Vichy France And The Resistance: Culture & Ideology 0389205761, 9780389205760

Table of contents :
Contents
Preface
Introduction: Ideologies and Ambiguities
Part One: Vichy
1. Political Surveillance and Ideological Control in Vichy France: a Study of Teachers in the Midi, 1940-1944
2. Women and the National Revolution
3. Manipulators of Vichy Propaganda: a Case Study in Personality
4. Jews and Catholics
Part Two: Ambiguities
5. Saint-Exupéry’s Pilote de guerre : Testimony, Art and Ideology
6. The Role of Joan of Arc on the Stage of Occupied Paris
7. Ambiguities in the Film Le Ciel est à vous
8. Catholicism Under Vichy: a Study in Diversity and Ambiguity
9. Uriage: the Assault on a Reputation
10. Uriage: the Influence of Context on Content
11. Emmanuel Mounier, Esprit and Vichy, 1940-1944: Ideology and Anti-ideology
Part Three: Resistance
12. The Resistance Experience: Teaching and Resources
13. France, Soil and Language: Some Resistance Poems by Luc Bérimont and Jean Marcenac
14. Les Cahiers du Silence
15. The Maquis and the Culture of the Outlaw (With Particular Reference to the Cévennes)
Outlines
16. Collaboration and Literary Criticism : Ramon Fernandez's Barrés
17. Writing Under Vichy: Ambiguity and Literary Imagination in the Non-Occupied Zone
18. The Cult of Joan of Arc in French Schools, 940-1944
19. Robert Brasillach: the Machismo of Impotence
Notes on Contributors
Chronology
Index

Citation preview

VICH Y FRANCE AN D THE RESISTANCE

VICHY FRANCE

and the

RESISTANCE CULTURE & IDEOLOGY Edited by RO DERICK KEDW ARD and ROGER AUSTIN

BARNES & NOBLE BOOKS Totowa, New Jersey

© 1985 Roderick Kedward and Roger Austin First published in the USA 1985 by Barnes A Noble Books, 81 Adams Drive, Totowa, New Jersey 07512 Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Main entry under title: Vichy France and the resistance. 1. World War, 1939-1945-France-A ddresses, essays, lectures. 2. World War, 1939-1945-Underground movem ents-France-A ddresses, essays, lectures. 3. F ranceIntellectual life-2 0 th century-addresses, essays, lectures. 4. Politics and culture—France-H istory-20th century-Addresses, essays, lectures. 5. FranceHistory-Germ an occupation, 1940-1945-Addresses, essays, lectures. I. Kedward, H.R. (Harry Roderick) II. Austin, Roger. D802.F8V46 1985 940.53*44 85-6095 ISBN 0-389-20576-1

Printed and bound in Great Britain

CONTENTS

Preface R oderick K edward and R oger A ustin Introduction: Ideologies and Ambiguities R oderick K edw ard Part One: V ichy 1.

1 11

Political Surveillance and Ideological Control in Vichy France: a Study o f Teachers in the Midi, 1940-1944 R oger A ustin

13

2.

Women and the N ational Revolution M iranda Pollard

36

3.

M anipulators o f Vichy Propaganda: a Case Study in Personality John D ixon

48

Jews and Catholics L ouis A den

73

4.

Part Two: A m biguities 5. 6.

Saint-Exupéry’s P ilote de guerre : Testim ony, A rt and Ideology £ B eynon John

89 91

The Role o f Joan o f Arc on the Stage o f Occupied Paris Gabriel Jacobs

106

7.

Ambiguities in the Film L e Ciel est à vous Jeanie Sem ple

123

8.

Catholicism Under Vichy: a Study in Diversity and Ambiguity BittHaUs 133

9.

Uriage: the Assault on a R eputation Brian Darling

147

Uriage: the Influence o f C ontext on Content D erek R obbins

159

10. 11.

Emmanuel M ounier, E sprit and Vichy, 1940-1944: Ideology and Anti-ideology John M ight 171

Part Three: R esistance 12. 13. 14. 15.

191

The Resistance Experience: Teaching and Resources H ilary F o o titt and John Sim m onds

193

France, Soil and Language: Some Resistance Poems by Luc Bérim ont and Jean Marcenac Jan Higgins Les Cahiers du Silence E thel Tolanksy

206 222

The Maquis and the Culture o f the Outlaw (W ith Particular Reference to the Cévennes) R oderick K edward

232

C ontents O utlines 16. 17. 18. 19.

253

Collaboration and Literary Criticism : Ramon Fernandez's Barrés BUI K idd

255

Writing Under Vichy: Ambiguity and Literary Im agination in the Non-Occupied Zone R obert P ickering

260

The Cult o f Joan o f Arc in French Schools, 1940-1944 N ick A tk in

265

Robert Brasillach: the Machismo o f Im potence John Coombes

269

Notes on C ontributors

274

Chronology

277

Index

284

PREFACE

The original idea o f bringing together scholars from the UK and Ireland w ith an interest in Vichy France and the Resistance was conceived, appropriately enough, in France. In fact it arose in the course o f a dis­ cussion betw een us after a long day in the Archives Départem entales at Mende in the Lozère. We both owe a great deal to those archivists throughout France who have generously given tim e to advise us and to support our requests for access to prim ary sources. W ithout their help, m any o f the contributions to this book would n o t have been possible. The conference we planned in Mende finally took place at the University o f Sussex in April 1984 w ith the presentation o f ten tong papers and several short ones. We designed it to show the various aspects o f research into Occupied France currently in progress in Britain and Ireland, b u t it would have been sadly impoverished w ithout the presence o f Monsieur Gilles Chouraqui, the Conseiller Culturel from th e French Embassy in London, and Monsieur François Bédarida, D irector o f the Institu t dTiistoire du Temps Présent in Paris. We were honoured and delighted th at they were able to contribute in such a telling way to our discussions. It is literally true to say th at the final form in which this book appears owes a great deal to the spirit o f lively and friendly discourse which characterised bo th the form al and inform al gatherings o f the con­ ference. On behalf o f the contributors to this volume, we would like to record our sincere thanks to those who attended the conference and who enlivened it w ith their comm ents and the generous criticism o f the papers given. It was because all the sessions were so productive th at we decided to ask for five m ore tong papers, and to publish four o f the short pieces th at had originally been given as ten-m inute introduc­ tions to potential research. These four are placed together as Outlines at the end o f the book (Chs 16-19). We only wish we had space to publish the even shorter contributions to each discussion: had we done so, the intellectual challenge and scope o f so m any different aspects o f Vichy France and the Resistance would have been fully apparent. As it is, we still hope th at the colour, diversity and depth o f the subject will be evident from these pages. Roderick Kedward and Roger Austin

INTRODUCTION:

IDEOLOGIES

AND

AM BIG U ITIES

Roderick Kedward

The Conference at which these essays were first presented, or suggested, brought together m ost o f the British-based scholars who are currently researching the period o f the German Occupation o f France. The dis­ ciplines were several and the approaches individualised and specific: there was no attem pt to produce a stage-managed unity o f purpose or a collective conclusion. High on empirical rummaging, w hether in local archives o r little known poem s, the papers pleaded guilty to a selective analysis, but showed a resilient toughness in their diffused insights. G athered together now into a book, the collection is vulnerable for its lack o f an overview, b u t the roots are there for a landscape to develop. The research it contains coincides widely w ith current research in France, b u t it is English, o r B ritish, in m ost ways th at the French would traditionally expect. Only the perfidy is missing. If the book shows there to be any particular emphasis on this side o f the Channel it is in the long section devoted to Ambiguities. The them e o f ambiguity surfaced recurrently during the Conference, even in the papers and discussion which appeared to be dealing w ith unam­ biguous issues. In this short introduction I would like to make a few comm ents on this them e, prefaced by still fewer words on how I m yself envisage the ideologies o f Vichy and the Resistance. The comments are really little more than personal reflections, and are n o t intended to pro­ vide a theoretical framework to the essays which follow . They them ­ selves have provided their own theoretical scaffolding, if any was thought to be needed. From m y own point o f view I would wish to portray the ideology o f Vichy, as it was contained in the Révolution Nationale and early collab­ oration as undoubtedly class-based, but m ore by reason o f its open hostility to the Left and Trade Unionism than by any consistent econ­ omic measures to develop the role o f private capital and property in the running o f society. It is not th at the Révolution Nationale had no econ­ om ic rationale, but th at like so m any com binations o f nationalism and corporatism in the tw entieth century, it was full o f political and cultural ideas which had little or no economic consistency. Its emphasis on provincial traditions and its doctrine o f a return to the land have been seen as a willingness to play the rural role in Germany’s New

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Europe, but in fact the rural and provincial ideas long predate any politics o f collaboration and m ust be seen as an embarrassment to the financiers and technocrats who were attracted to Vichy because o f its determ ination to abolish the Trade Unions and curb the political L eft, and the opportunities it gave for a directed econom y. Vichy and the Révolution Nationale were n o t coterm inous. Vichy continued into a second stage o f collaboration when the ideas o f the Révolution Nationale became decidedly tarnished. We have to ask w hether the various stages o f collaboration, from M ontoire through to Sigmaringen, have a single ideology? Whose interests did they repre­ sent? This is m uch m ore difficult, for if the interests o f the econom i­ cally dom inant class were inconsistently represented by the Révolution Nationale and early form s o f collaboration, they were hardly served at all by the collaboration in which Vichy became ultim ately involved in 1943-4. The objection to this m ight well be th at it was collaboration in its m ost com plete form which seemed to A lbert Speer in Germany and Bichelonne in France to provide a m odel o f an efficiently planned and directed European econom y, which some have seen as prefiguring the Treaty o f Rome and the EEC. Surely this has an ideological dimension? Eventually, yes, when it emerges from an entirely different political source, the econom ic planners o f the various Resistance movements in Europe. Under Vichy it was far too individualised to qualify as an ideo­ logy. Would it n o t be simpler to call the whole o f Vichy fascist, adding the adjective French to distinguish it from the other European varieties? It m ight be sim pler, and it would represent the way in which the Jews and the Resisters increasingly experienced the Vichy presence, but it would still leave us w ith the problem o f deciding w hat kind o f an ideology French fascism actually was. In the end I would like to retain the diag­ nosis o f fascism, b u t in the form th at Poulantzas conceptualised.1 I would suggest th at the Révolution Nationale combined w ith collabora­ tion to make Vichy in its first tw o years an ‘exceptional state* in so far as it served the needs o f the cartels and m onopolies, the patronat and the financial w orld, which had been radically challenged by the Popular F ront. But it was far m ore insubstantial than the ‘exceptional states* which Poulantzas saw existing in the early stages o f Italian Fascism and German Nazism, due to the inevitable economic disasters o f being an occupied and exploited country; and it was inconsistent due to the pre­ valence o f cultural and political ideas which stemmed only from the fringe o f the dom inant class and not from the centre. In the last two years, 1942-4, even this flexible definition fails to make sense, due to

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the progressive disintegration o f the Vichy state, and I would venture th at Vichy in its last stages was no m ore than the politics o f oppor­ tunism , drawn tow ards highly derivative, Nazi-style, solutions, b u t w ith no coherent ideology, and no fundam ental class basis. What is im portant fo r m any o f the contributors to this book, is the role th at w riters and intellectuals played, and the extent to which ideas and culture were the main creative force behind the Vichy ideology lather than econom ic interests. This moves us away into a m ore freefloating conceptual w orld, which allows the notion th at culture and economics have no predictable relationship to each other. In this perspective, ideas are not necessarily class-determined even if they become class-specific in their results and application, while the arts in the widest sense can either be dependent on class, or can establish their independence o f class structures and values. Such an understanding o f culture is usually combined w ith a definition o f ideology in which class and econom ics play a role, b u t n o t a determ ining one. Ideology in this sense is a body o f ideas, forming the basis o f a distinct set o f policies, and one which could be the projection o f class interests b u t is not necessarily so. W ithin this definition it could be argued th at the ideo­ logy o f A ction Française, which was derived from ideas about French history, culture and character, was an ideology perm anently in pursuit o f a class basis and an econom ic rationale. It appeared to have found both under Vichy, b u t when it lost them in the last years o f the Occu­ pation, it did n o t collapse as an ideology b u t became even m ore fanati­ cally entrenched in its cultural base. Clearly when ideology is used in this way it becomes m ore approxi­ m ate to words like dogma and doctrine, and by and large this seems to be the way in which it is used in this book. I don’t believe th at this should entail a rejection o f the notion th at ideologies are m ostly classbased, b u t rather it should present itself as a conceptual adjustm ent to do justice to the obvious lim itations o f relating n o t only collaboration b u t also Resistance to the interests o f class. For if there are inconsist­ encies w ithin the class dimension o f Vichy and collaboration, there are ju st as m any, if n o t m ore, w ithin Resistance. In Resistance we find a body o f ideas which stemmed from a politi­ cal tradition to which several econom ic classes were, in their different ways, attached. This was the tradition o f republican patriotism , which had a revolutionary wing b u t a socially conservative centre. It can certainly be described as an ideology in the looser sense, b u t it was slow to establish itself in Resistance, and it only did so when it became fully apparent th at Vichy could n o t protect the French nation as Pétain had

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so boldly claimed in July 1940. The Resistance as the sole em bodim ent o f this republican patriotic tradition dates from 1942, and even then the hopes o f m any republicans, who had seen in the hero o f Verdun the personification o f their patriotism , had n o t been fully destroyed. Before 1942, Resistance was a notable force in the French reaction to the O ccupation b u t it could n o t be said to constitute an ideology until the Resisters came to m onopolise the political legacy o f republican de­ fence and the citizen at arms. The prim acy o f politics in the make-up o f Resistance does n o t mean th at class interests were o f little im portance in its doctrines. Vichy de­ prived the urban working class o f its bargaining strength and collabor­ ated closely in the deportation o f labour. As a result. Resistance prom ised m uch for this victimised class. Had it not been for the in­ fighting and disarray w ithin the politics o f the Left betw een the victory o f the Popular F ront and the end o f the Nazi-Soviet pact, Resistance might have started as a proletarian m ovem ent, and the exaggerated fears o f the Allies and de Gaulle o f a social revolution at the tim e o f the Liberation m ight have been justified. Such speculative comment is only worthwhile as a way o f emphasising th at this did n o t happen: republi­ can patriotism took ideological possession o f the Resistance and never lost its hold whatever tactical concessions might have been made to ideas o f radical social change. The culture o f the Resistance, unlike the culture o f Vichy, is diffi­ cult to quantify. Its quality is largely found in poetry which adapted better to clandestine expression than the visual and perform ing arts, and demanded fewer o f the scarce m aterial resources than the novel. Like the ideology o f the Révolution N ationale, the ideology o f repub­ lican patriotism also had its cultural m yths, sacred doctrines, heroic images o f the past, and creative visions o f the future. Due to the popu­ larity o f Pétainism , some o f these m yths overlapped for a tim e w ith the m yths o f Vichy, and the ambiguities were striking. They did n o t last, and after 1942 the ideologies have no common ground except the ‘Marseillaise’, and even there, as Louis Grave said in L e Chagrin e t La P itié, T h e evening the first arms arrived, we came to this cellar. I rem ember we sang the “Internationale” . We weren’t Communists though; it was ju st th at Pétain sang “La Marseillaise” so we had to sing T T ntem ationale” .'3 Such an anecdote is a good rem inder th at the ideas and cultural attitudes w ithin the Resistance were expressed m ore in in­ dividual action and group behaviour than in art form s or intellectual writing. The cultural and intellectual historians o f Vichy have a fairly orthodox task, w ith fam iliar form s to analyse, whereas the equivalent

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5

studies o f Resistance m ust use an enlarged concept o f cultural and intellectual expression. For exam ple, we can gain a very clear picture o f Vichy’s attitudes to women from film s, novels, plays and magazines as well as through the Governm ent’s social policies. The very few writings which the Resistance produced is poor m aterial by com parison, but th at does n o t make the research in th at direction impossible: it will in­ volve a search for images o f women outside the cultural form s o f expression, in the organisation and structures o f Resistance activity. To understand the ideology o f Resistance, action and expression need to become m ore interchangeable. There can be few better reasons for encouraging interdisciplinary research than this. M ention o f interdisciplinary work brings me back to the Conference and the recurrence o f am biguity in the papers and discussion. What are the im plications, possibilities and problem s o f finding so m any ambig­ uities in th e history and culture o f France under the German Occupa­ tion? Several observations are possible. In the first place the em piricist will laconically rem ark th at w hat has always been there will eventually be discovered, not least as the search for a viable thesis takes young researchers away from the well-trodden paths o f collaboration and Resistance into the thickets o f comprom ise, uncertainty and ambiva­ lence. But where have the w ell-trodden paths run? Through the heart o f the wood or only round the perim eter? Perhaps the thickets o f am biguity are really the heart o f the wood, representing the very stu ff o f the Occupation experience, or are they no m ore than rébarbative clumps o f undergrow th above which soar the fam iliar trees o f collabor­ ation and Resistance for which the wood is prim arily known? The placing o f the section on Ambiguities in the centre o f the book may seem to have a symbolic im portance, b u t this is really n o t so, for it was an unthinking, traditional (very English?) place to p u t ambiguities, lying betw een the control mechanisms o f a collaborationist Vichy at one end, and the subversion o f the Maquis at the other. If ambiguity was the norm o f the Occupation experience and expression, then perhaps the section should come assertively at the beginning. If, how ­ ever, the discovery o f ambiguities is the tradem ark o f those w ith a professional interest in com plicating any given subject m atter, then the section should come at the end, as a self-conscious admission o f academic practice. The Conference only skirmished around this issue: there was no direct confrontation, and no resolution. Ambiguities rem ain at the centre, or should we say in the m iddle, fa u te de m ieux.

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Secondly, the fascination o f ambiguities is not only th at they are a whole new area for the researcher to discover and develop, but th at they are also, or more so, new ways o f assessing old m aterial, sometimes as a result o f new inform ation but just as often as a result o f new in­ terests, new insights and new approaches both w ithin and outside the academic w orld. Interpretations, like perform ances, are specific to tim e and place: they have their own history, their own structures, their own language. A t the m om ent, on this side o f the Channel, there is a marked preference for breaking down the polarities in French history and the French way o f life. This preference values ambiguity as a force which breaks the predictability o f polar opposites, and anchors both experience and expression more firmly in the complexities o f their own structures. I hesitate to call it a preference for the structuralist approach, for that would be to lim it its source to th at particular school o f thought. It derives in equal measure from a scrupulous empiricism. The result is an emphasis on links, interconnections, common sources, interchangeable language and so on, all o f which make for ambiguities as soon as attem pts are made to superimpose a clear-cut grid o f polar opposites. The cult o f Joan o f Arc, the respect for Péguy, a sense o f French trad­ ition, the call to patriotism , were ju st some o f the m any ingredients in French attitudes and opinion during the O ccupation, common to the cuisine o f the Hôtel du Parc at Vichy, to the furtive Resistance meals in the cellars o f the Croix-Rousse in Lyon, and to the long evenings round the smokeless fires o f the Maquis. Inevitably there is a certain distancing involved in this kind o f emphasis, which raises controversy in France and often offends. It is easier to explore the ambiguities o f patriotism under the O ccupation, and even to conclude th at both Vichy and the Resistance (perhaps some o f the fascists in Paris also) were patriotic, if patriotism is seen as a common ingredient in all French politics, like the predilection for groupuscules. Similarly the m ilitary exploits o f SOE agents, Resistance units, the SS, and the Milice can more easily be compared from a stand­ point which regards war-games as endemic in masculine behaviour. What kind o f patriotism and what objectives there were in the wargames, then become secondary rather than prim ary questions. Such distancing suggests a lack o f political commitment,- or an overall cynicism about behaviour, but this is not necessarily the case. There are politics w ithout patriotism , and hum an behaviour w ithout war-games, to which the apparently distant, uncom m itted researcher may be strongly tied. A preference for emphasising ambiguities, links and interconnections in Occupied France may be a step tow ards estab­

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lishing what the researcher feels to be wider and m ore im portant polar opposites. It is n o t just a current possibility. During the existence o f the Nazi-Soviet pact the official opinion o f the leaders o f the French Communist Party was th at there was little to choose between Pétain, seen as the servant o f the French cartels, and de Gaulle, seen as the servant o f the City o f London. A larger dialectic than the struggle between Vichy and the Free French thus made de Gaulle and Pétain into confederates rather than enemies in the eyes o f the PCF. The party quickly withdrew this analysis, but it surfaced again, this tim e among Trotskyists and other sections o f the Left in the 1960s who found m uch to compare in the social philosophy o f Gaullism and Pétainism. A class analysis o f the tw o during the Occupation has yet to be rigor­ ously undertaken, but it cannot be long before a full social history o f all sides o f the conflict introduces a host o f new ambiguities, partic­ ularly if the study incorporates a fem inist perspective. In a similar pro­ cess, the analysis by Marrus and Paxton o f attitudes and policies tow ards the Jews, though concentrating on the Vichy régime, nevertheless found little to recommend in the attitudes o f any o f the French during the first tw o years after the defeat. They established an area o f ambiguity which cut across the traditional divide, and thereby empha­ sised their com m itm ent to a larger m oral perspective.3 A destructuring o f specific polar opposites is not the destructuring o f all. Thirdly, the growing research into ambiguity under the Occupation raises the problem o f w hether the term should be judgem ental, as it has m ostly been used, or w hether it should become more neutrally descriptive. As a portm anteau term ambiguity has stood for bad faith, failure to choose, dishonesty, double-jeu in the Laval sense, equivoca­ tion and a ttentism e, all o f which carry a derogatory flavour affecting the way we diagnose ambiguity under the Occupation and how we respond to it. W hether we intend it or n o t, a section called Ambiguities still carries a level o f indictm ent within it, which is why the contri­ butors defending the reputation o f Emmanuel Mounier and the staff o f the École des Cadres at Uriage do so w ith a discernible degree o f vigour. But also discernible in the research which emerged at the Conference was the use o f the term to suggest inconsistency, confusion, or the inevitable compromises involved in fulfilling the demands o f everyday life under the O ccupation, w hether driving a train safely to its destina­ tion even though it was full o f Germans, or opening an art gallery, theatre or opera to a clientele which was mainly German. François Truffaut addressed this kind o f ambiguity squarely in L e D ernier M étro (1980) as Jean-Louis Curtis had done immediately after the

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war in Les Forêts de la N u it (winner o f the Prix Goncourt in 1947). Still further there is a widespread use o f the concept o f an ‘ambiguous situation’ as if it exists independently o f the population, so th at certain kinds o f ambiguous behaviour and expression are seen to be unavoid­ able effects o f som ething external to individual or group responsibility. What has happened over 40 years o f writing and research on the Occupation is th at, inevitably, analogous periods o f conflict, similar situations o f occupation by a foreign power, similar liberation move­ m ents, have arisen to invite comparisons and contrasts w ith the French experience. Almost all researchers are also teachers, and in educational discussions and curricula there is scope for them atic observations in which the Occupation o f France becomes ju st one in a num ber o f linked events. Obvious examples o f the comparative and generalised approach include the integration o f the Paris fascists into the generic category o f European, and still wider, psychological fascism; the dis­ cussion o f Resistance in term s o f other movements throughout the world which have been called terroristic by the prevailing forces o f order; the continued debate about the quality o f com m itted literature and the optim um role o f intellectuals in a divided society; and the study o f film under the Occupation less in term s o f Vichy propaganda than in term s o f film genres and the traditions o f French film making which stretch either side o f the war. An understandable interest at present lies in the comparison o f Vichy, not so much w ith other govern­ m ents in an O ccupation, but w ith other governments in an economic recession. To what extent do these governments use a recession, as Vichy used the O ccupation, to force through a sectarian political pro­ gramme under the cloak o f realism , the national interest and the need for sacrifice? Do similar acts o f social discrim ination result? or com par­ able m ethods o f law enforcem ent? And can those who are caught betw een collaborating w ith a government’s economies and resisting be studied for the same sym ptoms o f ambiguity as were displayed in the French adm inistration under Vichy? Clearly, the effect o f generalising the study o f the Occupation may ju st as easily intensify the value judgem ents attached to ambiguity as reduce them , depending on the force o f the comparisons and the subjec­ tive elements involved. The result is more to normalise the term rather than neutralise it, to make it more understandable and predictable. This is the im plication o f T ruffaut’s film and the novel by Curtis, b u t, excellent as they are, I feel th at the scathing satire o f ambiguity in Jean D utourd’s A u Bon Beurre (1952) should be placed alongside them to prevent the term from becoming a colourless synonym o f hum an falli-

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bility. Fourthly, no one should confuse the study o f ambiguity w ith the study o f chance. They may be related but they are not the same. Chance is as often the forerunner o f choice and unambiguous behaviour as it is o f am biguity. The film made by Louis Malle in 1973-4, Lacom be L ucien, which portrays the way in which a peasant boy in the South West o f France becomes a member o f the German police in the last m onths o f the Occupation, was widely reviewed as a film about ambiguity and chance. The reviewers were not entirely wrong, but m ost o f them failed to look carefully at the question o f choice w ithin the film . Lucien finds him self inside the collaborationist headquarters due to the chance event o f a punctured bicycle tyre, but when his uninten­ tional betrayal o f his village schoolmaster leads to the arrest and torture o f the schoolm aster and a realisation by L uden o f w hat his new-found friends are doing, he had a choice, though not an easy one, o f w hether to stay w ith them or leave. Malle does not put the choice into so many words, but the visual presentation o f L uden left to him self and wander­ ing into the hall o f the hotel where he hears the cries o f the tortured schoolm aster, conveys a period o f reflection and calculation during which the choice is made. He deddes to stay, thereby implicating him self in the torture upstairs. Thereafter, ambiguities in his behaviour are portrayed side by side w ith quite unambiguous actions. There is nothing o f the reluctant, acddental collaborator in his enjoym ent o f the power and privilege it brings, and if the suggestion o f the film is th at his psychological needs might ju st as easily have been satisfied in the Maquis, this does not invalidate the fact th at what he did become was a willing recruit into the German police, for as long as police duty and self-interest coincided. To say th at a particular collaborator might have become a Resister had circumstances been different (a claim made im plicitly in the trial o f D am and), draws attention to the im portance o f chance, but it does not make the choice itself ambiguous. When the Resisters claimed at the trial o f Laval th at his double-jeu was not a defence, they were right, in so far as Laval had chosen collaboration as a way o f trying to minimise the effects o f Occupation, whereas they had chosen Resistance. If collaboration had won, the Germans would still be there, however skilful the double-leu. Ambiguities in intention, o r even the absence o f intention as in the case o f Lucien Lacombe, do n o t necessarily produce ambiguous actions. It would be difficult, and probably foolish, to try and judge w hether wider perspectives ultim ately enhance or weaken our insights into the O ccupation. I feel fairly sure th at counter-suggestibility will always

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operate in discussions o f this kind. A swing towards comparative or generalised perspectives will almost mechanically produce a reasser­ tion o f specificity and vice versa. It must be so, for only by creative thinking in both directions will we have anything to offer on a period in French life and culture in which huge issues were at stake and small details so determ inant. Given this assurance o f a pendulum swing in research, which will swing also between the study o f ambiguity and choice, one final comm ent comes to m ind. Those who chose to resist the German Occu­ pation, and those who chose to collaborate or wait on events, did so w ithin a specific context as well as all the larger ones th at we now recognise. All three reactions were initially based on unknown possi­ bilities, and involved a good deal o f imaginative speculation. But by 1942 there was less and less need for speculation and more and more for a decision between different sets o f actualities. Some o f the initial possibilities had become facts, and a choice no longer had th at ‘unreality' th at many have diagnosed in both collaboration and Resist­ ance in 1940-1. Throughout 1942, and still more so in 1943-4, the in­ hum anity o f Nazism and the m oral necessity o f active protest impressed themselves on French society. This changing context, not outside or beyond the O ccupation, but w ithin it, gives the study o f choice between collaboration and Resistance its own moral imperative. Ambiguity at th at point, w hether at the tim e or since, m ust surely be seen as a choice not to choose.

Notes 1. Nicos Poulantzas, Fascisme et Dictature (Maspero, 1970), trs. as Fascism and Dictatorship, Verso Edition, 1974. 2. Marcel Ophuls, Le Chagrin et la Pitié (Productions Télévision Rencontre, 1969), trs. as The Sorrow and the Pity (Paladin, 1975), p. 85. 3. M.R. Marrus and R.O. Paxton, Vichy France and the Jews (Basic Books, New York, 1981).

PART ONE: VICHY

POLITICAL SU RVEILLAN CE AND IDEOLOGICAL CONTROL IN VICHY FRANCE: A STUDY OF TEACHERS IN THE MIDI, 1940-1944 Roger Austin

Recent work on Vichy France has reflected an interest in the regime’s readiness to prom ote its ideology through propaganda1 and through socialising young people in schools and youth movements.3 It is now quite clear th at Vichy’s reform s o f the educational system and its sup­ port for youth organisations were not only an attem pt to overturn an allegedly republican, bookish and secular system th at was held respons­ ible for the defeat in 1940, but also a deliberate attem pt to foster political integration in the new state. Work based largely on the archives o f the Ministère de l’Education has shown how educational and youth policy evolved from the confused nationalist idealism o f 1940 to a cynical sacrifice o f the interests o f young people in the face o f German demands for compulsory labour in 1943-4. What has not been made clear, however, is the way in which the state developed and made use o f an extensive surveillance system not only to m onitor teachers as a group and as individuals b u t to use the intelligence th at was collected to try to enforce political loyalty. The way in which this operation was conducted provides insights into how far the regime was concerned to prom ote ideological control, particularly among primary school teachers in state schools. This chapter, based on hitherto classified archives, is an interpreta­ tive essay which explores how Vichy exercised political control and how effective it was. These issues are analysed and discussed by illus­ trating w hat happened in several departm ents in the Midi. Detailed work in the Lozère, Ardèche and H érault, w ith comparable m aterial from the Gard, Aude, Pyrénées-Orientales, Aveyron and Alpes-Mari­ tim es, is beginning to show how widespread Vichy’s political surveil­ lance and control o f teachers was. At the same tim e, analysis at the level o f the departm ent is starting to reveal how m uch latitude local officials exercised in their interpretation o f national policy. The control o f teachers functioned through tw o main channels: firstly, through the official state apparatus o f the Ministries o f Educa­ tion and the Interior which often relied on inform ation sent by the M inistry o f War, and secondly through populist pressure groups like

13

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P olitical Surveillance and Ideological C ontrol

the war veterans association, the Légion des Anciens Com battants. As we shall see, these tw o agencies did n o t always share the same political perspectives.

The Ministry of the Interior and the Prefecture The responsibilities o f the M inistry o f the Interior and its local repre­ sentative the prefect in ensuring the political loyalty o f the teaching corps had a tradition which dated back to the Napoleonic era but between 1940-4 prefects not only had a far more sophisticated system o f controls at this disposal but particularly strong reasons for wanting to use them . Popular belief in the role o f prim ary school teachers in sapping the morale o f the nation was widespread. Even outsiders, like Thomas K eraan, an American based in Paris, were in no doubt about where blame lay in the fall o f France. In his book, R eport on France, published in 1942, he w rote: *If I were asked what group in France, aside from the political leaders, was chiefly responsible for the conquest o f France, I’d have to answer: the school teachers.’3 The same view was extensively prom oted through the French press both nationally and in regional papers.4 Teachers suspected o f defeat­ ism , communism or those recently naturalised were particularly likely to be disciplined either by being sacked, prem aturely retired, moved to a worse post in their own or another departm ent or tem porarily sus­ pended. The legislation to deal w ith these teachers was passed on 17 July 1940 and empowered prefects to take action against any teacher likely to prove ‘an element o f disorder, an inveterate politiciser or in­ com petent’.3 But in addition to taking action against teachers for the role they were believed to have played up to the defeat, French m ilitary authorities found new reasons to keep them under surveillance. In October 1940 it was claimed th at currents o f opposition to the new regime were beginning to form around prim ary school teachers. In a report on 4 O ctber 1940 the surveillance service o f the Ministère de la Guerre noted: ‘Left-wing extrem ists have not lost all hope and it is still amongst prim ary teachers th at one discovers signs o f anti-national atti­ tudes.’6 Within four days, a circular was transm itted to prefects order­ ing them to carry out a thorough investigation o f the attitude o f teachers7 and later, th at o f inspectors.8 Two m onths later, in a classi­ fied note from the Minister o f the Interior to prefects in December 1940 they were reminded th at it was their job to ‘exercise a strict control over the loyalty o f prim ary teachers' and to take severe sanctions where

P oliticai Surveillance and Ideological C ontrol

15

necessary.9 Virtually identical term s were used by the Minister o f Education to regional prefects some 15 m onths later when Jerom e Carcopino addressed them in Lyon on 20 March 1942. Prefects had not only to rally prim ary school teachers to the regime but ‘m onitor their atti­ tude and if need be use their powers to dismiss’,10 he said. There is evidence th at in some departm ents newly appointed prefects wanted to take extrem ely energetic action. In the Ardèche, where the local branch o f the teacher’s union the Syndicat National des Instituteurs had been both strongly pacifist and a staunch defender o f teachers’ rights during the 1930s, the prefect planned to take severe measures against ‘antinational’ teachers.11 Indeed, as early as January 1940, several m onths before Vichy, the prefect had drawn up a list o f teachers suspected o f communism who were considered dangerous. They had enjoyed a stay o f execution during the phoney war but w ith the defeat and the demand for a scapegoat, the prefect succeeded in taking more severe action against them than the M inistry o f Education thought necessary. In at least tw o other ;departm ents, the Aveyron and the Alpes-Mari­ tim es, there is no doubt th at the prefects wanted to go much further than Vichy. From Rodez in the Aveyron the prefect complained in a report to the M inistry o f the Interior th at he had received no reply to his proposed disciplinary m easures12 while the prefect in Nice grumbled th at ‘some departm ents o f central government seem more interested in putting a brake on the National Revolution than in serv­ ing it’.13 In the Lozère it was the m oderating influence o f a prim ary school inspector that was stamped on by an unyielding prefect. The case concerned a popular and com petent teacher, a recently naturalised Spaniard suspected by the police o f communism. When the education inspector supported a village petition to keep the teacher the prefect comm ented th at ‘it would be dangerous to allow him to corrupt future generations w ith communist ideas and I am astonished th at the prim ary school inspector does not understand this’.14 There is considerable evidence from other departm ents th at this case is rather characteristic o f the so-called épuration o f the teaching pro­ fession in 1940. The schools’ inspectors were mainly concerned to get rid o f union leaders or incom petent teachers but were .ready to take considerable risks in defending teachers against political charges pro­ vided th at the teacher was respected in the com m unity and brought credit to the state school, the école publique.15 New prefects wanted a num ber o f political heads to roll both to satisfy what they believed was popular demand and to give notice to the Ministry o f the Interior

16

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th at they were indeed exercising the ‘strict control on the loyalty o f teachers’ th at they had been instructed to do in December 1940.16 What is clear from the way th at the purge o f teachers was carried out by local prefects is th at it had m ore to do w ith settling old scores and providing symbolic scapegoats than any wide-scale, root and branch reform o f the teaching corps. The num bers involved were extrem ely small, amounting to some 2-3 per cent in m ost departm ents.17 The political responsiveness o f the prefect was, o f course, subject to movement over tim e and space. In three departm ents under study, the Alpes-Maritimes, the Aveyron and Lozère, the prefects followed up the purge o f teachers in 1940 by throwing their colleagues into the front line o f the ideological struggle to win the population over to the National Revolution. The prefect o f the Alpes-Maritimes, for exam ple, provided the M inistry o f the Interior w ith a quite unsolicited descrip­ tion o f the political role that he believed teachers should play. In November 194118 he comm ented th at he had once again come to realise ‘the determining influence o f the teaching profession on the life o f the com m une'. He went on to say, The National Revolution will never really penetrate the countryside except through the teachers: if the Government has at its disposal a body o f primary school teachers who are attached to the regime and who are the leading propagandists o f its doctrine, the rural masses will be all but won over. By January 1942, the same prefect was claiming th at once the core o f troublem akers and agitators had been removed in 1940, the remaining teachers were now making a vital contribution to the V o rk o f redresse­ m en t', and th at the rural teacher was ‘the best propaganda agent avail­ able to the governm ent'.19 In the Lozère, the prefect’s endorsem ent o f an overtly political role for teachers took the form o f helping to co­ ordinate the activities o f the official ‘propaganda delegate’ to teachers by a thorough vetting o f candidates who might be influential among their colleagues.20 In the same report he not only signalled to his superiors a conference given by a local secondary school teacher in July 1942 on ‘France, victim o f anglo-bolchevik conspiracy' but comm ented T am happy to bring to your attention the excellent attitude o f this teacher and his dedication to the cause o f the National Revolution'.21 At the same tim e the prefect in the Aveyron expressed the considered view th at primary school teachers were, for the m ost part, ‘the best artisans o f the work undertaken by the Marshal’.22 Taken together,

P olitical Surveillance and Ideological C ontrol

17

these comm ents suggest th at at least some prefects wanted teachers to play a dynamic role th at was overtly ideological — they were to be nothing less than crusaders for the National Revolution. In other departments» however, prefects were more concerned to direct teachers' energies to what one o f them called ‘social action' which involved collecting m aterial or money either for POW parcels or for various schemes like the Secours National, or later for Parisian air­ raid victims. Having set out in neat columns all the am ounts o f m oney th at teachers and school children had collected for these causes, the prefect in the Pyrénées-Orientales inform ed the Minister o f the Interior th at ‘this table shows better than any com m entary the participation o f teaching personnel in the work o f national renewal’.33 Elsewhere there is evidence th at prefects sought to prom ote political loyalty among prim ary school teachers by working through the educational inspectorate. In three departm ents, the Gard, the Aude and the Ardèche, this m eant taking steps to censure or remove the chief educa­ tion officer, the Inspecteur de l’Académie, who was suspected o f being lukewarm or openly hostile towards the regime.34 But running parallel to the interest o f some prefects in encouraging teachers to play a positive political role was a fear that teachers were potentially dangerous and needed to be kept under careful surveillance. To keep them under observation, V ichy's officials had a formidable netw ork, th at was both official and unofficial. The surveillance system was, in part, the result o f a long tradition th at grew from the cabinet noir o f Louis XIV,35 through the creation o f the intelligence branch o f the police, the Renseignements Généraux in 191336 and m ore imm ediately to the inter-war surveillance organisa­ tion37 which was substantially extended in 1939 w ith the outbreak o f war. There is clear evidence th at the system o f m onitoring civilian and conscript morale during the phoney war remained in the hands o f the m ilitary authorities after the defeat but it was now incorporated into Vichy’s apparatus for m aintaining internal order.38 To keep itself inform ed o f the state o f public opinion and, at the same tim e, to uncover criminal or political activities, the regime relied on both a massive interception o f postal and telegraphic comm unications carried o u t by the War M inistry and the intelligence gathering activities o f the ‘police préventive', the Renseignements Généraux which became part o f the national police structure in April 1941 39 The surviving archives o f what was euphem istically colled the Con­ trôle Technique provide a remarkable picture o f how the Vichy regime gathered inform ation and pursued those suspected o f criminal, political

18

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or m oral deviancy. The num ber o f letters intercepted every m onth in each départem ent varied between 12,000 and 45,000, w ith a similar num ber o f telegrams and a smaller num ber o f phone calls.30 For the m onth o f January 1944 alone a to tal o f 2,236,120 letters, 1,573,763 telegrams and 92,000 telephone calls were intercepted in m etro­ politan France.31 This random sample o f comm unications from all sections o f society and all geographical areas in the southern zone was used by each departm ental Président o f the Contrôle Technique to write a synthesis o f public opinion and to pass on copies o f suspect letters for further investigation. M onthly reports on the m ood o f the population and the attitude o f specific groups, including teachers, were sent to the local prefect, to the m ilitary comm ander and to a central co-ordinating bureau, the Commission de Contrôle Technique in Vichy. Interception o f com m unications was not only intended to provide the regime w ith a tableau o f public opinion. Its second function was ‘la recherche d ’indices révélateurs d'infractions, crimes et délits’: indeed, each m onth every prefect received for his departm ent a list o f interceptions ‘likely to lead to police, judicial or adm inistrative inter­ vention’.33 In March 1941, Darlan complained to prefects that an inadequate num ber o f apprehensions had been registered so far. In this aspect o f the Contrôle Technique’s activities it is quite clear th at the system was interpreted to ensure th at in their public behaviour and their private conversation, the population expressed loyalty to the ideo­ logy enshrined in the National Revolution and its chief symbol Philippe Pétain. Teachers as a group and as individuals were o f particular interest to officials in the Contrôle Technique, partly, as we have seen, through fear th at they might still be attached to the ideals o f the old regime, but also because they were believed to have a vital role to play in winning over the population to the new ideology. What some teachers’ letters reveal is both the extent to which the system had succeeded in creating fear and uncertainty about what might be safely said or w ritten and how wide the definition o f suspect correspondence was. One teacher in Mende, for exam ple, writing to a friend who had been forced to move to a post at Alès, in the Gard, w rote in July 1941 'you always have the impression th at someone is there behind you when you are w riting'.33 A nother letter, among the copies o f thousands th at were intercepted was sent in O ctober 1941 from a prim ary school teacher in a village in the Lozère to a colleague in a neighbouring ham let. Under the analysis ‘Suspect correspondence between teachers’, the archive extract reads as follows:

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19

really the tone o f your letter says more than the content: it reached me all right, but watch yourself, indiscreet rem arks can lead to a stay in Rieucros cam p, where it seems, qu ite a fe w teachers have fo u n d a h o m e . . . This reference to one o f Vichy's detention camps in the Lozère where aliens and ‘undesirables’ were held had been underlined by an official in the Contrôle Postal, as was the conclusion o f this letter which said, T h ere’s no point in worrying about it, we are as tem porary as the Jew s so y o u w on *t have to endure yo u r school shack m ucher longer\ 34 O ther examples from the Lozère and the Ardèche suggest th at the feeling o f being watched was no paranoid impression. It led one young teacher to rem ark in O ctober 1942, in another letter th at was intercepted, 'A t the m om ent you have to know what to say to please this regime.’3* It is a measure o f how far Vichy had gone in determ ining what were considered acceptable attitudes that rem arks like those described above norm ally led to the individuals concerned being placed on a special list o f people who became the object o f particular surveillance. Not only was all their outgoing and incoming correspondence now inter­ cepted but they were likely to be investigated by the Renseignements Généraux, whose inspectors in each departm ent w rote detailed reports on the attitude o f both individual teachers and the teaching corps. In some instances their investigations led to arrest, in others, like the case o f a teacher moved from the Gard to the Ardèche because o f his allegedly ‘subversive activity’ in May 1941, the knowledge o f being watched led the police to claim in December 1943 that he was no longer dangerous.36 The value o f intercepted correspondence as a means o f keeping in touch w ith currents o f disaffection began to diminish from as early as mid-1941 when one o f the officials in the Contrôle Postal noted th at, at least in the Ardèche, 'com m unists don’t use the postal services’.37 By March 1942, clumsy efforts to trap black m arketeers or profiteers w ith evidence from their own correspondence was felt to be counter­ productive by senior inspectors in the service.38 In May 1942, schoolchildren in Mende were warned by the Inspecteur de l’Académie in Lozère to be careful about what they said in letters. This exposure o f the system o f postal surveillance led the local Président o f the Contrôle Postal in Lozère to complain to the prefect th at there was now no further value in intercepting children’s letters.39 By early 1943 there were increasing num bers o f references to people’s knowledge o f how the system worked: ‘look and see if m y letter has been steam ed open,

20

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it’s fairly common practice here', remarked one w riter in the Ardèche on 15 January 1943 Although the effectiveness o f the system was lim ited by the sheer volume o f correspondence to be analysed and the conflicts th at were provoked w ith other branches o f the state apparatus it remained an extrem ely im portant weapon in the state's arsenal for m aintaining internal security and ideological conform ity. If the prefecture and the police had had to rely on the official but discreet operations o f the Contrôle Technique they would only have picked up what people chose to commit to paper or said in telephone conversations. In fact, the evidence suggests th at the police were kept just as busy investigating 'anti-national' activities by the floods o f letters sent anonymously or by various pressure groups denouncing suspect individuals.

