5962 French Historical Studies / 23:1

From Liberation to Purge Trials in the ‘‘Mythic Provinces’’: Recasting French Identities in Alsace and Lorraine, 1918–1920

Laird Boswell 5962 FRENCH HISTORICAL STUDIES / 23:1 / sheet 131 of 216 Nothing proved more important for the French at the Great War’s end than regaining control of the lost provinces of Alsace and Lorraine. This was an event of momentous political and symbolic significance. After a hiatus of close to half a century, the nation took solace in the fact that it was once again ‘‘whole.’’ The euphoria that followed the Great War’s end and Alsace-Lorraine’s return to the French nation, however, was short-lived. Alsace-Lorraine’s complex place within French identity, the nation’s enormous emotional investment in the lost provinces, and four years of devastating losses all converged to transform the region into a site of contention during the postwar years. The recovery of the border provinces involved far more than the reacquisition of lost territory, and the reimposition of French rule proved far more difficult than popular opinion and politicians, influenced by a massive and ever present nationalistic literature on the region, had expected. The lost province occupied a unique position in the French popular imaginary as the most patriotic of regions. In the nationalistic climate that followed victory, squaring the myth of a patriotic Alsace- Lorraine faithfully waiting for deliverance with the reality of a German- speaking province that had benefited, in ways large and small, from close to fifty years of German rule proved impossible. But there was far more to the problematic reintegration than the widespread discrep-

Laird Boswell is associate professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of Rural Communism in France, 1920–1939 (Ithaca, N.Y., 1998). He is currently working on problems of national and cultural identity in twentieth-century Alsace and Lorraine. An earlier version of this article was presented to the 1997 German Studies Association meeting in Washington, D.C. The author thanks Florence Bernault, Suzanne Desan, and the ref- erees for French Historical Studies for their critiques of earlier drafts. The research was undertaken thanks to a grant from the German Marshall Fund of the United States. French Historical Studies, Vol. 23, No. 1(winter 2000) Copyright © 2000 by the Society for French Historical Studies Tseng 2000.1.5 16:49 130 FRENCH HISTORICAL STUDIES

ancy between myth and reality. French bureaucrats and military oﬃ- cials came armed with an ethnic vision of the borderland. In an attempt to recast Alsatian and Lorrainer identity, they immediately set oﬀ to categorize the population according to its ancestry and launched—to use the vocabulary of contemporaries—a large-scale épuration designed to weed out ‘‘bad’’ Alsatians and Lorrains.1 Accommodation was not the order of the day; instead, integrating the province within France meant denying its Germanic characteristics, its regional and cultural identity. Between 1918 and 1920 the French thus undertook massive purges of Alsatian and Lorrainer society and reimposed the French language in schools on a generation educated entirely in German. A few years later (1924–25), Edouard Herriot’s Cartel des Gauches government would

5962 FRENCH HISTORICAL STUDIES / 23:1 / sheet 132 of 216 awkwardly challenge the religious privileges located at the heart of border province identity.2 Today, it has been long forgotten that the first French épuration of the twentieth century took place not in the wake of the Vichy regime, but immediately after the First World War in Alsace and Lorraine. Al- though more restricted in geographical scale and less violent in nature (there were no summary executions), this purge was massive in numbers and intensity. The infamous commissions de triage setupbythe French state to cleanse border province society are now erased from collective memory. A few regional writers have mentioned them—with a mixture of regret and bitterness—in their writings, and historians sometimes devote a few, though rarely well-informed, sentences to them. The waves of purges and denunciations are thus seen as a mere detail in the postwar history of the region, dwarfed by the ‘‘unforget- table hours’’ of the 1918 liberation, the problematic transition from German to French rule, the continuous administrative blunders of the French, and growing skepticism and resistance among Alsatians and Lorrainers. Of all these events, however, the commissions de triage rank as the most disturbing. The complex events that followed the war’s end—from the celebrations of the liberation to the purges and denunciations that followed on their heels—were part of a larger process of reconfiguring and redefining national, local, and moral identities in Alsace and Lorraine. This process was initiated by the heavy hand of the state, but once under

1 The term épuration was often used at the time, by both friends and foes of the process. See, for example, ‘‘L’Epuration,’’ in Le Journal d’Alsace-Lorraine, 15 Dec. 1918; Commission de triage: organisation, Archives départementales du Bas-Rhin (hereafter )121 902; unsigned police report, 1919, in Archives nationales, Paris (hereafter )  30 170. 2 This article does not address the linguistic and religious conﬂicts in detail. On language and education see Stephen L. Harp, Learning to be Loyal: Primary Schooling as Nation Building in Alsace and Lorraine, 1850–1940 (DeKalb, Ill., 1998), chap. 9. Tseng 2000.1.5 16:49 FROM LIBERATION TO PURGE TRIALS IN THE ‘‘MYTHIC PROVINCES’’ 131

way it did not always remain under state control, and the process was soon relayed by local inhabitants eager to prove their patriotic credentials, searching for ways to make their voices heard, or motivated by personal gain, sentiments of revenge, and long-standing village feuds. But there was more to the purges than redeﬁnition of identities. The épuration in the lost provinces illustrated three crucial characteristics of twentieth-century French history: the development of increasingly racialized notions of Frenchness that found their origins in the late nineteenth century, the state’s willingness to impose its authority at the expense of republican values, and the centrality of collaboration and resistance in determining national sentiment and trustworthiness. The purges, however, need to be understood within the broader context of

5962 FRENCH HISTORICAL STUDIES / 23:1 / sheet 133 of 216 the myth of a patriotic Alsace-Lorraine and the patriotic frenzy of the liberation, and it is with these two moments that I begin this article.

The Mythic Provinces and French Identity France had relinquished Alsace and a signiﬁcant part of Lorraine (the German-speaking areas and a francophone strip that included Metz) after its shattering defeat in the War of 1870. But as France lost physical control of the region, paradoxically, popular attachment to this little-known and distant region grew. Between 1871 and 1914 Alsace- Lorraine became known in political discourse, in the schools, and in the popular imagination as the ‘‘lost province’’ or the ‘‘twin sisters’’ without which the nation could not be whole.3 On school maps the region was shrouded in purple and black, the colors of mourning. Even after the 1890s, when Alsace-Lorraine receded from the forefront of public discourse, it remained profoundly anchored in the nation’s memory. The myth of Alsace-Lorraine was born during the thirty years after the War of 1870, and it was during this time period that the predomi- nantly German-speaking provinces (in 1910, 87.2 percent of the population considered German or German dialect as its mother tongue), whose signiﬁcant Protestant community (26.5 percent of the population in Alsace in 1910) also distinguished them from the rest of the French nation, became a constituent part of French identity and patriotism.4 Over time, thanks in part to the drawings of the Alsatian carica-

3 Onthememoryoftheprovinces perdues, see François Roth, La Guerre de 70 (Paris, 1990), chap. 20. 4 In Lorraine, German immigration helped the Protestant population reach 12 percent in 1910. The number of Protestants grew from seven thousand to seventy-four thousand between 1870 and 1914 (François Roth, La Lorraine annexée: Etude sur la Présidence de Lorraine dans l’Empire allemand, 1870–1918 [Saint-Ruﬃne, 1976], 139–40). Religious statistics for Alsace include military personnel; see Joseph Rossé, Marcel Stürmel, Albert Bleicher, Fernand Deiber, and Jean Keppi, Das Elsass von 1870–1932, 4 vols. (Colmar, 1936–38), 4:222; for statistics on language, see p. 198. Tseng 2000.1.5 16:49 132 FRENCH HISTORICAL STUDIES

turist l’Oncle Hansi (the pen name of Jean-Jacques Waltz), the Alsatian (but not the Lorrainer) village became the archetype of the French village, and the region to the east of the Vosges mountains was transformed into a sentimental homeland of French nationalism.5 The seeds of future misunderstandings can be found in the paradoxical situation of a nonfrancophone and culturally distinct region being invested with a degree of patriotic symbolism on a scale known to no other French province. Alsace-Lorraine, moreover, had been part and parcel of Ger- many, and its inhabitants German citizens during the critical period of the construction of German national identity between 1871 and 1914. In France, the sense of the nation was substantially refashioned by the new republican regime, and Alsace-Lorraine (or its absence) played an

5962 FRENCH HISTORICAL STUDIES / 23:1 / sheet 134 of 216 essential role in this process.6 Much of the idealized vision of the provinces perdues was related to the profoundly gendered and subordinate place Alsace and Lorraine occupied in the French imaginary. Widely distributed popular imagery depicted Alsace and Lorraine alternatively as sisters in mourning or young women in regional costumes faithfully waiting for the return of the ‘‘motherland.’’7 The imagery of the twin sisters shedding tears of sorrow, resisting the Germans through cunning and resourcefulness, or placed at the mercy of the Germans (often in very sexual terms) proved enduring. After 1871, the allegorical representations of Alsace and Lorraine came to represent French patriotism and la revanche more than Marianne herself, and in a different register than the increasingly popular Joan of Arc whose patriotism was more defensive in nature. But the critical point was that the soeurs jumelles fitted in with cultural stereo- types that represented France as feminine in opposition to a more mas- culine Germany. To the French public Alsace and Lorraine became best known as feminine, sometimes adolescent figures whose complex imagery embodied faithfulness, courage, resignation, determination, and patriotism.8

5 See Jean-Jacques Waltz, Mon Village: Ceux qui n’oublient pas: Images et commentaires par l’Oncle Hansi (Paris, n.d.). 6 On German identity during this period see Alon Conﬁno, The Nation as Local Metaphor: Württemberg, Imperial Germany, and National Memory, 1871–1918 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1997) and Celia Applegate, A Nation of Provincials: The German Idea of Heimat (Berkeley, Calif., 1990). On France, see Raoul Girardet, Le Nationalisme français, 1871–1914 (Paris, 1983); Robert Tombs, ed., Nation- hood and Nationalism in France from Boulangism to the Great War, 1889–1918 (London, 1991); and Pierre Birnbaum, ‘‘La France aux Français’’: Histoire des haines nationalistes (Paris, 1993). 7 Among the most famous was Jean-Jacques Henner’s 1871 painting Elle attend, which depicted a young Alsatian woman, dressed in black with the traditional Alsatian noeuf (headdress), waiting patiently for France’s return. 8 See Georges Bischoﬀ, ‘‘L’Invention de l’Alsace,’’ Saisons d’Alsace 119 (1993): 34–69; Gerd Krumeich, Jeanne d’Arc à travers l’histoire, trans. J. Mély, M.-H. Pateau, and L. Rosenfeld (Paris, 1993), 176–87; Ruth Harris, ‘‘The ‘Child of the Barbarian’: Rape, Race, and Nationalism in France Tseng 2000.1.5 16:49 FROM LIBERATION TO PURGE TRIALS IN THE ‘‘MYTHIC PROVINCES’’ 133

While Alsace-Lorraine, its cities and countryside, and its regional costumes became mythologized in the French imaginary, the majority of the region’s inhabitants gradually accommodated themselves to Ger- man rule. In the late 1890s, however, the growth of an autonomist movement, spurred by growing dissatisfaction with the region’s second- class status in the Reich, signaled that unresolved questions of regional identity remained central to cultural and political life in the area.9 The region was of considerable symbolic importance to Germany—a point studiously ignored by the French—and it beneﬁted from the Empire’s solicitude. Strasbourg, whose cathedral made it a powerful symbol on both sides of the Rhine, was the recipient of substantial investments in infrastructure and was remade the German way.10 By 1914, the region

