lecture 18, "the dark years: vichy france"
john merriman

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the fall of France, and collaboration

1936, again, possibly a time when Hitler could have been stopped in the Rhineland.

all of this has to be seen, in France, in the context of World War I and its legacy--there was a strong feeling, Wilson, etc., that wars were bad things done by evil people (and this was implicit in the resolution of the Treaty of Versailles, of course)

no one wanted another war, but Hitler had been agitating for one from the outset.

there was a feeling that another war would be unthinkable, in France. have to remember the tremendously traumatizing effects of WWI.

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Hitler had of course been building military capacity in Germany, re-arming the nation, etc. Hitler's advisors had been expecting a war to begin, though, in 1940/1941--as we all know, the war actually begins on the 1st of September, 1939, when Hitler invades Poland (he takes power in 1933).

militarily, why does France fall so rapidly?

their respective troop strengths were relatively equal at the time of the invasion of France in May 1940. in tanks, the allies actually had superiority, though German tanks were lighter and faster (and they were used in divisions, which gave them an advantage).

Germans had a clear superiority in fighter power (and they had tried them out in Spain, don't forget)

how had the British and French been planning? they believed that it would be another war of attrition--a long, drawn-out battle in which a strong, defensive line would be critical.

the Germans, by contrast, believed in rapid attack--the "blitzkrieg"

the French are assuming that the forests in N. France and E. Belgium will be physical impediments to the German invasion, but did not prove to be this. 10 tank divisions pour through the forests and they simply waste these French tanks. in four days they're way inside France. the German High Command thought it would take 9 days--and it took 4!

Hitler does make one mistake, prof argues, which is he refuels, allowing the evacuation of French and British troops at Dunkirk.

you have refugees, and German fighter planes picking them off as they fled.

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a new French government, then, collaborates with the Germans--Vichy France is born. (France is divided in two zones; the "collaborationist" government has its capital in Vichy.)

involves people who actively assist the Nazis in achieving their goals, acting on their aspirations. by the end of 1943/1944, if you were a French collaborator and you find graffiti with the word "K" on your door, you were toast--because it meant that the Maquis (or the resistance) was confident enough to make that kind of threat.

again, it's not only France--in Belgium, for example, the right-wing Flemish were more likely to collaborate, and it remains a tension. in Budapest, way you see a goulish shoe-memorial to Jews and Communists gunned down by Hungarian collaborators.

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the historiography and history of collaboration is fascinating, prof is saying.

there's a myth of universal resistance, perpetuated by people who had actively collaborated and also by Charles De Gaulle (he needed people to forget the Communist resistance, and lead the French people to identify with his person and leadership--part of the mantle he'd assume.)

there was a movie from 1953-1954 about the Jews arrested in Paris in 1942--taken away, put in a transit camp north of Paris. in the film you see French guards--so what they do is they photoshop it, effectively.

three series of crucial events have jolted this myth, prof is arguing:

(1) the film called "the sorrow and the pity", which is 4.5 hrs long. what the producer does is he goes to one single town and he looked at what happened there in collaboration--some of the best documentary scenes about intentional forgetting, etc,--where teachers forget about their Jewish friends/colleagues. it was only shown in one theatre. made for French TV, but not shown until 1981/1982. why? because it told the awful truth, which was that lots of people believed better Hitler than Blum.

(2) "vichy france," by bob paxton in 1972. it cut through the intentional forgetting to look squarely at collaboration--bob paxton, actually, didn't have the right to french archival documents (the 50 year rule, and a "troublemaker"). but when this book came out, it had a very powerful effect. here was a great historian saying it "wasn't like what you learned in school."

(3) the trials--as collaboration came to be something that people wanted to know about--then people with bad histories were tracked down. one of the first was Touvier, who was involved in the torture of resisters, deportations of jews/communists. he was hidden by right-wing groups (bounced from monastery to monastery). but finally tracked down and tried. at this trial, Paxton became an "expert witness." and there was a trial of Barbi, as well, who had tortured people in Lyons. and then there was Maurice Papon, a functionary who signed the death-certificates of hundreds and hundreds of Jews. he went on to a very successful career in the fourth and fifth republic. and they caught up with this very very old man, and there was the question of whether he ought to be tried (in 1998, 1999 -- at one point he escapes, and they find him at a fine restraunt in Switzerland; he insists, "I was a good bureaucrat.") he used the "shield argument"--that if it wasn't for me(/we), thing would have been even worse. he was found guilty, and sent to jail.

