Vichy France (69 page)

So far we have talked only about the final hearings of these trials, the public sessions. Far more valuable to a historian would be the preliminary arraignment sessions (
instructions
) during which the accused was confronted for the first time with a far wider range of documents. Of course, the whole dossier prepared for the prosecution would be the most valuable source of all. It will be a long time before these most sensitive materials are opened to research. In the meantime, President Louis Noguères of the High Court of Justice has published an extremely important selection of materials from Pétain’s prosecution dossier:
Le Véritable procès du maréchal Pétain
(Paris, 1955).

The publications of the regime also provide a great wealth of completely unclassified material. Used with elementary attention to the rules of evidence, the Vichy press is very revealing. The regime and its supporters went to great pains to say what they wanted the public to think. The Vichy press was dominated by traditionalists, who wrote without inhibition in their long-awaited triumph. Researchers using the Vichy press must remember that other interests and other attitudes were actually more quietly decisive, especially in economic and social matters. The Vichy press was subject to guidance rather than prior censorship, with penalties for those who ignored the guidance. An important record of press guidance is the collection of daily instructions to editors published after the war by Pierre Limagne of the Catholic daily
La Croix—Ephémérides de quatres années tragiques
, 4 vols. (Paris, 1945–48). These instructions applied, of course, to the Vichy zone. The press of Paris and the Occupied Zone were more directly under German command. A survey of the Paris press, with
excerpts, is conveniently published in Michèle Cotta,
La Collaboration
(Paris, 1964). There is unfortunately no companion volume in this excellent “Kiosque” series on the Vichy press.

Vichy government publications reveal a great deal about the motives and aims of internal policy. Decrees and laws continued to appear in the
Journal officiel
, even though there were no longer parliamentary debates. Each major ministry published its circulars and instructions in a
Bulletin officiel.
Personnel and policy changes may be followed in the
annuaires
of the main high civil service organs such as prefectoral corps, Council of State, and Inspectorate of Finance. Law professors commented upon current legislation exhaustively in the bulletins of the main legal publishing houses, Dalloz and Sirey. All these official and semiofficial publications reveal more about Vichy domestic policy than one might think, for the bureaucracy was applying reforms that it was convinced were both legitimate and permanent. The Cour des Comptes’ postwar review of Vichy finances,
Rapport au président de la république, années 1940–45
(Paris, 1947), is another rich source.

Vichy can not really be seriously studied without attention to the German archives captured by the Allies at the end of the war. Only here can high policy be followed from day to day with every decision imbedded in its full context. Only here can Vichy initiative be disentangled from German
diktat.
Most of the papers were microfilmed before the originals were returned to Bonn in the early 1960’s. Sets of these microfilms are available in the United States National Archives in Washington and the Public Record Office in London.

The essential starting point for work in the German Foreign Office papers is George O. Kent,
A Catalog of Files and Microfilms of the German Foreign Ministry Archives, 1920–45
(Stanford, Calif., 1962). The files entitled “Akten betreffend Frankreich” or “Beziehungen Frankreich-Deutschland, 1938–44” kept by Staatssekretär Ernst von Weizsäcker, the top career official in the German Foreign Office throughout the war years, contain the heart of the matter: Abetz’s telegrams from Paris, records of every important discussion between Vichy and German officials, memoranda on Foreign Office policy decisions. There is important additional information here and there in the files of Unterstaatssekretär Woermann, Ambassador Ritter, and the Foreign Office economic experts Clodius and Wiehl. The files of the German embassy in Paris add rich details on daily relations between Abetz and his French contacts as well as German reports on what they thought was going on at Vichy. The files of the German Armistice Commission at Wiesbaden, the Waffenstillstandskommission, should
also be used to supplement the published French delegation papers.

The German military papers are equally essential. Here one can find his way with the aid of mimeographed “Guides to German Records Microfilmed at Alexandria, Virginia,” available from the U.S. National Archives in Washington. German military records concerning France are indexed principally in no. 12 (Records of Headquarters, the German Army High Command, Part I), nos. 17–19 (Records of Headquarters, German Armed Forces High Command, Parts II, III, IV), and no. 30 (Records of Headquarters, German Army High Command, Part III).

