Vichy France (49 page)

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Authors: Robert O. Paxton

Tags: #Nonfiction

5
For example, Kriegstagebuch der D.A.S., Port Vendres, “Stimmungsbericht für die Zeit 22.8–21.9.42” (T-77/OKW-1437/5, 593, 685 ff.);
DFCAA
, IV, 394, 500.

6
Jean Guéhenno,
Journal des années noires
(Paris, 1947), 21 January 1942. For electricity shortages in the winter of 1941–42, see
Revue des deux mondes
, 15 January 1942, and
Le Figaro
, 17 January 1942. Coal and oil figures are found in “Mitteilungen über die Arbeiten der WaKo,” no. 68 of 13 September 1940 and no. 94 of 15 October 1940 (T-120/368/206980, 207141).

7
André Gide–Roger Martin du Gard,
Correspondance
(Paris, 1968), II, 250, 272.

8
Alfred Fabre-Luce, “L’Oreille au ventre,” in
Journal de France, 1939–44
(Paris, 1946).

9
The French prefects’ reports published in
DFCAA
, IV, 396, 500, were of course expected to be seen by German eyes. The Armistice Commission inspection teams’ “Stimmungsberichte” or opinion reports for 1941–42 may be consulted in T-77/OKW-1432, OKW-1434–37.

10
For prefects’ reports on the quick excitement and disappointment of April–May 1941, see
DFCAA
, IV, 500. T-120/221/149183–86 reports a pro-Yugoslav demonstration in Marseilles in April 1941. After Yugoslavia had been crushed, Jean Guéhenno thought “for the first time” that French defeat was “definitive.”
Journal des années noires
(Paris, 1947), 11 April 1941. T-120/211328–30 reports opinion in Toulouse in August 1941 about the Russian campaign. For officers’ views on the Russian campaign, see Paxton,
Parades and Politics at Vichy
(Princeton, N.J., 1966), 243–44.

11
Kriegstagebuch der D.A.S., Port Vendres, “Stimmungsbericht für die Zeit 6.6–24.6.42” (T-77/OKW-1437/5,593,696 ff.).

12
Although German intelligence reports are confused by a tendency to equate Gaullism and communism, the Germans were clearly less nervous about the Free French in 1941 than they had been in 1940. See, for example, a report in May 1941 that Gaullism was “not noteworthy” in Oran (T-77/OKW-685/2,499,320) and also a U.S. diplomat’s report that there was little Gaullism in French North Africa,
FRUS
, 1941, II, 420. Most of the French Forces in Syria chose to be repatriated rather than join de Gaulle after the fratricidal Levant war of June–July 1941. Between the Gaullist success in French Equatorial Africa in the fall of 1940 and the return of French Africa to the war with the American landing in November 1942, there were no mass defections from Vichy to the Free France. And even then, only 100 out of 2,000 French sailors in the French squadron interned at Alexandria eventually joined the Free French (U.S. Dept. of State Serial File 851.01/176). The one senior French officer to defect in 1942, Air Force General Odic, went to Washington rather than London.

13
Ministère de l’Intérieur, cabinet du secrétaire-général pour l’administration, “Synthèse des rapports des préfets de la Zone Libre pour le mois de février 1943,” 18 March 1943 (Centre de Documentation Juive Contemporaine, document no. CCCLXXXIII-3).

14
Daniel Halévy,
La Fin des notables
(Paris, 1937). For Halévy and Vichy, see Alain Silvera,
Daniel Halévy and His Times
(Ithaca, New York, 1966), and the Stephen Wilson article cited in footnote 17.

15
Le Procès de Charles Maurras
(Paris, 1946), 371.

16
Pierre Pucheu,
Ma Vie
(Paris, 1948), 109, 138; Drieu La Rochelle,
Gilles
(Paris, 1939), 434; Lucien Rebatet,
Les Décombres
(Paris, 1942), 29–33; Robert Brasillach,
Notre Avant-guerre
(Paris, 2nd ed., 1955), 151–55.

17
Daniel Guérin,
Front populaire, révolution manquée
, quoted in Stephen Wilson, “The Action Française in French Intellectual Life,”
Historical Journal
XII:2 (June 1969), 348.

18
Daniel Halévy,
La République des ducs
(Paris, 1937), 108;
La Légion
, no. 15, August 1942. Charles Micaud,
The French Right and Nazi Germany
(Durham, N.C., 1943), is still the best summary of this evolution in the middle-class press.

19
See Frédéric-Dupont’s recommendation of Lt. Col. Gaëtan de Villers for a job in the Commissariat-général pour les Questions Juives (
CDJC
, document no. XLII-109).

20
FRUS
, 1940, II, 404. For other, similar remarks, see
this page
.

21
L’Almanach de la Légion française des combattants
, 1941, 46.

22
Stanley Hoffmann, “Aspects du régime de Vichy,”
Revue française de science politique
VI:1 (1955).

23
Colonel de la Rocque letter to presidents of PSF sections, Clermont-Ferrand, 16 September 1940 (Centre de documentation juive contemporaine, dossier XXXIII, which contains a whole file on La Rocque gathered by his enemy Xavier Vallat);
Ministère public c/Chasseigne
, 34; the 29 April 1941 ban on the PSF in the Occupied Zone is mentioned in T-77/OKW-1444/5,594,887 ff. Samples of German police information about “Jewish influence” in the PSF may be found in
CDJC
, documents no. XLVI-37 and LXXVIII-1. Information on La Rocque as a member of Pétain’s cabinet and on the views of Barochin is contained in U.S. Dept. of State Serial File 851.00/2385,2698,2928. For Vallin, see Jacques Soustelle,
Envers et contre tous
(Paris, 1947), I, 407. There is much interesting material in Philippe Machefer, “Sur quelques aspects de l’activité du Colonel de la Rocque et du ‘Progrès social français’ pendant la seconde guerre mondiale,”
Revue d’histoire de la deuxième guerre mondiale
, no. 58 (April 1965). La Rocque’s obscurity at Vichy and his arrest, along with so many other nationalist figures, by the Germans in 1943 allow such recent works as Edith de la Rocque,
La Rocque tel que je l’ai connu
(Paris, 1962), and Philippe Rudeaux,
La Croix de feu et le PSF
(Paris, 1967), to treat La Rocque as a member of the Resistance.