Populist A ttacks and Denunciations The years 1940-1 were particularly notable for the denunciation o f teachers, partly because o f the official campaign against them for their alleged responsibility for the defeat and also because in some depart­ m ents teachers were singled out by the Church, the m ayor or by the Légion as targets for populist anger. It is quite clear, for example, th at in departm ents where there was a tradition o f rivalry between state schools and confessionals ones like the Lozère and the Ardèche, political attacks on teachers in the state sector were widespread.4 The causes for which they were denounced and the subsequent investiga­ tions by the police or by education officials provide some indication o f how easy it was for teachers to fall foul o f new codes o f professional conduct and political outlook. For exam ple, the prim ary school teacher at Préaux in the Ardèche was reported to the police for 'having let her class play noisily in front o f the church’ on 11 November 1940 while a commemorative service was in process. Together w ith three other teachers she was suspended for three m onths w ithout pay.43 This was no isolated incident: the regime’s willingness to provide financial and m oral support for church schools43 rekindled old rivalries at village level to such an extent th at any episode provided an opportunity for accusations and counter-accusations. In a num ber o f cases where there were attem pts to close down the state school, parents were persuaded to send their children to the church school either on the grounds th at they would get a better education44 or on the pretext th at the state school teacher was immoral, incom petent, a freemason or a communist.45

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21

As late as the start o f the new school year 1943/4 a state school teacher in Lozère was writing to a friend in O ctober 1943 th at ‘the priest» the vicar and the church school teacher, even the m ayor, are organising a massive campaign to take our kids away from school'.46 Two further examples can be used to illustrate the intensity o f feeling that this issue aroused. In July 1943 a teacher in the Lozère who was denounced by the priest in his village for having criticised the church during his lessons was put under particular surveillance when he was heard to rem ark ‘My dream is to massacre as m any priests as possible.*47 Finally, enquiries in 1944 into the activities o f those accused o f collaboration threw up a large num ber o f cases where priests were charged w ith having de­ nounced state school teachers in order to close their school.48 The threat o f losing their livelihood m eant th at teachers had to be exception­ ally careful to tow the ideological line. Furtherm ore, they soon discovered th at if they transgressed un­ w ritten rules about professional behaviour they could be driven out o f the village and sometimes out o f a jo b . In one village in the Lozère, fo r exam ple, the new teacher, a m arried wom en, was denounced for having an affair w ith a local m an: what seems to have scandalised the indigenous inhabitants was, in the words o f the school inspector, th at *when the school children arrived for class in the morning, they delighted in following the footprints left in the snow by M. “X” who, having spent the night at Mme. " V s ', made his way home in the early hours'.49 On another occasion, a teacher in Aubenas, Ardèche, was transferred from his post not because he was a bad teacher, but because, as the school inspector said, he was 'a bad husband'.60 In addition to being good husbands or wives, state teachers had to avoid suspicion o f being drinkers or too keen on fishing and ensure th at they kept their classes well under control.51 It was also essential to keep on good term s w ith the m ayor who was n o t only responsible for provid­ ing the everyday but vital supplies o f wood to warm the classroom but whose official position could give any com plaints added weight. The nature o f the com plaints about teachers' m orality and the way they were handled suggest th at the virtues o f Fam ille and Travail were fre­ quently invoked and enforced both at a popular and official level. It is in this sense th at one can talk about ideological penetration. In due course we shall see how educational inspectors expected teachers to conform to outw ard expressions o f Patrie. The letters which brought all the above cases to the notice o f the police or the prefect in 1940 and 1941 were part o f a flood th at has been estim ated at betw een three and five m illion for the whole period.53

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Although this figure is certainly exaggerated, the volume o f letters sent was so considerable th at in January 1942 the Minister o f the Interior had to write to prefects ordering them to discourage any further denun­ ciations.53 There is no doubt th at the regime’s tacit approval o f inform ­ ing as a legitim ate and even national duty unleashed a massive and in some cases hysterical response. In December 1940, for example, an anonymous denunciation sent directly to the M inister o f the Interior from an army veteran alleged th at a communist cell existed at Valgorge in the Ardèche and th at three local teachers were printing tracts in the school basem ent. The police investigation stated th at the charge was ‘pure fantasy’and sprang from an accusation o f cheating at cards.54 O ther enquiries into com plaints similar to this one were simply what a primary school inspector called 'miserable village jealousies’.55 While these examples were for the m ost part the spontaneous action o f individuals who were acting from malice or a misplaced sense o f patriotic d uty, a far more orchestrated campaign o f vengeance against teachers was m ounted by some local branches o f the Légion. Set up in August 1940 to act as the eyes and ears o f the National Revolution, its members sometimes saw themselves as semi-official vigilantes, cham­ pioning popular causes like better food supply or rooting out enemies o f the state. Certainly Pétain’s message to them in April 1941 appeared to give them a free rein to enlighten m ayors and sub-prefects on any civic, social or m oral affairs which were in contradiction to ‘the Marshal's D octrine and Instructions’.56 In the Ardèche, it was the Légion, through a form er teacher, which showed the greatest energy in carrying out a w itch-hunt against teachers.57 A fter making a series o f individual com plaints about the attitude o f particular teachers, the departm ental President o f the Légion sent the prefect in August 1941 the names o f tw o primary school inspectors and 30 teachers who should be disciplined because they were allegedly dis­ loyal or incom petent.58 Charges against teachers included the claim that one had failed to fly the national flag in his school at Le Teil when an adjoining road had been officially renamed Boulevard Maréchal Pétain, th at another had said o f Pétain, V hen is he going to snuff it? ', and th at one o f the prim ary school inspectors had ‘an attitude th at was incom patible w ith the new regime’. When the prefect passed the L égion'snote to the school inspector for com m ent, he replied th at not only was there no evidence to support any o f the claims made but th at their 'vague and fictional nature showed how lightly teachers were being attacked'. Nevertheless, seven teachers were moved, three o f whom had been denounced for being

P olitical Surveillance and Ideological C ontrol

23

‘anti-national*, ‘hostile to Pétain* or ‘holding advanced ideas*. These purely political offences illustrate how strongly the tide o f ideological conform ity was running in 1941. One other case deserves further com­ m ent: it concerned a teacher near St Jean de Muzols in the Ardèche who had been physically assaulted by tw o farm workers in Septem ber 1940 ‘simply because he was a teacher* and later denounced for antigovernment propaganda.89 When the Légion demanded his removal from office an investigation by the police recommended th at no action should be taken: the Légion persisted, claiming th at he was ‘a notor­ ious freemason w ith comm unist tendencies’. A further enquiry by the police revealed th at behind the denunciation lay an attem pt to get a relative o f the Légion’s secretary the teacher’s job at St Jean de Muzols. Although the police commissioner and the local sub-prefect were init­ ially prepared to have the teacher moved ‘to calm things down’, the local primary school inspector succeeded in getting the affair shelved. But, when the teacher in question was under threat he w rote a long letter in self-defence to the prefect in which he justified his entire career and outlook in term s o f Vichy’s new ideology, Travail, Fam ille and Patrie.60 This case is interesting not only in showing how the Légion’s insistent political denunciations could conceal purely personal intrigues b u t in showing how different branches o f the surveillance system did not embrace the same ideological perspectives. Nevertheless, the need for teachers to fend o ff attacks by justifying what they did in term s o f the new ideology suggests th at at least in 1941 the Légion had succeeded in some areas in creating the conditions o f fear and suspicion which assisted the penetration o f the National Revolution. In early 1942 there were a few spasmodic signs th at the Légion was still capable o f pursuing local vendettas against teachers, like a case in the Gard where a teacher was reported to the prefect because she had refused to attend a flag-saluting cerem ony.81 It is fairly clear, however, th at the wave o f orchestrated or spontaneous denunciations against teachers was over by mid-1942. In part this corresponded to a more general loss o f confidence in the regime and the political messages that had characterised it from mid-1940 to early 1942.63 In effect, populist vengeance against teachers belongs to th at initial period o f Vichy’s exist­ ence which was marked first by a w itch-hunt against those held respons­ ible for defeat and then by a brief crusade to prom ote Pétainism . This crusade concealed an unpleasant m ixture o f opportunism , local intrigues and popular hysteria to which teachers were particularly vul­ nerable. Their fate would certainly have been far worse if the state had n o t become bogged down in trying to process the vast quantity o f veno-

24

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mous and often misleading inform ation it had unleashed from the public.

The M inistry o f Education and the Inspection Académique The direction and the various changes o f national educational policy under Vichy have been well docum ented elsewhere63 but the degree o f ideological control exercised over teachers can only really be under­ stood by an analysis o f how local educational officials interpreted policy. The lives o f teachers in state prim ary schools were crucially affected by their relationship w ith the prim ary school inspector» the inspecteur prim aire, and above him w ith the chief education officer, the Inspecteur de l’Académie. The all im portant inspection marks which teachers were given every year by the inspectorate often determ ined decisions about w hether they got prom otion or were able to move to a post in a b etter school o r m ore congenial surroundings. The inspectorate had the m ost frequent, form al contact w ith teachers and was often asked to investi­ gate com plaints about teachers. How did these officials react to the new regime and to the idea th at teachers should play a leading role in the services o f the National Revolution? There is conclusive evidence from a num ber o f departm ents th at the local Education A uthority, the Inspection Académique, had tw o m ajor preoccupations when the Vichy regime was established. The first was to reinforce their own authority over teachers which had been under attack during the 1930s by the unions: relations between the unions and the inspectorate had been severely strained during the strike called on 30 November 1938 to enforce the term s o f the Matignon agree­ m ent.64 Memories o f this certainly coloured the attitude o f some schools inspectors in 1940-1 whose reports on suspect teachers always indicated w hether they had been 1938 strikers or not. When teachers were considered for prom otion, the fact th at they had gone on strike in 1938 could be held against them : indeed, when the Inspecteur de l’Académie in the Ardèche subm itted a list o f teachers for prom otion to the prefect in 1941 he made a point o f showing th at no 1938 striker had been considered.65 In the Lozère some 20 teachers who should have been prom oted on grounds o f seniority or excellence were held back by Vichy because o f their union or political associations.66 This is a good illustration o f how local education officials were more willing to punish teachers for their past records than reward those who had

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25

embraced the new ideology. O ther instances show how im portant the reassertion o f the inspect­ orate’s authority was. When, for exam ple, teachers were instructed by the M inister o f Education to devote the first lesson o f the new term in August 1940 to *the patriotism , devotion, love o f work and discipline which the Head o f State shows to French people and French schoolchildren’,67 prim ary school inspectors in the Lozère ordered every school teacher to send in a w ritten report on how they had taught this lesson. Teachers who failed to carry o u t these instructions to the letter had their previous inspection mark reduced by tw o.68 In O ctober 1940 one prim ary school inspector in the Lozère was w ritten to by the Inspecteur de l'Académie in term s th at made it very clear th at orders were orders. In rem arks th at we shall return to in the context o f what patrie m eant for local officials, he w rote: I am surprised by the small num ber o f teachers who have displayed the Head o f State’s portrait and the inscriptions which render him homage. You would do well to ensure th at all teachers conform to an order th at the rest o f their colleagues in the departm ent have obeyed.68 Further indications that the inspectorate was ready to enforce its authority in making teachers accept directives sent from Vichy can be found in the intercepted correspondence o f teachers, one o f whom complained to a friend in February 1942 th at ’instead o f dem onstrat­ ing their zeal for an unthinking conform ity, our superiors should con­ sider the real interest o f the class and allow teachers to adapt’.70 The second o f the inspectorate’s concerns was the defence o f the state school against the claim th at its teaching was unpatriotic. In order to vindicate the école publique’s reputation as a vehicle for patriotism , it was vital for the Inspecteur de l’Académie to both take action against *unpatriotic’ teachers and at the same time to insist th at the state school cham pion new form s o f patriotism . In 1940-1 the local inspect­ orate in the Lozère perceived patriotism as identical to Pétainism and used its authority to prom ote the Pétain cult amongst schoolchil­ dren. One prim ary school inspector in this departm ent w rote to a head teacher in his area at the end o f August 1940 in the following term s: Several teachers have already taken the initiative in putting up the portrait o f Marshal Pétain in their classrooms. I congratulate them for having understood th at children’s enthusiasm needs concrete

26

P olitical Surveillance and Ideological C ontrol images to develop. I therefore call upon all teachers w ithout excep­ tion to follow the example o f their colleagues . . . No excuses will be accepted. Schools are not neutral in questions o f patriotism .*

Pétainism implied m ore than merely observing the exterior rituals o f displaying Saint Philippe’s portrait: it also m eant seeing French history and French culture in a certain way. If state schools were to champion a more nationalist ethic, it was up to the inspectorate to see th at the new curriculum w hich*the regime introduced was indeed taught correctly. As Education M inister Carcopino said in a circular to each Inspecteur de l'Académie in 1941 : The government has the will to act on children and young people through the school in order to achieve the redressem ent so necessary for the country. The reform o f education, the revision and altera­ tio n o f courses on M orality and D uty to the Fatherland have pre­ cisely this aim !. He went on to say th at the aims would only be achieved if instruc­ tions ’are loyally accepted and applied by all teachers and inspectors should therefore guide teachers in the interpretation o f new courses’.72 The overall thrust o f the new syllabus in history and in Education Générale et Sportive has been analysed73 in term s o f a general bias towards integral nationalism and a rehabilitation o f the virtues o f preRevolutionary France to coincide w ith Vichy’s ideological celebration o f work, family and fatherland. But how rigorously did the inspect­ orate m onitor the way in which the regime wanted to politicise the curriculum? Teachers were usually inspected once a year, and were also required to attend conferences in their area which took place once or twice a year. In O ctober 1940, for exam ple, the them e in Lozère was T h e role o f the prim ary school in the m oral and civic education o f the child and the awakening in him o f a national and patriotic con­ science.'74 Teachers were also sent detailed instructions through the Bulletin Départem ental de l’Enseignement Primaire on exactly how to handle, for exam ple, history lessons. In 1942 the Inspecteur de l’Aca­ démie insisted th at the new courses should be taught not only accord­ ing to the letter, but also the spirit o f new instructions which m eant bringing out the ’national character'.73 It was one thing for the inspectorate to require teachers to display Pétain's portrait, and this was something which could be routinely

P oliticai Surveillance and Ideological C ontrol

27

checked, but it was quite another to ensure ideological com m itm ent through the curriculum . Surveillance o f this sort was impracticable and alien to the entire form ation o f m ost Inspecteurs de l'Académ ie: there were exceptions o f course. One teacher in Aveyron complained to a friend in the Lozère in the spring o f 1942 th at the chief inspector in her departm ent was ‘absolutely pro-National Revolution and really makes us aware o f our duties’.76 Most o f the evidence, however, indicates th at for different reasons, the inspectorate in many depart­ m ents was distancing itself from certain aspects o f Vichy’s educational policies. In the H érault, the Inspecteur de l’Académie between 1940-4 has left a rem arkable picture o f how Vichy’s clericalism and demands for ideological conform ity drove inspectors and teachers towards the Resistance.77 In the Lozère, it was a clerical offensive designed to shut down state schools which stung the inspectorate into a rearguard defen­ sive action o f the école publique. In other departm ents there were different but related causes which pushed the inspectorate into attitudes o f reserve or even hostility: in a public outburst reported by the local press in Nîm es and subsequently censored, the Inspecteur de l’Académie in the Gard announced to a gathering o f teachers and officials in O ctober 1940 th at the regim e's decision to close the state teacher training colleges, the écoles norm ales, V as the result o f ignorance and injustice'.78 To some o f those who had been taught in the écoles norm ales, their closure was seen as an attack on one o f the cornerstones o f the French educational system . In the Ardèche it was the intrigues o f the Légion th at began to make the Inspecteur de l’Académie question the sort o f regime th at apparently legitimised populist meddling in the serious business o f education. As early as December 1940, he sent a note to one o f his prim ary school inspectors in which he warned him th at one o f their recent telephone conversations had been intercepted and th at their criticism o f a teacher, who was a prom inent member o f the Légion, had been reported to the teacher concerned. To stop this individual from his intention o f planning to denounce the inspector for hostility to the doctrines o f Marshal Pétain’s government the Inspecteur de l’Académie urged his colleague to go on the offensive.79 Further reasons for the hostility o f this official to the regime were revealed in letters which were inter­ cepted in February 1943. In them he claimed that a decision to transfer him from the Ardèche to Troyes had been m otivated by his refusal to give in to the demands o f certain priests for the closure o f state schools and his resistance to orders to discipline certain teachers.80 One o f

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the difficulties that the school inspectors encountered both in the Ardèche and the Drôme was the outlook o f their imm ediate superior in the educational hierarchy, the R ecteur, who as late as December 1943 was still trying to rally schoolchildren to Pétainism . When he gave the senior pupils at Privas in the Ardèche a speech in th at m onth he con­ cluded w ith an appeal to them to shout ‘Long live Pétain, Long live France*. There was an embarrassing silence from the school, according to one o f the boys who was there.81 Indeed, the latitude o f action th at chief inspectors enjoyed depended to a great extent not only on the political outlook o f the prefect in their departm ent, but also th at o f their own superior in the educational hierarchy, the Recteur. For purposes o f educational adm inistration, France was divided into a num ber o f Académies which grouped together five or six departm ents. Ardèche belonged to the Académie o f Grenoble whereas Lozère was part o f the Académie o f M ontpellier: some measure o f the different political perspectives which existed between the tw o can be judged by comparing the incident referred to above in the Ardèche w ith a comparable case in the Lozère. Here, the President o f the Contrôle Postal told the prefect in February 1942 th at the local inspectorate was protecting if not encour­ aging state school teachers in an ‘anti-clerical struggle* and th at this could explain the ‘deplorable outlook o f a good num ber o f pupils*.82 The prefect chose to rew rite com pletely this com m ent in his report to Vichy stating th at the inspectorate were working hard to discourage anti-clericalism amongst the teachers. Only tw o m onths later, the same official in the Contrôle Postal intercepted a letter from a pupil at school in Mende in which she poured scorn on the school’s practice o f saluting the flag. This tim e the letter was sent to Pétain and to the Recteur in M ontpellier, presum bly to create m ore effect. In fact, it led the Recteur to w rite to all the inspecteurs in his Académie warning them to encour­ age pupils to be careful about w hat they w rote.83 This unequivocal attem pt to put his colleagues on guard against the state’s surveillance agencies is entirely consistent w ith other evidence we have about this Recteur who was finally sacked by Vichy in June 1943 for refusing to give the authorities lists o f students to be sent on the Service du Travail Obligatoire (STO).84 Indeed, it was this plan to send teachers and students to Germany in 1943 th at placed Recteurs and Inspecteurs in a particularly invidious position since it was their responsibility to select teachers for the com­ pulsory labour scheme. In H érault, the action o f the Inspecteur de l’Académie am ounted to to tal sabotage o f the plan to send 58 prim ary

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29

school teachers, since only one actually left the departm ent.85 But in the Lozère, a tough-minded prefect, w ith the co-operation o f certain officials in the Inspection Académique, ensured th at ten teachers left and a further seven who refused to leave were sacked.86 These examples testify to the sort o f differences th at existed even between departm ents in the same Académie in term s o f the configuration o f political forces and their im pact on teachers. Vichy was not a m ono­ lithic regime th at stam ped a uniform blueprint throughout France. Nevertheless it is now becoming clear th at provided they carried out their work conscientiously, teachers could expect varying degrees o f protection from the educational inspectorate in the face o f a m ulti­ plicity o f demands by the state. In general, Vichy failed to politicise this group o f civil servants who occupied a vital tier in the educational system . We have looked, in tu rn , at the various agencies, both official and un­ official, which acted as related parts o f a widespread system o f sur­ veillance and control. How effective was this system in enforcing political conform ity amongst teachers? The historiographical problems o f answering this question are considerable. The m ajor difficulty con­ cerns the value th at can be attached to official reports w ritten during the Vichy period by police inspectors, prefects and school inspectors, and the problem s associated w ith using depositions produced in 1944-5 related to enquiries about Resistance and collaboration. Two cases can be used to illustrate these points: reports w ritten by the Inspecteur de l’Académie in Lozère to the prefect in 1941 and 1942 on the attitude o f teachers in the departm ent both attest to their loyalty as did a report by one o f the inspectors o f the Renseignements Généraux in 1943 87 In 1945, however, the same school inspector was referring to the role o f teachers in the Resistance, to their patriotism , sense o f civic duty and to the way they had ’m aintained an ideal’.88 When official requests for reports like these were m ade, it needs to be remembered th at the authors’ comm ents were neither spontaneous nor unm indful o f their intended audience. Evidence about attitudes gleaned from the dossiers o f those teachers accused o f collaboration can be equally misleading. What is quite clear in a wide sample o f cases in the Lozère and the Ardèche is th at behind the charges o f ’collaborationist, pro-Vichy, anti-Gaullist, anti-Allied propaganda’, there frequently lay an incident in the village which had alienated the teacher from a section o f parents. In the clim ate o f liberation from August 1944 the demand for vengeance was ju st as strong as it had been in August 1940; where the Légion had paved the way for a flood o f denunciations in 1941, a

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similar wave o f popular clam our for justice and reparation grew from the activities o f some o f the locally constituted Comités Cantonaux de Libération in late 1944. O ften the letters o f 1944 began in exactly the same term s as those o f 1941 : *11 est de notoriété publique. . . * was followed by demands th at the prefect or the Inspecteur de l’Académie or the M inistry o f Education take firm action *so th at the épuration can be seen to be done’.89 Now th at the boot was on the other foot, it was the priests and teachers in church schools who were vilified. One teacher was denounced for ’having relations w ith a German parachutist*, another had a hand grenade throw n at her house because o f remarks she made about a prom inent member o f the local Resistance.90 In this case there is no doubt that the real intention was to remove an unpopular teacher who had lost the support o f parents in the village. Although caution m ust be taken in using this evidence about teachers* attitudes, where it has been corroborated by the intercepted correspondence o f teachers, a num ber o f conclusions can be drawn. At first, the cumulative effect o f the violent press campaign unleashed against teachers after the defeat, the sanctions imposed on a m inority o f them and the general clim ate o f mea culpa in 1940 forced m ost teachers into what one report described as a ’docile conform ity to the new instructions’.91 Although there were isolated individuals who refused to devote the first lesson o f the new term to Pétain’s ’patriotic sacrifice for the nation*,92 it was more typical to find teachers putting up his portrait.93 But by 1941 differences between departm ents were beginning to become apparent: while teachers in the Ardèche were showing increasing signs o f anti-clericalism ," and under threat from the Légion because o f their views, those in the Lozère were reported to be com pletely loyal to P étain ." In the Gard the police reported th at outw ard conform ity concealed real differences between those whose support for Vichy was genuine and others, notably around the coal­ mining area at Alès who were said to be still very attached to the old regim e." By 1942 there were clear indications th at m any o f those who had rallied to Vichy were becoming increasingly irritated by the extra­ curricular burdens th at were being heaped on them at a tim e when their salaries were falling behind those o f other civil servants.97 Both in the Aveyron and the Alpes-Maritimes prefects were dismayed th at teachers* loyalty to the regime should be compromised by what one o f them described as a ‘derisory and discouraging’ salary increase." Police intel­ ligence reports from a variety o f departm ents in the Midi in the spring o f 1 9 4 3 " suggest th at while teachers were extrem ely cool tow ards

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31

Laval and the policy o f collaboration they were careful not to express their views openly, and were punctilious in carrying out their duties. Even Resistance tracts specifically directed at prim ary school teachers urged them to break out o f their shell o f professional neutrality.100 But in spite o f the widespread disaffection caused by the running down o f state education and the worsening effects o f inflation on standards o f living, the m ajority o f teachers, like m ost o f the population, were frozen by fear and uncertainty into a curious form o f paralysis. This was at least partly due to the effectiveness o f the various branches o f the surveillance netw ork which had succeeded in creating such an atm osphere o f suspicion th at it was difficult to know whom to tru st. Although the entire population was subject to certain form s o f discreet or overt surveillance, teachers as a professional group were singled out for particular attention. Even when the state chose not to take further action against individuals whose conduct had become ‘sus­ pect’, the mere knowledge th at letters, phone calls or even private con­ versations might be m onitored, was an extrem ely powerful weapon in ensuring internal security. This was especially true in the villages o f the Midi where, as we have seen, there often existed deep-seated antagonisms between state school and church school which divided communities. The rivalry between the tw o schools did not simply threaten the live­ lihood o f the state school teachers: it forced them to exercise the utm ost caution in relations w ith the m ayor, the parents and the chil­ dren. The cumulative effect o f this led one teacher to comm ent w ith evident chagrin, T h e teaching profession has been com pletely emas­ culated.’101 A m inority o f teachers did play an active part in Resist­ ance groups either because the threat o f STO shook them out o f what the underground paper called 'their little routine life’.103 or because their sense o f outrage at Vichy’s injustices pushed them into action. The reaction o f m ost teachers, however, was blunted by a suspicion and fear th at the surveillance system had encouraged and confusion about how they should react to established authority. While m any despised V ichy's ideology which ran counter to their entire training, they could not com pletely reject the state’s authority nor ignore its cogent propa­ ganda about the possibilities o f the disorder th at might accompany liberation.103 There is very little evidence from the departm ents examined in this study th at teachers as an identifiable group were subject to political surveillance by the German occupying authorities. Both in term s o f the ideological content o f the curriculum and the surveillance o f teachers, the Germans appear to have been quite satisfied w ith the measures

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taken by Vichy, and there is no indication th at Vichy was acting under particular pressure from the occupying authorities in this m atter. The way th at Vichy developed and made use o f various form s o f political control over teachers indicates th at, after directing this control to sup­ porting a brief ideological crusade held together by the precepts o f the National Revolution, it developed from early 1942 an obsessive concern w ith internal security. The m ajor reason for this was th at, while Pétainism was a sufficiently potent force for political integration until early 1942, there was nothing to replace it. As public opinion in general became increasingly disinterested in the ritualistic trappings o f the National Revolution and ever more concerned w ith food shortage, labour demands and anxieties about liberation, teachers’ identity as a group m eant less and less. From April 1942 when the regime had in Abel Bonnard its m ost conspicuously political Education M inister, the evidence suggests th at the will to enforce ideological control o f teachers at local level had simply collapsed. This conclusion serves to underline the need to look at Vichy not through the shibboleths o f its m inisters but through the often prosaic preoccupations o f the regime’s servants and subjects. It is in this way th at we can see how the initial convergence o f populist and official surveillance o f teachers in the enforcem ent o f Pétainist ideology began to disintegrate as early as 1941. From then on, it was precisely the gratuitous meddling o f th e Légion, o f certain curés and officials in the Contrôle Technique th at pushed civil servants like Inspecteurs de l'Académie and some prefects into a defence o f the values o f the Third Republic embodied in teachers and the école publique.

Notes 1. Roger Austin, 'Propaganda and Public Opinion in Vichy France, the depart­ ment of Hérault 1940-1944’, European Studies Review, October 1983. 2. W.D. Halls, The Youth o f Vichy France (Oxford, 1981); Roger Austin, T he Chantiers de la Jeunesse in Languedoc 1940-1944*, French Historical Studies, Spring 1983. 3. J. Kern an, Report on France (London, 1942), p. 136. 4. Halls, Vichy France pp. 104-6; Austin, T he Chantiers de la Jeunesse’, pp. 45-51. 5. Halls, Vichy France p. 113. 6. Archives Nationales (hereafterAN) AJ 41 25. Report from Service des Contrôles Techniques, 4 October 1940. 7. AN FIA 3655 Circulaire No. 2822,8 October 1940. 8. AN FIA 3655 Circulaire No. 3877, 27 October 1940. 9. Archives Départementales de l’Ardèche (hereafter ADA) CAB 895. Minister of Interior to prefects, 10 December 1940.

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10. ADA CAB 897. 11. ADA CAB 895. Prefect to Education Ministry, 28 September 1940. 12. AN FIC III 1141, Report on 30 October 1940. 13. AN FIC III 1137, September 1941. 14. Archives Départementales de Lozère (hereafter ADL) T 5514, Prefect to Inspecteur de l’Académie, 13 May 1941. 15. AN F 17 13364, ADA CAB 114, ADL T 5514; Halb, Vichy Ftance p. 115. 16. See note 9 above and Austin, The Educational and Youth Policies of the Vichy Government in the Department of Hérault, 1940*1944’ (Manchester PhD, 1981), p. 89. 17. Austin, 'Educational and Youth Policies’, p. 89. 18. AN FIC III 1137. Report on 6 November 1941. 19. AN FIC III 1137. Report for January 1942. 20. ADL T 5514: Correspondence in July 1941 and September 1943. 21. AN FIC HI 1165. Report for July 1942. 22. AN FIC IH 1141. Report for July 1942. 23. AN FIC HI 1181. Prefect in the Pyrenées-Orientales, June 1942. 24. AN FIC IH 1153, October 1940; AN FIC HI 1141, Sept.-Oct. 1941; ADA CAB 517, February 1943. 25. Jean Tulard, 'Les Français sous surveillance’, L ’Histoire, no. 32, March 1981. 26. Marcel Le Qère, 'La naissance des Renseignements Généraux’, L ’H istoire, no. 32, March 1981. 27. Donald N. Baker, The Surveillance of Subversion in Inter-war France: the Carnet B in the Seine, 1922*1940’, French Historical Studies, vol. X, no. 3, Spring 1978. 28. Archives of the Conseil Supérieur de la Defense National, 2N 263. Note from le General d’Armée, Ministre de la Guerre to Generals commanding 7th, 9th, 12th and 18th Regions, 6 July 1940. 29. Law of 23 April, 1941 quoted by Le Clère, ‘La naissance’, p. 84. 30. Archives Départementales du Gard (hereafter ADG) CAB 648; ADA CAB 517; ADL V I*2 19, V1M2 23. 31. AN F7 14929. Report on 28 January 1944. 32. ADG CAB 649. Note from Darlan on 22 March 1941. 33. ADL V IM2 23, letter intercepted on 25 July 1941. 34. ADL V IM2 23, letter intercepted on 16 October 1941. 35. ADL V IM2 23, letters intercepted in October 1941 and October 1942. 36. ADA CAB 191. Report on 6 December 1943. 37. ADA CAB 517. Report for June 1941. 38. ADL V IM2 19, note on 27 March 1942. 39. ADL V IM2 23. Correspondence 21 May 1942. 40. ADA CAB 517. 41. ADA CAB 114, CAB 897. 42. ADA CAB 114, CAB 895. 43. Halls, Vichy Ftance, Ch.3; Austin, 'Educational and Youth Policies’, Ch. 2. 44. A number of inspectors argued that if parents were sending their children to private schoob it was because the state school’s curriculum was weighed down with extra curricular tasks like collecting acorns or scrap metal. Austin, 'Educational and Youth Policies’, p. 197. 45. ADA CAB 897, CAB 114. ADL T 5514. 46. ADL V IM2 23. 47. ADL V IM2 21,10 July 1943.

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48. ADA CDL450. 49. A D LT5514. 50. ADA CAB 114,18 September 1941. 51. ADA CAB 114 and CAB 895. 52. André Halimi, La Délation sous l ’Occupation (Paris, 1983), p. 7. The author appears to have confused genuine letters of denunciation with letters that were intercepted by the Contrôle Postal. 53. ADA CAB 668. Note on 2 January 1942.'This was followed by a law on 8 October 1943 threatening imprisonment and a fine to those found guilty of denunciation. AN AJ41 429. 54. ADA CAB 114, 20 December 1940. 55. ADA CAB 897, 27 March 1941. 56. AN F 41 158, 30 April 1941. 57. ADA CDL 450/2. 58. ADA CAB 114. Note oh 13 August 1941. 59. ADA CAB 897. 60. ADA CAB 114, letter on 21 April 1941. 61. ADG 15M2221, 18 January 1942. 62. Austin, 'Propaganda and Public Opinion*, European Studia Review, October 1983, p. 469. 63. Halls, Vichy France. 64. Austin, 'Educational and Youth Policies*, p. 34, pp. 39-41. 65. ADA CAB 114, 20 February 1941. 66. ADL T 5421. Notes on 20 October 1944 and 10 April 1945. 67. ADL Bulletin Departmental de l ’Enseignement frimaire, June-August, 1940, pp. 190-1. 68. ADL T 5438. 69. ADL T 5438,18 October 1940. 70. ADL V IM2 23, letter intercepted on 22 February 1942. 71. ADL T 5438. Note de service, 28 August 1940. 72. ADL T 5438, circular 5 December 1941. 73. Halls, Vichy France, Chs 7 and 8. 74. ADLBDEP Jan/Feb. 1941, pp. 90-100. 75. ADL BDEP Jan/Feb. 1942, pp. 54-5. 76. ADL V IM2 23. Letter intercepted on 4 March 1942. 77. Maurice David, Monsieur Gaeten Instituteur (Paris, 1961). 78. AN F1C IH 1165. The prefect complained to the Minister of the Interior that the IA’s attitude was likely to compromise government action, 22 October 1940. 79. ADA CAB 450/2, letter on 12 December 1940 80- ADA CAB 517. Letters intercepted on 2 February 1943 were sent by the prefect in the Ardèche to Pétain as proof of the IA’s outlook. 81. ADA CAB 517. Letter and enquiry on 11 December 1943. 82. ADL VIM2 19, February 1942. 83. ADL VIM2 23. .Recteur’s circular of 30 April 1942. 84. Austin, p. 133. 85. P. Delanoue, Les Enseignants, La Lutte Syndicale du Front Populaire à la Libération (1973), p. 284. 86. ADL T 5514, R 7251, T 5427. 87. ADL T 5516. 88. ADL T 5874. Note on 8 October 1945. 89. ADA CDL 450. 90. ADA CAB 897. 91. ADL T 5438, 21 November 1940. 92. ADL Bulletin Départemental de l ’Enseignement Primaire, June/August

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35

1940. 93. ADL T 5438. 94! ADA CAB 895, September 1940, CAB 517, April 1941, November 1941. 95. ADL T 5438, August 1941 and T 5516, November 1941. 96. ADG15M 221. Report on 24 November 1941. 97. ADL V IM2 19; ADA CAB 517, July, 1942; AN FIC IH 1153, March,1942. 98. AN FIC III 1141, FIC 011137, May/June 1942. 99. ADLT 5516,19 April, 1943; ADA CAB 191,3 March 1943; AN FIC HI 1141 (Aude), January 1943; FIC III 1141 (Aveyron), May 1943; FIC III 1181 (Pyrénées-Orientales), March 1943. 100. AN AGO 609. 101. ADL V I“ 2 23,13 October 1941. 102. AN AGO 609. Tract entitled ‘Aux Instituteurs*. 103. ADA CAB 517, intercepted letters on 25 November 1943 and 19 September 1943.

WOMEN AND THE NATIONAL REVOLUTION Miranda Pollard

This chapter is based on the notion th at — although historians have referred to Vichy’s ‘femme au foyer’ imperative — there has been a failure, or a reluctance, to incorporate the question o f gender into inter­ pretations o f the National Revolution. Y et recent work on women and fascism underlines the significance and interpretative possibilities o f this them e o f sexuality and ideology.1 Vichy itself attem pted to institution­ alise a paternalist and reactionary definition o f women’s role and status, w ithin the family and w ithin French society. Furtherm ore this definition, centred on m otherhood and fem ininity, found expression in a wide range o f antifem inist policies in education, em ploym ent and sexuality. But rather than give an account o f these policies, I would like to use this opportunity to highlight the nature o f Vichy’s view o f women and also their significance for the National Revolution, o f which they constitute an integral ideological elem ent. Though an integral and specific element o f Vichy’s political culture (and hence the subject o f m any o f the regime’s tautological banalities) women were not addressed as directly or explicitly as in fascist dis­ course. The tw o predom inant ideological impulses which inform ed Vichy’s views o f women were pronatalism and familialism. Both cen­ trally concerned female sexuality and sexual divisions. The form er was a preoccupation w ith population growth th at assumed state control o f fertility and reproduction; the latter an advocacy o f social stability or ‘rénovation’ th at was based on the legitim ate, patriarchal fam ily unit and required the m aintenance o f *la femme au foyer’. In any analysis o f government legislation and propaganda, as well as in the bulk o f un­ official but supportive literature, these tw o them es are strikingly evident. In order to assess the ideological originality o f the National Revolu­ tion and the extent o f discontinuity w ith its Republican progenitor, it is obviously necessary to analyse the continuity o f language and symbols from the inter-war period - at greater length than I have space for here. Certainly the imm ediate past was crucial for both natalism and familialism, which emerged in a coherent Jointly-identified form in 1920 and had definitely entered the realm o f State policy w ith the promulga­ tion o f the Code de la Famille in 1939. The development o f both has

36

Women and th e N ational R evolution

37

been charted elsewhere.3 Here it might be useful, at the risk o f over­ sim plification, to note m erely th at across the political spectrum natalism and familialism had gained credence in the 1930s. Certainly among some conservative groups - the Alliance Nationale Contre la D épopulation is the m ost obvious example —vigorous prom otion o f the French family and population growth presented a panacea to various real and perceived threats, internal or external: the civil strife o f the Popular Front era, im m igration, German rearm am ent, etc. In other words, well before Vichy, there was a conjuncture o f ideas th at gave prom inence to certain analyses o f decline and degeneracy as well as presenting specific ideological remedies. If the transition in 1940 regarding images o f women and the fam ily was not as abrupt as one m ight expect, it was purely because a natalist-fam ilialist vocabulary had become commonplace in political discourse. But this vocabulary or discourse, however pervasive, did not ju st progressively become amplified by 1940. Crucially, it was the crisis o f m ilitary collapse and occupation, the traum a o f defeat th at crystal­ lised these latent ideological trends and gave urgency to their specific perspectives. The remarkable m ood o f ‘national self-recrim ination’ (Paxton) in the summer o f 1940 generated a m oral crusade against the institutions and m ores o f the Third Republic. ‘D énatalité’ and ‘la crise de la fam ille' were often highlighted as grim symptoms o f pre-war decadence. Certainly the m otif o f this m oral crusade - '‘Travail, Fam üle, Patrie* - was more than a convenient slogan to replace the revolutionary triptych on public buildings. These words symbolised values central to the proposed national ‘rénovation’. The vision o f the new m oral order initiated by Pétain was firm ly based in a traditional, hierarchical and oiganic structuring o f society, antithetical to the m at­ erialism and individualism which was deemed to have characterised Republican France and which had led to national catastrophe: L'ancien régime n 'a connu, en effet, que l’individu en face de l'E tatProvidence: l'ordre nouveau est fondé sur le groupem ent naturel: fam ille, comm une, corporation et plus ces groupem ents sont forts, plus l’E tat l’est aussi.3 This social philosophy, often attributed to the influence o f Le Play, gave the fam ily a crucial public and socio-political dimension. It was n o t ju st the key area in which individual hum an fulfilm ent might be realised, although this plays an im portant part in later pro-fam ily propa­ ganda. Even m ore significant was the fam ily’s function as the prime

38

Women and th e N ational R evolution

unit o f social organisation. The stable and fecund French family under­ pinned all social order; its advocacy and m aintenance therefore form ed a legitim ate elem ent o f social policy: Le droit des familles est en effet antérieur et supérieur à celui des individus. La famille est la cellule essentielle; elle est l’assise même de l’édifice sociale; c’est sur elle qu’il faut bâtir, s’il elle fléchit, to u t est perdu; tan t q u ’elle tien t, to u t peut être sauvé.4 This familial ideology was m atched and complem ented by intensi­ fied natalist anxieties, similarly brought centre stage by the events o f 1940. Indeed they were sanctioned by Pétain himself, when he gave one o f the causes o f French defeat as T ro p peu d’enfants*. Natalist slogans o f demographic panic gained currency and an array o f propaganda alerted public opinion against ‘un suicide co llectif, comparing French demographic perform ance w ith th at o f her virile neighbours and m elodram atically invoking the im m inent demise o f la patrie’. This propaganda, as well as the legislation which it advertised or advo­ cated, rested on tw o principal assumptions: first th at the reversal o f France’s declining birth-rate was possible, in fact was an urgent priority; and secondly th at this demographic regeneration was to be achieved by and through the French fam ily. The campaign against social and moral decadence form ed the ideological nexus between these tw o all-pervasive assum ptions, which echoed through official publications.5 Natalism and familialism were inextricably linked. A striking example is th at o f the ‘Concours-Référendum sur les causes de la dénatalité française’ (1941) conducted under the patronage o f Maréchal Pétain, in which the public were invited to assist the au th o rities. . . à alerter l’opinion, à redresser le jugem ent public, afin que la France entière se préoccupe d ’assurer la renaissance de la famille qui sera la renaissance de la France, condition de notre avenir meilleur.6 Entrants were required to choose the three m ost im portant reasons for French depopulation from a possible 15 axioms, which ranged from the availability o f divorce, women’s em ploym ent outside the hom e, fear o f childbirth, to the difficulties o f accom m odation, etc. Given the m oral bias o f the sponsors (who included the Commissariat Général à la Famille and the Centre National de Coordination et d*Action des Mouvements Fam iliaux) and the campaign against individualism, it is

Women and th e N ational R evolution

39

perhaps unsurprising th at 'absence ou insuffisance de religion* headed the poll. The overlapping or interrelatedness o f ideologies o f Church and State in 1940, no less than their form al relationship, was highly complex. However, it is obvious th at in this area o f natalist-familialism there was an explicit identification o f common interests which might be crudely schematised here as centring on support for the procreativity o f French 'familles nombreuses*. It was the m ilitants o f the pre-war, predom inantly Catholic, family movement who provided the message and personnel for Vichy’s natalist policy. Although reference was often made to the success o f fascism in this sphere, they were quick to emphasise the m oral and conservative aspects o f French natalism , as opposed to the racial and secular imperatives o f their neighbours* policies, and were highly reticent about any undue extension o f State control.7 None the less despite the articulation o f conservative Catholic familialism , pronatalist enthusiasm often led to moral-racial ambiguities. Partially this was because the consensus which supported the idea o f 'rénovation nationale' via the French fam ily, also underpinned the broader concept o f creating an exclusive national com m unity. Although racialist paranoia had o f course existed previously, it was undoubtedly war, the anti-communist purge, and the creation o f a reactionary government (whose thorough anti-Semitism was one o f its principal features) which gave these phenom ena a more coherent socio-political form . Vichy was totally consistent in its drive to establish an exclu­ sively French, pure national com m unity and rid it o f all foreign, degen­ erate elements. From the revision o f recent naturalisations8 - one o f its first legislative steps - to the propaganda o f its demographic instruc­ tio n manuals9 ,th e regime pursued its specific natalist orientation. This discussion has so far concentrated on indicating the pervasive­ ness o f natalist-familialism and its im portance for the National Revolu­ tio n . I would now like to elaborate on how this perspective inform ed the ideological orientation o f the regime towards women. Predictably, given the preoccupation w ith depopulation, m other­ hood became the prim ary focus for women’s social contribution: C'est en vertu de sa m aternité même que la mère est l'ouvrière privi­ légiée du redressem ent national. Contre ce m ortel ennemi du pays, la dénatalité, doit se dresser la mère française; seule sa fécondité peut assurer le salut de la race.10

40

Women and th e N ational R evolution

Although Vichy did not espouse the extrem e eugenicist measures o f fascist regimes, the valorisation o f m otherhood, w ith its racial associa­ tio n , provided a common ideological dynamic. The exclusive idealisa­ tion o f m aternity and fecundity and the creation o f separate spheres o f existence and fulfilm ent for the sexes were fundam ental to the social thinking o f both. Vichy, as in other areas, did not simply act in accord­ ance w ith German dictates. The regime's policies are thus not reducible to an im portation o f the K inder, K irche, K üche im perative. V ichy‘de­ fined wom en's role and status by reference to an inseparable m aternal and familial function: La famille repose essentiellem ent sur la m ère. Or la Cité repose sur la famille. D 'où le role de la mère dans la Cité . . . De la famille, la mère est l’assise fondam entale . . . Elle est créatrice, éducatrice, consola­ trice et la conseillère et guide du foyer.11 The principal features o f this outlook had direct antecedents in con­ servative and Catholic doctrine. An influential restatem ent, for exam ple, had been th at o f Pius XI in his Encyclical ‘Casti Connubii' (December 1930) which argued against any form o f wom en's emancipa­ tion for the good o f the fam ily. But the notion o f 'la femme au foyer' and the pre-eminence o f wom en's procreative role were not solely attributable to Catholic dogma. J.F . McMillan has noted the pervasive­ ness o f this ideology o f dom esticity in nineteenth-century France among republicans and anti-clericals to o .12 Crucial to this analysis, how­ ever, was the seeming interaction o f such a broadly based antifem inism , w ith its complex b u t resilient roots in French traditions, and a revital­ ised and quite distinct natalist-familialism. There was an interesting dovetailing o f paternalist images and assum ptions which found expres­ sion in Vichy's policies and propaganda. A general consensus existed as to the significance o f women’s domes­ tic role. One com m entator in demanding constitutional guarantees for the family as ‘une unité sociale naturelle', recommended the adoption o f a constitution m odelled on th at o f the Irish Free State and in partic­ ular its article giving recognition to women’s place w ithin the hom e.13 The view th at the common good relied on the m aintenance o f a strict sexual division o f labour was the basic premise for all subsequent argu­ m ents. Women's social contribution was acknowledged but delineated; her influence and fulfilm ent were by-products o fh e rro le in th e dom estic sphere. A brochure o f the Commissariat Général à la Fam ille, destined ‘Aux Educatrices’ confirm ed the im portance o f this role:

