creative resistance of refugee Jews to social and economic exclusion to age-old anti-Semitic mythology. Burger is using this anti-Semitic cliché knowingly. (Jews were ‘supposed to be very rich’.) The lack of innovative imagery works well to ground Burger’s story in a familiar cultural narrative. Kurt Lenkway remembers that Jews in Nice were always anxious. Odette A. and Moussa A., both of whom had fled from Paris where they had met as students at

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 91

Jewish Life in Nice, 1939–43 • 91 the Sorbonne, speak of both ‘anguish’ and ‘uncertainty’. They tell us that in 1941–2 no one knew what to do.15 It is a sombre reminder that even the most educated and insightful French and foreign Jews were trapped in Nice by material, emotional and political barriers. Lenkway recalls too that no one doubted that Germany would occupy all of France sooner or later, ‘it was just a question of time’.16 He spoke of his admiration for his parents who persisted in trying to get out of Europe. Lucky to have resources to do so, they were able to bribe the Romanian Consul in Beziers to get passports. Kurt and his brother managed to get into Spain in 1941. Harry Burger’s father was not so fortunate. Arrested in 1941 while trying to purchase a counterfeit Cuban visa, he was acquitted on the immediate charge but as a foreign Jew without papers was sent to the concentration camp at Gurs. Deported to Auschwitz in 1943, he died sometime between the end of 1943 and the beginning of 1944. In his 1980s testimony, Burger makes little effort to be nuanced or ‘objective’. Memory, grief and anger are inseparable, as he concludes ‘the French episode’ of his narrative: ‘I only have to add that the French have proven to be very wonderful collaborators of the Germans. Extremely antiSemitic and pleased with the solution. I understand that, even today, the French have no love for the Jews – and I would never go back to them, either’. The conceptual slippage from collaboration to anti-Semitism to being pleased with the solution (a ‘solution’ which is left deliberately ambiguous) allows the French to be morally condemned at the same time as it permits Burger to assert his personal relationship with, knowledge and rejection of the French people: ‘I would never go back to them either’.17 Despite the harsh realities of life in the city, thousands of Jews were still attempting to get to Nice, believing it to be the best destination within France for gaining exit visas and having the support of a large Jewish community. Julien E., whose mother had cousins with French citizenship living in Nice, notes that it was ‘the pole of attraction for Jews fleeing from all of northern Europe’.18 Yet according to the testimony of Moussa A. and Odette A., these refugees arrived ‘disoriented’ and ‘had no clue what to do’ except to try to get US visas. Moussa, a Syrian Jew who had been studying theatre history at the Sorbonne before fleeing to Nice, went to the US Consulate and had his application for a visa accepted by a ‘helpful’ staff member there. Other survivors, like Maximilian L., also recall that the US Consulate was helpful, even that he was close to the quota number needed. Ruth N.’s grandmother was able to sponsor her visa application from the US and she got her papers in Nice in 1941. These witnesses pay tribute to the efforts of the Consulate staff in ordinary language. They remember the friendliness of the personnel as much as the difficulty of the circumstances. Does this memory not, in itself, indicate a desire to normalize the narrative, to render their story recognizably human by saying ‘these people were decent in the middle of all this chaos and hardship’. It allows us to gain some sense of moral scale for what follows.

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 92

92 • Miranda Pollard Of course, in the memory of others, like Marianne B., a German refugee who had been imprisoned and then freed from the camp at Gurs, hanging about for the salvation offered by the US Consulate was often a frustrating experience and ‘many people committed suicide waiting for visas’.19 She herself owed her survival to the generosity of an American businessman who sent her money and obtained an illegal visa for her. Again, it is essential to take the standpoint of Jewish men and women living in Nice in 1940–1, and to not see their history through the lens of the genocide we now know happened. Like everyone else, Jews in Nice wondered how long the war could last. In June 1941, many like Moussa A. read in the local newspapers of the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union and took hope from the idea that Hitler must eventually be defeated. Others felt that Nice provided a degree of protection from the immediate violence of the war and of Nazism; perhaps they could live there quietly until their visas came through. By the end of 1941, with the American entry into the war and the closing of the Consulate, refugees in Nice also knew their options for legal escape were narrowing. But other factors mattered too. Age, nationality and language skills, official and illegal connections, money, accommodation, the degree of assimilation within the city’s existing neighbourhoods – all these factors might determine the degree of choice open to foreign and French Jews. Between the summer of 1940 and the first major round-up and deportation of Jews from Nice in August 1942, there were many events that indicated heightened anti-Semitism. In October 1940, a Légion meeting at the casino in Nice was attended by about 7,500 people who heard Joseph Darnand and other predominantly PPF speakers denounce Jews. Various anti-Semitic acts, including the breaking of windows in Jewish homes and the painting of graffiti, alerted Nice’s Jewish population to a new wave of hostility against them. But these isolated incidents were surely not as worrying as the bureaucratic measures which continued to delimit Jewish lives materially. Vichy enacted its first Statut des Juifs in October 1940, legally defining who was a Jew and what employment was now prohibited to French Jewish citizens. Marcel Ribière worked to implement the anti-Jewish legislation systematically. He justified his actions in terms of the threat which Jews supposedly posed to France. Referring to the hostility of the public towards handing Jews over to the Germans (as opposed to restricting them socially or interning them within France), Ribière asserted that it was only temporary. After all, ‘Jews . . . in the region . . . are so numerous and show off their wealth with such impudence, that the majority of people will not be upset to see them go’.20 But what of Nice’s Jewish inhabitants’ own sense of identity? Maximilian L., a schoolboy in the 1940s, returning from school one day had ink thrown at him by a Milicien. But inexplicably the Milice, given that their headquarters was next door at 14 rue Dalposo, and that they knew he was Jewish, left him alone otherwise.

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 93

Jewish Life in Nice, 1939–43 • 93 This was the same young boy who remembers that he nearly killed a schoolmate who called him a ‘dirty Jew’ two years earlier. He does not speak in his interview of how he kept his temper in check in the atmosphere of rising anti-Semitism. His narrative is about going to school, eating at home, helping his father find food and cigarettes. Julien E., an unusually articulate and self-conscious interviewee, remembers that life in Nice between 1940–2 seemed ‘uneventful’, ‘as far as he can recall’.21 But he wonders out loud what he knew then – just nine years old when his parents were arrested as the family tried to escape over the Swiss border – and what he learnt afterwards. Incarceration and a long separation were the worst he and his brother could imagine. He did not know that he would never see his parents again. He simply recalls that his parents told him to take care of his younger brother and that his mother was ‘hysterical’ as she was taken away. But even this adjective has a cool, almost clinically detached tenor surely imposed in adult life. We can only wonder what words the nine-year-old Julien spoke at the time. Stanley Hoffmann, having returned to Nice with his mother after the exode, also continued his studies at the local lycée, where he had an especially supportive history teacher. Nemet, his best friend in school, was a Jewish Hungarian classmate. According to Hoffmann, Nice had changed since the mid-1930s when he lived there before, but discrimination had not yet become deadly deportation. He notes that the students usually reflected ‘the opinions of their parents’, which tended to be overtly xenophobic at first and moderated to a more attentiste attitude as the Occupation progressed. Is this Hoffmann the lycéen or Hoffmann the distinguished Vichy historian speaking? I would argue both. He is able to integrate emotional and intellectual memories; they are neither fractured nor straitjacketed by events. He speaks outside mere grammatical language because his memories have already found an audience and a voice. A bright student, Hoffmann remembers he felt ‘thoroughly French’, despite the fact that his mother was Austrian and his father American. He was not in favour of emigrating to the US although his father sent a supporting affidavit in 1941, when he and his mother were planning to leave.22 The elements of surviving are variously recalled. Marianne B., after getting out of detention in Gurs, as mentioned above, lived on money sent by an American businessman. Arriving from Paris, Odette A., who had recently graduated in medicine, found her boyfriend Moussa in dire straits and sold off personal belongings, including her accordion, so they could both eat. They were obliged to move around hotels and pensions. Food was very scarce. Oscar A.’s Bulgarian parents had been visiting him in Nice and were stuck there when the war broke out. These memories are related in a matter-of-fact manner. But what of Clara M. who stayed with her uncle in Nice, had false papers and moved around the city, not realizing the ‘stupid risks’ she took.23 Her criticism is directed not at those who inflicted the

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 94

94 • Miranda Pollard pain but at herself, the one who was ‘lucky’ to survive the war. In a particularly poignant moment, she says that the hardship she remembers most is the absence of her parents. Ruth N. notes that food was terribly scarce but remembers that ‘We measured time by Jewish holidays’. Odette and Moussa recall the thousands of East European Jews newly arrived in Nice, who stood out because of their dress and language. Many spent their time down by the Promenade des Anglais waiting to meet guides who would assist them in getting over the Pyrenees into Spain. Moussa says that so many of these so-called guides were swindlers. Additionally, many Jews got beaten up and ripped off by Darnand’s ‘thugs’. But Moussa also cautions that after fifty-three years his ‘memory fails him’. Survivors’ memories serve as an important reminder that well into 1942 (even arguably until the arrival of the Gestapo in September 1943) many Jews in Nice managed to fit in, find food, accommodation, sometimes even to get work and find time for leisure. These testimonies also suggest the ways in which Jewish identity was understood differently according to family history, time and location. Monique B., whose family were well-off assimilated French Jews, moved to Nice because she had an uncle living there already and because her father proposed that they would all be baptized Protestant. She notes in an almost amused way, however, that he made no effort to conceal his Jewish identity. Serge B. remarks that his family were not at all observant. Indeed, in his memory, they ‘found out’ when war was declared (by dint of the anti-Semitism around them) that they were Jewish. Odette A. similarly remembers that her family had not even observed Jewish holidays, and that neither her mother’s nor her father’s side of the family were pious. But as she grew up, she was made aware of her Jewish ‘otherness’ by classmates, first in school and then at university in Paris where she studied medicine. Dismissed from her government position because of the Statut des Juifs, she recalls that over time she became more and more ‘closed in on her identity as a Jew’. Briefly employed in a perfume shop in Nice, she was fired when her boss realized she was Jewish, although he claimed he was not anti-Semitic. Confronted with this level of prejudice, she deliberately chose to set up a dispensary to help sick Polish and Romanian Jewish refugees in Nice. She felt ‘at home with them’. She even registered with the authorities as a French Jew. Increasingly menaced by anti-Semitism she chose to claim her Jewish identity explicitly and proudly. Odette’s interview has an unrelenting, rigorous quality to it. She passes quickly over the arrest and deportation of her mother and sister in 1940. The grammar of her testimony is parsed through her own experience of arrest, torture, deportation and survival. But most importantly, she is interviewed with her husband, Moussa, whom she enthusiastically portrays as the hero and main protagonist of their Resistance story – the remarkable story of having saved over five hundred children from certain death through the Réseau Marcel. For Moussa A., two incidents forced him to decide on action instead of waiting to see how events would evolve. In April 1942, he saw a woman kicked to death

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 95

Jewish Life in Nice, 1939–43 • 95 on a street in Nice, in front of a crowd which included her screaming child. When he asked what was happening, an onlooker told him that the ‘Jewish woman was being disciplined’. Helpless to intervene, he fled the scene in despair. He recalls that he cried out spontaneously ‘My God, My God, why have you forsaken us?’ It is almost as though his story requires this ‘conversion’, as though his audience may need convincing. Uncomfortably continuing with this narrative switch, explaining the obligation to act at that moment, Moussa haltingly says he was brought to meet an Italian army chaplain who wanted to ‘confess’ to a Jew what he had seen happen on the eastern front where he had been stationed. The SS had used Jewish children for shooting practice.24 At this juncture in the interview with Annette Wieviorka, herself a historian of the Nazi genocide, Moussa stops and says these things ‘were too horrible to name or describe’. Odette, who honours Moussa who but has lived through and subsequently written of these horrors herself, interrupts impatiently, saying ‘Tell it! Don’t censor it!’ Moussa continues. The SS had used Jewish children as target practice, shooting them dead for amusement. At first incredulous, Moussa accepts the priest’s word because the latter swears on the crucifix he wears under his soutane. After such an oath, Moussa says he came to accept the unthinkable: the arrests, the deportations, the rumours, the evidence of such sadism against children did not equate with anything except Nazi genocide against all Jews. He and his then girlfriend, Odette (who was later to become his wife), assumed false identities and, with the help of the Bishop of Nice, Monsignor Rémond, established a secret web of contacts, hiding places and safe houses for Jewish children abandoned after their parents had been arrested and deported.

The Terror Made Manifest: 1942 In the spring of 1942, the number of Jews officially resident in the department of the Alpes-Maritimes was nearly 13,000 of whom 7,500 were foreigners. The actual number of French and foreign Jews was probably far higher. Nice, along with Toulouse, Marseilles, Lyons and Limoges, was home to the greatest number of Jews in the unoccupied zone. But there was no natural safety in numbers. In July 1942, SS Jüdenreferent Dannecker visited Nice to gather information about ‘the Jewish problem’. Shortly thereafter the prefect received orders to prepare a suitable location close to the train station to hold 3,000 detainees. Early in the morning of 26 August 1942, the first major round-up of foreign Jews in Nice for deportation took place. Over 10,000 Jews from the unoccupied zone were delivered to the Germans by Vichy in August. Although some calls to solidarity and resistance were recorded, and undoubtedly many Jews were tipped off by friends and neighbours not to be at home when the police came calling, there was no mass protest at the action of the authorities.25

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 96

96 • Miranda Pollard

Life Under Italian Occupation, 1942–3 Reacting to the landing of Allied troops in North Africa, the Germans decided to occupy all of France in November 1942, leaving the Italians to administer the south-east corner of France. Vichy was nominally in charge but Mussolini’s regime maintained de facto control, politically and militarily. Ironically, this turned out to be a welcome respite for French and foreign (including Italian) Jews in Nice. The Italians marched into Nice but without the swagger or confidence of the Germans, and without the anti-Semitic agenda of either Vichy or the Nazis. Stanley Hoffmann, whose mother was in hospital for surgery at this time, remembers the large, scruffy overcoats of the Italian soldiers. Moussa also recalls the arrival of the Italians who seemed to drag their feet with exhaustion. They were not regarded with fear. Not only were many Niçois of Italian origin, but also, clearly, these soldiers were disillusioned with war. Tracking down Jews was not on their minds. As Odette remarks, falling back on a familiar heterosexual trope, ‘[The Italians]...for them, it was the girls that they chased.’ Hoffmann too remembers that the only trouble in the city as far as the Italian military were concerned was the odd crime passionel. David B. recalls that even the Resistance movement of which he was a member, Zionist Youth, thought the Italians were alright.26 The Italian authorities in Nice blocked both Vichy and German initiatives. No Jews in the Nice region were to be forced to wear the Yellow Star, to be coerced into the Foreign Worker Units, to have ‘Jew’ stamped on their papers or to be removed inland (effectively to German-controlled départements). Outside of the region, Jews, elated by the news of Italian protection, fled to Nice and hundreds managed to have their status regularized there, allowing them to re-enter Italy, for example. With Mussolini’s fall in July 1943, a German division arrived in Nice and panic overcame the Jewish community. From July to September, the Italians and the various Jewish and Zionist organizations active in Nice tried to implement evacuation plans to get those in danger to safety either in Italy or in North Africa. The choice was between staying in Nice, surrounded by other Jews and hoping for Italian protection to hold up, or fleeing individually or in small groups across the Alps, or back into German-controlled France. In September, Aloïs Brunner’s Gestapo unit moved into Nice to arrest and deport the 20,000–25,000 Jews estimated to be living there. The savage tactics employed by Brunner and his men, who included anti-Semitic ‘physiognomists’, succeeded in tracking down nearly 2,000 innocent civilians. Although Brunner failed to get the lists of registered Jewish residents from the new prefect, Chaigneau, who claimed he had handed them over to the Italians, the Jewish agencies who had assisted refugees were raided and closed, and dozens brought to the Hotel Excelsior to be tortured about the whereabouts of key figures in the community. Night and day, streets were blocked off, houses searched and families rounded up; children were arrested on

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 97

Jewish Life in Nice, 1939–43 • 97 the street, and men were told to drop their trousers in public to ‘prove’ their identity. Odette A. recalls how ‘whole hotels were picked up’. Moussa agrees. Despite the risks, he and Odette ‘had to be outside’, on the streets, to rescue children who were left behind. He holds out a photograph to the camera. It is of a German boy, Rafael, whose mother had handed him over to them before being arrested. This boy spent days crying under the table in his new home, his adoptive mother distressed that she could not comfort him at all. Moussa hesitates. He wants to emphasize a point: ‘Most of these people [who hid children illegally] were not well-off . . . We were more welcomed by those who had nothing, who agreed to take enormous risks’. In his narrative, he deflects attention from himself and Odette towards their working-class allies and the hidden children, whom ‘it was terrible to see so young so sad’. The photograph works as a story-telling prop, allowing Moussa to keep talking and to keep this history personal and down-toearth.

Conclusion These grammatical notes have conveyed some of the ways in which Jewish men and women who survived the war years in Nice retold their stories. Sixty-four years old when she gives her interview in 1993, Monique B. says simply, ‘It’s important that people know and remember’.27 These witnesses have not sought to persuade or seduce us, their audience, by intricate metaphors or literary sophistication. Instead they go on the record, simply hoping to be heard. Their memories are a gift.

Notes 1. Harry Burger, Austrian refugee typed transcript of audio-taped testimony given in 1986/87, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM), ‘Memoir of the War 1939–1945’, p. 5. 2. Kurt Lenkway, German refugee, speaking of the urgent trade in exit visas, ‘This small piece of his: the escape from Germany and three years later the successful immigration to the United States’, p. 19. Microfiche of audio testimony available at USHMM, RG-02.065*01. 3. Ruth N., German refugee whose father had joined the French Foreign Legion in 1939, and who moved to Nice in 1941. HVT-1789, Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies at Yale University (hereafter Fortunoff). Interviewees are cited by first name and last initial only, along with Fortunoff Archive audio-visual tape number. On this remarkable collection, see the Fortunoff website at http://www.library.yale.edu/testimonies/about/index. htm.

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 98

98 • Miranda Pollard 4. This chapter is part of my research project on the life and work of Odette Abadi. On Nice during the war, see Jean-Louis Panicacci’s indispensable Les Alpes-Maritimes, 1939–1945 (Editions Serre, 1989), as well as his earlier ‘Les Juifs et la Question Juive dans les Alpes-Maritimes de 1939 à 1945’, Recherches Régionales Côte d’Azur et Contrées Limitrophes, no. 86, 1983. 5. Concerning the twenty-seven Fortunoff interviews dealing with Nice: twentyone were given by those aged fifty-five to seventy-four years old at the time of interview; twenty-three were conducted in the 1990s; twenty of the interviews about life in occupied Nice were given by those aged twenty or under in 1940, and five by those aged twenty-one to thirty. (No information was available for two.) Ranging from the earliest in 1984 to the most recent in 1995, these testimonies vary from 43 minutes to 6 hours and 32 minutes in length. They were conducted in English and French, in Paris, New York, Brookline and New Haven, and follow a standard format of a fixed camera directed at the person being interviewed with the interviewer/s off camera. 6. For one account of the revisionist phenomenon, see Pierre Vidal-Naquet, Assassins of Memory (Columbia University Press, 1992). On the problems of representation, see Omer Bartov, Murder in Our Midst (Oxford University Press, 1996). 7. Lawrence Langer, Holocaust Testimonies (Yale University Press, 1991), p. 21. 8. Odette Abadi is a notable exception. Arrested in Nice in 1943, tortured by the Gestapo concerning her activities in the network she ran to save Jewish children and was deported to Birkenau and then Bergen-Belsen. See her account, Terre de Détresse (l’Harmattan, 1996). On the network itself, which Odette ran with her future husband Moussa Abadi, see Yaël Abihssira ‘Le Réseau Marcel: Histoire d’un réseau de sauvetage clandestin dans les AlpesMaritimes pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale’ (Mémoire de maîtrise, Paris I, 1998). 9. Lenkway, p. 22. 10. Maximilian L., HVT-956. 11. Telegram from Horace Remillard, US Consul, Nice, to Department of State, Washington, DC, 24 July, 1940. US National Archives and Records Administration (USNARA) 125.6633/160. 12. In her sensitive account of the multiplicity of Jewish experiences, Jews in France during World War II (University Press of New England, 2001), pp. 1–29, Renée Polonski notes that the term ‘Jewish community’ represented ‘nothing but a fiction’ at this time. 13. Oscar A., HVT-3205. 14. Burger, p. 6. 15. Odette A. and Moussa A., HVT-3203. 16. Lenkway, p. 28.

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 99

Jewish Life in Nice, 1939–43 • 99 17. Burger, p. 8 (emphasis mine). 18. Julien E., HVT-2742. 19. Marianne B., HVT-793: Transit documents, exit visas through Spain and/or Portugal and boat tickets might expire before the US visa was processed, leaving the applicant stranded. 20. Marc Olivier Baruch, Servir l’Etat Français (Fayard, 1997), p. 151 (my translation). 21. Julien E. is an unusual témoin in many respects. He was one of the ‘hidden children’ of the Réseau Marcel and found out by accident in 1991, when he met the historian Lucien Lazare at Yad Vashem, that he owed his life to Odette and Moussa Abadi. He sought them out and became their friend, playing a significant role in bringing their history to light. See Julien E., HVT-2742. 22. Author’s interview with Stanley Hoffmann, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, 12 December 2002. 23. Oscar A., HVT-3205; Clara M., HVT-310. 24. Moussa A., HVT-3203. 25. On anti-Semitism and its early critics in the southern zone, see H.R. Kedward, Resistance in Vichy France (OUP, 1978), pp.86–8, 164ff. 26. David B., HVT-4012. 27. Monique B., HVT-2634.

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 100

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 101

–8– ‘Fraternity among listeners’. The BBC and French Resistance: Evidence from Refugees Martyn Cornick

This chapter is a tribute to Rod Kedward’s work on the Resistance. In the preface to the first of his pioneering volumes, Resistance in Vichy France, Kedward indicates that his book was written not to ‘give a history of Vichy nor a chronological survey of Resistance. What it does is to examine the various ways in which people became Resisters’.1 At intervals through this work Kedward underscores the importance of the BBC, including its French Service, in providing a reliable point of contact for the target audience, that is, the French population. The book’s subtitle –A Study of Ideas and Motivation for Resistance – is entirely apposite here. Very effectively, the BBC mediated both the ‘ideas’ and the ‘motivation’ necessary for awakening, encouraging and sustaining resistance in occupied and unoccupied France. For instance, in the chapter ‘Popular Protest’, Kedward, drawing on Resister testimony, maintains that ‘Lucienne Gosse, writing about Grenoble, and Georges Rougeron, writing about the Allier, are just two among many Resisters who emphasize the early importance of the BBC in orientating individual attitudes and creating a form of fraternity among listeners’.2 Often operating in tandem with the Resistance press, the BBC ‘fully prepared the public’ for protests and demonstrations against both Vichy- and Germaninspired measures.3 Kedward also reproduces extracts in translation from resisters’ interview testimony. Thus M. Romain Baz remembered how ‘The first group we created . . . was in the shape of a sports association. It was above suspicion because it had a priest attached to it. The young members distributed tracts and organized listenings to the BBC’.4 For the later part of the Occupation more examples could be produced from Kedward’s second volume, In Search of the Maquis.5 Building on work I have published previously in this area – in particular an extended article-interview with Emile Delavenay, the Director of the BBC’s European Intelligence Department6 – here I shall examine how the BBC contributed to motivating the French audience. The department produced reports for distribution among the high echelons of government, including the Ministry of Information and the Political Warfare Executive. This work was based on several 101

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 102

102 • Martyn Cornick sources of intelligence, including digests from the BBC Monitoring Service, French print media brought to London via Lisbon and elsewhere, and listener correspondence. As part of this huge effort Delavenay and his staff also interviewed refugees and returners from France, and it is this information which provides our primary source material. Here we have to limit ourselves to reports covering the early part of the Occupation, 1940–2, the most important period as far as motivating resistance is concerned.7 The reports, produced rapidly at the time for the immediate purpose of feeding into the whole radio war effort – from the technical side to the creative process of programme making – are little known. Now, they provide the historian of the Resistance with insights into conditions prevailing in wartime France. The technical information was of greatest interest to the radio engineers responsible for maintaining broadcast quality – wavelengths, jamming, countermeasures and so on. The reports also contain details relating to the audience, including reactions to programme content, the development of public opinion and the circumstances surrounding the act of listening. This was of vital importance, since the very act of listening to London represented a means of defying Vichy and German rules. This information reveals a fascinating picture of everyday life during the Occupation. Finally, the reports are invaluable testimony to the sometimes perilous adventures lived by these escapers, whether or not their decisions to leave France were undertaken as a conscious act of resistance. We should consider first why it was that the BBC came to play such a key role in the war. In 1940, it was known that the French population – some 41 million people – owned between five and six million radio sets. Most sets were concentrated in the Paris region, the Nord, Seine-Inférieure, the east and the Gironde. In the centre and the Midi there were far fewer: one recent source mentions 3,000 sets for the whole of the Lozère in 1939.8 Most were adapted for medium- and longwave reception, on which the BBC broadcast at 1,500 metres. As the 1930s went on, the BBC increased its use of other wavelengths, including short wave. Listening to the BBC’s broadcasts on both long and short waves had therefore become established practice by the time war broke out. That this was realized by both French and British authorities is evinced by a conversation between the Prime Minister Winston Churchill and the permanent head of the French Foreign Ministry, Alexis Léger (better known as the poet SaintJohn Perse, his nom de plume). Just after the collapse of France, on 28 June 1940 Léger – accompanied by his opposite number at the British Foreign Office – visited Churchill. Against a background of increased Anglophobia in France and Algeria and a surge of anti-French feeling in Britain, Léger insisted that one of the ways in which the British might henceforth influence the French people was the ‘clever use of the press and wireless’. Léger stated that ‘English broadcasting was more heard in France than was French broadcasting’. He presaged a phenomenon which was already gathering momentum and whose impact would take on a vastly

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 103

The BBC and the French Resistance • 103 increased importance as the Occupation wore on, saying that the BBC ‘alone could be expected to provide news from untainted sources’. But he urged too that British news media ‘must be sympathetic [to the French] and avoid recrimination’.9 These words represent, in summary, the policy of the BBC towards occupied France. This carefully balanced policy was implemented in contrast to other voices, which, as the following example from mid-1941 shows, counselled that more drastic steps be taken regarding the French. In a speech delivered at Ormskirk on 5 June, a Commander King-Hall demanded: ‘What steps . . . we are taking to encourage [the French] to revolt, to refuse to pay taxes, to fight the traitors at Vichy? We need to start a revolution in France and force Darlan to fly to his spiritual home in Germany’. The editor of the review in which this demand was quoted provides an astute assessment of the more subtle role the BBC would play in fostering resistance: The sole aim which the BBC ought to pursue in broadcasting to France is to break through the totalitarian darkness with which all France is enveloped. That can be done in one way and one way only – to tell the French the truth through the medium of honest news-bulletins and objective, analytical, and informative talks on the situation in this country and the world at large. Everything beyond this will do harm. . . . The French are enduring afflictions that are worse than air-raids with unimaginable fortitude, and just as Londoners need not be told how to behave when they are bombed, so the French need not be told how to behave in their anguish, ruin and humiliation. When the time comes, the spirit of resistance which burns with a white heat in the heart of the French people will burst with a mighty conflagration . . .10

‘Telling the truth’ without embroidery, objective news reporting of the unfolding war without masking Allied reverses, and not excessively criticizing the personality of Pétain: these were the tactics deployed by the BBC in order to build confidence in the French to resist. But it would take time and patience. Delavenay and his staff conducted over 500 interviews with refugees of many nationalities who arrived in London from France and French overseas territories, as Table 8.1 shows: Table 8.1 Interviews Conducted by the BBC European Intelligence Department Dates of interview reports April 1940–November 1940 January 1941–December 1941 January 1942–December 1942 January 1943–December 1943 January 1944–November 1944 Total aFigures

Totals per year 7 57 (3)a 175 (4) 141 (19) 131 (54) 511 (80)

in parentheses show the numbers of anonymous interviews

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 104

104 • Martyn Cornick The range of people interviewed is astonishing. Among them were military personnel keen to join the Free French; radio experts; returning expatriate English residents in France (including a significant number of women); Irish priests; a Dutch writer; a Hungarian novelist; commercial travellers; journalists; Breton fishermen; and many political and resistance personalities (including Pierre Mendès France, Henri Queuille and Fernand Grenier among the former, and Jean-Jacques Mayoux, Yvon Morandat and Raymond Aubrac among the latter). There were other, less formal, conversations which did not give rise to a typed report, especially those with agents working for the Special Operations Executive (SOE) or the Gaullist secret service, the BCRA (Bureau Central de Renseignement et d’Action). The year 1942 was the most productive, with 175 records; a further 141 and 131 were produced in 1943 and 1944. This reflects the chronology of the Occupation; after a period of uncertainty – or attentisme – more people decided to leave France as their initial faith in Pétain faded. Particular impetus was given to the exodus from France when Pierre Laval returned to power in April 1942, and again after the Germans occupied the zone libre in November 1942. How did refugees come into contact with the BBC? Log sheets drawn up by the Royal Victoria Patriotic School (RVPS), the principal MI5 reception centre for the vetting of refugees, were routinely passed to Delavenay’s office, and once refugees who might be helpful had passed through security checks they were given his address. Interviews were conducted in BBC offices, sometimes at Bush House, at other times in temporary accommodation at Bedford College in Regent’s Park, and in still other cases in hotel bars or restaurants. The primary intent of the interviews was to gather as much information as possible about the effectiveness of BBC broadcasting and listener reception in France. Delavenay and his staff used a standard questionnaire.11 In addition, typed reports were made of the conversations, often divided into headed sections, such as ‘Listening to the BBC’, ‘Listening in Paris’, ‘Vichy and German Propaganda’, ‘Public Opinion and the War’, ‘French Feeling about de Gaulle’, ‘The Future of France’, and so on. Almost all the reports carry data relating to wavelengths, jamming and how listeners tried to avoid it. In March 1941 M. Frédéric Fua, a wireless engineer who had fled Paris in June 1940 and who had since been living around Pau until he left France on 7 February 1941, gave important early confirmation that listening to the BBC was widespread throughout the country. When he had been in Paris, he indicated that ‘His firm could not have sold a receiver which was not able to take each of the English medium wave stations in Paris by daylight on a normal size outside aerial’. Once in Pau, and having also visited Toulouse and Marseilles, he noted that short-wave listening had become common; he even ‘bought locally an ordinary fair quality receiver with which he took our Overseas and European services as well as the Home Service short wave with a few feet of bare wire laid on the floor as an aerial.’

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 105

The BBC and the French Resistance • 105 As for jamming, it was often ‘too strong on medium waves for people to want to listen’, but by October 1940 he confirmed that listeners were becoming adept at quickly turning their dials during transmissions when jamming became too strong, because there were fewer problems on short wave. This showed that people were following BBC broadcast advice. There was reason to be tentatively optimistic: It was quite clear from his conversation that our transmissions . . . have priority over everything else in the French listener’s mind. I asked M. Fua whether he would go so far as to say that the majority of French set owners listened to us. He considered his answer rather carefully and said, ‘I would not say so. I would say la totalité’.12

It is clear from the reports that Vichy and German jamming of the BBC proved a formidable obstacle. Information from another ‘most useful witness’, Mr C. Wortham, revealed something of the lengths to which people were prepared to go in order to hear London. Since June 1940 he had worked as a farm labourer at St Etienne de Vicq twelve kilometres from Vichy, ‘where all the jamming came from’ in the area: Listening to London was ‘always an effort’ . . . He himself listened in a room with his employer and his employer’s wife and 16–year-old daughter . . . He and his host listened with all their energy. When the farmer switched off because the jamming had become too unbearable his wife would often exclaim ‘Thank goodness, it was giving me an awful headache’. Sometimes, on good nights, one could get what Mr. W. called ‘mentally tuned in’ to the broadcast in spite of the jamming . . .