24
For Laval’s efforts to keep Doriotists out of the Veterans’ Legion and its later paramilitary force, the Service d’Ordre Légionnaire, see U.S. Dept. of State Serial File 851.00/2866,2919. Doriot tried to interest the Germans in supporting him in a bid for power in September–November 1942 and had the backing of people like Sicherheitsdienst head Walter Schellenberg. Abetz consistently supported Laval, however, as in Abetz (Paris) 5295 to Ribbentrop of 19 November 1942 (T-120/928/297509011), which warns against Doriot as too “active” and “nationalist.” For Laval’s efforts to take over the Anti-Bolshevik Legion for Vichy and christen it the Tricolor Legion, see General Bridoux, “Journal,” and a German foreign office report by Strack, Ausw. Amt Pol., 11, 3074, 25 August 1942 (T-120/3837/E044122–24). Hitler ordered Abetz to deny rumors that he envisaged Doriot as Laval’s eventual successor in Ribbentrop (Feldmark) 1158 to Abetz, 21 September 1942 (T-120/1832/418612). Laval, however, failed to get the Germans to dissolve the PPF in December 1942. See Ribbentrop (Sonderzug) 1614 to Abetz, 26 December 1942 (T-120/935/298684–87). The most useful scholarly works on Doriot are Gilbert Allardyce, “The Political Transition of Jacques Doriot,”
Journal of Contemporary History
I (1966), and Dieter Wolf,
Die Doriotbewegung
(Stuttgart, 1967).

25
The most complete source for the content of journalism in occupied Paris is Michèle Cotta,
La collaboration
(Paris, 1964). For control and staff members, see Ministère de l’information. Notes documentaires et études, no. 218, “La Presse authorisée sous l’occupation allemande (1940–44)” (Paris, 1946). Information on Abetz’ subsidies may be found in T-120/364/20639–45 for
La France au travail
, T-120/3485H/E019445–48 for
La France au travail
and
La Gerbe
, and an entire folder on the German embassy and the Press, Pariser Botschaft, Ordner 1134, “S 8 Geheim, 1940–44,” filmed as T-120/3112. See also an extensive report by the Armistice Commission on parties in the Occupied Zone, as of 28 August 1941 (T-77/OKW-1444/5,594,887 ff.). The trial of the
Je suis partout
writers is reported in
Le Monde
, 17–18 November 1946.

26
The main published work on Déat, “Claude Varenne” [Georges Albertini],
Le Destin de Marcel Déat
(Paris, 1948), is a naïvely revealing apologia by the secretary-general of the RNP and later
directeur du cabinet
in Déat’s Ministry of Labor and Social Solidarity. See also
Pétain et les allemands: Mémorandum d’Abetz
(Paris, 1948), 75. Darlan’s remark to General Vogl is found in Wirtschafts- und Rüstungsstab, Frankreich, Abt. Ch. des Stabes, 352/41 of 16 July 1941 (T-77/OKW-1444/5,594,826). For Déat’s support of Laval against Doriot in the Anti-Bolshevik Legion and in Doriot’s autumn 1942 efforts to get German backing as Laval’s successor, see Abetz memorandum to Ritter, 23 July 1942 (T-120/926/297241–50), Abetz (Paris) telegram 5295 to Ribbentrop of 19 November 1942 (T-120/928/297509–11), Schleier (Paris) 5640 to Ribbentrop of 3 December 1942 (T-120/935/298801). For the Front révolutionnaire national, see Schleier (Paris) 1359 of 1 May 1943 (T-120/1669H/394286).

27
Stephen Wilson, “The
Action française
in French Intellectual Life,”
The Historical Journal
XII:2 (1969).

28
For a hostile German report on
Action française
’s preference for a divided Germany in the tradition of Richelieu, see T-120/434/220159–60.

29
The phrase is from Jacques Bardoux,
L’Ordre nouveau: Face au communisme et racisme
(Paris, 1939).

30
For individual
grands corps de l’état
, see Pierre Lalumière,
L’Inspection générale des finances
(Paris, 1959); Charles E. Freedman,
The Conseil d’état
(New York, 1961).

31
Mattei Dogan, “Political Ascent in a Class Society: French Deputies, 1870–1958,” in Marvick (ed.),
Political Decision-Makers
(New York, 1961). The fullest study of rural overrepresentation in the Third Republic is J. M. Cotteret
et al., Lois électorales et inégalités de representation en France, 1936–60
(Paris, 1960). For Waldeck-Rousseau’s remark, see Pierre Sorlin,
Waldeck-Rousseau
(Paris, 1967).

32
Pierre Rain,
L’Ecole libre des sciences politiques, 1871–1945
(Paris, 1963), 89 ff. In 1938 only 62 of the school’s 2,000 students had financial support.

33
Annuaire du parlement
, 1902.

34
Societé des anciens élèves de l’Ecole libre des sciences politiques,
Annuaire
(Paris, 1938). Two of the four deputies, René Dommange and Frédéric-Dupont, represented conservative Paris constituencies.

35
Roger Grégoire,
La fonction publique
(Paris, 1954), 69.

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