Women and th e N ational R evolution

41

C’est en effet autour de la préparation à la vie au foyer que doit être centré l’éducation d'une jeune fille. Ce foyer, cellule vivante de la patrie, sûr abri des enfants, bonheur à la mesure du coeur des hommes, ce foyer où to u t nait, se préserve, se développe, c’est à elles qu'il appartient de défendre l'intégrité et la douceur contre les ennemis du dehors et du dedans.14 Thus woman was defined by her function o f wife, m other and guardian o f private space. The consequences o f such a dichotom y between private/dom estic and public/social were obviously far-reaching. W omen's social existence was seen as separate and personal, the dom estic ideology was reinforced. Above all the 'femm e au foyer’ imperative in the National Revolution involved the system atic endorse­ m ent o f a specific sexual identity and the social construction o f gender, w ithin an ideology o f natalist-fam ilialism . It is w orth investigating this notion in the three key areas I m en­ tioned earlier — education, em ploym ent and sexuality. Through each, one can detect a range o f images and presum ptions o f gender and fem ininity which overlap, relate to and feed each other system atically. Sometimes these are reflected in direct relation to natalist-familialism, sometimes as the mere shadow o f the National Revolution’s core pater­ nalism. In education, for exam ple, the prim ary substance o f V ichy's dis­ course focused on fu tu rs chefs', the virile cadres who would spearhead a m oral regeneration. It was French male youth whose effective social­ isation concerned the policy-makers and ideologues, and who were in fact m obilised into the quasi-m ilitaristic Chantiers and Compagnons. None the less the regim e's educational orientation did have certain con­ sequences for girls' education, which in turn coincided w ith the change in the status and nature o f female education demanded by a fem m e au fo y er' principle. The egalitarian and m eritocratic presum ptions o f Republican education were replaced by a gender-strict vocationalism . Form ation, no longer mere instruction or encyclopaedic fact-cramming, was to be provided, directly fitted to future social roles and signifying therefore blatent antipathy to wom en's non-dom estic am bitions, academic o r professional. This m eant for girls com pulsory 'enseigne­ m ent m énager', comprising hygiene, housekeeping, cooking, laundry and 'une initiation à la psychologie et à la morale fam iliale’, and tim e­ tabled to correspond to extra hours o f physical education for male students.15 'Enseignem ent m énager' was central to constructing a differentiated

42

Women and th e N ational R evolution

curriculum , underwriting women’s future m aternal function and dom estic labour and the separateness th at was to be confirm ed by sexual segregation in the classroom.16 It was claimed th at equal and identical instruction led to identical qualifications ( ‘des titres et dip­ lômes flatteurs, n ’oublions pas le vieux complexe I d ’infériorité dont souffrent encore les femmes d’aujourd’h u i') which in turn incited girls, who had no need, to ‘encom brer les carrières m asculines'. The logical outcom e o f undifferentiated education for the labour m arket was felt to be ‘l’invasion | égoïste des jeunes filles qui voulurent se faire une situation seulement pourlétre indépendantes et se payer des toilettes coûteuses'.17 These prejudices, though probably cultivated as hostility to the ‘new’ economically active female in the 1930s, were particularly misplaced and ironic in the austere France o f 1940-4. But such attem pts to discredit women’s academic or professional am bitions, wavering betw een misogyny and paternalism , found clear articulation in the Vérités e t Rêveries sur l ’E ducation (1941) o f René Benjamin - who has been called ‘one o f Pétain’s m ost faithful hangers-on’.18 Warning fathers against the costly delusion o f seeking to provide a career and independence for their daughters, as well as indicating the risk o f nervous debilitation from studying for the girls themselves, Benjamin concluded th at he had heard from a well-informed source (probably confirm ed by current rum our) th at 300 qualified female lawyers fo n t le tro tto ir à Paris’.19 It was not ju st the backdrop o f German occupation th at made such diatribes so pernicious. This propaganda merely amplified the National Revolution, which sought not only the educational preparedness o f girls for dom esticity but also the actual ‘retour’ o f the woman, especially the m arried woman, to the hom e. From the summer o f 1940 the government acted to protect male ‘chefs de fam ilies' from the rigours o f dem obilisation and unem ploym ent by setting param eters to women’s right to em ploym ent. A telegram o f 7 July 1940 recom ­ mended a hierarchy o f dismissals o f women from the private sector and was followed by w hat Darlan was to call ‘une des lois les plus im port­ antes parm i celles qui ont été élaborées par le gouvernement du Maréchal’30- the Loi du 11 octobre 1940, which regulated women’s em ploym ent in the public sector. Regardless o f the ultim ate efficacy o f these measures the same paternalist ideology was being reiterated: woman’s place was ideally ‘au foyer' and her right to rem unerative work was conditional. The exceptions perm itted were when women substituted for the male breadwinner, as widows or heads o f house­ holds, for example wives o f prisoners o f war, or else where they effect­

Women and th e N ational R evolution

43

ively provided no 'concurrence* for exam ple, in traditionally 'fem ale' industries. Similarly exem pted were m arried women whose work was o f a nature to be com patible w ith the fulfilm ent o f her dom estic re­ sponsibilities, th at is, part tim e or in close proxim ity to her hom e. Above all the ideal o f the dependent m arried woman, constrained by duty and dom estic labour, was param ount. The prom inence given to the Fête des Mères under Vichy was in­ tended to acknowledge if not compensate for this dependence, as well as providing an opportunity for eulogies on the subject o f m otherly virtues. . . 'de dévouem ents quotidiens, de discrets sacrifices, de vrai et pur am our'.21 A conscious appreciation o f m others and their social function was required o f the whole national com m unity: ‘Honorer la m ère, c’est honorer la Patrie, Mieux encore, c'est la serv ir.. Z22 so th at fam ilialist logic was constantly propounded: La mère fait la fam ille, La famille fait la France.23 The natalist imperative itself was often quite explicit as in this appeal made directly to French women: Toi qui veut rebâtir la France Donne-lui d ’abord des enfants.24 Indeed one author waxed lyrical on the coincidence o f benefits o f m aternity —for the woman and the State: L 'intérêt personnel de la femme, sa beauté physique, sa santé, son équilibre m ental et surtout sa conscience morale sont devenus un facteur démographique de prem ier o rd re .. . L'individu devra com­ prendre que ses intérêts fém inins sont communs avec ceux de l'E tat. En même tem ps que la femme française reconnaîtra ses intérêts fém inins et renaîtra à une nouvelle jeunesse par la m aternité, elle servira la société, accomplira les fonctions sociales qu'on attend d ’elle.35 Reproduction and female sexuality were constantly identified so th at th e natural destiny o f the woman was itself continuously constructed, as in the injunction: 'il n 'y a rien de plus triste qu’un jardin sans fle u rs .. . qu’une femme sans en fan t'.26 Fem ininity and m aternity were key attributes o f this prom otion o f gender indentity. An official

44

W omen and th e N ational R evolution

brochure entitled ‘La Vie en Fleur' carried tw o articles extolling m otherhood. One m aintained th at. . . ‘avoir des enfants em bellit la femme’, the other th at ‘la m aternité donne à la femme son équilibre'. This pervasive psycho-social approach was summed up by an illustrated

En fondant une famille Elle accom plit sa destinée.37 It is highly significant th at endorsem ent o f this natural m aternal destiny came so often from the medical profession. O f course there was an overlap, o f Catholic Association m ilitants and personnel from the medical profession or social services. But this medical orthodoxy gave the seemingly commonsensical or universalist assum ptions o f wom en's social role a fresh, quasi-scientific sanction. A consensus was form ed th at deemed procreation not only advantageous b u t essential for wom en, confirming again the coincidence o f natalist priorities and con­ servative views o f the female condition: Les découvertes scientifiques des dernières décades ont prouvé que la femme ne peut écarter systém atiquem ent la conception sans risque de porter atteinte à son organisme. . . La m aternité seule donne à la femme la plénitude de son épanouissem ent. Le Professeur Pinard, un des grands m aîtres de l'obstétrique aim ait à dire q u'il faut à une femme, en général, quatres grossesses au cours de son existence pour avoir une santé norm ale.38 The medical recom m endation o f at least four pregnancies, favoured unlim ited procreativity and combined social, psychological and physio­ logical argum ents about the dangers o f birth control. It com plem ented a m ore aggressive propaganda campaign against the ‘fléau national’ o f abortion. On this issue a rem arkably unified conservative reaction was m obilised, expressing itself in a rigorous policy o f repression. Indeed the ‘300 Law’, which established the concept o f abortion as a crime against the individual (the unborn child), society and the race — and under which a woman was guillotined —was closely related to the ideo­ logical imperatives o f natalism , familialism and moralism discussed above.39 The title-page o f a brochure against abortion graphically por­ trays this notion o f personal and national ‘assassination. . . L'avorte* m ent tue l’enfant, tue la femme, tue la France'.30 A nti-abortion m aterial, emotive and abundant as it was in this period, starkly con­

Women and th e N ational R evolution

45

firm ed the exclusion o f a self-determined female sexuality and the primacy o f m ilitant natalism : Mais si Ton considère que la France perd chaque année 35,000 femmes tuées par l’avortem ent criminel (fem m es dont chacune aurait pu donner plusieurs enfants au Pays), que les avorteurs tuent chaque année de 50,000 i 100,000 de Français, ill suffirait seule­ m ent que la France supprime l’avortem ent pour se retrouver au prem ier rang des puissances fécondes.31 Hopefully this brief survey has given some indication o f the nature and im portance o f Vichy’s images o f wom en. A comprehensive analysis would obviously rely on assessing both the degree o f ideological mobili­ sation and policy im plem entation involved in this ‘femme au foyer* im perative. But I would argue th at the significance o f this imperative does not relate solely to the efficacy o f individual legislative or propa­ ganda measures. Crucially im portant is the articulation and amplifica­ tio n o f these assum ptions o f gender and fem ininity as integral or dynamic elements o f the National Revolution. This in turn offers two interpretative possibilities. Either these assum ptions constituted a latent antifem inism , crystallised by Vichy in the natalist-fam ilialist nexus itself an apparently apolitical area in which the regime sought to con­ struct a sense o f national purpose and identity. Alternatively the range o f images o f *la femme au foyer* may not have signified an explicit antifem inism , on the fascist m odel, but instead a ‘shadow* or reverse o f Vichy’s paternalism — and here the term needs to be reinvested w ith literal meaning. The potent symbolism o f the father figure in the N ational Revolution requires investigation. From Pétain’s muchpublicised encounters w ith wom en, children and peasants through to the prom otion o f hierarchical authority via male Chefs de Families and Anciens C om battants, a paternalist social ideology was mobilised. This paternalism was central to the regime’s efforts to project a reassuring apoliticism .33 Studies o f particular institutions or policies (like th at o f C outrot on ‘La Politique Familiale de V ichy')33 tend to confirm them es o f con­ tin u ity and even apoliticism . This discussion, on the other hand, suggests th at w ith regard to sexuality and ideology the National Revol­ u tio n involved discontinuity and polarisation.

46

Women and the N ational R evolution

Notes 1. See, for example, M.A. Macciochi, Temale Sexuality in Fascist Ideology’, Feminist Review, I, 1979; T. Mason, Women in Germany, 1925-1940’, History Workshop Journal, 1976. 2. R. Talmy, Histoire du Mouvement Familial en France, 1896-1939 (Paris, 1962); D.V. Glass, Population Policies and Movements (Oxford, 1940). 3. P. Pétain, Principes de la Rénovation Nationale. La Doctrine et l ’A ction du Maréchal, Société d ’Editions Economiques et Sociales (Paris, n.d.), p. 22. 4. P. Pétain, ’La Politique Sociale de l’Avenir*, Revue des Deux Mondés 59-60, September 1940, pp. 114-15. 5. These include tracts and brochures o f the Commissariat Général à la Famille: Aux Educatrices (1943), La Vie en Fleur (1943), Le Pharmacien et la Dénatalité (n.d.), L'instituteur et Son Rôle dans la Restauration de la Famille Française (1941). 6. ’Demain que sera la France’. Exemplaire de prospectus de Concours-Référ­ endum. AN, AGII 498. 7. G. Pemot, ’Note sur la Politique Familiale’ (1940), p. 2. AN AGII 459. 8. Journal Officiel, 23 juillet 1940. 9. Enseignement Démographique et Familiale, Haury & Lugand, Alliance Nationale Contre la Dépopulation (Ministère de l’Information, 1944), AN F41 291. 10. Un Fléau National: la Dénatalité. Brochure pouvant servir pour plan aux conférences, 1942. (Services techniques de la Propagande, Vichy) AN F41 291. 11. La Journée des Mères. Brochure pouvant servir pour plan aux conférences, 1943.A N F41 291. 12. J.F. McMillan, Housewife or Harlot: the Place o f Women in French Society, 1870-1940 (Brighton, 1981), pp. 10-12. 13. W. Garein, Révolution Sociale Par la Famille, Fédération des Associations de Familles (Service technique de la Propagande, Vichy, 1943), p. 16. 14. Aux Educatrices, Commissariat Général à la Famille. 15. Loi du 18 mars 1942. 16. W.D. Halls, The Youth o f Vichy France (Oxford, 1981), p. 43. 11. Aux Educatrices, Commissariat Général à la Famille. 18. A. Werth, France 1940-1955 (London, 1956), p. 67. 19. R. Benjamin, Vérités e t Rêveries sur l ’Education (1941), p. 186. 20. Letter, 7 mars 1941. AN, F60 628. 21. Poster Têtes des Mères’, 25 mai 1941. AN, F 41 291. 22. IA Journée des Mères, AN, F41 291. 23. Tract ‘La Maternité Embellit’, AN, AG I I 498. 24. A section of the tricolored triptych produced in December 1941, the others being: Dormer la vie engendre la loia; La Famille, fruit du passé, germe de l ’avenir. AN, AG I I 498. 25. Dr Toüs, Santé, Beauté, Maternité (1941). 26. AN AG U 498. 27. La Vie en Fleur, Commissariat Général à la Famille. 28. Les Dangers des Pratiques Anticonceptioneües, Alliance Nationale Contre la Dépopulation (1944). AN F41 291. 29. Journal Officiel, 15 février 1942. See G Watson, ’Birth Control and Abortion in France since 1939*, Population Studies, 5 , 1952. 30. P. Lefebvre-Dibon, La lutte contre l ’a vortement, Alliance Nationale Contre la Dépopulation, 1943. 31. J.E. Roy, L ’A vortement Fléau National, Publications de FUniversité de Poitiers, no. 4,1944.

Women and th e N ational R evolution 32. H.R. Kedward, Resistance in Vichy France (Oxford, 1978), PP- 82*4. 33. A. Coutrot, *La Politique Familiale de Vichy’ in Le Gouvernement de Vichy, 1940-1942, FNSP, Paris (1972).

47

3

MANIPULATORS OF VICH Y PROPAGANDA: A CASE STUDY IN PERSONALITY John Dixon

The Vichy regime was an obvious failure. In four years it turned a nation o f ‘Quarante Millions de Pétainistes*1 into one which, to all intents and purposes, was to m about by a bloody civil war in 1944 whose wounds have yet to heal fully, even after 40 years. S udi a situa­ tion imposes severe problem s for historical research. Failure it may have been, b u t when the defeat occurred in 1940, it was for many French people the ‘Divine surprise’ for which they had been waiting and preparing for years.3 The Vichy regime did have an ideology, however contradictory it was to prove, and, for various reasons, it was able to m otivate a significant num ber o f educated people to m anipulate the vast bureaucratic machine it created to effect the restoration o f France. Dr Roger Austin has w ritten about the propaganda machine in the Hérault départem ent and how it coped w ith the problem o f assessing public opinion.9 There is no doubt th at this vast machine was uncoor­ dinated and to some extent chaotic; until, th at is, January 1944 when rationalisation was imposed by the Milice regime o f Laval and Dam and. By th at tim e, however, m any o f the natural supporters o f the Vichy regime had themselves been alienated. It is to these supporters o f the Vichy regime th at this chapter is devoted since the success o f a political m achine m ust, to some extent, be determ ined by the people who inspire its development and who make it succeed —or fail. Roderick Kedward has indicated the route towards understanding the Vichy regime: ‘Above all, there is a need to see Pétainism as some­ thing which came from below , as well as from above, and to analyse its failure in those terms*.4 This chapter is an attem pt to do ju st th at in a very small way since the tw o m anipulators o f Vichy propaganda chosen here are, in no statistical way, representative. Marcel Pays, regional censor o f Limoges, could be regarded as a ‘professonal Vichyssois’, one who found com pensatory em ploym ent in the new regime and one who had evident sym pathy for its ideas. The demands o f the Vichy regime and the proxim ity o f his newly acquired country residence were the only reason for his three-year connection

48

M anipulators o f Vichy Propaganda

49

with Limoges. *1940 is less the death o f the Third Republic than the final death o f the Popular F ro n t.' This is Roderick Kedward's perspective on the nature o f Vichy France.s He drew his conclusion from a study o f pre­ fectoral reports and a study o f those w ritten by Marcel Pays would not detract from th at. In the case o f Me. René Farm er, C hef de Propagande, o f the Légion Française des C om battants, this assertion would be to tell but part o f the story. Because he followed Pétain w ithout hesitation in 1940 and stayed, ju st like Pétain, loyally at his post until it no longer existed, Me. Fam ier is here designated as an 'instinctive Pétainist*. Furtherm ore, a study o f his life reveals a dedication to the destruction o f a republican regime whose fundam ental concepts were totally alien to his own culture and ideology. My fascination for the Vichy regime lies in the conviction th at it was a 'regime in w aiting' for m ore than 45 years. Antagonism against th e sym bol o f the Republican regime (D reyfus) was a consistent and comm on them e among m any supporters o f Vichy and, when Maurras commenced his life sentence in prison by shouting, *C'est la Revanche de D reyfus' he was, for once, speaking for m any m ore people than him ­ self.6

Marcel Pays, Censeur Régional de Limoges: *Vichyssois professionnel’ Weber has already penetrated Vichy incontestably, w ith his assertion th a t 'Many Frenchm en were Maurrasian w ithout knowing it'. An occa­ sional pre-war contributor to Je Suis P artout and Gringoire, there is no evidence th at Pays belonged to A ction Française but certainly the study o f this m an’s three-year service as regional censor in Limoges shows b o th how im portant censorship was in the regime's control o f ideology and how officiais like Pays, brought into the regions from Vichy, carried out national policy. Marcel Pays was a professional in the sense th a t he executed his orders w ithout regard for his personal feelings and in the sense th at the Vichy regime provided him w ith rem unerative em ploym ent when the defeat o f 1940 confronted him w ith a future w ithout work at the delicate age o f 59. No doubt he was then contem plating retirem ent at the end o f what h ad been a flourishing career as a national journalist in Paris. In 1933 he h ad been prom oted O fficier de la Légion dTionneur7 while he was diplom atic editor o f VExcelsior. This newspaper died w ith the Repub-

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lican regime and, after being appointed to the censorship departm ent o f the M inistry o f Inform ation at Vichy in Septem ber 1940 he arrived, after a short period atj Nîm es, in December 1941 as regional censor at Limoges. He approached this sudden and paradoxical change o f direc­ tion o f his career w ith nothing less than professional com m itm ent. Moreover, rum our suggested th at he even had am bitions for prom otion in the censorship hierarchy at Vichy, staffed as it was by form er Parisian colleagues.8 This em ploym ent was Marcel Paÿs’ only connection w ith Limoges itself. Such a tenuous link poses very serious problem s for research into his background and personality. He was also a poet but his poems and official docum entation impose the onus o f inference upon the reader. What does become clear is th at the key to understanding Pays’ m otiva­ tion for working for Vichy and for his remaining at his post until May 1944 lies in a profound desire to earn his own living and m aintain a standard o f life th at, by 1940, he had achieved for him self and his family by hard work and sacrifice — the sacrifice o f his poetical and artistic aspirations. As he said: ’A rt or Literature? A nxiety over this choice hardly taxed me; first it was necessary to live.’ Marcel Regis V ictor Pays was bom in 1881, the son o f the sales representative o f a Lyon silk firm which failed ju st before his birth.9 His father was to try , somewhat im prudently prepared, to make a living in South America. Marcel was to see his father only once before his disappearance w ithout trace in 1899. He was accordingly reared by his m other b u t his educa­ tion was financed by the family o f the silk firm . His education was sound b u t, as he was a relatively poor scholar at a Catholic boarding school, he was always conscious o f his own relative poverty and the need to earn his own living. He| passed ’an infancy, dream y and sad’ at Le Puy, Haute Loire, a ’devout and sacred city where prayer and pleasure have the same secret ardour. O f your voluptuous fervour, the hot wax o f m y heart has received the secret im print which makes me a “man o f desire'*.’ Certainly poetry, published in I9 6 0 ,10 reveals a m an to whom m atters o f the heart were o f some significance. As for religious piety, even his arch-critic, Pierre Limagne, acknowledged th at he was less ‘fussy’ in m atters religious than in m atters political and m ilitary. It is Pierre Limagne, form er journalist w ith the Catholic newspaper, la Croix de Paris, who provided m uch intim ate detail o f the censor’s life whilst in Limoges.11 La Croix was evacuated to Limoges for the four years o f the Occupation and in 1946 Limagne published a uniquely detailed diary o f these years, Les E phém érides.n Accurate as

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this detail is, a journalist needs a villain for his story and it is clear th at the regional censor fulfils this role adm irably. Relations were already strained under the regime o f his predecessor, the elderly soldier Com­ m andant Henri Peyre and as the dom estic and m ilitary situation deteriorated so did relations between censor and newspapers. What makes this book dangerous as a true record o f ‘Marcel P......... ’, as he is cited, is th at after the occupation o f the ‘free zone’ in November 1942, Limagne left Limoges for active services w ith the Maquis in the Ardèche. Consequently inform ation in his book is, thereafter, dependent upon docum ents brought to him by colleagues and upon journalists’ gossip. Some o f the com m ent on the supposed relationship between Pays and his German counterpart is based upon inform ation relayed by the news­ paper’s cyclist-messenger boy. In an interview w ith m e, M. Limagne adm itted th at he had only m et Pays before the war and th at he did not like him , because o f his excessive professional zeal. The only journalist o f la Croix who knew him personally has adm itted th at he is now too old and ill to remember -enough to help the historian.13 Such are the hazards which confront the historian o f the ‘professional Vichyssois' w ho was, in effect, in ‘exile’ from his roots. The situation may well be rem edied since, at the tim e o f writing, the fam ily o f Marcel Pays has indicated th at it will co-operate w ith my research. Conclusions outlined here m ust, therefore, be regarded as pro­ visional. For the present, we m ust rely on his official reports, letters, po etry - and Limagne’s subjective com m ents. Pays him self was realistic enough to appreciate his predicam ent, now he was no longer a journalist: W ithout doubt, censors cannot pretend to be popular in the narrow world o f newspapers which m ust be rem inded o f their errors. But they will leasily finish by making themselves understood, esteemed and resp ected .. . which is really the essential.14 Experience would frustrate these ideals since never could journalist and censor agree about ‘errors’. A form er journalist, however, would appear to be a m ore felicitous choice as a censor than a soldier as the govern­ m ent tried to relax the restrictions upon newspapers during 1941 and 1942. M atters o f ‘inform ation’, ‘propaganda* and ‘censorship’ were not the creation o f the Vichy regime. It m erely utilised and developed republi­ can practices bequeathed to it. Introduced in haste, these services were to be chaotic and com peting until rationalisation was imposed by the

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Secretary o f State for Inform ation, Philippe H enriot in 1944. Censor­ ship was an ancient practice, controlled traditionally by the m ilitary. Vichy’s contribution was to staff this departm ent by professional journalists. In the First World War, it had earned the sobriquet ‘Anastasie’, yet despite the best political intentions it was not until O ctober 1936 th at the government set up a commission to co-ordinate all the inform ation services which had hitherto been operated by separate m inistries. Under Camille Chautemps this commission was designed to serve the M inistry o f Foreign Affairs. It was, however, fear o f war in July 1938 which prom pted the creation o f a general service o f inform ation although another year passed before the w riter Jean Girau­ doux was put in charge o f co-ordinating all inform ation services. In March 1940 L.-O. Frossard became the first Minister o f Inform ation.15 In the provinces the role o f the censor was seen to be merely th at o f applying consignes — government instructions. Soldiers, aided by civil servants were the obviously qualified staff for this lim ited function. Hence the arrival o f Cm t. Peyre and L t. Paul at Limoges in July 1940 along w ith the elderly Joseph Masson, dragged m ost reluctantly out o f retirem ent since he received no extra pay for this work which was to occupy him for the whole o f the Vichy era. Simon A rbellot16 was not impressed: ‘What censors! An aréopage. . . o f sleeping diplom ats, disaf­ fected m ilitary m en, w riters w ithout inspiration.’ Frossard was deter­ mined to replace these ‘illiterates’ and his problem was solved by the closing down o f newspapers such as VExceisior in May 1940 which yielded a profusion o f journalists such as Marcel Pays seeking to earn their living. The Third Republic had extended the role o f censorship in 1936 when the M inister o f the Interior, Albert S arraut,had instructed pre­ fects to keep copies o f all periodicals printed locally since these revealed the general state o f morale and popular reaction to govern­ m ent ideas and acts.17 By 1941 a weekly report on the state o f public opinion as revealed by the b e a i Press was an essential part o f the censor's function. These reports reveal th at Cmt. Peyre was no illiterate — b u t he was ferociously anti-com m unist. During a feud w ith la Croix he had insti­ gated a police phone-tap in Septem ber 1941 but the police report con­ centrated upon the unpopularity o f the censor himself: ‘num erous com­ plaints have already been made by the local press and the removal o f this personality had been requested'. Commandant Peyre had already been told by the editor o f the centre-right newspaper, le Courier du C entre* th at ‘You know nothing o f your profession and I’m beginning

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to have had enough o f this censor.'9 W ithin weeks Marcel Pays arrived after having com pleted his apprenticeship as a censor in Nîmes. It was not» however» only in the cities th at it was realised that m ilitary censorship was counterproductive. In April 1941 the govern­ m ent issued a circular on the role o f the censor: Nine m onths after the Arm istice, it is useful to revise the principles o f control o f the press in order to give newspapers a certain am ount o f liberty com patible w ith the general situation. . . criticism s are perm itted and the press is authorised to discuss problem s o f the main them es o f the National Revolution. Censors m ust m eet at least weekly w ith editors . . . meetings o f colleagues rather than adm inist­ rative m eetin g s.. . to distribute as fairly as possible praise or blame and explain necessary sanctions if need be. Circular 30 o f February 1942 w ent even further. Entitled 'L'Assouplis­ sem ent du Régim e', it made only certain com m unications o f govern­ m ent obligatory for the newspapers and directed censors to have frequent contacts w ith prefects: 'Y our task is n o t only to control but also to advise the press.’ On the face o f it, Pays was well suited to the new role o f the censor, envisaged by Darlan: th at o f ‘advisor to the press’. Yet Umagne was soon complaining th at Pays was to o well suited since he claimed that Pays was n o t content to censor but w anted to rew rite the newspaper him self. Vichy backed up these com plaints by reminding him th at his role was to shorten and n o t to prolong articles!*0 The censor was, accordingly, always the focus o f hostilities in a regime which allowed newspapers to criticise the system , a system which quite clearly, journa­ lists at la Croix were determ ined to underm ine. It was Pays' zeal which was the source o f Limagne's vituperation. Pays own position was ultim ately underm ined, however, because o f the indulgence shown tow ards newspapers by his deputy, L t. Paul, a w ounded war veteran o f 58 years who arrived in Limoges as m ilitary censor in July 1940. As early as Septem ber 1942, Pays was expressing to Vichy his doubt about the reliability o f Paul b u t, because o f his wife and tw o children, he w anted to avoid a scandal. Y et it is clear th at it was Paul who was in charge when articles passed the censor ultim ately causing Vichy to issue a 'green' notice admonishing the censor for his laxity.33 The ultim ate crisis m anifested itself on 6 December 1943 when Paul allowed le Courier to print a report concerning 'le préfet du M aquis' alongside one concerning Vichy’s official prefect.39-'L e préfet

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du Maquis* was none other than Georges Guingouin,24 the communist Resistance leader, ‘w anted’ for over tw o years, who was succeeding where Vichy prefects had consistently failed, in controlling food prices. This failure was a significant factor in Vichy’s own defeat in the propa­ ganda battle. Vichy reacted swiftly and ruthlessly. The Courier was suspended and its directors were interned — along w ith Lt. Paul. The President o f the Légion intervened;25 Pays him self defended his subord­ inate by claiming th at the paper had ‘misled’ the censor26 and, after a few weeks o f genteel internm ent at Evaux-les-Bains,27 all three were released but were subsequently removed from office. This crisis coin­ cided w ith the arrival o f Philippe H enriot as Minister o f Inform ation, and a new structure which rationalised the competing propaganda units. Lt. Paul’s successor eventually succeeded Pays who was him self sub­ ordinated to the Regional Delegate o f Propaganda and Inform ation in March 1944.28 The irony o f his professional demise lies in the fact th at Pays had consistently argued for this rationalisation and unification.29 Part o f the organisational problem o f French government was th at such a civil servant had to satisfy tw o masters — central government in Vichy and the regional prefect in Limoges. If his relationship w ith the newspapers was disastrous, th at w ith the préfecture was harm onious. Faced immediately in December 1941 w ith strife in the Dordogne between censor and prefect, he rapidly came to an agreement whereby the censor was to be the prefect’s ‘broadcasting and reception aerial o f inform ation’ whereas the prefect was to be the censor's ‘secular arm ’.30 Pays* relationship w ith prefect Lemoine was particularly close31 but m ost prefects seemed content to issue censors’ notices on their behalf, virtually verbatim . Certainly the success o f this relationship was based upon m utual need: the censor was an im portant source o f comm ent on public opinion whose transm ission to Vichy was a crucial function o f the préfecture. Posterity, unlike apparently Vichy, begs the question con­ cerning the competence o f the censor in this field, especially as Pays claimed th at his job kept him in the office day and night. However, an insight into the ‘scientific* m ethodology was revealed by his subordi­ nate in the Dordogne who reported: It goes w ithout saying th at the facts th at I report here are not em pty rum ours and I cite my sources: 1. bourgeois landowners in touch w ith the peasant; 2. conversations w ith peasants in the hotel which I in h a b it.. .

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m uch visited on m arket days.92 Study o f the reports w ritten by Pays indicate th at they were read by somebody at the préfecture, because o f the red and blue crayon annota­ tions. Replacement prefect André Jean-Faure seems to have been the m ost assiduous. One o f his suggestions caught the eyes o f the historians Marrus and Paxton.99 It concerned the paradox th at Jews were ex­ cluded from the STO. It is not certain th at Jean-Faure obtained the idea from the censor but certainly he read the Dordogne censor’s report on 30 April 1943 which referred to ‘the deep discontent from the fact th at Jews escape all obligatory w ork'. Pays did not pick this up until 28 May 1943 when he suggested th at the idea originated w ith the depart­ m ental prefect and then he was concerned th at Jews were doubly prone to propaganda from London and Moscow since they were sim ultane­ ously condemned to idleness yet disposed o f considerable resources. This was on 7 June, the same day on which Jean-Faure took up the them e to be m arked down by posterity.94 Pays w rote his last report in January 1944, at a tim e when there was a shift in authority from the prefects to the Milice.95 These reports and Limagne's comments suggest th at Pays was in no way ill at ease w ith the basic ideology o f Vichy and its National Revolution. Interest there­ fore lies in the degree to which he allied him self w ith the regime and, ultim ately, its illegitim ate corollary, collaboration. Lim itations o f tim e force the researcher to concentrate upon certain key .topics. Pays certainly revealed him self hostile to Britain b u t, like m any o f his com patriots, this revulsion was revealed by his reaction to bom bardm ents o f French targets. He annoyed journalists by insisting upon sub-titles such as ‘Indescribable British aggression' or ‘Fifty-nine British aircraft shot d o w n '." That he was hostile at all to Britain is w orthy o f note since Pays cannot excuse xenophobia w ith claims o f geographic isolation. Certainly no profound understanding, bom o f living in Britain, emerges from his poetry which might tem per traditional prejudice against ‘perfidious A lbion'. Marcel Pays had in fact lived in Britain for some three years before the Great War after his marriage to an English­ wom an, who died after a very long illness. He worked as an art critic w ith the magazine Connoisseur. He was said to have been bilingual b ut there is little evidence in his writing to this effect. His passport revealed th at he visited England from 26 to 30 April 1938 as special correspond­ ent o f VExcelsior during the visit there o f Daladier and Bonnet.97 One can only be disappointed, therefore, by the superficiality o f his poetic

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references to Britain. In one entitled ‘In the style o f Toulouse-Lautrec,* he w rote: Their m etallic heels, Pounding the parquet in step, The little British girls Dance Beneath the electric lights. • « «

Y our eyes o f porcelaine, So child like, O f what are they dreaming? What thoughts live there When your underwear Is transform ed into strange corollas Whose pistils dance for those whom Lingerie excites. O f w hat are they dreaming, Your angel eyes? Do they see the handsome Tom y[sic] In Hyde Park or Kensington Gardens, So smart in scarlet tunic; Who spoke to you o f m arriage, The sw eetheart who carried o ff Your life savings?38 Usually Pays was such a professional th at it is difficult to know how strongly he was personally com m itted to the National Revolution. In February 1943 the censor reported blandly th at ‘a collaborationist com m ittee has become discernible recently'.39 A week later, he iterated his com plaint o f lack o f co-ordination in the propaganda services when a youth conference clashed w ith th at o f the physicist, Georges Claude,40 organised by Groupe Collaboration. In the file o f this group a report dated 18 February 1943, w ritten by the Renseignements Géné­ raux said th at ‘the com m ittee has been constituted w ith M. Marcel Pays, chief censor, and the deputy secretary o f the PPF'.41 Was this Monsieur Pays, dutiful censor? Or was it Marcel Pays, individual? There is no evidence th at Pays belonged to any political party - nor even to the Légion Française des Com battants for which four years o f service in the Great War would have entitled him . Y et it is w orthy o f note th at it was

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he who was involved w ith this conference and not an official délégué d ’inform ation as was usual. The explanation probably lies in the mal­ adm inistration o f the propaganda services o f which Pays frequently com plained. Subsequent events showed th at Pays saw a dichotom y betw een his professional and private life. This is illustrated by his reporting on reaction to the STO. It had such profound im pact upon public opinion th at Vichy could not ignore it. On 8 March 1943 he reported ’certain bourgeois, [who] revealed themselves ulcerated at the requisition o f their sons. . .’42 That very same day Limagne noted th at ’Marcel P . . . has gone to Vichy to see Laval in order to interest him in his own son, who has been designated for the deportation and he seeks his exem p­ tion*. Four days later he returned to the story: ‘the son departed w ithout waiting for the term ination o f steps taken to gain his exemp­ tio n ; upholding collaborationist sentim ents, Pays was astounded, quite rightly, th at he should be so sm itten’.43 The son rejected the preferen­ tial treatm ent offered by Laval. Thereafter Pays reveals him self a reporter w ith particularly detailed knowledge o f the problem s such ’deportees* faced.44 There was, however, no comm ent o f a personal nature to reveal the feelings o f a father. Nor do his reports reveal m uch about the German m ilitary censor, L t. Sahm , an Austrian who arrived in Limoges on 16 January 1943. In fact Limagne is the m ain source o f inform ation b u t, as we have already em phasised, he was him self absent from Limoges during this period. The owner o f la Croix reported meetings where Pays offered aperitifs and cigarettes while addressing his counterpart as ’mon cher ami* (though Limagne comm ents th at this was a Pays mannerism used even w ith people he clearly disliked). Allegations were made th at Pays entertained Sahm at his country residence — ‘copains comme cochons* was the allegory; furtherm ore the tw o o f them were alleged to have in­ terrupted a perform ance o f the Barber o f Seville, which created m ore gossip about the closeness o f Franco-German relations. M. Pays’ family vehem ently deny th at Sahm stayed at their house but he did visit w ith­ o u t invitation while he was travelling from Limoges to Châteauroux. A neighbour reported his presence. It was, however, stated th at L t. Sahm was a man o f courtesy and some charm . He was also responsible for the working o f the STO in Limoges yet such *friendship’ did not save Pays* own son from his determ ination. The eventual departure o f Pays from Limoges did n o t end the exist­ ence o f scenes betw een newspapers and the new chief censor but Limagne rem inds us o f our them e when he paid the man the compii-

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m ent th at he was ‘certainly anti-German*. Pays left Limoges, perhaps for the last tim e, on 3 May 1944 victim o f the ‘Préfet du Maquis affair* and certainty o f the re-organisation o f the Propaganda and Inform ation services by Henriot which subordinated Pays to the Propaganda chief. Had he been any less anti-German and, therefore more collaborationist than his successor? Only the m ost fanatical o f collaborators could have been pro-German when it was clearly obvious th at German defeat was only a m atter o f tim e. It has been reported, w ithout verification, th at Pays was in fact on a Nazi blacklist in 1940 over articles he had w ritten in VExcelsior. A study o f his signed articles reveals th at the literary style o f the chief o f the foreign bureau became less ‘diplo­ matic* about the Nazis after the declaration o f war in 1939. Pays collected cuttings o f his own articles which dem onstrated his interest in affairs concerning Great Britain b u t the newspaper itself, especially in 1938, reveals th at Pays was in the mainstream o f m oderate right-wing opinion in advocating Mussolini*s Italy as the effective counterpoise to Nazi Germany. He, and his newspaper, were certainly M unichois in the sense th at the agreement — and Mussolini*s last m inute intervention by telephone —had ‘saved civilisation from a fatal experience*.46 Evidence therefore presents a portrait o f Marcel Pays as an elderly man w ithout strong political opinions or allegiance who, in the tradi­ tion o f French understatem ent, did not ‘play politics*. Like so many others he was able to accept w ith some enthusiasm the changes brought about by the Vichy regime and he was certainty willing to accept pay­ m ent by th at regime for the use o f his expertise in the new circum­ stances. The question which has m ystified even members o f his own family is)how a journalist could become a censor; how did he reconcile his journalistic principles o f freedom o f inform ation w ith the censor’s role o f suppressing, shaping or even distorting inform ation? The solu­ tio n can only be an evident sym pathy for the aims o f the Vichy regime and an overriding need, which stemmed from his experience o f genteel poverty during his adolescence, to earn his own living and m aintain his standard o f living. Along perhaps w ith m ost o f the other ‘quarante millions de Pétainistes’ this overriding preoccupation led inevitably to the accepting o f what had been hitherto unacceptable. Pays* co-opera­ tion w ith the German censor perhaps reveals no more than a logical and convenient extension o f his support for a regime which, he had not yet realised, had outlived its usefulness by November 1942. It could be th at Limagne would have included Pays in his two-edged com plim ent to his successor who, besides being ‘anti-German* was a ‘cowardly civil servant and, a t the bottom , Maurrasian enough in spirit*.47

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In December 1944 he was form ally dismissed from his functions and in February 1946 he suffered the indignity o f being removed from the Légion d'honneur. He was finally put on trial before the Chambre Civique de Limoges on 26 July 1946 where he was 'purely and sim ply’ acquitted o f the only charge - th at o f being one o f Vichy's censors. He still had to wait until 20 January 1948 before being restored to the Légion. Subsequently he w rote occasional articles for le Figaro and other publications. Among his own docum ent collection cuttings are found from VA uvergnat de Paris where it was recalled th at, before the G reat War, Paÿs had been hailed as one o f 16 young 'wolves' from the Auvergne who were led by Gandilhon. His last book, R im es Prosaïques, published in 1960 won for him tw o literary prizes, le prix Gabriel Vicaire and le prix Tristan Derême. His stature at his death m erited the recording o f his death at the age o f 82 in the 'Biography o f principal French personalities w h a died during the year 1963'.48 Yet it appears th a t Pays died unsure o f his own reputation. In R im es Prosaïques he w rote his own sad com m entary in the poem , 'R esignation': My generation wanted nothing to do w ith me. Was it its fault, or mine? Too late to call the error m ine, I have lived w ithout knowing either how or why.49 His professional success was clearly eclipsed by th at fateful choice he m ade in the desperate days o f the summer o f 1940, yet it is his work as a Vichy censor th at has brought Marcel Pays to the attention o f posterity. It is, therefore, somewhat ironic th at this four-year aberra­ tio n should finally throw the spotlight on his positive, if m odest, con­ trib u tio n to French cultural life.

