Vichy France (8 page)

This means emphasizing Vichy at the expense of the Paris collaborators. All too often the two are lumped together indiscriminately. Some of the most notorious figures of the occupation were the Frenchmen who led political groups or published newspapers at Paris in return for the high life of the occupied capital and, in many cases, direct subsidies from the German embassy.
⁸²
Although these personages were conspicuous, their direct effect on Vichy policy is doubtful and their vassalage to Abetz is certain. They enjoyed neither the independence nor the broad following that make Vichy interesting. Their attitude to Vichy was hostile; they criticized it for being too lukewarm and too old-fashioned in the face of the fascist revolution. Only in January 1944, with Déat and Darnand, did important figures from the Paris circle gain influence in an eclipsing Vichy. The most able of the Paris crowd—Doriot, for example—never did. So the Paris collaborators occupy the wings rather than center stage in this book.

This book also emphasizes social history. Some of the more poignant and dramatic aspects of life under Marshal Pétain have not received as much attention here as some readers would no doubt like. The internal politics of the regime is still much shrouded in mystery, and as for a dramatic sense of the squalor and heroism of occupied France, one must still turn to novels such as Jean Dutourd’s
The Best Butter
or Jean-Louis Curtis’
The Forests of the Night.
I thought that some other questions, whose answers are already less obscure, could also arouse a reader’s
curiosity and engage his convictions. What did the Vichy regime do with its share of independence? What groups benefited? Who were its supporters? We shall begin, then, with the first French external use of that independence: the French campaign for a Franco-German settlement.

¹
Wolfgang Förster,
Ein General Kämpft gegen den Krieg
(Munich, 1949), 84, 86, 92. A
New York Times
editorial expressed a similar opinion on 7 May 1938.

²
Jean Berthelot, speech to railroad workers, 21 August 1941.
Ministère public c/ Berthelot
, 140.

³
The most authoritative study of German campaign records, Hans-Adolf Jacobsen,
Fall Gelb
(Wiesbaden, 1957), recalls how risky the German plan was and how nervous the leaders were. The most convincing French study, Colonel A. Goutard,
1940: La Guerre des occasions perdues
(Paris, 1955), makes the possibilities of another Marne more genuine than used to be thought. The latest account of the good numbers and superior quality of French tanks is R. H. S. Stolfi, “Equipment for Victory in France in 1940,”
History
, vol. 55, no. 183 (February 1970), 1–20. The old clichés about French material inferiority still apply to only one sector, albeit a crucial one: aviation. Even here the vulnerable Stuka played a diminishing role, and new Allied planes were coming on the line at the end. France was more vulnerable in 1940 than she had been in 1914, but defeat was by no means a foregone conclusion.

⁴
Fifth column literature is an apparently irresistible genre. It runs from Albert Bayet,
Pétain et la
5
e colonne
(Paris, 1944), to Max Gallo,
La Cinquième colonne
(Paris, 1970). Louis de Jong,
The German Fifth Column in the Second World War
(Chicago, 1956), disposes of most of these legends.

⁵
Le Procès du maréchal Pétain
, Albin Michel edition (Paris, 1945), 31–33, 117 ff.

⁶
Gen. André Truchet,
L’Armistice de 1940 et l’Afrique du Nord
(Paris, 1955), makes the most thorough case for fighting on from North Africa. General Weygand argued to the end of his life that such a course was suicidal. See his
En lisant les mémoires du général de Gaulle
(Paris, 1955), 91. The Noguès telegrams are in
Ministère public c/ General Noguès
, 26.)

⁷
Documents on German Foreign Policy
[
DGFP
] Series D, vol. IX, no. 479, p. 608. Berlin was also kept informed through the German ambassador at Madrid of French plans to move the government to North Africa.

⁸
Robert Brasillach,
Journal d’un homme occupé
(Paris, 1955), chap. 1.

⁹
The Rommel Papers
, ed. B. H. Liddell Hart (New York, 1953), 69–73. The Vierzon case is recounted in Gen. André Beaufre,
Le Drame de quarante
(Paris, 1965), 265; contemporary press coverage of the trial of Colonel Charly’s killers in 1949 may be found in William L. Shirer,
The Collapse of the Third Republic
(New York, 1969), 875–6. The parliamentary committee investigating the war and prewar years looked into a number of such cases.
Evénements survenus en France de 1933 à 1940
, II, 384–404.

¹⁰
Charles de Gaulle,
War Memoirs
, I, 73.

¹¹
Foreign Relations of the United States
[
FRUS
], 1940, II,
passim
, and especially William C. Bullitt’s telegram of 1 July 1940 in which various French leaders predicted a speedy British collapse, 462 ff.

¹²
Paul Baudouin’s postwar denials are contradicted by the contemporary texts. See Col. A. Goutard, “Comment et pourquoi l’armistice a-t-il été ‘accordé’ par les allemands,”
Revue de Paris
, vol. 67 (October 1960), and Baudouin and Goutard letters in the subsequent two issues. The text of Baudouin’s inquiry as relayed from Madrid to Berlin may be consulted in the archives of the German Foreign Office, Büro des Staatssekretärs, “Beziehungen zwischen Frankreich und Deutschland,” vol. 2, (T-120/121/119600). Material from microfilmed German archives will hereafter be cited in this form: U.S. National Archives Series (e.g. T-120)/serial (e.g. 121)/frame (e.g. 119600).