When the Vichy regime imposed a listening ban in October 1941 – thereby giving official recognition to the effectiveness of the BBC’s work – Wortham reported that in his tiny village near the capital of the ‘free zone’, the ban ‘had made no difference’. ‘Listening was, in general, thought much less risky in the country. Walking around St. Etienne any evening in December one could still hear a “funny noise” proceeding from “almost every house.” This “funny noise” was the jamming of British broadcasts’.13 Another among Delavenay’s visitors was Pierre Dupuy, the Canadian chargé d’affaires to the French government. Dupuy, whom Churchill called his ‘little window on Vichy’, made three missions there.14 Dupuy’s comments gave further early confirmation that the BBC was on the right track. In February 1941 he pointed to ‘the immense importance of [BBC] broadcasts to France, which . . . reach practically 40 million people’. At first sight such comments may appear exaggerated, yet Dupuy was a Canadian diplomat, and had privileged access to Vichy officialdom. Referring to his December 1940 visit to Vichy, he affirmed:

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 106

106 • Martyn Cornick The efficiency of the broadcasts is certified by officials of the French Information Service, working (at that time) under Laval. Several of them admitted to M. Dupuy that they envied us our team of ‘Les Français parlent [aux Français]’ and had difficulty in putting together such a brilliant group of broadcasters.15

Dupuy urged the BBC to avoid ‘propaganda’ and to deploy descriptive reportage, which, he believed, would be more likely to encourage listeners’ interest in the progress of the war outside France. He reported a story relating to Churchill’s speech to the French, made on 21 October 1940 at the height of the London Blitz, and which had been drafted partly to reinforce the idea of British resistance to Hitler. This anecdote provided an example of a latent spirit of resistance, which might, with persistence, be nurtured: . . . the headmaster of a lycée at Versailles . . . said to his pupils on the day of the Prime Minister’s broadcast, ‘Today is not an ordinary day. We are going to hear the Leader of the Allied Forces. In spite of circumstances, we still remain the Allies of Britain and so you must all do everything you can to hear him. The broadcast will be badly jammed; will each of you take down every sentence which he can hear properly and we will piece it together tomorrow’. The next day each schoolboy came back with everything he had heard and the form spent the better part of the day piecing together Churchill’s speech in the right order.

Such evidence encouraged the authorities in London to believe that their efforts were worthwhile, and that eventually these efforts would be repaid. Indeed, as in the case just quoted, Britain’s solitary stand against the apparently overwhelming military might of Nazi Germany, and the country’s survival through the Blitz which began in August 1940 and which continued through into spring 1941 represented, early on in the Occupation, a potent sign of resistance for the French audience. This was a key BBC theme, and Churchill, in his broadcast in both French and English of 21 October 1940 just referred to, used the bombing to bind Britain’s lone destiny with that of defeated France. Churchill began: Frenchmen! For more than thirty years in peace and war I have marched with you, and I am still marching along the same road. . . . Here . . . under the fire of the Boche, we do not forget the ties and links that unite us to France, and we are persevering steadfastly and in good heart in the cause of European freedom and fair dealing for the common people of all countries, for which, with you, we drew the sword.

Harping on the theme of steadfastness under fire, Churchill dismissed the Nazi invasion threat with a sarcastic flourish: Here in London, which Herr Hitler says he will reduce to ashes, and which his aeroplanes are now bombarding, our people are bearing up unflinchingly. Our Air Force has

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 107

The BBC and the French Resistance • 107 more than held its own. We are waiting for the long-promised invasion. So are the fishes.16

From the BBC’s point of view, the demonstrably simple fact of enduring and surviving the Battle of Britain was more potent than the most sophisticated propaganda: the message that Hitler could be resisted was being received and understood in France. But it did not suffice for the British just to resist. The French had to be convinced that the Axis would eventually be defeated, so it was equally important to broadcast news of British military successes. Thus, when the British landed a severe blow against the Italian fleet at Taranto in November 1940, the French Service put out a parody of André Chénier’s poem ‘La Jeune Tarentine’. That this was heard and appreciated was made clear when twenty-year-old Corporal Duffretet arrived in London later that month, having escaped in a private aircraft across the Channel from German-occupied Brittany. Also, jingles, such as the famous ‘Radio-Paris ment, Radio-Paris ment, Radio-Paris est allemand’, set to popular tunes, were extremely effective as they were instantly memorable. One such jingle celebrated Taranto, as would be the case with other military successes: ‘Encore un bateau de coulé/ V’la l’Angleterre qui passe,/ Deux croiseurs, trois cuirassés:/ l’Angleterre est passée’.17 Jean-Louis Crémieux-Brilhac asserts that ‘until autumn 1941, London knew practically nothing about the reality of Resistance movements’.18 This, no doubt, is true. Yet we have already seen how the BBC, through the various means it had at its disposal for monitoring the audience, persisted in its conviction that radio could establish an almost organic link with its French listeners, motivating them and gradually mobilizing their resentment at being occupied. Further evidence for the effectiveness of BBC action was provided when active Resisters finally began turning up in London, as was the case in early 1942 with Paulin Bertrand, alias Paul Simon, manager of the Paris-based clandestine newspaper Valmy. Founded in January 1941, Valmy first produced fifty copies on a child’s printing outfit. It took one month to do so. By August 1941 it was roneo-printing 3,000 copies over four pages. Yet this was an extremely dangerous activity, and production had had to be halted during the autumn and winter. Significantly enough, Simon, in a broadcast interview with Jean Oberlé, confirmed that their primary motivation for this act of defiance against the ‘now intolerable’ German presence in Paris had been inspired very early on in the Occupation when ‘we saw that the British were resisting’.19 Apart from the detailed information he gave relating to wavelengths, Simon confirmed that despite the dangers incurred in listening to heavily jammed radio broadcasts, many Parisians still took the risk. The most popular part of French Service programming went out at 8.15p.m. London time; it was this which suffered the most serious jamming. But there were various means of surmounting it.

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 108

108 • Martyn Cornick People who did not work would listen to repeats the following day; most importantly, people organized themselves into listening groups. ‘Monsieur S. knew of a number of listening groups organized among people living in one block so that the curfew did not affect them and they could get back to their own flats after listening to the programme’. Furthermore, he confirmed that the ‘V-campaign’, first orchestrated by the BBC in March 1941, had been ‘invaluable in making it possible for all and sundry to show their spirit of resistance to the enemy’.20 In a further interview, Simon showed himself to be disillusioned by the ‘atmosphere of bureaucracy and unreality of the Free French headquarters in London’. He ‘had not come here to wage war in offices’. Even at this stage of the war, Simon voiced the disappointment felt by some in France ‘with the lack of any British landing on the continent at the height of the German offensive against Russia’ (after June 1941), and he appeared ‘slightly embittered himself about Britain’s attitude to the war’.21 A few months later, in mid-August 1942, the disastrous Allied raid on Dieppe showed only too clearly the importance of being fully prepared for a major landing in France. In the immediate aftermath of Dieppe, the BBC broadcast advice to the French civil population in the area to remain calm, advice that was well heeded.22 Group listening occurred in various forms: in major urban centres listeners ran the risk of capture by the Germans or denunciation by members of the Vichyite Légion, evidently a recurrent detested bugbear for many of Delavenay’s visitors. In remoter rural areas, where people were sure they would not be denounced, group listening took place more openly. Mrs Cedar Paul, while at Magagnosc, above Grasse, received peasants eager for news in her home; she could listen to the BBC Home Service, which was not jammed, and pass on the news. Similar experience recurs in other reports. The Dutch writer, Anton den Doolaard, who arrived in London in the summer of 1941 after a bicycle odyssey around France between May 1940 and May 1941, had had an amusing but reassuring experience at Anduze, in the Gard: Mr. D. heard our broadcasts in the kitchen of a café, [where] two laws were being broken at once – coffee was being served after hours in the kitchen although the public room was apparently closed, and people came in and formed a small group around the loudspeaker. The pass-word when they came in was ‘Heil Churchill!’ with the hand raised.23

A German anti-fascist, Kurt Kokorniak, who had been interrogated for ten weeks in Brixton prison, London, after escaping from Gestapo internment in July 1941, said he had witnessed group listening in working-class quarters in both Metz (where ‘the group were all railway employees’) and Montpellier (‘where the listening group consisted of 14–15 people in a private flat’).24 When Doolaard settled for the winter of 1940–1 at Besse-en-Chandesse, a village south-west of Clermont-Ferrand, he remained in touch with friends in the

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 109

The BBC and the French Resistance • 109 occupied zone where, he said, there was a more realistic appreciation of the true nature of the German Occupation. To avert the almost total monitoring and censorship of interzone correspondence, [Doolaard] sent his friends regular consignments of cheese. Inside the cheese he inserted an empty aspirin tube enclosing a letter, and replaced a cheese stopper on the opening. He allowed the cheese to wait a few days until the crust had formed again over the stopped hole, and his correspondence was never disturbed.25

Examples of such ingenuity were exactly what London was looking for. For their perpetrators, such actions subverted the tedium and restrictions of occupation; for the BBC they produced raw material to authenticate their broadcasts to France. In addition to information relating to broadcast quality and reception, many reports contain glimpses into the realities of everyday life under the Occupation. One such is that of Delavenay’s interview with Neville Lytton. Lytton was a portrait painter who had been a liaison officer in the Great War, and who had moved with his French wife to St Rambert-en-Bugey, in the Ain, between Lyons and Aixles-Bains. They left France on 7 August 1941. After some initial listening difficulties, Lytton bought a new Phillips set with short waves for 1,000 francs. ‘From the time when it became evident that England was not subdued by the Germans, radio from London gained in importance.’ Because he owned an efficient new set, ‘Mr. L.’s house became a rendez-vous for everyone in the village’. ‘The listeners include[d] an Abbé, a Protestant Socialist, a Cagoulard, etc. They were all thirsting for news and were united in the wish first to kick the Germans out of France.’ Lytton also reported on some of the political reflections he and his guests had had: The de Gaulle legend. General de Gaulle and the Croix de Lorraine represent for the French something ‘infinitely pure – a pure flame of patriotism against the time-serving programme of Vichy’, to quote Mr. L.’s own words. . . . The rich commercial classes in Lyon were against de Gaulle and pro-Vichy. In their view, France’s interest lay in collaboration with Germany, and de Gaulle was a traitor because he was going against the interests of France in resisting. Mr. L. said that all loyal Frenchmen refused to believe in the possibility of defeat, and those who resisted were all the peasants, the working classes, the camps de jeunesse and the Chasseurs [Alpins] . . . those who were proVichy and anti-de Gaulle were terrified of communism and feared a new ‘Front Populaire’.

This report indicates too that ‘Guerilla bands were already being formed before Mr. L. left; these were composed of most enthusiastic young men who were training to be ready for the British invasion’.26 From mid-1942, after Laval’s return to power and the implementation of his policy of workers’ conscription – known as ‘La Relève’ – there were signs that

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 110

110 • Martyn Cornick Resistance activities were increasing. A Mrs Frank, having lived for five years at Le Lavandou, Grenoble (after all British residents had been ordered to leave the Riviera), and then at Le Lavandou again, confirmed that : La Relève had been a great success at Le Lavandou, from the resisters’ point of view: in spite of the tempting offers, in spite of threats and the fact that when the workers first refused to go the early train to Toulon was taken off, so that they couldn’t get to work and consequently became chômeurs, up to the time of her departure only one man had accepted to go.27

From this time (September 1942), the French Service broadcast numerous talks exhorting workers not to respond to the Relève. By New Year 1943, Henri Hauck was confidently encouraging workers to enter the Maquis: ‘Comrades, if you must leave home, don’t leave to go and work for the Boches; instead, seek refuge in the countryside, go into hiding’.28 In the months leading to the desperately anticipated landings (which finally took place in Normandy in June 1944), Delavenay met several active political resisters. Among these was Jean-Jacques Mayoux, a former student friend and Professor of English at the University of Nancy, who had left France in October 1943 to represent the ‘Ceux de la Résistance’ group in the Algiers Consultative Assembly. Asked for clarification of the rather vague term ‘Resistance’, Mayoux’s reply did not disappoint: Could it be said that there was a network of organized resistance spreading to the smallest village all over France which could really be used as a working organization for a specific purpose. He told me that it was so and that it was possible to speak of organized resistance as something which spread into the whole life of the country.

Mayoux provided Delavenay with a great deal of what must have been highly sensitive information at the time, particularly regarding power struggles both at Free French headquarters in Carlton Gardens and in Algiers. According to Mayoux, the BBC had played a paramount role to the extent that without it, resistance ‘would not have risen and spread in the way it did except [sic] for London broadcasts’.29 Raymond Aubrac also came to London, in February 1944. Delavenay caught up with him on the 22nd, just before Aubrac’s departure for Algiers. His information on listening referred to the Jura, Saône-et-Loire, Ain and Paris. By this stage in the war, radios had become a precious commodity: it was ‘impossible to get sets except “by stealing them”. Valves are very scarce’. Aubrac was critical of aspects of the BBC’s coverage, especially its reports of the Algiers Assembly. It had been counterproductive to misreport ‘the arrest of 180 men at Oyonnax or St. Claude’. BBC broadcasts did not sufficiently reflect the severity of the ‘struggle for liberation’. And worst of all was the ‘war of nerves . . . you have played’. ‘Talk about

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 111

The BBC and the French Resistance • 111 “Autumn Leaves” [an invasion codename] and similar promises’ had completely ‘upheaved’ the lives of hundreds of French families. These had had two major effects: ‘1) to put Frenchmen “beside themselves” with irritation, 2) to create an anti-British mentality’. In these complaints, Delavenay saw the necessity, postwar, for British and French to understand each other better, a crucial condition for stabilizing the political situation. Yet despite the criticisms, ‘A. was full of praise of [sic] the BBC and said that in spite of the efficiency of the resistance organizations the latter were “pebbles” whereas the BBC was “the cement” which united the pebbles in one solid block’.30 This was high praise indeed, and, ultimately, pays tribute to the long and patient efforts of the BBC in awakening and maintaining ‘resistance’ among the ordinary radio audience, some of whom told Delavenay as much after they had escaped to London. Radio listening – especially in groups – not only provided the audience with comparatively objective news about the conduct of the war outside France, but it also reinforced their sense of common purpose, their sense of belonging to identifiable and even tangible communities. Sooner or later, these communities, this ‘fraternity of listeners’, would resist the occupier more actively, and would look forward to the postwar period. Thus the BBC helped the French to see beyond the darkness and repression of the Occupation.

Notes The author is grateful to (the late) Emile Delavenay and to BBC Written Archives for permission to quote from the documents used in the preparation of this chapter. 1. H. R. Kedward, Resistance in Vichy France (OUP, 1978), p. v; current author’s emphasis. 2. Ibid., p. 211. 3. Ibid., p. 217. 4. Ibid., p. 283. 5. H.R. Kedward, In Search of the Maquis (OUP, 1993). 6. M. Cornick, ‘The BBC and the Propaganda War against Occupied France: the Work of Emile Delavenay and the European Intelligence Department’, French History, vol. 8, no. 3, 1994, pp. 316–54. See also M. Cornick, ‘Fighting Myth with Reality: the Fall of France, Anglophobia and the BBC’, in V. Holman & D. Kelly (eds), France at War in the Twentieth Century (Berghahn, 2000), pp. 65–87. For his memoirs, see E. Delavenay, Témoignage. D’un village savoyard au village mondial (Edisud, 1992). 7. Copies of the reports are located at the Institut d’Histoire du temps présent, Paris, and in the BBC Written Archive at Caversham. 8. J.-P. Claudel, ‘Le parc des récepteurs de radio au début de la guerre’,

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 112

112 • Martyn Cornick

9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14.

15.

16.

17.

18. 19. 20.

21. 22. 23.

www.charles-de-gaulle.org. In June 1942 Delavenay noted that the number of radio licences in France stood at 5,262,642; however, there were more sets in circulation because licence evasion was common. Interview with Edgar Darier, report dated 3 June 1942 (BBC Written Archive). Reported by John Colville in The Fringes of Power (W.W. Norton, 1985), pp. 173–4. The Editor, ‘The Situation’, The Nineteenth Century and After, no. 773 (July 1941), pp. 1–18 (quote from p. 7), current author’s emphasis. A questionnaire is reproduced in Cornick, ‘The BBC and the Propaganda War’, pp. 351–2. Report dated 28 March 1941. Report dated 3 March 1942. F. Kersaudy, Churchill and De Gaulle (Fontana, 1990), p. 120. The declassified reports of Dupuy’s missions are available at the Canadian Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ website, www.dfait-maeci.gc.ca. Report dated 10 February 1941. The ‘Français parlent aux Français’ team referred to was composed of Pierre Bourdan, Jean Oberlé, Jacques Duchesne, Jacques Brunius, Jean Marin, Maurice Van Moppès and Pierre Lefèvre. W.S. Churchill, ‘Le Dieu protège la France’, broadcast 21 October 1940, in R.R. James (ed.), Winston S. Churchill. His Complete Speeches 1897–1963, vol. VI, 1935–1942 (Chelsea House, 1974), pp. 6296–8 (quote from p. 6296). The French text is in J.-L. Crémieux-Brilhac (ed.), Les Voix de la liberté (Documentation Française, 1975), 5 vols, 1. 18 juin 1940–7 décembre 1941, pp. 121–2. ‘Victoire navale à Tarente’, jingle set to the tune of ‘Encore un carreau de cassé’, broadcast 14 November 1940, quoted in Crémieux-Brilhac, Les Voix de la liberté 1, p. 144. For the text of the Chénier parody, see ibid. Interview with Duffretet, report dated 29 November 1940. J.-L. Crémieux-Brilhac, La France libre (Gallimard, 1996), p. 222. Interview broadcast on 3 February 1942 reproduced in Crémieux-Brilhac, Les Voix de la liberté 2, 8 décembre 1941–7 novembre 1942, p. 45. Interview with Paul Simon, report dated 9 February 1942. For the launch of the ‘V-campaign’, see the talk by Jacques Duchesne broadcast 22 March 1941 in Crémieux-Brilhac, Les Voix de la liberté 1, p. 204. Report dated 19 February 1942. Later, Simon was killed in a London air raid; Crémieux-Brilhac, La France libre, p. 333n. See the texts dated 19, 20, 21, 28 August 1942 in Crémieux-Brilhac, Les Voix de la liberté 2, pp. 190–7. Mrs Cedar Paul, report dated 5 February 1942; Mr den Doolaard, report dated 8 July 1941. Doolaard, a novelist and anti-Nazi, worked thereafter in London for Dutch naval broadcasting and Radio Orange.

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 113

The BBC and the French Resistance • 113 24. Report dated 9 February 1942. 25. Report dated 8 July 1941. In one of his interviews, Pierre Dupuy – who had access to Vichy reports – confirmed that Pétain’s government was ‘obliged to read private correspondence to get information on what people think’; report dated 24 March 1941. 26. Interview with Neville Lytton, report dated 30 October 1941. Lytton’s memoir on his First World War liaison work is Le G.Q.G. britannique (Flammarion, 1921). He published a volume on his experiences in Life in Unoccupied France (Macmillan, 1942). 27. Report dated 5 September 1942. 28. Crémieux-Brilhac, Les Voix de la liberté 3, 8 novembre 1942–9 juillet 1943, p. 82. 29. Interview with Jean-Jacques Mayoux (30 December 1943), report dated 14 January 1944. 30. Interview with Raymond Aubrac, report dated 23 February 1944.

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 114

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 115

–9– ‘Meeting Private Ryan’: a Franco-American Liberation Community Hilary Footitt

Representing the Liberation Over the nearly sixty years since the Liberation of France, the events of 1944 have been represented in a variety of ways. Scholarship in the 1960s and 1970s was largely focused on the passing of power, usually seen in a unitary framework – the regaining of power by the centre. Whether in the context of battlefield analyses, detailed work on the Commissaires de la République or the ‘missed opportunity’ narratives of revolutionary disappointment, the perspective was broadly that of the politics of Liberation.1 In the 1980s and 1990s, the framework of studies widened to include an interest in the diversity of Liberation experiences on the ground – the patchwork of Liberation – and an identification of the multiple local facets of power, with the Liberation as an explosion of multilevel movements of power in multiple sites. Approaches derived from cultural and ethnographic studies focused further attention on l’imaginaire social, on the ways in which Liberation had been and was being represented and on the encounters between different types of communities within this. As Roderick Kedward suggested in his fiftieth anniversary collection on the Liberation: ‘The act of stepping outside the narrative, like the process of analogy and allusion, and even contestation, allows the event to be creatively re-sited’.2 If, however, we have moved away from totalizing and centralized power-passing explanation to grass roots, diversity, multiplicity and representation, it would still seem fair to suggest that, in general, Liberation studies continue to see the experience as a fundamentally French-centred one, with little more than a walk-on role for the Allies. In this area of Allied–French encounter, historical studies have arguably stayed at the early phase of French Liberation research, with explorations of the AMGOT (Allied Military Government of Occupied Territory) discussions, and of the relationships between the Allies and de Gaulle, or between the Allies and the Communists.3 There has been little interest in extending work on Allied–French relationships to embrace either the multilevel/multiple sites 115

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 116

116 • Hilary Footitt approach (different sorts of Liberation encounters in different areas), or the insights which interpretative frameworks derived from cultural or ethnographic studies might offer. The Allies are still largely marooned in a unitary passing of power narrative, temporally located in the pre-Liberation AMGOT negotiations and the military sacrifices of D-Day plus, and spatially located in the north, in the Normandy landings or on the shores of the Mediterranean. Arguably however, just as diversity has marked our understanding of the Liberation experiences for the French, so the Allied–French transnational communities established in France during 1944 are equally likely to reflect diversity, to be different in various parts of the country, in relation to the various types of Liberation which took place (moving communities, established communities, communities where the balance of forces was distinct). Bringing these various Franco-Allied Liberation communities into the consultable record of the Liberation4 may help us to combine previously separate French and Anglophone Liberation narratives, and in so doing it may challenge persistent national exceptionalism agendas. A cross-cultural approach which examines the ways in which the different communities represented each other at the time can offer particular insights into the nature of cultural exchange. More generally, it may help to show us some of the ways in which communities forcibly brought together through war develop ‘on the ground’ their working understanding of the ‘other’.

The Case of Cherbourg The particular transnational community which this chapter examines is that of the northern port of Cherbourg. The Liberation experience of Cherbourg is distinctive in several respects. The port was of considerable strategic importance to the Allies and was therefore strongly defended by the Germans. A savage battle was fought for possession of the town, with the Germans only surrendering when they had destroyed as much of the port infrastructure as they could. The native population of Cherbourg had largely evacuated the town (around three quarters had left), and the local Resistance was mainly engaged in a subsidiary and supporting role, giving intelligence to the American troops as they sought to reduce the German garrison. Unlike the Liberation experiences in much of the south and centre of the country, Cherbourg was liberated not by Resistance–Allied activity, but rather through a sustained Allied–German military encounter. In addition, Cherbourg, unlike many other northern towns, continued to accommodate a sizeable and varied American population for well over a year after its Liberation, from 26 June 1944 until the reconstituted port was finally handed back to the French on 14 October 1945. As well as the first liberating troops, the town was to see an enormous influx of Americans: engineers charged with rebuilding the port, large numbers of embarking troops – on just one day in September for example

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 117

A Franco-American Liberation Community • 117 (7 September 1944) 23,000 Americans arrived in the port – and of wounded troops being taken away on hospital boats. Some idea of the scale of the American commitment in the town can be seen from details of the material brought through the port by the Americans: over 433,301 tonnes were unloaded in November alone for example.5 Three vignettes of the American–French relationship in Cherbourg over this period give some idea of the ways in which the communities encountered each other. First, the day after the Allied Liberation of the town (27 June), a ceremony took place at the Hôtel de Ville, Place de la République, at which the American Commanding General of the 7th corps, which had liberated Cherbourg, General Collins, presented the then mayor of Cherbourg, Dr Renault, with a French tricolour flag. It was a flag made out of silk from the first American parachutes which had landed in France a few hours before the débarquement.6 Secondly, a week after their arrival in Cherbourg, the American army, at another official ceremony, ‘gave back’ the town’s Omnia Cinema (formerly reserved for the Germans during the Occupation) to the French people: the local paper headlined: ‘The Omnia cinema is given back to the population by the American authorities’. The mayor’s speech at this official occasion was quoted as, ‘In the name of the town of Cherbourg, I would like to express my gratitude to the American army whose heroism has restored to us that life of liberty which was denied to us for so long’.7 Significantly the third event was much later (4 November 1944), over four months after the Liberation, and it was then that the French local authorities invited the Americans to an official reception at the Hôtel de Ville, hosted by the municipality. The local paper was intensely critical of the time it had taken the municipality to host such a reception for the Americans, arguing that there had been, ‘an atmosphere of torpor which was paralysing any initiative . . .’.8 These three encounters (the flag, the Omnia Cinema, and the late reception) are emblematic, this chapter will argue, of a relationship which was to be represented, realized linguistically, in relation to the spaces which the two communities occupied.

The Urban Space Space/location has of course long been linked to definitions of identity. In a Liberation context, Brossat for example has noted the ways in which people all over France set about reclaiming their space at the Liberation, tearing down German street signs, acting on their environment to mark it again with their own identity – ‘an urban space to re-conquer’.9 The words which both sides in Cherbourg, French and American, used to describe their developing relationship in 1944 suggest that they were both clear that the urban space of Cherbourg was not free to be reclaimed. The American

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 118

118 • Hilary Footitt history of the Civil Affairs Detachment in Cherbourg explicitly uses the term ‘occupation’ to describe their stay: ‘The Germans had occupied the city under peaceful conditions and our occupation was under quite different circumstances. The comparison . . . with the German occupation was always an ever present fact . . .’.10 Interestingly, the local paper, La Presse Cherbourgeoise, argued that the difference between the two occupations (German and American) was that the Cherbourgeois had treated one (the German occupation) as if it was invisible, whereas the American occupation, by friendly soldiers, was visible and engaged their sympathetic attention: ‘Two attitudes . . . In our streets, you crossed the path of the soldiers of occupation, but you never saw them: you looked away . . . but we’re looking straight up, with natural sympathy and gratitude at the brave soldiers who have delivered us’.11 The physical visibility of the Americans was indeed obvious. Buildings which the German occupiers had formerly used for administrative purposes were taken over for very similar use by the American liberators. If you trace the American presence in the liberated urban space of Cherbourg in 1944, you will find it obtrusively concentrated along the main central thoroughfares. And, beside all this, there was the enormous and controlling presence of the Americans at the port and the arsenal, as they began the rebuilding process, the shipment of goods and equipment, and the passage of wounded and recuperating soldiers. All over the town, American soldiers were billeted in the remains of houses in which French people were living. Huge amounts of American war material moved with extreme noise through the town and onwards over the departmental roads on what the Americans called the Green Diamond Highway (Cherbourg–St Lô, Cherbourg–Dol), and the Red Ball Highway (St Lô–Vire), and all along these roads there were huge posters in English setting out the penalties soldiers would incur for such misdemeanours as speeding, not saluting an officer and so on. The visible control mechanisms of the American army were initially much like that of an occupying enemy army: a curfew which prevented people from travelling more than six kilometres from their houses, and a ban on the use of binoculars, cameras, radio transmitters and carrier pigeons; furthermore, as with the previous occupation, the French police were nominally charged with enforcing these bans, and again, as in the German occupation, the actual enforcement was pretty patchy.12 Even the mental impression of a zoned hexagon, as in the occupation, was to some extent replicated by the existence in close proximity in Normandy of British and American zones, with refugees passing from one to the other, requiring medical screening.13 Travelling over the urban space was controlled physically and metaphorically by the Americans. Physically, travel outside the city was dependent on permits and, even more crucially, on means of transport being available, and motor transport was in desperately short supply. Metaphorically, the means of corporate communication, of

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 119

A Franco-American Liberation Community • 119 constructing and sharing the geographical space imaginatively, as it were, existed in parallel with the Americans. Thus, the newly published La Presse Cherbourgeoise, proudly labelling itself as the ‘First newspaper of liberated France’,14 shared presses for several weeks with the American troop newspaper Stars and Stripes. The radio station (Radio Cherbourg), set up on a hill above the town in a former German radar station, and going on air on 4 July 1944, carried material which always had to be vetted by the American censor.15 Far from reconquering their urban space, and feeling at home within it, the Cherbourgeois could play little role of agency in reclaiming their present community, and hence their identity. An interesting illustration of this is the discussion which took place about the prestigious Cherbourg department store (centrally located), Rattis. The American account of this is worth quoting in full: We explained to the Mayor that a great problem now existed, with 15,000 colored troops coming in and no place for recreation. We pointed out that they were well disciplined troops, not like the Senegalese, and that it was necessary that they be given the opportunity to play, as troops must of necessity after they have worked. The Ratti (Department Store) was desired. The Mayor sympathised with us, but the Ratti was the pride of Normandy, and Mrs Ratti had been loyal to the Resistance and they were coming back to Normandy to reopen the store, and it was necessary that such a store be in operation for the people of Cherbourg. I told him he was entirely right, and proceeded to point out that the store had practically nothing on its shelves, and the scarcity was such that no store materials could come into Cherbourg for quite some time. And then we pointed out that the store had suffered a certain amount of damage that had to be made right, and with the military holding priorities on repair materials, it would be practically impossible for Mrs Ratti to have those repairs made. And then, the Army would pay Mrs Ratti well for the use of the store and it would revert back to her on the collapse of Germany . . .16

At the heart of the town then, the site of considerable prestige and sense of communal identity, Rattis store, there is a symbolic shell (nothing on its shelves, scarcity, damage – an accumulation of negatives). What the mayor describes as ‘the pride of Normandy’ is first empty, then under the command of the Americans and finally to be occupied by troops whom the French would be inclined to bracket with troops from their own colonial empire.