"the Vichy syndrome."

so, from having no official memory of Vichy--only bits that had to do with the resistance--France underwent this re-evaluation of its relationship to the regime. and that was important for people who had lost their family members, for Jews (some 75,000 Jews never returned to France after Vichy). the big round-up in June 1942, for example, was not done by the Germans, but by the French police. one of the worst institutions of all was the milice (the militia), created in January 1943, to get tough on the Jews, the communists, the resistance.

remember, the militia's tactics required very personal forms of betrayal--people sending letters to the police, etc. (in the days after war, almost 10,000 collaborators were executed)

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voting left superimposed on a map of de-christianization and there would be remarkable similarities, as prof said before. that is not true of collaborationists--this is not regional, or from one social class (this is the case in Belgium, though.) of course you're more apt to have people from the middle-classes collaborate, but it's difficult to generalize (you have working-class collaboration).

what about religion? the role of the Pope in all of this, professor is saying, is nauseating. the Pope knew, but did nothing. zero. the Catholic Church hierarchy was generally very collaborationist.
Roosevelt and these people knew (they knew before they did anything, prof reminds us), but their dilemma is trickier (can you bomb death camps? train tracks?)

the Church got what it wanted, during Vichy France--no divorce, two people executed for abortion. (though he is also insisting that it is not this open and shut)

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now, what did the people who collaborated want? a couple of themes

(1) argument made by Petain after the war. by collaborating with the Germans, you were saving the French State. but, as Paxton says, "they may have been saving the French state, but they were destroying the French nation."

(2) the xenophobia that characterized the French right, before the occupation, was obviously a prevalent theme during the collaborationists. no Italians, no Spanish (especially no Marxists).

(3) anti-semitism--the French Vichy regime (it's only in November of 1942 that the Germans occupy the Vichy zone, because the resistance is mobilizing) puts in laws depriving Jews of rights that the Germans didn't even ask them to do. in some ways even harsher than the infamous Nuremberg laws of the Reich.

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Petain, for the fascists, will be an answer for:

(1) the "decadence" and "feuding France" of pre-Vichy France

(2) the restoration of the earthly power of the Church. restoration of the soul of France; the old, Catholic/Christian values. a return to the "moral order"--when things are passed down from the "moral orders."

(3) nationalism, of a new sort--away from the legacy of the French revolution, towards a nationalism of patriotism and values. and, of course, with this comes an exclusionary ethic.

(4) authority--not the dirtiness of "democracy"; authority flows from the top, down.

(5) peasantism. "true France," not the France of Jews, striking workers, communism, etc., virtue is found in the soil (Joan of Arc is a peasant girl, remember--she becomes a symbol of all this). cities are places where Jews and workers hang out. the true France is the France of peasants on the soil.

(6) corporatism--they've read about Mussolini and Italian fascism, making the argument that workers and bosses have the same interests. and you can resolve these conflicts in the idea of the Nation--strong, marching, plutonic warriors

lecture 3, "centralized state and republic"
john merriman

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two things: (1) centralization of the state, and why paris as center; (2) why the "miracle baby," Chambord, did not become King of France--why did France end up a republic, and how?

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the role of Paris is unique in European history--and it still is this way, despite various decentralization proposals. it is the most centralized state in the world, according to professors.
(Spain, Germany all examples that have two or three balancing cities, at the very least. Even England, with industry in the north in Manchester, etc.--the economic centers, etc.)

the role of Paris, in sum, is special, and particular to France.

("Paris in the French Desert"--where else, but in France, would so much of the population be considered provincials, in a deeply condescending way.)

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One of the reasons that Paris' role is so great in France has to do with the way that the French state was constructed, the way it was centralized (you only hear people with Parisian accents on the radio, even in other regions, most of the time--always people with Northern accents).

Balzac articulated the way that Parisians view provincials (dominated by role and monotony, like "frogs at the bottom of their puddles"..."they don't think about things that are serious")

One of the key economic indicators of this dominance: Lyon, France's second city--its principal bank moved itself to Paris in the 1860s!

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How did it get this way?

All states centralized, but why Paris is so uniquely centralized?