Me. René Farnier, Majorai du Félibrige, Chef de Propagande de la Légion Française des Combattants The 'professional' Vichyssois may have been able to leave Limoges for an obscurity which, in the clim ate o f the summer o f 1944, was no doubt welcome. Me. René Farm er had no intention o f leaving his home in the High Limousin. To have done so would have been an admission o f self-reproach. Y et while Pays may have felt him self 'unw anted' by his own generation, the Liberation o f Limoges on 21 August 1944 brought inareasing fears th at Farm er him self was very m uch a w anted

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m an.90 Three m onths later the denunciation cam e, m anifesting itself at the end o f a newspaper report: h ow ever, we have had the disagreeable surprise to report the presence at this rally o f Me. Fam ier, notorious legionnaire who, we are assured, is still a teacher at the Law School.*91 Four days later the Echo du C entre, a comm unist newspaper which had taken over the premises o f the Courrier du Centre followed suit. Its tone was m ore strident: *Why w ait to im prison the President o f the Légion? Me. Farm er [is] still a teacher at th e Law School. [He] should be hunted down and interned.* That decision had been m ade, however, the day previously by the Comité d’Epuration in Limoges. It was to be exactly as the Echo had demanded b u t although he was interned under a regulation concerning ‘denunciation o f civil servants and patriots’, it was significant th at the Com m ittee declared: T h e Commission repeats th at no charge has been brought against [these leaders] \ 53 Nevertheless René Fam ier was interned for nearly three m onths in the form er local Vichy concentration camp o f Nexon until he was suddenly released. His reaction is best left in his own words: Pour du culot, c’est du culot! The Purification Commission interned m e, fifty four days after which it exam ined m y case and declared t h a t . . . it did n o t oppose m y liberation! Quel aveu! And it is signed by the hand o f the [President] who assured me o f the devotion o f him self and his com m ittee. These tyrants are real imbeciles! In fact the affair was m ore dubious than th at since he later learned th at pressure was being p u t on his wife which kept him in prison for twelve days longer than was necessary: it was desired th at he resign his jo b at the Law School. Fortunately when the prefect learned o f this m anoeuvre, he im m ediately ordered Fam ier’s release. Ironically the pre­ fect was a com m unist. The circumstances o f this somewhat sordid episode, which took place in a region described by some to be in a state, initially, o f political terror, illustrate alarmingly the problem s o f achieving objective historical research. Compared w ith Pays, René Fam ier has yielded an abundance o f docum entation for research. Indeed he had a natural desire to rehabilitate him self and he w rote an account o f the experience o f Limoges from ‘D-Day* until April 1945 when his son returned from th e STO. It was this son who offered this account for my research, con­ taining some 180 pages o f m anuscript. I have also seen a m eticulous account w ritten by Me. Fam ier o f his experience in the whole o f the G reat War, but it appears th at there exists only this one volume o f the

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Second World War. The historian is thus faced w ith ‘pre-selected’ docu­ m entation as the author tries to justify his actions, quite naturally, and to indicate the chaos and injustice which he saw following the break­ down o f the Vichy regime. It appears to be a diary, but a lapse over the execution o f Brasillach54 suggests th at it was w ritten in February 1945, a fter his release from internm ent. Otherwise the detail would seem, so far, to be accurate. Nor is oral history necessarily any more reliable — indeed, concern­ ing events o f the Liberation it can be positively misleading. Having first ‘encountered’ Me. Fam ier in an inform ation bulletin and then, more fascinatingly, in a M ém oire55 concerning the activities o f the political Right in Limoges before the First World War, I included his name on a list o f Vichy servants which was presented to someone who was recom­ m ended as an authority on, and survivor of, Limoges in the Vichy era. My interlocutor readily adm itted they had been colleagues and that Fam ier had been interned, but not as a punishm ent. It had been a device o f his colleagues to shelter him! M onths later I read in Farm er’s own account a significant footnote: T knew later th at Sieur . . . [a form er civil servant] under Pétain but whom Guingouin had conserved in office, has alone among the teachers at the Law School tried to prevent my return to m y post.’ The job description in the footnote and corrobora­ tio n o f his career, leads m e, and the son o f Me. Farm er, to conclude th at m y interlocutor in 1982 may well have been, in fact, the actor in the dram a o f 1944. For this historian 40 years is a lifetim e but for survivors and participants o f this period, evidently, objectivity and even honesty is a quality th at cannot be justifiably expected. Drama concerning Me. Farm er's fate after the Liberation has perhaps over-emphasised the role th at he played during the Occupation. IBs crime seems to have been th at he was a leader o f the Légion but no docum ents or public accusations have been found which accuse him o f collaboration w ith either the Milice or the Germans. As propaganda chief w ith the Légion he certainly launched him self into his role w ith gusto in 1941 b u t by 1942 he was beginning to label him self 'assistant commissioner for Folklore events’; by 1943 he was Trovincial President o f the National Commission on Folklore' and in 1944 he requested Vichy to let him stand down as propaganda chief. During this period his assistant was indeed complaining o f rudim entary organisation and th at he was running the service alone for m ore than a year. His assistant's claims may have had some justification since Fam ier never altered his habit o f going to his country hom e, some miles outside o f Limoges, leaving others to organise th at m ost im portant

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event o f the Légion’s calendar, the August anniversary.36 The young assistant finally resigned in the Autum n o f 1943 and his next appear­ ance in Limoges was dram atic. At the Liberation he was a Lt. FFI who led a raid on the Légion headquarters and, while his men surveyed its occupants, he searched the offices for docum ents. Fam ier reflected with some irony on this ‘S.O .L. so proud o f his uniform who had hunted communists’ in his native and neighbouring tow n o f St Junien.57 Farm er’s absence in the country did not mean th at he neglected what had become the inspiration o f his life, his folk group called L’Ecole du Barbichet58 whose activities flourished in the countryside, often on the Légion’s behalf, during the holiday m onths. It is left to the historian to deduce th at Fam ier increasingly diverted his energies from the Légion to regionalism. An indication th at he and other Légionnaires were losing faith in the government came in a report on the invasion o f the Non-Occupied Zone which he w rote in November 1942. He adm itted th at m any o f its members had ’escaped* because, among other reasons, the according o f full powers to Pierre Laval had divided them since their oath was to the Marshal and not to his head o f govern­ m ent. In addition, o f course, it was evident th at German victory was no longer certain.59 Despite these misgivings, Fam ier stayed at his post until it no longer existed, in the same m anner as did Pétain. It was this loyalty towards and adm iration o f Pétain which had drawn Fam ier into serving the Vichy regime as a m anipulator o f its propaganda. Thus he is here dubbed an ’instinctive Pétainist*. Two experiences had dom inated his life before 1940: his experience as a soldier at the Front and, from an earlier stage, regionalism. Fam ier had convinced himself, rightly or wrongly, th at Pétain was, at heart, a Mistralian and in Septem ber 1940 he publicly advertised his position in the Légion newspaper w ith the headline: OUR TASK.60 As in 1914, our duty is held in one word: to SERVE and to serve under the orders o f th at great leader whom we love and adm ire, whose orders will be executed eagerly and w ith discipline. . . our first virtue m ust be obedience.. . An analysis o f Farm er’s service to Vichy and Pétain from 19404 can only be understood in the context o f the first 52 years o f his life, a striking example o f how 1940 was seen as the apotheosis o f a move­ m ent which had been life itself to Fam ier and people like him , though they represented only a small part o f the ‘quarante' m illions’ who had

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welcomed Pétain as their ‘Saviour’. Biographies o f Farm er’s life have already been w ritten, but by people so close to him that they are necessarily selective.61 What they have in common is th at the life o f René Farm er has a gap, unaccoun­ ted for, from 1928 until 1952, tw o years before his death. The aspect o f his life which has been docum ented is his contribution to folklore. The biography w ritten by Dr Leon Delhoume, a childhood friend, co-founder o f the félibrige movement in Haute Vienne and veterans* leader from the inter-war period, fills in many o f the details o f th e development o f the culture and ideology o f our subject. René Fam ier was, in fact, bom in exile in Savoy in 1888, the son o f a rail­ way engineer. Unlike Pays, he wrote o f a ‘delightful infancy* during which his education had religious influences. When his father retired th ey returned to the family estate at Bonnac la Côte from where he could attend the Lycée o f Limoges. There he steeped him self in the literature and language o f O c, coming under the influence o f Mistral. As editor o f the school magazine in 1904, he reviewed poems o f D’Annun­ zio, th at ‘great Italian poet*. This later turned into adm iration for Mussolini’s Italy combining itself w ith profound criticism o f the Third Republic. In 1908 he was a student in Paris at a tim e when students were disrupting lectures given by teachers whose political ideas were mis­ trusted. He then wrote to Delhoume th at the end o f the Republic would n o t come w ith a coup d*état but th at its death would be its own work.63 He condem ned the regime because o f its reliance on individua­ lism which produced ‘three poison fruits: M utiny, Indiscipline and Disorder*. His sole remedy was a ‘hereditary and anti-parliam entarian democracy*. Delhoume paints a picture o f this law student spending his tim e reading poetry, smoking a pipe and going to mass. He would seem to have been a man o f conventional m orality who w rote th at he lived a ‘solitary life* enjoying female company but was ‘disgusted* by con­ tem porary literary work in which ‘everywhere the husband is deceived by his wife*. He loved the theatre and absorbed him self in ‘théâtre A ction Française*. A t this tim e he came to know Charles Maurras personally.63 By the tim e he had won a ‘brilliant* law doctorate in 1913, he was already a journalist in Limoges for the organ o f Action Française, le Salut N ational64 (where he wrote under the pseudonym o f René Maison Rouge, inspired by his lovely home o f th at name in Bonnac. That same year he was one o f the founders o f the Institut Limousin de l’Action

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Française at a tim e when this group seemed to possess a positive educa­ tional dynamic inspired by regional culture. According to his news­ papers, his lectures were well received but the group itself was small in num ber and poorly financed. His national service was finished ju st in tim e for him to be mobilised and despatched to the front by 8 August 1914. He participated in Victory’ on the Marne b u t as the war gathered in intensity in 1915 he shaved o ff his red beard, rose rapidly to the rank o f quarterm aster sergeant and started to defend soldiers on trial for their lives for dis­ obeying orders. However his Croix de Guerre earned him an extra two days leave in Limoges in the Autum n but in these eight days, during which he realised th at the ‘fro n t' and the ‘rear' did not speak the same language, a disillusion set in whose engendered bitterness was to influ­ ence his subsequent writings. His experience o f the rem ainder o f the war would seem to have been less harrowing while he exercised his talents as a barrister ‘near* Verdun. Demobilised in 1920 he set up his own law office in Limoges and m arried in O ctober, becoming a father in 1922. Meanwhile he had secured a post at the Law School and began writing for the new organ o f A ction Française.65 His enthusiasm was consecrated, however, to the foundation o f his Ecole du Barbichet in 1923 w ith the climax arriving in 1928 when Limoges was the host o f the félibréen festival o f Ste Estelle. Thereafter neither biographer writes o f his activities. Fortunately for posterity, he assumed the task after 1931 w riting, as President o f a federation o f V eterans' groups, in their newspapers. He retained this position until it was dissolved by Pétain in August 1940.66 Com part­ m entalised as his life appears to be, it is well w orth analysing them es which his writings between 1908 and 1940 tackled in order to appreci­ ate the genesis o f this ‘instinctive Pétainist’. We have already noted his criticism o f the Republic, uttered at the age o f 20, and the 1930s saw little change in these fundam ental beliefs. The difference was th at his rhetoric had been imbued w ith bitterness engendered by four years at the F ront, followed by 20 years o f frust­ ration w ith the Republic. In 1938 he w rote: T w enty years afterwards and nothing has changed. . . lions are still led by asses.’67 The belief th at war veterans could do better had even pre-em pted 6 February 1934 since a m onth before he had called: ‘BE READY!*68 It is obvious th at the im potence o f our politicians is irremediable . . . and if, on th at day, France, disconcerted and disabused, turns

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tow ards the Poilu o f the Somme and Verdun in order to be saved one m ore tim e, ah well comrades, th at day you will reply again: Present! and you will be ready to take pow er. Poilus who won the war are capable o f winning the peace. René Fam ier was proclaimed in 1936 as the ‘specialist in the question o f m aintaining peace*.49 On the eve o f Munich he declared th a t *war is a crime* and on the m orrow he was certain th at *the Munich agreement was not a m isfortune’.70 Being M unichois did not necessarily im ply th at Fam ier was a potential collaborator w ith the Germans but he undoubtedly feared H itler’s regime greatly, blaming its rise on the ‘abandonm ent o f concessions and advances to Germany* after 1918.71 What was more significant was th at this fear o f Germany magnified his adm iration o f Mussolini. A t Munich it was he who had ‘saved m illions o f hum an lives*, while in March 1939 the Duce was to go on ‘to save peace and civilisation*. ‘If Paris and Rome had agreed w ith each other*, he declared, ‘H itler would be inoffensive and peace would be saved’.73 Farm er’s attachm ent to Italy had a curious birth, w ith Mistral as the G odfather. In 1932 he made a speech pleading for ‘franco-latin friendship . . . the Renaissance o f the Latin race and family*. He devel­ oped his thesis:79 There are betw een us ties o f fam ily and lite ra tu re . . . for if you have celebrated Mistral in Italy, we have celebrated w ith a profound adm iration Dante and Virgil as well. D ante, poet-friend o f Limousin troubadours who had the idea, it appears, o f writing the ‘Divine Comedy’ in the Limousin language because, in the thirteenth century, Limousin was the literary language o f Europe. He w ent on to castigate the anti-Latin prejudice expressed in Paris and explained his lacking this prejudice by the rapid visit he had made to Italy in 1930 where he could see: a great country in full flight, in great vitality and in full strength. I assure you th at a Frenchm an can travel freely w ithout being m olested and, m y faith , he can breathe as freely in Florence as in Paris. It was this prejudice in favour o f Mussolini’s Italy which caused him to speak disparagingly o f Britain during the Ethiopian crisis, thus dis­ playing another essential strand o f Pétainism o f 1940: Anglophobia.

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His antagonism lay in his belief, added to Italy's frustration w ith the Treaties, th at ‘Ethiopia is not a nation b u t an amalgam o f tribes, barbarous and cruel*. In 1936, while ridiculing the League o f Nations, ‘slumbering in impotence*, he claimed th at it was English imperialism which *would have French soldiers killed for the sake o f pleasing the Négus'.™ This them e o f spilling French blood for English gains was iterated in 1940 in the wake o f Dunkirk and Mers El-Kébir. In an article entitled ‘English Treachery* he declared th at it was in fact Britain who had broken her w ord. Moreover British betrayal had not started at Oran but in 1939 when she had dragged France into an ideological war against all those people who do not love ‘dem ocracy’.75 Such talk o f British treachery m ust have evoked a response in the em otionally charged atm osphere o f the summer o f 1940. By then Pétain was in power and, as we have seen, ‘service’ and ‘obedience' were the watchwords. Opinions o f March 1940 would therefore be interest­ ing, at least those n o t obliterated by censors clumsier than Marcel Pays. In an article, he w rote o f the ‘butchers o f Moscow’ who wanted war. Praising ‘heroic Finland', he added th at ‘certainly we French feel th at this war is one o f civilisation against Barbarism and th at to defeat Germany is to defeat as well the Asiatic hordes which, under the pre­ tex t o f Bolshevism, threaten the old w orld, heir to the M editerranean civilisations. . Such thoughts were to be a fam iliar them e o f propa­ ganda following ‘Barbarossa' in 1941. The assum ption o f power by Pétain caused him in Septem ber to pay homage on behalf o f 5,000 regional veterans. ‘The government o f the Marshal has undertaken to remake France. With strict discipline we m ust be at his side. We can, however, collaborate in the great work o f renovation.’77 How far did René Fam ier support the National Revolution? As w ith Paÿs there is no doubt about his sym pathy and, as w ith Paÿs, the only firm evidence o f any political activity is based on research o f depart­ m ental archives. What seems to be evident and, superficially surprising, is th at after 1930 his name does n o t appear in docum entation concern­ ing A ction Française, la Croix de Feu or the PSF.78 One wonders if his allegiance to the first was cast in doubt by the Pope's condem nation in 1926. Again it was the file o f the PPF which cast a little light in the Autum n o f 1940 when Fam ier involved him self w ith the defence o f a young man who was accused o f painting anti-Jewish slogans on walls. Fam ier was convinced the affair had political overtones since he criti-

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cised the police for an excess o f zeal which was not m anifested tow ards either com m unists or w hat he called ‘degaullists’. He had sought the intervention o f a prefect, apparently sym pathetic to avoiding court action, and the m atter reached Peyrouton, the M inister o f the Interior him self. Correspondence on this m atter reveals th at the Secretary o f the PPF described Farm er's attitude to them as *very sym pathetic’. No m ore has yet emerged.79 Meanwhile th at same prefect had asked Fam ier to undertake a task fo r which he had undoubted enthusiasm . On 26 November 1940 he produced a report on regionalism in which he looked forward to a 'peasant civilisation* founded by a Head o f State who 'has publicly rendered homage to the m em ory o f Mistral, founder and inspiration o f the Félibrige’.*0 In this way loyalty o f m en such as Fam ier was pledged by the uniting o f tw o crucial strands o f his life; association o f war veterans and regionalism . It has been shown th at as the effectiveness o f the Légion seemed to decline, Fam ier stayed, however reluctantly, at his post yet consecrated frnore tim e and energy to regionalism and his beloved Ecole du Barbichet. On the eve o f ‘D-Day’ he declared to a regionalist con­ ference: 'Folklore teaches us the history o f our province; F élibhge makes it loved.'81 Evidently such love does conquer all since both the Félibrige and L'Ecole du Barbichet survived its association w ith the Vichy regime and in 1983 the group celebrated its sixtieth anniversary w ith its founder, René Fam ier, posthum ously taking pride o f place at the exhi­ bition m ounted in its honour. In 1952 he had, him self, become fully rehabilitated when he was elected for the second tim e as bâtonnier o f the Limoges bar. He was by then extrem ely tired and he died tw o years later in 1954, characteristically reciting the whole o f M istral's 'Ode to the Latin race'.83 It appears th at even the feeling o f injustice felt by René Fam ier could not weaken the profound fervour o f the culture and ideology which he had developed during adolescence in High Limousin. It could be argued th at Fam ier was an 'instinctive Pétainist' w ithout realising it until the fateful 'conjuncture' o f 1940.83 The strength o f this culture and ideology is still apparent in the descendants o f such men. Marcel Pays' involvement w ith Vichy would not seem to have had such profound roots and, until proved otherwise, it would seem th at he was a professional man who saw no ideological conflict in the job he was paid to perform , even though he m ust have felt th at censorship was anathem a to professional journalists such as himself.

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The last lines th at R ené M aison R ouge w rote as a youthful 26-yearold before he marched o ff to war were taken from Pascal: If only man had never been corrupted . . . M * In 1944 both Fam ier and Pays m ust have sensed themselves as being regarded as corrupt by the younger generation which had risen up to take control o f liberated France. Time and the historian's perspective have both contributed, however, to the placing o f the Vichy regime into the context o f a fervent opposition to the very foundations o f the Third Republic, a repugnance which spanned the generations and which was clearly bom well before the accession to power o f th at hurriedly constituted Popular F ront.85 U ndoubtedly Blum's governm ent, and the workers’ instinctive reaction to it, inspired the regime's opponents to greater stridency and activity in their opposition to the hated M arianne. The difference is m erely one o f emphasis. Some 40 years later these m anipulators o f Vichy propaganda would seem themselves to have been misled into supporting a regime whose acts and ideas were to become increasingly unpalatable even to those who had enthused over the first changes inaugurated by Pétain in his National Revolution. W hether because o f loyalty to Pétain or because o f the need to earn a living, Fam ier and Pays tied themselves inextric­ ably to the Marshal's regime. It is interesting to contrast the reaction o f these tw o men to coping w ith the unpalatable. Fam ier, the youthful star o f Action Française before the Great War withdrew into the rela­ tively neutral zone o f regionalism as Pétain’s regime collapsed, whereas the non-political censor revealed increasing zeal, until he too lost heart at the beginning o f 1944 w ith the professional snub administered by H enriot's reform s. Farm er's regionalism provided an ideological bridge for his subse­ quent rehabilitation after Vichy, symbolised in a m odem , private housing estate to the north o f Limoges by the R ue R ené F am ier.96 Pays, however had no such obvious avenue and his reintegration took longer and was m ore painful. This is some measure o f the cultural and ideological gap th at separated even those th at Vichy was able to m obi­ lise in its m anipulation o f propaganda.

Notes I would like to thank the Foundation o f Rotary International for supporting this

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research, Roderick Kedward o f the University o f Sussex and the Gloucestershire Education Authority for granting leave o f absence to attend this conference. 1. H. Amouroux, Quarante Millions de Pétainistes (Paris, 1981). 2. M. Dank, The French against the French (Cassell, 1978), p. 47. 3. R. Austin, ‘Propaganda and Public Opinion in Vichy France: The Depart­ ment of the Hérault, 1940-44’, European Studies Review (1983), voL 13, pp. 455-82. 4. H.R. Kedward, ‘Patriots and Patriotism in Vichy France*, Royal Historical Society, 5th series, voi. 32 (1982), pp. 177-8. 5. Ibid. 6. Gimman-Gigandat, ‘L’Accusé Procureur: Maurras’, Historic (1975), HS41, pp. 112-18. 7. Private Correspondence with Grande Chancellerie de la Légion d ’Honneur, 15 June 1983. 8. P. lim agne: Ephémérides de Quatre années tragiques, 1940-44,3 vols. (Paris, 1946); 23 October 1942 there was speculation about the replace­ ment of the Head o f Censorship at Vichy, Jean Dtifour, who had died suddenly on 14 October 1942 at 39 years of age. He had been a journalist with le Matin. 9. Most of the research into Pays* background was gleaned from documents extracted with difficulty out of public bodies. To this end I am indebted to Mile Liliane Delaume a professional geneologist of 28, Avenue de la liberation, 87000 Limoges who gave her advice benevolently. In addition much professional advice was offered by Mile Sarah Olivier, Directeur-adjoint des Archives Départmentales de la Haute-Vienne. However, almost at completion o f the research stage, I at last made contact with M. Paÿs* family and in July 1984 Mme Paÿs kindly let me study her husband’s papers in order to restore balance to a story strongly biased by a study based upon poetry, official documents and the subjectivity of Piene lim agne. 10. Marcel Payé', Rim es Prosaïques (Rodez I960). The same author also had published Les A ik s de Cire (Paris, 1909). 11. La Croix de Paris was a national pre-war Catholic newspaper which was evacuated to Limoges for the duration of the Occupation. It was a different news­ paper from La Croix de Limoges and La Croix de Dimanche. In 1940 it was esti­ mated by the prefect (Archives Nationales: F41/160) to haye had a circulation of 35,000. Between 24 July and 8 August 1943 it was suspended by Laval, though lim agne claims this was after prompting by Krug von Nidda. In October 1944 it was allowed to reappear under its old title. 12. lim agne, Ephémérides, passim. 13. Correspondence and interview with M. lim agne, February to April 1983. 14. Archives Départementales de la Haute Vienne (hereafter ADHV), 1 PR 159, 6 June 1942. 15. Information on the confusing history of these services at government level can be obtained from the Inventaire to series F41 at the Archives Nationales. Further details can be found in the Revue d ’histoire de la Deuxième Guerre Mon­ diale, no. 64,1966 which is a special number devoted to ‘Propaganda’. 16. Simon Arbellot, La Presse Française sous la Francisque (Echo de la Presse, Paris 194?). Arbellot was not a disinterested observer. A prisoner of war released in 1941 and former journalist with le Temps he became Head of the Information Service in the Ministry o f Information in October 1941. In this capacity he was regarded by Limagne as author of the Notes d ’Orkntation by which tite government expected the newspapers to follow the National Revolu­ tion. After the Nazi Occupation of France in 1942 he became the Consul in Malaga. In 1947 he was imprisoned for four months before being acquitted during

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the Epuration. He was subsequently the author of several books which purport to give a subjective view of the Vichy era as he experienced it. 17. ADHV: 1 PR 157. 18. hi 1939 le Courrier du Centre was a regional Journal d ’information which in 1936 had had a daily circulation of 68,100 with 3,200 subscribers in Limoges. By 1942 the respective figures were 95,000 and 5,000 (AN: F41/160). Pre-war its political tendency was considered to be ‘moderate republican*. After the Libera­ tion it was prosecuted before la Cour de Justice and all its assets were sequestered. Its premises were taken over by various newspapers, for example, L ‘Echo du Centre which is still in circulation today and le Courrier Marseillais whose director for a time was the deported Resistance leader« Edmond Michelet. 19. ADHV 1 PR 159; IS November 1941. Report by Paÿs? It is thought, but not verified, that Peyre was sentenced to prison with hard labour after the liberation. 20. ADHV: 1 PR 158 Circ. 30 of 1 February 1942. Limagne, Ephiméridës 6 March 1942. ADHV 1 PR 16. 21. AN: F41/159 Paÿs letter to Dufour Vichy, 3 September 1942. 22. Limagne, Ephéméridês, August 1943 in particular. 23. AN: F41/245. Cuttings of actual newspapers preserved in file. 24. M. Guingouin is the author of several books, the latest being G. Guingouin et G. Monediaire, Georges Guingouin: Premier Maquisard de France (Limoges, 1982). 25. ADHV: 1 PR 159; 11 February 1944. 26. ADHV: 1 PR 159; January 1944, report by Marcel Paÿs. 27. Jean Tristan, ‘En 1942 les internés d*Evaux les Bains*, Le Limousin, no. 65 (May 1972). ADHV. 28. ADHV: 1 PR 159 Law published 26 February 1944 but appeared in Circular of 10 April 1944. 29. ADHV: 1 PR 159; 17 December 1942. 30. ADHV: 1 PR 159; 20 December 1941. 31. ADHV: 1 PR 159; 29 September 1942. There was never a personal remark from the prefect. 32. ADHV: 1 PR 164; 2 August 1941. 33. M.R. Marrus and R.O. Paxton, Vichy France and the Jewsj (New York, 1981), Ch. 7, p. 325 in, particular. 34. ADHV Dordogne - 1 PR 164; Paÿs - 1P R 159; Regional Prefect see A N :FlC in/ 1197 and 1200. 35. AN: F41/245 a weekly report on newspapers was sent right up until the Liberation. It was typed on a pro forma. 36. Limagne 4 March 1942. 37. Private papers o f M. Paÿs. 38. Paÿs, Rimes Prosaïques, p. 135, author’s translation. 39. ADHV 1 PR 159; 22 February 1943. 40. B. Gordon, Collaborationism in France daring World War II (Cornell, 1980) writes that he was a patron of La Gerbe and a member o f the Comité d*Honneur de la LVF along with Bonnard, Hermant, etc. A physicist and expert on liquid air he drew an audience described as ‘assez nombreux* for his Limoges conference. Limagne reported that he was the victim of an attack at Orléans on 13 January 1944 and in 1945 he was reported to be in Fresnes prison, Tort âgé et sourd comme un pot*, C. de la Mazière, Le Reveur Casqué (Paris, 1972), p. 228. 41. Groupe Collaboration was formed 24 September 1940 and was larger than the RNP although it never approached its political importance (Gordon, Collabor­ ationism, p. 230). Members of die LFC were allowed to adhere as individuals. On 30 January 1943 Laval wrote a circular on this group:

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(It] aims to reunite all those who want to promote the restoration of relations between Fiance and Germany, in particular that which concerns spiritual and cultural exchanges between the two countries. This group, which does not constitute a political party, is recognised by the government (ADHV1 PR

100)

On 26 December 1944 it was deemed 'unworthy* by the government o f the day. 42. ADHV 1 PR 159; 8 March 1943 rep o rt 43. lim agne, Ephémérides, March 1943. 44. ADHV 1 PR 159; 15 March 1943 rep o rt 45. lim agne, Ephémérides, 16 January 1943; 14 July 1943. 46. Bibliothèque Nationale (Sully) L'Excehiar, J.O. 2178, 25 September 1938. 47. lim agne, Ephémérides, 3 June 1944. 48. B.N.(S) H. Temenon, Biographie des principales personalités françaises décédées au cours de Vannée (1963). 49. Pays, 'Resignation* in Rimes Prosaïques, p. 74, author's translation. 50. Cahiers Inédits par Me. René Farmer, Petite Chronique de la Libération, Juin 1944 - Mai 1945, lent to the writer by kind permission of his son. 51. Le Populaire du Centre, 21 November 1944. In 1939 it was a Journal d'information of tendency SFIO. On 17 January 1941 it was suspended and re* appeared under the title of L'Appel du Centre until it was suspended in its turn on 30 August 1944 when its owners, but not its editor, were prosecuted. Since then it has continued as Limoges* leading daily newspaper under its original title. In 1936 the Populate sold 12,300 copies each day and had 1,800 subscribers in Limoges. In 1942 L'Appel had figures respectively of 8,100 and 1,870 (AN: F41/160). 52. L'Echo du Centre, 25 November 1944 (ADHV). 53. ADHV: Le Centre Libre, organe des Comités Départmentaux de la Libéra­ tion, 24 August 1944 onwards. This edition, 2 December 1944. 54. Farmer, Petite Chronique, Chap XXVII. Brasillach was executed on 6 February 1945 and Doriot, mentioned in the same chapter, was killed on 22 February. 55. E. Chantaraud, Droites Nationales e t Droites Populates en Haute Vienne (1880-1914) unpublished Mémoire de Maîtrise (Limoges, 1980). 56. ADHV: unclassified Fond de la LFC. 19 November 1942. 57. Farmer, Petite Chronique. 58. The félibrige was a society of poets and prose writers formed in 1854 with the object of preserving the Provençal language, hi 1893 Joseph Roux inaugur* ated Lemouzie, revue régionaliste & félibréene; revived in 1920 it is still published today at 13 Place Municipale, Tulle, Corrèze. L*École du Barbichet took its name from feminine headwear, described by Me. Farmer’s widow as *so gracious and so admired in our province*. Much information was contained in a special report written by Famier on 25 November 1940 for the prefect. In it he wrote that the Barbichet was paralysed because of rival groups set up by politicians of the leftT he neighbouring L'Ecole du Briance ceased existence but Barbichet con* tinued without subsidies. Consequently in 1940 they were left in debt to the tune of F4.000 (ADHV: 1 PR 152). On 14 April 1944 the LFC asked Vichy for a subsidy for the group in view of its valuable propaganda (ADHV Fond LFC). 59. ADHV, Fond de Ut Légion, 19 November 1942. 60. ADHV: IL 153, Le Limousin Mutilé/Vrais Combattants, number of September 1940 (hereafter LM). 61. Mme Jeanne Famier, ‘Histoire du Félibrige en Limousin*, le Populate du Cèntre, 1959-60 (ADHV D 315). 62. L. Delhoume, Mon ami René Famier (lim oges, n.d.). Collection of

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M. Famier. 63. Famier met Maunas whilst a student in Fans and later when passing through Paris en route to the front. He wrote in a letter: ‘Avec Maunas toute conversation est difficile. Je me borne donc à lui crier dans l’oreille mes remercie­ ments pour son livre. . . * 64. ADHV, Le Salut National, organe régional de l ’A ction française. Weekly from 3 November 1912. Last edition 2 August 1914. 65. ADHV, La Gazette du Centre: Journal Quotidien du S o t. Organe de la Defénse Sociale et des Libertés Publiques. 1920 onwards. 66. LM July 1931 described as ‘comrade*; December 1932 as Trésident du Front des Anciens Combattants*. 67. LM, December 1938. 68. LM, January 1934. 69. LM, December 1936. 70. LM, September and December 1938. 71. LM, March 1937. 72. LM, December 1932, February 1933, December 1938 and March 1939. 73. LM, December 1932. 74. LM, Ethiopia October 1935; League of Nations April 1936. 75. LM, September 1940. hi this same edition Famier wrote a letter demanding a change in die name of *100 des Anglais*. It was not granted. 76. LM, March 1940. 77. LM, September 1940. 78. ADHV, 1M 156-9 inc.; 1 PR 121. In another veterans* newspaper, THbune des Amochés é Réchappés du Feu, 20 November 1935, he commented on the aftermath of an incident which took place in Limoges on 16 November whep a crowd led by *socialists* ‘attacked* a private meeting of Les Croix de Feu at l’Ecole de Dressage. It is felt that this incident was used as the excuse by the Minister of the Interior to ban political leagues such as Les Croix. Famier wrote then: *we do not belong to the Croix de Feu movement’. 79. ADHV, 1 PR 101 Correspondence October 1940. 80. ADHV, 1 PR 152 Rapport de la Section Culturelle de la Commission Régionaliste Départementale, 25 November 1940. 81.1 PR 154 Report of Renseignements Généraux, Regional Congress of Folklore, promoted on 5 June 1944 by Centre for Regional Studies at which departmental prefect was also a speaker. It is ironic that L’Ecole du Barblichet was booked to perform at Oradour-sur-Glane on Sunday, 11 June 1944 but was thwarted by the SS-Das Reich Division. 82. Delhoume, Mon ami René Famier. 83. Kedward, ‘Patriots and Patriotism in Vichy France*, p. 180. 84. Le Salut National (ADHV) 2 August 1914. 85. Kedward, ‘Patriots and Patriotism in Vichy France*, p. 178. 86. Apparently the permission of the family was not sought, nor is it regarded particularly as an honour. Not far away is 'Cité Léon Delhoume*.

4

JEWS AN D CATHOLICS Louis Allen

T o u t a été d it' is the natural reaction when the subject o f the Jews under Vichy is in question; so m y initial reaction o f surprise th at it did not originally figure as a topic for the Sussex conference was probably misplaced. Marrus and Paxton's Vichy and the Jew s has dealt w ith it,1 the Catholic reaction has been outlined in Pierre Pierrard's Ju ifs e t Catholiques français2 , and Jacques Duquesne’s Les C atholiques français sous l'O ccupation? and there is o f course a vast am ount o f m aterial to draw on in the Centre de D ocum entation juive. But there is more to a scrutiny o f the topic now than a mere rehearsal o f well-worn facts, however salutary the rem inder may be when we see the careful crudities o f Jean-Marie Le Pen taking over from the unsavoury rhetoric o f Vichy politicians and intellectuals. There is a present im pact to consider and there is also a picture which varies w ith the viewer's perspective. It is possible to consider the four years o f relations between the Catholic Church and the Jews under Vichy as one m ore episode in the long history o f European anti-Semitism; or as an aspect o f the history o f Church and State relations; or as a com ponent o f the history o f the massacre o f European Jewry in the tw entieth century. Whichever per­ spective we use, today is as good a tim e as any to look at the topic again, because we seem to be at the end o f the tw o 40-year periods into which the history o f the Catholic Church and the Jews in France can be divided: from the beginning o f the century to the beginning o f the German occupation shows a continuation o f hostility, in the ranks o f Church, Army and French bourgeoisie, derived from the Dreyfus affair and its afterm ath in the Combes laws on religious education; from the Liberation to the present day is the growing awareness o f the practical results o f anti-Semitism on a national scale, w ith a realisation by the French Church, from the episcopate down, th at there is theological as well as political and sociological work to be done to avoid a recurrence o f the old pathological hatreds. From Dreyfus to Vichy; from Vichy to the present day when the Archbishop o f Paris him self (Cardinal Lustiger) is a Jew , makes a neat segm entation and does in fact corres­ pond to reality in the changes o f feeling. And, o f course, there is dis­ tressing contem porary evidence th at those who suffered from the events o f 1940 to 1944 have been perm anently m arked by it in their

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relations w ith other Frenchm en, and th at the risk o f recrudescence is n o t, now , as unthinkable as it might have appeared to be ten or tw enty years ago. As an episode in the history o f European anti-Semitism , it is obvious th at what happened to the Jews in France does not have the statistical dimensions o f the horror inflicted on Polish and Russian Jew ry, and, unlike the com m unities o f Eastern Europe, the com m unity left behind is now stronger and m ore num erous than it was in 1939, by a new imm igration from French N orth Africa, yet at the same tim e ill at ease and aware o f the conflict between the interests o f Israel and those o f French policy in the Middle East. As part o f the history o f French ideas, in which anti-Semitism is a constant thread on either side o f the political spectrum , rationalist w ith V oltaire, socialist w ith Proudhon, chauvinist w ith D rum ont, Barrés and Maurras, the anti-Semitism o f Vichy is consciously an ‘anti-judaisme d’état* claiming roots in the Catholic past o f France. In this sense the visceral anti-Semitism o f Céline is not typical. The Vichy laws express a view o f society similar to th at o f Belloc’s The Jew sy hostile tow ards what is taken to be an in­ tractable and irreducible m inority w ithin a sacral society. The character­ istic figure is Xavier V allat, rather than Darquier de Pellepoix. As part o f the developing theology o f the Catholic Church, the four years from 1940 to 1944 are the proving-ground for totally new ideas on the rela­ tions between Jews and Catholics, which, to some extent at any rate, bore fruit in the declarations o f the Second Vatican Council. What is interesting here is to find an obvious link between the theo­ logy o f anti-Semitism and the theology o f Occupation and Resistance. It was easy for m oral theologians to indicate the reprehensible nature o f support for de Gaulle from the point o f view o f traditional Catholic teaching. M. Lesaunier, the head o f the Séminaire des Cannes, pub­ lished early in 1942 a brochure entitled La conscience catholique en fa ce du devoir civique actuel in which he stressed the Catholic’s duty to obey the established power, which, in the case o f France after 10 July 1940, was clearly Pétain. Asked by a journalist to draw conclusions about Gaullism and Anglophilia from these principles, he replied: Que fait de Gaulle? II refuse de reconnaître l’autorité légitime du Chef de l’E tat, il se révolte contre cette autorité. Or, Leon XIII nous a mis en garde: ‘L’Eglise a toujours réprouvé les doctrines et toujours condamné les hommes rebelles à l’autorité légitim e.’ Il en résulte que ceux qui se déclarent Gaullistes opposent la même résistance à l'ordre divin et encourent les mêmes peines. Chercher à susciter la

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révolte, c’est com m ettre le crime de lèse-majesté humaine et divine. Sym pathiser avec cette propagande, c’est participer au même égare­ m ent. Since Germany had won the war w ith France, there was constituted a new situation o f rights and duties on either side, based on interna­ tional law: Pendant to u t le tem ps que durera l’arm istice, le devoir de to u t Français, mais aussi de to u t catholique, est la soumission à cette réglem entation, et de ne rien faire pour troubler l’ordre établi. Minds brought up on these ideas would find little difficulty in approving the early legislative measures taken against the Jews in France by a government which, after all, seemed to be providing heaven-sent opportunities for re-establishing a ’Catholic order’ and taking a long overdue revenge on the Republic and its anti-clericalism. The generally piacular m ood o f France in the summer o f 1940 found easy targets, and the idea o f national repentance o f a republic which was, in the eyes o f the Catholic hierarchy, identified w ith a generalised assault on the Church since the separation o f Church and State in 1906, was something to be encouraged, not deplored. The Protestant pastor, Marc Boegner, noted during a visit to Vichy as early as 26 July 1940, an alm ost generalised atm osphere o f revenge upon French Jewry and became aware o f l’antisémitism e déclaré de certains m inistres et la menace form ­ ulée a l’égard des Juifs français, considérés comme ayant fait tan t de mal au pays qu’ils avaient besoin d’un châtim ent collectif.4 The com bination o f eager repentance and thirst for revenge is suffi­ cient explanation o f the fact th at the S tatut des Juifs o f 3 O ctober 1940 is a purely French invention, drafted and issued w ithout any pressure from the occupying power. Theologically, the S tatut des Juifs marks the end o f an era in the dealings o f the Catholic Church w ith the Jews. It is well known th at the Head o f State, through his ambassador, Léon Bérard, took pains to verify the acceptability o f the measures, in term s o f Catholic social doctrine, w ith the highest Vatican authorities. The identity o f the Catholic official (b o th Monsignors Tardini and M ontini were visited) who actually pronounced at some length an opinion on the issue is still a m atter for speculation. But from the

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Catholic point o f view, w hat is striking about Bérard’s letter to Pétain (2 Septem ber 1941) is the careful working out o f a m oral theology o f anti-Semitic measures, none o f w hich, o f course, was intended to lead to anything like a policy o f exterm ination, but which were clearly in­ tended to exclude the Jews as a whole from French national life. A proviso was added th at such measures should be carried out w ithin the norm s o f charity (!) and w ithout doing damage to Catholic ordinances on marriage.5 No clearer illustration could be asked for, to show th at the moral theology o f the letter is totally rem ote form the reality o f European politics o f the 1940s, let alone from the demands o f Christian charity. For one thing, the S tatut des Juifs, though supposedly not owing its origin to ideas o f racial hatred, used racial and not religious categories in its definition o f who was a Jew and who was not. The anti-judaism o f Vichy’s first Commissioner for Jewish Affairs, Xavier Vallat, was, in his own view, based on the Christian history o f Europe; not on Nazi theories o f racial superiority but on the num erous anti-Jewish decrees o f the Popes and Councils and the anti-Jewish rhetoric associated w ith the greatest names in the history o f Christian thought, St Augustine and St John Chrysostom . A person was ’regardée comme juive issue de trois grands-parents de race juive* (a definition which perm itted Simone Weil some m ordant irony at the expense o f the Minister o f Education when her right to teach was w ithdraw n). There were variants, too: someone w ith two Jewish grandparents whose spouse had tw o Jewish grandparents was considered to be a Jew (O ctober 1940); those who had tw o Jewish grandparents and also practised the Jewish religion were considered to be Jews (June 1941). The decrees o f 2 June 1941 excluded French Jews from the m agistrature, the Army (unless they happened to be war veterans) and from responsible posts in newspapers and broadcasting. Access to university education was lim ited by a num erus clausus o f 3 per cent and to the liberal professions, for example the law , by one o f 2 per cent. It is indicative o f the m ood o f the French Catholic Church o f the tim e th at the Jesuit review C onfluences, published in Algeria, not only saw nothing reprehensible in these measures, but indicated th at their application to Algeria would be a useful m ethod o f ’assainisse­ ment*.6 ’Le silence quasi absolu de la hiérarchie catholique face à la legislation anti-juive de Vichy est un fait.* (Pierrard, p. 297.) All this, o f course, referred to ‘juifs de nationalité française*. Foreign Jews, who had taken refuge in France by the thousand in the late 1930s, were rounded up in accordance w ith a decree o f 4 O ctober

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1940, and interned in special camps. By the spring o f 1941,40,000 o f these were interned in such camps as Gurs and Rivesaltes. Xavier Vallat’s ’Commissariat Général aux questions juives’ was created in March 1941 — th at is, the im position o f acts o f legal exclusion o f the Jews was n o t a single measure, taken at a single m om ent, but a whole process, over a period o f tim e, and was autonom ous: ’ll est utile de préciser,* w rites Jean-Pierre Azema, ‘que la paternité du S tatut des juifs revient à Vichy seul, sans que l’Allemagne nazie ait exercé la m oindre pression.*7 Perhaps the Church, or at any rate, the higher clergy who were solidly pro-Pétain, would have continued to accept such measures w ith­ out a qualm , or at any rate w ithout public protest, had the events o f July 1942 not occurred. Even when the Jewish com m unity in Lyon protested to Cardinal Gerlier about the conditions under which Jews were interned in the camp at Gurs, he took the opportunity, while listening to their com plaints, o f upbraiding them for the actions o f Leon Blum in the 1930s, which he deemed an ’influence néfaste* and referred to the need for ’expiation*.8 His reaction, and the use o f Blum as a scapegoat, is reflected in attitudes in the French Army at the same tim e. We are used to the B o ys* Own Paper image o f the prisoners o f Colditz, exhibiting a gratifying and ingenious solidarity against their gaolers; but as far as the French officers were concerned, th at solid­ arity did n o t include Jewish officers. In 1941, w ithout any intervention by the German authorities, but on the orders o f the senior French officer, the French mess excluded Jewish officers — Elie de Rothschild among them — who had to mess and sleep separately. When Captain R obert Blum, Leon Blum’s son, arrived in Colditz as one o f the P rom inente, some o f his comrades greeted him w ith cries o f ‘Blum au ghetto!* Paradoxically, those Jews who were in POW camps, under the Wehr­ m acht, were the only ones really safe from the SS and the Gestapo (safer than their families in France).9 Then ‘O pération vert printanier* took place. In the Vélodrome d’Hiver, on 16/17 July 1 942,12,884 Parisian Jews, m en, women and children were arrested and interned under abominable conditions; the prelude to the departure o f over 75,000 Jews from France to Auschwitz, o f whom 3 per cent survived. *11 n*y a que des différences de degré et non pas de nature entre l’acceptation du num erus clausus et les fours crém atoires, celle-là conduisant infailliblem ent à ceux-ci*, w rote Daniel Mayer in answer to a later statem ent by Xavier Vallat th at those who directed French antiJewish policy were unaware o f what awaited Jews deported from

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France.10 There is no doubt th at he is right; but it needed a watershed like the events o f the Vélodrome d’Hiver in July 1942 to make it clear what the upshot o f purely legal measures would be. There had been protests before, on the part o f the French clergy, and the work o f priests like Abbé Glasberg and the Amitié Chrétienne in Lyon was some indication th at not all Catholic consciences had been stilled by the hierarchy’s tacit acceptance o f the Maurrassian ‘anti-sémitisme de raison’ which prevailed in Vichy. The savagery o f the searches, the heart­ rending separation o f very young children from their parents, all this could not go unanswered. The m ost urgent voice was th at o f Monsignor Theas, Bishop o f M ontauban: Des scènes doloureuses et parfois horribles se déroulent en France, sans que la France en soit responsable. A Paris, par dizaines de milliers, des juifs ont été traités avec la plus barbare sauvagerie. Et voici que dans nos régions on assiste à un spectacle navrant: des familles disloquées, des hommes et des femmes traités comme un vil troupeau et envoyés vers une destination inconnue avec la per­ spective des Iplus graves dangers. Je fais entrendre la protestation indignée de la conscience chrétienne et je proclame que tous les hommes, quelles que soient leur race et leur religion, ont droit au respect des individuels et des E tats. Or, les mesures antisém ites actuelles sont un mépris de la dignité hum aine, une violation des droits les plus sacrés de la personne et de la famille. Que Dieu console et fortifie ceux qui sont indignem ent persé­ cutés, qu’il accorde au m onde la paix véritable et durable fondée sur la justice et la charité. Sim ilarly, at Toulouse on 20 August 1942, the Archbishop, Mgr. -Saliège, speaking at a lunch in the diocesan seminary, declared: Dans notre diocèse, des scènes d'épouvante ont eu lieu dans les camps de Noé et de Récébédou. Les juifs sont des hommes, les juives sont des femmes. T out n’est pas permis contre eux, contre ces hommes et contre ces femmes, contre ces pères et mères de famille. Ils font partie du genre hum ain. Ils sont nos frères comme tant d'autres. Un chrétien ne peut l’oublier. France, patrie bien-aimée, France qui porte dans la conscience de tous tes enfants, la tradition du respect de la personne hum aine, France chevaleresque et gen-

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éreuse, je n ’en doute pas; tu n’es pas responsable de ces horreurs.13 The prefect, seized o f the tenor o f the Archbishop's speech, tried to prevent it being read from pulpits in the dioecese, as Mgr Saliège had ordered. The tex t was polycopied and distributed round the parishes by bicycle. Prom ptly, the prefect told the m ayors o f the com­ munes to prevent priests reading it out loud from the pulpit on Sundays. The upshot was th at some refrained, and some did n ot; but the Arch­ bishop was quite clear about his own stance: ‘Let them get on w ith it (Q u’ils la lisent!)’. And while proclaiming his loyalty to Pétain and the established order, he declared, the following m onth, th at ‘the affirm a­ tion o f a Christian principle has never implied the negation o f another Christian principle’. But by this tim e the Germans had entered the Non-Occupied Zone, and resistance to anti-Jewish measures had become infinitely more hazardous. In the event, between 75,000 and 86,000 Jews were deported from France, 24,000 being French Jews, th at is, 27 per cent o f the French Jewish population o f 1940. The Jewish population o f France stood at 290,000 in 1940, 90,000 being French Jews, the rest refugees or recent immigrants. The present population is estim ated at between 600,000 and 700,000, between 1.2 per cent and 1.4 per cent o f the population o f France (‘La population juive en France’, La D ocum entation catholiquey no. 1719, 1er mai, 1977, pp. 423-4)). The horrors o f deportation and the exterm ination camps need no further chronicling here: they have become the seed o f terrifying fictional portrayals on an apocalyptic scale (André Schwarz-Bart’s L e dernier des justes) o r, perhaps even more poignant because more graspable, o f sober realistic depiction o f intolerable fact in such auto­ biographies as Saul Friedländer’s Quand le printem ps reviendra . . . That book, in which we see the m etam orphosis o f a harried Jewish child o f Czech origin, Pavel, into a Christian French chrysalis, Paul (which nearly led him into the Catholic priesthood); then to a final transform a­ tio n as the Israeli citizen, Saul, describes from the inside what must have been the m ental odyssey o f the tw o Finaly children. Their relevance here is th at they constitute one elem ent o f the persistence o f the Vichy/Jewish them e, on one side or another, well in to the post-war years. That Christian institutions, and individuals, risked their very existence to save Jewish lives, particularly Jewish children, is amply docum ented; but the post-war pages of, inter alia, The Jew ish Chronicle, show th at these very acts o f charity, carried out at such great risk, were fraught w ith menace for the survival o f the Jewish identity o f the children involved. Not only did proselytisation