Two Communities : Two Time Zones The impression is of two communities which were not only existing in parallel, but were operating in two different time zones. Interestingly enough the Americans in the port of Cherbourg, employing a very considerable number of French labourers,

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 120

120 • Hilary Footitt operated on a different clock from the French clock outside the base, one hour behind: ‘American time’ and ‘French time’, as the slightly mystified local press described it.17 The French in Cherbourg were inhabiting a time zone which was crucial to their reconstruction of themselves. To put it crudely, being unable to reclaim their own urban space, the French moved to the space which was available to them– the essentially lost past community. Many of the concerns of the Cherbourgeois from late June 1944 to the time of the American departure in 1945 were fixed on recovering what had been lost in order to rebuild a permanent community. Past and permanence therefore contrasted strongly with the Americans’ present/immediate future and transition. Symbolically, the French community in Cherbourg struggled to find what had been lost in the process of Liberation. First, there were the people who had gone missing between the exodus from Cherbourg and the Liberation, with ‘missing persons’ notices which speak graphically of families torn apart and separated: ‘Grateful for any information on my son, Frank, 33 months, in care with Mme. Jules Lefèvre at Dangy. Gone. Destination unknown’.18 The newly established Radio Cherbourg was pressed to send family messages as a means of locating missing relatives. Secondly, the community worked to relocate itself physically as a community. This was difficult for several reasons: by the end of September, there were still complaints about houses which had been bombed but had not yet been completely demolished.19 Even when there were houses which were habitable, however, there were problems in re-establishing ownership as people who had been forced to evacuate their homes by the Germans returned to find that their houses had been taken over by others who simply refused to move.20 The physical community then was in a state of some flux. In the same way, the Cherbourgeois struggled to recover goods which had gone missing or been lost during the recent battle and liberation, or which were still being pillaged.21 The local paper was full of notices asking for the return of goods which their owners no longer had: ‘The person who was seen taking M. Durel’s bike from his yard, after the bombing raid of 15 June, is requested to return it as soon as possible’.22 As the French worked to re-establish the patterns of material ownership pre-Liberation, so they began to recover the community networks existing before the conflagration. Calls went out for people to come forward and resume their pre-Liberation jobs, particularly, as in the case of key needs like transport, when they were vital to feeding the community and rebuilding it.23 Parents were called upon in early September to register their children for school;24 although as one mother complained, it was virtually impossible to kit out her children as normal for the new school year: ‘After five long months of holidays . . . evacuation, nights spent in shelters, mending and patching, the only clothes we’ve got left are ones fit for the rag and bone man’.25

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 121

A Franco-American Liberation Community • 121 With the restoration of community networks of employment and schools went the reconstitution of some of the shared cultural identity of the city. The local Cherbourg music group, the Union Lyrique Musicale, called for its former musicians to come in for rehearsals so that the group could play, as indeed they did, at the 14 July celebrations.26 ‘In Cherbourg, now delivered, the French people are breathing the air of liberty again’.27 ‘French time’ was a recovery of the lost past. It was, as the American General Collins rightly described it during the same 14 July celebrations, ‘the town coming back to them.’28

Reconstituting the Images of the Other Arguably, the images of ‘Private Ryan’ which the French constituted through this experience were related to their need to use a different time zone in order to reclaim the space of national identity. Necessarily therefore, in comparison, the Cherbourgeois represented the Americans in ‘American time’, as a transitional community, a community which was (hopefully) passing through, but which, importantly, could not aspire to occupy the space of the past which the Cherbourgeois would inhabit. Increasingly, the Americans in Cherbourg were represented as transitional people, fixated on the present or the immediate future –without cultural roots in the past or strong traditions. At first the Americans had understandably impressed the French with the scale of their material riches, both in terms of armaments and lifestyle. One of the archetypal images of the first days of the Franco-American encounter in Normandy is that of the parachutist with pockets all over his uniform: ‘pockets for munitions, pockets for chocolate, pockets for tins of food, pockets for cigarettes . . . and then they were armed up to the teeth . . . they had machine guns, revolvers on their helmets, revolvers on their belts, grenades . . .’.29 Relatively quickly however French comments portrayed this material largesse as profligate and unfocused in its distribution – a laid-back carpe diem approach which spoke of a failure to understand the roots of the situation in which the Americans found themselves. The French were experiencing bread shortages which were more severe than during the period of the occupation; shortages which were to continue through September, with 150 grams per day.30 It was therefore hardly surprising that French observers found the way in which the Americans treated their German prisoners to be excessively generous. As the American Civil Affairs Report noted: ‘A mild criticism of the American troops is that German prisoners are being treated with too great lenience – some would prefer to see a little of what they regard as the “Russian” technique’. Allied censorship of civil communications indeed found French correspondents from Cherbourg complaining of ‘the exceptionally gentle treatment they accord the German

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 122

122 • Hilary Footitt prisoners’.31 Given the number of Frenchmen working for the Americans in Cherbourg on the rebuilding of the docks, it was equally unsurprising that there should be ‘a mental contrast between the wealth of American material pouring in and the low wages paid to workmen by the Americans’.32 In addition, there were initial difficulties in ensuring that the American army employers paid the ‘allocations familiales’, and ‘assurances sociales, accidents de travail’.33 The hugely obvious disparity in wealth between the two communities could easily be seen by French participants as permitting what Patry describes as a ‘don’t care’ sort of attitude,34 a disregard for the indigenous and rooted community, suggestive of a more general lack of respect for tradition. With this construction of an American community living for the moment went a clear admiration for the logistical ability of the Americans, admirably shown in the ‘Système D’ approach they had taken to the monumental task of clearing and rebuilding the port of Cherbourg. But this itself could be seen as intrinsic to a group without tradition, fixated on values of competition, being the biggest, being the best, etc. When the port was finally handed back to the French on 14 October 1945, the mayor, M. Schmidt, expressed his admiration for all the Americans had achieved in this with the words: ‘It’s that desire to beat the record which characterises the young American nation’.35 Much earlier in the relationship, when the American Red Cross had opened its first club for American servicemen in France, the correspondent from the local paper, permitted a pre-opening tour, described it as notable for the scale on which it had been conceived: ‘As always, our American friends did things in a big way’.36 In a sense, the image of the Americans constructed was of a group with relatively little cultural sophistication, slightly at the outer rim of civilized behaviour, outside the cultural space which the Cherbourgeois had developed for themselves. The more positive rendering of this was that of the American as childlike in his behaviour. Much was made of the way in which the Americans seemed to relate very freely to children – ‘We’ve all seen, haven’t we, American soldiers surrounded by children?’.37 Indeed, this was an image sedulously cultivated by the American propaganda machine in its L’Amérique en Guerre, which was dropped over Normandy – ‘the very deep love for kids which almost all Americans have. Right now you can see groups of French children, pressing round khaki uniforms, shamelessly ripping off all their insignia’.38 More perturbingly, this naïveté and lack of sophistication of the Americans could be rendered as close to animal-like behaviour. Thus at a particularly tense time in Franco-American local relationships in Cherbourg when it appeared that drunken black troops were running riot, Americans were described as perpetrating: ‘Scenes of savagery and bestiality [which] are desolating our countryside. There’s looting, rape, killing. There’s no security at home or on the roads’.39 Allied censorship of civilian communications in France at this period indeed recorded clear

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 123

A Franco-American Liberation Community • 123 concern in Cherbourg about the number of savage incidents in which women, some as old as seventy-two, were said to have been attacked and raped. The souspréfet, in a phone-tapped conversation to the police in Cherbourg, noted that three of the alleged culprits had been caught and that the Americans were now considering hanging them publicly: ‘Public feeling is very high against the troops and they wish to show the population the measures they are taking against it’.40 When the Americans sought to gain the cultural high ground by positioning themselves in a more traditional cultural relationship with the French in Cherbourg, the representation in the press tended to emphasize the naïveté of the rendering, rather than its intrinsic merit – hence the concert given by the First American Army in Place de la République in mid-July was described thus: ‘Obviously, the repertoire isn’t like ours, and the tones of some of the instruments are a bit disconcerting for French ears’.41 An American identity was thus constructed by the French in an entirely different space from their own, and closely related to the instantaneous rather than the traditional. The Cherbourgeois appeared to feel most comfortable when constructing an image of the Americans counterposed to the space which they had constructed for themselves. The Americans were a people who lived in the present and immediate future, compared with themselves for whom the past was actually the present space they occupied. In a sense it was not at all surprising that the Americans should operate on, and be represented as being in a different time zone from that of the Cherbourgeois (‘American time’). The Americans in Cherbourg were clearly a community in transition. The record-breaking clearing of Cherbourg harbour42 was fundamentally to help an army passing through, in transition. At a personal level, the American community in Cherbourg was made up of men who were understandably likely to be fixated on the present. Thus for example, the young American GI who had first arrived at the Hôtel de Ville in Cherbourg (and is commemorated in a plaque there to this day) was killed as the army advanced into Germany, and the lieutenant shown in one of the most famous pictures of the Liberation of Cherbourg was to die two weeks later.43 In this time zone, it was unlikely that the American community as a whole would behave other than as a community in transition. Their representation of Cherbourg speaks strongly of a voyeuristic collecting of images, much like a present day tourist passing through. Thus for example, the famous American war correspondent, Ernie Pyle, filed a report from liberated Cherbourg in the language of image making: ‘In Cherbourg it looks so much like the Hollywood sets of old European cities that you get your perspective reversed and feel that Cherbourg has just been copied from a movie set’.44 This collecting of images was also, for the French, an indication of a culture more related to the instantaneous than the traditional. At the 14 July celebrations in Cherbourg, the local paper noted the tendency of their American friends to seize the images they saw:

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 124

124 • Hilary Footitt ‘Photographers and camera men were in their element: we know how Americans love beautiful images’.45 An understanding that the French were perceiving the Americans as collecting images as they passed through is provided by the text of an invitation which a French cultural exchange circle in Cherbourg issued to American officers: ‘In a few months time you may be back in the States. What do you know of France and the French people? What are you going to take home with you? The taste of Calvados? The photos of a couple of French girls? The memory of a few ragged urchins begging shamelessly . . . of drab, dull looking houses, muddy streets, a wet climate and sad, ill-dressed, grumbling , discontented people?’.46 To return to the vignette of the much-delayed official French hospitality to the American Army: at the formal reception hosted by the Hôtel de Ville in early November 1944, the Mayor of Cherbourg recognized that the images which the American soldiers were likely to be taking away from the town were not those he would traditionally associate with France: ‘A real concern which I’ve often heard expressed is what a shame it is for you not to have seen France as it truly is: the France of History, two thousand years of past tradition . . .’ Despite this however, with three girls dressed in traditional Norman costume beside him, he gave a classic formulation of the constructed space of French self-identity, which defied any of the current images and realities of occupied space: ‘The French are living with their past, a past of which they are justly proud and which they are actually trying to preserve from the influences of modernity’. The American, General Clay, in response, as quoted by the French press, implicitly seemed to accept the other space of identity which the French had opened up for their guests: ‘Our soldiers do not know France . . . Our army is young, and . . . it will go home . . .’.47 A representation of the Americans as ‘other’, young and in transition.

Meeting Private Ryan When people discuss Franco-American relations in this Liberation period, they tend to argue that by the end of the experience both sides were in the position of admiring other nationalities more than the one with which they had lived in northern France. A survey in the paper Libération, as early as 7 September 1944, found that only 29.3 per cent of French people questioned felt that the USA was chiefly responsible for the German defeats, compared with 61 per cent who admired the Russians more. On the other side, the survey that the American army research branch carried out to gauge the attitudes of American GIs to their Allies and enemies found that attitudes towards the French became markedly more negative over 1945. Asked which out of the British, French and Germans the GIs preferred in August 1945, the lowest opinion was held of the French, with more GIs holding a ‘fairly favourable’ view of the Germans than of the French.48

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 125

A Franco-American Liberation Community • 125 The problem with these results is not that they may misrepresent the views of those at the time, but that, on their own, they pay no attention to the contexts in which the very different Liberation experiences took place. In considering a case study of one of these transnational Liberation communities, this chapter has argued that the languages of Liberation which the Americans and French spoke were radically dependent on the particular situation. Unable to reclaim their own national space, the Cherbourgeois moved to occupy a space which was available to them – the permanent past – and contrasted this strongly with the transitional community with which they were forced to deal. Beyond the traditional currency of cultural exchange between occupying army and occupied civilians, two different and necessary spaces were constructed to ease the difficulties of two national communities living together. The languages which helped them to represent, and indeed survive, the experience were radically dependent on the geographies of the space they shared. Understanding transnational communities means engaging with the positions in which these communities are placed in relation to each other. In this sense, meeting Private Ryan in Cherbourg between 1944 and 1945 not only helps us to understand a little about Franco-American relationships in this port. It also tells us something more general about the tactics which communities adopt to live through a particular encounter, in a specific place, and at a specific time.

Notes 1. Comité d’Histoire de la Deuxième Guerre Mondiale, La Libération de la France (CNRS, 1976); C.-L. Foulon, Le Pouvoir en Province à la Libération (FNSP, 1973); G. Madjarian, Conflits, Pouvoirs et Société à la Libération (Union Générale d’Editions, 1980). 2. H.R. Kedward, and N. Wood (eds), The Liberation of France (Berg, 1995), p. 9. See also A. Brossat, Libération, fête folle (Autrement, 1994); and F. Virgili, La France ‘virile’ (Payot, 2000) 3. A. Funk, Hidden Ally (Greenwood Press, 1992); F. Kersaudy, Churchill and de Gaulle (Collins, 1981); H. Footitt & J. Simmonds, France 1943–45 (Leicester University Press, 1988). 4. ‘Consultable record’ taken from C. Geertz, The interpretation of cultures (Fontana, 1993), p. 30. 5. See details in A. Picquenot, Cherbourg sous l’Occupation (Ouest France, 1983). 6. La Presse cherbourgeoise, no. 1, 3 July 1944. 7. La Presse cherbourgeoise, no. 4, 6 July 1944. 8. La Presse cherbourgeoise, no. 105, 4 November 1944. 9. A. Brossat, fête folle, p. 8.

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 126

126 • Hilary Footitt 10. Rept. CA Detachment A1A1, June–August 1944, SHAEF files, G-5, 17, 23, Hist.Repts, Cherbourg, Jkt.1. 11. La Presse cherbourgeoise, no. 5, 7 July 1944. 12. S. Tirel, ‘La 1ere armée américaine et les Normands, du 6 juin au 31 juillet 1944’, Revue de la Manche, vol. 38, 1996, pp. 242–8. 13. Public Record Office (PRO), WO 219 3529. CA summary no. 8 up to 4 August 1944, SHAEF G5(ops) 850/6. 14. La Presse cherbourgeoise, no. 1, 3 July 1944. 15. Anciens de Radio Cherbourg, file Seconde Guerre Mondiale, Bibliothèque Jacques Prévert, Cherbourg. 16. A. Thomson, ‘ “Over there” 1944–45. Americans in the Liberation of France. Their perceptions of, and relations with, France and the French’, Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Kent, 1996, p. 84. 17. La Presse cherbourgeoise, no. 74, 26 September 1944. 18. La Presse cherbourgeoise, no. 63, 13 September 1944. 19. La Presse cherbourgeoise, no. 77, 29 September 1944. 20. La Presse cherbourgeoise, no. 47, 25 August 1944. 21. La Presse cherbourgeoise, no. 6, 8 July 1944. 22. La Presse cherbourgeoise, no. 12, 15 July 1944. 23. La Presse cherbourgeoise, no. 6, 8 July 1944. 24. La Presse cherbourgeoise, no. 54, 2 September 1944. 25. La Presse cherbourgeoise, no. 63, 13 September 1944. 26. La Presse cherbourgeoise, no. 7, 10 July 1944. 27. La Presse cherbourgeoise, no. 11, 14 July 1944. 28. Ibid. 29. R.-J. Lebarbenchon, Américains et Normands dans la bataille (Azer, 1993), p. 159. 30. La Presse cherbourgeoise, no. 9, 12 July 1944, no. 70, 21 September 1944. 31. PRO, WO 219/3529. CA Summary of field reports, no. 7, to 28 July 1944, SHAEF/G5(ops) 850/6; WO 219/1792B, Censorship civil communications, Record no. 1580, 12 October 1944. 32. PRO, WO 219/3529. CA Summary 9, up to 11 August 1944, SHAEF/G5(ops) 850/6. 33. La Presse cherbourgeoise, no. 27, 2 August 1944. 34. R. Patry, La Guerre des haies (Imprimeries Central copies, 1994), p. 286. 35. La Presse cherbourgeoise, no. 92, 17 October 1945. 36. La Presse cherbourgeoise, no. 17, 21 July 1944. 37. La Presse cherbourgeoise, no. 18, 22 July 1944. 38. PRO, FO 898/495. L’Amérique en Guerre, no. 2, 26 July 1944, USF 130. 39. La Presse cherbourgeoise, no. 92, 17 October 1944. 40. PRO, WO 219/1792B. Censorship Civil Communications. See Record no.

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 127

A Franco-American Liberation Community • 127

41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48.

1574 , 15 October 1944, and Record no. 1582, telephone conversation, 18 October 1944. La Presse cherbourgeoise, no. 13, 17 July 1944. La Presse cherbourgeoise, no. 297, 15 October 1945 R. Lerouvillois, 32 trains pour Le Mans. 1944 (Isoète, 1994), p. 94. Stars and Stripes, 21 July 1944. La Presse cherbourgeoise, no. 12, 15 July 1944. J.W. Mead, This is Cherbourg, file Seconde Guerre Mondiale, Bibliothèque Jacques Prévert, Cherbourg. La Presse cherbourgeoise, no. 106, 5 November 1944. S.A. Stouffer et al., The American soldier, vol. 2 (Princeton University Press, 1949), p. 566.

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 128

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 129

Part II Individual Trajectories

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 130

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 131

–10– Film and Cultural Demobilization after the Great War: the Two Versions of J’Accuse by Abel Gance (1918 and 1938) John Horne

Vichy has long been discussed in terms of its legacy and the tortuous process by which the French came to terms with this central event in their history. Less familiar is a reflection on the links between Vichy France and that earlier, no less fundamental historical episode, the Great War, which killed 1.4 million Frenchmen. Among the many connecting threads was a widespread pacifism between the wars which, if it does not account for the military defeat of 1940, does explain something of the tenor of the Vichy regime. Yet this pacifism was more pervasive as a cultural than as an explicitly political phenomenon. And it was a retrospective reaction to the Great War more than a contemporary product of it. In order to explore the nature of interwar pacifism, one might do worse than look at its manifestation in the cinema, which became a truly mass medium during and after the conflict. As Roderick Kedward has shown in his exemplary discussion of retrospective cinematic responses to Vichy, film is a rich medium for tracing historical trauma.1 This chapter will concentrate on two films with the same title made twenty years apart by one of France’s foremost cinéastes. The connections between them are a puzzle worth exploring. Abel Gance contributed to the puzzle when, in the late 1920s, he presented the first version of J’Accuse as a pacifist film. He suggested that he had made it in order to ‘preserve the horror of the war indelibly in front of the eyes of its assassins and its victims and to provide the sincerest accusation possible before the tribunal of the future’.2 Many have agreed and have consequently viewed the 1938 version as a remake of the earlier film inspired by foreboding of a new war.3 Yet the two films are quite different, and there are good reasons for distinguishing the complex message of the first from the very different, pacifist sentiment of the second. I shall focus on the content of each film, examining it in relation to recent work on the Great War and interwar pacifism. What is at issue is the way the two films creatively reconfigured particular elements of the different 131

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 132

132 • John Horne historical moments in which they were made. Hopefully, this will illuminate the relationship between them.

The Film of 1918 When war broke out in 1914, Abel Gance was twenty-four. By November 1918 the death rate of men in his call-up cohort stood at 24 per cent.4 Gance, however, was physically unfit for the army and only mobilized into the auxiliary service in 1917. He was briefly assigned to a factory at Aubervilliers which made gas for combat and noted in his diary that ‘I would prefer to leave for armed service than stay in the frightful atmosphere which a latter day Dante would have made into one of his circles of hell.’5 He was quickly rescued and sent in July 1917 on suspended callup to work for a company producing feature films in conjunction with the Army Photographic and Film Service. Gance had a rising reputation. From his debut in 1911 he had always kept control of his films, combining subjects which interested him with a shrewd eye for commercial success. This won him the backing of Charles Pathé, whose company (with that of Léon Gaumont) dominated French film distribution. Thus it was a passionate, successful exponent of film as a popular art form, spared by fragile health from the western front, who made J’Accuse as an official film in 1918. The war had entered Gance’s work already. The filmscript of an unmade melodrama, Le Spectre des tranchées (1915), which entailed a wonder weapon, German spies, and heroic conduct on the front, reflected the general mood of patriotic selfmobilization behind the national effort in the first two years of the conflict.6 However, J’Accuse was made in altered circumstances. The French were sorely tried by 1917. The failure of General Nivelle’s offensive in April triggered the collective refusal of 20 per cent of the troops on the western front to undertake pointless offensives and led, under the command of his successor, Pétain, to more appropriate tactics and better home leave.7 This outcome vindicated the poilus’ sense of themselves as citizen soldiers.8 When Georges Clemenceau became Prime Minister in November 1917 he acknowledged that ‘these Frenchmen who we had to throw into battle have rights over us . . . we owe them everything, without reserve.’9 The ordinary soldier had become the moral focus of wartime France. Civilian war weariness was also widespread. As mounting casualties turned France into a nation in mourning, the purpose of the war was questioned by many. For some, the vision of a world transformed – by victory, universal peace or revolution – justified the sacrifice. Others hoped for a negotiated peace. The need to counteract defeatism, strengthen morale and explain the war’s purpose led to a drive to remobilize opinion behind the national effort. State and voluntary organizations produced posters, brochures, periodicals and films.10

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 133

The Two Versions of J’Accuse By Abel Gance • 133 Abel Gance planned J’Accuse in August 1917. He envisaged it as the first of a trilogy with two other productions bearing the titles ‘La Société des Nations’ and ‘Les Cicatrices’ (The Scars), which in fact were never made.11 By the time he wrote the script in July 1918, the mood of the country had changed again. The final German offensive which opened in late March reawakened a resolve to resist defeat and reactivated much of the language and imagery of the earlier part of the war. The renewed threat to Paris, the floods of refugees, the arrival of American soldiers all heightened a sense that the fate of the nation hung in the balance. As Gance filmed the outside scenes at Nice in August–September, aided by the poet Blaise Cendrars who had lost an arm at the front, Allied soldiers reversed the offensive and entered regions which the Germans had utterly devastated as they withdrew. Tales of ‘German atrocities’ revived along with demands for retribution.12 When the Armistice came, it froze the Allied armies on the point of entering Germany and caught Gance in the final editing of the film. The first J’Accuse is an amalgam of these elements. The story is a love triangle of the kind familiar to Gance from his passion for romantic literature as well as from acting in melodramas and writing for the screen. In a Provençal village a poet with pacifist and humanitarian leanings, Jean Diaz, is in love with Edith, who returns his love but is married to the brutal François Laurin. The last, carefree moments of the prewar world give way to the mobilization on 1–2 August 1914. François departs but Jean is not due to leave until the fortieth day of the mobilization. Jealous of Jean, François sends Edith away to his relatives in the Ardennes. There, she is captured by the Germans and deported. J’Accuse! When this news reaches François at the front, he bitterly assumes it to be a subterfuge to hide Edith’s relationship with Jean. Equally distraught at Edith’s abduction, Jean applies to officer training school and is eventually posted to the same regiment as François. Jean wins François’ respect through his bravery at the front and the two men are reconciled in their love for Edith. Four years later (the film now being set in the present) Jean suffers shell shock and, temporarily deranged, is sent home. There he finds his mother on her deathbed and as she dies he once more reads her his pacifist poems. At that moment, Edith returns from captivity in Germany with a little girl, Angèle. Confronted by her furious father, a veteran of the Franco-Prussian War, Edith explains that when first deported from the Ardennes in the summer of 1914 she was raped by several German soldiers and became pregnant. J’Accuse! Her father storms off to the front to avenge his ‘honour’, where he is eventually killed. When François returns on leave shortly afterwards he nearly murders the child, but Jean dissuades him. Still jealous, François begs Jean to assuage his feelings by leaving with him for the front once more. The two men take part in the final Allied offensive. J’Accuse! The combat scenes use footage of the 28th United States Infantry Division in the

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 134

134 • John Horne St Mihiel salient. Jean is traumatized again by the fighting while François dies in hospital grasping the hand of Jean lying in the next bed. Jean returns home with a head wound and in a trance. In a celebrated sequence he summons up the dead from the front. The soldiers (4,000 of them lent by the army, some of whom were really to die in the last weeks of the war) march back to see if the home front has been worthy of their sacrifice. The unfaithful wife and the profiteer are denounced. J’Accuse! Jean is now delirious. Little Angèle guides his hand to write ‘J’Accuse!’ in childish letters on a blackboard. It is a revelation. Finding his poems of lyric pacifism, Jean tears them up. He declaims a new ode in which he blames the sun for its cosmic indifference to the ‘frightful epic’. A caption tells us that the war has killed the poet. Jean dies. Traditionally critics accepted Gance’s own retrospective account of his anti-war motives and thus found the film confused if brilliant. For example, Jean invokes the figure of an ancient Gaul during the final battle who incarnates the ‘powerful virtues of our race’. Vercingétorix, the ancient Gallic leader whose revolt was crushed by Caesar, had entered the pantheon of French patriotism as an image of national resistance in the half century before the war – Gauloises cigarettes date from 1910. The juxtaposition of this national icon with the final scenes makes little sense if we assume the film to be at core a denunciation of war.13 But if we accept that Gance believed the two themes to be mutually coherent, it may tell us something about 1918. In a sophisticated reading, Jay Winter sees many of the elements of the plot – unrequited love, German atrocities – as ‘the stuff of second-rate melodrama in wartime’. The film is redeemed and becomes redemptive through the power of the penultimate sequence, when the army of the risen dead confronts the living with the task of making sense of the monstrous conflict and thereby allowing life to continue. The task is beyond Diaz who, Christ-like, dies a victim of his own transcendent vision.14 Yet to emphasize the closing ten minutes of a long film may be to risk downplaying the significance of other narrative and symbolic elements, especially since the resurrection of the dead is distinct from Jean Diaz’s denunciation of war. Much about the first J’Accuse becomes clearer if we understand it as a film made inside the war. Gance himself felt that the abrupt end of the conflict might affect its reception. ‘The Armistice disorients me a little’, he wrote in his diary, ‘but I think that the social message of J’Accuse is too profound and the film will be a triumph everywhere, if nothing happens to thwart its ending.’ He considered that the return of the dead made the film a transcendent epic of emotion.15 A provisional version of the film was shown in December 1918, and a commercial one in March 1919. Over half the army remained mobilized during this period, and the risk of more fighting was not terminated until the peace treaty was signed in late June. Subsequently, new versions of the film fine-tuned its themes to fit the postwar world in ways which are hard to reconstruct. But the Armistice never figured in it.

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 135

The Two Versions of J’Accuse By Abel Gance • 135 Hence J’Accuse is a wartime film even if final production and first reception occurred between the Armistice and peace treaty.16 The film’s narrative future remains open – the war is not won, the men have not come home and their sacrifice has not been redeemed. It expresses wartime emotions and anxieties still current in early 1919. Like the final chapters of two mid-war novels, ‘The Dawn’ in Henri Barbusse’s Le Feu, and ‘Mr Britling writes until Sunrise’ in H.G. Wells’ Mr Britling Sees it Through, Gance ends on an eschatological note. In all three cases it is expressed by the sun’s rays, which illuminate the continuing tragedy of the war with the light of an unknown future. If Jean Diaz condemns the sun, Gance invokes the ‘necessary utopia’ of Christian love as a promise of redemption.17 The first of these wartime preoccupations is the enemy. ‘J’Accuse’ was of course Zola’s famous cry in the Dreyfus Affair for justice and liberty, values which many in France saw as central to the Great War. It had been reused by a German expatriate as the title for a much-acclaimed book denouncing Germany for causing the war.18 Gance, who makes Jean’s mother Jewish, played on both associations.19 In keeping with the representational canon of wartime, the enemy is never given a human face. Either he remains the general cause of the war and as such is opposed by Vercingétorix, or he becomes the dehumanized individual who commits atrocities. When Edith recounts her rape, we see the spiked helmet of the perpetrator as in a fairground shadow play. Rooted in real brutalities towards French and Belgian civilians during the invasion and Occupation, the ‘German atrocities’ portrayed a feeling of national violation which was reawakened in 1918.20 In a preliminary version of the film, Vercingétorix became chief prosecutor at the bar of history before which (using the commonest Allied myth of ‘German atrocities’) Belgian children with severed hands cried ‘J’accuse!’21 More significantly, Gance’s narrative centres on the atrocities since Edith’s deportation and rape inspire the hatred of the enemy which drives the men (including her father) into battle. The reverse of the dehumanized enemy is the French hero. Gance deliberately puts Jean and François in the Chasseurs Alpins, an elite unit recognized by the large black berets of its members and whose martial spirit was legendary. Both men show exemplary courage, and inspire their comrades in the victorious counter-offensive of 1918. Their indifference to death as they recall their love for Edith in the midst of an artillery bombardment illustrates an insouciance under fire which was seen as typically French. And if Jean the poet is ultimately destroyed by the war, François is redeemed by it, converted from the bully of 1914 into a man capable of self-sacrifice. The soldiers’ sacrifice is the moral crux of the film; as Clemenceau recognized it was for the nation in 1917–18. But the soldiers are also victims and the men who rise from the dead are truly pitiable. The sense of victim-hood was widespread in 1917, in soldiers’ songs and letters, and we have seen that the military disobedience of the early summer was a reaction against it. However, the moral and

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 136

136 • John Horne psychological measure by which death is given meaning – and victim-hood turned into ‘sacrifice’ – is neither the enemy nor the future (total victory or the end of all war) but the fidelity of the home front. This, more than anything else, marks J’Accuse as a wartime film. For a complex social morality related individuals and social groups to the ultimate sacrifice of death for the patrie. It was partly a question of soldiers versus civilians. But it also involved different levels of sacrifice between mobilized men, some of whom worked in scheduled occupations or, like Gance, were exempt on health grounds, while others enjoyed no such protection. In the view of the soldier, the cherished home front of the family and loved ones coexisted with the ‘detested’ home front of errant wives and those who shirked their duty, profiteered or otherwise made light of the soldiers’ sacrifice.22 Yet the home front itself was deeply touched by the war through mounting loss and grief. Edith and Jean Diaz’s mother, the key women in the narrative – are themselves victims, Edith in occupied France and his mother through Jean’s absence at the front. A caption spells out the message: ‘The war kills mothers as well as their sons’. Jay Winter is right that the return of the dead moves the film from the conventional to the transcendental. The war dead who haunt the living until they have been mourned, propitiated and spiritually laid to rest were familiar to millions in the interwar period and used as a theme of art and politics alike. In Gance’s film, however, the dead are satisfied if the living have been true to them within the timeframe of their own suffering, as Edith and Jean’s mother have. This moment of reckoning in the social relations of wartime sacrifice came when the living soldiers returned in 1919. The regiments often marched back to a civic ceremony which paid them homage and symbolically reabsorbed them into ordinary life.23 The penultimate scene of J’Accuse anticipates that meeting in relation to the dead. This was the ‘profound social message’ that Gance felt would guarantee the film its relevance after the fighting had stopped. The final accusation against war is a cri de coeur uttered by a soldier-poet who has disintegrated spiritually and psychologically under the experience of combat. It is a theatrical portrayal of shell shock and, in a time-honoured dramatic convention, madness becomes the voice of sanity in a world turned upside down. Jean’s final ode is an extreme version of the moral protest evident in 1917 and it is not surprising that some condemned the film as ‘defeatist’.24 Yet Jean’s denunciation of war is entirely non-political. No generals, arms manufacturers or politicians are blamed. And the narrative contains a hint of reconciliation. For unlike the conventional representation of the child of rape as a little boche and invariably a boy, Angèle is a girl with a redemptive name while her mother, Edith, is a mater dolorosa. The point is underlined in a remarkable sequence showing Angèle herself forced by the village children to wear a German helmet and in play to execute a little boy in French uniform.25 Yet Angèle, the ‘enfant de l’ennemi’,

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 137

The Two Versions of J’Accuse By Abel Gance • 137 reveals to Jean the ultimate enemy, which is war itself, and hints at a new life. The ‘sacrifice’ of Jean Diaz and his poetic muse contrasts sharply with Abel Gance’s confidence in his ability to portray what he saw as the epic tragedy of war. ‘I am filled with an invincible confidence in my power as a cinematographer’, he wrote on finishing the script.26 Yet it is hard not to see the film also as an exploration of his personal relationship with the war. Many elements of the narrative have an autobiographical ring. Gance had Jewish ancestry but was raised a Catholic; he left his wife for a mistress (the love triangle) just as he began the script; and Jean Diaz is the figure Gance might have been had he been called up – an artist killed by his temperamental revulsion against war. The film is perhaps Abel Gance’s answer to the ultimate accusation – that of being young and non-combatant.