Such archival riches mean that German policy toward France has been studied in Germany with a thoroughness little reflected in French works. The most recent work of synthesis is Eberhard Jäckel,
Frankreich in Hitlers Europa
(Stuttgart, 1966), translated as
La France dans l’Europe de Hitler
(Paris, 1968). Its comprehensive bibliography is the best current guide to other German works.

The United States Department of State also kept a close watch on French affairs. A very full selection of reports to Washington from the embassy at Vichy, together with conversations in Washington with Ambassador Henry-Haye and departmental memoranda concerning France, are published in the series
Foreign Relations of the United States
for the years 1940–43. Those who examine the State Department’s raw files for those years will find nothing of importance omitted. William L. Langer,
Our Vichy Gamble
(New York, 1947), is still the most lucid statement of the State Department’s perspectives at that time.

The British Foreign Office papers for the wartime period are now opening for research. In the meantime, one may consult Sir Ernest Llewellyn Woodward’s semiofficial
British Foreign Policy in the Second World War
, volumes in progress, London, 1970.

The United States National Archives also has microfilms of some captured Italian documents: reports of the Ministero della Cultura Populare and reports on the work of the Franco-Italian Armistice Commission (U.S. National Archives Microcopy No. T-586). These deal mainly with matters of everyday detail.

Published works on Vichy run heavily to participants’ memoirs or rely largely upon them. The historian of Vichy France should read these tendentious memoirs only after a thorough steeping in authentic contemporary materials. They were written under the pressure of threats to liberty, property, and even life. Without exception, their main historical value today is the light they cast upon their authors’ efforts at rehabilitation and the kinds of alibis used. Their sheer bulk
and their entrenched legends are a serious barrier to comprehension.

Some scholarly work is beginning to appear, however. This highly selective account will mention only recent serious works. The best-informed general French account is Henri Michel,
Vichy: Année
40 (Paris, 1966), which begins to reflect work done in the German archives. The works of Stanley Hoffmann are essential to understanding the significance of Vichy for French society. See his contribution to
In Search of France
(Cambridge, Mass., 1963); “Aspects du régime de Vichy,”
Revue française de science politique
(January–March 1956); “Collaborationism in Vichy France,”
Journal of Modern History
40:3 (September 1968).

None of the spate of Pétain biographies of the late 1960’s (Georges Blond, Pierre Bourget, J.-R. Tournoux) seems to have made any attempt to test its assumptions about collaboration against the German archives. The one Vichy biography that has gotten down to archival bedrock is Geoffrey Warner,
Pierre Laval and the Eclipse of France
(London, 1968). General Weygand has received sympathetic and thorough treatment from a lawyer with access to the papers of the High Court of Justice, Guy Raïssac,
Un Soldat dans la tourmente
(Paris, 1964), and a more balanced assessment by Philip C. F. Bankwitz,
General Weygand and French Civil-Military Relations
(Cambridge, Mass., 1967). Some other scholarly biographies are awaited.

The Vichy economy has now been placed on a firm basis of research by Alan Milward,
The New Order and the French Economy
(Oxford, 1970).

Much light has been cast on agricultural policies by Gordon Wright,
The Rural Revolution in France
(Stanford, Calif., 1964), and Pierre Barral,
Les Agrariens français de Méline à Pisani
(Paris, 1968). Henry W. Ehrmann,
Organized Business in France
(Princeton, New Jersey, 1957), has not been superseded. Neither has his early
French Labor from the Popular Front to the Liberation
(New York, 1946). It can be supplemented by Georges Lefranc,
Les Expériences syndicales en France de 1939 à 1950
(Paris, 1950), whose author drew upon experience in the Labor Ministry at Vichy under René Belin, and the work of a well-informed official, Jacques Desmarest,
La Politique de la main-d’oeuvre en France
(Paris, 1946).