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occur; there were also instances o f refusal to return the children to those Jewish relatives who survived. The Finaly case is the m ost conspicuous and the m ost instructive. It split French Catholicism down the m iddle, and causes echoes to rever­ berate not o f the Dreyfus case but o f the kidnapping o f the M ortara child in nineteenth-century Bologna, an injustice which was never reversed: a servant girl secretly baptised a Jewish child and adm itted this in the confessional; the child was prom ptly removed from its parents by papal police and brought up as a Catholic (he ended up as a priest). Not all the considerable pressures brought on the Papacy from the outside (including th at o f Sir Moses M onteflore) availed to have the child restored to its parents. The Finaly case is not entirely similar, o f course, in th at the boys’ parents had died in the exterm ination camps. But there was no doubt th at close relatives had sought them and asked for their return in 1945, and Mlle Brun, their guardian, had p u t every obstacle in the way o f this return. The children owed their lives to her, w ithout a doubt; equally w ithout a doubt, she later abused her trust. The most soberly factual account o f the affair was given in the pages o f the Cahiers sioniens by F r Th. Demann, who analysed the development o f the doctrine o f ’education after baptism ' which the M ortara case had rendered necessary. The Church's Canon Law gave warnings against baptism o f the children o f non-Catholic families w ith­ out parental consent; but it also insisted th at if baptism had been admin­ istered then the children should be removed from their parents and brought up as Catholics. Mile B ran's own phraseology about this event is instructive. *Je les ai fait baptiser français' was how she put it. Like many such situations, intolerable in themselves, this one contained no easy solution. What is disturbing is to read the comm ents o f leading Catholic intellectuals, people among whom one might have expected to discover an enlightened view. The historian Henri M arrou, for example, who had been involved in the Resistance and was later to play a courageous role in the defence o f priests who came to the aid o f Algerian rebels, weighed up the issues in w hat seems a judicious way but con­ cluded w ith a clear wish that the children should not be returned to Jewish relatives in such a way th at their Catholic upbringing might be endangered - could they not be left ’disponible' to choose at some future date? - or th at their education as Frenchm en would be at risk: Ne peut-on envisager une solution provisoire, relativem ent équitable en face des éventualités incertaines: laisser les enfants en France, continuer à les éduquer dans un milieu français, les confier à un

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établissem ent d'éducation neutre; leur perm ettre de continuer à voir celle qu’on leur a appris d’appeler ’Maman’, mais leur perm ettre d'autre part d’entrer en relation avec ces oncles et tantes qu’ils ignorent; les habituer à honorer cette ascendance juive qui, à nos yeux à tous, fait leur noblesse; leur perm ettre de continuer à pratiquer la religion catholique, la seule dans laquelle ils aient appris jusqu'ici à invoquer le Dieu d'A braham , d’Isaac, de Jacob; to u t cela jusqu’à jugem ent définitif, — et la date si proche de leur libre adol­ escence?0 That this solution had been put forward first by an em inent Jewish member o f the Amitié Judeo-Chrétienne, Jules Isaac, as Marrou claims, is somewhat surprising; less so is M arròu's claim th at ’elle ne peut pas ne pas heurter profondém ent la conscience religieuse juive . . . ’ and his acknowledgement th at it favoured the Catholic adoption at the expense o f the ’natural’ fam ily. This contrast between the rights o f the natural family and those o f the spiritual fam ily is the burden o f the tw o pages devoted to the case in the journal o f one o f France’s m ost em inent Cath­ olic laym en, who had been imprisoned in Colditz. He refers to the Finaly fam ily’s attem pts to gain contact w ith the children, and to the abusive kidnapping and removal to Franco’s Spain w ith the collusion o f French and Spanish priests and nuns, but in term s o f such abstraction th at they cannot lead to any firm decision. This, indeed, is where G uitton him self ends: Alors que faire? Je ne le sais pas. Mais, qu'il y ait ici un triple problèm e: juridique, hum ain, religieux, je le vois clairem ent. Ce problème ne sera pas résolu par le dénouem ent de l'affaire présente, encore inconnu en ce prem ier mars où j ’écris.14 The solution eventually arrived at — the children's settlem ent in Israel — was clearly at variance w ith th at adum brated by M arrou, and the hesitant advocacy o f ’spiritual guardianship' explored by G uitton; but it was also the solution found for him self by Saul Friedländer as the answer to his own tortured search for identity. But it would be unfair to suggest th at the Finaly affair was entirely a product o f conditions created by the Vichy regime: the slaughter o f the Finaly parents, which underlies it, was brought about by Nazi Germany, not by Pétain’s France. What m atters, looking back on it, is th at it was perhaps part o f a general prise de conscience by European Catholics, the very articulate French Catholic com m unity in partie-

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ular, o f the role which casually and thoughtlessly accepted item s, b oth o f religious belief and civic tradition, played in the preparation o f the European m ind as a sowing ground for the Holocaust. Not merely the revision o f the Good Friday liturgy, w ith its centuries-old prayer pro perfidis Judaeis, and the Vatican II Declaration on the Jews, were part o f this theological repentance. There was also the much more generousspirited proclam ation by the French bishops in 1973, ‘O rientations épiscopales sur les relations avec le Judaïsme*. This declaration is not merely concerned w ith recent events. It returns to Christian theology at its earliest roots, and tries to uncum ber it from the hatred and con­ tem pt to which it has undoubtedly given rise. The bishops affirm th at ignorance o f Jewish law in the tim e o f Christ casts the Jews as culprits in the trial o f Christ, th at Christian teaching on the Pharisees is wrong­ headed and based on ignorance o f the true nature o f Pharisee beliefs, th at the Jewish roots o f Christianity need to be constantly reaffirm ed, th at the Jewish people will continue, th at they have n o t been deprived o f the Divine election by the existence o f C hristianity, th at the thoughtlessly accepted dichotom y between the religion o f the Old Testam ent and th at o f the New as one between a religion o f fear and one o f love is an error, th at Catholics m ust n o t seek the disappearance o r absorption o f the Jewish com m unity but establish a living link w ith it and, m ost courageous o f all, the bishops acknowledge the role o f the State o f Israel — w ith however m any qualifications —in a way th at the Second Vatican Council would never have ventured: Au-delà de la diversité légitime des options politiques, la conscience universelle ne peut refuser au peuple ju if, qui a subi tan t de vicissi­ tudes au cours de l’histoire, le droit et les moyens d*une existence politique propre parm i les nations.15 In the tradition o f Jules Isaac*s post-war Jésus e t Israël, asking for m utual comprehension and scrupulous exam ination o f differences, the historian Robert Aron - appropriately, the historian o f Vichy and the Liberation - gave a resounding welcome to the French bishops* initia­ tive in his L ettre ouverte à VÉglise de France. The moving final passage o f his own highly personal introduction shows to what an extent a French Jew bathed in French traditions, both sacred and secular, could find him self at home in Christian churches as he visited Israel for the first tim e: Ces églises villageoises, ce sont elles qu’au seuil de la dernière étape,

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à l’instant où mon coeur va se délester d’un caillou, je retrouve soudain en ce m onastère d’Ein-Karem, où la liturgie romaine qui baigne nos campagnes de France, s’accom plit dans la langue qui renaît en ces campagnes de Judée, dans la langue de Dieu, en hébreu. Il me fallait donc une église pour entrer dans Jérusalem . Il me fallait le son des angélus et des vêpres de chez nous, pour aborder la ville Etem elle, où toutes les heures se confondent, où toutes les langues se m êlent, où tous les cultes s’avoisinent. . . Merci à l’Eglise de France qui a permis au Ju if français, rejoig­ nant la terre de ses lointains ancêtres, de se sentir escorté à la fois par les souffles harm onieux de son air natal, et par les tourbillons enfiévrés et exaltants ‘de la ville où peut-être l’attend Dieu, le Dieu de ses pères, de nos pères, ‘Elohe avotenou’.16 It would be pleasing to end on such an ironic note. Pleasing, but mis­ leading. There has been a great deal o f theological rethinking o f Catholic attitudes tow ards Jews; but some Jews are very naturally suspi­ cious o f it, and others, as the Harris-Sedouy survey o f Jewish life in present-day France shows, still bear the wounds o f Vichy, even if tim e has made them subcutaneous. A good example o f the first is the essay La Libération du J u if (Gallim ard, 1966) by the Tunisian Jewish w riter settled in France, Albert Memmi. Considering two alternatives offered to the Jewish com m unity by recent European history, left-wing socia­ lism and absorption into the Christian com m unity, Memmi dismisses both as specious. The continued existence o f anti-Semitism in the USSR indicates th at the success o f the socialist revolution does not mean the end o f hatred, and sooner or later the left-wing Jew discovers the disastrous alternative: ’accept finally the com plete disappearance o f the Jews, or stop being a com m unist’. The hypothetical ‘acceptance’ by Christians, derived from the shame and guilt for the Holocaust, is like­ wise dismissed. Even though we m ay, w ith the Second Vatican Council, attenuate historically the responsibility o f the Jewish people in the passion o f Christ, it still rem ains true, for Memmi, th at theologically it could have happened in no other way: the Jews are needed by Christian m yth. Tinkering w ith liturgical phrases and revising catechetical m ethods is irrelevant, since the whole o f Christian doctrine and the whole perspective o f Christian life would have to be altered to adapt to such a basic change. In spite o f the hopes the Vatican Council raised, it could do nothing about this. The mere fact, to o , th at what took place was a volte-face carried out by command (however hesitant) o f a General Council, makes it all the m ore suspect. Could men capable o f such sub­

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mission not attack again tom orrow what they accept today, on the basis o f another order and another historical circumstance? Even those who pass, among Catholics, for the greatest friends o f Israel —Jacques Madaule, Jacques M aritain - speak in term s which necessarily link Jewish suffering w ith the existence o f a Jewish people. The m uted vio­ lence o f the Council, the hesitations, the withdrawals, the m ediocrity o f the final resolution, all show the depth o f the Christian refusal. The close coincidence in France between a large Catholic population and virulent anti-Semitism is enough to make him sceptical. In fact a survey carried out by the magazine Adam at the tim e his book appeared seemed to confirm his views. In one-third o f the French population, even after the horrors o f Nazi persecution and the official change in the Church's attitu d e, the deeply rooted prejudice against the Jews sur­ vived. One per cent o f those questioned actually approved o f the Nazi exterm inations; and the prejudice rose not m erely, as one m ight expect, w ith the age group, b u t increased in north-western France and among those who declared themselves to be practising Catholics.17 Thirteen years after Memmi's em bittered refusal o f the theological olive-branch, André Harris and Alain de Sedouy’s Ju ifs e t Français resurrected the problem in sociological term s.18 For m any o f the Jews they questioned, it was clear th at the traum a o f exclusion from national life was not forgotten. They noted th at the interdict on anti-Semitic expression, tacitly accepted since the return o f a rem nant from the death camps, was now at an end, largely because a new generation o f Frenchm en had no m em ory o f it. Raymond Aron, reviewing the book in VExpress, pointed to de Gaulle’s press conference and his reference to the ‘peuple d'élite, sûr de soi et dom inateur', as the signal to end the ‘reprieve'. But Aron was, on the whole, not pessimistic, seeing nothing comparable to the fanaticism s o f the 1930s in the occasional awkward­ nesses produced by the existence o f a blacklist imposed on French busi­ nesses by Middle Eastern countries w ith large and necessary oil reserves: Je puis me trom per, mais peuvent aussi se trom per ceux ‘qui o n t peur de la France et des Français'. Mes enfants, mes petits-enfants acceptent leur destin, ils ne veulent renier leur ascendance ni leur nationalité. Double fidélité qu'ils vivent sans déchirem ent.19 The reaction o f François Furet in le N ouvel Observateur was different: Les juifs français ont donc redécouvert que les jeux ne sont jam ais faits: ni par rapport au religieux, ni par rapport au national, ni par

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rapport aux destins individuels'.30 Like A ron, Furet notes the appearance at the same tim e o f Alfred Fabre-Luce's book Pour en fin ir avec l ’a nti-sém itism e (Juillard, 1979) o f which a crucial feature is a reassessment o f the role o f Vichy in the history o f French Jew ry. B ut, o f course, Fabre-Luce’s way o f ending anti-Semitism is to plead for the disappearance o f Jewish specificity; and he accuses historians o f Vichy o f establishing a version o f recent French history w hich, in his view, over-emphasises French responsi­ bility for persecution. Paxton in particular is taken as an example o f historians who have taken it upon themselves to ‘présenter aux Fran­ çais l'histoire de leurs années de guerre à travers un prisme ju if (F uret, op. cit., p. 72). As Furet points out, Fabre-Luce, under the pretence o f ending anti-Sem itism , serves as an expression o f it and adds the con­ spiracy theory o f history for good measure. Even if we accept FabreLuce's version o f the old theory o f Pétain as shield for France, and his claim th at the percentage o f Jews who survived in France, compared w ith th at o f Eastern Europe, dem onstrates the effectiveness o f Vichy in defence o f its citizens, Furet replies th at what characterises Vichy is its use o f a fam iliar dem on to exorcise the defeat o f 1940: Il y a dans le statu t des juifs de 1940 un acte de politique française, accompli et rédigé au nom d'une tradition nationale, par des hommes qui n 'y ont pas été contraints par l'étranger. E t, si la géné­ ration juive assimilée, même de ceux qui ont été quelques mois pétainistes entre juin e t l'autom ne, y a vu une rupture française avec la tradition de 1789, c’est que Vichy l'a claironné.31 On this point, he and Aron are a t one, as Aron writes himself: les interviews de Harris et Sedouy révèlent un fait que tous les Juifs de France constatent avec tristesse. La France, pendant la guerre e t depuis 1967, a déçu les Juifs, au-dedans et au-dehors. Elle passait pour la terre d'asile par excellence aux Juifs du monde entier, elle avait, la prem ière, voté les lois d'ém ancipation. Elle prit un autre visage sous V ich y .. ,23 The relation o f the Jews to the French State and to the Catholic Church, under Vichy, and later, illustrates why the history o f Vichy is still a m atter o f consequence. There have been a num ber o f passion­ ate controversies in G reat Britain about the way this country conducted

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its war. Mostly they are on strategic issues: the policy o f strategic bombing, double- or single-thrust to the Rhine in 1944, and so on. Absorbing as they are, none o f these debates radically affects our view o f ourselves as a nation. The opposite is true o f the controversies over Occupation, Resistance and Liberation in France. They may be rem ote in tim e now , after 40 years, but they do affect both the way the French conceive themselves not only to have behaved, and the way they con­ ceive themselves to be. Even when a m uch greater num ber o f facts about the years 1940-4 have become available, it will often be a question o f ta n t pis pour les fa its : there will remain a confrontation, for the foreseeable future, o f basic presuppositions about France as a political entity and French national life; just as, during those years, French Catholics often found the very nature o f Christianity called into question.

Notes 1. M.R. Mairus and Robert O. Paxton, Vichy France and the Jews (Basic Books, 1981). 2. Pierre Pierrard, Juifs et Catholiques français (Paris, Fayard, 1970). 3. Jacques Duquesne, Les Catholiques français sous l ’Occupation (Paris, Grasset, 1968). 4. Raymond Toumoux, Tétain et les Juifs’, Histoire magazine, no. 18, Special issue on ’Histoire de l’Antisémitisme en France’, juillet-août, 1981, pp. 37-8. 5. On the Bérard letter, cf. John F. Morley, Vatican Diplomacy and the Jews Airing the Holocaust 1939-1943 (KTAV Publishing House, New York, 1980), pp. 49-56; Pierrard, Juifs et Catholiques français, p. 296; and J. Nobécourt, ’Le Vicaire’et l ’Histoire (Editions de Seuil, 1964), pp. 356-62. And cf. Xavier Vallat’s use of Church history in self-exculpation: "Toutes les mesures que contient la législation française de l’Etat nouveau et bien d’autres plus dracon­ iennes, ont été prises jadis à la demande de ces autorités religieuses dont les juifs de 1942 prétendent aujourd’hui qu’elles désapprouvent tacitem ent en cette matière les actes du gouvernement du Maréchal.' Duquesne, Les Catholiques français, pp. 253-4. But we should remind ourselves that GerUer’s later protests earned him the virulent hatred of Brasillach in Je Suis Partout: ’Au nom de la France, au nom de ma patrie chérie, de la Chrétienté tout entière, je réclame la tête de Gerlier, Cardinal, talmudiste délirant, traître à sa foi, à son pays, à sa race. Gerlier, je vous hais!' Pierrard, Juifs et Catholiques français, p. 292. 6. Jacques Duquesne, Les Catholiques français, p. 252. 7. Jean-Pierre Azema, De Munich à la Libération 1938-1944 (Seuil, 1979), p. 93. 8. Jacques Duquesne, Les Catholiques français, p. 254. 9. R. Toumoux, Tétain et les Juifs’, pp. 38-9. 10. Evidences, déc. 1957 in Pierrard, Juifs et Catholiques français, p. 303. 11. Duquesne, Les Catholiques français, pp. 260-1. 12. Pierrard, Juifs et Catholiques français, p. 317. 13. Henri Manou, ’L'affaire Finaly’, Esprit, avril 1953, pp. 500-1.

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14. Jean G uitton, Journal, (Plon, 1959), p. 75, entry for 1 mars 1953. 15. Text in Robert Aron, Lettre ouverte à l’Eglise de France (Albin Michel, 1975), p. 204. 16. Ibid., pp. 11-12. 17. Cf. L. Allen, ‘Final Solutions?* (New Blackfriars, June 1967), p. 490. 18. André Harris and Alain de Sedouy, Juifs et Français (Grasset, 1979). 19. Raymond Aron, 'Les Juifs, Vichy et Israël*, L'Express, 29 September 1979, p. 96. 20. François Furet 'Israel et les Français juifs*, Le Nouvel Observateur, no. 775,17-23 septembre 1979, p. 71. 21. Ibid., p. 72. 22. Raymond Aron, 'Les Juifs, Vichy et Israël*, p. 96.

PART TWO: AM BIG UITIES

5

SAINT-EXUPÉRY'S PILOTE D E GUERRE: TESTIMONY, A RT AND IDEOLOGY S. Beynon John

P ilote d e guerre (1942)1 is certainty an urgent and memorable work which secured for Saint-Exupéry a wartime readership well beyond the boundaries o f th at stricken France which forms the subject o f his narrative. A t the outset, I would like to emphasise th at its sentim ents and attitudes, like the m oral, social and political ideas which lie dif­ fused throughout it, are strikingly congruent w ith those o f his pre­ war writings: Vol de n u it (1931), which first brought him fame w ith its vivid picture o f the pioneers o f commercial aviation in South America; the newspaper reports on Moscow and Spain w ritten in the 1930s; the dense, elliptical reflections com m itted to paper in the Carnets com­ posed betw een 1935 and 1942; Terre des hom m es (1939) w ith its brooding pages on m an’s destiny, sparked o ff by a crash-landing in the Libyan desert. The picture o f the ideal society th at is implied in m uch o f these writings is organicist, rooted in rurality and natural hierarchies. It stresses the power o f the creative im agination, the im portance o f com­ m unal and fraternal bonds, the appeal o f m oral idealism, the readi­ ness to subordinate self to the service o f something gréater than self, and the need for charism atic leaders capable o f showing the way forward. Saint-Exupéry’s preferred models o f hunrçn activity tend to exem plify the virtues o f creativity, nurture and disinterestedness. They are artists (w hether architects, musicians or w riters), scientists, priests, gardeners or shepherds. The undoctrinal and vague spirituality diffused through­ o u t m uch o f his writing finds its symbol in the repeated image o f the cathedral which is offered as the supreme expression o f the aspirations o f m an. Saint-Exupéry’s persistent attacks on the spiritual emptiness o f m odem society are linked w ith a general disparagement o f machin­ ery and industry that is paradoxical coming from a man whose fame was associated w ith the technology o f aviation, who loved fast cars and had a talent for mechanical invention. The intellectual and m oral consistency displayed in Saint-Exupéry’s writings has its roots in the social, religious and political ambience in which he grew up. Descended on his m other’s side from aristocratic stock in Aix-en-Provence and the Vivarais and, on his father’s, from 91

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ancient though undistinguished gentry in Périgord and the Limousin, he was educated at religious schools by Jesuits and Marianists in a deeply Catholic and royalist tradition which produced army and naval officers.2 He him self was originally intended for the navy and there is evidence th at after the débâcle o f May-June 1940 he was influenced in his attitude tow ard Gaullism by the hostile opinion o f naval friends.2 In a general sense, which does not imply form al political allegiances or active political involvem ent, it is likely th at Saint-Exupéry was coloured throughout his life by the conservative nationalism th at pervaded the Catholic rural gentry and which made them , like their sons in the army and navy, sym pathetic to m uch o f the ideology o f Maurras’s Action Française. It is certainly significant th at a num ber o f Saint-Exupéry’s asso­ ciates in the 1930s were far to the right in politics. An admired colleague and friend, Jean Mermoz, was not only an ace pilot w ith the firm o f Latécoère, but an active supporter o f de La Rocque’s Croix de Feu who actually became vice-president o f the Parti social français during the period o f the Popular Front government in 1936. Unim­ pressed by de La Rocque, Saint-Exupéry declined his friend’s invita­ tion to join the PSF. In the 1930s Saint-Exupéry also frequented G aston Bergery whose newly created Front commun represented a stage in Bergery’s political evolution from radicalism tow ard what has been called ‘une form e très nette de “fascisme de gauche” . . . 14 Bergery will subsequently turn up in Pétain’s adm inistration in 1940 and become Vichy’s ambassador to Moscow before undergoing a lastm inute conversion to de Gaulle (Sternhell, p. 299). So far as SaintExupéry is concerned, all this suggests not so m uch the confident possession o f a radical ideology or a firm com m itm ent to party as much as an instinctive preference for doctrines o f order and authority. P ilote de guerre represents a docum ent o f very great interest for any student o f Vichy France. Part o f its fascination lies in the way in which it was received by the reading public, first in the USA, and then w ithin France itself at the tim e o f its publication. P ilote de guerre originally appeared in English in New York in three successive issues o f The A tla n tic M onthly (February-A pril 1942) before being published in book form in both English (F light to Arras) and French, the latter edition under the im print o f th e , Editions de la Maison française, a publishing house established in New York in Septem ber 1940 and sub­ sequently responsible for bringing out about 120 French books in th e USA between 1940 and 1945.5 American reactions were generally very favourable, seeing the narrative as a hym n to the heroism o f French

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pilots in wartim e, a vivid record o f the sufferings o f the civilian popul­ ation, and the expression o f an idealistic faith in France. This helps to explain why F light to Arras was selected by the Book o f the M onth Club and became a bestseller (C ate, p . 450). However, there were dis­ senting voices: Americans who, still outraged by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941, criticised Saint-Exupéry’s argu­ m ents as defeatist {Ecrits de guerre, p. 224). Opinion o f the novel in French circles in the USA was more sharply divided and included judge­ m ents th at it was ‘fascist' in inspiration, or ‘paternalistic’ and ‘reac­ tionary’ (C ate, p. 459). To understand this, one has to recall the situa­ tio n o f French wartim e exiles in the USA when Saint-Exupéry arrived in New Y ork, via N orth Africa and Lisbon, on 31 December 1940. Briefly, the French com m unity, numbering some 20,000, was caught up in a fierce clash o f political loyalties. The new Vichy emissaries to the USA (ambassador Gaston Henry-Haye and his close associates) proclaim ed an aggressive Pétainism th at created conflicts w ithin the corps o f French career diplom ats in Washington. Apart from these, there were a num ber o f a tten tistes among the early ‘émigrés de luxe’ — bankers, industrialists, businessmen, literary and other artists - who were still influenced by Pétain’s great personal prestige, sym pathetic to the need to ‘norm alise’ French social and economic life, and ready to give the early policies o f Vichy the benefit o f the doubt. There were also figures who had been prom inent in the public life o f the Third Republic and who were hostile to what they saw as Pétain’s usurpation o f power. Such were form er Prime Minister Camille Chautemps and Alexis Léger (the poet Saint-John Perse) who had been highly influ­ ential as Secretary-General o f the French Foreign Office during the inter-war period, and who was to play a distinctly enigmatic role during his American exile. Like Saint-Exupéry, Alexis Léger was suspicious o f de Gaulle’s dictatorial tendencies but, unlike Saint-Exupéry who harboured no great love for the Third Republic, Léger, a brilliant pro­ duct and beneficiary o f th at regime, displayed a principled if rather legalistic attachm ent to republican institutions and based his opposi­ tion to both Pétain and de Gaulle on the premiss th at neither leader could claim constitutional w arrant or dem ocratic consent for the powers he had assumed. Then again, there were right-wing patriots like the form er deputy Henri de Kérillis whose perfervid and outdated brand o f nationalism found an outlet in the weekly Pour la victoire. He was ardently in favour o f resistance to the Germans and initially supported de Gaulle enthusiastically before transferring his loyalties to Giraud in March

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1943 (Fritsch-Estrangin, p. 128). Alongside these were the uncondi­ tional supporters o f de Gaulle, particularly those active in the lavishlyfunded France Forever Association. These included Adrien Tixier, head o f the Délégation de la France Libre in the USA, and the virulently anti-Vichy publicist, Henry Torrès, who ran the Gaullist weekly, France-Am érique. The aim o f these men was to discredit Vichy and to establish de Gaulle as the sole legitim ate representative o f defeated France. It has to be said th at some Gaullist activists in the USA showed a belligerence th at was in inverse proportion to any risks to which they were exposed. Certainly the internecine warfare waged among these different groups seems to have been remarkable for its vehemence, pettiness and ruthless special pleading; it left little room for person­ alities like Saint-Exupéry who liked to think o f themselves as above the battle.6 Given his own recent history and opinions, Saint-Exupéry could n o t, in any realistic sense, present him self as above the fray. In the clim ate o f acrid controversy which prevailed among the French exiles in the USA, it was never likely th at those favouring resistance to the Germans, w hether they were drawn from the supporters o f Four la victoire or from the ranks o f com m itted Gaullists, would judge the ideas and sentim ents o f P ilote de guerre other than in the light o f what was known or rum oured o f Saint-Exupéry's personal and political affilia­ tions in wartim e. It was a fact th at he had made three or four trips to Vichy from Lyon between mid-August and late O ctober 1940, th at he had made contact w ith converts to Pétainism , like his old acquaintance Gaston Bergery who was active in implementing the policies o f the National Revolution, and th at he had been received by Pétain him self (Cate pp. 416-17). It was rum oured too th at his name had been put forward for a post in the Vichy State Secretariat o f Education which involved responsibilities for youth and sport (C ate, p. 421). It was also noted th at he conspicuously failed to come out openly in favour o f the Free French movement or to contribute to the pages o f Four la victoire ; refused to condemn the Pétain governm ent's policies; privately defended collaboration as a necessary and realistic device for saving France; and had actually been nom inated in January 1941 (though w ithout his consent) to serve on Vichy’s Conseil National (E crits de guerre, p. 161). As a result, Saint-Exupéry was widely regarded in Gaullist circles in New York as a supporter, if not an agent, o f Pétain, and P ilote de guerre seen as something o f an apology for Vichy collab­ oration. However, it is only when we turn to the variety o f responses pro­

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voked by P ilote de guerre when it was authorised for publication in the Occupied Zone th at we become fully aware o f the degree to which interpretations o f the tex t are largely symptoms o f political divisions among the French. An edition o f 2,100 copies appeared on 27 Novem­ ber 1942, but after favourable reviews in the Vichy press, where it was variously praised as ‘beautiful', ‘m oving', ‘perhaps the one true book about the war o f 1939' (E crits de guerre, pp. 295-7), and as ‘saving honour' or being ‘le seul [livre] à la mesure de la France’ (ibid., p. 302), or even, in the pages o f the Catholic La C roix, as embodying Christian personalism (ibid., p. 313), it was hysterically attacked by the Paris neo-fascist P.-A. Cousteau in tw o successive issues o f Je suis partout (8 and 15 January 1943). In these articles P ilote de guerre was criticised as ‘l’apothéose du judéo-bellicism e, la justification de tous les crimes commis avant et après la guerre contre la France . . . ', and as legitimis­ ing the attitudes and policies o f Blum, Reynaud and Mandel (E crits de guerre, pp. 300-1). In w hat was clearly an orchestrated campaign, these charges were subsequently taken up by other pro-fascist and anti-Sem itic publications until the German Propaganda Abteilung intervened and banned the work on 8 February 1943. As a defiant reaction to this ban, P ilote de guerre was then taken up by the Resist­ ance and published in Lille in a clandestine edition o f 1,000 copies in December 1943. In a final irony which crowns the fascinating story o f the fortunes o f this tex t in the course o f the Second World War, the Gaullists in Algiers seem deliberately to have prevented its being sold throughout N orth Africa (E crits de guerre, p. 467), thus punishing Saint-Exupéry both for failing to rally to de Gaulle in the USA and for supporting Giraud in Algeria after he got there in May 1943. P ilote de guerre offers another kind o f fascination, th at o f a work o f literature th at reorders the brute facts o f history in such a way as to coax us into sharing the author's own m oral perspective on the Fall o f France. To explore this will involve some scrutiny o f the narrative art o f P ilote de guerre before discussing the nature o f its form al arguments and the value o f the prescriptions which the w riter puts forward for the ultim ate recovery o f France. Finally, I shall be concerned to ask w hether these ideas or m oral reflections are com patible w ith some elem ents o f the official ideology o f the National Revolution. In putting such questions, I do n o t w ant to im ply th at Saint-Exupéry was ever a naïve adm irer o f Pétain. Nothing in what he says or writes after the summer o f 1940 expresses the hysterical relief experienced by fervent supporters o f the Marshal when the Armistice o f June 1940 was signed. Nor is there anything to suggest th at he expected marvels from the

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regime. In the autum n o f 1940 the com m itted Pétainist may have hoped to see in this M ethuselah the saviour o f the nation, a Lazarus miraculously emerging from the grave o f the Third Republic. SaintExupéry seems to have had more lim ited expectations, though he too clung to some illusions long after they should have been discarded. P ilote de guerre represents a hybrid genre which tended to be SaintExupéry’s preferred literary m ode. The basis o f the work, as in Vol de m it (1931) and Terre des hom m es (1939), is autobiographical. In a w ord, it is offered principally as a form o f witness to the w riter's own experience in the real w orld, though an experience th at has been selected, filled o u t and reordered, using a m odicum o f fictional devices (telescoping o f events, masking o f real-life persons under fictitious names, introduction o f m inor invented episodes), in such a way as to accommodate a vein o f m oral discourse by which the author/narrator seeks to impose significance on his tex t. As a result, the freedom o f the reader to interpret the action embodied in the narrative is very much reduced. There is little here o f th at power o f invention th at marks m ajor writers o f fiction, little o f th at capacity to create and sustain a large, autonom ous imaginary world and to oblige us to take th at world on trust. I am going to argue th at there is present in P ilote de p ierre a tension, perhaps even a fissure, between the descriptive and aesthetic elements in the book and w hat, in the broadest sense, might be called its ideo­ logy. This ideology is sometimes explicitly presented and argued for, sometimes im plicitly rendered in the choice o f character, imagery and m etaphor, b u t whatever form it takes, it tends to impose on the lived experience contained in the novel (the ordeals o f wartime flying or the suffering o f French civilians caught up in the panic o f m ilitary defeat) a significance th at does not necessarily come from the concrete experi­ ences described as m uch as from the author/narrator's desire for us to share in his sensibility and in the rightness o f his m oral vision. Even at its m ost graphic m om ents, P ilote de guerre is not the plain, unreconstructed account o f an eyewitness who participated in the events described. In the first place, it is a composite picture o f several o f Saint-Exupery's reconnaissance flights and not a literal recounting o f the low-level sortie he made over A nas on 23 May 1940. It actually telescopes m onths o f photoreconnaissance work and several high altitude flights into a single mission th at is made emblematic o f all the others. O ther aspects o f the narrative make it obvious th at this is a fictive transposition o f the real. To begin w ith, we cannot fail to be aware o f the highly wrought language th at is brought to bear on the flow o f

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events, and which cannot possibly be m istaken for the rough notation o f happenings which, in their speed, im pact and m ultiplicity, constantly threaten to overwhelm the observer. Not that Saint-Exupéry totally neglects the mundane facts o f the pilot's world. He obsessively enum ­ erates the details o f his flying equipm ent (belts, fasteners, zips, oxygen mask, helm et, gloves) and convincingly portrays the plane as an exten­ sion o f the pilot (p. 40), as the latter runs through the range o f tech­ nical functions that have to be checked: oxygen supply, machine guns, dials and controls. Here he feels him self to be a technician exercising his craft: ‘En somme je fais mon m étier. Je n’éprouve rien d'autre que le plaisir physique d’actes nourris de sens qui se suffisent à euxm êm es.' (p. 43 ) Elsewhere, however, one recognises the virtuosity o f SaintExupéry's language, the way in which objects and experiences are being defamiliarised in order th at they can be registered more intensely and more memorably by us as readers. I think particularly o f th at m oment o f unreal calm in Chapter X when Saint-Exupéry's plane is high enough to be safe from the anti-aircraft fire coming up from the ground, and when that unreality is captured by images whose very artificiality is exactly suited to conveying the strangeness o f the experience. The pilot glances back at the slipstream trailing behind like Técharpe de nacre blanche . . . un voile de mariée’ (p. 73) and dreamily surveys his crew: 4 . . . inaccessible comme une trop jolie femme, nous poursuivons notre destinée, traînant lentem ent notre robe à traîne d'étoiles de glace . . . ' (p p . 74-5). It could be said, and the narrator him self subsequently feels, th at this precosity o f language is self-indulgent and so, suspect. Y et, even if we allow th at this m oment tends to prettify the experience o f wartim e flying it might still be thought to be psychologically accurate in portraying a fleeting sense o f detachm ent on the part o f a pilot in action. More than th at, this very expressive idiom strikingly confirms the distance which Saint-Exupéry the w riter has placed between him self and the raw m aterial o f wartime experience. One sees the same kind o f technique at work in Chapter II, at the moment when the plane is hit by gunfire from below. Here, at the very height o f danger, the sense o f being caught up in some terrible dream is brilliantly conveyed:4Je vois des larmes de lumière couler vers moi à travers une huile de silence.’ (p . 161) The idea o f grief or suffering that we associate w ith tears is m uffled as a result o f being linked w ith this sense o f an irresistible movement through an 4oiled’ silence. N ext, this haunting image is sur­ rounded by a cluster o f others which extend and intensify it. The image o f a liquid world gives way to images o f light or fire: projectiles coming

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through the air like gold stalks o f wheat or a dense cluster o f spears or the dizzy play o f needles or a flashing web o f gold threads (p. 162). These images are infinitely more suggestive o f a reconnaissance plane caught in m ortal danger inside a fierce concentration o f anti-aircraft fire than any literal account o f such disjointed and sporadic moments o f action could ever be. The scene lodges in our minds as no direct report could hope to do. Such use o f language throw s into high relief the way in which the resources o f literary art transform the raw auto­ biographical m atter on which Saint-Exupéry draws and affects our perception o f the role o f the French Air Force in the m ilitary campaign o f May-June 1940, encouraging us to grant to it the sym pathy and adm iration which the author him self feels. The war, lived out subjec­ tively in the turm oil o f events, is a bewildering and fragm ented experi­ ence. It is the w riter who has imposed significance on it in the act o f writing about it. In a very similar fashion, we are coaxed into seeing the stream o f French refugees, driven forward by the advancing German invaders, from the same god-like point o f vantage as the pilot and his crew. For m uch o f the narrative we are not so m uch w ith them , sharing in their plight and subject to some degree o f fellow-feeling, as poised over them , and engaged in judging the blind futility o f their conduct. Our tem ptation to do so is shaped not only by this vertical perspective which we are obliged to adopt, but also by the language which the narrator displays. So it is th at we see the choked roads below as ‘end­ lessly flowing black syrup* (p . 110), and the creatures who move fit­ fully down them as ‘un vol de sauterelles qui s*abat sur du macadam* (p. 12), or as a vast flock tram pling the ground outside a slaughter­ house (p . 123), or, later still, in an image which obliquely evokes the Biblical massacre o f the innocents, as a scattered crowd searching for the ‘stable’ th at will provide a refuge from their calam ity (p. 198). Almost im perceptibly, we have been drawn into making a negative judgem ent o f this crowd. It has become a reluctant, bewildered, fatal­ istic herd, containing, no doubt, m any individuals who possess distinc­ tive qualities and skills but who are certain, in Saint-Exupéry’s m ind, to be reduced by war and displacement to ‘parasites et vermine* (p . 115). It is true th at this dark picture, consistent w ith m uch o f what historians o f the exodus have noted,7 is partially offset by a few sharp vignettes o f the plight o f wom en, children and the old which excite pity (one thinks especially o f the woman giving birth on the back o f a cart) and which Saint-Exupéry derives from an earlier encounter w ith refugees on the ground when his squadron was moving its headquarters.

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But the dom inant image th at survives is one more calculated to pro­ voke criticism and disillusion than compassion. There is another way in which the author attem pts to structure the feeling and thinking embodied in P ilote de guerre and, in some degree, to control our response to them . This is his frequent use o f the device o f tem poral elision. There is nothing unusual about this as a narrative technique and nothing innovative about the way Saint-Exupéry handles it. Characteristically, the narrator moves in m em ory, in a fluid and unobtrusive way, either from his active presence as a pilot to a recent incident th at is located w ithin the framework o f his wartime experience, o r to an episode in the rem ote past, usually th at o f childhood, which enables him conveniently to dram atise the continuity o f his own life and to give us access to his private sensibility. Examples abound. P ilote d e guerre actually opens w ith a m om ent in which the dozing narrator is dreaming about his school days, only to be recalled perem ptorily to the real world by an order to appear before his superior, the command­ ing officer o f 2/33 Reconnaisance G roup. Further memories o f his experiences as a schoolboy in sick-bay surface in Chapter VI when the Arras mission is already under way. In fact, several incidents from child­ hood are recalled in the course o f the mission: his sitting silent and afraid on a table in the cold dark entrance hall o f the family chateau as his uncles pace to and fro, oblivious to his presence (Chapter XIV); vague memories o f fairy-tales and the fam ily governess, Paula (Chapter XIX). Elsewhere it is the recollections o f m ilitary life th at predom inate: a visit to hospital to greet the brave Sagon who had jum ped from his burning plane (Chapter IX); making a fire in his freezing quarters in the village o f Orconte occupied by his unit in the w inter o f 1939 (Chapter X I); the silent meal w ith the farm er and his family (Chapter XXVII). What m atters about these examples is not their psychological plausi­ bility or lack o f it. A pilot who daydreams and philosophises quite as m uch as the narrator o f P ilote de guerre when he is on a dangerous m ission, is a very unlikely sort o f pilot. What we are dealing w ith here is a literary convention, a device by which essentially symbolic inter­ ludes can be introduced into the action in order th at we as readers can be exposed to the values and attitudes to which the narrator attaches im portance and which lie diffused, as it were, beneath the explicit m oral and social argum ents developed in the tex t and which, in some degree, prepare us for them . Almost all the narrator's memories involve families or substitute families which provide bonds o f m utuality, pro­ tection and support, answering to what the narrator subsequently interprets as the fundam ental need o f all hum an beings to extend them ­

100 Saint-E xupéry 's Pilote de guerce selves through other people or through form s o f art, scientific inquiry, or religion (p. 106). The Tyrolean governess, Paula, is clearly invoked as a talism an, a guarantee o f protection against the perils th at beset the child’s w orld, though I personally find her introduction at a dangerous moment in the mission to be both whimsical and sentim ental. In a very similar way, the narrator's bed in his spartan quarters at Orconte recalls specifically the m aternal warm th and com fort known in infancy, ju st as the dance o f the flames on the ceiling fixes, at least by implica­ tion, the memory o f the nursery. R ather differently, the visit to Sagon in hospital is a ritual which reaffirm s the sustaining brotherhood o f arms, in m uch the same way as the narrator’s meal w ith the farm er, his wife and niece is turned into a ’breaking o f bread’, a sacram ental rite th at expresses the bonds o f national com m unity. The narrator declares quite specifically: ’Mon ferm ier distribue le pain, dans le silence . . . Il assure, pour la dernière fois peut-être, comme l’exercice d ’un culte, ce partage.’ (pp. 201-2) Here, it seems to m e, the echo o f the Last Supper strains to raise this dom estic scene to the level o f an allegory about the agony o f the nation. So far, I have tried to suggest, through scrutiny o f certain aspects o f the literary technique o f P ilote de guerre, th at it would be quite m istaken to view it simply as a piece o f unvarnished testim ony, though it is obvious th at a large part o f it originates in the experiences o f an eyewitness. Nor is it, properly speaking, a piece o f fiction. There is no plot and no ’characters’, in the sense o f autonom ous fictional beings who offer the density o f life and a capacity for growth and change. There are not even separate and fully realised ’voices’ capable inde­ pendently o f entering into the reflections about war, risk, obedience and death o f which P ilote de guerre is largely made up. There is really only one voice th at dom inates the book, th at o f the author/narcator. All other figures, from Paula to Commandant Alias, are simply ciphers, p u t there briefly to em body particular virtues or qualities (protective­ ness or duty). The half-symbolic interludes which spring from the narrator's memories o f the past are so handled as to persuade us to feel sym pathy (and even a touch o f reverence) for certain m oral values and social form s: the family as focus o f nurture and protection, and the group, especially the warrior group, in so far as it illustrates the unity and solidarity th at comes from service to a larger purpose and accept­ ance o f a common discipline which may require self-sacrifice. What happens at these levels o f P ilote de guerre is th at an ideology, or fragm ents o f it, are hinted a t, implied and even, in some degree, subtly recom mended. What happens elsewhere in this narrative about

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an aerial reconnaissance mission over Arras is th at these im plications are explicitly spelled o u t, orchestrated, it might be said, in pages o f discursive prose th at cease to make m uch pretence o f springing natur­ ally from some piece o f observed action, on the ground or in the air, and which seem to have a separate existence o f their own. I am not so m uch thinking o f those substantial passages o f analysis or reflection which are interpolated among scenes o f the war (Chapter XVI on the chaos o f the exodus, for exam ple), although the insertion o f this dis­ cursive m aterial threatens the imaginative unity o f the chapter, but o f those chapters grouped tow ard the end o f the book (m ost o f Chapter XXIV, and Chapters XXV-XXVII). Here a kind o f sermonising takes over; the pages are full o f grand philosophic form ulas, as if the author/ narrator were in the grip o f some urgent compulsion to make us see the tru th about the Fall o f France, and to oblige us to take the necessary m oral reform s to recover from it. What these chapters clearly dem on­ strate is th at Saint-Exupéry is quite unwilling for us to draw our own m oral conclusions from the concrete scenes and feelings so vividly con­ veyed in the earlier chapters. They are to be made to yield up lessons th at are not simply consistent w ith the author’s settled m oral vision, as th at had been elaborated in a range o f pre-war writings, but also to justify retrospectively his own judgem ent o f the Armistice o f 24-25 June 1940 and o f the Vichy governm ent’s early forms o f collabora­ tion. In looking at the pages Saint-Exupéry devotes to the analysis o f the causes o f French defeat in the summer o f 1940, and at those con­ cluding chapters where the conditions for a kind o f national ’redresse­ m ent m oral’ are spelled o u t, it is im portant to recall th at they were not dashed o ff in the immediate afterm ath o f the m iltary débâcle. P ilote de guerre was largely w ritten in the course o f 1941 so that it necessarily represents a m ore detached account o f events than some piece o f instant reportage. In the argum ents which he deploys about French m ilitary weakness and political im potence, Saint-Exupéry shows him­ self to be largely untouched by the im portant changes th at had super­ vened in the international, as in the French dom estic, situation at the tim e when P ilote de guerre was in the process o f being w ritten. There is n o sense th at the views it represents have been at all m odified by the fact th at Britain did not go down to defeat in the wake o f France, that a Free French movement and an internal French Resistance have emerged, th at the USSR and the USA have entered the war against Nazi Germany, or th at the social, political and economic condition o f France under Pétain has raised serious doubts about the vaunted inde-

102 Saint-E xupért's Pilote de guerre pendence o f the Vichy régime and its capacity to defend the interests o f its citizens. What we actually get is a strong sense o f a rhetorical ritual in which deeply felt convictions are reaffirm ed. Indeed, if we look beyond P ilote de guerre, these same arguments are rehearsed w ith increasing desperation, beginning w ith the appeal for a kind o f 'union sacrée’ contained in the lecture ‘D ’abord la France’ (November 1942), continuing w ith the long letter sent to General Chambe (Algiers, 3 July 1943), in which the tw in them es o f m ilitary unpreparedness and French m oral degeneration are coupled, and ending in the b itter letter w ritten to an unidentified correspondent in November or December 1943, where dire predictions o f what would have happened to France had the Armistice not been signed are juxtaposed to an outburst o f fury directed against the conduct o f the 'm ob' in the final days o f the French collapse.8 What precisely are the nature and force o f Saint-Exupéry’s argu­ m ents in P ilote de guerre*! A first set o f argum ents bears quite narrowly on France's defeat in battle, and here the whole burden o f SaintExupéry's analysis is to suggest th at such a defeat was inevitable. For instance, he does n o t exaggerate the deplorable effects o f the civilian chaos on the roads,9 and his picture o f the disparity between the French and German forces is broadly in accordance w ith the facts. It was certainly a fact th at the Germans enjoyed vast superiority in bom bers and dive-bombers, and a significant advantage in fighters because the RAF did not commit the bulk o f its planes in support o f the French, but even here Saint-Exupéry's determ ination to place the worst possible construction on events so as to prove the inevitability o f France’s defeat, leads him wildly to exaggerate the gap. If all types o f aircraft are taken into account, the gap was m uch nearer a ratio o f 3:1 than o f 10, or 20:1, as he asserts (p. 92).l° Equally extravagant is his claim th at the Germans enjoyed a superiority o f a 100:1 in tanks (p. 92). It is true th at Saint-Exupéry specifies th at this applies to the period after D unkirk, but his figures are difficult to reconcile w ith expert estim ates o f the situation prior to Dunkirk when there appears to have been rough parity between French and German tanks.11 The real issue, which is to do w ith the tactical use o f tanks, is nowhere discussed In the same vein, Saint-Exupéry speaks o f 150,000 French troops killed in a fortnight (p . 96) while m ilitary historians suggest m uch lower figures for the whole o f the campaign.13 There is no need to labour the point. Such statistics are highly sub­ jective and impressionistic. They speak o f a state o f m ind, a predis­ position to find the worst so as to account for the French collapse and

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so as to justify the Armistice. A fter retailing this order o f facts, it comes as no surprise to find Saint-Exupéry reaching very pessimistic conclusions: ‘Aucun sacrifice, jam ais, nulle p art, n ’est susceptible de ralentir l’avance allemande’ (p. 92), a view at variance w ith cooler pro­ fessional assessments.13 This, it is im plied, is the natural and inevit­ able result o f a clash between a nation o f 40 million farmers and another o f 80 million industrial workers (p . 92). In this fanciful figure o f speech the France o f 1939 is pictured as a nation w ithout industry and so m anifestly incapable o f meeting the challenge from across the Rhine. The fatalism im plicit in this is the necessary prelude to SaintExupéry’s subsequent interpretation o f the true significance o f the French defeat. Just as the retreat and the chaotic exodus down the roads o f France are seen not so m uch as evidence o f m ilitary dislocation resulting from errors o f strategy and tactics or from lack o f competence in the French High Command, but as a form o f m oral disintegration, a loss o f the ‘organic’ wholeness o f the nation (p . 136), so the Armistice is viewed by Saint-Exupéry as an act o f abnegation. France, it is argued, is to be judged by her readiness to sacrifice herself. If France continued to fight in the face o f overwhelming odds, it was because she had a spiritual mission: ‘L ’Esprit chez nous a dominé l’Intelligence’ (p. 138). The defeat o f France was a necessary stage in preparing the conditions th at would make effective resistance to Germany possible: ‘La France a joué son rôle. Il consistait pour elle à se proposer à l'écrasem ent (m y italics) . . . et à se voir ensevelir pour un tem ps dans le silence.' (p . 138) There is something breathtaking about this specious attem pt to draw an ethical position from the facts o f defeat and arm istice. It attributes to France a clear-sighted resolve to sacrifice herself for the good o f Europe and the future o f freedom . As such, it is a piece o f special pleading, an ex p o st fa cto attem pt to justify what has happened by an appeal to a higher tribunal, a grand m ystical design in which France emerges as the chosen instrum ent o f an abstraction called H istory. This is the lan­ guage o f religion, not politics: here we see expressed the escape from history into file realm o f eschatology. Nowhere is P ilote de guerre more in tune w ith the official Vichy gospel o f contrition and spiritual regen­ eration. The prescriptions th at conclude P ilote de guerre are wholly con­ sistent w ith such a vision. By insisting on the common guilt and respon­ sibility o f all Frenchm en for the defeat o f 1940, they effectively move the argum ent on to a purely m oral plane and so enable Saint-Exupéry conveniently to avoid having to discriminate between the relative

104 Saint-E xupéry 's Pilote de guerre responsibilities o f social or political groups w ithin France: ‘La défaite divise . . . je ne contribuerai pas à ces divisions, en rejetant la respon­ sabilité du désastre sur ceux des miens qui pensent autrem ent que moi . . . ’ (p. 211) The same failure to engage w ith concrete realities mani­ fests itself when Saint-Exupéry urges his readers to make the gift o f self in order to create a truly human com m unity (p. 233). The sentim ents are unexceptionable b u t they take us no nearer to an understanding o f how fraternity is to be established w ithin the French com m unity, or tow ard any clearer perception o f th at common ideal o f sacrifice to which we can all subscribe (pp. 240-1). Faced (at the m om ent when P ilote de guerre appears in the Spring o f 1942) w ith the problem o f how to act when one finds oneself occupied by a foreign power th at is involved in the spoliation o f one’s country and the persecution o f one’s fellow citizens, it hardly helps to be told th at ‘le culte de l'Universel exalte et noue les richesses particulières* (p . 242) or th at the ‘primacy o f Man’ is the only proper foundation for liberty and equality (p. 243). Confronted w ith the cruel realities o f 1942, these vague gestures in the direction o f spirituality strike one as the last rem nants o f an archaic and discredited rhetoric.