The Film of 1938 The second film was shot from May to August 1937 and premièred in January 1938. It was contemporary with the fall of Léon Blum’s Popular Front government, French rearmament and the Spanish Civil War. In an interview in Cinémonde in July 1937, Gance made it clear that although the title and some characters were borrowed from the earlier film, the script was new and unambiguously pacifist. J’Accuse will be an indictment. I accuse the war of yesterday of having prepared the Europe of today, and the Europe of today of preparing the war of tomorrow, which will see the total annihilation of Europe . . .’

The narrative begins at the end of the war. Jean Diaz is a mature soldier at Verdun. He comforts some men, including his friend François, who are due to go out on a suicide mission, the final patrol of the war. Jean swears to them that this will be the last war. He also promises that should François die, he will not take up with François’ wife Edith, whom both men love. At the last moment Jean volunteers for the patrol to replace a father of four. The following morning, the men are brought in dead to a world transformed by the Armistice, except for one who is missing and Jean who has survived. The plot then oscillates between three stories – Jean’s love for Edith, which remains unconsummated owing to his promise to François; his work as a master glazier who invents a new bullet-proof glass; and his fidelity to his comrades of the last patrol. He expresses that fidelity by returning to Verdun for years on end where he pursues his researches in a shack near the village from which the patrol set off. Although Jean had imagined his research to be a force for peace, his invention is produced by a powerful glass manufacturer and politician (vaguely associated with the authoritarian right), Henri Chimay, who marries Edith’s daughter. Chimay declares the new glass vital for national defence.

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 138

138 • John Horne The dénouement comes as the film moves into the present. Jean has suffered increasingly from an old head wound which sends him into a delirium. As an international crisis develops, he hears that mobilization is to be decreed. Recovering his mind, he returns to Verdun and in a café discovers a woman, Flo, who had run a café on the same spot in which the men of the last patrol had caroused. She loved the soldier who was reported missing. Now the café is empty, with even the tourists and pilgrims having abandoned the war dead. Aided by Flo, Jean tries to summon up the forgotten men. By name he invokes the last patrol. As an ‘apocalyptic storm rages’, a tower with a beam like a lighthouse groans and flashes in response.27 In reality it is the ossuary of Douaumont where the fragmented bones of the missing of Verdun had been gathered in a national shrine. In the last sequence of the film, the dead rise and return home to France and all the combatant nations. They are preceded by Jean Diaz, now a furious prophet, who is killed by the terrified crowds. A working man tries to drive back the dead by singing the Marseillaise, but ‘even the Marseillaise is fatally wounded.’ Finally the two crowds intermingle and as the living rediscover their dead, time dissolves and the sacrifice of the last war rescues the present. Gance’s shooting script specifies: In this last scene . . . do about ten highly emotional flashes between a woman of 40, daughter of 20, son of 20, grandchildren who embrace their rediscovered dead and who swear never more to hate or to fight. With Germans, English, Russians, Poles, Italians, Belgians, Americans, all in their respective languages, do: 1) a war widow 2) daughter of a dead soldier 3) son of a dead soldier 4) mother of a dead soldier.28

The film concludes with the abolition of war by Henri Chimay before the hastily assembled Estates-General of the World, which also render homage to Jean Diaz for having ‘succeeded by his faith in avoiding a new and frightful catastrophe.’29 The moral frame of reference in the second J’Accuse is much simpler than in the first. The Great War is reduced to a destructive machine which has escaped the control of all human agents, represented by the last patrol, which everyone knows in advance to be suicidal but which none can prevent. Future war is represented both by the escalating technology of destruction (Jean Diaz’s glass is a metaphor for gas bombardment from the air, which haunted opinion in the 1930s) and by the ‘merchants of death’ and populist politicians who fuelled a future conflict. Since war is the sole enemy, Jean Diaz’s crusade as a providential hero provides the only narrative momentum. The war dead are presented purely as victims, with none of the hatred of the enemy or martial masculinity so important in the earlier film. On the contrary, the final sequence shows the dead of all nations arising as

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 139

The Two Versions of J’Accuse By Abel Gance • 139 one. Just how important their victim-hood is can be illustrated in two ways. First, Gance once again used real soldiers for the risen dead, but this time they came not from the armed forces (which refused his request) but from the ranks of the gueules cassées – those veterans whose hideous disfigurement usually kept them out of the public eye.30 Second, a first version of the script in Gance’s papers reveals a more radical storyline which starts not on the eve of the Armistice, but in the mutinies of 1917. A group of soldiers are executed for refusing to return to battle, and the subsequent mission of Jean Diaz is partly to honour their memory. At the final awakening, these sacrificial victims (who had in reality been rehabilitated after the war) arise with the rest and ‘go their different ways, to oppose hatred and the fratricidal fury of mankind, their diaphanous chests filled with holes.’31 In short, Gance’s film is a visionary statement of a rather programmatic kind of pacifism characteristic of the later 1930s. The film was endorsed by the Conférence Internationale des Associations de Mutilés de Guerre et d’Anciens Combattants, which was the leading veterans’ organization associated with the League of Nations. Gance’s brilliant use of the beam from the tower of the Douaumont ossuary may well have been inspired by a commemorative festival of light held there in July 1936 at which 10,000 veterans from different countries swore to defend peace.32 Thus, the second J’Accuse drew on orthodox pacifist sentiment in expressing fidelity to the dead of the Great War in order to oppose renewed conflict in the future.

Conclusion How Abel Gance moved from the first to the second J’Accuse can only be briefly suggested. One way of understanding the first film is as an expression of many elements of the ‘war culture’ of France in 1918. The final denunciation of war expressed the widely felt enormity of a conflict which had redefined moral and emotional boundaries. But the other elements – hatred of the enemy, the soldiers’ sacrifice, home front morality – were equally part of the war’s internal psychological landscape. The second J’Accuse might be seen as the end point of a process of ‘cultural demobilization’ in which the motives and values of wartime have been dismantled (all those elements of the first film which are absent from the second) and replaced by an implacable opposition to future war.33 This would explain the quite different moral and emotional meaning of the two sequences of the risen dead, which are the pivots not just of each film but also of the relationship between them. Abel Gance’s particular path of cultural demobilization remains to be established. But it certainly went via the League of Nations, which Gance felt should use cinema internationally to help promote peace, and his epic film Napoléon (1927). Napoleon, as the man who resolved the cataclysm of the French Revolution via a

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 140

140 • John Horne new, French order in Europe, was peculiarly relevant to the 1920s. Gance chose to make his Napoleon listen to the injunction of the immortal dead of the Revolution to establish universal peace.34 And while the absence of diaries makes it hard to reconstruct his precise motivation, it was undoubtedly the foundering of such hopes which forced him to reawaken the shades of the Great War a decade later.

Notes 1. H.R. Kedward, ‘The anti-carnival of collaboration: Louis Malle’s Lacombe Lucien’, in Susan Hayward & Ginette Vincendeau (eds), French Film: texts and contexts (Routledge, new ed. 2000), pp. 227–39. 2. Interview in Photo-Ciné, 1928; see also Abel Gance, Prisme (1930; new edn, Samuel Tastet, 1986), pp. 107–8. Prisme is unreliable for Gance’s views at the time that he made J’Accuse. 3. For example René Jeanne and Charles Ford, Abel Gance (Editions Seghers, 1963), pp. 24–8, 64; Joseph Daniel, Guerre et cinéma (FNSP, 1972), pp. 63–7, 144–8. 4. Antoine Prost, Les Anciens Combattants et la société française 1914–1939 (FNSP, 1977), vol. 2, p. 5. 5. Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, Département des Arts du Spectacle, Gance papers, 4 Col. 36/35, diary entry for 14 June 1917. 6. Laurent Véray, ‘Abel Gance, cinéaste à l’oeuvre cicatricielle’, 1895. Revue de l’Association Française de Recherche sur l’Histoire du Cinéma, 31 October 2000, special issue, ‘Abel Gance, nouveaux regards’ (ed. Laurent Véray), pp. 19–52 (here, 22–3). 7. Guy Pedroncini, Les Mutineries de 1917 (PUF, 1967), p. 63. 8. Leonard Smith, Between Mutiny and Obedience (Princeton University Press, 1994), pp. 175–214. 9. Georges Clemenceau, inaugural speech, 20 November 1917, in Discours de guerre (Plon, 1934), p. 158. 10. John Horne, ‘Remobilizing for “Total War”: France and Britain, 1917–1918’, in John Horne (ed.), State, Society and Mobilization in Europe during the First World War (CUP, 1997), pp. 195–211. 11. Gance papers, 4 Col. 36/35, diary entry for August 1917. 12. Bruno Cabanes, ‘Finir la guerre. L’expérience des soldats français (été 1918–printemps 1920)’ thèse de doctorat, Université de Paris I, 2002, vol. 1, pp. 30–7. 13. Daniel, Guerre et cinéma, p. 67; André Simon, Vercingétorix et l’idéologie française (Editions Imago, 1989), pp. 94–109. 14. Jay Winter, Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning (CUP, 1995), pp. 15–22, 133–42.

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 141

The Two Versions of J’Accuse By Abel Gance • 141 15. Gance papers, 4 Col. 36/36, entry dated ‘Août et Septembre 1918’. 16. Following the March 1919 première, the film toured extensively abroad, including Britain and the USA. New French versions appeared in 1922 and 1928. The script was published as J’accuse. D’après le film d’Abel Gance (La Lampe Merveilleuse, 1922). 17. The film closes with the motif of the cross. Also see J’Accuse, p. 110. 18. Christophe Prochasson and Anne Rasmussen, Au Nom de la patrie. Les intellectuels et la première guerre mondiale (1910–1919) (La Découverte, 1996), pp. 11–60, 126–42; Richard Grelling, J’Accuse. Par un Allemand (Payot, 1915). 19. In the 1928 interview (note 2 above). 20. John Horne and Alan Kramer, German Atrocities, 1914. A History of Denial (Yale University Press, 2001). 21. Daniel, Guerre et cinéma, p. 67 22. Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau, 14–18. Les combattants des tranchées (Colin, 1986), pp. 107–77. 23. Cabanes, ‘Finir la guerre’, pp. 488–555. 24. Winter, Sites of Memory, p. 137. 25. Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau, La Guerre des enfants, 1914–1918 (Colin, 1993), pp. 80–100. 26. Gance papers, 4 Col. 36/36, diary, entry for 29 July 1918. 27. Gance papers, 4 Col. 36–557, J’Accuse (1937), shooting script, p. 157. 28. Gance papers, 4 Col. 36–557, J’Accuse (1937), shooting script, p. 344. 29. Gance papers, 4 Col. 36–557, J’Accuse (1937), publicity brochure; shooting script, pp. 345–51. 30. Jean Rollot, ‘Des “Gueules cassées” ont tourné “J’Accuse” sous la direction d’Abel Gance’, La Vie du Cinéma, 5 August 1937; Sophie Delaporte, Les Gueules cassées (Noêsis, 1996), pp. 173–98. 31. Gance papers, 4 Col. 36–557, J’Accuse, early typescript, p. 17; Nicolas Offenstadt, Les Fusillés de la Grande Guerre (Odile Jacob, 1999), pp. 32–3, 69–107. 32. Daniel Sherman, The Construction of Memory in Interwar France (University of Chicago Press, 1999), p. 312. 33. 14–18 Aujourd’hui-Heute-Today, 5, 2002, special issue on ‘Démobilisations culturelles après la Grande Guerre’, esp. John Horne, ‘Présentation’, pp. 45–53. 34. Bambi Ballard (ed.), Napoleon as seen by Abel Gance (Faber, 1990), pp. 174–6.

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 142

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 143

–11– ‘Like a wisp of straw amidst the raging elements’? Daniel Guérin in the Second World War David Berry

Daniel Guérin (1904–88) was an outstanding figure on the French revolutionary left for over fifty years. A committed activist in fields as diverse as anti-colonialism and homosexual liberation, he published widely and made significant contributions in many areas.1 Guérin was widely respected: Leon Trotsky corresponded with him in the late 1930s;2 Jean-Paul Sartre judged his reinterpretation of the French Revolution to be ‘one of the only contributions by contemporary marxists to have enriched historical studies’;3 Pierre Hahn believed his own generation of homosexuals owed more to Guérin than to any other;4 Aimé Césaire paid tribute to his work on decolonization;5 Noam Chomsky considered (and still considers) Guérin’s writings on anarchism to be of great importance to contemporary socialist thought.6 There is widespread and enduring interest in Guérin, yet he has suffered a thoroughly undeserved neglect on the part of researchers. The aim of this chapter – part of a longer-term project which is to produce a biography of Guérin – is to examine his response both as an activist and as a theorist (or historian, as he thought of himself) to the Second World War. Victor Serge related in his memoirs, in a passage lamenting the generalized collapse of all revolutionary opposition to war in the summer of 1939, how he had met Daniel Guérin on 23 August: ‘The Workers’ and Peasants’ Socialist Party had lost its influence in the Paris region and, abandoned by its most prominent leaders, was in a state of crisis.’ Guérin, he went on, ‘who was beginning to achieve the status of a leader of the revolutionary movement . . . was feverishly preparing his flight to Oslo.’7 What Serge did not know was that Guérin had been mandated by the Front Ouvrier International (FOI, International Workers’ Front against War, launched in 1938 by the so-called London Bureau) to leave the country at the outbreak of war in order to establish a centre in Norway which would be able to maintain communications between the FOI’s national affiliates.8 Guérin’s generation of revolutionaries had all read Alfred Rosmer’s account of the Zimmerwald 143

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 144

144 • David Berry movement and were convinced of the importance of international organization.9 At a conference of the FOI in Brussels in October 1938 – at which Guérin was a member of the PSOP delegation – a resolution was adopted which declared the FOI’s opposition to both ‘imperialist war’ and ‘imperialist peace’ (ie. Munich), and committed the Front’s affiliates to a policy of revolutionary defeatism. So on 25 August 1939, Guérin set off on the journey to Oslo, and just in time: Maurice Jaquier had been asked by Pivert to support Guérin in Oslo (partly in order to counter the latter’s Trotskyist sympathies), but was unable to get any further than Amsterdam.10 Guérin learnt of the outbreak of war in Stavanger: ‘I felt like a wisp of straw amidst the raging elements . . . My brain told me that, as a revolutionary, I had to survive; my feeble, human heart hardly felt able to continue beating.’11

The Oslo Secretariat Guérin was welcomed in Oslo by a group of young, Norwegian left socialists led by Haakon Meyer, and he was helped in his work there by a mixed group of left socialists, oppositional communists and Trotskyists from France, Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia. Getting the Trotskyists to work with those militants affiliated to the FOI (condemned by the Stalinists and reformists as ‘Trotskyist’, but condemned by Trotsky as ‘centrist’) caused Guérin a lot of hard work – although the war between Russia and Finland facilitated matters: ‘it enabled us all systematically to set out and debate our respective positions on a conflict which, for internationalists, raised some very tricky questions.’12 Guérin’s ‘revolutionary internationalism’ and research in the library of the Nobel Institute led him to the conviction that Britain, France and Germany were all lying about the outbreak of war and that each bore its share of responsibility. An article on this theme was, however, rejected by the Oslo socialist newspaper, Arbeiderbladet, on the grounds that it might be more appropriate if it were to appear in the Nazis’ daily, the Völkischer Beobachter. ‘Although Norway was officially neutral’, Guérin concluded, ‘the Norwegian social-democrats were already lined up behind the “democracies” and incapable of understanding our revolutionary internationalism.’13 From October 1939, the Oslo secretariat produced a monthly bulletin which was sent to the FOI’s correspondents in different countries.14 The group also distributed, in May 1940, an ‘Appeal to the German Proletariat’ written by Guérin, which began: German workers and soldiers! We are your class brothers and we appeal to your conscience as workers . . . At no time have we sided with the imperialist brigands who provoked this war. From the very beginning, we stood against the imperialists of London

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 145

Daniel Guérin and the Second World War • 145 and Paris as well as against the bloody dictatorships of Berlin and Moscow. We are the Third Camp – the camp of the oppressed of all countries, the camp of those who die for nothing, the camp of the colonial slaves over whom the modern-day slave-traders fight, the camp of the poor and the hungry, the camp of world socialist revolution!15

When the German army occupied Oslo in April 1940, Guérin was arrested and sent to a German internment camp for civilians. Ironically, he recognized the place, having photographed it in 1932 during the trip he had made to research the rise of Nazism.16 Guérin passed the time reading, learning Norwegian and studying the Frankfurter Zeitung, and it was through this newspaper that he learnt one morning of the assassination of Trotsky: ‘In a world already darkened by war, it suddenly became even darker.’17 The Frankfurter Zeitung also served as the main source of information for a brief account of the origins of the Vichy regime which Guérin drafted in December 1940.

The Meaning of Vichy Guérin’s analysis of the creation of the Vichy regime – very similar to that put forward by the Fourth International18 – was in terms of the conflict between two ‘clans’ within a divided ruling class. On the one hand, there were those in favour of the continuation of the war alongside Britain, even if it meant leaving France: ‘the imperialists’ desire to defend their privileges’.19 On the other hand, there was the class solidarity – reminiscent of 1871 – of those who felt sympathy for the ‘strong governments’ of Germany and Italy and who were therefore in favour of compromise with them against their own working class: ‘for the Third Reich had an interest in separating France from England, and therefore in accommodating the French ruling class by helping it to maintain its domination of both the French popular masses and the peoples of the colonies.’20 For Guérin, those on the French left who applauded Munich had fallen into the trap of ‘national unity with those of our bourgeois who preferred to kneel before foreign fascism rather than bow to the wishes of its own working class.’21 Of the armistice documents signed with Germany and Italy in June 1940, Guérin remarks that they explicitly stated that France would be able to retain the naval forces necessary for the defence and conservation of its colonies, and that the victors demanded the occupation of none of France’s colonial territories. ‘In taking on responsibility for keeping order in a considerable proportion of French territory, the Wehrmacht is not harming any of the essential interests of the French bourgeoisie.’22 Pierre Laval’s objective was the creation in France of ‘a new type of fascist regime, more or less inspired by those of Germany and Italy’.23 The social basis of Vichy, Guérin stressed, was principally the middle classes who, frightened by the Popular Front, wanted order and a strong state, and were attracted by the idea

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 146

146 • David Berry of a charismatic leader. Of course, the idea of the ‘homme providentiel’ was not applicable only to Pétain. In a letter of February 1945 to Dwight MacDonald, Guérin would write of the persistence of the Pétainism of the bourgeoisie, of their fear of the urban working classes, and of the concessions repeatedly made to the right by de Gaulle’s provisional government: So there has been no discontinuity in the political direction of the bourgeoisie. Two successive military governments have kept the working class in their place during this critical period. The poor naïve things in the Resistance thought de Gaulle was the opposite of Pétain. They are now beginning to understand that de Gaulle is Pétain’s heir.24

From Oslo to Occupied Paris On 18 December 1940, Guérin was released and sent back to Oslo. There, he earnt his living with a series of manual jobs, but in what little spare time he had Guérin visited the National Library, devouring everything he could find on the French Revolution of 1789. ‘Why go so far back in history?’ he asked. Up until that point, everything Guérin had researched and written about since his decision in 1930 to abandon the novels and poetry of his youth had been to do with the contemporary socialist movement and was closely linked with his own activities as a militant. ‘Because converting myself into a historian helped me to survive those accursed years and because it was, for me, a way of saying no to the abominable war, a way of nullifying it, of turning my back on it.’25 Finally, in March 1942, the German authorities authorized the repatriation of French civilians, and Guérin was able to return to occupied Paris. He immediately re-established contact with Trotskyist and socialist comrades, notably his old friend Yvan Craipeau, a leading member of the Parti Ouvrier Internationaliste, with whom he became involved in clandestine political activities.26 In the spring of 1942 Guérin was approached by the Trotskyist Marcel Hic with a view to the reorganization of the international secretariat of the Fourth International. The exiled Swiss oppositional communist Pavel Thalmannn recounts how Hic invited him to represent the German-speaking territories on the reconstructed secretariat. With the agreement of the small group of exiled revolutionaries of which he was a member, Thalmann turned up for what he had been told would be the constitutive meeting of the new secretariat to find only Hic and Guérin. According to Thalmann’s account, he and Guérin were presented with an 80–page document on the national question which Hic wanted them both to sign so it could be presented as the outcome of a collective discussion. Both refused – Thalmann because it seemed to him an irrelevance in the circumstances, Guérin because he had not even read the document, let alone been given the opportunity to contribute to the debate.27

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 147

Daniel Guérin and the Second World War • 147 In the summer of 1942, Guérin was offered a post as a controller with the Comité d’Organisation du Livre, a quango charged with regulating the publishing industry. One of its duties was the publication of the ‘Liste Otto’, a list of books withdrawn by publishers or banned by the German authorities, but his new colleagues turned a blind eye to the fact that Guérin’s Fascisme et grand capital featured on the list.28 Guérin’s job concerned relations with booksellers, a trade with which he was familiar from having worked in it himself in the 1920s.29 He travelled a great deal and claimed to have occasionally been able to use his position to protect some booksellers against anti-Jewish legislation. He also had a great deal of contact with Germans, and his fluency in German enabled him to strike up conversations with many ordinary soldiers, soldiers who were, Guérin insisted, the sons of workers and of peasants, who hated the war and Hitler’s dictatorship: ‘Comrade, we understand each other! But we must keep quiet, there are spies and informers everywhere’, one of them whispered in my ear after a hushed conversation and as he shook my hand firmly . . . It is the honour of the French Trotskyists . . . that they sought to fraternize with the German soldiers, while others simply attacked them from behind.30

Indeed, from his return to Paris in the spring of 1942, Guérin was closely involved with the Parti Ouvrier Internationaliste, which had been publishing a clandestine newspaper, La Vérité, since August 1940.31 Guérin had frequent contacts with the exiled German Trotskyist Widelin, who had come to Paris at Hic’s request and who helped organize anti-militarist and anti-Nazi propaganda among German soldiers.32 At the beginning of 1944, Guérin also contributed to the activities of a group of Trotskyist workers which produced newsletters carrying reports of workplace struggles against both their French employers and the Nazis. Invited, on the other hand, to contribute to a clandestine Gaullist paper, Guérin declined: ‘I intended remaining true to revolutionary internationalism and, since the appeal of 18 June 1940, none of my reservations about the General had been diminished. I would never ally myself with the chauvinists of my country in order to resist Hitler. Their means were not ours.’33 For Guérin, de Gaulle represented ‘the militarist, imperialist bourgeois Resistance.’34

‘Liberation’ In June 1944, the French police tried to arrest Guérin and he was forced to flee to the mountains of Haute-Savoie. He stayed there until the Liberation, when he witnessed the humiliation of Frenchwomen with shaven heads; drunken, armed teenagers partying around a pile of coffins, delighted at the prospect of firing squads; the chauvinism of the supposedly communist Francs-tireurs et partisans

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 148

148 • David Berry (FTP); and the unnecessary deaths both of swaggering Maquisards and of weary German soldiers who wanted nothing better than to lay down their arms. Guérin was given the opportunity of writing for the first Resistance newspaper to be distributed openly in the region, and warned against complacency just because the flag flying over public buildings had changed. The war ‘represented only one episode of the contradiction which exists between the formidable technology of modern times and private appropriation. The war of 1914–1918 marked the first round of this conflict, that of 1939–1944 the second. For humanity, the nightmare is not yet over.’35 Keen to get back to Paris to see whether ‘liberation’ might become the prelude to revolution, Guérin left Annecy in early September, armed with a pass provided by his new contacts in the local Resistance movement.36 On the way, near Autun, for the first time in his life, he saw what a battlefield was really like: A sickening spectacle . . . Hitler had, in his desperate haste, conscripted young boys of 17. Around some supply trucks, broken apart and overturned, these blonde children now lay, all along the road, disembowelled, their brains blown apart, the photos of their parents and of themselves falling from their bloodied pockets. I picked a few up, and would later send them to the families . . . The hideousness of war. It really was not pretty to see at close quarters. I had always hated it . . . I no longer hated it from a distance and in the abstract. Now, I could even smell it. It stank . . .37

In some areas, FFI (Forces françaises de l’intérieur) and FTP fighters were in control. ‘There was a pre-revolutionary atmosphere, a rising tide, the people in arms.’ Despite ‘chauvinistic deviations’, ‘this uprising had a certain class character’: ‘The young workers had taken up arms for their own account, not for Charles de Gaulle or for Maurice Thorez, and they intended holding on to them in order to defend their own interests as workers, not those of the bourgeoisie.’38 The role of the PCF in collaborating with de Gaulle and reactionaries in the police and military to disarm the workers and restore ‘order’ was roundly condemned by Guérin, for whom the title of a Trotskyist pamphlet of February 1945 was entirely apt: With Maurice Thorez on the road which leads back to Vichy.39 Soon after, Guérin was appointed secretary-general of the Office Professionnel du Livre, the reincarnation of the Comité d’Organisation du Livre. He campaigned energetically to get La Vérité legalized, essential because of government control of paper supplies. Unfortunately, the PCF’s role in the provisional government made this impossible, at a time when reactionary papers of all kinds were being authorized to reappear. Guérin also intervened in this period to get Trotskyist militants released from jail.40 Despite the Trotskyists’ active contribution to the Resistance, the Stalinists were still describing them as belonging to some kind of fifth column.

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 149

Daniel Guérin and the Second World War • 149

Guérin as Historian: Escapist or Activist? In the summer of 1945, Guérin finally completed his study of the French Revolution.41 This was a task he had been working at maniacally since 1941, a task ‘which took me far beyond my modest human dimension, which eclipsed all the rest, which helped me to negate the war and the wretchedness of the times, which filled, obsessed and illuminated me.’42 However, despite repeated assertions in his autobiography that this work on a distant past was driven to a great extent by a desire to escape from the horrors of the present, he produced the draft of a preface in the summer of 1944 ‘in which the present and the future invaded the past to such an extent that I did not dare place it at the front of my work.’43 Frustrated by the fact that few readers of La Lutte des classes seemed to have grasped his real intentions, Guérin confided in a letter to Pivert in November 1947: ‘The book is an introduction to a synthesis of anarchism and Marxism–Leninism which I would like to write one day.’44 Lutte des classes thus offered a new interpretation of the French Revolution inspired by the Marxian (and Trotskyist) concept of permanent revolution and by the libertarian conception of revolution from below; but ‘beyond that and above all’, the aim was to ‘draw from the greatest, longest and deepest revolutionary experiment France has ever known lessons which would enable us to regenerate the libertarian revolutionary socialism of today.’45 No surprise, then, that the book caused uproar not only amongst established academic historians of the French Revolution, but also among the ‘dissembling politicians who have been the gravediggers of true proletarian socialism.’46 Guérin’s supposedly escapist work on an ‘academic’ subject thus proved to be an integral part of his attempt to analyze and draw lessons from his political experiences of the preceding ten to fifteen years. This effort would be continued more explicitly in ‘Quand le fascisme nous devançait’ (a piece originally commissioned by Les Temps Modernes in 1954 for a special issue on the state of the left) and in his Front Populaire, Révolution Manquée (first published in 1963), and which would lead ultimately to the ‘libertarian communism’ with which present-day activists associate Guérin.

Fascism and War: The Lessons for the Socialist Movement For Guérin, the war had been ‘a quarrel between brigands.’47 For the French left to support a war against Germany on the grounds that the latter was fascist, was: to enter into a pact of national unity with the plutocrats of our own country, to help them to defend their colonial and imperial spoils, spoils already swollen by the Treaty of Versailles, to help them to strengthen their domination over the French people and thus, perhaps, to prepare the way for a French form of fascism.48

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 150

150 • David Berry The causes of the war and of the triumph of fascism were to be found in the errors of the left, ‘divided, ossified, negative, narrow-minded.’49 These errors were, in Guérin’s eyes, the socialists’ electoralism and class collaboration; their failure to take fascism seriously, despite the warnings, until it was too late; their obsession with their rivalry with the Communist Party; their incomprehension of the significance of the Spanish Civil War and their refusal to aid the republicans; their lack of understanding of the nature of the capitalist state, which led to the impotence of Blum’s government; the Communist Party’s blind obedience to the Comintern; the criminal stupidity of the Comintern’s ‘third period’ and its counter-revolutionary strategy both in Spain and in France; and particularly, in France, its insistence on an alliance with: a bourgeois party whose corruption and bankruptcy were in large part responsible for the fascist explosion: the Parti radical-socialiste. Instead of transforming unity of action ‘at the top’ into organic unity, on the basis of an intermediate minimum programme founded on the struggle against the trusts and on social transformation, instead of widening this working-class bloc into a popular front bringing together, around the working-class, the greatest possible proportion of the middle classes and the impoverished small peasants, the leaders of the PC allowed their hands to be tied by M. Daladier.50

As Guérin summarized the state of the left in the 1930s: ‘Everything made the renewal of the concepts and methods of struggle employed by the French Left both indispensable and urgent.’51 Of course, Guérin saw the root causes of fascism and of the war in the crisis of the capitalist system. Both were: emergency measures used to prolong artificially an outdated mode of production and of appropriation which was no longer able to survive by normal, peaceful means: a strong state on the one hand, over-armament on the other, were (and still are today) the supreme expedients by which the bourgeoisie strives to renew the fare without which it would die of starvation: profit.52

But for Guérin himself, any lasting value which might have been found in Fascisme et grand capital had less to do with its analysis of fascism and more to do with the vision of socialism which it articulated: ‘What at bottom is fascism, if not the direct product of the failings of socialism?’53 In the process of documenting the rise of fascism, Guérin necessarily had to analyse the tactical and strategic failings of the left which had made such a triumph possible, and in the process to formulate an alternative. The ‘essential conclusion’ of the book for its author was that fascism can only be fought and defeated by working-class revolution, and for that to be achieved the working-class movement must not be tied to

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 151

Daniel Guérin and the Second World War • 151 the apron strings of bourgeois ‘democracy’. An anti-fascism which rejects social revolution is just ‘misleading waffle’.54 The eradication of fascism will be complete and definitive only when we present to humanity a successful example of a new form of government, an authentic, complete, direct democracy, involving all producers in the administration of things. This new type of democracy is not a pipe dream, an invention of the imagination. It exists. We saw its first, hesitant steps in the great French revolution. The Commune of 1871 was the first real attempt to put it into practice . . . The Russian soviets of 1917, in spectacular fashion, held it up as a model to the world.55

Attempts to destroy fascism other than through building this ‘true democracy, a communal or soviet-type democracy’ were doomed to failure. ‘The monster of the totalitarian State is reeling. We will be delivered from it forever if we help ensure the triumph of its antithesis: the republic of workers’ councils.’ ‘How could we not be disoriented?’ declared Fred Zeller of the war years. And yet, although Guérin may have felt like ‘a wisp of straw amidst the raging elements’, he seems in fact, in comparison with many on the Left, to have remained remarkably lucid and to have acted in accordance with his beliefs and his analysis of the political situation. Indeed the war years were highly significant for Guérin’s political and ideological development, and represent something of a turning point. His historical research, based on a historical materialist analysis, confirmed his class analysis of ‘democracy’ and made him increasingly critical of what he saw as the Jacobin traits in Marxism, leading him to adopt a libertarian understanding of the dynamics of social revolutions. His political analysis of the role played by the Socialist and Communist Parties in the 1930s led him to break definitively with reformist socialism and with Popular Frontism as strategies for defeating fascism. The 1940s represent the high point of his (not uncritical) association with Trotskyism, not least because of his admiration for the courageous, principled and humane stance adopted by Trotskyist militants during the war. (Indeed his autobiographical works can be seen as a contribution to a small but growing literature on the role played by the anti-Stalinist revolutionary tendencies in this period.56) It is also perhaps in these years that we can see most clearly the depth of Guérin’s revulsion for violence and war; a revulsion which would lead to his becoming a prominent figure in the anti-militarist movement.57 As he would later put it: ‘At the age of 80, I can say that I have always had a gut hatred of war. The fight against war has been the passion of my life.’58

Notes I would like to thank Gill Allwood and Ian Birchall for their comments on an earlier draft of this chapter.