The most useful recent account of the church is Jacques Duquesne,
Les Catholiques français sous l’occupation
(Paris, 1966). See also Emile Poulat,
Naissance des prêtres-ouvriers
(Paris, 1969).

A valuable collection of primary material on Vichy policy toward Jews has been published in a somewhat undigested fashion by Joseph
Billig,
Le Commissariat français aux questions juives
, 3 vols. (Paris, 1955–60). The most widely used general works—Gerald Reitlinger,
The Final Solution
, 2d ed. (London, 1968), and Raul Hilberg,
The Destruction of the European Jews
(Chicago, 1961)—make the unwarranted assumption that German pressure coerced Vichy into action.

Local government under Vichy is a potentially rich vein for study. A useful institutional manual is the work of a prefectoral official, Pierre Doueil,
L’Administration locale à l’épreuve de la guerre
(Paris, 1950). Michel Baudot,
L’Opinion publique sous l’occupation
(Paris, 1955), is limited, despite its title, to the Eure department. Aimé Autrand, president of the prefects’ professional association, had access to some police files for
Le Département de Vaucluse de la défaite à la libération
(Avignon, n.d. [1965]). A model local social history, William A. Christian, Jr.,
Divided Island: Faction and Unity on Saint-Pierre
(Cambridge, Mass., 1969), shows how the Pétain–de Gaulle split on a small French island off Newfoundland reopened old cleavages between a declining traditional society and a modern economic sector.

The Vichy forces of order have hardly been examined. There is no work on the police, but the more sensational Milice has been treated by the free-lance author J. Delperrie de Bayac,
La Milice, 1918–45
(Paris, 1969). My own
Parades and Politics at Vichy
(Princeton, N.J., 1966) assesses the social and political role of army officers in the regime.

Education at Vichy still awaits serious attention. Political and social attitudes are suggestively discussed in the aforementioned works of Stanley Hoffmann, while H. Stuart Hughes,
The Obstructed Path
(New York, 1968), examines some of the major intellectual figures active during these years. For the 1930’s intellectual background, one should consult Jean Touchard, “L’Esprit des années 30,” in
Tendances politiques de la vie française depuis 1789
(Paris, 1960); Pierre Andreu, “Les Idées politiques de la jeunesse intellectuelle de 1927 à la guerre,” in Académie des sciences morales et politiques,
Comptes-rendus
(1957), 17–35; and Jean-Louis Loubet del Bayle,
Les Non-conformistes des années 30
(Paris, 1969).

Other neglected Vichy subjects include the bureaucracy, many aspects of business activity and economic policy, and colonial relations.

Finally, the atmosphere of those dreadful years grows more and more elusive for the young and the foreign. Here fiction is more helpful than memoirs. In my opinion, no one has matched the sardonic
A Bon beurre
, translated as
The Best Butter
, of Jean Dutourd, the moving
Les Forêts de la Nuit
of Jean-Louis Curtis, or the same author’s novel of postwar divisions,
Les Justes causes.
And at this writing, Paris
crowds are standing in line to see an extraordinary film evocation of life in Clermont-Ferrand during the Vichy period, Maurice Ophuls’
Le Chagrin et la pitié.

Vichy has always aroused passion. Now, as it recedes in time, it should arouse hard thought.

¹
Peter Novick,
The Resistance Versus Vichy
(New York, 1968). See also the work of the High Court’s second-presiding judge, Louis Noguères,
La Haute Cour de la Libération
(Paris, 1965).

A Note About the Author

Robert O. Paxton was born in Lexington, Virginia, in 1932. He received his B.A. from Washington and Lee University, an M.A. from Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar, and his Ph.D. from Harvard University. From 1961 to 1967 he taught at Berkeley, and after two years at the State University of New York at Stony Brook is now Professor of Modern Western European History at Columbia University. His book
Parades and Politics at Vichy: The French Officer Corps under Marshal Pétain
was published by Princeton University Press in 1966.