Notes 1. All subsequent references to this text are to: Pilote de guerre (Paris, Le livre de poche, 1963). 2. As late as 1943 he could still write: ‘Je ne suis pas royaliste mais je respecte profondément le vieux gentilhomme royaliste.* See: Saint-Exupéry, Ecrits de guerre, ed. Louis Evrard (Paris, Gallimard, 1982), p. 366. 3. Curtis Cate, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. His Life and Times (London, Heinemann, 1970), p. 415. 4. Zeev Sternhell, Ni droite ni gauche: L ’idéologie fasciste en France (Paris, Editions du Seuil, 1983), p. 28. 5. Guy Fritsch-Estrangin, New York entre de Gaulle et Pétain (Paris, La Table Ronde, 1969). 6. A very partial but lively account o f this infighting is given in FritschEstrangin, passim. 7. E.g., Nicole Ollier, L'Exode sur les routes de Pan 40 (Paris, Laffont, 1970). 8. All three texts can be consulted in Ecrits de guerre, pp. 265-70; 389*91 ; 427-31. 9. Indeed, Nicole Ollier argues that official estimates of the number of refugees in the Free Zone on 13 August 1940 (2,486,500) were far too low. 10. Alistair Home, To Lose a Battle. France 1940 (Harmondsworth, Penguin Books, 1979), p. 220, gives a comparative table. 11. Home (pp. 217-18) gives 2,400-3,000 German tanks to 3,100 French; J.-B. Duroselle, L'Abîme 1939-1945 (Paris, Imprimerie Nationale, 1982), pi 136 gives 3,000-4,000 German tanks to 3,300 French. It may be that Saint-Exupéry had heard of the Deuxième Bureau’s Vastly inflated* (Home, p. 217) estimate of

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7,000*7,500 German tanks. 12. Home (p. 650) gives 90,000; Jeffery A. Gunsburg, Divided and Con­ quered: The French High Command and the Defeat o f the West, 1940 (London, Greenwood Press, 1979), p. 275 gives 120,000. 13. E.g. A. Goutard, 1940. La Guerre des occasions perdues (Paris, Hachette, 1956).

6

THE ROLE OF JOAN OF ARC ON THE STAGE OF OCCUPIED PARIS1 Gabriel Jacobs

By 1920, when the upsurge o f interest in Joan o f Arc in the second half o f the last century and the early years o f our own had resulted in her canonisation, Joan had already long represented in France a wide spec­ trum o f nationalistic and religious ideals. In the 1920s, she symbolised the determ ination o f a great victorious nation, and one o f the forces which had made possible the flowering o f its culture and genius. She was not overlooked in the 1930s w hen, for instance, the banners o f the extrem e Left proclaimed her ‘[la] fille du peuple, vendue par son roi, brûlée per ses prêtres'.3 Her story was nevertheless perceived at that tim e as rather too equivocal to be taken up with much gusto by the m ajority o f intellectuals, even when events in Spain prom pted leftwing pacifists to embrace the notion o f the Just War, and right-wing Catholics to support Franco’s cause as a crusade against Godless com­ munism. Being identified universally as an upholder o f the doctrine o f non-intervention in the affairs o f other nations, unless those nations tried to annex one’s ow n, she was probably too blurred a symbol to be o f decisive benefit to either faction. But given on the one hand the strength and depth o f Anglophobia in many sections o f pre-war French society, soon to be sharpened by Dunkirk and Mers-el-Kébir, and on the other the reality o f occupation by a foreign power, it was inevitable from the outset that Joan would be an im portant double figure in France between 1940 and 1944. During the O ccupation, potential comparisons between the fifteenth-century France o f Joan o f Arc and France’s predicam ent after the débâcle o f 1940 were too striking to be disregarded even by the m ost unpolitical o f com m entators. Chanoine Glorieux, in the preface to his carefully neutral biography o f Joan which appeared in 1941, was at pains to point out that although his work had been all but com pleted before the War, the advent o f the new regime had served only to enhance the im portance o f its subject.3 Marcel Vioux’s 1942 Jeanne d*Arc, intended for popular consum ption, while in no way didactic, neverthe­ less incorporated on its title-page Pétain’s pronouncem ent: ‘M artyre de l’Unité Nationale, Jeanne d’Arc est le symbole de la France’. In more highly-coloured Vichy-orientated propaganda, from political histories 106

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to posters, the full range o f possible analogies was explored. The head­ lines o f ie P etit Parisien o f 11 May 1941 - ‘La France célèbre aujourd’hui la fête nationale de Jeanne d'A rc, brûlée vive par les Anglais . . . * - illustrates the way in which charged language was used to arouse feelings o f revenge against the English for an event separated in tim e from the m id-tw entieth century by h alf a millennium. In both zones Joan was made the epitom e o f the Vichy ideal. ‘Comme la Romée serait fière de sa fille qui s’entendait si bien aux soins du ménage!’ w rote René Jeanneret in 1942 in his life o f Joan officially approved for use in schools,5 appearing to forget for a m om ent the rather small role played by ‘les soins du ménage’ in the life o f the real Joan. Joan’s peasant upbringing was generally extolled as an example o f the solid vigour o f rural virtues, while the m ilitant partisan in her was for the m ost part ignored in favour o f a picture o f hum ility and obedience. But above all she was presented as the forger o f political unity at a tim e o f grave national crisis: ‘Etem el sujet d’émerveillement’, exlaimed Henri de Sarrau, adding, w ith what now seems remarkable credulity, ‘comme celui qui a placé le Maréchal Pétain à la tête de l’E tat français’.6 Some writers presented her less as the precursor o f Vichy than as the em bodi­ m ent o f heroic grandeur, and saw her story as the Trium ph o f the Will. Jean Jacoby, the author o f works whose titles did not hide his political colours - L e F ront Populaire en France e t les égarem ents du social­ ism e m oderne, L e D éclin des grandes dém ocraties e t le retour à l'autorité, La Race — was drawn to a Jeanne in whom he saw a m anifesta­ tion o f iron resolution and fascist vitality. In his Scènes de la vie de Jeanne d'A rc o f 1941 he rejected Anatole France's magnum opus on the life o f Joan on account o f its author’s ‘sordide sectarisme’ (p. 16). For him , Anatole France had hidden the true Joan, whose heart had indeed been full o f charity, but who in no way had sought reform or socalled social justice: ‘Elle ne se plonge pas dans les masses’, Jacoby insisted, ‘ne spécule pas sur leurs sentim ents' (p. 223). Clandestine propaganda naturally concentrated on Joan the freedom fighter, the solitary visionary w ho, surrounded by the lies and deceit o f her own countrym en, had in the m idst o f defeat liberated France from foreign occupation. In such a context, the very fact th at Thomas Pugey’s 1943 history o f Joan was published in Switzerland by the Editions de la Baconnière,7 whose list has already included works by Eluard, Aragon and Louis Parrot, was enough to indicate th at this work was to be taken as a Resistance tex t, despite the fact th at its content was almost wholly confined to a treatise on mystical Catholicism. It seemed natural for the Resistance to adopt the Cross o f Lorraine as the

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emblem o f Free France, and parallels were frequently drawn between De Gaulle and Joan. Was n o t Joan, like De Gaulle, the very opposite o f the d éfaitistes, w ho, at best, were men who had ignominiously accepted occupation in order to salvage a small com er o f French exist* enee, while the very essence o f France was being dissipated? How could one fail to see in the Armistice o f 1940 an image o f the Treaty o f Troyes, at which defeat and occupation had been legalised? ‘Aux yeux de tous les défaitistes*, proclaim ed an anonym ous pam phlet published in Brazil, ‘Jeanne est une protestation violente, acharnée . . . Jeanne nie la défaite.’8 But the Resistance was also obliged to dimmish the fact th at Joan o f Arc had been burned by the English. And here, the French service o f the BBC in London was in an especially sensitive position. Its broadcasters chose either to overlook this feature o f the story, or to m eet the problem at a tangent by arguing th at England was an island outpost o f Free France, like Orleans when Joan had raised her stan­ dard.9 Though Joan m aintained a high status, then, in m ost form s o f prop­ aganda, particularly during the first half o f the O ccupation, her fate as a theatrical character was not quite as illustrious as might have been expected. It may seem surprising, and especially so given the French dram atists’ predilection for m yth and legend during this period (Sartre’s Les M ouches and Anouilh’s A ntigone spring imm ediately to m ind), but it is a fact th at no Joan o f Arc play w ritten between 1940 and 1944 was produced on the stage o f occupied Paris, nor, as far as professional theatre is concerned, in the provinces. Probably the m ost im portant published play on the them e o f Joan o f Arc w ritten under German occupation was P ortique pour une fitte de France by Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Barbier. Performed by am ateurs in Lyons and Marseilles in the spring o f 1941,10 it was nothing more than a stylised piecd o f prop­ aganda intended for use in the Camps de Jeunesse. It had recourse to lines like the one used —repeatedly —by an anonymous Englishman in the play: ‘Les Français sont pourris, pourris, pourris', and the published version included an appendix containing chants recommended by the authors for communal perform ance by an entire camp: *Comme Jeanne, nous croyons en la résurrection de la France’ (p. I l l ) , and the like. The play's im portance as theatre, even in the eyes o f its own creators, may be judged from the following extraordinary (if em inently practical) directive: ‘Il y a lieu de supprim er entièrem ent le personnage de Jeanne qui pourrait être grotesque, tenu par un garçon.’ (p. 107) In Paris, given the ever-increasing popularity o f legitim ate theatre, the im portance o f Joan as a symbol, and the wide choice o f available

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pre-war plays extolling her, it m ight have seemed th at only glitter and stardom awaited her on stage for the foreseeable future. She made her début in occupied Paris in Shaw's Sainte Jeanne in December 1940. This was followed six m onths later by an appearance in Péguy’s Jeanne d*Arc, then in Vermorel’s Jeanne avec nous, which opened in January 1942. But the final perform ance o f this play in August o f th at year was also virtually the end o f Joan as a character in Parisian theatres for the rest o f the Occupation. W ith Ludmilla Pitoëff in the title role, Shaw’s Saint Joan had had its French première in 1925, in the translation by Augustin and H enriette Hamon. The same tex t was used by Raymond Rouleau’s com pany, w ith Jany Holt as Jeanne, for the production at the Théâtre de l’Avenue which ran from 24 December 1940 to the end o f January 1941. Even w ith the play’s illustrious past, and its potential dram atic im pact (theatrically it is far. superior to the efforts o f either Péguy or Verm orel), it attracted relatively little critical attention. This may have been the result o f various factors difficult or impossible to evaluate: the quality o f the acting, costumes and sets, even the tem peratine inside the theatre in the middle o f that first w inter o f the O ccupation. Be th at as it m ay, the fact th at reviews are comparatively few and far between is certainly a measure o f the lack o f serious interest, at this early period, in Joan o f Arc as a symbolic character, particularly since the play closed well before the first Occupation Joan o f Arc Day o f May 1941, which was to m ark the beginning o f the R icette as a true cult figure. No doubt, therefore, the perform ances o f the play were neither deliberately didactic, nor deliberately contentious, nor deliber­ ately ambiguous. Historians o f propaganda (censorship boards to o ) are o f course faced w ith a peculiar difficulty when it comes to the interpre­ tative art o f theatre, since generally only the plain tex t is available for exam ination, while it is obvious th at all m anner o f signals and messages can be made to appear when actors garnish it on the stage. And, at a distance o f nearly half a century from th at period o f chaos and hard­ ship, when the last thing in a theatre director’s m ind was the im portance o f preserving the prom pter’s copies o f a script, the problem is com ­ pounded by the im possibility o f discovering which m aterial was deleted, or even inserted, and at which perform ance. However, in the case o f Rouleau’s production o f Shaw's Sainte Jeanne, it may reason­ ably be assumed, at least, th at few cuts were made. Shaw's play is not inordinately long, and w ith the possible exception o f the Epilogue, is sufficiently com pact as it stands to sustain dram atic intensity. More­ over, its strong anti-English flavour (and the fact th at Shaw was Irish

110 The R ole o f Joan o f A rc was emphasised in a num ber o f reviews o f the play) had considerable appeal at the end o f 1940, when Albion was still exceptionally per­ fidious for a part o f the French bourgeois theatre-going public. Shaw’s num erous references to the English probably remained intact, and indeed among the few reviewers who chose to deal specifically w ith what they saw as the play’s contem porary significance, there was unan­ imous agreement th at its punch came from its biting and cynical treatm nt o f British attitudes and policies. An anonymous reviewer in Paris Soir (24 December 1941) contended th at the original 1924 London production had flopped because English audiences had preferred the Joan o f Arc o f Shakespeare’s H enry V f ’Pièce qui se term ine par d’affreuses grossièretés à l’égard de Jeanne et dont le public anglais s’est fo rt réjoui’, and Arm ory in Les N ouveaux Tem ps (6 January 1941) recommended the play as a cure for Anglophilia. The vast m ajority o f critics, however, concentrated virtually exclu­ sively on the literary and dram atic qualities o f Shaw’s play. Indeed, o f all the m ajor reviewers, only the theatre critic o f VIUustration (R . de B., 14 January 1941) was sufficiently jostled by it as a pièce de circon­ stance to comm ent on its enorm ous latent value as propaganda beyond th at o f its conspicuous anti-British ethos. For him , Shaw’s Joan clearly represented on stage the creation o f French nationalism ; for him , she was ’miraculeuse dans la mesure où elle a galvanisé pour un idéal un pays aveuli par la défaite’. And the play does truly abound in what m ight have been taken as allusions to contem porary circumstances. ‘Nous avons besoin de quelques fous m aintenant . . , Voyez où nous ont menés les sages’ says Poulangy to Baudricourt (p. 20)11 —a line briefly noted in some reviews;13 ’Un nouvel esprit commence à se développer chez les hommes’, comm ents l’Archevêque (p. 49); ‘Si j'étais le m aître’, thunders Le Chapelain, ‘je ne laisserais pas un Ju if vivant dans toute la chrétienté' (p. 86). Some rem arks, such as Jeanne’s ’rien ne com ptant, en dehors de Dieu, que la France libre et française' (p. 216), may have sounded too m uch like a call to arms not to have caught the attention o f the censor, but little o f the play would have remained if all possible topical allusions had been removed. Shaw’s Joan, in the words o f Ingvald Raknem is ‘a sort o f intractable, intolerable, sexless suffra­ gette’,13 but she is also plainly an apostle o f national unity and a severe critic o f French attitudes, both political and m ilitary. Warwick, the only im portant English character in the play not portrayed as a nin­ com poop, is quick to see the dangers inherent in Jeanne’s idea that the rule o f the king should be absolute, since a fragm ented country makes occupation and exploitation a relatively simple m atter, while for

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Jeanne, says Cauchon, ‘les gens qui parlent français constituent ce que les Saintes Ecritures décrivent comme une nation. Appelez ce côté de son hérésie Nationalism e, si vous voulez . . . * (p. 110) Shaw’s Joan understands th at the cause o f France’s defeat has been its m oral and m ilitary unpreparedness. ‘Notre ennemi est à nos portes et nous sommes là sans rien faire* she exlaims (p. 73). ‘Nous faisons les imbéciles*, she says to Charles, ‘tandis que les godons, eux, prenaient la guerre au sérieux*(p. 122), ( . . . ) ‘A quoi sert l’armure contre la poudre à canon?* (p. 129). Could the audiences o f the w inter o f 1940 have been insensitive to such patent im plications, heavy w ith overtones o f pre-war hesitation, infighting, self-indulgence and low m ilitary m orale, in the face o f order, discipline and blitzkrieg tactics? It would seem th at Jeanne’s symbolic role was as yet to o ill-defined in the national con­ sciousness, or the critics unsure o f how far it was appropriate to press the point hom e — after all, the Hero o f Verdun had not yet been pro­ nounced the equal o f the Heroine o f Orleans. By 1941, however, Pétain had crowned Joan Queen o f the New Order, and her Day was comm em orated in a burst o f nationalistic enthus­ iasm, ‘comme le signe de la réconciliation et de l'unité nationale re­ trouvées’, as L'O euvre (11 May 1 9 4 1 )p u tit. De Gaulle retaliated w ith th e idea th at between 3.00 and 4.00 p jn . on Sunday 11 May, the French should take to the streets, simply to look at each other in silence as a gesture o f solidarity w ith Joan and the Resistance. Accord­ ing to the clandestine Libération (18 May 1941), the dem onstration was a m agnificent success, the people o f Paris pouring into the streets at the appointed tim e watched by terrified and dismayed German soldiers who did n o t dare to intervene - such is the stuff o f propa­ ganda. The collaborationist press, on the other hand, did not need to exaggerate. In the dom ain o f the theatre alone, Joan o f Arc Day was the signal for a salvo o f special occasions throughout the provinces, while in Paris the Palais de la M utualité and the stage o f the Comédie Française saw star-studded casts in scenes from the m ajor PuceUe plays.14 Perhaps it was this theatrical fervour which prom pted Robert Brasillach to work on his Procès de Jeanne d'A rct w ritten in dialogue form , and published in Ju ly , and Jacques H ébertot w ith the Com­ pagnie du Rideau des Jeunes to produce Péguy's Jeanne d'A rc at the Théâtre H ébertot (form erly the Théâtre des A rts). It opened on 23 June, w ith Juliette Faber in the title role. The 1941 production o f Péguy’s play presents a textual problem far greater than th at o f Shaw’s Sainte Jeanne. A com plete perform ance o f Péguy's Jeanne d 'A rc, in fact three plays in one, would have lasted

112 The R ole o f Joan o f A rc more than eight hours. This was cut to well under three hours -'a v e c le respect qu’on devine' comm ented Les N ouveaux Temps (25 June 1941) - by the author's son, Marcel Péguy, but it is today impossible to know which extracts were selected for inclusion. It is certain, at least, th at the production was based prim arily on the original three plays o f 1897: Péguy’s shorter M ystère de Ut charité de Jeanne d*Arc o f 1910 consists basically o f a new version o f tw o dialogues taken from only the first play o f the trilogy, b u t m ost critics in 1941 give all three plays equal weight in their reviews. It is likely that Marcel Péguy's adaptation included parts o f the later version, sometimes called the ‘Christian Joan' as opposed to the earlier 'Socialist Joan’. But whatever his sources, after the Liberation the uncertainty led to some m ystifica­ tion, to which I shall return. Partly for his num erous writings on Joan o f Arc, Péguy had been seen as a luminary by the collaborationist establishm ent. Alexandre Marc may well have been right in his view, expressed just before the defeat o f 1940, th at Péguy's Jeanne was a character alien to the fol­ lowers o f the Führer, for whom , as he put it, 'seule la santé im porte, non la sainteté'.18 Péguy him self was nevertheless soon to becom e, in the words o f the collaborationist author and critic Maurice Rostand {Paris M idi, 25 June 1941), a 'grand inspiré en qui la France s’est ex­ primée comme en son héroïne’. Péguy was recommended reading in the youth camps o f Vichy France, and schools and Chantiers de Jeunesse were named after him .16 Those who before the War had seen in his por­ trayal o f Joan anything other than the future vindication o f the Vichy ideal were vigorously denounced. *11 est fâcheux', exlaimed Comeau in 1942, 'que les passions politiques aient pour un tem ps rendu suspect . . . le message de l'héroïne chantée par Péguy.17 Not all com m entators forgot th at Péguy had once espoused the cause o f socialism, nor th at he had been Dreyfusard, but the very fact th at by 1943 Jean V ariot, in a general eulogy o f Jeanne d 'A rc, felt th at it was necessary to point out th at the play’s author had not him self been a saint, tainted as he had been by dém ocratism e and philosém itism e, is in itself some indication o f the heights to which Péguy had been elevated by Vichy.18 It may safely be assumed th at Marcel Péguy’s 1941 adaptation o f Jeanne d*Arc was a cento reflecting this official exaltation o f his father. And it is evident th at the play could with little difficulty be made to fit the circumstances. Despite the fact th at it differs from nearly all other Pucelle dramas in ending on an unheroic and funda­ m entally pessimistic note; despite the fact th at Péguy was less interested in Joan as a m aker o f history and the forger o f a new France than as a

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victim o f ‘le Mal universel', his heroine is o f spotless moral rectitude, and wages an exemplary war against the forces o f social and political disorder. And the critics, who for the most part received the 1941 production enthusiastically, were not slow to take note o f what they saw as its contem porary significance. ‘Certes, cet ouvrage vient, ou jamais, à son heure’, w rote Armory in le M atin (20 June 1941); ‘ . . . si présent, si actuel’, cried Jacques Berland w ith astonishm ent (Paris Soir, 27 June 1941); Claude Véré (Sem aine à Paris, 23 June 1941) thought the success o f the play assured, since the perform ers were so obviously driven by the idea o f a new France embodied in the com bination o f Péguy and Joan o f Arc. Above all, Péguy's heroine was taken as a symbol o f strong leadership emerging from simple Christian virtues. Didier Gex (le M atin, 28 June 1941) saw in her ‘ce génie des gens simples et d roits', and Arm ory, in his piece for Les N ouveaux Temps (1 July 1941), was struck by Péguy’s desire to produce a heroic charac­ ter who remained essentially paysanne. But no critic dealt with one o f the basic them es o f Péguy’s play, that charity by itself is worthless and th at one is helpless in the face o f hum an misery unless some effort is made to understand and eradicate its cause, in this case the im position o f the will o f one nation on another. Jeanne comes to realise th at a new war m ust be waged, since the peace o f occupation has resulted in only the semblance o f order, which cannot be the will o f God. With so much to cut, Marcel Péguy was perhaps able to m anipulate this them e o f arm ed revolution, or even to purge the tex t o f it entirely, but this would have been difficult, and it is more likely th at it rem ained, and that audiences associated it w ith the ideals o f Pétain’s National Revolution. Now a word on the m ystification I m entioned earlier. In 1947 a dif­ ferent three-hour abridgement by Marcel Péguy (how different we are not sure) began I a run at the Théâtre H ébertot to mark the post-war reopening o f the theatre. It generated a proliferation o f previews and reviews, and attracted the attention o f the m ajor critics o f the day,19 b u t nowhere is any m ention to be found o f the 1941 production. Sam edi Soir (27 Septem ber 1947) devoted several columns to a history o f the Théâtre H ébertot, based on an interview w ith Jacques H ébertot him self, but for the period o f the Occupation noted only th at Giraudoux, Cocteau, Passeur and Crommelynk had been produced. Marc Beigbeder (le Parisien Libéré, 25 Septem ber 1947) was so im­ pressed by Péguy's play th at he thought the delay in bringing the 1897 version for the first tim e ever to the Paris stage was scandalous. Marcel Péguy him self, in a piece w ritten for the 1947 programme, com m ented, w ith a certain équivoque, that it was surely the length o f his father’s

114 The R ole o f Joan o f A rc original Jeanne d*Arc which had prevented it from ever being per­ form ed commercially.30 The fact th at the so-called première o f 18 September 1947 was a charity affair for the benefit o f La Fédération des Maquis21 prom pted P(ol) Gaillard in l ’H um anité (26 Septem ber 1947) to point out th at Marcel Péguy’s past was not w ithout stain» since the latter had contributed to la Gerbe and other collaborationist newspapers, and in Les L ettres Françaises (25 Septem ber 1947) Gaillard remembered th at this ex-collaborator had for four years prom oted his father as the guiding light o f the ‘régime hitléro-vichyssois’. One may imagine how Gaillard might have reacted if he had known o f the special perform ance given at the Comédie Française in June 1941 ‘au profit des Ecrivains Com battants’,22 but he appears to have been as unaware o f the first H ébertot production as his fellow critics. It is hard not to con­ clude that there had been a conspiracy o f silence. Was Marcel Péguy’s original 1941 adaptation so obviously pro-Vichy that in 1947 he thought it best forgotten? Did Jacques H ébertot simply erase the fact o f the 1941 run from his memory? Did certain critics deliberately refrain from m entioning it? If such is the case, then it was perhaps in the desire to see the rapid rehabilitation o f Charles Péguy.23 Be th at as it m ay, the m omentum created by Shaw and Péguy in 1940 and 1941 was boosted by Claudel. In July 1941, his oratorio Jeanne d ’A rc au bûcher, w ith music by Honegger, began a tw o-m onth Tour de France, taking in 30 towns, covering 3,000 kilom etres, and involving a special train for the actors and musicians, lorries loaded w ith instrum ents, costumes and sets, and an advance guard o f admini­ strators to organise board and lodging — all in the desire to bring to the provinces, as the author him self put it, a vision o f Joan o f Arc surrounded by a united France.24 Meanwhile, rehearsals were beginning in Paris for the next production on the them e o f the P ucettet Vermorel’s Jeanne avec nous.25 The venture was rather meagrely funded, and the actors o f the Compagnie du Théâtre d’Essais worked w ithout pay during the rehearsal period; but their obvious enthusiasm carried them through, and the play opened to a warm reception at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées on 10 January 1942. Towards the end o f February, it moved to the Théâtre de l’Ambigu, and on 26 June to the Théâtre Pigalle, where it ran until August. Berthe Tissen, a form erly unknown actress, played Jeanne, and in doing so made her nam e.26 Almost nothing w ritten about Jeanne avec nous during the Occu­ pation could lead one to conclude that it was taken by audiences to be anti-Nazi or anti-Vichy. However, in contrast to the fate o f Péguy’s Jeanne d ’A rc, the post-war reprise o f Vermorel’s play (in December

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1945) prom pted reviewers to deal almost exclusively w ith the im pact and meaning it had had for occupied audiences, and moreover to brand it the first Resistance play to be perform ed in Paris. Before returning, therefore, to its 1942 reception, it is w orth examining this retrospective reaction, unconstrained as it was by the German presence. Only the unqualified post-war acknowledgement o f the clandestine message o f Les M ouches is comparable w ith th at accorded to Jeanne avec nous. The vast m ajority o f critics present at the 1945 staging saw the play as having been, in 1942, as m agnificently subordinate as Joan herself. For them , the earlier production had been ‘la révolte . . . contre l’ennemi de l'ex térieu r', ‘un beau travail de pied-de-nez', ‘à la barbe des Allem ands, le procès de la collboration,.ri They marvelled at the apparent stupidity o f the German censors. ‘Comment [ont-ils] su se m éprendre’, asked J . Van den Esch incredulously (Bays, 22 Decem­ ber 1945), ‘ignorer le danger de ces répliques capables d'arracher les pavés des rues?' Jacques Mauchemps o f Spectateur (2 January 1946 offered his own version o f what he imagined to have been the German censors' reasoning: *ça, très bonne pièce. Pièce contre Anglais. Une pièce pour Jeanne d ’Arc, c’est forcém ent une pièce pour Allemands.’ But if the Germans were dull-w itted, it seems the French were not. A large num ber o f reviewers, though w ith no unbiased evidence to back their claims, affirm ed w ith remarkable assuredness th at the 1942 audiences had easily discerned Vermorel’s real message, the only possible message, according to Thierry Maulnier (Essor, 19 January 1946) , in an occupied country: an indictm ent o f the occupying power. Maurice Delarue, one o f the few 1945 critics who had seen the original production, m aintained th at audiences had strained to see allusions to the O ccupation and Vichy in every line delivered, and th at they had un­ m istakably recognised Pétain and Déat in Jeanne’s contem ptible judges (Terre des H om m es, 19 January 1946). And Simone de Beauvoir inform s us th at each burst o f applause was an unequivocal dem onstra­ tio n against Nazi rule,28 though Vermorel him self (Opéra, 19 December 1945), talks o f the shiver th at had run down his spine each tim e the silence o f the audience had highlighted a daring allusion, such as his English officers clicking their heels, or his men o f the Church referring to each other as ‘cam arade’. Yet some 1945 voices were not quite in harm ony w ith the chorus. François de Roux (M inerve, 4 January 1946) thought th at the censors m ust have given Jeanne avec nous its visa not only because Joan had been burned by the English, but also because o f a certain cynicism Verm orel had put in the m ouths o f those judging his heroine at her trial.

116 The R ole o f Joan o f A rc Jean Sauvenay {Témoignage C hrétien, 4 January 1946) considered th at one o f the distinct them es o f the play was the problem o f the relative m erits of, on the one hand, peace bought w ith bloodshed, and, on the other, its less costly counterpart, that o f collaboration —a problem on which, in his opinion, Vermorel had rightly declined to give guidance. And Marc Beigbeder {les E toiles, 1 January 1946), while recognising th at it was no doubt possible in 1942 to see Vermorel’s Englishmen as Germans, and his Inquisition as Vichy, thought the textual clues to these transpositions far from obvious. How, then, is one to decide how the 1942 audiences reacted to Jeanne avec nous? To begin w ith, by this date any play treating the Joan o f Arc them e, whatever the intentions o f the dram atist, would have been seen in the light o f pressing contem porary concerns, so th at surprise at the im plications o f Shaw’s Sainte Jeanne and Péguy’s Jeanne d*Arc had now been replaced by a sense o f expectation. For les N ouveaux Tem ps (20 January 1942) Vermorel’s play was ‘une preuve nouvelle de l’intérêt que les auteurs de la génération présente trouvent, au lendemain de nos revers, à rem onter le cours de notre histoire’. What is m ore, the title Jeanne avec nous, as Michel Florisoone and Raymond Cogniat noted in their survey o f the 1941-2 season, was proof that the play had been w ritten as a com m ent on contem porary problem s.29 In th at hard and disheartening w inter o f 1941-2, it was also to be anticipated th at the critical emphasis would be firm ly on heroic grandeur. In the words o f André Castelot o f la Gerbe (15 January 1942), Jeanne avec nous was ‘une pièce écrite dans le sens de la vraie grandeur, voie dans laquelle nous aimerions tan t, en cette noire époque, voir le théâtre de France s’engager*. Absent are the references to Joan’s sim plicity. Gone is the spate o f negative Anglophobiccomm ents: only one m ajor reviewer, Charles Quinel {le M atin, 21 January 1942), thought it w orth m entioning th at the Pucelle had been burned by the English. R ather, for the 1942 critics, Vermorel’s Jeanne is the incarna­ tion o f positive glory and m ajesty, and his play has, as Georges Pioch (iVOeuvre, 13 January 1942) put it, ‘cet accent sobre et f o r t . . . lequel vaut pour toutes les époques du m onde, et singulièrement pour celle où nous purgeons notre peine et le m orne destin qu’elle nous fait’. In the case o f Jearme avec nous it is possible to ascertain precisely the relationship between this critical reaction and the tex t o f the play, since the first published version, dated O ctober 1942,30 is for all prac­ tical purposes a prom pter’s script, w ith those lines which had been excluded from the Rideau des Jeunes production clearly indicated. And it is plain from this tex t th at Vermorel's heroine does indeed symbolise

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self-respect, fortitude and lionheartedness.31 ‘La France, c’est l’audace, l ’orgueil, la sainte brutalité, l’héroïsm e’, she cries to B edfort, [sic, p. 99 ] , a line which epitom ises her outlook. Bedfort himself, a m ature, pragm atic and perceptive character, is the m outhpiece for m oderation, and thus collaboration. It was to be expected, he explains in a selfconscious passage about the role o f Joan o f Arc, th at a people defeated m orally and physically would snatch desperately at a symbol o f hope fo r the future (pp. 58-9), while the reality o f th at hope was there for all to see: peace and order in the unification o f tw o great nations. ‘Allonsnous vivre encore pour des générations dans cet état de guerre, de crime passionel, à nous entretuer tous les vingt a n s . . . ?’, he asks w ith pacifist wordly wisdom (p. 141). The 1942 audiences cannot have been insensi­ tive to such rem arks, but since they came from the m outh o f one o f Jeanne’s oppressors, the critics seem to have been at a loss as to how th ey should be received, and abstained from discussing them . Only Morvan Lebesque (le P etit Parisien, 12 January 1942) showed any willingness to come to term s w ith the problem , and concluded th at Jeanne’s opponents ‘se trom pent, mais de bonne foi’. In his review, Lebesque had already made his right-wing affiliations clear by disparag­ ing the 1936 May Day celebrations, when ‘Jeanne avec nous!’ had been one o f the rallying cries o f the Front Populaire, but had com m ented th a t Vermorel’s play belied the im plication o f its title. The 1942 critics generally ignored aspects o f the play which were m anifestly an incite­ m ent to revolt against imposed order. 'Ce peuple sait encore descendre dans la rue, s’am euter contre l'injustice’ says the kindly Lohier (p. 81); and Jeanne's response to those who argue th at her cause will throw France into chaos, is pointedly explicit: 'L a terre n’est pas là pour les peuples lâches, ou fatigués. Et le mien to u t entier n ’en voulait pas de votre paix de h o n te.’ (p . 40) Jeanne contre nous? It is clear th at m uch o f the play could have been interpreted to suit one's own prejudices and preoccupations. Many o f Jeanne's heroic, patriotic lines could have been interpreted equally as justifying the N ational Revolution or the cause o f the Resistance. Vermorel’s post­ war claim (iOpéra, 19 December 1945) th at Jeanne’s rem ark about her sovereign — ‘Sa France sera grande' —had had a special im pact in 1942 since the King o f Bourges and General de Gaulle by coincidence shared the same Christian nam e, may well have been tru e, but Vermorel’s Charles is also a buffoon. In 1945, Pol Gaillard (les L ettres Françaises, 11 January 1946) was to deride ‘le triste Alain Laubreaux de Je Suis P artout [qui] prétendait même découvrir dans la pièce des allusions anti-soviétiques et s'étonnait avec joie de voir les juges de Jeanne

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s'appeler inexplicablem ent “camarades” !’ But Laubreaux’s view (Je Suis P artout, 21 February 1942) is perfectly understandable, even justifiable, given the black picture Vermorel paints o f the Church and the Inquisi­ tion, whose members use this term in addressing one another. Patrick Marsh has argued th at Jeanne avec nous was one o f only tw o wartime French plays (the other being Sartre’s Bariona) unquestionably w ritten w ith the specific aim o f encouraging the Resistance.33 Yet the author o f Jeanne avec nous him self pointed out both during and after the Occupation th at he put the finishing touches to it in 1938.33 Nor m ust it be forgotten th at Vermorel had contributed articles to the pro-Nazi newspaper ìa Gerbe, n o t only as a preview to the opening o f his play in 1942, but also as a critic who, the year before, had strongly attacked surrealist and avant-garde theatre.34 Nevertheless, if it m ust be accepted th at the claims made by critics in 1945 and 1946, though exaggerated, contained more than a germ o f tru th , the scales are tipped from the point o f view o f the tex t not by the confrontation o f Jeanne and her judges, and even less so by th at o f Jeanne and Befort (a forerunner o f the equilibrium m aintained by Anouilh in the contest between Antigone and Créon), but by the character o f Jeanne's m ost dangerous enem y, the Inquisitor Lem aître. Jacques Berland’s attem pt (in 1942) to classify Lem aitre’s position as T entêtem ent partisan' (Paris-Soir, 16 January 1942) was patently strained. L em aître's long and detailed accounts o f the physical torture inflicted by the Inquisition (pp. 60-1,149), little o f which was cut from the 1942 production, and which read like a synopsis o f Sartre’s M orts sans sépulture, were too close to reality not to have been taken as an indictm ent o f the m ethods o f the Gestapo or the Milice. Jeanne is not tortured (nor was the real Joan, though Vermorel breaks w ith historical accuracy in having her raped by English soldiers in her cell), but she is nevertheless very clearly the victim o f a system capable o f bloodcurdling atrocities carried out in the name o f ex­ pediency. In effect, therefore, her role has changed, partly in the way she herself is presented, but equally w ithin the wider symbol o f the un­ ju st and sometimes brutal treatm ent o f innocent individuals by the State, in this case itself a puppet o f a ruthless foreign regime. Jeanne avec nous cannot have had the immediate im pact as a Resistance play implied by post-war critics, since it ran almost continuously for nearly eight m onths w ithout being banned by the Propaganda-staffel or its French theatrical equivalent, the Comité d'Organisation des Entre­ prises de Spectacle. But the fact that it was the last major theatrical Joan o f Arc venture in Paris suggests either th at the censors did finally

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consider th at the subject itself had become weighted in favour o f resist­ ance to occupation as such, or th at playwrights and theatre directors suspected th at the censors had come to this conclusion.35 The double meaning o f Jeanne avec nous did not o f course prevent it from being used as collaborationist propaganda. In March 1942, for exam ple, ex­ cerpts were perform ed on the stage o f the Théâtre de la Madeleine after Pierre Champion’s lecture in the series ‘De Jeanne d’Arc à Philippe Pétain’,36 and the play figured prom inently in the 1942 Joan o f Arc Day celebrations. Fragm ents o f it, together w ith other texts on the same them e, were used as interludes for a radio broadcast entitled N oblesse m usicale de Jeanne d*Arc,37 and it joined the Pucelle plays o f Schiller, Péguy, Shaw, René Bruyez, Jean Loisy, André Villiers, Fran­ çois Porché and Saint-Georges de Bouhélier, from all o f which works scenes were perform ed in a gala m atinée organised in honour o f Joan by th e Théâtre National Populaire on 10 May 1942 at the Palais de C haillot.38 But while Gaston Denizot o f la Gerbe (14 May 1942), in his account o f yet another celebration held at the Salle Pleyel, did not hesitate alm ost to echo the title o f Vermorel’s play in exclaiming ‘Jam ais la grande Lorraine n’a été plus près de nous’, a curt note which appeared inconspicuously in a num ber o f newspapers39 signified the concern o f the authorities over what Joan might have come to symbo­ lise despite their efforts. It announced th at on Joan o f Arc Day, cele­ bratory rallies or meetings o f any kind were strictly forbidden. To what extent did Vermorel’s Jeanne avec nous influence official reasoning? Since the play’s message was determ ined largely by the preform ed atti­ tudes o f its audience, Verm orel's own objectives are probably rather beside the point. But Jeanne avec nom caught the m ood o f the tim es, and thus no doubt contributed to the growing feeling among those in power th at Joan could no longer by relied upon to be a clear symbol o f the New Order. By the middle o f 1942, then, Joan had little future as a theatrical character. From then until the end o f the War, her sole appearance on the Parisian stage was in a reprise o f Claudel’s Jeanne au bûcher on 9 May 1943. This single perform ance at the Salle Pleyel, w ith the cele­ brated Mary M arquet reading the part o f Jeanne, and Honegger him self conducting the Orchestre National, was given to a packed house, and broadcast live on radio.40 But Claudel’s oratorio belongs, if anything, m ore to the world o f music than to th at o f theatre, in any case left little room for any variable interpretation o f iis message either by per­ form ers or audience, and its 1943 production was nothing more than a last flicker o f limelight for Saint Joan.

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Her disappearance from the stage was not wholly reflected in other form s o f com m unication during the second tw o years o f occupation. As late as 1944, for exam ple, as Allied bombings increased and prepara­ tions for invasion were known to be under way, a poster showing her manacled, behind the devastated churches and cathedral o f Rouen, declared: ‘Les assassins reviennent toujours sur les lieux de leur crime’.41 But posters are not live theatre, nor, like live theatre, rich in possible ambivalence. It is perfectly understandable not only th at Joan’s stage career should have been the first to suffer once the tide had turned, but also th at in th at little Golden Age o f French theatre which the Occupation produced, when one might have expected her to dom inate the stage, her role appears to have been somewhat restricted. Hindsight is o f course o f doubtful validity: in the final account we cannot know what she truly represented for individual audiences. The very fact, for instance, th at virtually all theatre critics were men m ust certainly have distorted for us the effect she had on the women who watched her on stage. Yet it is clear th at her theatrical role changed between 1940 and 1942 in a discernible way. Always a potentially fickle symbol for those who wished to prom ote her as the defender o f the New Order, she soon became an image o f the tradition o f resist­ ance. It is only natural th at it should have been the theatre, as a living happening w ith its close dependence on the m oods and em otions o f the public, th at paved the way fór Joan’s new role after the Libera­ tion as the cham pion o f Vesprit de la Résistance.