5962 FRENCH HISTORICAL STUDIES / 23:1 / sheet 135 of 216 had spent close to half a century under German control, and for the new generations the cultural and emotional links with France proved ever more distant. The war’s outbreak, however, radically changed the provinces’ situation. Alsace-Lorraine, which had gradually lost the central position in French political discourse that it had occupied in the last three decades of the nineteenth century and was relegated to what Marc Bloch termed the ‘‘discreet shadows,’’ was thrust anew into the forefront of public concerns.11 The Germans placed the two provinces under harsh military rule for the duration of the conﬂict—strict censorship was enforced, freedom of movement limited, the use of the French language banned in public, and the germanization of French speaking areas of Lorraine accelerated.12 In Lorraine alone some two thousand to three thousand men and women were condemned for anti-German declarations, ranging from speaking French to ‘‘inappropriate’’ behavior toward Ger- man soldiers or the Reich.13 The government arrested prominent politicians and journalists and exiled some to Germany (perhaps four hundred during the course of the war in Lorraine). German immigrants increasingly occupied positions of power and conﬁdence. All these

during the First World War,’’ Past and Present 141 (1993): 204; Maurice Agulhon, Marianne au pouvoir: L’Imagerie et la symbolique républicaine de 1880 à 1914 (Paris, 1989). 9 Autonomism was a complex and ever changing movement. For a perceptive discussion see Paul Smith, ‘‘A la recherche d’une identité nationale en Alsace, 1870–1918,’’ Vingtième siècle: Revue d’histoire 50 (1996): 23–35. 10 The Germans undertook large-scale urban renewal projects, erected imposing administrative buildings, and transformed the city into a center of higher education that boasted the world’s largest university library on the eve of World War I—a library that remains to this day one of France’s best. John E. Craig, Scholarship and Nation Building: The Universities of Strasbourg and Alsatian Society, 1870–1939 (Chicago, 1984), 60. 11 Marc Bloch, L’Etrange défaite (Paris, 1946), 155. 12 On Lorraine during wartime, see François Roth, La Lorraine annexée, 593–653. 13 Roth, La Lorraine annexée, 600. Tseng 2000.1.5 16:49 134 FRENCH HISTORICAL STUDIES

measures contributed to simmering conflict and fueled growing anti- German sentiments. The two provinces paid a heavy toll during the war. The vast majority of Alsatians and Lorrainers who served did so in the German army (380,000); deeming them too unreliable to fight on the western front, the high command sent most to the east. Fifty thousand never returned.14 By the war’s end, the socialist Hermann Wendel sensed that the winds had shifted: in 1914, he argued, four- fifths of Alsace-Lorraine’s population would have voted to remain with Germany; in 1918—in retribution for the province’s suffering during wartime—the overwhelming majority would have chosen France.15 Alsatians and Lorrainers did not fare much better in French hands. Soon after the war’s outbreak, the French interned thousands of Alsa-

5962 FRENCH HISTORICAL STUDIES / 23:1 / sheet 136 of 216 tians and Lorrains living on French soil; they were joined by some eight thousand Alsatians deported from parts of southern Alsace ‘‘liberated’’ during the first weeks of the conflict, and by unspecified numbers of Lorrainers taken hostage during the French army’s initial advance.16 Even the fervent nationalist Maurice Barrès, whose patriotism could surely not be questioned, complained in late 1914 that young Alsa- ciennes and Lorraines (the region’s iconographic symbols), employed as maids and servants in Paris, had been deported to concentration camps.17 Up until the November 1918 armistice, the French continued to intern civilians (Albert Schweitzer among them) from Alsace- Lorraine whose loyalty was judged suspect. Countless others found themselves the victims of discriminatory hiring or bureaucratic practices, not to mention denounced as Germans or boches by patriotic citizens. The pervasive suspicion of Alsatians and Lorrainers, the lingering doubts about their patriotic trustworthiness, did not disappear with the end of wartime circumstances; on the contrary, these attitudes would extend well into the postwar years, and decisively shape relations between the region and its new rulers.

14 Rossé et al., Das Elsass, 1:300. A smaller number—twenty thousand to thirty-eight thousand—fought in French uniform; these included some ten thousand who had crossed the border in the weeks before the war’s outbreak to enroll in the French army.They were joined by Alsatians and Lorrains who lived in France, deserters, and prisoners of war who chose to join the ranks of the French army. On these issues, see Roth, La Lorraine annexée, 626–27, and Alfred Wahl and Jean-Claude Richez, La Vie quotidienne en Alsace entre France et Allemagne, 1850–1950 (Paris, 1993), 247. 15 Rossé et al., Das Elsass, 1:339. 16 The majority of those interned would eventually be released, although French authorities would continue to intern Alsatians and Lorrainers throughout the war years. See Jean-Claude Farcy, Les Camps de concentration français de la Première guerre mondiale, 1914–1920 (Paris, 1995), 51– 62. On the treatment of civilians during wartime see Annette Becker, Oubliés de la Grande guerre: Humanitaire et culture de guerre: Populations occupées, déportés civils, prisonniers de guerre (Paris, 1998). 17 Maurice Barrès in L’Echo de Paris, 3 Dec. 1914, cited in Les Alsaciens-Lorrains en France pendant la guerre (Paris, 1915), 87. French authorities consistently referred to internment camps as camps de concentration during the First World War. Tseng 2000.1.5 16:49 FROM LIBERATION TO PURGE TRIALS IN THE ‘‘MYTHIC PROVINCES’’ 135

Celebrating the Return to the Mère Patrie French troops met with an enthusiastic welcome as they marched through Strasbourg, Mulhouse, Colmar, and Metz in late November 1918. Hundreds of young women in Alsatian headdress and costumes, sporting tricolor cockades, holding flowers, and waving French flags or white handkerchiefs turned out to greet the poilus. The streets were decked in tricolor flags, bands played the Marseillaise,barsgaveoutfree beer to soldiers, and huge crowds of people lined the streets, peered from windows, and climbed on roofs to give French soldiers a welcome that exceeded all expectations (especially in Strasbourg). But the ani- mated welcome had more to do with the understandable relief that the war (fought in part on Alsatian soil for the control of the Vosges ridges) 5962 FRENCH HISTORICAL STUDIES / 23:1 / sheet 137 of 216 had ended, that famine and widespread shortages would be averted, that Alsatian and Lorrainer soldiers would be returning home, and that Alsace-Lorraine would not pay the heavy price of defeat but on the contrary share, however ambiguously, in the fruits of victory. For the bour- geoisie, the arrival of French troops meant social peace, and the end of the threatening revolutionary movement of soldiers and workers that emerged in urban areas in the midst of the German military collapse. French soldiers were soon followed by Marshal Ferdinand Foch, and on 8 December by President Raymond Poincaré, who headed three spe- cially chartered trains carrying hundreds of senators, deputies, elected Paris officials, members of alsacien and lorrain associations in exile, and journalists who came to reclaim Strasbourg as France’s own.18 The spontaneous outbursts of enthusiasm for French troops often took a carnivalesque and religious coloration and revealed how much underlying sympathies for France had developed during four years of German wartime military dictatorship. But spontaneity was only part of the story. Local authorities played a crucial role by forming ‘‘reception committees’’ that printed posters calling upon ‘‘truly Alsatian young women’’ (those of mixed ancestry were presumably unwelcome) to greet their liberators in Alsatian costumes, and gave them precise instructions on how to do so.19 The Alsatian costume, a rarity at the time,

18 On the voyages of Foch and Georges Clemenceau see   30 249; on Strasbourg’s liberation, see Archives municipales de Strasbourg (hereafter ), Evènements historiques 19 and Archives contemporaines, II, 2; and 1918: Les Glorieuses journées de Lorraine et d’Alsace (Nancy, 1919). On the liberation of Alsace see the work of Jean-Claude Richez, ‘‘Conseils ouvriers et conseils de soldats: Revendications de classes et revendications nationales en Alsace en novembre 1918,’’ Mémoire de Maîtrise, Université des lettres et sciences humaines de Strasbourg, 1979, and ‘‘La Révolution de novembre 1918 en Alsace dans les petites villes et les campagnes,’’ Revue d’Alsace 107 (1981): 153–68. For the patriotic perspective, see Jacques Granier, Novembre 18 en Alsace: Album du cinquantenaire (Strasbourg, 1969). 19 , Archives contemporaines, II, 1. Tseng 2000.1.5 16:49 136 FRENCH HISTORICAL STUDIES

was worn only in rural villages on festive occasions, and its use in 1918 was the object of debate both among urban elites and rural inhabitants; some opposed this masquerade and could not understand why Stras- bourg’s demoiselles wanted to be ‘‘disguised as peasants.’’20 But the costume, shunned by French revolutionaries, had, thanks to widespread popular engravings, become for the Third Republic a dual symbol of Alsace’s quaint ‘‘attachment’’ to France and its sense of local identity.21 Out of ‘‘charming daintiness’’ (the words of the Michelin guide), Alsace presented itself to its liberators in the traditional ‘‘uniform’’ that the French had expected women to wear.22 Alsatian writer René Schickele had a more dyspeptic view: he questioned whether all young women who wore the costume on 18 November were of longstanding Alsatian

5962 FRENCH HISTORICAL STUDIES / 23:1 / sheet 138 of 216 ancestry; a few years later he noted that the costumed women at a Paris exposition could not speak a word of Alsatian dialect or German.23 Most French had a one-dimensional understanding of the complex motivations behind the patriotic upsurge in November 1918. Air force captain René Chambre was one of the first soldiers to enter Alsace on 19 November 1918; his encounter with hundreds of flag-waving Alsa- tians, including numerous blond women in costume marching toward the French border, constituted for him the materialization of the ‘‘entire vision of our childhood...Weareenteringthedreamfullyalive.’’24 The French mistook the celebrations and rejoicings of the liberation as another confirmation of Alsace’s out-and-out patriotism, and this contributed to reinforcing popular perceptions of Alsace as the most patriotic of provinces. Glorified images of the liberation of Alsace would soon make it into schoolbooks and forge enduring memories in the minds of French schoolchildren. The celebration did not reach epic proportions everywhere, however. Industrial parts of Lorraine along the German border proved more subdued in their welcome. Some rural Protestant regions in Al- sace (the region of Saverne) displayed markedly less enthusiasm than larger cities, and rural areas in general tended to downplay their welcome. In northern Alsace (Oberbetschdorf), military authorities claimed Catholics greeted French troops with enthusiasm, while Prot-

20 Charles Spindler, L’Alsace pendant la guerre (Strasbourg, 1925), 709; Auguste Braun, ‘‘L’En- trée des français à Strasbourg: Récit détaillé des évènements,’’ Manuscript, n.d., , Archives contemporaines, II, 2. 21 L’Alsace et les combats des Vosges, 1914–1918, 2 vols., Guides illustrés Michelin des champs de bataille (Clermont-Ferrand, 1920), 1:7. 22 Strasbourg, Guides illustrés Michelin des champs de bataille (Clermont-Ferrand, 1919), 12; Louis Madelin, Les Heures merveilleuses d’Alsace et de Lorraine (Paris, 1919), 60. 23 René Schickele, ‘‘Das Ewige Elsass,’’ in his Die Grenze (Berlin, 1932), 18–20. 24 Granier, Novembre 18 en Alsace, 50–51. Tseng 2000.1.5 16:49 FROM LIBERATION TO PURGE TRIALS IN THE ‘‘MYTHIC PROVINCES’’ 137

estants adopted a ‘‘reserved, almost hostile’’ attitude; the liberation revived long-standing enmities and led to clashes between youths of both confessions.25 The protestant Hanauerland was reputedly refrac- tory to French inﬂuence, but some soldiers appear to have met with a warm welcome, while others faced a more reserved reception.26 Protes- tants, closely bound to German culture via Lutheranism, worried about their future as a minority in a Catholic country. Some Catholics, on the contrary, welcomed the return of French rule.27 Wine growers worried about their economic future in the world of French viticulture. And the numerous Alsatians and Lorrains who had fought in German uniform discreetly returned to their homes and kept a low proﬁle. No sooner had the celebrations died down than French civil and