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 152

152 • David Berry 1. For a bibliography see http://www-staff.lboro.ac.uk/~eudgb/DG.htm. 2. Leon Trotsky, Le mouvement communiste en France, 1919–1939 (Editions de Minuit, 1967). 3. Question de méthode quoted in Ian Birchall, ‘Sartre’s Encounter with Daniel Guérin’, Sartre Studies International, vol. 2, no. 1 (1996), p. 48. 4. ‘Une lettre du regretté Pierre Hahn’ in Daniel Guérin, Homosexualité et Révolution (Le Vent du ch’min, 1983), p. 43. 5. Aimé Césaire, introduction to Daniel Guérin, Les Antilles décolonisées (Présence africaine, 1956), pp. 9–17. 6. Noam Chomsky, introduction to Daniel Guérin, Anarchism: from theory to practice (Monthly Review Press, 1970), pp. vii–xx. 7. Victor Serge, Mémoires d’un révolutionnaire, 1901–1941 (Seuil, 1951), pp. 373–4. The Parti socialiste ouvrier et paysan was created when the SFIO leadership expelled Marceau Pivert’s Gauche révolutionnaire in 1938. 8. Daniel Guérin, Front populaire, révolution manquée (Actes Sud, 1997), pp. 379–80, 419–31; Fenner Brockway, Inside the Left (George Allen & Unwin, 1942), chs 28–9. 9. Alfred Rosmer, Le mouvement ouvrier pendant la guerre (Librairie du travail, 1936). 10. Maurice Jaquier, Simple Militant (Denoël, 1974), p. 168; Jean-Paul Joubert, Révolutionnaires de la SFIO (FNSP, 1977), pp. 212 and 220; Guérin, Front populaire, pp. 419–28. 11. Daniel Guérin, Le feu du sang (Grasset & Fasquelle, 1977), pp. 45 and 48. 12. Guérin, Le feu du sang, p. 50. 13. Guérin, Le feu du sang, p. 51; Front populaire, p. 410. 14. Copies of no. 3 (December 1939) and no. 4 (January 1940) can be found in the Fonds Guérin, BDIC, F delta 721/24/15. 15. Daniel Guérin, ‘Appel du Front ouvrier international contre la guerre au prolétariat allemand’, Front populaire, May 1940, pp. 496–8. 16. Daniel Guérin, La Peste brune a passé par là (Librairie du Travail, 1933). 17. Guérin, Le feu du sang, p. 71. 18. Cf. Jean van Heijenoort, ‘Manifeste: La France sous Hitler et Pétain’, in Rodolphe Prager (ed.), Les congrès de la quatrième internationale (La Brèche, 1981), vol. II, pp. 35–44. Guérin was also impressed with Trotsky’s manifesto of May 1940, ‘La guerre impérialiste et la révolution prolétarienne mondiale’ and included it in his collection of Trotsky’s writings, Sur la deuxième guerre mondiale (la Taupe, 1970), pp. 187–245. 19. Daniel Guérin, ‘Quand le fascisme nous devançait’ in La Peste brune (Spartacus, 1996), p. 28. 20. Guérin, ‘Les débuts du régime Pétain’ in Le feu du sang, p. 251. 21. Guérin, ‘Quand le fascisme nous devançait’, p. 28.

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 153

Daniel Guérin and the Second World War • 153 22. 23. 24. 25. 26.

27. 28.

29. 30.

31. 32.

33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40.

Guérin, ‘Les débuts du régime Pétain’, p. 254. Ibid. Guérin, Le feu du sang, pp. 270–2. Ibid. On the wartime activities of the revolutionaries with whom Guérin had links, see Yvan Craipeau, Mémoires d’un dinosaure trotskyste (l’Harmattan, 1999); Fred Zeller, Témoin du siècle (Grasset, 2000), pp. 217–33; Pavel & Clara Thalmann, Combats pour la liberté (La Digitale/Spartacus, 1983), pp. 235–330; Jaquier, Simple Militant, pp. 171–315; Joubert, Révolutionnaires de la SFIO; Jacques Roussel, Les Enfants du prophète (Spartacus, 1972). Thalmann, Combats, pp. 290–1. Hic’s ‘Thèses sur la question nationale’ are in Prager, Les congrès, vol. II, pp. 119–44. Encouraged by Simone Weil and other friends after February 1934 to produce a ‘scientific’ analysis of the origins of fascism, Guérin published Fascisme et grand capital (inspired by Trotsky, Andrès Nin and Ignazio Silone) in 1936. Copies of the ‘Liste Otto’ are in the Fonds Guérin, BDIC, F delta Rés 688/9/2. Daniel Guérin, Autobiographie de jeunesse (Belfond, 1972), ch. 6. Guérin’s family owned Hachette. Guérin, Le feu du sang, p. 100. On the differences between the stalinists and Trotskyists in this respect, see Gerd-Rainer Horn, ‘Le Troskysme et l’Europe pendant la deuxième guerre mondiale’, in Les Cahiers Léon Trotsky, no. 39 (September 1989), pp. 49–75. J.M. Brabant, M. Dreyfus & J. Pluet, La Vérité, 1940–1944 (EDI, 1978). Roussel, Les Enfants du prophète, p. 27; Guérin, Le feu du sang, p. 108; Thalmann, Combats, pp. 300 and 316–23; Craipeau, Mémoires, pp. 166–7; Ian Birchall, ‘With the Masses, Against the Stream – French Trotskyism in the Second World War’ in Revolutionary History, vol. 1, no. 4 (http://www.revolutionary-history.co.uk/backiss/vol1/no4/france.html, accessed 16 February 2001); Prager, Les congrès, vol. II, pp. 117–18. Guérin, Le feu du sang, p. 109. Guérin, Front populaire, p. 414. Guérin, Le feu du sang, p. 119. Two copies of Ohé partisans! (July and August 1945) can be found in Guérin’s archives (BDIC, F delta 688/10/2). Guérin’s laissez-passer from the Comité de Libération Nationale, HauteSavoie, is in the Fonds Guérin, BDIC, F delta Rés 688/9/3. Guérin, Le feu du sang, p. 122. Ibid. p. 123. A copy can be found in the Guérin archive, BDIC, F delta Rés 688/9/3. Correspondence with Pierre Boussel (Lambert) and others, Fonds Guérin, BDIC, delta 721/16/6.

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 154

154 • David Berry 41. La lutte de classes sous la Première République, 1793–1797 (Gallimard, 1946, 1968), 2 vols. 42. Guérin, Le feu du sang, p. 133. 43. Ibid., p. 135. More or less forgotten about until May 1968, it would eventually be published as La Révolution française et nous (Maspero, 1976). See David Berry, ‘Daniel Guérin à la Libération. De l’historien de la Révolution au militant révolutionnaire: un tournant idéologique’, Agone-Sociologie, Histoire, Politique, no. 29/30, 2003, pp. 257–73. 44. Quoted in ‘Daniel Guérin’, special number of Alternative Libertaire (Agora, 2000), p. 16. 45. Guérin, La Révolution française et nous, p. 7. 46. Ibid. 47. Guérin, ‘Quand le fascisme nous devançait’, p. 28. 48. Ibid, p. 28. 49. Ibid, pp. 21–22. 50. Ibid, pp. 25 (emphasis in original). 51. Ibid, p. 23. 52. Ibid, pp. 29–30. 53. Preface of March 1945 to Fascisme et grand capital (Phénix Editions, 1999), p. 21. 54. Ibid, p. 22. 55. Ibid, p. 24. 56. For a review of this literature, see ‘Révolutionnaires en seconde guerre mondiale’, special issue of Dissidences (Bulletin de liaison des études sur les mouvements révolutionnaires), vol. 5, no. 12–13 (October 2002–January 2003). 57. See his L’Armée en France (Filipacchi, 1972), with Roland Gengenbach; and his preface to Agnès Van Parys, Les Déserteurs (Balland, 1971). 58. Introduction to Marie and François Mayoux, Instituteurs pacifistes et syndicalistes (Canope, 1992), p. 12.

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 155

–12– ‘Mal embarqué bien arrivé’: the Strange Story of François Perroux Julian Jackson

No one was more sensitive to the ambiguities of the Occupation than François Mitterrand. One day in January 1994, he was dining in a Parisian restaurant with the journalist, Georges-Marc Benamou. At another table they spotted Maurice Papon, whose postwar career as a high-flying administrator and politician had been abruptly terminated in 1981 when it was revealed that during the Occupation he had helped organize the deportation of Jews from France. In 1994 Papon was awaiting trial for crimes against humanity. When Benamou expressed his disgust at Papon’s presence, Mitterrand reprimanded him sharply: Young man, you do not know what you are talking about . . . You cannot understand. Everybody was at Vichy. But there were those who ‘started badly’ [mal embarqués] but ‘ended well’ [bien arrivés]; and then there were those who ‘started badly’ and also ‘ended badly’. I was a bad starter who ended well.

The same, in Mitterrand’s view, was true of Papon, and his remarks reflected his irritation at the obsession of the French public with his own Vichy past: ‘Why me? Why only me? What about the others, were they not also at Vichy?’ He went on to list, with a certain relish, all of de Gaulle’s ministers in the Fifth Republic who had served Vichy in some capacity.1 Mitterrand’s tirade was not disinterested, but it was not unperceptive either. There were indeed many ‘mal embarqués, bien arrivés’: not only high-flying administrators like Papon or the Vichy police chief René Bousquet, but also intellectuals like Hubert Beuve-Méry, leading member of the Vichy think tank, the Ecole des Cadres at Uriage, and then editor for two decades after 1945 of the daily newspaper Le Monde; or the Catholic philosopher-journalist Emmanuel Mounier who started as a sympathetic commentator on Vichy and ended up with a saintly reputation as one of the leading left-of-centre intellectuals of the early postwar Fourth Republic. There was the influential demographer Alfred Sauvy whose entry in Who’s Who leaps from ‘collaborator of Paul Reynaud and Jean Monnet 155

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 156

156 • Julian Jackson 1938–1940’ to ‘director of INED [Institut National des Etudes Démographiques] in 1945’ without any mention of his activities in between – for example his participation in the Fondation française pour l’étude des problèmes humains (commonly known as the Carrel Institute after its director the scientist Alexis Carrel), which was set up by Vichy in November 1941, and subsequently became notorious for its eugenicist researches. There was the architect Le Corbusier, whose keenness to offer his services to Vichy in 1940–1 did not prevent him becoming, after the Liberation, one of the inspirations of French postwar urban planning. Perhaps, however, there is no more remarkable, and less studied, example of a career ‘mal embarqué bien arrivé’ than that of the economist François Perroux (1903–1987). Having forged a reputation in the 1930s as the rising star of French economics, after 1940 Perroux was fervently committed to the Vichy regime and served it in many capacities, even if never holding a position of front-rank importance. He served on the commission set up to draft a new constitution.2 From September 1942 to December 1943 he was secretary-general of the Fondation Carrel.3 He was a founder member of the group Économie et Humanisme, set up by the Dominican Louis-Joseph Lebret to build bridges between Catholic social thought and the human sciences. He was one of the eight signatories of its founding manifesto in February 1942 along with Lebret and the traditionalist Catholic pundit Gustave Thibon, who was much admired by Pétain himself. Economie et Humanisme was guardedly sympathetic to the National Revolution. It received a subsidy from the Vichy government in 1943 and participated in the ‘Journées communautaires de Mont Doré’ organized by Pétain’s cabinet in April 1943 to reflect on the future of the National Revolution.4 In addition to all these activities, in April 1942, Perroux, with one other associate, set up the so-called ‘Renaître’ group with the ambition of creating a doctrine for the National Revolution, ‘paving the way for the elite who will lead it’.5 Perroux remained committed to the values of the National Revolution until the end, but this did not stop him after the Liberation rapidly establishing himself as a pivotal figure in French postwar economics. In January 1944 he had set up an economic research institute, the Institut de Science Économique Appliquée (ISEA), and after the Liberation this became the most stimulating centre of economic discussion in France. Its first publication, in June 1944, was a comparison of the plans drawn up by John Maynard Keynes in Britain and Harry Dexter White in America for the reorganization of the international monetary system. It was followed by another on the Bretton Woods agreement, and in May 1945 by another on the Beveridge Plan. In July 1945 Perroux was sent to Britain by the French government as head of a delegation of French economists, mostly from the ISEA. Their brief was to study the most recent developments in British economics, especially the new techniques of national accounting. At Oxford, Cambridge and the LSE

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 157

The Strange Story of François Perroux • 157 they met leading British economists including Roy Harrod, John Hicks, Thomas Balogh and Richard Stone. Subsequently those in charge of French postwar economic planning drew heavily on the expertise of the ISEA.6 Perroux probably did more than anyone to introduce Keynesian economics into France, even if it would be inaccurate ever to label him an unconditional ‘Keynesian’.7 He was one of the intellectual architects, behind the scenes, of French postwar modernization. In the 1950s, Perroux turned his attention to the economics of the developing world, and it is here, with his invention of the concept of ‘growth poles’, that he made his most original contributions to economic thought. By the 1960s he was considered the most important French economist of the century, and was frequently talked about as a possible recipient of the Nobel Prize. If he was never in fact awarded it, his Vichyite past, which was rarely mentioned but not entirely forgotten, may have played a role. Perroux himself never alluded to the Occupation in his postwar writings. In a short essay on his intellectual development, published at the end of his life, he devoted a lot of space to his formative intellectual influences before the war. Of his activity during the Occupation he wrote only that, having been about to leave for America in 1939, he instead stayed in France to teach and pursue his research into the theory of value, until in 1944 he founded ISEA – ‘with the French Resistance’ as he rather misleadingly put it. He noted also that Keynes was one of the ISEA’s first foreign patrons. His account then moves briskly on to his postwar activities. Of ‘Renaître’, the Fondation Carrel, Vichy’s constitutional commission, and so on, he says nothing.8 Filling in the blanks in Perroux’s narrative has an interest which extends beyond the single case of Perroux himself. The trajectories of administrators like Papon and Bousquet, who moved effortlessly from one political regime to another, are less problematic: serving governments loyally is what they were trained to do whatever qualms they may or may not have experienced. But for intellectuals, whose engagement was a voluntary one, the transition from one set of allegiances to another invited some explanation and self-rationalization, even if there was a measure of opportunism involved. The fact that someone of Perroux’s intellectual distinction could commit himself so totally to Vichy suggests that we take Vichy’s National Revolution seriously as an intellectual project, and not see it as merely the rearguard action of a handful of irreducible reactionaries. For many years now, historians have been aware of the diverse ideological currents present at Vichy – of the coexistence of ‘modernisers’ and ‘traditionalists’ – and more recently they have begun to probe the validity of this dichotomy and elaborate more complex conceptualizations.9 Certainly the example of Perroux suggests that the distinction between a modern and reactionary strand is problematic since he fits neatly into neither category. Perroux’s case also invites us to consider to what extent the ideologies underpinning Vichy were assimilated into the intellectual life of postwar

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 158

158 • Julian Jackson France and how they were accommodated by the expanding social sciences in France after 1945.10 It should be said finally that an exploration of such cross-currents is particularly appropriate in a volume dedicated to Rod Kedward, who, despite being best known as a historian of the Resistance, has always been exceptionally sensitive to the ambiguities of the Vichy experiment One of the problems of writing about Perroux is the sheer mass of his published output, much of it of a highly technical nature.11 Although something has been written on Perroux by professional economists, little attention has been devoted to his social thought.12 Perroux himself would have rejected this separation. In a lecture to the Fondation Carrel in June 1943 he inveighed against the way in which economics, becoming more technical and mathematical, was in danger of cutting itself off from the world it sought to explain. The classical economists like Smith, Mill or Ricardo had also been philosophers and men of action, but contemporary economists were too seduced by abstract theory: ‘man in his living wholeness [l’homme total et vivant] has disappeared from the science of economics’. This was all the more regrettable since it reinforced tendencies existing within modern capitalism: ‘emancipated from the prescriptions of morality and tradition . . . the modern economy offers only a subordinate role to the human being. Wealth becomes an end in itself’. The solution to this problem was not, as in the nineteenth century, to draw on philosophy but rather to connect economics to the human sciences – the ‘science de l’homme’. In this context he mentioned the work of sociologists like Werner Sombart and Max Scheler, the work of the Centre d’Etudes des Problèmes Humains set up by the engineer Jean Coutrot in the 1930s and above all the researches of Carrel whose book Man this Unknown had proposed as ‘object of scientific study man in all his wholeness’. For Perroux, the cross-fertilization of economics and the human sciences would rescue economics from the ‘temptation of a world of robots or an empty universe of homines economici’. In short, the ambition must be, to use one of Perroux’s most celebrated formulations, ‘l’économie de tout l’homme et de tous les hommes’.13 This kind of language, and the syncretic vision which lay behind it, was entirely characteristic of that generation of French intellectuals who have subsequently been dubbed the ‘non-conformists of the 1930s’.14 Profoundly alienated from the French republican establishment, sharing a distrust of liberal individualism and in search of a ‘third way’ between capitalism and socialism, they expressed their ideas in a number of small reviews and groups like Esprit and Ordre Nouveau. Perroux was a frequent contributor to Esprit in the 1930s, and proud to belong to this generation. In 1938 he wrote: ‘the new intellectual circles which have suddenly sprung up – the Third force, Ordre Nouveau, Homme réel, Nouveaux Cahiers, Combats, Groupes corporatives, Esprit – have in just a few years thrown up for discussion and put into circulation more new, original and realistic ideas than any of the main political parties in the last fifty years’.15

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 159

The Strange Story of François Perroux • 159 Perroux’s intellectual influences were wide-ranging, and he was formidably read not just in economics, but also philosophy, sociology and political theory. He was steeped in Catholic social thought, and had close contacts with Dominican intellectual circles. Another early influence was Georges Sorel on whom Perroux had originally intended to write his thesis before devoting himself to economics.16 Perroux had studied economics at Lyons University, but his real apprenticeship as an economist developed when he went to Vienna in 1934 and attended the seminar of Ludwig von Mises. He travelled widely in Europe making important intellectual contacts in Germany (Carl Schmidt, Werner Sombart) and Italy (Corrado Gini). It was Perroux who introduced the ideas of the Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter into France. During the 1930s Perroux worked on his own interpretation of the Viennese neo-marginalist school. The neo-marginalists rejected the notion that value was objectively determined – as in the classical labour theory of value – and saw it as subjectively determined by the choices and psychological desires of individuals in the market. Perroux’s work on the Austrian school led to the publication during the war of his own study of the theory of value.17 Perroux’s other main activity in the 1930s was as one of France’s leading theorists of corporatism.18 This resulted in 1938 in the publication of his substantial work Capitalisme et communauté de travail. In this book, which combined technical economic analysis with an invocation of the Sorelian idea of myth, Perroux diagnosed a double crisis of modern capitalism. First, the tragic alienation of the proletariat from the fruits of its own labour, and its exclusion from the national community. Second, the fact that owing to the internal logic of capitalist concentration – the development of monopolies– capitalism had lost its capacity for automatic self-adjustment and self-regulation.19 Socialism was not an answer because only the market could provide a successful mechanism for the establishment of prices; nor was it possible to return to a capitalism of small units. Instead it was necessary to create an ‘organized market’. Perroux’s means of achieving this objective was the creation of what he called ‘communities of labour’ (Communautés de travail). These were defined as follows: ‘groupings of a public or semi-public nature in which employers and workers in each branch of industry are represented equally and where differences between them are arbitrated, in case of conflict, by the State’.20 The Communautés de travail would allow the market to operate more effectively by reintroducing a more level playing field: ‘they would place monopoly groups in a situation where, whether one considers the market in services (labour) or the market in products, they would come up against partners worthy of them, that is enjoying a knowledge of the market and of a contractual power equal to their own’.21 This would be a third way between ‘doctrinally exhausted liberalism’ and Marxism. Since the workers’ representatives would be equally represented in the Communautés de travail with those of the employers, they would feel fully implicated in the prosperity of their

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 160

160 • Julian Jackson company. This would allow the ‘socialisation of profits’ or, as Perroux put it on other occasions, ‘socialisation without socialism’.22 As well as organizing the market more effectively, the community, ‘as myth’, would also allow the workers to overcome their sense of alienation. The Communauté de travail: Tells the worker that man is not alone in his work . . . is no longer an anonymous unit of an inexorable accounting system, but that he is a person who is linked by his work to innumerable other persons . . . It takes account of the fundamental moral and social aspirations which are present in the depths of the psychology of every human being who is terrified of solitude and nostalgic for the idea of communion. Community and not just society.23

Perroux claimed that his version of corporatism differed radically from ‘totalitarian corporatism’ in the genuinely equal representation it offered to the working class. Nonetheless Perroux was not willing in the 1930s to condemn fascism unconditionally, and he regretted that France ‘has not yet recognized what is positive in the fascist experiments’ and blamed the French for displaying an ‘excessive timidity towards novelty’.24 Perroux also wrote, just before the war, a study of what he called the ‘Hitlerian myths’ of Nazi Germany, and his conclusions were ambiguous. Although he saw Germany as a ‘threat to a free and civilised Europe’, and rejected the Nazi elevation of the race and nation into a secular religion, he felt that Nazism ‘like all the great heresies does have a positive content’. Those who reproached Nazism for having ‘upset our traditional notions of liberty and human rights’ were too bound by ‘juridical superstitions’: ‘real democracy . . . can be realized by employing different means from those to which the political regimes of France or England have accustomed us’. In short, Nazism was characterized by a considerable degree of ‘plasticity, and all of the myths on which it rests seem to me to offer the possibility of evolving in completely different directions both good and bad’.25 Whatever Perroux thought about fascism, he was convinced, as he wrote in an article in Esprit in 1938, that liberal democracy as practised in France in the 1930s was moribund: ‘democracy in France has lost its sap. It has become merely a formula which is recited, a habit which is not questioned . . . Its institutions and its procedures have no hold on a reality for which they are no longer appropriate’. In terms somewhat reminiscent of Charles Maurras, Perroux distinguished between ‘the real France’ and ‘electoral France’. Representation by an arithmetic majority was a wholly inadequate way of deciding the general interest; it provided only ‘a distorted and inauthentic image of the national community’. Instead Perroux argued for other forms of representation: the plural vote to take account of the ‘social value’ of the voter or the representation of organized interests – economic groupings, intellectual bodies, war veterans, religious movements – from which would emerge the elites which could regenerate the French state and replace the

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 161

The Strange Story of François Perroux • 161 ‘pseudo representation’ of the republic with a genuinely ‘functional and personalist’ democracy.26 Thus Perroux’s advocacy of a reorganization of the economy around Communautés de travail was part of a larger ‘French Revolution of the twentieth century’ which, by reinvigorating the economy and the state, would also allow the French to rediscover the sense of national belonging – ‘the nation as vocation’ in Perroux’s words27 – that had been so damaged by the experience of the Great War and the upheavals which followed it. In short, the ultimate objective was a ‘National Revolution’.28 ‘National Revolution’ was of course the official slogan of the Vichy regime, and in 1940, with the ‘dead wood cracking under our feet’, Perroux hoped it would be possible to seize the opportunity to build a ‘really new economy’, a ‘communitarian organization of the economy, a community of communities’.29 He noted approvingly in 1942 that Pétain had himself used the term Communauté de travail in one of his speeches. In the numerous pamphlets he produced during the Occupation, Perroux popularized the ideas which he had developed in the 1930s. The aim was to construct a ‘corporative market’ where individuals would still retain a large degree of choice but within the ‘discipline of intermediary groups’, notably the Communautés de travail. These groups would operate according to ‘economic programmes’ established by the state, in collaboration with them, and operating in the collective interest. The state had to play a role because if the representation of the two sides of industry was genuinely equal it might be necessary at times for the presence of a third party to decide between them. The result would be a ‘corporative planning distinct from both liberal capitalism and collective planning’. This would avoid the pitfalls of ‘integral planning’ (planification intégrale) whether as conceived by Soviet Communists or American technocrats, neither of whom took proper account of the human person and the diversity of individuals: ‘human beings have their own reactions. They are the seat of individual consciences capable of choices and preferences. They are not reducible to some anonymous cog’.30 The problem with both socialism and liberal capitalism was that they were in some respects mirror images of each other. They were both hostile to intermediary groups and shared the same vision of ‘atomistic masses instead of groups traditionally and organically formed’. Both accepted the individual as the ‘primary and fundamental reality’ in a ‘secularised world’. Liberals ‘subject man to the determinism of the market . . . socialists subject man to the determinism of class . . . In both cases it is the world which acts on man not man on the world’. In short: ‘the ultimate aim of their vision of economic transformation is not a group, even less a community – nor a person considered as having a transcendent destiny – but a biological and psychological individual’.31 During the war Perroux wrote extensively to develop his notion of community.32 Drawing on the work of the German sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies, on the one hand he rejected any organicist notion of community as proposed by ultra-traditionalists

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 162

162 • Julian Jackson of Action française. On the other hand he dismissed the fear of liberals that individuals risked losing their identities in community structures. This he saw as impossible, entirely contrary to the irreducible biological and psychological reality of man. Thus it could only be expressed by metaphors borrowed from the natural or mechanical worlds (the river losing itself in the sea, automata). Furthermore, individuals would always be protected by the fact that they lived in interlocking sets of communities, some organized and some not, and these would to some degree counterbalance each other.33 Far from threatening the identity of the human person, the community was ‘a set of bonds without which man cannot be properly understood either in his concrete existence or in his metaphysical wholeness’.34 Perroux’s thinking about community was importantly influenced by the writings of the French jurist Maurice Hauriou (1856–1925), leading theorist of the so-called Insitutionalist School. For Hauriou it was the role of the law to ‘foster integrated fully realized human beings’ by constituting society into harmonious social groups which would find a balance between personal freedom and external constraint. This was the purpose of the ‘institution’ – a collectivity which lived by the activity of its members but also surpassed and transcended them. The relationships between individuals in an institution, animated by a collective idea, would be governed by different kinds of legal arrangements from either civil contract, which was based on mutual agreements, or public law, which was based upon constraint. The ultimate objective was a society organized into a ‘social whole of personalities’.35 Hauriou’s thought was hugely influential among interwar French social Catholic theorists because it offered a rehabilitation of intermediate social bodies and reacted against the individualism of the republican tradition. Hauriou offered a way to embody communities institutionally: ‘corporative institutions cannot be understood without the community; conversely the organized community requires the institution’.36 For Perroux, institutional theory overcame the dual flaw which had afflicted French legislators since 1789: on the one hand they had failed to ‘adapt with flexibility and sensitivity to the contours of social reality and tried to force society into an abstract and ideological mould’; on the other hand, they had perverted the real communities which continued to exist, like the family, by trying to confine them within juridical structures which conflicted with their reality.37 Perroux considered that the industrial enterprise already embodied many of the characteristics of a community: a hierarchy of functions, an interlocking set of complementary activities, a set of fundamental human relationships. Furthermore, the separation between managers and owners in the modern factory meant that it was easier for the common interest to be seen to prevail over the pursuit of individual profit, and this would allow ‘the disinterested sense of “us”’ to emerge. The setting up of Communautés de travail was for Perroux only part of a vast reordering of French society to produce a ‘national communitarian revolution’ bringing the alienated proletariat into the national political community, and

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 163

The Strange Story of François Perroux • 163 completing the work of the Revolution after the abortive experiments of 1848 (the Second Republic), 1871 (the Paris Commune) and 1936 (the Popular Front). This communitarian society would move beyond the fiction of democratic legislation and allow the emergence of governing elites: ‘it is only around and through the leader that the group becomes conscious of itself ’. Communities are of course defined by whom they exclude as much as by whom they include, and this issue was particularly sensitive given the policy of anti-semitism pursued by the Vichy regime. Perroux had already considered the ‘Jewish question’ before the war in his pamphlet on the idea of the ‘nation as vocation’. He saw no problem either with Zionists who had established their own national vocation or with assimilated Jews who had ‘forgotten almost all that is particular and specific in the cultural characteristics and traditions of the Jewish people’. The problem arose with Jews who rejected Zionism and wanted to retain their Jewish identity within the Diaspora: This intermediary position is very dangerous . . . It reinforces and confirms the Jewish nationality, and marks out the spiritual frontiers of Israel within the political and spiritual frontiers of other nations. The conflict between this Jewish vocation and other national vocations is not unavoidable, but it is likely to be frequent . . . [because] one is not a Jew as one is Catholic or Protestant. Catholics and Protestants do not have an ethnic and cultural tradition of a people or a nation which they defend from within another nation.38

During the Occupation Perroux addressed the ‘Jewish question’ on only one occasion, suggesting the possibility of different degrees of citizenship for members of different communities,39 but one senses that he was not entirely at ease with the issue. Despite his general commitment to the Vichy regime, Perroux was not uncritical of the kinds of corporatist structures which had been introduced by it. For Perroux, the main problem with Vichy’s system was that it separated the economic from the social: economic decisions, including the determination of prices and wages, were the domain of the ‘organization committees’ set up in 1940, while decisions about social conditions rested with the ‘social committees’ set up by the Labour Charter promulgated in 1941. Perroux recognized that Vichy’s solutions had had to be improvised in the ‘middle of a national disaster’, and did not exclude the possibility that they could evolve in a more satisfactory direction. But for the moment, in his eyes, they represented no more than a ‘camouflage of capitalism’ rather than a system which ‘went beyond capitalism’ (dépassement du capitalisme).40 In this regard, despite his strong Catholic affinities, Perroux was possibly closer to the ‘fascist’ lobby at Vichy than to the Catholic conservatives.41 During the Occupation Perroux also felt it necessary to warn against those conservatives who were tempted by some kind of rural nostalgia. ‘Mechanisation in

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 164

164 • Julian Jackson modern capitalism’, he wrote, ‘has in general been much more liberating than enslaving . . . whether in the factory or outside it’. He rejected the idea that the ‘rhythmic work of the factory has no beauty’. Those ‘reactionary thinkers’ who condemned the modern factory were in thrall to the same materialist vision of society as Marxists: ‘they assume that the machine determines man and not the other way around. It is not the machine that we must question but the social framework which uses it, and which we must change’.42 Perroux’s corporative economy did not imply any renunciation of the modern economy: The Communautés de travail will succeed only if they look to the future. The economy of the new France will embrace progressive and powerful mechanisation . . . and be vigorously integrated into the great currents of the European and the world economy. Spare us any hollow laments for an economy of quality not quantity or for the phoney idyll [idyllisme de pacotille] of the artisanal workshop.43

This led Perroux to mark a certain distance from Economie et Humanisme which he accused of being too simplistic in its understanding of economics, and of idealizing a pre-capitalist economy without a market: ‘our friends have not understood that no progressive and modern economy can do without money and that money requires a unitary market. The economy of the twentieth century cannot draw its lessons only from the economics of the village or from communities of fishermen’.44 Perroux’s own position towards the Vichy regime was therefore ambivalent. In the discussions within Économie et Humanisme he was one of those who insisted on ‘prudence with regard to the regime in place’; he excluded the possibility of ‘effective action within the domain of immediate politics’.45 But on the other hand he told Hubert Beuve-Méry that he could not support Uriage’s criticism of Vichy because he saw these criticisms as too inspired by the ‘principles of 1789, and I am totally against them’. Paul Reuter, one of the Uriage team, reprimanded him for being ‘too severe’ on those who had left France to work for liberation from abroad and too critical of the dissident position of Esprit – ‘as is the fashion at the moment in official circles’. He warned Perroux against allowing the regime to ‘exploit your enthusiasm and your generosity’.46 Reuter need not have worried. For someone so implicated in the Vichy regime, Perroux engineered the transition to the Liberation very skilfully. His relations with Carrel had deteriorated in 1943, and he resigned from the Fondation in December to set up his own organization, the ISEA. Although the breach between the two men seems to have concerned administrative matters more than doctrinal ones, Perroux took the opportunity to denounce Carrel at the Liberation for collaboration.47 On the other hand, Économie et Humanisme was only allowed to continue publication at the Liberation on condition that Perroux and Thibon left its administrative committee, from which Perroux accordingly resigned at the end of

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 165

The Strange Story of François Perroux • 165 1944.48 So if Perroux sacrificed Carrel to save his fledgling ISEA, Lebret sacrificed Perroux to save Économie et Humanisme. Such bargains were frequent at the Liberation. But what kinds of ideological adaptations underpinned them? When Perroux’s 1943 lecture to the Fondation Carrel was republished in pamphlet form in 1944, he had a corrective inserted in the text at the last moment (so late that it consisted of merely a slip of paper with a typed warning on it): I must draw the reader’s attention to the mistaken significance that I accorded, when this lecture was delivered, to the views of M. Carrel with a somewhat naive good faith. Not myself being formed by the biological sciences, and deceived by the massive and unproven claims made by him in the name of Science, I had granted his book Man This Unknown, a credit which is judged severely by specialists in this area. I must therefore warn the non-initiated public against an error of which I was for a while the victim and of which I no longer intend to be the propagandist. Luckily the idea and the destiny of the Science of Mankind is not linked to certain interpretations of it.