¹³
DGFP
, Series D, XI, no. 227, 385 ff. Camille Chautemps told William C. Bullitt on July 1 that Pétain, Laval, and Weygand thought France would get easier peace terms if she set up some kind of dictatorship.
FRUS
, 1940, II, 468.

¹⁴
Ministère de la guerre,
Bulletin officiel
(1940), 1100, 1112;
Actes et documents du Saint-Siège relatifs à la seconde guerre mondiale
(Vatican City, 1967), IV, 97; Büro des Staatssekretärs, “Friedensverhandlungen mit Frankreich” (T-120/365,368,378).

¹⁵
E.g., General Weygand,
Mémoires
, III.
Rappelé au service
(Paris, 1957).

¹⁶
Charles A. Micaud,
The French Right and Nazi Germany
(Durham, N.C., 1943), 97–9.

¹⁷
Video, “L’Armée et la politique,”
Action française
, 25 August 1936. I owe this reference to Mr. Lawrence Abrams.

¹⁸
Louis-Ferdinand Céline,
L’Ecole des cadavres
(Paris, 1938), 78–79. P. E. Flandin predicted a million casualties in his campaign against war over Czechoslovakia in September 1938.

¹⁹
A. J. P. Taylor’s controversial
Origins of the Second World War
(London, 1961), was the first postwar attempt to place scholarly support behind a popular attitude that has been much more widespread in France since 1940 than it ever was in England or the United States.

²⁰
Paul Valéry,
Cahiers
, vol. 233 (Paris, 1960), 307.

²¹
For Evreux, see Marcel Baudot,
L’Opinion publique sous l’occupation
(Paris, 1960), which, despite its title, studies a single department, the Eure. Jean Vidalenc,
L’Exode de mai–juin 1940
(Paris, 1947), estimates a total of ten million refugees.

²²
Ministère public c/ Bousquet.

²³
P. C. F. Bankwitz, “Maxime Weygand and the Fall of France,”
Journal of Modern History
31:3 (September 1959). U.S. Ambassador William C. Bullitt also expected a Communist rising in Paris; see Gordon Wright, “Ambassador Bullitt and the Fall of France,”
World Politics
10:1 (October 1957), 63–90. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin,
Letters to Two Friends, 1926–1952
(New York, 1968), 145.

²⁴
Memorandum by Dr. Friedrich Grimm, 19 June 1940 (Centre de Documentation Juive Contemporaine, Paris, document no. LXXV-253.) The Centre is abbreviated hereafter as CDJC.

²⁵
For Abetz, see Dr. Best memorandum, 17 August 1940 (CDJC, document no. LXXV-152);
The Halder Diaries
, 10, 11, 15, 26 August 1940, report with alarm Abetz’ reputed deals with French Communists. The party’s efforts to resume activity in Paris in the summer of 1940 are very widely reported, in hostile sources. See A. Rossi,
Physiologie du parti communiste français
(Paris, 1948), 395–410, for the fullest account.

²⁶
The phrase is Jean Berthelot’s, from his May Day speech, 1941.
Ministère public c/ Jean Berthelot.

²⁷
U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey, as quoted in J. K. Galbraith,
The Affluent Society
(New York: Mentor, 1963), 131–3; Jacques Benoist-Méchin,
La Moisson de quarante
(Paris, 1941), 67.

²⁸
General Emile Laure,
Pétain
(Paris, 1941), 432.

²⁹
Haute Cour de Justice,
Ministère public c/ Bousquet
, 38–58; Cour de Justice de Lyon,
Ministère public c/ Angéli
, 100.

³⁰
Yves Bouthillier,
Le Drame de l’armistice
(Paris, 1950), II.
Les Finances sous la contrainte
, 245–47.

³¹
Simone de Beauvoir,
La Force de l’âge
(Paris, 1960), 459–72.

³²
Jean Guéhenno,
Journal des années noires
(Paris, 1947), 11 September 1943.

³³
See the German police report of 23 August 1940 (Nuremberg document NG-5418); for Bruneton—only one example out of many, but made public in a postwar trial because he later served as commissioner for French labor in Germany—see Haute Cour de Justice,
Ministère public c/ Bruneton
, 4.

³⁴
U.S. Department of State Serial File 851.01/82. Heating was hurriedly patched up in late October. See
ibid.
, 740.0011 Eur War 1939/552.

³⁵
Esprit
, 8e année, no. 94 (November 1940).

³⁶
Der Vertreter des Auswärtiges Amts beim Oberbefehlshaber des Heeres, “Frankreich.” “Aufzeichnungen über politische Besprechungen in der Zeit vom 6. bis 15. September 1940.” (T-120/364/206021 ff).

³⁷
La Moisson de quarante
(Paris, 1941), 105.

³⁸
Daniel Halévy, “Le réformateur inconnu,”
Le Temps
, 18 August 1940. See also Alain Silvera,
Daniel Halévy and His Times
(Ithaca, N.Y., 1966), 204–6.