5962 FRENCH HISTORICAL STUDIES / 23:1 / sheet 139 of 216 military authorities turned to the task of administering the newly recovered provinces and ‘‘reintegrating’’ them within France. They proved ill-prepared for the task, however.Within a few years France had squan- dered the important reservoir of sympathy with which it began, and had succeeded in alienating, in ways large and small, a substantial por- tion of the Alsatian and Lorrainer population. While Alsace-Lorraine constituted a key war aim, until the ﬁnal months of the war the government had done little preparation to reestablish governance in the region.28 And the French ignored the advice of even the most rabidly patriotic Alsatians and Lorrains who urged them not to import large numbers of bureaucrats unfamiliar with the region’s particularisms, but to rely instead on the services of carefully chosen local elites, some of whom had spent decades in exile.29 The war’s end also brought about a gradual shift away from the heavily gendered representations of the province. The twin sisters became increasingly referred to as children. This was not accidental: the twin sisters had resisted German rule largely on their own, and it was time to return them to the nation’s control. ‘‘France comes to you,’’ wrote General Henri Gouraud, ‘‘as a mother comes to her dear child,

25 Administrateur militaire de Wissembourg to haut commissaire de la République à Stras- bourg,3Mar.1919, 121  904. The mayor, schoolteacher, pastor, and a few youths were soon hauled before the commission de triage. For other examples see Richez, ‘‘La Révolution de novembre 1918 en Alsace,’’ 164–65. 26 See Jean de Pange, Les Meules de Dieu: France-Allemagne Europe (Paris, 1951), 155; for the reserved welcome, see the novel by Pauline de Broglie, comtesse de Pange, Le Beau Jardin (Paris, 1923), 8–9. 27 For more on the problem of confession, Alfred Wahl, Confession et comportement dans les campagnes d’Alsace et de Bade, 1871–1939, 2 vols. ([Strasbourg], 1980), 2:1130–33. 28 During the war it did establish the Conférence d’Alsace-Lorraine whose role was to plan for the resumption of French rule. The Conférence’s opinion, however, was purely consultative in nature. See Procès-verbaux de la Conférence d’Alsace-Lorraine, 2 vols. (Paris, 1917–19). 29 See Emile Wetterlé, Ce qu’était l’Alsace-Lorraine et ce qu’elle sera (Paris, 1917), 313–16, and L’Alsace-Lorraine doit rester française (Paris, 1917), 236–37. Tseng 2000.1.5 16:49 138 FRENCH HISTORICAL STUDIES

lost and later found.’’ Speaking in Strasbourg, Raymond Poincaré, the president of the Republic, spoke of the ‘‘children we have regained [enfants retrouvés]’’ and added ‘‘the plebiscite is completed. Alsace has thrown herself, crying with joy, at the neck of her long lost mother [mère retrouvée].’’30 Now that the children had returned home, however, it was time for them to follow the household’s (French) habits.31 Patriotic Alsa- tians internalized this discourse and underscored their pride at being ‘‘obedient children.’’32 When Poincaré arrived in Strasbourg, wrote one commentator, he found a daughter (Alsace-Lorraine) ‘‘already sitting comfortably on her mother’s lap.’’33 But interestingly enough, France was not only reunited with its daughter, but also its sons who had been absent from the imagery of the lost province. ‘‘What nation,’’ wrote

5962 FRENCH HISTORICAL STUDIES / 23:1 / sheet 140 of 216 Louis Madelin, ‘‘had witnessed among its sons such fidelity?’’34 The imagery of a mother returning to embrace her long-lost children, combined with the obsession with fidelity, set the tone for French policies in Alsace and Lorraine. Some patriotic essayists argued that even those ‘‘children’’ most compromised by the German Empire should be allowed to return to the family’s fold, much like children who had ‘‘dis- owned their mother but are conscious of the wretchedness of this un- natural act.’’35 The growing emphasis on family reflected the view that Alsace was biologically part of France. It was but one step from the familial imagery of the mère patrie and her children, destined in large part for popular consumption, to the ethnic and racial discourses that also structured the encounter between the French and the Alsaciens-Lorrains.The vast literature on the ‘‘Alsace- Lorraine question’’ published during the period of German rule (and especially during the Great War) was far from devoid of racial under- tones. From caricatures to pamphlets and academic works, Alsace- Lorraine was increasingly described as having formed the borderline between Celts (i.e., the Gauls) and the Germanic tribes—an outpost of Latin civilization on the Rhine. Alsace-Lorraine, it was argued, had been part and parcel of Gaul; it later came under Roman control when Caesar conquered Gaul and fixed its boundary along the Rhine river.36

30 1918: Les Glorieuses journées,41,59,64. 31 Georges Delahache, ‘‘La Réadaptation de l’Alsace,’’ RevuedeParis,15 Mar. 1925, 327. 32 One Alsatian wrote (5 Dec. 1919) to the haut commissaire de la République in Stras- bourgthathewas‘‘proud...tobetheobedient child of such a worthy and good representative of the French state’’ and signed his letter ‘‘your devoted child.’’  121  899. 33 Madelin, Les Heures merveilleuses,7. 34 Madelin, Les Heures merveilleuses, 240. 35 Wetterlé, L’Alsace-Lorraine doit rester française, 233–34. 36 Authors often invoked Caesar’s Commentaries of the Gallic Wars to support the view that the Rhine was the border of Gaul. See Jules Roche, Alsace-Lorraine: French Land (Paris, n.d.), 7–8. For caricatures see Henri Zislin, Sourires d’Alsace (Paris, n.d.). Tseng 2000.1.5 16:49 FROM LIBERATION TO PURGE TRIALS IN THE ‘‘MYTHIC PROVINCES’’ 139

The Romans brought with them Latin culture, and, historians Ernest Lavisse and Christian Pfister maintained, latinity perhaps struck deeper roots in Alsace-Lorraine than in the rest of Gaul.37 But the longstanding unity with France was not just historical or cultural, it was racial. The Alsatian ‘‘race,’’ wrote Camille Jullian of the Collège de France, was gauloise (Gallic), not Germanic, and the Alsatians did not physically resemble the Germans—on the contrary, these ‘‘eastern meridionals’’ were vivacious, supple, and had a distinct and flexible frame.38 Others distinguished a ‘‘Latin race’’ on one bank of the Rhine and a ‘‘Ger- manic race’’ on the other side.39 After the Great War, the 1919 Miche- lin guide to Alsace’s battlefields continued to underline the region’s French racial character: The Alsatian race remained, by and large, of

5962 FRENCH HISTORICAL STUDIES / 23:1 / sheet 141 of 216 Celtic type; Alsatian men, though chieﬂy blond, did not have the same facial and physical characteristics as Germans; and Alsatian women, thinner than German ones, resembled women from northern France.40 This literature found its roots in the racial nationalism that emerged in the late nineteenth century. Its purpose was clear: to demonstrate that Alsace-Lorraine had been part and parcel of France (i.e., Gaul) from the beginning, and shared with the nation a common racial (Celtic), cultural (Latin, ‘‘meridional’’), and geographic (the Rhine as a natural frontier) heritage. This was a profound shift from Fustel de Coulanges, who had argued in 1870 that Alsace might well be German by race, but that it was French by choice.41

Cleansing and Categorizing: Defining Frenchness The growing ethnic and racial discourse surrounding Alsace-Lorraine influenced French military officials, civil servants, and even those returning from exile (les revenants) in the immediate postwar years. French authorities quickly set forward on a massive purge and catego-

37 Ernest Lavisse and Christian Pﬁster, La Question d’Alsace-Lorraine (Paris, n.d., [1917]), 3. 38 Camille Jullian, L’Alsacefrançaise:Aunamidufront(Paris, n.d., [1917]), 4–5. For a more extended discussion see idem, Le Rhin gaulois (Paris, n.d., [1915]), and Peter Schöttler’s excellent analysis in ‘‘Le Rhin comme enjeu historiographique dans l’entre-deux-guerres: Vers une histoire des mentalités frontalières,’’ Genèses 14 (1994): 63–82. 39 Charles Weimann, France et Allemagne: Les Deux Races (Paris, 1918). 40 L’Alsace et les combats des Vosges, 1:6. For other examples of ethnic themes, see Georges Delahache (pseud. of Lucien Aaron), Petite Histoire de l’Alsace-Lorraine (Paris, 1918), 12; Wetterlé, L’Alsace-Lorraine doit rester française, 22; Benjamin Vallotton, ...Dis-moiquelesttonpays?...(Nancy, 1919), 8; 1918: Les Glorieuses Journées, 62; Jeanne et Frédéric Regamey, L’Alsace au lendemain de la conquête (Paris, 1912), 1–3. For a more balanced view, see Rodolphe Reuss, Histoire d’Alsace (Paris, 1934). See also Karl-Heinz Rothenberger, Die elsass-lothringische Heimat-und Autonomiebewegung zwi- schen den beiden Weltkriegen (Frankfurt, 1976), 35. Lucien Febvre has penned a brilliant critique of the ethnic interpretation (Le Rhin: Histoire, mythes et réalités [Paris, 1997]). 41 Fustel de Coulanges, ‘‘L’Alsace est-elle allemande ou française?’’ in his Questions contemporaines, 2d ed. (Paris, 1917), 96–99. Tseng 2000.1.5 16:49 140 FRENCH HISTORICAL STUDIES

rization of Alsatian and Lorrain society in the hope of reshaping the region’s identity. Their objective was threefold: to expel those of German blood in the hope of restoring racial purity; to categorize inhabitants according to their ethnic background; to purge society of those Alsa- tians and Lorrainers suspected of having collaborated with the Ger- mans or of harboring sympathies for the German cause.42 These three undertakings were closely interrelated.The French wanted nothing less than to recast the sense of national allegiance in Alsace-Lorraine, and they did so following racial, ethnic, cultural, and moral criteria. Diﬀer- ent understandings of what it meant to be French crystallized around the épuration in Alsace-Lorraine. What explains the decision to cleanse, categorize, and purge? The

5962 FRENCH HISTORICAL STUDIES / 23:1 / sheet 142 of 216 desire for revenge that had been latent since 1870, the enduring myth of Alsace-Lorraine as the most patriotic of provinces, and the profound hostility and hatred of the Germans that emanated from the Great War are the most obvious factors. After four years of war propaganda that focused on the barbaric nature of German soldiers and the ‘‘atrocities’’ they had committed on French soil,43 it was difficult to envisage accommodation with German officials—even in Alsace-Lorraine. During the war, German military authorities had arrested, interned, imprisoned, and even executed a certain number of Alsatians and Lorrainers for a whole range of antinational crimes ranging from Deutschfeindlichkeit to spying; the purges were designed to uncover those who had denounced ‘‘good Alsatians.’’ Restoring the province to the patriotic purity so dear to the myth meant cleansing it of German influences and indigenous traitors. Other factors played a role as well. An influential number of Alsatians had opted for French citizenship and established themselves in France after the War of 1870;44 they organized interest groups and, after 1918, pressured the regime to act against German settlers. They often worked as consultants and advisors for the government, and some returned to Alsace where their knowledge of the region and its dialect, albeit dated, was much needed by the authorities. German immigrants were the first targets of administrative repri- sals and popular resentment. One month after the 11 November armistice, 150 Alsatian men met in Strasbourg to form a comité d’épuration whose objective was ‘‘to purge Alsace of the boches who deserve it’’ and to cleanse Strasbourg’s municipal administration. ‘‘Good Alsatians’’ could