In Europe in 1500, you had about 1500 independent, territorial states. State-making, of course, was one of the central processes in early modern European history. Unification of Italy (1850s and 1860s), Germany (1871), of course. States developed their ability to extract resources from the provinces.

In the 16th century, Paris came to be France's capital ("absolutism": in the 17th century, European rulers expand their abilities to extract resources from ordinary people, expand their reach to other provinces).

Louis XIV (the "sun-god") sends people out in the provinces to do his well--they negotiate with local nobles, etc.--but ultimately, the only thing that matters is that this increases the power of the state (it's at this time that the standing armies of the central, absolute monarchy become enormous).

And along comes the French Revolution, which seeks to rationalize the administration of France. So, before, where you had to pay tolls in many parts of France, different weights/etc., they try to strengthen the center. And because their rivals are the nobles and the Church, they opt to base their administrative center on Departments.

They become strings which reach out from Paris into the different Departments--the three things that any resident of the provinces sees, then, are the ministry of war, the ministry of justice, and the ministry of the interior.

Created in 1790, and they still exist (the only major change came in 1860, when the departments around Paris were consolidated due to the city's expansion). Most are named after rivers.

The point is: in order to defeat its enemies, the revolution centralizes the State.

And next, of course, Napoleon makes state centralization even more important, as he seeks to consolidate his power.

Similarly, the Second Empire (1852-1870), his nephew (Napoleon III), uses centralization as a tool of the state, to consolidate his own power, and to undercut the residual influence of the nobility. If you wanted something, it no longer made sense to go to the local notable--the patronage of the Empire (the Center) is key, as he can provide railroads, schools, etc.

You have economic processes that clarify the power of the Center, in sum. The state can authorize economic processes that make a city (railroads, bridges, factories, etc.). The evolution of banking, as well, which further consolidates power in Paris (the State financial institutions are in Paris, and they can direct investment).

If you look at a map of the railroads, in France--all roads lead to Paris. Trains reinforce the predominance of the capital city. (Turbo-Prof, a name for somebody who lives in Paris, and teaches outside of the city, but is desperate to live in Paris. This is bad, of course, because it destroys local university life.)

The 19th century, then, accentuates all of this. (Prof reading an absurd definition of the "provincial" from the Larousse dictionary). (De Gaulle, as a further example of this, which we will talk about later: "How can you govern a country that has 440 different kinds of cheese?")

It is illegal, in France, to use names that are not officially approved.

What has not changed, in Paris, is the capacity of the center's ministries to influence life in the provinces. (In the 1980s, there were huge demonstrations favoring Catholic Church against the diktats coming down from Paris with regards to content of education).

There is no other country, in the post-communist world, where so many people work for the State. (Prof's aside: it's entirely untrue, of course, that public services don't work).

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All this, of course, becomes a salient question in debates over Europe, and the EU constitution. We will talk about this later, but prof is arguing for a vote against--"I know of no one, except professors in Paris and Lyon, who would have voted for it"

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How did this happen?

In February of 1870, you had a monarchist-dominated Assembly, elected, in which rural regions (Brittany, Normandy, etc.) wanted the restoration of a monarchy. Why does that not happen? Why did it become the Third Republic (1875/1877-1940)?

A story of decisions taken by individual people (old-style history).

There was a miracle baby (part of the Bourbon royal family), Count de Chambord. In 1820, his father was assasinated, by a liberal, who wanted to extinguish this royal line (the Bourbons, who had been restored in 1815-1830).

France goes into great mourning, because the heir to the French throne is dead.

And then, lo and behold, it turns out his widow, was pregnant! And as the country holds its breath, the baby was a boy. A miracle baby! ("Henry V")

Unforunately, he was sort of a "sad sack."

Now, there were the Orleanists, who, under King Louis Phillipe, were in power from 1830-1848, and seen as "progressive", bourgeois-liberal monarchs. Carried an umbrella! He is chased from the throne in 1848--but he had helped modernize the economy, and did not restore the Church to its original power.

Whereas the Orleanists were sharp, then, Chambord was thick as a brick.

When France collapsed after the war with Prussia, it seemed to the monarchists that their ship had come in. It's easy to make fun of Chambord, of course, but there was a strong royalist movement--and it wasn't just people looking backward. He himself said he didn't want to be a king of the old regime, but to combine monarchy with modernity.