Here we catch Perroux, as it were, red-handed in the transition from one regime to another. It is interesting also that the overnight word ‘community’ seems to have disappeared from Perroux’s writings, but he remained unrepentant in his distrust of individualism or liberal democracy.49 In a pamphlet published in 1945 – he sent a copy to Keynes ‘with admiration and in homage’50 – he defined his vision of ‘liberty beyond liberalism’. For Perroux the liberal idea that man is free to act as he wishes ‘without subordinating his will to any other will outside him’ was a myth. So too was the liberal distinction between the public and the private, relying on the fiction that our lives are ‘separated into two distinct and non-communicating parts’. As far as the economy is concerned ‘a purely contractualist conception of the industrial enterprise is not sufficient to embrace the totality of what it contains’. Instead, then, of the negative and formal liberalism of the existing ‘pseudo-civilization’ he proposed a positive notion of liberty defined as ‘the subordination of our individual desires to ends which transcend them and the co-ordination of our individual desires to common ends and collective aims’.51 This was of course the ‘authentic liberty’ of the community, even if the word was no longer used. But what kind of economic arrangements was Perroux now proposing in a France which had shifted radically to the left, where nationalizations and ‘planning’ were now at the centre of public discussion? While supporting the idea of an economic plan in 1945, Perroux warned that it could not substitute for the operation of the market. Similarly, while not opposing nationalizations in principle he warned that they could end up merely as state capitalism or bureaucratization. For Perroux, the key aim must remain socialization – putting the social product at the disposition of the population as a whole. Through a central body in control of public investment, the state could ensure full

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 166

166 • Julian Jackson employment. But successful planning also required the cooperation of professional organizations: industries within the same sector should be grouped together and wages fixed by permanent arbitration committees representing both sides of industry, and containing representatives of third parties, one of which might be the state, in case agreement could not be reached. Within an economy regulated in this way, social insurance on the model of the Canadian social security plans or the Beveridge report would act as an instrument for income redistribution. Thus ‘socialisation without socialism’ would now occur under the patronage of Beveridge and Keynes.52 In his study of value in 1943 Perroux had written: ‘neo-marginalism is a corpus of propositions detached from any preferences for a particular economic policy. But like any body of scientific propositions it can usefully illuminate the way we should act’.53 Quite apart from his skill in adapting to the prevailing political wind, perhaps it was because he considered himself first and foremost an economist that Perroux was able to be so flexible in the actualization of his social and political ideas. In fact, during the Vichy period there was clearly a certain tension between Perroux the economist and Perroux the social theorist: a tension between his commitment to the market and his preference for an ‘organized’ economy, between his starting point as an economist – the subjective choices of individuals – and his belief that man could only fully develop his potential within a community. On the other hand, it would be wrong to think that after 1945 Perroux had abandoned his quest for a marriage between Christian humanism and modern economics. One of his main contributions to development economics was to oppose the approach of American economists like Rostow for whom development was a purely quantitative phenomenon detached from cultural considerations. Perroux never abandoned his suspicion about pure economic individualism. This explains his interest, in the late 1960s, in the work of Marcuse, and his wariness of America.54 As he wrote in 1977: ‘one does not understand the market when one forgets the elementary fact that it is a meeting between human beings and not a movement of particles’.55 In the end, then, Perroux stands as one of the most distinguished representatives of that seam of Catholic-inspired anti-liberalism which runs through the history of twentiethcentury France, surfacing sometimes on the right, sometimes on the left, but always in search of some (European) third way between capitalism and socialism.56

Notes 1. G.-M.Benamou, ‘Jeune homme, vous ne savez pas de quoi vous parlez’ (Plon, 2001), pp. 57–70. 2. This was the constitutional commission of the Conseil National. See M. Cointet, Le Conseil national de Vichy (Aux amateurs de livres, 1989), pp. 123–5, 153–5.

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 167

The Strange Story of François Perroux • 167 3. See A. Drouard, Une Inconnue des sciences sociales (Maison des sciences de l’homme, 1992); A. Reggiani, ‘Alexis Carrel, the Unknown: Eugenics and Population Research Under Vichy’, French Historical Studies, vol. 25, no. 2, 2002, pp. 331–6. 4. D. Pelletier, Economie et humanisme (Editions du Cerf, 1996). 5. Perroux’s associate in this enterprise was Yves Urvoy on whom see D. Urvoy, ‘Témoignage: Yves Urvoy (1900–1944)’, Revue française d’histoire d’outremer, vol. 65, 1978, pp. 64–98. 6. On Perroux’s contribution to postwar planning see F. Fourquet, Les Comptes de la puissance (Recherches, 1980), pp. 39–47, 66–73, 249–54. 7. See his lecture ‘La Généralisation de la General Theory’ given in Istanbul in December 1949, republished in the Revue de la Faculté des sciences Économiques de l’Université d’Istambul, 10/1–4, 1948/1949. 8. F. Perroux, ‘Pérégrinations d’un économiste’, Économie appliquée, vol. xl, no. 2 ,1987, pp. 197–212. 9. J. Clarke, ‘Engineering a New Order in the 1930s: the Case of Jean Coutrot’, French Historical Studies, vol. 24, no. 1, 2001, pp. 63–86. 10. In general see A. Drouard, ‘Réflexions sur une chronologie: les développements des sciences sociales en France de 1945 à la fin des années soixante’, Revue française de sociologie, vol. xxiii, 1982, pp. 55–82. 11. The bibliography of his writings published after his death runs to fifty pages, and it is far from complete: Economie appliquée, vol. xl, no. 2, 1987, pp. 411–57. 12. In F. Denöel (ed.), François Perroux (L’Age d’homme, 1990), the word ‘community’ does not appear once although it was one of Perroux’s major preoccupations before 1945. 13. F. Perroux, Science de l’homme et science économique (Librairie de Médicis, 1943). This lecture was first published in Économie et humanisme, 10 December 1943, pp. 895–903 and 11 January 1944, pp. 49–55. 14. J. Loubet del Bayle, Les Non-conformistes des années trente (Seuil, 1969). 15. F. Perroux, Capitalisme et communauté de travail (Librairie du Recueil Sirey, 1938), pp. 316–17. 16. On Perroux and Sorel see C. Villanueva, ‘Une Utilisation critique du “mythe”: François Perroux, lecteur de Georges Sorel’, Mil neuf cent, vol. 12, 1994, pp. 87–110. 17. F. Perroux, La Valeur (PUF, 1943). 18. For the massive literature on corporatism in the 1930s see G. Pirou, Essais sur le corporatisme (Librairie du Recueil Sirey, 1938), and the special issue of Esprit devoted to corporatism in August 1934. 19. Perroux, Capitalisme et communauté, pp. 182–6. 20. F. Perroux, Syndicalisme et capitalisme (R. Pichon & R. Durand-Auzias, 1938), pp. 56–7.

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 168

168 • Julian Jackson 21. 22. 23. 24.

25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32.

33. 34. 35. 36. 37.

38. 39. 40. 41.

42. 43.

Perroux, Capitalisme et communauté, p. 204. Ibid., p. 306. Ibid., p. 309. Ibid., p. 166. Michel Winock says that Perroux was considered by the more left-wing members of Esprit as being too sympathetic to fascism: M. Winock, Histoire politique de la revue ‘Esprit’ (Seuil, 1975), p. 151. F. Perroux, Des Mythes hitlériens à l’Europe allemande (R. Pichon & R. Durand-Auzias, 1940), pp. 7, 313–14. F. Perrous, ‘La Réprésentation comme fiction et comme nécessité’, Esprit, 1938, pp. 789–809: 789. F. Perroux, Français pourquoi? (Editions du Cerf, 1938). Perroux, Capitalisme et communauté, pp. 282–6. F. Perroux, Communauté et société (PUF, 1941), pp. 2–3. F. Perroux and Y. Urvoy, Renaître 37, Économie planiste, 1943, pp. 16–24. F. Perroux and Y. Urvoy, Renaître V, Économie d’hier et de demain, 1944, pp. 96–102. See F. Perroux, Communauté (PUF, 1942); F. Perroux, ‘Communauté 1942. Le Travail pour tous, la nation à tous’ in Journée d’études: Collège d’études syndicales et corporatives, April 1942, pp. 82–96; F. Perroux, ‘Entreprise et communauté de travail’ in Communauté et société, 5–31; Perroux, Théorie de la communauté (J. Loviton, 1942). Perroux, Communauté, pp. 153–6. F. Perroux. Preface to R. de Véricourt, Médecin et communauté (Librarie de Médicis, 1943). A.Broderick, The French Institutionalists (Harvard University Press, 1970), pp. xiii–xix, 1–5, 20–2. Perroux, Communauté, p. 146. For other references to Hauriou see pp. 22, 37, 39, 63, 138–46. F. Perroux, ‘L’analyse de la communauté’ in Perroux, G. Tibon, L. Gardet, et al., Caractères de la communauté (Économie et humanisme, 1944), pp. 25–33: quotation on pp. 27–8. Perroux, Français pourquoi? , pp. 42–3. J. Jackson, France: The Dark Years 1940–1944 (OUP, 2001), p. 353. F. Perroux and Y. Urvoy, Renaître, essais (Librairie de Médicis, 1944). In this context it is interesting that he contributed to the first number of the review Idées, which enjoyed the patronage of one of the most prominent Vichy ‘fascists’, Paul Marion: Perroux, ‘Le Problème français du prolétariat’, Idées, November 1941. This had originally been a lecture to Marion’s training school for the cadres of the National Revolution. Perroux and Urvoy, Renaître, essais, pp. 27–8. F. Perroux, Preface to G. Chadien, L’Artisanat dans l’économie future

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 169

The Strange Story of François Perroux • 169 (Éditions de l’institut d’Études corporatives et sociales, 1943), p. 6. 44. Quoted in Pelletier, Économie, pp. 65–6. See also the correspondence between Perroux and Lebret reproduced in A. Liebmann, ‘François Perroux. Années 40–44: une histoire ambigue’, DEA, University of Paris-X, Nanterre, 1980, pp. 117–20. 45. Pelletier, Économie, p. 35. 46. A. Delestre, Uriage, une communauté et une école dans la tourmente (Presses Universitaires de Nancy, 1989), p. 121. 47. Drouard, Une Inconnue, pp. 171–3. 48. Pelletier, Économie, pp. 50–2. 49. F. Perroux, La Démocratie (Domat-Montchrestien, 1946). This was one of a number of short pamphlets published by Perroux after the Liberation in a series entitled ‘Groupes Travail’. 50. The written dedication is to be found in the copy in the library of the LSE. 51. F. Perroux, Libéralisme et liberté (Librairie générale de droit et de jurisprudence, 1945), 306, 311, 314. These ideas were already outlined in Perroux, Communauté, pp. 164–8. 52. F. Perroux, Économie organisée et économie socialisé (DomatMontchrestien, 1946); F. Perroux, Les Nationalisations (DomatMontchrestien, 1946). These were both pamphlets in the ‘Groupes Travail’ series. 53. Perroux, La Valeur, p. 292. 54. F. Perroux, François Perroux interroge Herbert Marcuse (Aubier-Montaigne, 1969). 55. F. Perroux, ‘Nation et orthodoxie économique’ reprinted in Économie appliquée, vol. xl, no. 2, 1987, pp. 325–32: quotation on p. 328. 56. For hostile interpretations of that tradition: J. Hellman, Emmanuel Mounier and the New Catholic Left (University of Toronto Press, 1981); J. Hellman, The Communitarian Third Way (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2003); D. Lindenberg, Les Anneés souterraines (La Découverte, 1990).

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 170

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 171

–13– Homecomings: Paulette Bernège, Scientific Management and the Return to the Land in Vichy France Jackie Clarke

For many years now, historians have written of the apparent tensions in Vichy France between tradition or reaction and modernity. Competition between rival factions and projects within the government has been seen as one expression of this, leading Henry Rousso to identify a tension between ‘archaism and modernity’ as one of the central paradoxes of the regime.1 Pétainist rhetoric glorified the peasant, harking back to a pre-industrial golden age which policy makers hoped to recapture by returning town dwellers to the land. Meanwhile at the Ministry of Industrial Production, engineers and industrialists like Jean Bichelonne and François Lehideux, inspired by the productivist ethos of the interwar scientific management or rationalization movement, were establishing a form of technocratic dirigisme which paved the way for postwar planning and economic expansion. It seems difficult then to conceive of rationalization and ruralism as anything other than fundamentally divergent visions of France’s future. The language of tradition-versus-modernity has become something of an orthodoxy not just in writing on wartime France, but also in studies of the interwar years, not least because the need to explain Vichy looms so large for historians of this period. Since the 1980s, we have become more aware of those regarded as interwar modernizers, as the role of technocratic groups has been highlighted and the impact of rationalization in the workplace re-evaluated.2 Thus, while interwar France was once discussed primarily in terms of economic backwardness and socio-political stasis, the picture that now prevails is one of a modernizing avantgarde pushing against the conservatism that earlier generations of historians emphasized. Cracks are already appearing, however, in this revisionist interpretation. Much of the first wave of work on those seen as prewar modernizers was done by political and economic historians and was concerned with the birth of economic planning. More recent contributions to the debate have come from cultural historians, 171

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 172

172 • Jackie Clarke who have brought into focus other aspects of social and economic change, including the development of consumer culture and the rationalization of the home. These studies argue that the vision of those who promoted mass production and consumption in interwar France held within it reactionary or conservative elements which prefigure Vichy. Ellen Furlough and Robert L. Frost, for example, note that those who marketed an ideal of the modern home at the Salon des Arts Ménagers traded on anxieties about women’s alleged abandonment of domestic roles. The appeal of the fantasy offered by the Salons was, on this analysis, that it promised to reassert gender boundaries by strengthening the bond between women and the home.3 Marjorie Beale and Romy Golan make arguments that follow a similar pattern, suggesting that a fascination with biological thinking among social and economic modernists (urbanists, engineers and efficiency experts) betrayed a nostalgic or reactionary impulse that was also present in fascism and Pétainism.4 Such analyses gesture towards some of the limitations of the tradition-versusmodernity binary, while continuing to operate within it. ‘Reactionary modernism’, to use Beale and Frost’s term, is understood as modernism contaminated by the prevailing traditionalism of French culture. To this extent, French interwar modernizers had barely been rediscovered, when their credentials began to be called into question. It is against this backdrop that I wish to examine the ideological itinerary of one of the most energetic members of the industrial rationalization movement from the 1920s to the Occupation years. While the case study is of some interest in its own right, it also serves here as a means by which to highlight some of the conceptual blind spots of the historiography discussed above. An individual trajectory cannot be assumed to represent the position of a particular group or ideological current, but by focusing on the activities of Paulette Bernège, the chief French promoter of the Taylorization of the home, we can usefully decentre an archetype which is already in place, that of the Vichy modernizer or technocrat embodied in the mythologized figure of Jean Bichelonne. Bichelonne is generally portrayed as an apolitical technician, who operated in a mathematical world of pure economics and would have worked with any regime allowing him scope to pursue this politically versatile agenda. Bernège, like many members of the interwar rationalization movement, did not work directly for the government, but her activities underline the need to consider rationalization as a social and ideological project or in Bernège’s view, a socio-biological one.

Bernège and Scientific Organization Between the Wars Bernège is a central figure in the history of domestic work in France. Like Christine Frederick in the USA, she pioneered the application of industrial methods to the home, promoting everything from ergonomic kitchen design or

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 173

Paulette Bernège and the Return to the Land • 173 time and motion study to elaborate record-keeping systems. A member of the Comité national de l’organization française (CNOF), which promoted the rationalization of the French economy between the wars, she also founded the Ligue d’organization ménagère in 1925 to disseminate her new household practices. In cultivating links with industrialists and engineers, as well as educators and hygienists, she acted as a bridge between the domestic science and industrial rationalization movements. Like other leading rationalizers, she was both a technician and an active publicist. One writer has estimated her output at 500 articles, over 200 lectures and 25 radio broadcasts.5 Between 1928 and 1950 she published some fourteen books and pamphlets. In 1930, she founded the Ecole de Haut Enseignement Ménager in Paris, where she sought to train an elite of ‘maîtresses de maison’ and domestic technicians in everything from design to applied psychology. Magazines, such as Mon chez moi or Art Ménager and the professional journal Education ménagère provided important vehicles for Bernège, but it was her first book, the best-selling manual De la méthode ménagère, which made her reputation. The volume went through at least three editions before the war and remained in use in France into the 1950s.6 Indeed, if Bernège’s career peaked before the war, her successors credited her as the expert who had laid the foundations for the postwar transformation of the French home.7 Similarly, Frost has argued that Bernège and her collaborators were instrumental in constructing the ideal of the well-equipped home which was to find its market with the emergence of an expanding managerial class during the consumer boom of the 1950s and 1960s.8 A lesser known aspect of Bernège’s work was her interest in rural organization. Much of her writing and educational endeavours targeted urban women, but she also worked with the Institut supérieur ménager de Laeken-Bruxelles, which recruited rural students and trained teachers for Belgium’s Ecoles ménagères agricoles.9 Similar domestic science schools operated in the French countryside, often sponsored by the Ministry of Agriculture. Such initiatives were symptomatic of the growing concern that migration from the countryside to towns threatened the viability of rural life. Improving the comfort and efficiency of the rural home, not least by supplying it with electricity, was one way of tackling this.10 As Shanny Peer has shown, the idea of using technology to preserve rural communities had won the support of a coalition of political leaders and agricultural organizations by the mid-1930s and was evident in the exhibits displayed at the 1937 International Exhibition, held in Paris and sponsored by the Popular Front government.11 The same logic was at work in a series of articles published by Bernège in the Dépêche de Toulouse in 1933. Bernège looked to the example of northern European, especially Danish, agriculture. Denmark had become an international model thanks to its successful use of cooperatives, drawing an increasing number of visiting experts from as far

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 174

174 • Jackie Clarke afield as the USA in the 1920s.12 Several French agronomists who would be better known after the war now began to take an interest in Scandinavian farming, identifying cooperative structures as a third way between peasantist corporatism and mass industrialized agriculture.13 Cooperative organization was also the centrepiece of the model farm designed by Le Corbusier in 1933 and subsequently displayed at the Paris Expo.14 For Bernège, the advantages of cooperatives were that they enabled farmers to enhance their purchasing power, invest in expensive machinery or fertilizers and obtain better prices for their goods.15 She also argued that France lagged behind Denmark and the Netherlands in the level of agricultural education and technical support offered by the state.16 In 1933 this praise for the organization of northern European farming, like Bernège’s espousal of Taylorism in the home, was couched largely in terms of efficiency.17 Yet, the language of economic rationality conceals underlying assumptions about the desirability of maintaining the small farm. The appeal of the Danish model was precisely that it provided a viable alternative to the large-scale industrialization of agriculture seen in the USA.18 In this sense it offered a means of preserving a social structure based on the productive unit of the family, while reaping the technological and economic benefits enjoyed by larger organizations, an aspiration which animated others in the rationalization movement, such as Jean Coutrot’s Humanisme économique group.19 Given the increasingly familialist climate of the 1930s, as well as the sharpened concern for the future of rural life, it is perhaps surprising that Bernège refrained from indulging in heavy moral rhetoric about the rural family in these articles. Yet, while the reasons for her choice remained implicit at this stage, in endorsing the Danish model over the American one, she treated the conservation of the French family farm as an end in itself. By spring 1939, this objective had taken on a new moral urgency. Bernège now called for a collective return to the land, identifying the rural exodus as a cause of physical and mental degeneration of the French population.20 It was this preoccupation that was to dominate her activities after France’s defeat.

Rationalizing Defeat The Vichy years brought notable developments in domestic science education. The belief that gender boundaries had become dangerously blurred, that women had abandoned their supposedly natural role and that they no longer learnt housekeeping skills at their mother’s knee, led the state to introduce a remarkably detailed compulsory programme of training for domesticity in 1942.21 Before the war, Bernège had argued that the application of scientific management to the home would reinvigorate women’s waning interest in domesticity and even reduce the divorce rate by ensuring more competent housewives, but she did accept the principle of women undertaking paid employment.22 Now, amidst a backlash against

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 175

Paulette Bernège and the Return to the Land • 175 ‘working women’, women’s compliance with methods and standards of homemaking determined by experts was presented by the promoters of the Vichy law as a matter of national survival, justifying new levels of compulsion and prescription on the part of the state.23 Though she declared her support for these measures, Bernège observed them from a distance.24 The outbreak of war had prompted her to return to her birthplace in the countryside near Agen and to refocus her activities. She continued her involvement with the rationalization movement through a CNOF group in Toulouse at which she presented a study of farm organization in 1941. Linked to this group was the fortnightly review Produire, for which she wrote numerous articles.25 But if the shock of 1940 left Bernège’s faith in rationalization intact, it also prompted her to broaden her ambitions for social reorganization. In her major work of the occupation period, Explication: essai de bio-sociologie dirigée (1943), she began by explaining her own return to the land in terms of national duty, attacking the selfishness and materialism of those who had not followed her example.26 In 1939, she had written of the degeneration of ‘urban man’: absorbed into the abnormal mass of the factory, the Frenchman, born to be a peasant or an artisan like his ancestors, had been reduced (socio-biologically) to a banal standardized type and (administratively) to an anonymous number.27 The disaster of 1940 and her own experience of flight to the countryside now convinced her that city- and country dwellers had evolved so differently that they constituted two distinct biological types.28 In the city, she suggested, a crucial connection with nature had been broken.29 The division of labour and the demands of mass production diminished men and stimulated artificial desires, replacing the true values of courage and hard work with the pursuit of materialistic satisfaction.30 Similarly, urban women were condemned for preferring the pursuit of comfort to their ‘natural’ function of regenerating the race.31 The peasant family was seen as the key to both moral and biological regeneration – regulated by the rhythms of nature, more preoccupied with subsistence than with profit, it was the healthy organ which might yet save a failing organism.32 Bernège sought simultaneously to build a general social theory on this intuition and to explain France’s fall. Defeat was attributed to a crisis of organization. Germany was deemed to have adapted more successfully to what was assumed to be a general evolution towards a more collective model of society.33 Since France’s organizational weakness was attributed to the emergence of an evolutionary gap between urban and rural life, one might have expected Bernège to propose a remedy which involved re-establishing links between the two, bringing the material and moral conditions of the city and the countryside closer together.34 Her proposals in 1933 certainly pointed in this direction, as did a number of other schemes supported by interwar rationalizers, from industrial deconcentration to garden cities. Yet, Bernège retreated from such a conclusion,

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 176

176 • Jackie Clarke arguing instead that urban life in its current form constituted an evolutionary dead end and that France must revert back, for an unspecified time, to an earlier stage of social evolution in order to have a healthy foundation on which to build.35 Never short of a biological example to support her case, she cited a famous experiment by Alexis Carrel in which a chicken’s heart had continued to grow and function in an artificial environment isolated from the larger organism from which it had been extracted.36 The social equivalent of this was to withdraw from the complex mass of French society into the simpler organism of the family farm, to allow society to rediscover its lost potential for growth and adaptation. Like unicellular creatures which had the ability to close themselves up in a membrane or shell for protection, she argued, the French peasant (like Bernège herself) now had the same instinct: ‘He returns home, shuts himself away, protects himself . . . in order to face a difficult future.’37 Theoretically, Bernège accepted a notion of social evolution which implied a certain progressivism. When she identified a trend towards more collective forms of life in industrial society (the emergence of ‘homo socialis’), she conceived of this as a step up the evolutionary ladder. The retreat into rural life was seen as a temporary staging post on the road to this superior form of social organization. Yet, throughout much of the text, the moment when France might emerge from its rural cocoon seems to have receded so far into the future as to be almost invisible.

Homecomings In both its socio-biologism and its ruralism, Bernège’s wartime writing seems fairly characteristic of cultural production under Vichy. To this extent her work may seem unremarkable. Indeed, although Explication was commended by at least one Vichyite organization, I have no evidence to suggest that it was particularly influential.38 Yet, the work does raise interesting questions: first, about how one gets from an agenda driven by the philosophy and techniques of industrial efficiency to a socio-biological argument for a return to the land, and, secondly, about how we conceptualize the relationship between such apparently contradictory projects. It might be tempting to dismiss Bernège’s wartime preoccupations as a purely contingent effect of defeat and the ideological climate of Vichy. Yet both her growing prewar concern with rural life and her postwar faithfulness to her wartime writings suggest otherwise. At the Liberation she continued to criticize urban life in Janille, paysan de la Garonne, a series of fictitious letters from a peasant farmer to a Parisian woman.39 In 1950 she described Explication as her ‘master work’ and reiterated her view that the gulf between rural life and a parasitic urban civilization was a central social issue.40 Perhaps most significantly, the increasingly socio-biological character of her arguments was not simply the result of external

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 177

Paulette Bernège and the Return to the Land • 177 influences that infiltrated her work after 1940. ‘For years in Paris I had professed a rudimentary organicist theory inspired by Maurice Ponthière’s “Lessons in the Organization of Work”,’ acknowledged Bernège in 1943.41 She had also written a long and admiring article in 1936 on the eugenicist theses set out by Alexis Carrel in L’Homme, cet inconnu.42 Even where her writing focused on the micro-organization of the home (on the ergonomics of kitchen design or the most efficient way to peel a potato) Bernège had theorized the organization of domestic work in terms of analogy with the natural world. In De la méthode ménagère a variety of models of household organization were discussed in evolutionary terms. The most rudimentary form of organization was that in which the woman performed a series of manual chores. In contrast, the model household advocated by Bernège was one run by a woman capable of scientifically organizing, as well as executing, household tasks.43 In the first instance, Bernège pronounced, ‘the housewife is like an earthworm’. In the second, she was a complete microcosm, a more complex organism which had attained a higher stage of development.44 What was at stake in this was the construction of a model of middle-class feminine domesticity which was no longer dependent on the existence of servants – a rearticulation of women’s relationship to the home which would speak to their professional aspirations. The difference between the primitive housewife and the complex one supposedly lay in the latter’s superior level of organization, which dignified her with the status of manager rather than manual worker. In this way a biologistic conception of rational organization served, in part at least, as a means of addressing the class and gender anxieties which focused on the home between the wars. Bernège’s interwar theory of organization thus moved seamlessly between biological and industrial analogy. If the home was a factory and domestic work should be Taylorized, both home and factory were also to be regarded as social organisms. To this extent Bernège belonged within a well-established current of scientific management, of which Henri Fayol was the founder and Maurice Ponthière one of the most enthusiastic interwar exponents. Although less well-publicized than Taylorism, Fayolism played a significant role in the development of management theory and education in interwar France.45 It has even been claimed that it was a crucial influence on American management science, before being re-exported back to France in the postwar productivity missions.46 Bernège described the complete housewife as ‘a single cell . . . with a nerve centre which directs, plans, supervises, coordinates’, and, in doing so, she used a well-known definition of the managerial function which came straight from Fayol’s doctrine of administrative organization.47 Fayol defined the business as a ‘double organism, material and social’, naturalizing the division of labour as a function of both social and biological bodies.48 Similar parallels between the animal and social worlds underpinned Maurice Ponthière’s manuals on business administration and his

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 178

178 • Jackie Clarke lessons on scientific organization at the Ecole d’organization scientifique, created by the CNOF in 1934.49 Hundreds of young managers and engineers were exposed to organicist management theory through these classes.50 From as early as 1928, Bernège had located herself within this tradition of ‘organizers who take the living organism as their model’: citing both Fayol and Ponthière, she professed that the organization of work, in the home or in the factory, must obey ‘the great law of physiology’.51 Between 1933 and 1943, Bernège’s anxiety about the gulf between urban and rural society clearly intensified. We now begin to see how, in the context of a defeated France, the organicist philosophy of domestic and business organization could supply the framework for a social engineering project which addressed this anxiety and incorporated a return to the land. The rationalization project being mapped out by this current of prewar management theory rested on an analogical slippage between social and biological systems, and between social systems of different kinds – the factory and the home, for example. Bernège argued explicitly in 1943 that by studying business organization, one could identify principles applicable to all social organisms.52 Thus, the supposedly natural laws which she had learnt as a scientific manager could now solve an organizational problem of another order.53 In constructing a socio-biological theory around the idea of a return to the land, she saw herself as contributing to a wider project: the development and application of a kind of super-Fayolism, a total science of organization that integrated the disciplines of biology, sociology and psychology.54 When she looked beyond management theorists for inspiration in this process, she began by looking to those, like Herbert Spencer, who had inspired Ponthière’s writings on business organization. Likewise, the reliance on biological analogy which marked her prewar work provided a sympathetic point of entry to the socio-biological theories of Carrel.55 This was not an isolated move since a similar rebiologization of the rationalization project was being pursued by engineers, industrialists and scientists at Jean Coutrot’s Centre d’Etudes des Problèmes Humains in the late 1930s.56 To this extent, Bernège did not need to plunder the ideological repertoire of the Vichy government to make her case in 1943. Rather, what appears to have happened in her wartime thinking is not so much a grafting on of extraneous elements, as a return to (and radicalization of) the first principles of scientific organization as she understood it: a philosophical as well as physical homecoming.