42 The word collaborated was not used at the time. 43 John Horne and Alan Kramer, ‘‘German ‘Atrocities’ and Franco-German Opinion, 1914: The Evidence of German Soldiers’ Diaries,’’ Journal of Modern History 66 (1994): 1–33. 44 Alfred Wahl, L’Option et l’émigration des Alsaciens-Lorrains 1871–1872 (Paris, 1974). Tseng 2000.1.5 16:49 FROM LIBERATION TO PURGE TRIALS IN THE ‘‘MYTHIC PROVINCES’’ 141

not stand idly by and watch the boches preserve their influence.45 French authorities expelled large numbers of Germans (more often than not, without a hearing), and pressured countless others to leave. They quickly turned their attention to the bureaucracy, and by late 1920 some 11,500 German civil servants had either voluntarily or forcibly departed. Schoolteachers, because of their role in the teaching of language and the dissemination of wartime propaganda, found themselves first in the line of fire.The new French rulers targeted high-ranking municipal and regional administrators, railroad workers, and bureaucrats, along with German pastors and priests. They also expelled political opponents such as Socialists and autonomists. German immigration had played an important role in the social

5962 FRENCH HISTORICAL STUDIES / 23:1 / sheet 143 of 216 and economic life of Alsace and Lorraine after 1870. On the war’s eve close to 300,000 Germans (including 70,000 members of the military) lived in Alsace-Lorraine. They had settled, by and large, in the towns and occupied key positions within industry, the liberal professions, the civil service, and within the skilled and unskilled work force. Germans comprised 35 percent of Strasbourg’s inhabitants at the beginning of the century. By 1918 some Germans had been established in Alsace- Lorraine for decades. Their relatively high intermarriage rate with Alsatians strengthened regional social ties to Germany.46 The growing links between the immigrant communities and Alsatians made the massive repatriations in the postwar years all the more diﬃcult. More than 110,000 German men, women, and children living in Alsace crossed the Rhine back to Germany between late 1918 and late 1920. Some had been expelled, others lost their jobs, and yet others driven by fear quickly packed up and left when they saw the new order of things.47 Approximately 100,000 Germans in Lorraine met the same fate. Near Strasbourg, those expelled, allowed only a few hand-held suitcases, crossed the Rhine with their heads bowed under the jeers of ‘‘patriotic’’ (and sometimes rock-throwing) Alsatians who cried ‘‘death to the boches’’ and ‘‘in the Rhine with you.’’ Amused French soldiers stood and watched. Old Alsatians complained of an ‘‘ignominious’’ and ‘‘pitiful’’ spectacle.48 Later, Alsatian Catholic historians sympathetic to

45 Letter of J. Ringeisser, secretary of the Comité d’épuration, 27 Dec. 1918,  121  899. 46 François Uberﬁll, ‘‘L’Immigration allemande entre 1871 et 1918,’’ Saisons d’Alsace 128 (1995): 63–71. 47 See the ﬁgures in Rossé et al., Das Elsass, 4:87. On expulsions from Metz see Philippe Schillinger, ‘‘Metz de l’Allemagne à la France, 1918–19,’’ Annuaire de la société d’histoire et d’archéologie de la Lorraine (1974): 123–31. 48 Letter from an old Alsatian whose brother had been expelled, 13 Dec. 1918,  121  Tseng 2000.1.5 16:49 142 FRENCH HISTORICAL STUDIES

autonomism (a broad movement that campaigned for regional self- determination) placed the blame on mobs led by hysterical women, unemployed journeymen, and men ‘‘in bourgeois clothes’’ who taunted and insulted the Germans, pelted them with horse manure, and spat at them. Unable to explain convincingly why Alsatians had turned with such fury against Germans, the authors accused those whose sense of regional identity was presumably tenuous: women and the down-and- out.49 This was easier than confronting the fact that the war and liberation had shattered the mythical unity of Alsatian society. While Germans ﬂed the region en masse, the new French administration was busy issuing identity cards to all Alsace and Lorraine residents over the age of ﬁfteen. In theory these identity cards did

5962 FRENCH HISTORICAL STUDIES / 23:1 / sheet 144 of 216 not confer citizenship, they merely accorded diﬀerent travel rights to individuals based on their ancestry. The state classiﬁed individuals into four categories, A, B, C, or D, depending on their birthplace, the birthplace of their parents, and sometimes that of their grandparents.50 Individuals born in Alsace-Lorraine, and whose parents (or grandparents) had once been French citizens (because they were born in Alsace or Lorraine before 1870) acquired the much sought after Carte A. Those born in Alsace-Lorraine who had only one French an- cestor (a German- or Swiss-born mother or grandmother, for example) were given a Carte B. Authorities gave citizens of the defeated powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Turkey, and Bulgaria) a Carte D, and all other foreigners (e.g., Italian immigrants) received a Carte C. A child whose father was of longstanding Alsatian heritage (Carte A), but whose mother had a Carte B because her family had a small German component, ended up, more often than not, with a Carte B.51 An Alsacienne whose spouse was from Baden, across the Rhine, would be issued a Carte A; her husband, however, had to make do with a Carte D, and their children Cartes B. Some of the most patriotic, francophile Alsatians had

899; ‘‘Zum Abschied an der Rheinbrücke,’’ Strassburger Neuen Zeitung, 3 Dec. 1918, reproduced in Rossé et al., Das Elsass, 4:408–9. 49 Rossé et al., Das Elsass, 1:522. 50 This was not a complete novelty. During the war the French state had classiﬁed Alsatians and Lorrainers according to their degree of trustworthiness and their national heritage. Those deemed reliable received a carte tricolore allowing them substantial freedom of movement. 51 For the instructions concerning the various cartes see Général commandant l’armée, ‘‘Ar- rêté relatif à la police dans les communes d’Alsace-Lorraine,’’ 14 Dec. 1918, , Archives contemporaines, II, 5; Avis oﬃciels pour l’arrondissement de Château-Salins,no.10,5Mar.1919,in  30 170. Both Rossé et al., Das Elsass, 1:529, and Wahl and Richez, La Vie quotidienne en Alsace, 118, argue that the children of a long-standing Alsatian (Carte A) married to an Alsatian woman of partial German ancestry (Carte B) would receive a Carte A if they were still considered minors, and a Carte B otherwise. Tseng 2000.1.5 16:49 FROM LIBERATION TO PURGE TRIALS IN THE ‘‘MYTHIC PROVINCES’’ 143

German blood in their veins, and they reacted with predictable outrage at their second-rate classiﬁcation.52 By distinguishing between ‘‘pure blooded’’ Alsatians and Lorrains, those of mixed ancestry, boches, and foreigners, the card system crystallized public opinion around issues of ethnicity. A Carte B wasastain that few wanted to display in public; it led to continuous suspicions and humiliations (‘‘the boches called me French—now that we are French, lo and behold I am boche’’).53 The Carte A, on the other hand, conferred legitimacy (and potential Frenchness) on its holder. Many of those who penned denunciations (of Germans, of fellow Alsatians and Lorrains) in the year after the armistice made their Carte A status clear, and often signed their letters ‘‘good Frenchmen,’’ or as some put it, ‘‘alsacien pur

5962 FRENCH HISTORICAL STUDIES / 23:1 / sheet 145 of 216 sang’’ or ‘‘une bonne Alsacienne, Carte A.’’ 54 The classification of the population was a divisive issue in the postwar years, because it was thought, not without reason, that identity cards would have a direct bearing on citizenship in the future. The establishment of a system of identity cards based on ethnicity sent a powerful message to Alsatians and Lorrainers, and it was all the more powerful because French citizenship was founded on a combination of jus soli and jus sanguinis.55 When it came to questions of citizenship, however—and the stipula- tions of the Versailles Treaty would spell this out—Alsace-Lorraine was acaseapart.56 This was a telling point. After all, if the mythic Alsace- Lorraine represented quintessential Frenchness, why should citizenship matters be different there than in the rest of the nation? True enough, it would have required considerable political deftness to adopt more open policies in the wake of four years of conflict with Germany. But far more was involved here, I would argue, than the contingencies and consequences of the Great War. The classification system paved the way for the recriminations, denunciations, and purges that would leave enduring marks in border

52 Spindler, L’Alsace pendant la guerre, 757. See also Georges Delahache, ‘‘Strasbourg, 1918– 1920,’’ RevuedeParis(1920), 196–97. 53 Delahache, ‘‘Strasbourg,’’ 197. 54  121  906. 55 For a general description of citizenship on each side of the Rhine, see Rogers Brubaker, Citizenship and Nationhood in France and Germany (Cambridge, Mass., 1992). See also Dominique Schnapper, La Communauté des citoyens: Sur l’idée moderne de nation (Paris, 1994). 56 Citizenship would be determined by the provisions of the Versailles treaty. In a nutshell, the treaty stipulated that those who had been French before 1870, as well as their descendents, would be reintegrated into French citizenship. However those with a German father or grand- father among their ascendents did not qualify for reintegration and had to apply for naturaliza- tion. See Traité de paix entre les puissances alliées et associées et l’Allemagne, et protocole signés à Versailles le 28 Juin 1919 (Paris, 1919), 47. Tseng 2000.1.5 16:49 144 FRENCH HISTORICAL STUDIES

province society. By categorizing people according to their ethnicity, the French provoked profound divisions within Alsatian and Lorrainer society, and contributed to weaken the social cement that bound communities together. The state’s objective was to strengthen its authority and to create multiple categories of Alsatians and Lorrainers with different rights. The card system relegated 40 percent of all adult residents to second-class status and fueled legitimate fears concerning their future. True enough—and contrary to common assumption—the cards did not confer French citizenship; they only constituted a form of identiﬁcation and discrimination. But there were few reassurances here for 10 percent of the population categorized as mixed heritage, and the 28 percent determined to be Germans, many of them longstand-

5962 FRENCH HISTORICAL STUDIES / 23:1 / sheet 146 of 216 ing residents.57 In December 1918, only those with the much sought after Carte A (59 percent of all residents) could travel freely throughout Alsace-Lorraine. The Carte A was also a passport to voter regis- tration (i.e., political rights) and currency exchange (and, though not officially, employment). Moreover, the card system encouraged Alsa- tians to discriminate between themselves: some Carte A holders soon thought those with Carte B should cede them their place in food lines.58 The large-scale categorization of individuals was eerily premoni- tory of restrictions placed on the rights of the newly naturalized in the late 1930s, and especially of the Vichy regime’s policy toward the Jews. Beginning in 1940 the French state devoted considerable efforts to defining who was Jewish and who was not, and the first Statut des Juifs placed racial criteria at the forefront. In both 1918 and 1940, then, the republican concept of citizenship was jettisoned in favor of an increasingly racial one—something that pointed to profound tensions in France between competing visions of nationhood.59

The Mechanisms of the Epuration After the First World War, weeding out Germans and categorizing residents of Alsace-Lorraine according to their ethnic purity was not

57 Foreigners accounted for 2.9 percent of all residents (Carte C). Statistics from Grayson L. Kirk, ‘‘French Administrative Policies in Alsace-Lorraine, 1918–1929’’ (Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin, 1931), 137. Figures on the breakdown of identity cards are similar for Strasbourg. See  121  952. 58 Rossé et al., Das Elsass, 1:529; Wahl and Richez, La Vie quotidienne en Alsace, 118. 59 In the second Statut des Juifs ( June 1940) the deﬁnition of Jew mixed religious and racial criteria. See Michael R. Marrus and Robert O. Paxton, VichyFranceandtheJews(New York, 1981), 92–95; François and Renée Bédarida, ‘‘La Persécution des Juifs,’’ in La France des années noires,ed. Jean-Pierre Azéma and François Bédarida (Paris, 1993), 2:136–39. For changes in citizenship law see Vicki Caron, ‘‘The Antisemitic Revival in France in the 1930s: The Socioeconomic Dimension Reconsidered,’’ Journal of Modern History 70 (1998): 24–73. Tseng 2000.1.5 16:49 FROM LIBERATION TO PURGE TRIALS IN THE ‘‘MYTHIC PROVINCES’’ 145

enough; it was necessary to purge the Alsatians and Lorrains, identify and punish those politically, morally, and socially compromised by association with the German regime. To organize these purges and give them a semblance of legality, the French established commissions de triage on 2 November 1918.60 The concept of triage had been forwarded as early as 1915 by the abbé Emile Wetterlé, former Alsatian Catholic deputy to the Reichstag, who escaped to France in 1914, joined the cause of French nationalism, and made a profession of writing rabidly anti-German pamphlets.61 Once the lost provinces had been recovered, Wetterlé argued, France had to sort out the immigrant Germans from the true Alsatians and Lorrains; and he also proposed to use triage to separate the wheat from the chaﬀ among civil servants in Alsace-