Notes 1 .1 wish to acknowledge with gratitude the help o f Stuart Ferguson, a post­ graduate student currently researching on the theatre of the Occupation. Mr Ferguson did a good part o f the primary work for this chapter in various libraries in Paris. 2. See Henri Guillemin, Jeanne dite Jeanne d ’A rc' (1970), p. 240. For all references in text and in notes, the place of publication is Paris unless otherwise

Verified. 3. Chanoine P. Glorieux, Jeanne d ’A rc, fitte de Dieu (1941), p. 5. 4. Joan o f Arc Day (8 May) is celebrated on the first Sunday following 7 May. 5. Le Miracle de Jeanne (Tours, 1942), p. 59. 6. La Leçon de Jeanne d ’A rc, no publisher, no date [1941J. 7. Traité de l ’étonnement, ‘Les Cahiers du Rhône* (Neuchâtel, 1943) 8. A Jeanne d ’A rc, sainte héroïne de Ftance inspiratrice de la Résistance française, Comité Centrale de la France Combattante au Brésil (Rio de Janeiro, 1941), pp. 5 ,6 . The words are those of Paul Doncoeur, and taken from his pamphlet, Qui a brûlé Jeanne d ’Arc? (1931). 9. See the text of the broadcast made by Maurice Schumann on 10 May

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1941, La Voix de la Liberté: Ici Londres, 1940-1944 (1975), p. 228. 10. See the title page of the published edition, 1941. 11. Page numbers refer to the..L925 edition of Sainte Jeanne. 12. For example in Le Matin, 22 décembre 1940 and Let Nouveaux Temps, 6 janvier 1941. 13. Joan o f Arc in History, Legend and Literature (Oslo, 1971), p. 195. 14. See,inter atta, le Petit Parisien, 11 mai 1941;/'Oeu>re, 11 mai 1941;and le Matin, 12 mai 1941. 15. 'Héroïsme et sainteté dans le message de Péguy', Temps Prisent, 24 mai 1940. 16. See, for example, W.D. Halls, The Youth o f Vichy France (Oxford, 1981), p. 225, and Jean Baudéan, 'Un hérétique: Charles Péguy', La fronce Socialiste, 23 octobre 1943. 17. *Péguy et l'Im e populaire*, Les Cahiers de NeuiUy, 1st cahier, 1942. 18. Péguy was not a saint, but his wartime fate was curiously akin to that of Joan o f Arc, for he was claimed as a champion by both sides: for example, it was during the Vichy adulation of Péguy that the Editions de Minuit produced the booklet Péguy-Péri (1944). 19. For example, Thierry Maulnier, Spectateur, 20 septembre 1947; Robert Kemp, le Monde 22 septembre 1947 and Une Semaine dans le Monde, 27 septembre 1947; Francis Ambrière, Opéra, 24 septembre 1947; and Gabriel Marcel, les Nouvelles Littéraires, 25 septembre 1947. 20. The programme is in the Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal, R. Supp. 2290. 21. See J.M., Spectateur, 9 septembre 1947. 22. See Paris Soir, 27 juin 1941. 23. Whatever the explanation, the misunderstanding has persisted. As recently as 1975, in the im portant exhibition Jeanne au Théâtre held in Orleans, the first performance of Péguy’s play, apart from some excerpts briefly seen at the Comédie Française in June 1942, was given as the post-war Hébertot adaptation; see the Catalogue of the exhibition, published by the Centre Jeanne d'Arc d’Orléans (Orleans, 1976), Exhibit 88. In Hervé Le B oterfs, La Vie parisienne sous l ’occupation, II, Paris la nuit (1975), pp. 167-8, and in Patrick Marsh's ‘Le Théâtre à Paris sous l'occupation allemande’, Revue d ’Histoire du Théâtre, IH, 1981 (the entire issue), pp. 287-8, the 1941 production is given as that o f the Mystère of 1910. 24. Comoedia, 12 juillet 1941. 25. See Vermorel, 'Avant Jeanne avec nous', la Gerbe, 8 janvier 1942 and Comoedia, 10 janvier 1942. 26. Vermorel reported on the difficulties encountered in putting on the play, and of finding an actress for the role of Jeanne, in Comoedia, 10 janvier 1941. See also the issues of 28 février 1942 and 20 juillet 1942 for information concerning the successive theatres involved in the production. 27. Quotations taken respectively from Georges Gregory, Front National, 28 décembre 1945; J. G.-R., A rts, and André Alter, l'Actualité Théâtrale, 30 décembre 1945. 28. La Force de l'âge (1960), p. 470. 29. Un an de théâtre: 1941-1942 (1942), p. 8. 30. The Achevé d'imprimer is 26 octobre 1942. Page numbers refer to this first edition. 31. This despite Le B oterfs view of Vermorel's Jeanne as, principally, *une fille des champs, naïve. . . véritable reflet de la paysannerie française*, La Vie parisienne, II, 194. 32. Marsh, ‘Le Théâtre à Paris*, p. 362. 33. See la Gerbe, 8 janvier 1942; Comoedia, 10 janvier 1942; and Opéra,

122 The R ole o f Joan o f A rc 19 décembre 1945. 34. See la Gerbe, 8 janvier 1942 and 2 février 1941. 35. Marsh, 'Le Théâtre à Paris*, p. 292, suggests that the play’s run was limited to only three months (sic) because the censors had by then understood its real message, and in the Catalogue of the 1975 Orleans exhibition (see note 23) the play is described as ‘[une pièce] qui soulignait au temps de l'occupation allemande le caractère 'désistant” de la mission de Jeanne, et qui fût, de ce fait, rapidement interdite* (Exhibit 124). 36. See le Petit Parisien, 14 mars 1942. 37. See Paris Midi, 7 mai 1942, and the review by Honegger in Comoedia, 9 mai 1942. 38. For details o f the gala see the preview in VOeuvre, 6 mai 1942. 39. See, for example, fe Petit Parisien, 9 mai 1942. 40. See Comoedia, 15 mai 1943. There were also single radio broadcasts of René Bruyez’s, Jeanne et la vie des autres, on 8 May, and a new play on the Joan of Arc theme by Marcelle Mauriette, La Savante, on 10 May; see the previews in Comoedia, 8 mai 1943. 41. See Pierre Bourget and Charles de LacreteUe, Sur les murs de Paris e t de France, 1939-1945 (1980), p. 166.

7

AM BIG U ITIES IN THE FILM LE CIEL EST A VOUS Jeanie Semple

‘ tu décolles, et puis tu te prom ènes dans le ciel comme dans un jard in .' Thus Thérèse G authier, the middle-aged, provincial housewife who is the heroine o f Jean Grém illon's film , L e G el est à vous,1 describes her impression o f case and pleasure during her first aeroplane flight. French cinema audiences who saw the film early in 1944 may have envied Thérèse's ability to move freely in the skies above France, and the title does hint at hope, confidence, and even freedom . Never­ theless, no film-maker would have risked any but the most oblique reference to the actual historical situation. On the contrary, the film 's ideological credibility was such th at it received the honour o f a gala perform ance before Mme Pétain and various government m inisters in the tow n o f Vichy on 8 February 1944.a That the film 's director was suspected o f left-wing sym pathies, and was in fact a member o f the clandestine C om ité de Libération du Cinéma Français? is only one o f the m any ambiguities about this film . Made in 1943, it has as many affinities w ith the France o f the Popular Front as w ith Vichy France; it was praised highly, even extra­ vagantly, in both the pro-Vichy and the clandestine press (and still arouses strong feeling among film historians): it shows an exem plary Vichy-style wife and m other who is ready to sacrifice her own life and the happiness o f her fam ily to a personal am bition which has become an obsession; in the fourth year o f the German occupation, it showed French crowds cheering the arrival o f a French plane (a Caudron) at an aerodrom e bedecked w ith tricolour flags; it even played a tiny part in the war, since the unusual activities o f the hundreds o f extras engaged for the scene at Le Bourget airport attracted the attention o f the RAF, who subsequently bom bed the airport. (The flying sequences were eventually shot at Lyon-Bron airport.)4 Even the word 'd e l' is open to more interpretations than already indicated: th e film is effectively fram ed by opening and closing shots o f a priest w ith a group o f orphans. A rem inder th at heaven is attainable by all? A warning th at Thérèse’s foolhardy exploit may leave her children motherless? And w hat to make o f the shepherd and his flock o f sheep who pass the orphans? A nother ambiguous symbol, or simply 123

124 A m biguities in the F ilm Le Ciel est à vous an interesting visual contrast in black and white? In short, the film offers a num ber o f ambiguities, anomalies, inconsistences, contradic­ tions and paradoxes, th at are w orth examining more closely. In m any ways, L e G el est à vous is rem iniscent o f the France o f the mid-1930s, o f the Popular F ront. To begin w ith, the title itself would rem ind the politically aware film-goer o f La Vie est à nous, the title o f the film commissioned by the French Communist party for the elec­ tion campaign o f 1936.s Then, the Popular Front Government had emphasised the new opportunities available for sport and leisure, and one o f its m inisters, Pierre C ot, had been keen to prom ote aviation as a popular sport. This promise o f aviation for all is echoed in the film itself: Pierre G authier offers ‘baptêm es de Voir' to the townspeople; Dr M aulette, president o f the aéroclub, asks the Conseil Municipal to vote 50,000 francs for *propagande aérienne', while the expression *aviation pop­ ulaire' occurs tw o or three tim es during the aéroclub sequences. Even M aulette’s rather patronising rem ark to Pierre th at *une chose com m e l'aviation n'a pas besoin que de supercham pions. I l fa u t aussi des obscurs, des sans-grade' implies th at aviation is no longer the privilege o f a m inority. L e G el est à vous also shares a common them e w ith Frontist films such as L e Crune de M onsieur Lange6 and La B elle É quipe.1 In the first, workers take over the printing house where they work as a co­ operative; and in the second, a group o f unemployed friends win 100,000 francs in a lottery and decide to turn a tum bledown riverside house into an open-air café. In both, ordinary people achieve inde­ pendence and success through hard w ork, directed tow ards a common goal, and in b o th , the characters are seen rooted in their environm ent, especially their working environm ent. In the same way, Pierre and Thérèse, an ordinary lower-middle-class couple are fired w ith enthus­ iasm for an ideal, and w ith m utually supportive devotion and loyalty, trium ph over all obstacles. A final link w ith the 1930s is th at the film is based on the story o f a real-life woman pilot — Andrée D uyperon, wife o f a garage owner from Mont-de-Marsan, who did break a similar solo flight record in 1937, and her achievement was widely circulated in the magazine MarieClaire. And the aviatrix Lucienne Ivry who is portrayed in the film was another record-breaking pilot o f th at tim e. When the film was first show n, reaction in the pro-Vichy press was predictable. O ther films had taken different aspects o f Vichy ideology, such as the Return to the land’ (M onsieur des Lour dines,* or the self-

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sacrificing m other (Le Voile B k u )9 or the glorious French heritage (Sym phonie F antastique).19 None had managed to synthesise so many as had this story o f a hard-working, enterprising, provincial artisan and his w ife, portrayed sym pathetically and realistically, which ends in a blaze o f patriotism and glory. The tone was set by L e F üm ,n which called it the best film made since the arm istice (*le film nous apporte un souffle bienfaisant d'idéal et de santé m orale; c’est une oeuvre exaltante et émouvante q u i . . . m ontre . . . le rôle de la femme dans un foyer et la beauté de la fam ille’). Similar sentim ents were expressed in A ujourd'hui111 ( ’vérit­ able épopée de l’esprit d’entreprise, de l’effort persévérant. . . un film exaltant'); in la Gerbe° ‘il faudra être privé de toute sensibilité, de to u te chaleur hum aine, pour n'étre point ém u’) and in l'A telier* ('c ’est pur, c’est sain, et ça exalte l’énergie individuelle’). The m ost interesting com m ent, however, came from a totally unex­ pected quarter. François Vinneuil,15 writing in Je Suis P a rto u t* praised Grémillon’s fine observation and warm sym pathy in a film th at was sentim ental in the best sense, b u t went on to spell out a paradox th at lies at the heart o f this film — th at the m ost ‘Vichy’ film was made by a m an wholly out o f sym pathy w ith Vichy ideology ( ‘le piquant de la chose est que ce film des vertus françaises, dont nous n'avons vu depuis trois ans que les absurdes caricatures, ait été réussi par un homme qui se situe, sans aucun doute, aux antipodes de Vichy, parm i les "réfract­ aires de tem péram ent” ’). Journalists in the clandestine press, often utilising the same expression (‘santé m orale’) found other reasons to praise the film . For l'Écran Français,11 it was a film ‘qui sauve l'honneur du cinéma français, qui réussit à faire entendre un cri dont la résonance ne s’éteindra pas . . . des personnages pleines de sève fran­ çaise, de courage authentique, de santé m orale, où nous retrouvons une vérité nationale qui ne veut pas et ne peut pas m o u rir. . . ’ The staunchest defender o f the film as a call to resistance was Georges Sadoul, who first w rote about it in C onfluences. “ He describes Pierre G authier as a typical ‘French’ hero ('u n brave type, bricoleur et débrouillard, frondeur surtout à la manière de Gavroche ou d'A rtagnan. C ette fronde veut d ’abord dire indépendance . . . ’) and he praises the genuine patriotism o f the film itself ( ‘L’am our de notre patrie bat dans ses simples images, et le spectateur qui le sait sincère et profond, se sent les larmes aux yeux.’ A fter the war, in his H istoire Générale du Ciném a, Sadoul quotes part o f this review, and adds th at ‘ . . . L e G el est à vous sonnait alors pour nous comme un appel aux arm es',19 and again in le G ném a Français, he w rites th at for the cinema audiences on the eve o f

126 A m biguities in th e FÜm Le Ciel est à vous the Liberation, the Gauthiers had become a symbol o f those ordinary middle-class French people who risked their lives ‘pour soutenir la résistance armée à l’intérieur du pays . . . cette peinture réaliste d'un certain aspect de l’héroïsm e français sonna comme un appel aux armes pour ceux qui com prirent le message'.30 To what extent this interpretation was widely accepted by those in the Resistance is less certain, and here it is interesting to compare the vigorous rebuttal by Raymond Borde,31 in his introduction to Francis C ourtade's Les M alédictions du Cinéma Français, 22 N othing, he writes, could be further from the tru th : Rien n'est plus faux. J'étais à l'époque m ilitant communiste et j ’affirm e ici solonnellem ent, qu'il fu t ressenti comme un acte de propagande de l’ennem i de classe. Objectivem ent, il servait les intérêts du Maréchal et toute la Révolution Nationale s'y retrouvait: l'artisan rouspéteur, bien de chez nous, avec son zinc de quatre sous, qui donnait une leçon à l'aviation industrielle; sa femme, pure héroïne dans le ciel de gloire, qui avait les humbles vertus de notre sol immémorial; le travail de fourm i qui magnifiait le m étier d 'hom m e. . . By the early 1970s French attitudes to the Occupation had m odi­ fied, especially after the watershed o f the television film , L e Chagrin e t la P itié,“ * in 1971. A ttitudes to the cinema o f the Occupation were also examined at the conference held at the Cinémathèque de Toulouse in July 1972, which resulted in various papers and articles on Vichy cinema. Jean-Pierre Jeancolas in Jeune Cinéma34 linked the cinema o f 1940-4 to traditional French conservative thought ('travail-fam illeéglise-patrie') rather than the 'Parisian' ideology o f Brasillach35 and R ebatet, and denied th at L e G el est à vous could be considered a call to arms. Plus personne ne lit dans L e G el est à vous un 'appel aux arm es, mais bien p lutôt le ronron d'une France perpétuellem ent satisfaite. Car enfin ce grand frémissement de drapeaux tricolores à la fin du film évoque autant la France du Maréchal que celle du Tripartism e de 1946 . . . On the other hand, in an article entitled 'U ne société malade de m oralité,36 Jean A. Gili declared th at Thérèse G authier was not in the least a 'V ichy' heroine ('u n e femme qui refuse de rester au foyer, qui-

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ne sacrifie pas to u t à l'éducation de ses enfants, qui, avec l'aide de son m ari, ose affirm er sa personnalité et accomplir l'exploit dont elle se sent capable') and th at her real victory w a s . . . d’avoir vaincu la sottise d’une société qui ne voit dans la femme que l’épouse et la mère entre les quatre m urs de son foyer'. It is at this tim e th at Joseph Daniel, in Guerre e t G ném a11, uses L e G el est à vous to illustrate how the same film can appeal to oppos­ ing ideologies: 'les adversaires du régime . . . m onopoliseront à leur profit cette oeuvre au titre prom etteur: L e G el est à vous. Dans le même tem ps, les partisans de la Révolution nationale ne peuvent que se louer de cette discrète exaltation de valeurs dont ils se veulent les cham pions’. He adds th at this was not an uncommon phenom enon at the tim e ‘pour des raisons opposées, ils applaudissent parfois les mêmes héros, comme ils le font ailleurs pour Jeanne d ’Arc ou pour Péguy'. It should perhaps be pointed out that the appeal o f this film rem ained largely theoretical, for the one point on which film historians agree is th at it was not a commercial success. The film ’s reputation was made in ciné-clubs after the war. Over the next decade, if one excepts the comm ents o f Raymond Borde, the analysis o f possible Vichy elements in this particular film has received decreasing attention in books about the cinema.38 By the 1980s, a degree o f am biguity is considered both acceptable and inevit­ able. Jacques Sicher, however, in La France de Pétain e t son G ném a, firm ly places any am biguity outside the film itself, in its historical context: 'L'am biguïté morale de “valeurs nationales” revendiquées à la fois par le pétainism e et par la Résistance vint des circonstances et non — on ne le dira jam ais assez — du film lui-m êm e'.39 While JeanPierre Jeancolas, in L e G ném a des Français 1929-1944,30 states th at since film-makers were obliged to walk a tightrope between opposing w orlds, a them e likè th at o f hum an endeavour would be 'récupérable' by bo th camps. Incidentally, this aura o f ambiguity seems to have extended across the Channel to those who w rote about the film in the im m ediate post-war period. Roy Fuller, in The Film in F rance* notes th at the film was consid­ ered ‘a glorification o f the French spirit and genius', but adds, 'Even if th at is debatable, it may be th at the public did not care to be rem inded o f their past glories at a tim e when they were so helpless.’ For Penguin Film R eview ,32 L e G el est à vous was 'dull, very solid, and rich in moving em otional scenes', and continues ‘one does not know w hether the m oral o f this story is th at this mechanic . . . ought to have been content to stay in his own m iddling station or w hether he is a symbol

128 A m biguities in the Film Le Ciel est à vous for the popular hero who ought to be allowed to rise as high as he wants to '. Sight and Sound,3* however, did opt for the 'pro-Resistance' theory. T h e film exercised a great resistance influence because it illustrates how determ ination and hard work can attain the seemingly impossible.’ This comm ent is doubly interesting, since the same journalist inter­ viewed Grémillon in Paris a year later, and w rote34 'he refused to accept the dictatorship o f subject imposed by the German censorship and found his own way o f presenting to the French people a picture o f their fellow-countrymen which was honest, touching and inspiring', and this might just possibly be a clue as to Grémillon's original intention. Nevertheless, making a film is a group enterprise, and it is unusual for any one person, even the director, to exert a to tal influence over the final result. Here again, a closer look at the personalities involved in making this film , reveals the same contradictions and anomalies to be found in the critical attitudes towards the film . To begin w ith the director, whereas L e Ciel est à vous had received accolades from the Vichy regime, his previous film , Lum ière d ’E té,35 had, according to Sadoul,36 almost been banned by th at same regime for its pro-commu­ nist sympathies. There may have been some justification for their sus­ picion, since the Catholic ‘analyse m orale' published by the CCR37 does describe the film as ‘une belle opposition de milieu de travail à un m ilieu malsain . . . jeune ingénieur vu sym pathiquem ent . . . châtelain sadique’. Im mediately after the war, Grémillon went on to make a semi-documentary about the Normandy landings called L e Six Juin à l'A u b e, which he started in the autum n o f 1944. Before the war, however, he had directed three films for ACE, the section o f UFA which produced French films w ith German capital.38*40 There was o f course nothing reprehensible about working on indivi­ dual films for ACE/UFA - some o f the m ost talented French directors, writers and actors had done so in the late 1930s. But in the case o f Raoul Ploquin, producer o f L e G el est à vous, his involvement w ith the Nazi state film organisation went deeper; he was director o f French production for ACE between 1934 and 1939. Later, in December 1940, he became the first director o f COIC,41 whose objective was to reor­ ganise the entire French cinema industry along corporatist lines. One o f the scriptw riters, A lbert Valentin, had also worked for ACE before the war and during the occupation in 1943 had directed Vìe de Plaisir for C ontinental, the Paris-based French subsidiary o f UFA, which produced 30 films during this period. The other scriptw riter, Charles Spaak had been associated with the pro-communist Ciné-

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Libertéf43 in the m id-1930s, and had scripted La B elle Équipe for Julien Duvivier in 1936. Then, before the war, he too had worked (w ith Grémillon) on tw o films for ACE.43 During the occupation, he wrote scripts for eight films, three o f them for Continental (L*Assassinat du Pere N oël\ Péchés de Jeunesse and Les Caves du M ajestic). He actually com pleted the script for this last-named while in Fresnes prison. The reason for his arrest early in 1944 remains obscure. Francis Courtade44 m entions an interesting hypothesis - th at Spaak chose to seek shelter at a tim e when his activities for Continental might have risked the charge o f collaboration later. This would account for the fact th at he received preferential treatm ent during his im prisonm ent. However, Courtade adds 'mais selon sa veuve, il avait été inquiété pour n’avoir pas dénoncé son frère Claude, actif résistant'. The cameraman, Louis Page, had worked w ith Grémillon both before and after L e G el est à vous, and was known for the characteristic grainy docum entary effect he could bring to what were in fact feature films (an ambiguity in itself). He had used this talent to great purpose in 1938, in Spain, working as cameraman for André Malraux, when the latter was making the film version o f his novel E spoir. Finally, among the perform ers, the actor Léonce Come (Dr M aulette) also appeared in tw o o f the m ost virulent propaganda films o f the occupation period - Les Corrupteurs, 45 and Forces Occultes*6 ; Charles Vanel was openly pro-Vichy47 while Madeleine Renaud, in a television programme in 197543 affirm ed th at L e G el est à vous had m eant to her ‘foi’, ‘espoir’ and ‘liberté’. There are also some ambiguities contained w ithin the character o f Thérèse. In 1944, she was seen, both by those for and against the regime, as exalting the role o f wife and m other ( ‘pure héroïne dans le ciel de gloire’); since then she is more often seen as having transcended this role and having found fulfilm ent by breaking free o f the confines o f hom e and fam ily. Is she then an anti-heroine, or perhaps even a fem inist one? In dress and general appearance and behaviour, Thérèse is a realistic portrayal o f a lower-middle-class provincial housewife and m other o f tw o teenage children, a woman who helps her garage-owner husband in his business, and at one tim e takes on a tem porary job to help w ith the family budget. This portrayal is in contrast to the real-life aviatrix, Lucienne Ivry, since the actress who plays this role is younger, slimmer and more glamorous. But the very ordinariness o f Thérèse would allow audience identification with a new kind o f heroine who had begun to appear in the cinema - an ordinary woman, often left on her own,

130 A m biguities in the Film Le Ciel est à vous coping w ith dom estic difficulties, or, as a member o f one o f the caring professions, dealing w ith other people's problems. Earlier in 1943, Madeleine Renaud had played such a woman, a welfare worker, in Georges Lacombe's, L "Escalier Sans F in. The m ost popular film o f 1942 had been L e Voile B leu, starring Gaby Morlay as a First World War widow who devotes the rest o f her life to caring for other people’s chil­ dren. Robert Bresson's first feature film , Les Anges du Péché is about the rehabilitation o f delinquent girls. Such portrayals mesh w ith certain aspects o f Vichy ideology (m otherhood, sef-sacrifice, redem ption) but at the same tim e they m irrored the historical realities o f this period, when women had to shoulder additional dom estic and other responsi­ bilities, when family life had been disrupted, and when young people were growing up in an atm osphere o f insecurity and tension. The strength and originality o f Thérèse is th at she dem onstrably reconciles the 'dom estic' and the 'adventurous' sides o f her nature, although, ju st occasionally, her display o f dom estic virtues borders on parody. For instance, in the role o f conscientious m other, she sets the alarm to wake her every tw o hours through the night so th at she can give her son his cough medecine ('il ne tousse plus, mais enfin le docteur a dit toutes les deux heures, alors je continue'). Or again, when, having safely landed at a French arm y post in the desert, she accepts a cup o f coffee, and the m odel housekeeper in her can't resist com m ent­ ing ‘Vous direz au cuisinier que son eau n 'était pas assez chaude, et le café a perdu un peu de son parfum '. There are good reasons, then, for considering Thérèse as a Vichy heroine (or even a Vichy anti-heroine) since her actions are governed by the words TYavaU-FamiUe-Patrie, even if she doesn’t always give them th at order o f priority. For her courage, independence and success, can she also be con­ sidered a fem inist heroine? There is an illum inating passage half-way through the film . The elder child, Jacqueline, is a gifted pianist, and her music teacher, Monsieur Larchet, tries to persuade the fam ily to let the girl study at the Conservatoire. Thérèse is outraged: 'M onsieur, vous encouragez Jacqueline à abandonner ses études sérieuses pour suivre, Dieu sait dans quelles conditions, une carrière insensée! Vous voyez Jacqueline vivre seule, à Paris? A M ontm artre?’ and w ith this she locks the piano - which is sold later to raise funds for Thérèse’s flight. A part from indicating excessive m aternal concern, this highlights another aspect o f Thérèse, her attitude to the passionately held am bitions o f another person. For Thérèse, independence and fulfil­ m ent remain a private m atter, a personal issue, and not related to any wider freedom o f action for women in general or for her own daughter in particular.

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Notes 1. Le Ciel est à vous: synopsis and credits. Piene and Thérèse Gauthier, who own a garage in the provincial town o f Villeneuve, are forced to move when the site of their business is wanted for the construction of an aerodrome. Piene, who served as mechanic to the French flyer Guynemer during the First World War, becomes more and more fascinated with flying and spends most of his free time at the aeroclub, to the exasperation of his wife. One day, the president o f the club dares her to take her ‘baptême de l’air’, and she is won over. She learns to fly, and the couple use all their savings to buy a plane of their own. Next, Thérèse decides to attem pt the world record for a long­ distance, non-stop flight by a woman pilot. She breaks the record, and returns in trium ph to Villeneuve and her family. Producer Director Story Adaptation Photography

Raoul Ploquin Jean Grémillon Albert Valentin Charles Spaak Louis Page

Thérèse Gauthier Piene Gauthier Monsieur Laichet Madame Btissard Dr Maulette Jacqueline Qaudinet Lucienne Ivry

Madeleine Renaud Charles Vanel Jean Debucourt Raymonde Vemay Léonce Come Anne-Marie Labaye Michel Francois Anne Vandénne

The film was begun on 31 May 1943 and first shown, in Paris, on 2 February 1944. Quotations from the dialogue are from the script, published by L’AvantScène du Cinéma, November 1981. 2. Le FUm, 19 février 1944. 3. George Sadoul, Histoire Générale du Cinéma (Denoel, 1954). vol. 6, p. 56. 4. Henri Agel, Jean Grémillon (Segjhers, 1969), p. 70. 5. Directed by Jean Renoir, with script supervision by Paul VaiHant-Couturier. 6.1935. Directed by Jean Renoir, script by Jacques Prévert. Many actors from the left-wing October Group appeared in the film. 7. 1936. Directed by Julien Duvivier, script by Charles Spaak. 8.1942. Directed by Pierre de Hérain, Pétain’s stepson; from the novel by Alphonse de Châteaubriant. 9.1942. Directed by Jean Stelli. One of the most popular and successful films o f this period. 10.1941. Directed by Christian-Jaque, for Continental. The film starred JeanLouis Barrault as Hector Berlioz, and other characters were Victor Hugo, Eugène Delacroix, Prosper Merimée and Alexandre Dumas. 11. Le Film, 5 février 1944. \2 . Aujourd’hui, 27 janvier 1944. 13. La Gerbe, 3 février 1944. 14. L ’A telier 5 février 1944. 15. Pseudonym o f Lucien Rebatet, journalist and film critic, imprisoned after the liberation for his collaborationist activities. 16. February 1944. Rebatet-Vinneuil devoted two articles to this film. 17. Supplement to the clandestine Lettres Françaises.

132 A m biguities in th e Film Le Ciel est à vous 18. Confluences March/April 1944, under the pseudonym Claude Jacquier. 19. Sadoul, Histoire Générale du Cinéma, pp. 51-3. 20. Georges Sadoul, Le Cinéma français (Flammarion, 1962), p. 99. 21. Director of the Cinémathèque de Toulouse. 22. Francis Courtade, Les Malédictions du Cinéma français (Moreau, 1978)p. 14. 23. Directed by Marcel Ophuls, produced by André Harris and Alain de Sédouy. The film is subtitled ‘Chronique d'une ville Française sous l'O ccupation'. 24. Jeune Cinéma, no. 65, October 1972, p. 40. 25. Film historian, and editor o f Je Suisipartout, executed after the Liberation for collaborationist activities. 26. Ecran 72, no. 8,1972, p. 9. 27. Joseph Daniel, Guerre et Cinéma (Armand Cohn, 1972), pp. 200-1. 28. Hervé Leboterf, La Vie Parisienne sous l'Occupation (France-Empire, 1974-5); Paul Léglise, Histoire de la Politique du Cinéma français (Piene L’Herminier, 1977). 29. Jacques Sicher, La fronce de Pétain e t son Cinéma (Henri Veyrier, 1981), pp. 202-7. 30. Jean-Pierre Jean colas, Le Cinéma des Français 1929-1944 (Stock, 1983), p. 331. 31. The Film in France, Pendulum Publications, 1946, p. 12. 32. Penguin Füm Review, no. 8, January 1949, p. 67. 33. Sight and Sound, Spring 1946, French Cinema during the Occupation, by Hazel Hackett, p. 2. 34. Sight and Sound, Summer 1947. 35. Lumière d ’Eté, 1942, script by Jacques Prévert, photography by Louis Page. The October/November 1984 National Film Theatre brochure calls the film *a probing study of society in dissolution, centring on a collection of decadent, lost souls holed up in a mountain hotel, with the silence broken only by massive blastings from a nearby dam construction*. 36. Sadoul, Histoire Générale du Cinéma, p. 53. 37. Centrale Catholique du Cinéma et de la Radio. 38.1936 Pattes de Mouche; 1937 Gueule d'Am our\ 1938 L'Etrange Monsieur Victor. 39. Alliance Cinématographique Européenne. 40. Universum Film Aktiengesellschaft. 41. Comité d'Organisation de l’Industrie Cinématographique. 42. Created in 1936, Ciné-Liberté grouped together people working in all branches of the cinema industry, as well as left-wing intellectuals. It had close links with the French Communist Party. Charles Spaak had given lectures to members. 43. Gueule d'Am our and L ’Etrange Monsieur Victor. 44. Frauds Courtade, Les Malédictions du Cinéma français (Alain Moreau, 1978), p. 225. 45. Les Corrupteurs, 1942, directed by Piene Ramélot. According to Le FÜm, 12 septembre 1942, the film showed le rôle néfaste que les Juifs exerçaient en France, avant cette guerre, grâce à la presse, la radio et le cinéma, dont ils tenaient toutes les rênes*. 46. Forces Occultes, 1943, directed by Jean Mamy. The film is both antiFreemason and anti-Semitic. Jean Mamy was executed after the Liberation. 47. Claude Beylie, ‘Réévaluations*, Ecran 72, no. 8, p. 4. 48. Le Cinéma Français par ceux qui l'ont fa it, directed by Armand Panigel for France-Régjon-3, Episode 8 ,5 May 1975.

8

CATHOLICISM UNDER VICHY: A STUDY IN D IV ER SIT Y AN D AM BIG U ITY Bill Halls

Catholicism under Vichy was not a m onolithic phenom enon. It represented a wide variety o f views th at evolved over tim e, o r failed to do so, and th at were often equivocal. This chapter highlights the strong initial position o f the Church and the decline in its influence, and then indicates the diversity and am biguity in the attitudes o f what might be described as Official* Catholicism . Alone among the institutions o f pre-war France the Catholic Church survived the defeat o f 1940 virtually intact. In the coming m onths politically and socially, culturally and spiritually, it was to dem onstrate its power. The armed forces had been beaten or im m obilised; the nation’s political fabric had been tom asunder, and Parliam ent was quickly rendered im potent; trade unions were in disarray; the state education system was throw n into confusion. Yet the institutional fram ework o f the Church had survived, perhaps even strengthened by the débâcle, if only because generally the clergy had not fled before the invader. Small wonder, therefore, th at the Germans were apprehensive o f Catholicism . For the future police overseers o f France, the SS, Catholicism represented an ideological adversary in the same way as Freem asonry and Jewry. It was a force to be reckoned w ith, sustained by a creed far m ore venerable than Nazism, run by a Hierarchy com­ manding an absolute obedience and w ith world-wide contacts. The Church controlled by far the largest proportion o f organised French youth; among ’Black France', the industrial and provincial bourgeoisie, it wielded massive influence; peasants and workers alike were aware o f its power. Throughout the O ccupation its activities were under constant German surveillance. As in 1870, defeat in battle had brought about an upsurge o f religious feeling among Frenchm en. The churches had not been so full for years; sin, retribution and repentance were the them es o f many sermons. Prayer was in fashion — for families to be reunited, for the m illion and a h alf prisoners o f war to be swiftly released; later, women prayed for their m enfolk deported to Germany and even for husbands 133

134 Catholicism Under Vichy who fought under the wrong flag on the Eastern front. Processions, pil­ grimages and retreats became the vogue .S u ch revivalism had political overtones. In 1940 m ost Catholics — and many Frenchm en —believed th at the Third Republic had iaileH because it was corrupt; socialists and communists had prom oted materialism ; dem ocratic institutions had not been able to w ithstand the crisis. The Church could redress the balance. France had lost the war, rm»iH yet art»»™» salvation through the Marshal. Çàrdinal Gerlier’s rem ark, which helived to regret, th at 'today France is Pétain and Pétain is France*, epitom ised a national in tim e m . Thus Catholic leaders took the initiative in acknowledging the authoritarian power o f the Marshal. They rejected arguments against the validity o f the regime. How could it be invalid when there was a Papal Nuncio at Vichy and a duly accredited French ambassador to the Vatican? Vichy constituted the ‘pouvoir établi*. Some went further: a dozen bishops shared the view o f archbishop Chollet o f Cambrai that Pétain was the ‘autorité légitim e’. In any case the usual practice o f the Church was to recognise any de fa cto governm ent. ‘Nous referons chrétiens nos frères’: when in July 1940 Cardinals Gerlier and Suhard m et in Paris their agenda was the regeneration o f France, beginning ^ it h education.1 Reciprocally, the regime eagerly accepted Catholic political and social support. The new ‘doctrine’ o f travail, fam ille, patrie on which Vichy based its policies accorded adm irably w ith views the Church had long expounded: ‘ces trois m ots sont les nôtres’, declared Gerlier in another injudicious rem ark.2 Thus the higher clergy advised on legis­ lation on the fam ily, youth, education and em ploym ent. A t the same tim e prom inent Catholic laymen were drawn into the political and adm inistrative m achine. Two ardent believers, Alibert and Chevalier achieved m inisterial rank, and measures not displeasing to the higher cleigy followed quickly. As M inister o f Justice, A libert, a recent convert, instituted a review o f all naturalisations since 1927, which made stateless some 15,000 people, including 6,000 Jews. In October he prom ulgated the first S tatut des Juifs, which excluded Jews from certain civil service posts and presaged action against those in the liberal professions. The very broad categorisation o f a Jew - later to include anyone w ith at least tw o Jewish grandparents — swept many into the net. There is no evidence th at this legislation was introduced at German instigation. Those Catholics who rationalised their antiSemitism by ‘the guilt for the death o f Christ argum ent’ approved the inhumane laws by their silence. Nor did they protest at the other target

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o f A libert, Freem asony, where bitterness betw een the Church and the Lodges was long-standing, and the law o f August 1940 abolishing secret organisations was welcomed. A devout Catholic, Bernard Fay, admini­ strator o f the Bibliothèque Nationale, aided by the no less Catholic Vallery-Radot, was given the task o f rooting o u t from public life some 15,000 masonic dignitaries. These new tribunes vetted all public appointm ents and, according to one Resistance organisation th at threat­ ened reprisals, the posts declared vacant were reallocated so as to ‘favoriser certains catholiques, traîtres à la patrie’.4 Fay moved in collaborationist circles, a somewhat rare occurrence for Catholics in 1940. Jacques Chevalier was a man o f a different stam p from Alibert - he never faltered, for exam ple, in his allegiance as a philosopher to his m aster Henri Bergson, a Jew . An academic, dean o f the faculty o f letters at Grenoble, he was also the godson o f Pétain. He was placed in charge o f education. Devoutly Catholic, variously described as ‘a prose­ ly te, a sort o f Knight Templar, a Leaguing m onk,’ and more ironically as ‘a great believer, a predestined creature*, in a short while he pushed through a num ber o f measures favourable to the Church: subsidies, through the communes, for Catholic schools, and the réintroduction o f the ‘devoirs envers Dieu’ into the State school curriculum and o f reli­ gious education as an optional subject. However, neither o f these key Catholics who ventured into politics lasted for long in their tw o mini­ stries. O ther notable Catholics who im plem ented policies favourable to the Church took up adm inistrative posts, although eventually m ost were ousted or resigned as the regime willy-nilly became more favourable to the Germans. They were particularly prom inent in youth affairs. Dunoyer de Segonzac, the Catholic cavalry officer who had created the Ecole des Cadres at Uriage, took to the m aquis at the end o f 1942. Lam irand, the enthusiastic but politically naïve Secretary General for Y outh, who had sought to protect Jewish scouts and in November 1942 had urged Pétain to flee to N orth Africa, resigned in February 1943. General de La Porte du Theil, a Catholic ex-scout commissioner, who had founded the Chantiers de la Jeunesse, was arrested and deported by the Germans in January 1944. Likewise V alentin, director o f the Ligue des Anciens C om battants, onetim e president o f the Association Catholique de la Jeunesse Française (ACJF) in Lorraine and an intim ate o f Cardinal Gerlier, had finally broken w ith Vichy in June 1943. On the contrary, Robert Garric, the Catholic founder o f the Equipes Sociales after the First World War, held his post as head o f the Secours National

136 Catholicism Under Vichy throughout the Occupation and even continued after the Liberation. Nevertheless, there were other Catholics who, like A libert, played a more sinister role. Xavier Vallat, a strong Catholic, became the first head o f the Commissariat Général aux Questions juives. He it was who told the SS officer Dannecker, charged w ith the execution o f the ‘final solution* in France, ‘I am an older anti-Semite than you; I could be your grandfather in th at respect.* However, by February 1942 Vallat could no longer hide his hostility to the Germans and resigned. Appraisal o f such a cross-section o f lay Catholic notables who achieved high political or administrative office and who carried out policies favourable to the Church thus reveals their diminishing direct influence as Vichy became increasingly enmeshed in the German war effort. The same decline in the power to influence events, b u t perhaps w ith greater compliance in pro-German policies, is noticeable in those cul­ tural and spiritual forces embodied in the higher clergy and partic­ ularly in the Hierarchy, as indeed they become more political. Among the clerical intelligentsia, both academic and theological, the rift deepens. Likewise, as the bishops are led inexorably into positions in­ com patible w ith their pastoral and spiritual role, there is disarray, although a m ajority, including three o u t o f the four diocesan cardinals, cling desperately to loyalty to Pétain as their rock o f salvation, and in so doing lose pastoral authority. The ‘official’ Catholic higher culture was represented in the Instituts Catholiques, the Church’s ‘universities*. Like Catholic schools, these institutions o f higher education had eventually been granted subsidies. A detailed study o f what influence they exerted and the stance they m aintained tow ards Vichy has yet to be m ade, but certain indications are already clear, from the actions o f those th at ran them . Thus the rector o f the Institut Catholique o f Toulouse, Bruno de Solages, was as outspoken as his diocesan, Cardinal Saliège. Never persona grata at Vichy, he had been forbidden to lecture at Uriage, a prohibition he disobeyed.5 His attitude was uncompromising. In June 1942 speaking at M ontauban before the mass Jewish deportations had begun, he asserted th at racism and communism were both unacceptable and th at drawing a distinction between Jews and ‘Aryans* was, and always had been, contrary to Christian teaching.6 His speech inaugurat­ ing the academic year 1943-4 contained a clear allusion to the Service du Travail Obligatoire (STO). God rather than man m ust be obeyed, and the m oral law had precedence over man-made laws. It would appear th at the library o f the Institut became a centre o f intellectual resistance

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both to Vichy and the Germans. A bout the Institut at Lyon there is little inform ation. However, in June 1941 a group located in the theology faculty o f the Institut are reported as having drafted a docum ent opposing a second S tatut des Juifs.7 This docum ent was cited by Mgr Guerry in his post-war apologia for the Church (L ’É glise sous l ’O ccupation, Paris, 1947) who gives the impression th at this w ritten protest was made public. In fact, the original has never been discovered. The Institut Catholique at Lille - ‘la Catho’, as it was known - com­ prised 1,400 students, some o f whom became deeply involved in the Resistance. There were links w ith the pre-war Parti Démocrate Populaire, the advocate o f social Catholicism and industrial harm ony, which seized the opportunity through the Resistance to re-enter the political arena, and refused to accept the Marshal’s ‘new order'. Indeed, at Lille the rift between Pétainists and the rest ran deep. On the one side were ranged Cardinal Liénart, bishop o f Lille, and, w ithin the Insti­ tu t itself Eugène D uthoit, a theologian o f note, then president o f the Catholic organisation Semaines sociales; both remained implacably loyal to the Marshal to the b itter end. On the other side were ranged teachers at the Institut such as Louis Blanckaert, who became active in the Resistance netw ork, La Voix du Nord. In 1941 a group o f law professors at the Institut w rote to Mgr D utoit, archbishop o f Arras, stating how deeply their consciences had been troubled by his pastoral letter (22 December 1941) in w hich, after M ontoire, he had advocated collaboration on the basis o f a ‘free and fair desire for understanding'. This they followed up in O ctober 1942 by a note to Liénart euphemis­ tically term ed ‘some technical considerations concerning the problem s o f governm ent’. It asked w hether Christians owed a duty o f obedience to a government ‘which must be considered w ithout legitim acy'.8 Liénart contented him self w ith replying somewhat tartly th at their implied proposition was unacceptable. There is no indication th at the attitude o f the Institut Catholique at Angers was anything other than acceptance o f the status quo , and even perhaps w ith a nuance o f collaboration. One instance may perhaps exem plify the official viewpoint. By November 1942 the unsavoury m oral reputation o f Bonnard, then Minister o f Education, and Jiis proGerman views were widely known. Nevertheless on 24 November the rector o f the Institut w rote thanking him for the subsidies th at had been granted, incidentally illegally styling his institution as ‘L'Univer­ sité catholique de l'O uest’. A fter a ritual obeisance to Pétain as the Vénéré chef de l'E ta t' and to Laval as head o f the governm ent, he

138 Catholicism Under Vichy assured Bonnard th at th e University o f Angers is, in this great m om ent in our history [the Germans had ju st occupied the whole o f F rance], as faithful and devoted as before to its legitim ate leaders’. He ended w ith a flourish, ‘You know , M inister, how m uch I personally like and admire your w ork, following the example o f Cardinal Baudrillart, m y m aster.’9 The evocation o f Baudrillart, rector o f the Institut Catholique in Paris, the largest Catholic institution o f higher education, is significant. The almost senile cardinal was a fervent anti-com m unist, a devoted admirer o f Pétain, having even published a book about him , La Voix du Chef. But he had also gone further than anyone down the road to col­ laboration, on which he had published articles in La Gerbe (21 novembre 1940), the virulently anti-Semitic and pro-Nazi organ o f Alphonse de C hateaubriant, and in L e N ouvelliste (L yon, 10 août 1941). Chateaubriant and Baudrillart were also associated together in the Groupe Collaboration. The cardinal also gave his patronage to the Légion Antibolchévique. When Déat launched this ‘legion o f the damned’ this prelate turned crusader is alleged to have exclaim ed, 'C ette cheval­ erie délivrera le tom beau du Christ’ — presumably by capturing Moscow.10 He was aided and abetted by a friend and colleague in the In stitu t, Paul Lesourd, who founded the Catholic collaborationist journal, Voix françaises. A fter BaudriUart’s death in late 1942 Mgr Beaussart, auxiliary bishop to Cardinal Suhard in Paris, who for a while had liaised on the Church's behalf w ith Bonnard at the M inistry o f Education, was canvassed as a possible successor. Although wide o f the m ark, the president o f the Comité Antibolchévique w rote to Bonnard signifying th at the staff at the Institut Catholique wanted none o f Beaussart, whom they stig­ m atised as ‘Anglophile, Gaullist and anti-collaborationist’.11 Bonnard, whose esteem for Beaussart was great,12 did not accept this assessment but nevertheless agreed to the appointm ent o f another, Mgr Cahret. From the foregoing it is clear th at one im portant segment o f ‘official’ Catholic culture, as represented by its faculties o f higher education, was deeply divided. What is remarkable is the extrem es represented in it, ranging from active Resistance to com m itted proNazism. The spectrum o f attitudes was not so broad among those French­ men who wielded ultim ate spiritual and pastoral authority in the Church.13 The prelate who m ost consistently spoke out against certain more extrem e measures o f the Germans and Vichy, such as the persecu­ tion o f the Jews and the com pulsory conscription o f youth for work in Germany was undoubtedly Cardinal Saliège, archbishop o f Toulouse. It