You have to imagine him after the Commune--he comes to Paris, had never been to the city. And he goes around as a tourist. He has an entourage, but there is this tradition of popular royalism--of people who wanted the King. There was a close association, of course, between the King and the Church, so there was support in the religious regions (he has made clear that he will restore the church to its rightful place of privilege). And he stands to benefit from the religious revival of the 1870s (after crisis, religious revivals--just like after the French revolution).

But it's hard, if you're 47 years old, and you're a pretender to the throne. He had a royal accident (broke his leg), he was himself a large man. He was a big-time gambler.

Viewed hereditary monarchy as a unique form of "salvation" for France. The key, of course, to his authority, as well, is the nobility, who have been disenfranchised since the revolution (the State had been winning the battle against its nobles). Elections in the 1880s bore out the fact that this was generally popular.

This did not stop nobles from believing that had they run in elections, they would have won, on behalf on the monarchy.

Chambord, though, when disaster came was not ready, in sum. He issued anachronistic manifestos, etc. Even still, for all his limitations, he was a man of faith and loyalty to his principles. In 1789, when the Bourbons were deposed, the family's white flag was replaced by the Tricolore. Chambord refused to compromise on this principle, which was the flag of the revolution that had killed his family members. And he didn't agree, either, to the sucession of the Orleanists after his death (Chambord didn't have any children: "Without my principles, I am a fat man with a big limp"(!)).

And so, Franch, lurched into the Republic of the Moral Order. In 1875, there's an amendment to the constitution that transforms France into a republic (won by won vote). In 1877, a General tries to overthrow the Government--but fails to do so, and by the early 1880s, the Republic is consolidated. And most people wanted it--its social base was the new middle class, and the workers. Some peasants in the south, of course, were still in favor of a monarchy.

The executive is fairly weak--real stregnth lies in the assembly. This does not mean that the State is not strong, at all. A very controversial decision of this centralized government comes in 1905, for separation of the Church and State.

The State becomes the new vehicle of economic, cultural, political patronage--replaces the nobility, the Church, and the monarchy that most people did not want.

believe it or not in the middle east:
The problem, of course, is that these are all extraordinary facts which will not offend anyone. There are no suicide bombers in Ripley, no Israeli air strikes ("Believe It or Not, 17,000 Lebanese and Palestinians, most of them civilians, were killed in Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon"), no major casualty tolls ("Believe It or Not, up to 650,000 Iraqis died in the four years following the 2003 Anglo-American invasion of Iraq"). See what I mean? Just a bit too close to the bone (or bones).
(...) but I think only the French press - in the shape of Le Monde Diplomatique - was prepared to confront a bit of "Believe It or Not". It recalled vividly - and shamefully - how the world's newspapers covered the story of Egypt's "aggression" against Israel. In reality - Believe It or Not - it was Israel which attacked Egypt after Nasser closed the straits of Tiran and ordered UN troops out of Sinai and Gaza following his vituperative threats to destroy Israel. "The Egyptians attack Israel," France-Soir told its readers on 5 June 1967, a whopper so big that it later amended its headline to "It's Middle East War!".
(...) Only the president of France, General de Gaulle, moved into political isolation by telling a press conference several months later that Israel "is organising, on the territories which it has taken, an occupation which cannot work without oppression, repression and expulsions - and if there appears resistance to this, it will in turn be called 'terrorism'".
(...) Congolese troops from Belgium's immensely wealthy African colony scored enormous victories over Italian troops in Africa during the Second World War, capturing 15,000 prisoners, including nine generals. Called "the Public Force" - a name which happily excluded the fact that these heroes were black Congolese - the army mobilised 13,000 soldiers and civilians to fight Vichy French colonies in Africa and deployed in the Middle East - where they were positioned to defend Palestine - as well as in Somalia, Madagascar, India and Burma. Vast numbers of British and American troops passed through the Congo as its wealth was transferred to the war chests of the United States and Britain. A US base was built at Kinshasa to move oil to Allied troops fighting in the Middle East. But - Believe It or Not - when Congolese trade unions, whose members were requisitioned to perform hard labour inside Belgium's colony by carrying agricultural and industrial goods and military equipment, often on their backs, demanded higher salaries, the Belgian authorities confronted their demonstrations with rifle fire, shooting down 50 of their men.