5962 FRENCH HISTORICAL STUDIES / 23:1 / sheet 147 of 216 Lorraine.62 But Wetterlé resisted any larger forms of discrimination against those (save the most guilty) who had collaborated with the Ger- mans in ways large and small.63 French authorities, however, took the concept of triage one critical step further. Inauspiciously named—triage, after all, evoked the grim ‘‘sorting out’’ of wounded soldiers first developed by the French army in the Great War’s field hospitals—the triage commission’s role was to sort out ‘‘good’’ and ‘‘bad’’ Alsatians and Lorrainers, to classify them according to their degree of patriotism, their morality, and their activity under German rule, so as to weed out undesirable elements of all kinds and sentence the guilty to surveillance in Alsace-Lorraine, internment in the ‘‘interior’’ of France, or expulsion from French territory.64 In 1918 few could ignore that triage had acquired new and poignant meaning on the field of battle. In wartime, the triage of the wounded separated those who would live from those who would not; in Alsace-Lorraine triage separated those deemed fit to belong to the national community from those who were not. The commissions de triage, which functioned from November 1918 to October 1919, operated in a legal vacuum. While French troops occu-

60 See  121  899, and ‘‘Instruction concernant l’administration de l’Alsace-Lorraine et ses rapports avec l’autorité militaire,’’ in  121  902. 61 In March 1915 French authorities had also set up triage camps (dépôts de triage)to‘‘sort through’’ individuals who had been arrested or evacuated because of their nationality (Germans, Alsatians, Lorrains, and so on) or because they were considered suspect. Wetterlé probably bor- rowed the concept of triage from here. See Farcy, LesCampsdeconcentration, 189–93. 62 Emile Wetterlé, La Grande guerre: L’Alsace-Lorraine (Paris, 1915), cited in Rossé et al., Das Elsass, 1:530. During the war, Wetterlé thought that triage needed to be undertaken in the French internment camps where Alsatians and Lorrains were unjustly victimized and taken for Germans. See Emile Wetterlé, Ce qu’était l’Alsace-Lorraine et ce qu’elle sera (Paris, 1917), 306–8. 63 Wetterlé, L’Alsace-Lorraine doit rester française, 211, 232–34. 64 Triage also evoked the internment camps (camps de triage) for foreigners (including Alsa- tians and Lorrainers) set up by the French during the war. Tseng 2000.1.5 16:49 146 FRENCH HISTORICAL STUDIES

pied Alsace-Lorraine on 18 November 1918, and while France’s claim to the region was not seriously challenged by the Allies, the exact me- chanics of the territorial handover would only be spelled out by the Versailles treaty. In the seven-month interim, the region was governed by a civil-military administration responsible to the War Ministry,65 and its inhabitants found themselves in an intermediary position: they were not yet French citizens nor did they enjoy the same judicial rights as the French. The ratiﬁcation of the Versailles Treaty in June 1919 brought their ambiguous position to an end; in the words of the Commissaire général de la République in Strasbourg, the treaty turned ‘‘Alsatians into French citizens’’ and brought the triage commissions to an end, for ‘‘the grievances formulated against bad Alsatians no longer have

5962 FRENCH HISTORICAL STUDIES / 23:1 / sheet 148 of 216 any reason to exist.’’66 This was an understated way of admitting that the crimes with which many Alsatians had been charged had no basis under French law. The triage commissions are best described as military decision- making bodies with a hand-picked civilian component. Located in sig- nificant urban areas, they were presided by an officer appointed by the commanding general, and staffed by two Alsatian or Lorrainer members: one named by Paris, usually a patriotic Alsatian or Lorrain émi- gré returning after a long absence, and another (most often a trusted local notable with francophile sentiments) chosen by the local military administrator. Of the six Alsatians named by Paris to serve on the commissions de triage of northern Alsace, four lived in Paris and two served in the army; all six had probably opted for France in 1871.67 The triage commission’s decision was reviewed by a general, who passed it on to a triage review commission68 that could uphold or reverse the judgment. The final decision, however, was taken by the commanding general. From start to finish the army was firmly in command. The triage commission’s powers, and its indifference to the rights of the accused, were even more troubling than its composition. On the basis of rumors, accusations, denunciations, or official requests, the triage commissions convoked ‘‘suspects.’’ There was no consistent sense of who was a suspect, what kind of accusations merited investigation, and what constituted acceptable evidence.69 Paris had instructed that

65 Bulletin oﬃciel d’Alsace et Lorraine 1 (1918–19): 1. 66 Commissaire général de la République à Strasbourg, 21 Oct. 1919,  121  902. 67 Quartier général de l’Armée, 15 Dec. 1918,  121  902. They could have also been descendents of Alsatians who had opted for French citizenship. Northern Alsace—the Bas-Rhin— had eight commissions de triage. 68 The review boards were called Commissionsdetriageetdeclassementdu2edegré. 69 Note of Colonel Michel, Président de la commission de triage de Haguenau, 24 Jan. 1919,  121  902. Tseng 2000.1.5 16:49 FROM LIBERATION TO PURGE TRIALS IN THE ‘‘MYTHIC PROVINCES’’ 147

triage commissions had no right to review questions of citizenship and could only investigate Germans under exceptional circumstances, but these directives were consistently ignored.70 The commissions de triage called in suspects by mail, providing them with only a cursory mention of the charges (‘‘for an aﬀair that concerns you’’; ‘‘to answer for anti-French acts’’). At best, the triage commissions solicited letters and additional evidence concerning suspects, although they were under no obligation to do so. Hearings were expedited quickly and in secrecy: the accused faced the three-person triage board alone; they had no right to legal representation, nor could they call witnesses in their defense. On the other hand, they could be confronted with their accusers, who enjoyed the right to call witnesses to buttress their accusations.71

5962 FRENCH HISTORICAL STUDIES / 23:1 / sheet 149 of 216 In some cases, the accused never saw their accusers and had to defend themselves in the face of charges made by ‘‘good patriots.’’ In others, the commissions condemned the accused without ever having granted them a hearing.72 The commissions de triage were little more than sham trials that openly trampled on the rights of the accused. Opponents of the trials drew parallels with the Inquisition and intimated that the boche ter- ror was being replaced with the tricolor one; others denounced them as comités de salut public.73 Communication between ‘‘judges’’ and ‘‘suspects’’ was difficult, if not impossible, and the commission’s members, who had virtually no legal background, found themselves ill equipped to undertake investigations about a society of which they knew little, and in a language they did not comprehend. Of six officers presiding over triage commissions in northern Alsace, two spoke not a word of German, one understood it, and another had some knowledge of dialect as well; only two spoke both dialect and German. None had the slightest legal background.74 The commissions were thus linguistically and legally poorly prepared for their task. And the accused often had difficulty following proceedings conducted in French. Finally, a high turnover rate also plagued the commissions de triage: Wissembourg’s military administrator complained in early 1919 that three presidents

70 Jeanneney, sous secrétaire d’état à la présidence du Conseil, 18 Jan. 1919,  121  902. 71 In theory, suspects could not be confronted with their accusers without the suspect’s approval. See ibid. 72 For a novelistic rendition of an interrogation before a commission de triage seeHenride Turenne and François Ducher, LesAlsaciens,oulesdeuxMathilde(Paris, 1996), 214–17. This novel is based on the television series by the same title produced by Pathé Télévision, La Sept/Arte, France 3, , , , , and  (1986). 73 F. Oesinger in Radical, 27 Apr. 1919, clipping in  121  968; Abbé Ch. Thilmont, Devant la commission de triage (Strasbourg, 1919), 1, in , Fonds Peirotes, box 13. 74 Sixième corps d’armée, 1 Dec. 1919,  121  902. Tseng 2000.1.5 16:49 148 FRENCH HISTORICAL STUDIES

succeeded themselves over the course of three weeks, and a similar situation prevailed in Sarre-Union.75 The problems of staﬃng and bureaucratic inertia, however, worked both ways: the expeditiousness and sheer incompetence of the commission worked to the detriment of the accused in certain cases, while on the other hand their ineﬃciency probably saved greater numbers of civilians from trial.

The Triage of Germans and Alsatians Who was brought before the triage commissions? What crimes did these inquisitive bodies charge them with? And how were they judged? Surviving archival records limit our ability to answer these questions. The commissions de triage kept no transcripts of the interrogations of 5962 FRENCH HISTORICAL STUDIES / 23:1 / sheet 150 of 216 suspects, accusers, and ‘‘witnesses,’’ and preserved copies of letters of denunciations and other accusatory documents erratically. They did, however, keep lists of accused individuals, and sometimes outlined the charges and provided an explanation for the commission’s verdict. To back themselves up, they often quoted from letters of denunciation and the testimony of the defendants and their accusers. The number of people brought before the commissions de triage is open to question. Strasbourg’s triage commission alone deliberated more than forty-three hundred cases between January and October 1919, and this figure may have reached fifteen thousand in all of Alsace and Lorraine.76 But the ramifications of triage extended well beyond those individuals called before the commissions. The triage commissions received and gathered information on people who they never brought in for questioning, either for lack of time or of evidence. And large numbers of individuals participated in the triage process by send- ing in denunciations and serving as witnesses for the accusation, and even larger numbers—friends and family members of the accused— were indirectly affected. Imposed from above by administrative fiat, the process of triage would have failed without the ongoing flow of denunciations that sprang from below. In the months following the armistice, the triage commissions received ‘‘an avalanche of denunciations’’ from Alsatians

75 Administrateur militaire de Wissembourg, 7 Jan., 1919,  121  902. On turnover see Commissaire de la république de Haute-Alsace, 4 Mar. 1919,   30 170. Presiding oﬃcers regularly took home leave or had themselves transferred to other posts in the army, if they were not demobilized altogether. 76 These ﬁgures include German citizens. Répertoire de la commission de triage, , Evènements historiques 20. There is also another Répertoire de la commission de triage for Stras- bourg in  121  905. Surviving records of the triage commissions are not complete enough to provide a reliable indication of the number of accused for the whole region. Tseng 2000.1.5 16:49 FROM LIBERATION TO PURGE TRIALS IN THE ‘‘MYTHIC PROVINCES’’ 149

and Lorrains of all walks of life aimed at neighbors, political opponents, coworkers, and competitors.77 In December 1918, Strasbourg’s police were too overwhelmed by the flood of denunciations to undertake detailed inquiries in each case.78 Some denouncers, in a wonderful example of the power of bureaucracy, came armed with ‘‘certificates of denunciation.’’79 Without active cooperation from the region’s inhabitants, the purges (given linguistic and other problems) would have faced insurmountable difficulties. Why did people cooperate? The war, and the uncertainties and divisions it engendered, were greatly responsible for the growing practice of denunciation. Following France’s victory, however, it was no longer a question of identifying enemies in wartime, but finding ways of affirming loyalty to the new state and shaping