Conclusion Ruralism, as H.R. Kedward, has taught us, could mean many things in wartime France.57 Similarly, we know that the rationalization movement had already proved its political versatility well before 1940, providing inspiration for communist, fascist and social democratic projects in the Soviet Union, Italy and Germany in

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 179

Paulette Bernège and the Return to the Land • 179 the 1920s.58 Yet, this notion of versatility becomes problematic if we begin to suggest that technologies and technicians are neutral and can simply harness their methods to the prevailing ideology. Within the French rationalization movement those who developed and applied techniques of scientific management did so in pursuit of a particular vision of social rationality. For Bernège, and others who were influenced as much by Fayol as by Taylor, this was defined within an organicist paradigm. The organicist roots of this branch of French scientific management theory have been largely overlooked, perhaps because they sit uneasily with the narrative of a struggle between tradition and modernity, and the archetype of the apolitical modernizing technician. Bernège’s case tells a different story. At the heart of her vision, one finds a paradox of a different kind to that set out by Henry Rousso – not a confrontation between reactionary and modernizing factions, but an ambivalence which goes to the heart of the rationalization project. Throughout Explication there is a tension between an optimistic faith in progress through science and the pessimistic theme of degeneration or evolutionary deviation; yet it is precisely this tension that drives forward Bernège’s efforts to impose order, just as anxieties about the destabilization of class and gender boundaries had fuelled her interwar campaign to reorder the French home. Zygmunt Bauman has identified this struggle with ambivalence as a feature of modernity itself, arguing that modernity is characterized by a self-conscious quest for order which can never be entirely satisfied. For Bauman, this struggle is self-propelling because it ‘creates its own problems in the course of resolving them’. The struggle becomes particularly intense where there is a heightened awareness that reducing ambivalence is ‘a problem of the discovery and application of the proper technology: a managerial problem.’59 The formulation seems strikingly apt in this case. Bernège attempted to rationalize her own fears and France’s crisis out of existence, expanding the scope of scientific management theory as she sought to justify a return to the land. If ‘urban man’ was the product of scientific and industrial progress, then science, in this case a biologist science of organization, could also provide the solution. To this extent, we might read the reconfiguration of Bernège’s social organization project in a time of acute national crisis not as a flight from the modern, but as part of the predicament of the modern, as an aggravated form of tendencies inherent in the very modernist project of rationalization.

Notes 1. Henry Rousso, ‘Les Paradoxes de Vichy et de l’Occupation. Contraintes, archaïsmes et modernités’ in Patrick Fridenson & André Straus (eds), Le Capitalisme français (Fayard, 1987). This idea of a struggle between traditionalists and modernizers has been a constant in histories of Vichy from

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 180

180 • Jackie Clarke

2.

3.

4.

5. 6.

7. 8. 9. 10.

11. 12. 13. 14.

15. 16.

Robert Paxton, Vichy France (Barrie & Jenkins, 1972) to Julian Jackson, France: The Dark Years (OUP, 2001). Richard Kuisel, Capitalism and the State in Modern France (CUP, 1981); Michel Margairaz, L’Etat, les finances et l’économie, 2 vols (Comité pour l’histoire économique et financière de la France/Imprimerie nationale, 1991); Aimée Moutet, Les Logiques de l’entreprise (Editions de l’EHESS, 1997); Laura Lee Downs, Manufacturing Inequality (Cornell University Press, 1995). Robert L. Frost, ‘Machine Liberation: Inventing Housewives and Home Appliances in Interwar France’, French Historical Studies, vol. 18, no. 1, spring 1993, p. 120; Ellen Furlough, ‘Selling the American Way in Interwar France: Prix Uniques and the Salon des Arts Ménagers’, Journal of Social History, vol. 26, 3, spring 1993, pp. 503–10. Marjorie Beale, The Modernist Enterprise (Stanford University Press, 1999), ch. 5, esp. p. 163; Romy Golan, Modernity and Nostalgia (Yale University Press, 1995), pp. 97–100. Y. Quintin, ‘Vie et oeuvre de Paulette Bernège’, Education ménagère, vol. 132, 1960, p. 8. Citations here are to the 1934 edition published by Dunod. On the postwar influence of Bernège, see Claire Duchen, ‘Occupation Housewife: The Domestic Ideal in 1950s France’, French Cultural Studies, vol. 2, no. 4, 1991, pp. 4–5. See Education ménagère, vol. 132, 1960, a special number celebrating Bernège’s contribution to domestic science education. Frost, ‘Machine Liberation’, p. 130. Quintin, ‘Vie et oeuvre de Paulette Bernège’, p. 7. Charles S. Maier, ‘Between Taylorism and Technocracy: European Ideologies and the Vision of Industrial Productivity in the 1920s’, Journal of Contemporary History, vol. 5, 1970, p. 58 and Auguste Detoeuf, ‘La Réorganisation Industrielle’, Cahiers du Redressement Français, vol. 7, 1927, p. 33. Shanny Peer, France on Display (SUNY Press, 1998), pp. 100, 112–17. Daniel T. Rodgers, Atlantic Crossings (Belknap Press, 1998), pp. 354–6. Gordon Wright, Rural Revolution in France (Stanford University Press, 1964), pp. 48 and 218n. Peer, France on Display, pp. 128–9 and Mary Macleod, ‘Urbanism and Utopia: Le Corbusier from Regional Syndicalism to Vichy’, Ph.D. thesis, Princeton University, 1985, ch. 5. Paulette Bernège, ‘Le Mouvement coopératif agricole’, Dépêche de Toulouse, 9 June 1933, pp. 1–2. Paulette Bernège, ‘L’Agriculture dans les pays du Nord’, Dépêche de Toulouse , 7 June 1933, pp. 1–2; ‘L’Aide de l’état à l’agriculture’, Dépêche de Toulouse, 8 June 1933, pp. 1–2; ‘L’Enseignement agricole dans les pays du

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 181

Paulette Bernège and the Return to the Land • 181 Nord’, Dépêche de Toulouse, 10 June 1933, pp. 1–2. 17. Bernège, ‘L’Agriculture dans les pays du Nord’, p. 2. 18. Ibid. 19. See Jackie Clarke, ‘Imagined Productive Communities: Industrial Rationalization and Cultural Crisis in 1930s France’, Modern and Contemporary France, vol. 8, no. 3, 2000. 20. Paulette Bernège, ‘Où va la France?’, Education ménagère, vol. 4, 1939, p. 29. 21. Miranda Pollard, Reign of Virtue (Chicago University Press, 1998), pp. 80–2. 22. Bernège, De la méthode ménagère (Dunod, 1934), p. 156. 23. H. Luc, ‘L’esprit de la loi’, Education ménagère, January 1943, pp. 2–3 and Luc’s letter to Marshal Pétain proposing the legislation published in the same issue, pp. 3–4. 24. Paulette Bernège, ‘Postulats de base’, Education ménagère, June–July 1943, p. 2. 25. Bulletin du CNOF, October 1942, p. 3. 26. Paulette Bernège, Explication: essai de biosociologie dirigée (Didier, 1943), pp. xi–xii. 27. Bernège, ‘Où va la France?’, p. 29. 28. Bernège, Explication, p. 36. 29. Ibid., p. 207. 30. Ibid., pp. 7–18, 203. 31. Ibid., p. 85. 32. Ibid., pp. 4–5, 20. 33. Ibid., pp. XIV and 171. 34. Ibid., p. 36, p. 152. 35. Ibid., p. 203. 36. Ibid., pp. 66–9. 37. Ibid., pp. 76–7. 38. Unité française. Cahiers de l’Université Jeune France, January–March 1943, pp. 107–8, 123–4 and April–June 1943, pp. 178–80. 39. Paulette Bernège, Janille, paysan de la Garonne. Paris aux antipodes, lettres du pays d’Oc (M. Delbert, undated) and Janille, paysan de la Garonne. Servir la vie ou le nouveau pacte social, lettres du pays d’Oc (M. Delbert, undated.). The letters are dated 1946. 40. Paulette Bernège, J’organise ma petite ferme (Salon des Arts Ménagers, 1950), pp. 99–109. 41. Bernège, Explication, p. xiii. 42. Paulette Bernège, ‘L’Education Biologique’, Art Ménager, 1 November 1936, pp. 570–4, 600–1. 43. Bernège, De la méthode, p. 9.

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 182

182 • Jackie Clarke 44. Ibid., pp. 9 and 12. 45. Henri Fayol, Administration industrielle et générale (Dunod, 1917). 46. See Pierre Morin’s introduction to the re-issue of Fayol, Administration industrielle et générale (Dunod, 1979), p. v and Donald Reid, ‘Fayol: excès d’honneur ou excès d’indignité?’, Revue française de gestion, vol. 70, September–October 1988, p. 151. 47. Bernège, De la méthode, p. 9; Fayol, Administration industrielle (1917), p. 11. 48. Fayol, Administration industrielle (1917), p. 26. 49. Maurice Ponthière, Le Nouvel esprit des affaires (Nouvelle librairie commerciale, 1931), p. 17; Maurice Ponthière, Le Bureau Moteur (Delmas, 1935), pp. 85–6; Ponthière, ‘Principes généraux d’OST’, Leçons de l’Ecole d’OST, 1942, unpaginated. 50. The school had educated over 1,700 students by 1941. Bulletin du CNOF, November 1941, p. 5. 51. Bernège, De la méthode, pp. 31, 59–60. 52. Bernège, Explication, pp. 128–31. 53. See especially Bernège, Explication, pp. 217–21. 54. Ibid., pp. 217–19. 55. Ibid., pp. 78–9, 88, 128–35. 56. Jackie Clarke, ‘Engineering a New Order in the 1930s: The Case of Jean Coutrot’, French Historical Studies, vol. 24, no. 1, winter 2001; and Beale, The Modernist Enterprise, ch. 5. 57. H.R. Kedward, In Search of the Maquis (OUP, 1993), especially pp. 145–7. 58. Maier, ‘Between Taylorism and Technocracy’. 59. Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and Ambivalence (Polity Press, 1991), p. 3.

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 183

–14– Demography at Liberation: Using History to Forget the Past K. H. Adler

Nobody, wrote Jean-François Gravier, geographer and consultant to the new postwar Ministry of Reconstruction and Urbanism, could any longer ignore the problem of population, given the fine contribution by Adolphe Landry, Alfred Sauvy, Robert Debré, Georges Mauco and Fernand Boverat.1 Gravier’s 1947 work, Paris et le désert français – a development of positions he had expounded for Vichy – asserted that French centralization encouraged rural depopulation and turned Paris into a vast parasite which fed off the rest of an inevitably depleted France.2 The rural–urban relationship was not the only issue that drew demographers’ attention at Liberation. This was a moment which witnessed sharp divisions among the political classes. As H. R. Kedward has elucidated, resistance movements were as diverse as they were disparate. Resistance unity was an idea both exaggerated and instrumentalized for political ends, and Liberation only augmented organizational, political, gender and ethnic divisions among resisters. But if there was one matter which crossed virtually all political boundaries, it was the belief that French postwar regeneration depended on production: not of steel, not of power, not of automobiles, but of babies. Ideas of what it meant to be French and their corollary, what it meant to be foreign, had taken root and been promoted during the Vichy years. It is not revelatory to argue that Vichy was exclusionary and based many of its exclusions on nationality, ethnicity and gender. But discourses of foreignness and Frenchness had also developed among Resistance organisms, in response to the foreign and fascist occupation, to the treachery of collaboration and, occasionally, because some resisters shared Vichy’s view of the decadent influence of foreigners in France. In a work which attracted opposition at the time, the centrist resister, Maxime Blocq-Mascart, for example, proposed that the state should restrict the place of settlement and occupations not only of immigrants and non-Christians, but also of their descendants up to the fourth generation.3 More common in Resistance literature were references to a naturalized idea of Frenchness and the entitlements it lent, against a generalized notion that Vichy’s ills had arrived from 183

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 184

184 • K. H. Adler outside along with the Occupation. While there is no material equivalence between the discourses of French and foreign as they were instrumentalized by the Resistance on one hand and Vichy on the other, both resorted to the national to describe exclusion from the community of the tolerated. ‘Those unworthy of the name French’ is a phrase which recurred in resistance literature and informed the ways that the national was interpreted at Liberation. To a large extent, this interpretation was based on a historicization of the recent, and less recent, past. Demographers, newly regarded as able to provide analyses which would avert further episodes of invasion and occupation, were among its proponents, and it is their perspectives on the past that we examine here. The post-Liberation government aimed to tackle head on what it insisted was the demographic ‘problem’.4 In a long ‘state of the nation’ speech of March 1945, Charles de Gaulle outlined the often quoted national need for an additional ‘twelve million beautiful babies’ within ten years. The lack of population was, he said, ‘the profound cause of our unhappiness’ and ‘the primary obstacle to our recovery . . . Without improvement France can only be a large light going out.’ New legislation would be passed, ‘at the much awaited moment when our mobilised men, prisoners and deportees will return to found and recreate a large number of French homes.’5 The return of prisoners of war, political deportees and forced labourers from Germany was a sensitive issue, and objections were raised against the proposal to hold elections – the first in which women would vote – before all the men had been repatriated. Two months later, de Gaulle further announced three areas of reform – modernization of the fonction publique, the nationalization programme and the introduction of family and immigration policies. ‘At last,’ he concluded, ‘we have put together measures concerning the population of France both in terms of guarantees for the families and by the introduction of rational rules relating to immigration’.6 Militants of all stripes reiterated what the socialists termed the ‘intimate connection’ between immigration and the French family during the liberation years.7 But ‘rationalization’ of immigration was not, as many claimed, the institution of some sensible rules in a muddled area where none had previously existed. So argued Population, the new scholarly journal of demographic studies, before explaining without conscious contradiction that before 1940, non-French inhabitants were barred from practising medicine, the law, teaching, journalism and were forbidden to change their occupation without authorization.8 Now, after Liberation, commentators hoped that the nation’s populace could be as scientifically planned as its economic progress. Part of that planning involved measures to increase the birth rate. Pro-natalism was far from new to postwar France, but it would be a mistake to view its transformation from propaganda to institutionalization and legislation as simply incremental. Interwar campaigners were certainly adept, and the Alliance Nationale Contre la Dépopulation was prolific and successful in making its mark – sometimes

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 185

Using History to Forget the Past • 185 quite literally, as when its demands appeared on a themed postage stamp in 1939. First adopted after the First World War, pro-natalism affected mainly poorer women, as contraception and abortion were suppressed and benefits introduced for families with many children. Few people, though, took much notice of the Fête des Mères, adopted by the government in 1920, before Vichy made it the cornerstone of its familialist calendar two decades later. It was not until 1939 that the Haut Comité de la Population et de la Famille assembled various elements of pronatalism into the package which passed into law in July that year as the Code de la Famille. The fact that the Code was promulgated scarcely more than a month before the invasion of Poland is significant here for two reasons. First, it was formulated at a time of heightened fear – of war, and of immigration. During the 1930s, the fear of foreigners which was already attached to colonial subjects and eastern European migrants only increased with the arrival of refugees from Spain and the expanding Nazi Reich. Second, postwar interpretation of the Code de la Famille emphasised its prewar origination. During the Occupation, pro-natalists had welcomed Vichy familialism; afterwards, however, some maintained the conceit that the Code’s republican origins less than a year before the armistice qualified its work as unfinished. The return of the republic permitted the Code’s ambitions to be realized, therefore, without explicit reference to Vichy.9 These political aspects lead us to problematize the term ‘pro-natalism’ itself. For pro-natalism was never solely about reproduction: the question of which babies, and what sort of population was desirable for the nation, always lay at its heart. As de Gaulle made plain, the politics of demography concerned nation, race, ethnicity and gender, and demographers undertook the project to form a population appropriate for France. For these reasons the term ‘populationism’ is preferred. All the authors Gravier cited – Robert Debré, Fernand Boverat, Alfred Sauvy, Georges Mauco and Adolphe Landry – were demographers who had remained in France during the Occupation (save for Boverat’s claim to have attempted to join de Gaulle in London, only to be rebuffed and forced to return home).10 All published demographic studies or propaganda during or immediately after the Occupation,11 and de Gaulle invited each to join the Haut Comité Consultatif de la Population et de la Famille, reconstituted anew under his chairmanship in 1945. All declared later that they had been resisters though only Debré followed anything that resembled the sort of Resistance that became celebrated at the time; he went underground in 1943 when life as a resister Jew in Paris – albeit one exempt from some limitations imposed by the Statut des Juifs and permitted to practise medicine – became too dangerous.12 During the Occupation, Landry, Sauvy and Boverat had joined the Fondation française pour l’étude des problèmes humains, or Fondation Carrel. This socio-biological research institute was established in 1941 with the Nobel Prize winner Alexis Carrel at its head. In 1945, when the republic institutionalized demographic science for the first time, the Fondation

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 186

186 • K. H. Adler Carrel was transformed into the Institut National d’Etudes Démographiques (INED), and Alfred Sauvy assumed the direction. The Institut National d’Etudes Démographiques was born less from the ashes than from the still burning flames of the Fondation Carrel. More than half the Fondation Carrel research personnel continued their work at INED; projects initiated during the Occupation were completed afterwards and the Fondation Carrel’s research orientation remained at least in part consistent into the Fourth Republic. INED later propagated the advantages of its interdisciplinary methodology. It did not, however, acknowledge its descent from the Fondation Carrel’s reductive biologism whereby ‘human problems’ – whether nutrition, mass psychology, housing or immigration – were analysed. Apart from his employment at the Statistique Générale de la France from 1922, where he became director of the Institut de Conjoncture during the Occupation, Alfred Sauvy’s activities between 1940 and 1944 remain uncertain.13 This vagueness of his personal trajectory coheres with his public statements about the chronology of populationism. For when he assumed the directorship of INED in 1945, he noted only two important dates: the passage in 1939 of the Code de la Famille, and the creation in 1945 of the Secrétariat à la Famille et à la Population – at whose helm he presided.14 That what came between was obscured should come as little surprise. How that obscuration was constructed owed much to demographers’ view of history. Its examination here will allow links to be drawn between postwar populationism and its debt to Vichy pro-natalism, anti-immigrationism and familialism. The challenge for legislators at Liberation was to promote the procreation of numerous, healthy children. The government combined coercion with encouragement, upholding the bans on abortion and contraception, and instituting a variety of financial benefits for families when women bore children. In contrast to Sauvy’s chronology, the new 1945 law to protect mother and child was founded unambiguously on both the prewar Code de la Famille and Vichy family legislation from 1942.15 Among other protective measures, a couple could not marry without a certificat prénuptial, a eugenic measure still in force today. Intending partners would receive a certificate if, in medical opinion, they were fit to wed, though a doctor was unable to prevent a marriage. The law of December 1942, introduced after an interwar campaign,16 somewhat vaguely declared that no marriage could proceed unless each partner had been issued with proof that they had been medically examined ‘with a view to marriage’. Postwar legislators favoured more explicit instructions. Just as they specified which chemical and surgical abortifacients were to be banned from sale or advertising, so the 1945 marriage legislation required the doctor’s examination to concentrate on ‘contagious and chronic infections which might have dangerous consequences for the spouse or descendents.’17 The stipulation that the spouse be protected from infection was part of moves against sexually transmitted disease which can be traced throughout the twentieth century.18

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 187

Using History to Forget the Past • 187 Efforts made at Liberation consolidated Vichy’s more radical stance on the family in which the certificat prénuptial originated. There was much discussion of whether the certificate should protect partners from infection, or go still further to encourage productive unions between ‘the best stock’.19 Supporters of eugenics argued that its adoption after the Second World War was founded on its interdisciplinary mix20 – positions similar to those held in favour of demographic science as a whole. Whereas neither biology nor sociology alone could provide satisfactory answers to the problem of raising the birth rate, they suggested, enthusiasts regarded eugenics, as a discipline founded on the social as much as the physiological, as the science of the future.21 By the late 1940s, eugenics might equally have been regarded as a science of the past. Yet some saw moral value in the certificate. Maxime Blocq-Mascart had represented the centreright Resistance group, the Organisation Civile et Militaire, on the Comité Français de la Libération Nationale, and by 1945 had joined the Haut Comité Consultatif de la Population et de la Famille. Unlike Alfred Sauvy for whom quantity was all, Blocq-Mascart adduced that the poor quality of marriage was to blame for the low birth rate. In his opinion, a simple certificate was insufficient. Instead, couples should receive training prior to marriage, and the population in general be taught its gravity, which was rapidly becoming lost in the assembly-line processing of town hall weddings.22 There seemed to be no satisfying populationists. As heterosexual couples rushed to marry at the end of the war, ostensibly in line with demographers’ wishes, so such weddings gave rise to complaints that marriage was taken too lightly. Blocq-Mascart also suggested that the certificate be more prognostic than diagnostic, and stipulate the examiner’s opinion on whether a union should proceed; if not, the intending couple should be forced to undertake ‘additional research’.23 It was less a concern for the individual which informed this sort of eugenic marriage in which undesirables would be isolated according to medical opinion, than the enforcement of the state’s ability to control its population towards national improvement. One of the problems with this sort of thinking was that even the experts had little idea of its outcome. From 1942, Jean Sutter had headed the Fondation Carrel team which examined nutrition, and he made the transition to INED. In 1950, he suggested that France should be grateful to Vichy for translating a century-long national aspiration for the certificate into legislated reality. In his long defence of eugenics published by INED,24 he underlined the universal approval with which he said the certificate was blessed, despite a distinct lack of clarity as to its usefulness. ‘The certificate has certainly been very useful’, he noted, ‘although its effects are very difficult to quantify exactly’.25 Obvious though the limits may have been, they in no way deflected those demographers anticipating a planned future from their purpose. Against all evidence, they found the scientific basis of eugenic predictions convincing – in other words, that it was possible to know which couplings

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 188

188 • K. H. Adler would produce healthy offspring. The sociological perception that ‘the most talented groups’ had the smallest families only served to enhance eugenics’ perceived powers of augury. Sutter considered that an interventionist government should offer material encouragement so that the ‘best’ types of family would bear the most children.26 When Francis Galton had devised eugenics some eighty years earlier, he considered social class to be more or less immutable, and disregarded other factors which put the ‘talented groups’ into that bracket. Despite radical developments in social science since the nineteenth century – not least the contribution of French sociology – French demographers at Liberation averred that merely adding to the number of the ‘talented’ via reproduction would improve the quality of the population, a position with which Sauvy is most often associated.27 Demographers admitted that eugenics was not universally admired. Despite its decline into disfavour, ‘it is eugenics,’ said Sauvy, ‘which will certainly provide the liveliest and deepest debates of the future’, though perhaps, ‘in other forms and under different names’.28 Renaming eugenics in pursuit of acceptability echoed Sauvy’s intention to Gallicize non-French surnames to aid immigrant assimilation.29 Under whichever name, the certificat prénuptial combined a modern, demographic economy with more sinister forebears. Only slightly critical of the eugenic ‘excesses’ practised in Nazi Germany, Sutter remained convinced by the scientific objectivity of state-mediated eugenics, which would inspire politicians to act in the best interests of the population. As other commentators regarded family improvement measures as so natural that they were beyond politics or ideology,30 so Sauvy and Sutter discerned similar commonsense values in eugenics. By the same token, their claims that the wish for eugenic legislation had historical precedence of at least a century situated such measures as being native to France and disguised any definite link to Vichy.31 The disjunction with Vichy was compounded when demographers cast their gaze still further back into French history. After Liberation, populationists often invoked the glories of pre- or non-republican periods. For them, the caesura of 1789 heralded the quickening of French decline. According to their account, the Revolution had generated the twin factors of French demographic deterioration: a falling birth rate and a rise in immigration. Georges Mauco and Maurice Grandazzi’s 1948 work, La Démographie à l’école, was a teachers’ manual which provided geo-historical background to diminishing population figures.32 Mauco, an immigration specialist and teacher, as well as secretary to the new Haut Comité Consultatif de la Population et de la Famille, and Grandazzi, editor of the Annales de Géographie, explored the role of the foreigner in the nation as well as the need to increase the birth rate.33 Their new gloss on the past constructed the immigrant as much as a liability as a necessity. While France was, ‘one of the first countries to have achieved strong national unity’,34 they argued, non-French origins persisted: immigrant births had ‘masked’ the ‘deficit’ in French reproduction.35 The

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 189

Using History to Forget the Past • 189 authors’ separation of French from immigrant births rendered national origin indissociable from reproductivity. This served to gender immigration in two ways: first, female immigrants became even more responsible for national decline than their male counterparts, since it was they who were giving birth to children who were not properly French, the right to French nationality based on place of birth rather than parentage notwithstanding. Second, while French women were charged with their failure to reproduce in sufficient numbers, immigrant women were denounced for fulfilling reproductive duties which were not primarily theirs, displacing them still further from the centre. In Mauco and Grandazzi’s account, national unity was dependent on the state’s toleration of those with non-French origins who were to be evaluated apart from the autochthon. But who were these immigrants who, under a post-Revolution policy of unrestricted access, had absolved the ‘native French’ from their reproductive obligations? According to the authors, by 1948, as many as one in seven of the population was of ‘recent foreign origin’. ‘Recent’ here referred not to the refugee influx of the 1930s, nor even to the immigration wave which spanned the late nineteenth century to the years after the First World War, but dated from 1801. Even after a century and a half, immigrant integration could only aspire to approximation. Four generations on, these origins carried more weight than all the assimilatory efforts of republican institutions. Western nations have normalized the idea that people born in one part of the world should necessarily be subject to different laws from those born in another. In France, this separation reached its nadir under Vichy. The argument pursued in La Démographie à l’école added historical nuance. It rested on a historicization of the legalistic differentiation of nationality which recuperated an eighteenthcentury ideal not merely to remove the focus from Vichy, but also to reiterate Vichy’s accusation of republican responsibility for national decline at foreign and female hands. The Revolution and its Enlightenment precursors became a focus for demographers at Liberation.36 In his introduction to a 700-page critical bibliography of French works on population published prior to 1800, Sauvy applauded the abundance of literature on the subject published before the Revolution, and noted its sudden decline afterwards.37 The Revolution, it would appear, far from ushering in reforms which transformed France into the civilized republic which remained recognizable into the twentieth century and whose values Liberation restored, had inaugurated an excessive individualism which led women to choose themselves over the nation, and childlessness over childbearing. The bibliography was one work among a number which recalled a more fecund pre-revolutionary era on which INED focused in its first decade.38 These elaborated how the philosophes had derided celibacy and encouraged prolific union as long as costs to the state and free benefits to poor people were avoided. The Revolution, INED commented, in turning its back on all associations of power in the ancien régime, had abandoned

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 190

190 • K. H. Adler these precepts in its preference for making financial savings rather than children.39 The eighteenth century was thus perceived as a fertile period for population and populationist ideas, which had witnessed the abandonment of these values at its end. Moreover, it was not so much general changes during the period as the Revolution itself that had caused the decline. For without a republic in place, the nation or, more precisely, its population was at liberty to pursue what demographers presented as its natural pro-natalist tendencies. Sutter’s location of the earliest demands for the certificat prénuptial during the reign of Louis Philippe underscored once again the disregard for population improvement which the republic apparently fostered.40 Demographers turned their gaze to this pre-republican era at the very moment that the republic was restored after the violence and authoritarianism of Vichy. There can be little doubt that they, like many others, were keen to erase the memory of the Vichy years; that they did so by sweeping away the republic as a whole, while participating in and profiting from its very centre, was one of the more subtle mechanisms by which their scientistic historicism might distance the nation from its recent past. At the same time, however, accommodation with Vichy, or at least with its populationism, is implied, since each of the regimes which apparently fostered pro-natalism was founded on non-republican, authoritarian principles. But scientism was also invoked in a rehabilitation of eugenics which acted less to obscure the recent past than to achieve reconciliation with it by confronting readers with populationist justifications. It has been suggested that Catholic protection of the ‘integrity of the body’ underlay a lack of interest in eugenics in France.41 One could argue that countries with stronger Protestant traditions such as Germany, Sweden or the United States adopted more devastating forms of eugenics. But the contrast is not so clear-cut. As we have seen, not only were certain eugenic proposals adopted, but such was the enthusiasm for populationism that even some of Nazi Germany’s eugenic instruments came in for applause.42 In a 1946 evaluation of Nazi populationism by Alfred Sauvy and Sully Ledermann, the authors argued that Nazi measures had been ‘successful’, and went so far as to suggest that, considered on its own terms, Hitler’s realization of his wish to rid Europe of Jews ought to be seen as ‘entirely successful’.43 Now, after the war, Sauvy maintained his prewar position that Hitler’s programme had made a positive impact on the birth rate, and he admired the regime for its foresight in engineering a demographic shift which would produce a preponderance of young people in Germany from the mid-1950s. This was in contrast to the French case, for which demographers predicted a constant rise in the proportion of elderly, and consequently unproductive and costly, individuals. Despite the title of this 1946 article, ‘The biological war’, the authors made no reference to the biological racism underlying Nazi population policy. This is not because the language to analyse racism in these terms did not exist. Sauvy

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 191

Using History to Forget the Past • 191 himself had explicitly asserted that to speak of ‘pure races’ was meaningless.44 Such reticence stemmed from elsewhere. For Sauvy and Sutter, it was scientific rationality and unarguable biological principles, not politics or ideology, which provided the foundation to eugenics. Here was a method which was not only unambivalent but was interdisciplinary, capable of incorporating the biological, the social, the economic and, significantly, the moral. But this was a strangely occluded set of morals, since it permitted populationist campaigners in a France recently liberated from Nazi Occupation to praise Nazi concentration camps, forced labour and the death penalty as suitable and effective punishment for abortionists.45 After Liberation, the body remained the battleground it had become under Vichy, even if some of the penalties for transgression changed. Most significantly, abortion no longer carried the death penalty. In comparison to the 1930s, though, prosecutions for abortion increased sharply, and the acquittal rate halved; Vichy’s homophobic legislation and the certificat prénuptial were retained, and adjusted to greater precision. New republican structures benefited from both the success of Vichy’s familialist discourses and the historicist efforts of demographers. Much as populationism was inherent to Vichy’s projects, state apparatuses for its development were less coherent. Now, with a new Ministry of Population to replace the old Ministry of Health, a Secrétariat à la Famille et à la Population and a national institute dedicated to demographic research whose members were enjoined to train Ministry of Population civil servants,46 populationism entered the state at levels of which prewar pro-natalists could only have dreamt.

Notes 1. Jean-François Gravier, Paris et le désert français. (Le Portulan, 1947), p. 81. 2. Jean-François Gravier, Etat, peuple, nation (Secrétariat Général à l’Information et à la Propagande, 1942). 3. Maxime Blocq-Mascart, Les Cahiers. Etudes pour une révolution française (OCM, June–September 1942), pp. 125–87. 4. Charles de Gaulle, ‘Vers le renouveau national’, 2 March 1945; ‘Le lendemain de la victoire’, 24 May 1945, in Discours de guerre, vol. 3, mai 1944– septembre 1945 (Egloff, 1945), pp. 169–86, 223–30. 5. Charles de Gaulle, Mémoires de guerre, vol. 3, Le Salut (Plon, 1959); reprint (Famot, 1981), p. 456. 6. Libération, 25 May 1945. 7. Parti Socialiste SFIO, Projet d’un statut des étrangers en France (Fédération des Socialistes Etrangers de France, July 1945), p. 5. 8. Population, vol. 1, no. 1, 1946, p. 171. 9. Georges Mauco, ‘Le Code de la Famille’, undated typescript. Archives

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 192

192 • K. H. Adler

10. 11.

12.

13. 14. 15. 16. 17.

18. 19. 20.

21.

22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27.