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is said th at only his parlous state o f health prevented the Germans from deporting him . On the other hand, the diocesan bishops included none who sought a to tal German victory. Indeed at the Liberation, from the 87 dioceses spread over the 17 ecclesiastical provinces or arch­ bishoprics o f which France was made up, only four o f the Hierarchy were deposed from their sees because o f their conduct during the Occu­ pation: Villerabel, archbishop o f Aix; D utoit, archbishop o f Arras; Auvity, bishop o f Mende; and Beaussart, auxiliary bishop o f Paris. Y et the Hierarchy was undoubtedly responsible for the disarray in which the Church found itself in 1944. A large share o f th at responsi­ bility m ust be borne by the three other pastoral cardinals: Suhard (Paris), U énart (Lille), and Gerlier (Lyon). All had incurred the hostility o f the Gaullists and the Resistance. Suhard had welcomed Pétain to Paris when the Marshal officially visited the capital after the bombings o f 1944; he had later officiated at the funeral o f the assas­ sinated collaborator, Philippe H enriot. Thus he was told in no uncertain term s th at he would not be welcome at the Te Deum attended by de Gaulle sung in Notre-Dame after the Liberation. Likewise, when the general visited his native Lille and attended a service, Liénart, very cavalierly, had n o t greeted him at the church door, on the pretext th at he was only the head o f a provisional governm ent. The personal cool­ ness was m utual. As for Gerlier, he complained that he was being persecuted by the liberators for his sins o f omission. How R esistanceminded* they were is a m atter o f dispute: French Catholics have found justification for both their action and inaction. The outsider would tend to agree th at all three suffered from ‘compromis, attentism e, mutisme*. A tract circulating in N orthern France in m id-1942 on ‘w hat Christian workers expect in vain from the cardinals and bishops o f France* sums up the situation: they 'approve o f everything by their silence*. Collectively all prelates shunned extrem es because o f their unswerv­ ing devotion to Pétain. But as the hapless Marshal became increasingly a tool in German hands they failed, w ith some honourable exceptions, to disengage themselves. Their view o f the world was naturally authorit­ arian. Thus Mgr Harzcouet, bishop o f Chartres, w rote to congratulate Bonnard on being appointed m inister o f education: T have reason to be assured th at the Education m inistry will be in good hands, which will preserve us not only from the sectarianism o f form er tim es, b u t also fro m dem ocratic w eaknesses.'* (My emphasis.) All bishops supported the abolition o f Freem asonry, from whose members they had suffered under the Third Republic; many tolerated

140 Catholicism Under Vichy the persecution o f the Jews, from whom they had n o t directly suffered at all. Thus Mgr Caillot, bishop o f Grenoble, preaching an Easter sermon in 1941, condem ned not only the Lodges but ‘th at other, equally harm ful pow er, the m étèques, o f which the Jews are a partic­ ularly conspicuous specimen*. Two years later his Easter hom ily exhorted his sem inarists —and indeed all young Frenchm en —to accept the STO. Mgr Auvity o f Mende forbade his priests to act as chaplains to the Resistance and likewise cajoled his seminarists to depart for Germany. Mgr D utoit o f Arras protested in January 1944 against the ‘bandits* (sc. m aquisards) ‘terrorising* the countryside and issued a solemn warning against propaganda th at might lead to civil war. The conduct o f other ecclesiastics was not consistent. Mgr Delay o f Marseille, who spoke out against the anti-Jewish measures in 1942, neverthless later officiated at a memorial service for H enriot. As late as 1943 Serrand, bishop o f St-Brieuc and Tréguier, an ‘ancien com battant’ m entioned five tim es in despatches, published a pastoral letter restating the regime’s legitimacy and condemning those who asserted the Marshal was playing a double game — su d i duplicity would be unw orthy o f the Head o f State. In one respect the patriotism o f at least half the bishops should have been beyond suspicion. O ut o f the 96 prelates no less than SI were veterans o f the First world war. Liénart and Gerlier held the Médaille M ilitaire. Nevertheless, it was estim ated th at the extrem e Gaullists had a ‘hit list* o f 23 bishops m arked o u t for ‘épuration’ on grounds o f lack o f patriotism . This sprang from the declaration by the Assembly o f Cardinals and Archbishops o f 24 July 1941, which promised ‘loyalisme sans inféodation* to the ‘pouvoir établi*. The same declaration had enjoined Catholics not to indulge in politics: the watchword was to be national unity. There followed a honeym oon period for the Church, in which it notched up solid advantages. However after the return o f Laval in April 1942 it faced hard choices. That summer the Hierarchy was forced to take up a posi­ tion on racism . The following spring the problem o f the STO arose, and what should be the attitude tow ards the Resistance. The injunction to the rank and file to avoid politics became an impossible condition: they were faced w ith m any quasi-political choices every day. It was at this point th at the princes o f the Church failed to give an unambiguous lead. Instead they apportioned blam e. The declaration o f the Assembly o f Cardinals and Archbishops o f 12 February 1943 was not pastoral but political. The Germans were condem ned for conscripting young French­ m en; the Allies were castigated for the harsh bom bingof French cities;

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and the Resistance for the continued acts o f terro rism ’. For the first tim e the authority o f Pétain was not invoked, but the them e was rather unity in the common suffering. Such negativism began to cause the Hierarchy to lose all credibility. Catholics, like other young Frenchm en, turned towards de Gaulle and the Resistance: this was where unity and salvation lay. How the prob­ lems th at arose were tackled can best be studied through the person­ ality and actions o f the three cardinals. Suhard, archbishop o f Paris, was perhaps the least com plex char­ acter.15 A man o f hum ble origins, lacking the diplom atic finesse o f Gerlier and the charisma o f Liénart, in 1940 he had only newly taken over the see o f Paris. His interests were indeed largely pastoral, and if he compromised him self it was for the sake o f others. One o f his main concerns was to secure the future o f Catholic schools. He shunned politics: he hesitated to sit on the Conseil National on the grounds th at this would be a political act. He was not averse to negotiating w ith A betz to secure the release o f priests in the Occupied Zone who had fallen foul o f the Germans. Through Rhodain, Chaplain General for prisoners and Frenchm en working in Germany, he wrung some advant­ ages for those so exiled. The secret mission o f the priests he sent to m inister to them as fellow-workers was the genesis o f the post-war worker-priest m ovem ent.16 Gerlier was a man o f a different stam p. Given his unswerving loyalty to Pétain, he did not deserve the reputation the Germans gave him , th at he was n o t the ‘Prim at des Gaulles* b u t the ‘Prim at de de Gaulle*. The cross he had to bear was the persecution o f the Jews, and what measures he should and could have taken to m itigate their suffering. His failing was his credulity: he could not believe the Marshal would be a party to atrocities. A lawyer by training, he remained for a long tim e insensitive to the m oral standpoint. Before the war he had con­ demned the Nuremberg racial laws, but had nevertheless m aintained th at there was a ‘Jewish question’ in France. Indeed he had raised the problem on 31 August 1940, long before A libert’s S tatut des Juifs, at a m eeting o f the Hierarchy - perhaps an indication th at he anticipated measures being taken against the Jews. He nevertheless protested against the living conditions for foreign Jews in the Gurs internm ent cam p; he also urged his friend, V alentin, to see that Jewish ex-servicemen were n o t stripped o f their rights. He may have protested to Pétain in Septem ber 1941, when the Marshal visited Lyon, against the m anner in which the second S tatut des Juifs was being applied. In January 1942 he warned Christians not to harbour anim osity against the Jews,

142 Catholicism Under Vichy although, he w ent on, ‘in certain respects the Jewish problem concerns the State’. The reading o f the fourth and fifth Cahiers du Témoignage C hrétien,11 published clandestinely in the spring o f 1942 (which are devoted to a condem nation o f racism and anti-Semitism) does not appear to have aroused his conscience. However, the round-up o f Jews in Paris and Lyon th at summer did summon up action. GerUer intervened to help Jews in the Lyon area, although as Abbé Glasbeig makes clear w ith some acerbity, he was init­ ially less than helpful in th at priest’s efforts to save Jewish children from deportation. It is likely th at at this stage Gerlier remained ignorant o f, or blind to , the horrible fate th at awaited Jews at the end o f their journey into darkness. By then, however, other Christian voices had been raised. On 22 July 1942 the Assembly o f Cardinals and Archbishops in the occupied zone spoke out. On 23 August Saliège issued his solemn protest: ‘Jews are men and women. Everything is not perm itted against t h e m . . . They are our brothers.’ Théas, bishop o f M ontauban, followed: ‘All m en, Aryan or non-Aryan, are brothers because they have been created by God.* On 6 Septem ber, it was Gerlier’s turn. In a m arkedly restrained m anner he defended the ‘inalienable rights o f the hum an person’, but added, excusing the regime, *We do not forget th at for the French auth­ orities a problem has to be resolved and we gauge the difficulties the government has to face.’ Although he partly redeem ed him self in sub­ sequent m onths by urging priests and nuns to hide as m any Jews as pos­ sible, unfortunately his intervention was too m odest and too late. Ambiguity and indecisiveness, coupled w ith a modicum o f blindness and prejudice, appear to characterise his com portm ent. He acted m ore as a local archdeacon m ight have done, rather than as the good pastor, the spiritual leader o f all Frenchm en. Cardinal Liénart o f Lille was the natural interlocutor for the other great issue o f conscience th at confronted leaders in the Church, the deportation o f young men for forced labour.18 It posed questions o f patriotism as well as o f the right Christian course o f conduct. It was from the N orthern industrial areas th at m any young men would be con­ scripted. Trade-union leaders and the young Catholic workers, the Jocistes, looked to Liénart for guidance. The STO had been form ally imposed in Septem ber 1942, but it was not until February 1943, when various year-groups began to be called up, th at m atters came to a head. Théas, bishop o f M ontauban, and Gerlier had already condem ned the violation o f natural rights when Liénart gave his first advice to young people at Roubaix on 15 March

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1943. The tex t o f his message has not been discovered, although the collaborationist press reported it as an injunction to obey the law. The incensed Jocistes demanded an audience o f the cardinal. According to one m em ber o f the delegation, Roger Bailleul, they did not mince their words: ‘Vous savez ce que Ton pense de vous dans les entreprises; on dit que “le Cardinal, c'est un vendu" . . . Liénart fait son p etit Baudrillart.*19 The reproach may have induced Liénart to speak out again in Lille a week later. This tim e his message has been preserved, but for m any it rem ained ambiguous. For the first tim e Christians were to be allowed to follow the dictates o f their own conscience. It would be no sin to disobey the call-up, b u t, if they felt it their duty to share the fate o f their fellows, esteeming th at theirs was an apostolic mission th at they had to fulfil by going, they should comply. Liénart, whilst allowing disobedience, showed extrem e reluctance to dissent from what he still conceived o f as Pétain’s good pleasure. Many, reading between the lines, found it difficult to believe the cardinal was advocating more than spiritual resistance to the STO. However, for a while his words were well received in London. Liénart, who was also Président o f the Assembly o f Cardinals and Archbishops, did n o t settle the argum ent among Catholics. N ot only Catholic workers b u t also the Catholic bourgeoisie, who saw their sons snatched away from them , were involved. A lbert Gortais, o f the ACJF, came o u t against com pliance, as did Catholic students generally: for him , rendering unto Caesar what was Caesar's was all very well, he declared, b u t Caesar was not Vichy, which was a mere transm ission belt for the Germans. Jocistes were divided: some com plied, and alleviated m aterially the fate o f their comrades in Germany; others went in to hiding or joined the Resistance. The Catholic scouts were for passive acceptance, influenced by their chaplain general, Father Forestier. Those in the Catholic student m ovem ent, such as Domenach and Dru, set up in Lyon a Com ité Interfacultés to help student ‘draft-dodgers', the so-called ‘réfractaires'. In their Easter message o f 1943 the bishops said nothing o f the theology o f resistance to oppressive and unjust laws, but gave the impres­ sion th at compliance was the laudable course, although the advice they had requested from a Jesuit theologian, Mgr Courbe, ran counter to this. Later Mgr Caillot o f Grenoble (in the Sem aine religieuse, G renoble, 12 August 1943) was even m ore categorical: There is a clear-cut attitude to be taken, one th at is really m anly,

144 Catholicism Under Vichy French, Christian . . . in im itating Christ him self as he took up his cross to carry it to the very end, a means o f personal sanctification, o f apostolate for others, o f reparation and redem ption for France. Later, when there was question o f extending the scope o f STO laws to women and girls, the cardinals and archbishops issued another state­ m ent criticising the proposed measure. But the fact th at it criticised the proposal n o t on any grounds o f justice, but on the m oral dangers th at might arise, aroused the w rath o f Saliège who w rote to U énart com­ plaining th at references in the docum ent to Allied ‘terrorism* were one­ sided, the question o f conscience was not tackled, and, although allusion was made to ‘injustices’ there was no m ention made o f the low wages earned by workers, the evils o f the black m arket and the depreda­ tions o f war profiteers, lié n a rt brushed aside these reproaches and fastened on a procedural point in his reply.20 Since by then the Church was the only institution, apart from the Resistance itself, th at could stand up to the exactions o f Laval and the Germans, U énart’s failure to give the young, Christian and nonChristian, a clear lead was disastrous. Evasion, ambiguity and weak compromise characterised his attitu d e. What may one conclude regarding the ‘official* forces o f Cathol­ icism, political and social, cultural and spiritual during four tum ultuous years? That they were poorly represented by their protagonists appears self-evident. It cannot be emphasised enough th at attitudes among the lower clergy and the rank-and-file laity were vastly different from those o f their leaders. By and large those o f the latter failed to evolve because they were rooted in prejudices th at harked back to the separation o f Church and State and Dreyfus, and perhaps even to the great Revolu­ tion itself. The grievances o f the inter-war period still rankled. In the new Ralliement th at Vichy stood for, the leading figures mainly sought advantages for the Church, blind to the fact that in the event o f a German victory, all such advances would be swept away, and they w ith them . As the war took a course, from about mid-1942 onwards, th at turned away; from a German victory and thus against the possibility o f Vichy’s own survival, Catholic opinion began to diverge, w ith its leaders either renouncing power or becoming ever more isolated from their flock. If, in particular, the prelates had been typical o f all Cath­ olics, at the Liberation the very credibility o f the Church in France as a great religious institution might well have been at stake.

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Notes NB: AN = Archives Nationales; AD ■ Archives Départementales. The following basic texts should be consulted:

1. Eglises et chrétiens dans la Deuxième Guerre mondiale. La région RhôneAlpes. Actes du Colloque de Grenoble, 1976, publiés sous la direction de Xavier de Montclos, Lyon, 1978. (Henceforth, Actes: Grenoble.) 2. Eglises et chrétiens pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale dans le NordPas de Calais. Actes du Colloque de Lille, 1977, publiés dans La Revue du Nord, nos. 237 et 238, avril-juin et juillet-septembre 1978, Lille (Hence­ forth, Actes: Lille.) 3. Eglises et chrétiens dans la Deuxième Guerre mondiale. La Fiance. Actes du Colloque de Lyon, 1978, publiés sous la direction de Xavier de Montclos, Lyon, 1982. (Henceforth: Actes: Lyon.) 1. For a discussion of the legitimacy of Vichy, cf. Renée Bédarida, Les Armes deVEsprit. Témoignage Chrétien, 1941-1944 (Paris, 1977), pp. 15-16. 2. Quoted in J. Duquesne, Les Catholiques français sous l'Occupation (Paris, 1966), p. 44. Although superseded by works that have appeared since, Duquesne’s work is still the best volume on Catholicism over the period. 3. Cf. M.R. Marrus and R.O. Paxton, Vichy Fiance and the Jews (New York, 1981), passim. 4. AN F. 17.13346. 5. H.R. Kedward, Resistance in Vichy Fiance (Oxford, 1978), p. 25. 6. Marrus and Paxton, Vichy Fiance, p. 275 note. 7. Actes: Lyon, p. 288. 8. Actes: Lille, p. 594. 9. AN F. 17.13342. Letter from François Vincent, recteur, to Bonnard, Angers, 24 November 1942. 10. He also declared that it was ‘the time of a new crusade*. Cf. Duquesne, Les Catholiques fiançais, p. 169. 11. AN F. 17.13344. Letter from the Président du Comité d*Action antibolchévique to Bonnard, Minister of Education, Paris, 18 July 1942. 12. When Mgr Beaüssart gave up his post as liaison between the Ministry o f Education and the Church, Bonnard thought it worth the trouble to write to Caldina! Liénart, as President of the Assembly of Cardinals and Archbishops, on 16 December 1942, regretting Beaussart’s displacement by Mgr Chappoulie. Cf. AN F. 17.13390. File: Enseignement libre. After the liberation the view officially taken of Beaussart was that he had been too favourable to Doriot’s PPF. Cf. A. Latreille, De Gaulle, la Libération et l ’Eglise catholique (Paris, 1978). This book has many illuminating sidelights on the comportment of die bishops during the Occupation. 13. For much of what follows I am deeply indebted to the three Colloquia d ted above. 14. AN F. 17.13344. Letter to Bonnard dated Chartres, 19 April, 1942. 15. For an appreciation of Suhard, cf. Cardinal ßuhard, Vers une Eglise en état de mission, présenté par Olivier de la Brosse OP, (Paris, 1965). 16. Cf. E. Poulat, Naissance des Prêtres-Ouvriers (Tournai (Belgium), 1965), passim. 17. Now republished in facsimile, Paris, 1980. The issues referred to are: Cahiers IV & V. Les racistes peints par eux-mêmes, February-March 1942. Cahiers V IA VH. Antisémites. April-May 1942.

146 Catholicism Under Vichy 18. Cf. AD du Nord, Lille, File R2457: Cardinal liénart. 19. Gf. Témoignage’ of Roger Baflleul, cited in Actes: Lille, pp. 687*8. 20. Cf. F. Delpech, ‘Les Chretiens et le STO’ in Actes: Lyon, pp. 347*54. Correspondance Saliège-liénart.

Q

URIAGE: THE ASSAULT ON A REPUTATION Brian Darling

This is the story o f a small group o f Frenchm en whose experience during the war and Resistance equipped a num ber o f them to exert a disproportionate influence on post-war France. It is also the story o f an attem pt, by others, to reinterpret and belittle the experience, and in some cases to denounce the influence. The difficulty for students o f the question comes from the paucity o f sources and o f evidence b u t, m ore im portantly, from the interpre­ tation o f intentions. Historians are fam iliar w ith the problem o f con­ flicting accounts and interpretations left by figures in the past, but here we are dealing w ith a generation which survived the event, and has exer­ cised some degree o f control o f the sources. We shall therefore seek to present w hat we characterise as the ‘house view* before examining the various ‘revisionist* assaults upon it. The ‘house* in this instance is an impressive one, both from the standpoint o f the estate agent and for the historian. The École N ationale des Cadres dV riage, functioned from late in 1940 to the end o f 1942. The 'house view' o f its activities comes to us largely through tw o scholarly articles, the first by Janine Bourdin in 19591 was as an example o f the political involvement o f intellectuals. The second was by an historian, Raymond Josse3 and was published in a historical journal. However, though tackling Uriage from different points o f view, both were based for the m ost part on common sources. Briefly these comprise a collec­ tion o f the letters and diaries o f Emmanuel Mounier which appeared in 19563 six years after his death, and tw o publications which emerged from the École b u t were n o t actually published until after the Libera­ tio n . These were a 'summa* o f the Ecole's project for the post-war reconstruction o f France, and an account o f the École’s pedagogical views based upon a six-m onth training programme4 . These printed sources were supplem ented by conversations w ith Gilles Ferry, author o f the École’s pedagogical manual referred to above and, equally im portantly, w ith Jean-Marie Domenach who was a ‘stagiaire’ at Uriage and, subsequently, editorial secretary and then edit­ orial director o f the m onthly review, E sprit. The published sources and the 'tém oignages', as relayed by Bourdin and Josse, form w hat one might call the kernel o f the house view. 147

148

Uriage: The A ssault on a R eputation

The story, briefly, is as follows. A young cavalry officer, Captain Pierre Dunoyer de Segonzac, graduate o f Saint Cyr, demobilised in the defeat o f 1940 had the idea th at one o f the m ajor reasons for the débâcle was poor leadership, and particularly in the case o f young people - no leadership at all. Thanks to m ilitary contacts he had at Vichy he was able to convince the Secrétariat Général à la Jeunesse to provide funds and a commission to found an Ecole des Cadres, initially to form cadres for the Chantiers de la Jeunesse. His first was at the Chateau de la Faulconnière close to Gannat (only 19 km from Vichy). In Septem ber 1940 he received his first stagiaires from the Chantiers, but after a visit from Pétain, Segonzac decided to look for somewhere further away and less accessible. His new location m et th at criterion, and m any others. His choice was a château o f the fam ily o f Bayard, ‘chevalier sans peur et sans reproche’, which overlooks Uriage (just south-west o f Grenoble, on the slopes o f the Belledonne). A bout as far away as he could be, and in as impressive a site as one could imagine. The move to Uriage prom pted a change in personnel and a change in orientation. Though Segonzac’s m ilitary career had left him w ith a personal loyalty to Pétain, it is clear through the quality o f the team he now recruited th at this loyalty coexisted w ith a very strong elem ent o f nonconform ism as well as a patriotism which would n o t countenance collaboration. The style o f life at Uriage has often been characterised as ‘Spartan’ w ith its diet o f intellectual activity, m anual w ork, physical training, its group singing, and its marching from one activity to another. Under the influence o f its new team , and particularly th at o f the Abbé de Naurois, Hubert Beuve-Méry, and Emmanuel Mounier the École developed as a centre o f analysis o f the present and particularly o f the future. Its standard courses were o f three weeks duration, w ith only one being o f six m onths, b u t they were all intensive. The teaching came from people in all walks o f life but m ost notably from such figures as the RP M aydieu, de Lubac, Fraisse, Mgr de Solages, Mgr Guerry, Jean Lacroix, abbé de Naurois, Paul-Henry Chom bart de Lauwe, R obert Mossé, Joffre Dumazedier and, o f course, Mounier and Beuve-Méry. Lectures and study sessions on economic and political questions were interspersed w ith reflections on the spiritual crisis. This effort to rethink Christianity at Uriage and in the pages o f E sprit before it was closed down was o f considerable im portance especially given the support which so m uch o f the hierarchy had given to the Vichy regime. From its beginnings as an institution recognised and funded by Vichy, Uriage became in the space o f tw o years a provider o f cadres for

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the Resistance. Indeed throughout the tw o years it had been in close touch w ith the local Resistance, and Segonzac was a close friend o f Henri Frenay, the leader o f Com bat, who had been hidden on a num ber o f occasions at the school. A fter its closure at the end o f 1942, and the w arrant issued for Segonzac’s arrest, virtually the entire staff o f Uriage joined the Maquis. The school operated clandestinely for a tim e from the Château de M urinet near St M arcellin, betw een Grenoble and Valence, providing ‘équipes volantes’ for the Resistance, and assembling its collective wisdom in its ‘summa’, Vers le S tyle du X X e Siècle, until it was discovered and blown up by the SS and the Milice. Uriage itself had the unhappy destiny to be subsequently occupied by the Milice. Uriage’s contribution to the future reconstruction o f France w ent far. Beuve-Méry was to become D irector o f L e M onde and bring it to a position where it was perhaps the m ost influential daily newspaper in the w orld. Emmanuel Mounier relaunched E sprit in December 1944, w ith Lacroix, and later Dom enach. To Dumazedier and Benigno Cacérès, we owe the movement Peuple et Culture; Simon Nora became one o f the central- figures in French economic planning; Paul Delouvrier, after being de Gaulle’s civil délégué général in Algeria, became the author o f the overall Plan (schéma directeur) for Paris in 1961 and later Préfet o f the Ile de France region. Many o f the priests and theo­ logians who were at Uriage were later to be found in the preparatory commissions for the Second Vatican Council. But despite its contribution to the future, Uriage itself m ust be seen very m uch in the context o f its tim e. Its values, or at least the school’s way o f expressing them , are n o t necessarily either universal nor eternal. B ut it m ust never be (forgotten th at France’s arm y had been swept aside by the invading arm y from across the Rhine, and that the victorious W ehrmacht now occupied Europe from Brest to BrestLitovsk. The defeat had n o t been due simply to a superiority in arm a­ m ents, and the values o f Uriage, l’honneur, la fidélité, le discipline, le service de la collectivité, are the response o f Dunoyer de Segonzac to this crisis. This abridged account o f the Uriage experience, what has been called the ‘house view’ because o f the nature o f its sources, is reproduced, though n o t always uncritically, in such works as Winock’s H istoire p o litiq u e de la revue E sprit 1932-1950, Julliard and Jeanneney’s L e M onde de Beuve-M éry, Kedward’s R esistance in Vichy F iance, and Halls’ The Y outh o f Vichy France.* It is the view developed in great detail and w ith great authority by Bernard Com te whose thesis will one day becom e available.

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The original ‘revisionist* salvo was hinted at by Robert Paxton in his study o f Vichy France6 which appeared in 1972 in New York and in a French edition tw o years later. The work has m udi to recommend it» particularly in Paxton's use o f the German archives to dem onstrate the eagerness o f some sectors at Vichy to offer more than the occupant had originally demanded in the way o f collaboration. His widely accepted analysis o f V ichy's ideas and intentions has been influential among those we intend to call the ‘revisionists'. Concerning Uriage he is quite clear. Though quoting Bourdin as the m ajor source o f his analysis, he prom otes Segonzac to Major, *under whose leadership the cream o f young civil servants and intellectuals camped and studied in an exalted atm osphere strongly coloured by Emmanuel Mourner’s “Person­ alism "'.H e goes on to observe th at T h e Uriage school w ent under­ ground in a body when France was totally occupied in November 1942, but it had been no less com m itted to its version o f the National Revolu­ tio n .’7 These tw o assertions were to be taken up and developed in their turn by Heilman and Lévy, as seen below. In 1976, the assault came in an article in the periodical A ctes de la Recherche en Sciences Sociales8 Pierre Bourdieu and Luc Boltanski sought to show links betw een Uriage and Vichy and to find the origin o f both in the Third Force movements o f the 1930s. In addition, by means o f a similar ‘fishing' in a large num ber o f books concerned w ith the m odernisation o f France in the 1960s and 1970s they succeeded in compiling a glossary o f term s which, w ith quotations being used as definitions enabled them to confound the genuine reform ers w ith liberal conservatives su d i as the then President Giscard d'Estaing and his close associate Michel Poniatowski. cette recherche d'une troisièm e voie, qui mène souvent aux portes du fascisme, parfois pourtant refusé, du cote d’un élitisme de la com pétence, associé à un populisme pastoral, anticipe jusque dans le détail, l'effo rt collectif des commissions du plan: l’avant-garde de classe, qui inspire l'entreprise de reconversion idéologique de l’aprèsguerre, m et en pratique, consciemment ou inconsciem m ent, les schèmes déjà éprouvés dans les débats de l'avant-guerre et dans les tables rondes d'Uriage qui, à la faveur de l’ambiguité des ‘hum an­ ismes’ associés au ‘planisme’, ont assuré la continuité entre la gauche de la Révolution nationale et la droite de la Résistance.'9 Firing back from the ‘house'10, Domenach was prepared to adm it th at there was some correspondence between ‘une certaine inspiration

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de la Révolution nationale et une certaine théorisation de la Résistance*. However, it was not because o f ‘planning* or o f ‘humanism’ th at people chose which side to be on, b u t rather in response to concrete events such as the handing over o f political refugees to the Germans, or the deportation o f the Jews. J ’assure Bourdieu et Boltanski que nous prenions ces idéologies beaucoup moins au sérieux qu’ils le font. Il s’agissait alors non pas de servir le pouvoir, comme ils disent, mais de le prendre. Et non pas dans l’Université ou dans les commissions du C.N.R.S., mais dans la nation. A coups de fusil. This ahistorical approach, ignoring events and responses to them in favour o f an analysis o f the w ritten word is all the more surprising in Bourdieu and Boltanski, given th at they insist in their theoretical introduction11 th at their research dialectic has throw n up questions which can only be resolved by an analysis o f the social conditions in which this literary 'product* was produced. As Domenach points o u t, it is absurd to w rite the history o f an ideology from 1930 to 1970 w ithout taking account o f Nazism in Germany or the Resistance in France.13 It is o f course true th at at Uriage almost all viewpoints were per­ m itted to be expressed on condition th at they were open to contradic­ tio n and analysis. It is also true th at, for exam ple, in Charles Péguy, who was perhaps the m ost im portant reference point for Uriage, one can find both the pious Catholic and the socialist p atriot. This is why he was published as inspirational literature by both Vichy and the Resist­ ance.19 But an analysis o f discourse which pays no attention to action and intention, which seeks to study content w ith no reference to context, and which nevertheless feels able to draw political conclusions, is an arid and indeed arrogant exercise. However, these were the works o f scholars, albeit w ith axes to grind. Bernard-Henri Lévy’s L Idéologie française* >published in 1981, was a different anim al entirely. The search for ‘fascists’ has taken some inter­ esting turns in tw entieth-century France. In the late 1920s and early 1930s the Left as a whole found them in the ex-servicemen’s ‘leagues* w hich had attem pted an assault on Parliam ent on 6 February 1934. A few years later institutionalised fascism was to surround France - in Portugal and Spain, in Italy and in Nazi Germany — and French fascists’ came o u t in open support o f all or some o f the neighbouring regimes. Post-war ‘fascists’ kept a very low profile, b u t by the 1960s young people were identifying alm ost any overt exercise o f authority as

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‘fascist’, and in 1968 de Gaulle was equated w ith H itler, and the riot police w ith the SS (CRS = SS). The only common thread in this tortuous story is th at attacks on ‘fascism’ had always been m ounted from w ithin the ‘L eft’. The originality o f Lévy, which gave him a lot o f his notoriety and access to the m edia, was th at here was a ‘transfuge’ from the extreme left o f 1968 who had now arrived in the new Right and was prepared to take on and discredit the sacred m yths o f the Left; defence o f the Republic, and the Resistance, by finding ‘fascism’ w ithin them . L Idéologie française is a virulent pam phlet - m ounted w ith a phenomenal publicity operation. ‘Le fascisme aux couleurs de la France’, anounced l'E xpress15 as it ran prepublication extracts adorned with a photograph o f the château at Uriage displaying a banner o f the Milice. No reference was made to the picture having been taken after the Ecole had been closed down and the château taken over by the Milice! Lévy has no real thesis unless it is th at w ith scissors and paste and racy headlines one can swamp the superficial weeklies and the m edia, and assume w ith safety th at no one will bother to check where your scissors chopped your sources. In a book published tw o years earlier, Régis Debray had outlined the rationale when he asked rhetorically, Pourquoi investir dix années de sa vie dans la rédaction d'une thèse d’E tat qui vous fera docteur ès lettres emprisonné à vie dans une faculté de province . . . alors qu’il suffit d ’un mois de travail pour vitrioler un pam phlet idéologique sur le sujet du jo u r [Goulag et D estin], qui me donnera un nom dans la grande presse, d’une heure de verve à la télévision pour devenir un héros national?**17 Lévy’s pam phlet is a theatrical attem pt to show th at France has a fascist tradition w ithin the Left and Centre, and th at this is the skeleton in the cupboard, or the smell on the landing, which has only been hidden by a conspiracy o f silence. Lévy, who puts him self forward (the book is w ritten in the first person active) as a cross between Saint George and the avenging angel, is determ ined to rescue France from its guilty secret, by revelation and denunciation. His whole argum ent, which moves back and forth between the Dreyfus Affair and the 1970s, hinges upon the fact th at he has two definitions, which allows him to accuse anyone o f anything. His first definition o f fascism quite reasonably includes anti-Semitism , collab­ oration and compulsory labour service in Germany (STO). But in order to take in m any people who could not possibly be included in

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this maximal classification there is a minimal definition, according to which fascism comprises a concern for national unity, a critique o f parliam entarism and the parties o f the Third Republic, an emphasis on youth, and the need for national renewal. Armed w ith this all-encom­ passing definition, Lévy can say o f Uriage th at it was *le style du pétainisme achevé’, ‘la quintéssence du pétainism e’, while at the same tim e being fiercely nationalistic and denouncing collaboration.18 The minimal definition is thus used to indict not only Uriage as fascist, but also E sprit and M ounier, and it could easily have included m uch o f the Resistance.19 To move on to John Heilman’s doctoral thesis, described as ‘wellresearched’ by the reviewer in the Tim es Literary Supplem enti who ven­ tured him self further to assure his readers th at ‘Mr Heilman’s book is by far the best guide to personalism we have had and his knowledge o f French intellectual history is impressive’30 should be to move into a less heady atm osphere. If only . . . Heilman’s view on Uriage is coloured by a desire to relate it to the German Ordensburg which is the subject o f a 750-word footnote. Though he quotes from Josse, and from W inock, Heilman confuses M urinet w ith Uriage, and talks o f the Château de M urinet being a t Uriage31. (He also claims th at La Fauconnière was lent to Segonzac ‘by Philippe Lam our a form er director o f the review Plans'22 — thus making a tenuous connec­ tion w ith Mourner’s associations in the 1930s). In fact, according to the same Josse article the chateau belonged to an advocate, Me Raymond H ubert, Lamour was merely starting his own personal 'reto u r à la terre' in the environs33. But the really disturbing feature o f Heilman is the vertiginious path he treads between an orthodox account o f the establishm ent o f the École, listing the staff involved, indicating some o f their conflicts w ith the Vichy authorities, and a brooding m ystical preoccupation w ith heady German ideas. One example m ust suffice: The Uriage school alum ni later m aintained th at it was a peculiar 'island o f freedom ’ in a more and more authoritarian régime. In 1940-1, however, Uriage sometimes seemed to be fulfilling Paul Nizan's prophecy: Mounier was distilling the thick foreign currents into the spiritualized national socialism o f a French Ordensburg above Grenoble. Precisely where, according to German ethnologists, the Nor­ dic Alleman fam ily had m aintained their aerie centuries e a rlie r. . . 34 Nizan's prophecy? It comes some 120 pages earlier as Heilman rela the story o f the fam ous Cahier de R evendications, published by i

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NRF in December 1932. This collection o f a dozen essays by spokes­ men o f the various young political tendencies, assembled by Denis de Rougement38, included an article by Nizan. A t the last m inute he attem pted in vain to withdraw it under pressure from the Party. Writing the following m onth in E urope, Nizan did the hatchet job required o f him36 and denounced the call for a ‘spiritual revolution* w ith which Mounier had been associated in the Cahier: they criticize fascism to the degree th at it is weakened by certain survivals o f outm oded bourgeois positions: the French are m uch more 'intelligent' than the Italians and the Germans. We know very well th at they decant, purify, and perfect the thick foreign currents; they bring the experiences to fruition: French national socialism will simply be m ore artful than the o th e rs. . . 37 Heilman has made it clear th at he found this tex t totally convincing and th at it served as a signpost for the rem ainder o f his thesis.38 But is it not Heilman who is in danger o f catching a w hiff o f the vapours? Uriage was, in a sense, a noble, rom antic enterprise which played a role in freeing France from Nazi dom ination. It was also an im prudent and dangerous venture under the circumstances. Some miles to the north at the École de Cadres in the occupied zone, young Frenchm en were walking on broken glass, bloodletting, and engaging in a whole set o f pagan rites th at recalled Heinrich Himmler's black order.39 To turn from Heilman to Zeev Stem hell's M droite n i gauche is to become almost punch-drunk. Sternhell, an academic historian, has made something o f a speciality o f defending a largely non-existent liberaldem ocratic tradition o f thought in France, against assaults from both Left and Right.30 His dem onstration in M aurice Barrés e t le N ationalism e français, and La D roite revolutionäre, 1885-1914; Les origines 0françaises du fa s­ cism e that nearly all ideas found in fascism and national socialism had first surfaced in France, is com pleted in this third volume. In N i droite n i gauche: L ldéologie fasciste en France, a book o f 300 pages w ith a further 65 pages o f footnotes, Sternhell looks for fascists among socialists, syndicalists, left-wing Catholics, indeed anyone who was critical o f democracy as it was practised by the Third Republic, and inevitably he arrives at the nonconform ist writings o f Mounier in the 1930s. Uriage is m entioned only once, but Sternhell has room for two o f its m ajor figures, Beuve-Méry, and especially Mounier. Indeed the

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whole structure o f the book, and indeed o f the series, seems to be organised to dem onstrate th at since France delivered herself up to Pétain in 1940 it m ust all have been the fault o f Mounier and everything th at happened before was m erely a prelude to Mourner’s accouchement o f the Vichy regime. Curiously enough, though in StemhelTs eyes largely a child o f Mourner’s nonconform ist youth, Vichy is not seen as a fascist institu­ tion: ‘Certes, le fascisme en France n’est parvenu à s’em parer du pou­ voir . . . * (p . 20), and ‘Le fascisme . . . n ’y a jam ais dépassé le stade de la théorie . . . * (p. 293). Vichy disappointed the fascists, as indeed would M ounier, since as Sternhell him self recognises: dans les années qui précèdent ls guerre, Mounier a toujours fait des choix politiques conform es à sa philosophie. Fin 1935 la sym­ pathie d'E sprit au Rassemblement populaire est acquise, et la revue de Mounier se démarque en cela des autres ‘non-conform istes’ des années trente. Elle preserve certes sa liberté de critique et ne se prive pas d'exprim er ses craintes, notam m ent en ce qui concerne la politique extérieure et une éventuelle alliance anti-allem ande. Mais la revue ne fait surtout aucune concession au stalinisme e t, en juin 1936, elle reçoit les prem ières contributions volontaires de V ictor Serge qui vient d’étre libéré d*Union Soviétique et dénonce les atrocités du régime. Quelque mois plus tard, Mounier s’engage contre le franquisme et entreprend sur la guerre d'Espagne un rem arquable travail d ’inform ation. E sprit com bat la vision mani­ chéenne de l'opinion catholique selon laquelle la guerre est un affrontem ent entre communisme et catholicism e. Prouver, ainsi que le m ontre Michel Winock, que des catholiques, que des prêtres, ont pris parti pour la République, comme ce fu t notam m ent le cas de la nation e t du clergé basques, tel est l’un des objectifs d*Esprit. Finale­ m ent, en octobre 1938, Mounier publie un vibrant éditorial contre la politique munichoise: il dénonce la démission de la France qui ne peut qu'encourager l'expansion des fascismes.31 The evidence is clear. Someone who, on Stem hell’s own evidence, fought fascism in his writing as well as in his ‘prises de position' thoughout the 1930s, can hardly be accused o f giving birth to Vichy. But Sternhell works at another level, in which books count for more than actions in politics. It is for th at reason th at so m uch o f his book is taken up w ith literary analysis, seeking the political message where a Leavis m ay distil the m oral elem ent. W ithin StemhelTs ‘great tradition’

156 W age: The A ssault on a R eputation o f fascism, Barrés, De Man, Drieu la Rochelle, Juvenal, M aulnier, Sorel and M ounier, are all given an infinitely larger part in the history o f fascist ideas than the overtly fascist activists D oriot, Déat and Dam and, all o f whom collaborated w ith Nazism. And, as if th at was not tenden­ tious enough, to leave collaborationist Vichy o u t o f his ‘great tradition* altogether suggests a wilful refusal to look for any fascist movement on the ground. The history o f ideas, as w ith the analysis o f discourse, becomes a very arid exercise when it is detatched from history and from ‘le vécu des gens*. It m ay give some satisfaction, th at the inhum ­ anities, the tragedies, the betrayals, o f the tw entieth century can be explained by the writings o f a handful o f not excessively gifted writers. But w hat really is the im portance o f a dozen books in shaping the polit­ ical life o f a society? How m any fascists did they m ake, and were they really made by reading books? And w hat did they d o ! So m uch o f real political life consists in trying to wrest concepts and vocabulary from the dom inant class and give them a genuinely demo­ cratic and popular content. This is what Republican and workers* move­ m ents have been engaged in for more than a century. It is a task which Uriage took upon itself, in discussion and, eventually, in armed struggle. They deserve a better history than th at into which our ‘revisionists* seek to integrate them .

Notes 0

1. J. Bourdin, ‘Des intellectuels à la recherche d’un style de vie - l’Ecole Nationale des Cadres d ’Uriage \ Revut française de Science Politique, no. 4 (Décembre, 1959)., 2. R. Josse, 'L ’Ecole des Cadres d’Uriage*, Revue d ’Histoire de la Deuxième Guerre Mondiale, no. 61 (1966). 3. E. Mounier, Mounier et sa génération (Editions du Seuil, coll. Esprit, 1956). 4. Equipe d’Uriage (sous la direction de Gilbert Gadoffre), Vers le style du XXe siècle (Editions du Seuil, 1945; G. Ferry, Une expérience deformation des chefs (Editions du Seuil, 1945). 5. M. Winock, Histoire politique de la revue Esprit 1932-1950 (Editions du Seuil, 1975); J. Julliard and J.-N. Jeanneney, Le Monde de Beuve-Mèry (Editions du Seuil, 1970); H.R. Kedward, Resistance in Vichy Fiance (Oxford University Press, 1978); W.R. Halls, The Youth o f Vichy Fiance (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1981). On Uriage, Bernard Comte has published ‘L’Expérience d’Uriage’ in Eglises et Chrétiens dans la Deuxième Guerre mondiale: la Région Rhône-Alpes, sous la direction d ’Xavier de M ontdos (Presses Universitaires de Lyon, 1978), pp. 251-67. 6. R. Paxton, Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order, 1940-44, (Alfred Knopf, New York, 1972). 7. Ibid., p. 165. 8. P. Bourdieu, and L. Bottansld, ‘La production de lldéologie dominante* in

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Actes de la Recherche en sciences sociales, nos. 2-3 (1976). 9. Ibid., p. 8. 10. In Esprit, nos. 7-8 (1976), pp. 99-101. 11. Botudieu and Boltansld, ‘La production de l'idéologie’, pp. 9-10. 12. In Esprit, nos. 7-8 (1976), p. 100. 13. An edition of Charles Péguy coupled with the Communist writer Gabriel Péri was published by Les Editions de Minuit (aux dépens de quelques lettrés patriotes. . . achevé d'imprimer sous l’Oppression à Paris le 22 juin 1944), as Deux voix françaises - Péguy/Péri. It contains (p. 39) this superbly apposite passage from Péguy's L'Argent suite of 1913: Du Gouvernement des Vieillards On me dit: C’est un vieillard. Je dis pardon. Les vieillards ont droit au respect. Os n'ont pas droit au commandement. Ils ont droit au commandement s'ils savent commander, s’ils sont bons pour commander. Mais ils n'ont pas droit au commandement par cela seul qu’ils sont de vieillards. Les vieillards, comme tels, parce qui'ils sont vieillards, ont peut-etre droit au respect, aux honneurs; ils n'ont, comme tels et en cela même, aucun droit au commandement. Autrement il suffirait de devenir suprêmement vieux, dans n ’importe quel ordre, pour parvenir, dans cet ordre, au commandement suprême. On admet bien, dans le militaire, et tout le monde admet, pour les militaires, que rien n'est dangereux comme les généraux fatigués. Et loin de donner aux généraux vieillis les commandements suprêmes on a créé la limite d'âge. Et on ne parle que de rajeunir les cadres. Et on croit avoir bien fait, et on se félicite, et on croit presque avoir remporté une victoire quand on a réussi à rejeunir les cadres, quand on a réussi à abaisser les limites d’âge. Et on a raison. 14. B.-H. Lévy, L ’Idéologie française (Grasset, 1981). 15. L'Express, no. 1540,17 janvier 1981, pp. 82*90. The photograph is on p. 86. 16. R. Debray, Le pouvoir intellectuel en France (Editions Ramsay, 1979). p. 182. 17. Ibid., 18. Lévy, L ’Idéologie française, p. 52. 19. C.f. Kedward, Resistance in Vichy France, p. 157 and Chapter VII, passim. 20. Patrick McCarthy in Times literary Supplement, 12 February 1982. 21. J. Heilman, Emmanuel Mounier and the new Catholic left 1930-1950 (University of Toronto Press, 1981) see p. 175. The 750-word footnote is on pp. 316-18. 22. Ibid., pp. 174-5. 23. Josse, ‘L’Ecole des Cadres’, p. 52. 24. Heilman, Emmanuel Mounier, p. 177. 25. La Nouvelle Revue française (Décembre, 1932). 26. This account of the incident was given by Denis de Rougement at a congress to mark the 50th anniversary of the founding of Esprit. Dourdan, December 1982. The context in which Nizan found himself W ir à vis the PCF in 1932-3 is related in Ariel Ginsbourg, 'Une promenade politique avec Paul Nizan’ in A toll, no. 1, numéro spécial sur Nizan, Nov.-Déc. 1967-Jan. 1968. 27. hi Europe (Janvier, 1933) quoted by Heilman, Emmanuel Mounier, p. 55. Heilman's translation. 28. Speaking at the Congrès pour le cinquantenaire d'Esprit, Dourdan, Décembre 1982.

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29. Heilman, Emmanuel Mounier, p. 178. 30. Z. Sternhell, Maurice Barrés et le Nationalisme français (Armand Colin, 1972); La Droite révolutionnaire, 1885-1914. Les origines françaises du fascisme (Editions du Seuil, 1978); Ni droite ni gauche; L 'idéologie fasciste en fronce (Editions du Seuil, 1983). Zeev Sternhell is Director o f the Centre for European Studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. 31. Z. Sternhell, Ni