5962 FRENCH HISTORICAL STUDIES / 23:1 / sheet 151 of 216 national identity at the grass roots. The accuseds’ putative national sympathies (or lack of them) were at the heart of the vast majority of cases. Initially, the army’s goal had been to investigate past and present members of the German officer corps, denouncers who had worked for German intelligence, and ‘‘women of easy virtue’’ suspected of sexual relationships with the enemy and whose ‘‘bad conduct’’ continued under French rule.80 But triage commissions quickly cast a wider net and investigated individuals of ‘‘mixed heritage,’’ denouncers and spies (real and imagined) of all kinds, and those of dubious patriotic allegiances. A certain Mr. X, notaire at Hochfelden, argued that all individuals who might have had a ‘‘pernicious influence’’ needed to be investigated. This included Ger- man immigrants, along with influential political and cultural brokers: mayors, pastors, and schoolteachers; officers in the German army; and the young apaches (ruffians) responsible for spreading bolshevism rounded off a list that reflected the concerns of a small-town notable.81 Despite official instruction to the contrary, the triage commissions consistently brought in German citizens for questioning, partly because they saw their task as cleansing the recovered provinces, and partly because a large number of the denunciations in their hands targeted Ger- mans. In northern Alsace (excluding Strasbourg), Germans accounted for 53 percent of some six hundred individuals referred to the commis-

77 Commission de triage et de classement du 2e degré (Metz) à commissaire général de la République (Strasbourg), 7 July 1919,  121  902. 78 Commissaire spécial to haut commissaire de la République à Strasbourg, 19 Dec. 1918,  121  899. 79 Commission de triage de Strasbourg, 28 Dec. 1918,  121  905. 80  121  902. I have found no written record of cases of women pursued for frater- nizing with the enemy. 81 Ibid. Mr. X was probably a member of the triage commission. Tseng 2000.1.5 16:49 150 FRENCH HISTORICAL STUDIES

sionsdetriage.82 The Germans, much like their Alsatian counterparts, faced a variety of accusations, ranging first and foremost from the denunciation of ‘‘patriotic’’ Alsatians during wartime, to ‘‘spying,’’ to more Kafkaesque charges of ‘‘pangermanism’’ and ‘‘Germanophilia.’’ (Over time some triage commissions recognized that it was not surprising to find Germans accused of ‘‘Germanophile sentiments’’; after all they were German.) But the charges needed not be spelled out in detail— having German or Prussian sentiments was guilt in itself and being Ger- man was reason enough to be ‘‘considered suspect.’’83 Thus one woman was expelled as a ‘‘German woman, undesirable first and foremost because of her boches sentiments,’’ while the triage board described another one as a ‘‘recalcitrant boche woman who is hostile to everything

5962 FRENCH HISTORICAL STUDIES / 23:1 / sheet 152 of 216 to do with our cause,’’ and a Württenberger couple was denounced for having behaved like ‘‘outrageous boches’’ during the war.84 The leitmotiv of countless denunciations and verdicts was the impossibility of assimi- lation and the need for purification. A German tramway engineer was charged with having sent Alsatians to the front lines (how was not speci- fied), but the real issue at stake was his nationality: ‘‘How can it be that such a guy has not yet been expelled? And yet he’s a pure-blooded Prus- sian,’’ wrote the denouncer, who added incredulously, ‘‘Does one be- lieve, perhaps, that one can make a boche into a Frenchman?’’85 Another letter writer accused a German of having denounced him for speaking French in a wine bar in 1915: invoking his ‘‘French-Alsatian’’ heart and his duty to his ‘‘dear French patrie’’ he asked for the expulsion of this ‘‘sale boche-traître.’’ 86 As a rule the commissions de triage proved more understanding of Germans married to Alsatians and Lorrains. The verdict thus depended on the suspect’s nationality and the strength of his ties to Alsace and Lorraine. Auguste Glasser, an upholsterer in Strasbourg married to a woman from Baden (Germany), was first condemned by the triage commission as a ‘‘hateful and violent German; will always be a danger to our cause—must be repatriated’’ until members of the commission realized he was an ‘‘Alsatian of French origin,’’ whereupon they crossed out all

82 Close to 20 percent of them came from neighboring Baden. This is based on what ap- pears to be a partial list of those brought before the triage commissions in northern Alsace (encompassing the regions of Brumath, Erstein, Haguenau, Molsheim, Strasbourg-Campagne, and Wissembourg). See Liste nominative des individus déférés à la commission de triage des Alsaciens-Lorrains, Mission militaire et administrative de basse Alsace,  121  904. 83 Commission de triage, Centre de classement du second degré,  121  903, Feb. 1919. 84 Commission de triage de Strasbourg,  121  900, 6 May and 31 Dec. 1919. 85 Ibid., 22 July 1919. 86 Ibid., 12 Dec. 1918. Tseng 2000.1.5 16:49 FROM LIBERATION TO PURGE TRIALS IN THE ‘‘MYTHIC PROVINCES’’ 151

their previous comments and presumably dropped the charges.87 It was testimony to the complexity of the situation that even triage commissions displayed confusion about who was Alsatian or Lorrainer (and thus French) and who was German. Overloaded with cases, the commissions also displayed sloppiness in their judgment: one accused was listed as Alsatian ‘‘son of Germans’’—an impossibility given that the identity card system had clearly stipulated that the children of German immigrants could not be categorized as pure-blooded Alsatians.88 Alsatians ﬁgured prominently (40 percent) among the accused in northern Alsace.89 The most common accusation (over half the cases for which charges are speciﬁed), and the one that met most often with harsh sentencing, was leveled against those who had denounced fellow

5962 FRENCH HISTORICAL STUDIES / 23:1 / sheet 153 of 216 Alsatians during the war for harboring pro-French sentiments, singing the Marseillaise, or hiding a French flag.While some of these charges, no doubt, contained elements of truth, in other cases denouncers used the war, which had a profoundly divisive effect on Alsatian society, as the best possible means of incriminating their enemies. Close to one-third of the cases involved charges of ‘‘Germanophilia’’ or ‘‘pangermanism.’’ These catchall categories encompassed anyone suspected of having public or even private sympathies for the German Empire or German culture. Finally, the triage commissions brought in smaller numbers of Alsatians on charges of ‘‘Francophobia,’’ ‘‘anti-French crimes,’’ or ‘‘guilty toward France.’’90 Those accused of having turned in fellow Alsatians and Lorrainers during the war faced the most difficult trials. The receiver of registry fees in Soultz-sous-Forêts (Bas-Rhin), whose spouse was German, was charged with having denounced Alsatians to German authorities dur- ingthewar.Hearguedinhisdefensethathehadbeenforcedtoreport ‘‘Germanophobic’’ remarks that came to his ear. The triage board’s verdict, however, was unambiguous: he was guilty and was marked for expulsion to Germany.91 Albert Nusbaum, an Alsatian schoolteacher in Soufflenheim, was accused of having denounced a colleague for

87 Ibid. 88 Commission de triage, Centre de classement du second degré,  121  903, Jan. 1919. 89 See Liste nominative des individus déférés à la commission de triage des Alsaciens- Lorrains, Mission militaire et administrative de basse Alsace,  121  904. Women accounted for close to 18 percent of all Alsatians brought in for triage. Unfortunately the charges leveled against Alsatians in northern Alsace are known in only one-third of the cases. The triage commissions kept poor records, some of those convoked failed to appear, and in some cases the commissions condemned without ever clearly specifying the charges. 90 Ibid. 91 Commission de triage, arrondissement de Wissembourg,  121  904, 8 Feb. 1919. Tseng 2000.1.5 16:49 152 FRENCH HISTORICAL STUDIES

‘‘Francophilia,’’ and for having struck a child who exhibited ‘‘francophone sentiments’’ after the armistice. The commission de triage judged he should be evacuated to the interior of France.92 More troubling, perhaps, were the cases of those who, because of their positions, had to collaborate with German authorities. An Alsatian forest warden, accused of having led German troops through the Schirmeck woods in 1914, argued in his defense that he was only fulﬁlling his duty as a fonctionnaire. The triage review board thought otherwise, declared his mission ‘‘undigniﬁed of a good Alsatian,’’ and sentenced him to surveillance outside his place of residence.93 In the same vein, a hunting warden accused of guiding German troops during the war’s early days was sentenced to ‘‘evacuation in a concentration camp’’; the review board

5962 FRENCH HISTORICAL STUDIES / 23:1 / sheet 154 of 216 noted that ‘‘a good Alsatian’’ should not have accepted the order to undertake such a task.94 The trials and the denunciations inevitably centered on distinguishing ‘‘good’’ Alsatians who had remained faithful to France and ‘‘bad’’ Alsatians who had collaborated with the Germans, exhibited ‘‘German sentiments,’’ and continued to do so in the present. On those grounds the trials were troubling to the majority of Alsatians and Lor- rains who, after all, had been German citizens for the better part (if not all) of their lives and whose sons had often served in the Ger- man army. The records of the commissions de triage contain countless cases questioning the moral and patriotic credentials of Alsatians and Lorrainers. Brumath’s triage commission charged that Dr. Kassel from Hochfelden, motivated by money and glory, displayed an ‘‘anti-French attitude’’ during the war, and decided to expel him in keeping with the ‘‘unanimous opinion’’ of the pays.95 The commission pronounced on the expulsion of another Alsatian, accused of being the ﬂagbearer for Brumath’s Kriegerverein (veterans’ association), that he was under no ‘‘obligation to join,’’ and in another case the insults a ‘‘Germanophile’’ resident of Erstein directed at French troops were judged to reﬂect the fact that he was a ‘‘bad Alsatian.’’96 Mittelhausen’s village cartwright, charged with denouncing a Belgian civilian, was expelled to Germany

92 The term evacuate was ambiguous: in some cases the commissions wanted the suspect placed under a résidence surveillée in the interior of France, and in others they wanted the accused to be placed in an internment camp. Commission de triage, Centre de classement du second degré,  121  903, Feb. 1919. 93 Ibid., Mar. 1919. 94 Ibid., Jan. 1919. 95 Commission de triage, arrondissement de Wissembourg,  121  904. The triage review board reviewed Kassel’s sentence and, given his regrets and appeals for clemency, decided to evacuate him to the interior of France. See  121  903. 96 Commission de triage de Brumath,  121  904. For Erstein, see Commission de triage, Centre de classement du second degré,  121  903, Jan. 1919. Tseng 2000.1.5 16:49 FROM LIBERATION TO PURGE TRIALS IN THE ‘‘MYTHIC PROVINCES’’ 153

on grounds that he was ‘‘a bad Alsatian with pernicious instincts,’’ and an unnamed compatriot—brought for unspeciﬁed reasons—was found to be a ‘‘dubious-looking unscrupulous Alsatian.’’97 Finally, the triage review board, after having examined the sermons and letters of Bisch- willer’s pastor, expelled him so he could no longer exert his inﬂuence on ‘‘good Alsatians.’’98 For the triage commissions, ‘‘bad Alsatians’’ included those sup- portive of regional autonomy as well as those whose past or present politics were judged to be dangerous.There had been some talk in both Germany and Alsace-Lorraine as the war neared an end of organiz- ing a plebiscite to determine the region’s future, or of according the region autonomy. The French government opposed both these ideas