Nationales (AN): Mauco Papers, Box 6. Georges Mauco’s personal papers were unclassified at the time of consultation. Boverat to Mauco, 24 March 1945. Centre des Archives Contemporaines (CAC): 860269 2. Robert Debré and Alfred Sauvy, Des Français pour la France (Gallimard, 1945); Adolphe Landry, La Démographie française (PUF, 1941); Fernand Boverat, Le Premier devoir: faire vivre la France. (ANCD, 1943); Georges Mauco, ‘La situation démographique de la France’, Ethnie Française, no. 7, January 1942. Robert Debré, L’Honneur de vivre (Hermann & Stock, 1974), pp. 221ff.; Jacques Debû-Bridel (ed.), La Résistance intellectuelle (Julliard, 1970), pp. 186–201. His personal papers are in family possession and are unavailable to researchers. Alfred Sauvy, ‘Introduction’, Population, vol. 1, no. 1. Ordonnance 45–2720, 2 November 1945. William H. Schneider, Quality and Quantity: The Quest for Biological Regeneration in Twentieth-Century France (CUP, 1990), ch. 6. Article 6. It was further updated in September 1946 when the medical exam had to include blood tests and x-rays. Population, vol. 1, no. 4, October–December 1946, p. 770. See Judith Surkis, ‘Secularization and Sexuality in Third Republic France, 1870–1920’, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Cornell University, 2001. For medical reactions, see Anne Carol, Histoire de l’eugénisme en France (Seuil, 1995), pp. 339ff. See for example Jean Audit and Marie Tisserand-Perrier, L’Eugénique et l’euthénique (J.-B. Baillière et Fils, 1952), front cover. A ‘tree of eugenics’ is fed by roots labelled with diverse disciplines and factors (archaeology, genealogy, geology, anatomy, law, statistics, etc.). Louis Chevalier, Démographie générale (Dalloz, 1951), pp. 151–5; Alfred Sauvy, preface to Jean Sutter, L’Eugénique, Travaux et Documents, no. 11, INED, 1950, p. 10. On the Ecole des Parents, see Georges Mauco, ‘Consultations psycho-pédagogiques’, Psyché, vol. 2, no. 3, 1 January 1947. Maxime Blocq-Mascart, Chroniques de la Résistance (Corrêa, 1945), pp. 506–7. Sutter, L’Eugénique. Ibid., p. 226. Ibid., p. 59. Alfred Sauvy, Richesse et population (2nd edn, 1943; reprint, Payot, 1944), pp. 79ff.

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 193

Using History to Forget the Past • 193 28. Sauvy, preface to Sutter, L’Eugénique, p. 10. 29. Alfred Sauvy, ‘Note sur le rythme necéssaire des naturalisations’, 2 May 1945. CAC: 860269 1; Debré and Sauvy, Des Français pour la France, p. 232. This Gallicization was intended ‘autant que possible à faire perdre aux noms leur aspect et la consonnance étrangers’. ‘Circulaire relative à l’instruction des demandes de naturalisation’, 23 April 1947, Population, vol. 2, no. 2, pp. 462–4. 30. Jacques Doublet, ‘Politique démographique en Autriche’, Population, vol. 2, no. 2, April–June 1947, p. 301. 31. Hubert Thomas-Chevallier, Le Racisme français (Imprimerie Georges Thomas, 1943), p. 118, offered a racist version of the certificat prénuptial. 32. Georges Mauco and Maurice Grandazzi, La Démographie à l’école (Alliance Nationale Contre la Dépopulation, 1948). 33. Georges Mauco, Les Etrangers en France (Armand Colin, 1932) was the prolific author’s major work on immigration. K. H. Adler, Jews and Gender in Liberation France (CUP, 2003), ch. 4. 34. Mauco and Grandazzi, Démographie à l’école, p. 27. 35. Ibid., n.p. Original emphasis. 36. On populationism during the ancien régime, see Carol Blum, Strength in Numbers (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002). 37. Claude Lévy (ed.), Economie et population: les doctrines française avant 1800. Bibliographie commentée, INED Travaux et Documents, no. 28 (PUF, 1956), p. xvi. 38. Anita Fage, ‘Economie et population: les doctrines françaises avant 1800’, Population, vol. 9, no. 1, 1954; Anita Fage, ‘La Révolution française et la population’, Population, vol. 8, no. 2, April–June 1953; Anita Fage, ‘Les doctrines de population des encyclopédistes’, Population, vol. 6, no. 4, October–December 1951; Richard Cantillon, Essai sur la nature du commerce en général. Texte de l’édition originale de 1755, avec des études et commentaires par Alfred Sauvy, Amintore Fanfani, Joseph J. Spengler, Louis Salleron (Institut National d’Etudes Démographiques, 1952). See also André Toulemon, Histoire des doctrines de la population (Berger-Levrault, 1956). 39. Jean-Baptiste Say quoted in Fage, ‘La Révolution française’, p. 336. 40. Sutter, L’Eugénique, p. 79. 41. Pierre-André Taguieff et al. (eds), L’Antisémitisme de plume (Berg, 1999), p. 29. This might more accurately be expressed as protection of the sanctity of life. 42. Paul Vincent, ‘Statistique internationale du mouvement des naissances’, Population, vol. 1, no. 2, April–May 1946, pp. 346–8; Alfred Sauvy, Richesse et population (Payot, 1943), p. 297; Debré and Sauvy, Des Français pour la France, pp. 182–3; Adolphe Landry, La Démographie française (2nd edn,

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 194

194 • K. H. Adler

43.

44. 45.

46.

1941; reprint, ANCD, 1942), p. 72; Doublet, ‘Politique démographique’, p. 301. Alfred Sauvy and Sully Ledermann, ‘La guerre biologique, 1933–1945: population de l’Allemagne et des pays voisins’, Population, vol. 1, no. 3, July–September 1946. Debré and Sauvy, Des Français pour la France, p. 124. L’Avortement et les moyens anticonceptionnels, ‘La Famille d’aujourd’hui. Sa formation. Son développement’, no. 4 (Union Nationale des Caisses d’Allocations Familiales, 1947), p. 37. Decree of 19 January 1946.

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 195

Rod Kedward and his Bibliography Biographical Note Born in March 1937 at Hawkhurst, Kent, (Harry) Roderick Kedward spent his early life in Goldthorpe (Yorkshire), Tenterden (Kent) and in Bath where he obtained a scholarship to attend the Kingswood Methodist School. He then studied at Worcester and St Antony’s colleges in Oxford before being recruited as a lecturer at the University of Sussex in 1962. He retired in 2002 but is continuing his research into twentieth-century France. He married sociology lecturer Carol Wimbleton in 1965 and they have two children – Joshua, a web-site designer, and Jessica, an art historian.

Bibliography of Rod Kedward’s Major Publications Books The Dreyfus Affair: Catalyst for Tensions in French society (Longman, 1965). Fascism in Western Europe 1900–45 (Blackie & New York University Press, 1969). The Anarchists: the men who shook an era (Macdonald, 1971). Images of Peace, 1916–23 (Oxford University Press, 1972). Resistance in Vichy France: a study of ideas and motivation in the southern zone, 1940–1942 (Oxford University Press, 1978). Occupied France: resistance and collaboration, 1940–1944 (Blackwell, 1985). Naissance de la Résistance dans la France de Vichy, 1940–1942, Idées et motivations (Champ Vallon, 1989). In Search of the Maquis, Rural Resistance in Southern France, 1942–1944 (Oxford University Press, 1993). A la recherche du maquis: La Résistance dans la France du Sud (Cerf, 1999).

Forthcoming Books France and the French: A people and their history since 1900 (Penguin, 2005). Structures of Resistance (OUP, work in progress)

195

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 196

196 • Bibliography

Edited Collections (with Roger Austin) Vichy France and the Resistance: Culture and Ideology (Croom Helm, 1985). (with Nancy Wood) The Liberation of France: image and event (Berg, 1995).

Chapters in Books (with S.B. John) ‘Literature and Ideology: 1880–1914’, in John Cruickshank (ed.), French Literature and its Background (Oxford University Press, 1969). ‘Modern Man in Search of his Art’, in J.Creedy (ed.), Art and Social Life (Tavistock Press, 1970). ‘Behind the Polemics. French Communists and Resistance, 1939–41’, in S. Hawes & R. White (eds), Resistance in Europe, 1939–1945 (Allen Lane, 1975). ‘Charles Maurras and the True France’, in R. Bullen, H. Pogge & A. Polonsky (eds), Ideas into Politics: aspects of European history 1880–1950 (Croom Helm, 1984). ‘The maquis and the Culture of the Outlaw’, in H.R. Kedward & R. Austin, Vichy France and the Resistance: Culture and Ideology (Croom Helm, 1985). ‘What kind of revisionism?’, in David Forgacs (ed.), Rethinking Italian Fascism: capitalism, populism and culture (Lawrence and Wishart, 1986). ‘The Vichy of the other Philippe’, in G. Hirshfield & P. Marsh (eds), Collaboration in France: politics and culture during the Nazi occupation (Berg, 1989). ‘The Maquis: Whose History?’, in M. Scriven & P. Wagstaff (eds), War and Society in 20th Century France (Berg, 1992). ‘La crise française vue d’outre-Manche’, in J.-P. Azéma & F. Bédarida (eds), Le régime de Vichy et les Français (Fayard, 1992). ‘STO et maquis’, in J.-P. Azéma & F. Bédarida (eds), La France des années noires, Vol. 2 (Seuil, 1993). ‘France’, in I. Dear (ed.), The Oxford Companion to the Second World War (Oxford University Press, 1995). ‘Ici commence la France Libre’, in H.R. Kedward & N. Wood, The Liberation of France: image and event (Berg, 1995). ‘Occupation and Resistance during World War II’, in Peter France (ed.), The New Oxford Companion to Literature in French (Clarendon Press, 1995). ‘La Résistance, l’histoire et l’anthropologie: quelques domaines de la théorie’, in J.M. Guillon & P. Laborie (eds), Mémoire et Histoire: la Résistance (Privat, 1995). ‘Le monde rural face au maquis’, in François Marcot (ed.), Lutte armée et Maquis (Annales Littéraires de l’Université de Franche-Comté, 1996). ‘French Resistance: a few home truths’, in W. Lamont (ed.), Historical Controversies and Historians (UCL Press, 1998). ‘Resistance: the discourse of personality’, in K. Robertson (ed.), War, Resistance and Intelligence (Leo Cooper, 1999).

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 197

Bibliography • 197 ‘La Résistance et la polyvalence de la chasse’, in J.-M. Guillon & R. Mencherini (eds), La Résistance et les Européens du Sud (L’Harmattan, 1999). ‘The anti-carnival of collaboration: Louis Malle’s Lacombe Lucien’, in S. Hayward & G. Vincendeau (eds), French Film: texts and contexts (Routledge, 2000). ‘Rural France and Resistance’, in S. Fishman, L. Lee Downs, I. Sinanoglou, L.V. Smith & R. Zaretsky (eds), France at War: Vichy and the Historians (Berg, 2000).

Articles ‘Patriots and Patriotism in Vichy France’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 1982. ‘Resiting French Resistance’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 1999. ‘La Résistance et le discours de l’exil’, Matériaux pour l’histoire de notre temps, 2002.

02 Vichy

22/12/04

11:05 am

Page 198

03 Vichy

22/12/04

11:06 am

Page 199

Index

Agen, 175 Alain (Emile Chartier), 36, 37 Alexandre, Jeanne, 37, 43, 45 Allied bombings, 78–80 Allied landings, 79–82, 108, 111 Allied Military Government of Occupied Territories (AMGOT), 115–16 Allied relations with the French, 115–27 Alpes-Maritimes, 81, 89, 95 American army, American presence, 116 anti-French attitude, 124–5 as liberators, 117–8 as occupiers, 118–9 billeting of, 118 black troops, 122 casualties, 123 censorship, 119 criticisms of, 121–4 help from Resistance, 116 indiscipline, 122–3 love of children, 122 material wealth, 121–2 public sympathy towards, 118 restrictions on public, 118 servicemen’s club, 122 anarchism, 1, 10–11, 18–22 passim see Daniel Guérin anti-fascism, 35–6, 39, 69, 108, 151 anti-semitism, 88, 90–4, 108, 163

Anduze (Gard), 108 Armistice First World War, 133–4, 137, 139 Second World War, 9, 90, 145 Aubrac, Lucie, 41, 54 Aubrac, Raymond, 104, 110–11 Audry, Colette, 41, 45 Auschwitz, 91 Austin, Roger, 28 Azéma, Jean-Pierre, 8, 36 Bakhtin, Mikhail 2 Barbusse, Henri, 135 Bard, Christine, 40, 43 Barthes, Henri, 7 Baudoin, Madeleine, 7 Bauman, Zygmunt, 179 Baz, Romain, 101 BBC, 3, 9, 12, 27, 75, 101–11 archive, 11 and resistance, 107–11 see also Delavaney, Emile Beale, Majorie, 172 Becam, Eloise, 43, 45 Belgium, 173 Benamou, Georges-Marc, 155 Bernège, Paulette 11, 171–81 Bertrand, Paulin, 107 Besse-en-Chandesse, 108 Beuve-Méry, Hubert, 155, 164 Béziers, 91 Bichelonne, Jean, 171–2 199

03 Vichy

22/12/04

11:06 am

Page 200

200 • Index Bigot, Marthe, 37, 42, 45 black market, 90 Bloch, Marc, 73, 75 Blocq-Mascart, Maxime, 183, 187 Blum, Léon, 36, 137, 150 Bonnin, Charlotte, 41, 45 Bourdieu, Pierre, 26 Bousquet, René, 155, 157 Boverat, Fernand, 183, 185 Brasillach, Robert, 54 Briggs, Asa, 20 Brignol, 80 Brunner, Alois, 96 Brunshvicg, Betty, 44–5 Bureau Central de Renseignement et d’Action (BCRA), 104 Burger, Harry, 87 Camisard Revolt, 2, 27 carnival theory, 2, 21 Carrel, Alexis, 156, 158, 164–5, 176–8, 185–6 Casablanca, 87 Catholics, 2, 10, 25 Cedar, Paul, 108 Cendrars, Blaise, 133 Césaire, Aimé, 143 Ceux de la Résistance, 110 Cévennes, 2, 27 CGT see trade unions Chaigneau, (Prefect), 96 Chénier, André, 107 Cherbourg, 116–125 Chomsky, Noam, 143 Clar, Fanny, 44–5 class, social, class profile of Resistance, 29 class solidarity, 144–5 class struggle, 143–151 middle-class women, 177 bourgeois support for Vichy, 145

social mobility, 188 working-class Resistance, 97, 108, 148 working-class and corporatism, 160 Clemenceau, Georges, 132 Clermont-Ferrand, 108 Cobb, Richard, 22 collaboration, 2, 36, 40–1, 57, 80, 91, 109, 164 collaborationism, 36, 40, 57, 74 Colliard, Lucie, 37, 41–2, 45 Communist party, the French (PCF) 4, 28, 61–2, 109, 144, and de Gaulle 148 and Resistance, 4, 8, 23, 41 inspiration of, 2, 25 pacifists in, 38–9, 41 miners, 62–70 passim rivalry with socialists, 150 see also trade unions Comte, Auguste, 6, 19 Corporatism, 159–60 Churchill, Winston, 80, 102, 106 Coutrot, Jean, 158, 174, 178 Craipeau, Yvan, 146 Crémieux-Brilhac, Jean-Louis, 107 Croix de Lorraine, 109 Daladier, Edouard, 150 Dannecker, Theodor, 95 Darlan, Admiral François, 76, 103 Darnand, Joseph, 92 Debré, Robert, 183, 185 Decaris, Germaine, 36, 39, 40, 46 Decroix, Juliette, 44, 46 Défense de la France, 44 De Gaulle, Charles, 76, 109, 146–8, 155, 184–5 defeat, 11, 51, 54, 106, 131, reasons for, 11, 174–5 and pro-natalism, 184–5

03 Vichy

22/12/04

11:06 am

Page 201

Index • 201 Delavenay, Emile, 101–13 demographers, 11, 183–94 demonstrations, 63, 76, 80 Den Doolaard, Anton, 108–9 Denmark, 173–4 De Vicq, 105 Dieppe raids, 108 Douzou, Laurent, 9 Draguignan, 81 Drevet, Camille, 37, 46 Dreyfus Affair, 1, 16, 19–21, 135 drôle de guerre, 24 Dupuy, Pierre, 105 Duquesnes, Jacques, 7 Eidenschenk-Patin, A, 37, 43, 46 Emery, Léon, 36, 38, 40–1, 44, 46 Emery, Marie-Thérèse, 38, 43, 44, 46 épuration, 40–1, 164 eugenics, 187–91 passim everyday life, 5, 45, 55, 102, 109 extermination camps, 88 Faure, Paul, 36, 44 Fayol, Henri, 177–9 feminism, 25, 38–9, 40, 54 femmes tondues, 29, 57, 147 Feuchtwanger, Lion, 77 First World War, 35, 37, 57, 90, 137–48 Fishman, Sarah, 9 Foot, M.R.D, 7 forced labour, 79–80 Forces Françaises de l’Intérieur (FFI), 148 Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust testimony, 11, 98 note 5 Foucault, Michel 6 Francs-Tireurs et Partisans (FTP), 147–8 Frederick, Christine, 172

French Revolution, 2, 25, 77, 143, 151, 188–90 and Daniel Guérin, 139–40, 146, 149 and depopulation, 188–90 Freud, Sigmund, 19, 21 Frost, Robert L., 172 Fua, Frédéric, 104 Furlough, Ellen, 172 Galton, Francis, 188 Gance, Abel, 131–41 Gaumont, Léon, 132 gender, 4–6, 10, 26, 29, 37, 51–8 and immigration, 189 boundaries, 26, 51–8, 172, 174 history, 4,7, and pacifism, 45 Germany, 190 gestapo, 94, 96 Gex Leverrier, Madeleine, 75 Gironde, 102 globalization, 4 Golan, Romy, 172 Gonnet, Marguerite, 51 Gosse, Lucienne, 101 Grandazzi, Maurice, 188–9 Grasse, 108 Gravier, Jean-François, 183, 185 Grenier, Fernand, 104 Grenoble, 101, 110 Guérin, Daniel 11, 143–54 gueules cassées, 139 Guha, Ranajit, 25 Guillon, Jean-Marie, 29 Hagnauer, Roger 38, 42, 43, 46 Hagnauer, Yvonne 38, 42, 43, 46 Hahn, Pierre, 143 Hauck, Henri, 110 Hauriou, Maurice, 162

03 Vichy

22/12/04

11:06 am

Page 202

202 • Index Haute-Savoie, 147 Henriot, Philippe, 4 Hervieu, Louise, 40, 46 Hic, Marcel, 146 history from below, 4, 11, 22 Hitler, Adolf, 35, 79, 92, 106–7, 147–8, 190 Hodgson, Francis, 9 Hofmann, Stanley, 93, 96 Holocaust, 88 homosexuals, 89, 143 Horne, John, 7 identity, 26, 42–3, 51–7, 117, 124, 162 American, 123 Cherbourgeois, 119, 121 collective, 11, 59–70 passim Jewish, 43, 92, 94, 97, 163 miners’, 59–70 gender, 51–7 imaginaire social, 115 immigrants, 59–70 passim Ingram, Norman, 36 interdisciplinarity, 6, 20, 25–6 internment camps, 75, 77 Beaune-la-Rolande, 77 Gurs, 91, 93 Les Milles, 77 Jackson, Julian, 8 Jankowski, Paul, 7 Jaquier, Maurice, 144 Jews, 11, 42–3 children, 42, 95–6 deportation of, 88, 93, 95, 155 internment camps, 75, 77 pacifists, 42–3 refugees in Nice, 87–97 round-ups, 95

Joll, James, 18–19 John, S. Benyon, 21 Johnson, Douglas, 9 Jung, Carl, 20, 29 Kedward, Rod academic recognition of, 7–10 Algerian war, 20 ambiguous nature of Vichy, 158 and everyday life, 5 anthropology, 5, 25 carnival theory, 2, 21 communists, 4, 8, 23, 25 Dreyfus Affair, 16, 19, 21 early interest in history, 15–16 education, 16–18 family, 15–17, 27 Fascism in Western Europe, 19 gender, 4–6, 10, 25, 76 history from below, 4, 11 In Search of the Maquis, 2, 9 interdisciplinarity, 6, 20–1, 25, 131 Lacombe Lucien, 3 Liberation, 115, 183 Liberation of France: Image and Event, 12 local history, 4, 89 love of France, 6 maquis, 25–7 May 1968, 22, 24 media work, 9, 26 motivations of Resistance, 101 objectivity, 24 Occupied France: Resistance and Collaboration, 5 opinion-events, 24 oral history, 5–6, 11, 17, 21–6, 89 outlaw culture, 27 personality, 7 politics, 15–27 passim positivism, 3

03 Vichy

22/12/04

11:06 am

Page 203

Index • 203 prizes and awards, 9–10 publications, 195–7 relativity, 3–4, 23–4 religion, 15–17 ruralism, 2, 28, 178 Resistance in Vichy France, 1, 5, 7–9, 26, 27 sport, 15–18 passim Sussex University, 20–22, 28 Vichy France and the Resistance, 3, 12 Keynes, John Maynard, 156, 165–6 King-Hall, (Commander), 103 Kokorniak, Kurt, 108 Kropotkin, Piotr, 18 Laborie, Pierre, 7 Lacombe Lucien, 2 Lacoste, Robert, 64 Laguerre, Hélène 44, 46 Laguerre, Odette 44, 46 Landry, Adolphe, 183, 185 Langer, Lawrence, 88 Larkin, Maurice, 7– 8 Larzac, 27–8 La Seyne, 77 Laval, Pierre, 78, 104, 109, 145 League of Nations, 139 Lebret, Louis-Joseph, 156 Lecoin, Louis, 37, 42 Le Corbusier, Edouard, 174 Ledermann, Sully, 190 Lefèvre, Jules, 120 Lefranc, Emilie, 38, 41, 43, 46 Lefranc, George, 38, 41, 46 Léger, Alexis, 102 Légion des Combattants, 41, 74, 76–7, 81, 108 Lehideux, François, 171 Le Lavandou, 110 Lenkway, Kurt, 87, 89

Lenoir, Madeleine, 44 Liberation, 3, 55, 64, 78, 147–8, 156 and resistance, 3 and Vichy intellectuals, 11, 156, 164–5, 176, 183–91 passim Rod Kedward on, 1, 6, 29 women, 53 see also Allied relations with French; épuration; femmes tondues Limagne, Pierre, 80 Limoges, 95 Liste Otto, 147 Lozère, 102 Lyons, 95 Lytton, Neville, 109 MacDonald, Dwight, 146 Malaquais, Jean, 78, 79 Marseillaise, La, 138 Marseilles, 61–3, 65, 79, 80, 95, 104 communists in, 61 Jews of, 81 march of miners, 63 Martinet, Marcel, 43 Martinet, Renée, 37, 43, 46 Marx, Karl 18,21 Mauco, Georges, 183, 185, 188, 189 Maurras, Charles 4, 6, 160 Mayoux, Jean-Jacques, 104, 110 men, absence, 184 armed Resistance, 26, 109 changing role, 51–8 passim hero figures, 56 male domination, 54 masculinity, 54, 175 military role, 51–8 passim, 122 protectors of women, 135 pro-Vichy activity, 45 rapists, 122–3, 133, 135–6

03 Vichy

22/12/04

11:06 am

Page 204

204 • Index targeted by round-ups, 81, 97 war fatalities, 132, 135–6 Mendès-France, Pierre, 104 Menton, 90 Methodists, 15–17 Metz, 108 Meyer, Haakon, 144 Michel, Henri, 22–3 Milice, 92, 94 miners, 59–71 peasant miners, 60 see also trade unions Mitterrand, François, 155 Moch, Jules, 65 Modiano, Hélène, 38, 46 Mollet, Guy, 44 Monnet, Jean, 155 Montpellier, 108 Morandat, Yvon, 104 Mounier, Emmanuel, 155 Munich agreement, 35–7, 44, 144–5 Mussolini, Benito, 96 Namier, Lewis 19, 22–3 Napoleon, 139–40 Nationalization, 64, 68, 184 Nazi-Soviet pact, 24 Nazism, 19, 35, 88–9, 92, 95, 145 and eugenics, 190 and Perroux, François, 160 Netherlands, 174 Nice, 11, 87–99, 133 Nicolle, Pierre, 79 Nivelle, General Robert, 132 Nord, 102 Oberlé, Jean, 107 Occupation, 3, 6, 21–2, 24, 28, 111 Offenstadt, Nicholas, 35, 36 Operation Barbarossa, 78–9

oral history, 5–6, 8, 11, 15–31, 21–4, 89–97 outlaw culture, 2–3, 27 Oyonnax, 110 pacifists, 10, 35–50, 151 and film, 131–41 collaborators, 40–1 communists, 38–9 feminists, 38–9 Jews, 42 resistors, 41–5 socialists, 38 Papon, Maurice, 155, 157 Paris, 102, 107, 133, 173–4 Paris Commune, 151 Parti Populaire Français (PPF), 79, 80, 92 patriotism, 23, 56, 134 Pathé, Charles, 132 Pau, 104 Paxton, Robert, 7, 8, 24, 28 Paz, Magdeleine, 38, 44, 46 peasants and peasantry, 3, 17, 108–9, 147, 150, 174–6 and Pétain, 2, 171 family, 175 miners, 60 revolt, 17 resistance, 109 Workers and Peasants Socialist Party, 143 Peer, Shanny, 173 Perroux, François 10, 156–69 Perse, Saint-John, 102 Peschanski, Denis, 3, 77 Pétain, Marshall Henri-Philippe 3, 36, 40, 90, 103, 156 and Pétainism, 40, 81, 90, 146 radio broadcast, 90 supporters of, 2, 40

03 Vichy

22/12/04

11:06 am

Page 205

Index • 205 Pichorel, Marthe, 37, 42, 46 Pivert, Marceau, 36, 38, 43, 144, 149 police, against communists, 61 against foreigners, 61 against Jews, 90 against strikers, 65 and women, 5–6 bluff, 25 corruption, 90 enforce German curfew, 118 enforce US curfew, 118 monitor public opinion, 74–5, 78 reactionary, 148 rumours about, 77 police reports, 6, 25, 61, 66, 74, 78 Ponthière, Maurice, 177–8 Popular Front, 27, 63–4, 145, 151, 173 positivism, 19 prisoners-of-war, 57 French, 57, 79, 81, 184 German, 69, 121–2 liberation of, 81 pro-natalism, 184–191 propaganda, 53, 74–5 and the BBC, 106 anti-Nazi, 147 protestants, 94, 163, 190 Prudhommeaux, Marie, 43, 46 Pyle, Ernie, 123 Queuille, Henri, 104 rape, 122–3, 133, 135–6 Rationalization movement, 11, 172–9 passim Ratti, Mrs, 119 refugees, 133 French, 11, 101–13 passim see also Jews Regionalism, 28

Occitan, 28 Relativity, 3, 23–4 Relève, La, 81, 109–10 religion, 18, 69 Rémond, Monsignor, 95 Réseau Marcel, 94 Resistance 26–9, 110, 116 BBC, 12, 101–13 passim British, 106–7 claims of, 185 communist, 4, 8, 23 contribution of Trotskyists, 148 discourses, 2, 183–4 historiography, 7–10, 23–4, 28 Jewish, 96 maquis, 2, 4–6, 9–10, 26–8, 64, 148 and forced labour, 110 motivation, 24, 101–2, 107 newspapers, 148 pacifist, 36–9, 41–4 rumours, 82–3 rural, 2, 4, 9, 27 southern zone, 1 use of historical examples, 2 women, 5, 9, 26, 40–4, 53–6 see also Rod Kedward Reuter, Paul, 164 Reynolds, Siân, 7 Reynaud, Paul, 155 Ribière, Marcel, 90, 92 Richardson, Joanna, 7 Rioux, Jean-Pierre, 9–10 Rosmer, Alfred, 143 Rougeron, Georges, 101 Rousso, Henry, 7, 8, 171, 179 Royal Victoria Patriotic School (RVPS), 104 rumours, 12, 73–85 creation of, 75–8 and resistance, 82–3

03 Vichy

22/12/04

11:06 am

Page 206

206 • Index and Vichy, 74–5, 80 ruralism, 9, 176–8 Russian Revolution, 2, 25, 151 Saint-Mandrier, 79 Sartre, Jean-Paul 6, 21–3, 54, 143 Sauvy, Alfred, 155, 183, 185, 186, 188, 190, 191 Saving Private Ryan, 121, 125 Scheler, Max, 158 Scott, James C., 25 Schwartz, Paula, 7 Seine-Inférieure, 102 Serge, Victor, 143 Service d’Ordre Légionnaire (SOL), 80 Service du Travail Obligatoire (STO), 80 Simmonds, John, 9 Simon, Paul, 107, 108 Sirinelli, Jean-François, 36 socialism, 11, 19, 149–51, 158–61, 166 Socialist Party, (SFIO) 36, 38–9, 41, 62, 144 Sombart, Werner, 158 Sorel, Georges, 159 Spanish Civil War, 28, 41, 44, 137, 150 Special Operations Executive (SOE), 104 Spencer, Herbert, 178 St Claude, 110 stereotypes, 52–3 St Etienne, 105 St Rambert-en-Buget (Ain), 109 strikes, 59–70 passim see also trade unions Sussex, University of, 20, 22 Sutter, Jean, 187, 188, 191 Sweden, 190 Sweets, John F., 26

Thalmann, Pavel, 146 Thibon, Gustave, 156, 164 Thompson, E.P., 21, 24 Thorez, Maurice, 148 torture, 20, 94, 96 Toulon, 75–83 Toulouse, 95, 104, 175 trade unions strike activity, 61 Confédération Française des Travailleurs Chrétiens (CFTC), 68 Confédération Générale des Travailleurs (CGT), 41–2, 62–9 Confédération Générale des Travailleurs Unitaires (CGTU), 62 Force Ouvrière (FO), 42, 65, 69 Trempé, Roland, 68 Trenet, Charles 6 Tribier, Louis, 43, 46 Trotsky, Leon, 38, 42, 143–6, 151 urban, 2, 27, 108, 117–19, 146, 156, 173–9 passim, 183 Uriage, 155, 164 USSR, 78–9 Vallaton, Benjamin, 82 Var, 73–83 V-campaign, 107 Vercingétorix, 134, 135 Verdun, 138 Vernet, Madeleine, 40, 43, 46 Vidalenc, Georges, 42, 46 Vidalenc, Marie, 42, 46 Vichy, 1–3, 9–11, 28 and Bernège, Paulette, 172–6 and Mitterrand, François, 155 and Perroux, François, 156–7, 163–4, 166

03 Vichy

22/12/04

11:06 am

Page 207

Index • 207 and radio, 1–5, 105 and rumours, 74–5, 80 ideology, 171, 184 National Revolution, 90, 156, 161, 163 pacifist sympathy with, 35, 39–41 regime 24, 145 Statut des Juifs, 92, 94, 185 see also Pétain Vichy France, 7, 57 Virgili, Fabrice, 29 Von Mises, Ludwig, 159 Vovelle, Michel, 77

Winter, Jay, 134, 136 women, 80, 104, 136, 184–6, and childbearing, 189 and resistance, 5, 9, 26, 40–4, 53–6 in demonstrations, 76, 80 in history, 4–5 in mining, 62 in the home, 172–5, 177 pacifists, 35–50 role of, 51–8, 174 see also rape Wood, Nancy, 29 Wortham, C., 105

Weill-Raynal, Sarah, 46 White, Harry Dexter, 156 Wieviorka, Annette, 95 Wieviorka, Olivier, 9, 44

Zeldin, Theodore, 19 Zeller, Fred, 151 zionists, 96, 163 Zola, Emile, 135