5962 FRENCH HISTORICAL STUDIES / 23:1 / sheet 155 of 216 vigorously, and the triage commissions did not hesitate to punish those sympathetic to regional autonomy and independence. Eckwersheim’s Alsatian schoolteacher was transferred to another post for having flown the Alsatian flag after France’s victory, and the priest who directed Sé- lestat’s library was expelled on grounds of having declared that he ‘‘was no more German than French, but only Alsatian’’ and was a partisan of Alsace-Lorraine’s neutrality.The commissions de triage condemned others for backing a plebiscite.99 Part of the process of refashioning and purifying Alsatian and Lorrainer society involved purging disproportionate numbers of cultural mediators who occupied positions of moral influence in communities, such as priests, pastors, and schoolteachers. In Alsace alone it is estimated that triage commissions removed 921schoolteachers (either Germans or Alsaciens-Lorrains) from their positions.100 More than others, priests, pastors, and schoolteachers needed to make their allegiances known to the new state in no uncertain terms or risk losing their jobs, and more so than others they were the victims of denunciations. Hauled before the triage commission, a professor at Haguenau’s lycée, accused of German sympathies, committed himself ‘‘to be a good and loyal servant of France.’’ Despite the fact that there was no com- pelling evidence in the case, the commission decided to evacuate him. Molsheim’s Alsatian pastor, Jacques Bucher, who did not ‘‘deny his Ger- man sentiments but declared his readiness to serve France with devo-

97 Commission de triage, Arrondissement de Wissembourg,  121  904, and Com- mission de triage de Strasbourg,  121  900. 98 Commission de triage, Centre de classement du second degré,  121  903, Jan. 1919. 99 Commission de triage, Arrondissement de Wissembourg,  121  904; Commission de triage, Centre de classement du second degré,  121  903, Jan. and Feb. 1919. 100 L’AlsacedepuissonretouràlaFrance, 2 vols. (Strasbourg, 1932), 1:400. Tseng 2000.1.5 16:49 154 FRENCH HISTORICAL STUDIES

tion,’’ met with the same sentence.101 The commissions de triage placed hundreds of religious, educational, and state officials on trial for collaboration with the German regime. In large numbers of cases concerning civil servants, however, personal vengeance and jealousy, combined with the designs of unscrupulous Alsatians hoping to acquire newly vacated jobs, also motivated denunciations and, by extension, purge trials. The commissions de triage’s binary worldview, of an Alsatian and Lor- rainer society divided the ‘‘good’’ from the ‘‘bad,’’ the pure and the impure, depending on the patriotism and the morality of the accused, reflected the enduring mythology of the lost provinces. But it also reflected that ‘‘pure blooded’’ Alsatians and Lorrainers (unlike Germans)

5962 FRENCH HISTORICAL STUDIES / 23:1 / sheet 156 of 216 could not be purged on racial grounds. The purge commissions thus turned to judging people’s intentions and sentiments in order to purify Alsatian society. What kind of sentences did Alsatians receive at the hands of the commissions de triage? No overall ﬁgures are available, but some tentative numbers can be pieced together from the records of the commissions in the northern-most parts of Alsace.102 In close to half the cases for which the decision is known, the commissions dropped the charges altogether—an indication that numerous accusations lacked solid foun- dations. One-fourth of the accused were sentenced to surveillance in Alsace, while smaller percentages were assigned to residence in France (6.7 percent), expelled to the French-occupied zone of Germany (6 percent) or, in the case of civil servants, transferred to other positions (8 percent).103 Those condemned were stripped of their voting rights. The expulsion of old-standing Alsatians (Carte A) proved disturbing to the population and prompted protests.104 It demonstrated that triage was also about political vengeance, that no one was protected, that proper ethnicity was not a suﬃcient criteria. The triage commissions of rural northern Alsace, however, appear to have been more lenient than others. In Lorraine, the heads of the triage review board complained that the commissions had proved far too receptive to ‘‘slanderous de-

101 Commission de triage, Centre de classement du second degré,  121  903, Jan. 1919. 102 Liste nominative des individus déférés à la Commission de triage des Alsaciens-Lorrains, Mission militaire et administrative de basse Alsace,  121  904. There is a record of the sentence for 60 percent of Alsatians charged. 103 Using these ﬁgures and if one assumes (tentatively, to be sure) that some nine thousand Alsatians and Lorrains were brought before the triage boards, then 540 would have been expelled to Germany, 2,160 assigned to residence in Alsace, 603 assigned to residence in France, and 720 civil servants transferred. 104 Letter of Grunbach and Richard to haut commissaire de la République (Colmar?), 13Feb.1919,  30 170. Tseng 2000.1.5 16:49 FROM LIBERATION TO PURGE TRIALS IN THE ‘‘MYTHIC PROVINCES’’ 155

nunciations’’ and had expelled too many individuals, many of whom never received a hearing.105 In March 1919, four months after the triage commissions set to work, the state directed that only four types of sentences be given to condemned Alsatians and Lorrainers: surveillance in their place of residence; exile and surveillance in other parts of Alsace-Lorraine; expulsion to Germany; and surveillance in the interior of France.106 The last option, which authorities now placed on the back burner, had been the punishment of choice in the three months after the armistice. Between December 1918 and March 1919, Strasbourg’s triage review board had sent one-third of all condemned Alsatians to surveillance and internment in la France de l’intérieur. But authorities soon realized that this

5962 FRENCH HISTORICAL STUDIES / 23:1 / sheet 157 of 216 strategy might backfire. Alsatians would surely be embittered by their forced exile, and their position as German speakers, and in some cases their sympathy for regionalist or autonomist ideas, could only distress a French public unfamiliar with the newly recovered provinces. It made more sense, vis-à-vis both French and Alsatian public opinion, to place them under surveillance in Alsace proper. And in ‘‘grave cases’’ state authorities encouraged the review boards to expel Alsatians without hesitation to Germany, and to do so quickly, before the ratification of the peace agreement turned them into full-fledged French citizens.107 In the hands of the triage review board, the state’s new directives resulted in assigning fewer Alsatians to residency in France, expelling far more to Germany, and sentencing an increasing number to surveillance in Alsace proper. Over time, however, triage commissions had grown weary of the flood of contradictory denunciations. In Benjamin Vallotton’s patriotic novel ...etvoicilaFrance, the president of Ixebourg’s commission de triage, eyeing a stack of accusatory dossiers, complained of the ‘‘bedlam’’ and wondered how he could choose between two petitions: one calling for the expulsion of a hotel owner (a German married to an Alsatian) and another arguing that he would make a fine Frenchman. The president dismissed evidence concerning other individuals by arguing, ‘‘If we lis- tened to everybody, there would be no one left in Alsace.’’ Even Val-

105 Commission de triage et de classement du 2e degré (Metz) à commissaire général de la République (Strasbourg), 7 July 1919,  121  902. In Strasbourg, the triage review boards, which reconsidered and, if necessary, overturned the decisions of the town’s commission de triage, did not judge and condemn in entirely the same fashion. The purges in Strasbourg had been more extensive and exemplary than elsewhere. By the time cases reached the triage review board, however, the charged political climate had subsided, and the boards increasingly discounted ex- cessive, fabricated, and unfounded denunciations. 106 See  121  103, Mar. 1919. 107 Rapport de la commission interministérielle des Alsaciens-Lorrains, n.d. (winter 1919),  121  902. Tseng 2000.1.5 16:49 156 FRENCH HISTORICAL STUDIES

lotton, whose support for French rule and hatred of Germany colored every page of the novel, could not but criticize the pervasive climate of denunciations that pitted Alsatians against each other and deeply divided the smallest of communities.108 ‘‘Deﬁance, calumny, and déla- tion were the great wounds of the new Alsace,’’ wrote the comtesse de Pange, who regretted that personal conﬂicts paralyzed society and marred social relations.109

The Meaning of Denunciation In the months following the armistice, patriotism became the language of social and cultural conﬂict. Beyond the common accusations against those who had turned in ‘‘unpatriotic’’ Alsatians to the German au- 5962 FRENCH HISTORICAL STUDIES / 23:1 / sheet 158 of 216 thorities during the war, the denunciations encompassed a whole range of personal vendettas, family feuds, village hatreds, and commercial clashes directed at ‘‘German immigrants,’’ Alsatians, and Lorrainer na- tives, all couched in the language of French nationalism. In the hope of avoiding investigation, those who thought themselves compromised by their activities under German rule tried to regain, in the words of Metz’s triage commission, a ‘‘French virginity’’ by informing on others, and especially on German immigrants. The language of ‘‘virginity’’ suggested that patriotism was tied to moral purity (in the image of the twin sisters) and that contact with Germans could only pollute the French character.110 Business owners denounced competitors and former workers. An Alsatian locksmith denounced a Saxon who had opened up shop next door; soon thereafter the Saxon sold him his shop and left.111 Those with an eye on German-owned businesses called for a boycott of their stores in the hope of later purchasing them at rock-bottom prices.112 It was the syndrome, wrote a Moselle senator, of ‘‘Ote-toidelà,quejem’ymette.’’113 The climate of denunciation left profound scars at the grass roots. What small town had not endured its bitter set of denunciations and counterdenunciations? Patriotic Alsatians wrote to newspapers to de- nounce neighbors and coworkers, and their accusations became part of

108 Benjamin Vallotton, ...EtvoicilaFrance,vol.3ofQuel est ton pays? (Lausanne, 1931), 52–53. 109 Comtesse Jean de Pange, Le Beau Jardin, 63, 78. 110 Commission de triage et de classement du 2e degré (Metz) to Commissaire général de la République (Strasbourg), 7 July 1919,  121  902; Thilmont, Devant la commission de triage,8. 111 Commission de triage de Strasbourg, 11 Apr. 1919,  121  900. 112 See, for example, Commission de triage de Strasbourg, 28 Jan. 1919,  121  906. 113 Jean Stuhl, senator of the Moselle, to Ministre des aﬀaires étrangères, 2 Mar. 1925,   30 296. Tseng 2000.1.5 16:49 FROM LIBERATION TO PURGE TRIALS IN THE ‘‘MYTHIC PROVINCES’’ 157

the public domain and the pervasive rumor networks. The widespread practice of délation gave birth to a climate of fear and silenced public opinion in smaller towns and the countryside.114 But most telling, in the end, was that the majority of Alsatians and Lorrainers who backed French rule squarely placed the blame on the French for encouraging an unhealthy climate of délation.115 There was, of course, some truth to this. But the argument ignored that délation needed no outside en- couragement; it reﬂected the deep fault lines that crisscrossed Alsatian society. Inhabitants of the region imagined (and so did the French) that Alsace-Lorraine was still a homogeneous society, tightly bound by networks of local and regional solidarity. By 1919 this was no longer the case.

5962 FRENCH HISTORICAL STUDIES / 23:1 / sheet 159 of 216 The denunciations provided a vehicle for expressing the enmities, jealousies, and rancors engendered during the wartime years, structured along national and ethnic lines. The denouncers, who invariably characterized themselves as ‘‘good Frenchmen’’ or ‘‘good Alsatians of long-standing Alsatian heritage,’’ labeled their counterparts ‘‘boches,’’ influenced by ‘‘boche’’ ideas, ‘‘bad Frenchmen,’’ or lacking a pure Alsa- tian or lorrain descent. In doing so they staked a claim on what constituted Frenchness, and they clearly influenced the commissions de triage’s deliberations. In the eyes of denouncers, nationality was not just related to ethnicity, but also to national sentiment, public morality, and political behavior.The parallel with the widespread practice of délation under the Vichy regime (some three to five million letters penned by ‘‘good Frenchmen’’ who denounced Jews, communists, Freemasons, business competitors) is striking.116 In both cases the disorientation produced by military defeat and the radical changes in political legitimacy opened the floodgates to waves of denunciations. Denouncers used the language of nationalism because this was the language the state wanted to hear, and the language denouncers knew would work. It enabled denouncers both to establish their patriotic virtue and to achieve their objectives: doing away with competitors, village enemies, political opponents, civil servants, and those tainted by their association with Germans. In this sense, as Sheila Fitzpatrick has underlined, denunciations can be understood as weapons of the

114 See Bernard Klein, La Vie politique en Alsace Bossue et dans le pays de la petite pierre de 1918 à 1939 (Strasbourg, 1991), 58–59. French distinguishes between dénonciation, which is more neutral in character, and délation, a term that carries a highly pejorative connotation and encompasses an element of treason and unsavory interests (unlike délations, dénonciations canbedoneinthe public interest). But the line between délation and dénonciation (not to mention mouchardage)was, as always, a ﬁne one. 115 Spindler, L’Alsace pendant la guerre, 750. 116 See André Halimi, La Délation sous l’occupation (Paris, 1983). Tseng 2000.1.5 16:49 158 FRENCH HISTORICAL STUDIES

weak.117 Between the armistice and the ratification of the Versailles treaty Alsatians and Lorrainers did not enjoy French citizenship and rights. Ruled by a civil-military administration and troubled by the psychological disorientation that resulted from the changeover from German to French rule, inhabitants of the region had few means to defend their interests at their disposal. The absence of a well-established, respected, and sizable local elite that did not owe its existence to France made it difficult to challenge the state’s purge of regional society. De- nunciations thus fulfilled numerous and contradictory functions: they gave a voice to the ‘‘little guy,’’ they provided a means for people to seek ‘‘justice,’’ to establish their national legitimacy, and to solve their long-standing grievances. 5962 FRENCH HISTORICAL STUDIES / 23:1 / sheet 160 of 216 Aftermath Judged over the long term, however, the purge trials failed on all counts.118 Large numbers of citizens had been called before these bodies, and even if the triage commission found many innocent of all charges, reputations had been damaged, and the bitterness would be enduring. Among Alsatians and Lorrainers, few things would unite rightists and leftists, Protestants and Catholics, autonomists and assimi- lationists, as much as their hatred of the purge trials.119 The large-scale triage of border province society—sorting individuals on the basis of their national worthiness and their ethnicity—weakened social struc- tures and severely compromised the inhabitants’ perception of the Re- public. In their parody of justice the triage commissions undermined the appeal of republicanism—a critical error since Alsace-Lorraine had been outside the French nation during the crucial founding decades of the republican system. Few in France at the time paid attention to the vigorous critique of the purges by small numbers of Alsatians and Lorrainers during the 1920s.120 Even the patriotically inclined Journald’AlsaceetdeLorraine

117 Sheila Fitzpatrick and Robert Gellately, Accusatory Practices: Denunciation in Modern Euro- pean History, 1789–1989 (Chicago, 1997), 188. She is referring to James Scott’s Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (New Haven, Conn., 1985). See also Sébastien Fontenelle, La France des mouchards: Enquête sur la délation (Paris, 1997). 118 For the substantially different, ‘‘official’’ French view see Alexandre Millerand, Le Retour de l’Alsace-Lorraine à la France (Paris, 1923), 30–31. 119 ‘‘But one is astonished to find, after ten years, how bitter are the memories of the people concerning these commissions and their work’’ (Kirk, ‘‘French Administrative Policies in Alsace- Lorraine,’’ 46). 120 See, for example, Thilmont, Devant la commission de triage;AbbéDr.Haegy,‘‘Einekri- tische Stimme aus der Übergangszeit,’’ Elsässer Kurier, 20 Feb. 1919, reproduced in Das Elsass, 4:409–13. Tseng 2000.1.5 16:49 FROM LIBERATION TO PURGE TRIALS IN THE ‘‘MYTHIC PROVINCES’’ 159

complained (in May 1919) that the triage commissions had beenthe fun- damental error of French policy.121 The Ligue française pour la défense des droits de l’homme et du citoyen criticized, as late as 1921, the expulsion of Alsatians to Germany. The Ligue worried about the ongoing climate of despotism in Alsace, and remarked with irony that French revolutionaries had posted a famous signpost on the banks of the Rhine reading, ‘‘Here begins the country of liberty.’’122 Robert Redslob, a well- known professor of international law in Strasbourg, wrote vigorous articles in Le Temps, one of France’s leading dailies, arguing that the triage commissions had been little more than a ‘‘fox hunt’’ (chasse à courre), high courts that judged the patriotism of the accused.123 Ger- man rule in Alsace-Lorraine had been recognized by an international

5962 FRENCH HISTORICAL STUDIES / 23:1 / sheet 161 of 216 treaty, and there was no legal basis for prosecuting citizens for their support of a constitutionally established regime. Associations of Alsa- tian civil servants campaigned to overturn triage commission verdicts and defended those who had been pensioned oﬀ, transferred, or de- moted.124 In 1928, the conseil général of the Haut-Rhin called for a review of the verdicts imposed on ‘‘innocent victims’’ by the commissions de triage. But the ministry of justice responded that nothing could be done: the triage commissions were not tribunals, nor did they have links to the ministère. The only recourse was thus parliamentary. In November 1929 the Alsatian deputy Marcel Stürmel proposed to the Chamber of Deputies a strongly worded bill granting French citizens the right to appeal the triage commissions’s verdicts and request ﬁnan- cial compensation. Deputies referred the proposed law to the Alsace- Lorraine committee, and it was eventually shelved. Stürmel proposed the same bill again in June 1936 and met with the same result.125

Conclusion Alsace-Lorraine has consistently been on the margins of modern French historiography, relegated there by historians who see the

121 Journal d’Alsace Lorraine, 25 May 1919, cited in  121  902. 122 For the war years see   30 310, and for 1921,   30227,letteroftheLigue to Président du conseil, Oct. 1921. 123 Redslob’s article is cited in ‘‘Proposition de loi tendant à faire réviser les décisions des commissions de triage en Alsace et en Lorraine et à assurer réparation du préjudice pour les vic- times de ces commissions de triage,’’ in Annales de la Chambre des députés, 14e législature: Documents parlementaires, 117, 2eme session extraordinaire de 1929 (Paris, 1930), 143–44. 124 ‘‘Für die Opfer der Commissions de Triage,’’ Unidentiﬁed news clipping, 16 Oct. 1924, , Fonds Peirotes 40. 125 See ‘‘Proposition de loi tendant à faire réviser les décisions des commissions de triage.’’ For 1936 see Annales de la Chambre des députés: 16e législature: Documents parlementaires, 133. Stürmel’s close links to autonomism did little to help the bill. Tseng 2000.1.5 16:49 160 FRENCH HISTORICAL STUDIES

German-speaking region as little more than an interesting anomaly with minimal relevance to the nation’s history.126 But border regions— contentious ones in particular—are fruitful sites to explore the relation- ship between national myths and reality, along with the problematic reconstruction of national belonging and sentiment.127 The complex process of reconfiguring and redefining identities in a region that sym- bolized French national identity sheds light both on the state’s shifting definition of Frenchness and on how local inhabitants tried to shape it. The postwar purges brought into sharp relief multiple understandings and practices of what made up Frenchness. The first was a racialized sense of Frenchness that grew out of the neonationalism of the 1880s and the aggressive social Darwinism of the fin de siècle.128 The

5962 FRENCH HISTORICAL STUDIES / 23:1 / sheet 162 of 216 civil-military administration arrived in Alsace-Lorraine inﬂuenced by a racial view of what constituted an Alsatian or Lorrainer and set out to make the region conform to the myth. By establishing a system of identity cards based on ancestry, the state awakened latent conﬂicts in society and pitted individuals against each other. The identity cards sent a clear message: they indicated that in the eyes of the state, French- ness in the border provinces was determined by blood, and they intimated that the attribution of citizenship would not follow the same rules as in the rest of the nation. The fear that German blood would pollute the French national community echoed acrimonious wartime debates—notably ones concerned with how to come to terms with the ‘‘children of the barbarians’’ whose mothers had been raped by Ger- man soldiers. In the eyes of some, the racial impurity of these children was a threat to the French family and civilization.129 Similarly, German blood in Alsace-Lorraine jeopardized the nation’s purity. This racial view of Frenchness that was at odds with the republican concept of citizenship coexisted with one based on imputed national sentiment, morality, and culture. Not content with categorizing the population according to their bloodline, the state purged Alsatian and Lorrainer society. The French believed that cleansing the German past and present would be enough to allow underlying French national sen-

126 Alfred Wahl, Jean-Claude Richez, and Freddy Raphaël have done much to problematize the region’s history. But my point is that scant attention has been paid to the region by historians in the rest of France. 127 On the role of frontier regions in an earlier period see Peter Sahlins, Boundaries: The Making of France and Spain in the Pyrenees (Berkeley, Calif., 1989). 128 See Zeev Sternhell, La Droite révolutionnaire: Les Origines françaises du fascisme, 1885–1914 (Paris, 1978), chap. 3; and Tombs, ed., Nationhood and Nationalism in France. 129 See the pioneering works of Harris, ‘‘The ‘Child of the Barbarian’ ’’; and Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau, L’Enfant de l’ennemi, 1914–1918: Viol, avortement, infanticide pendant la Grande guerre (Paris, 1995). Tseng 2000.1.5 16:49 FROM LIBERATION TO PURGE TRIALS IN THE ‘‘MYTHIC PROVINCES’’ 161

timent (as they imagined it) to resurface. While ostensibly the purges were not about nationality, the issue was never far from the center of the proceedings. The triage process suggested that Frenchness was both complex and contingent: being a ‘‘good Alsatian’’ was not just a question of having the correct family tree, it was related to patriotic sentiments, to political and moral acts, to one’s standing in the local community, and to the role one had played under German rule. The racialist understanding of Frenchness faded from public view as the identity card system was phased out and the triage commissions closed down. It would remain below the surface, however, throughout the interwar years. The moral and cultural sense of nationhood also became less prominent as republican rule was reinstated in Alsace-

5962 FRENCH HISTORICAL STUDIES / 23:1 / sheet 163 of 216 Lorraine; it would reappear in force during times of tension, most notably at the outbreak of the Second World War.130 AftertheWarof 1870, Fustel de Coulanges, Ernest Renan, and others had made much of the fact that Alsace and Lorraine were French by choice, and up to the First World War the region was commonly used to illustrate the contrast between a restrictive German ethnocultural view of nationhood and the more ‘‘enlightened’’ French republican position that em- phasized the voluntary adhesion to the values of the national community. Ironically, by 1918, the republican view of nationhood was clearly most on the defensive in the region that, in theory, exemplified it, thus illustrating the profound impact of late-nineteenth-century nationalist thought and of the First World War on understandings of the nation in France. The redefinition of identities was not just a top-down affair—even if the state made sure it retained the upper hand—but it was also relayed and forged through conflict at the local level. For Alsatians and Lorrains the question was how to construct and reconstruct a sense of French identity after having been German for the better part of their lives. Troubled by the switch to French rule, and worried that the card system and the triage commissions would transform them into second- class citizens (with second-class rights), the region’s inhabitants inter- vened—through the medium of denunciations—to defend themselves as best they could and establish their patriotic credentials. Denuncia- tion was thus a form of resistance, but it simultaneously undermined the cohesiveness of local communities. The events surrounding the dramatic reintegration of Alsace-

130 See Laird Boswell, ‘‘Franco-Alsatian Conﬂict and the Crisis of National Sentiment during the Phoney War,’’ Journal of Modern History 71(1999):552–84. This article addresses the rela- tionship between religion, language, and national identity in greater detail. Tseng 2000.1.5 16:49 162 FRENCH HISTORICAL STUDIES

Lorraine after the Great War suggest a comparison with the actions of the state and of individual citizens during other times of crisis in the twentieth century. The parallels between the denunciations of 1918–20 and those of the Vichy years, between the purges in postwar Alsace- Lorraine and the 1944 épuration, the tendency to pass judgment on acts of collaboration and accommodation to evaluate national belonging and sentiment, are too striking to be ignored. Postwar Alsace- Lorraine was a laboratory of things to come: the use of purges to cleanse the national community of unwanted elements, the practice of denunciation as a complex and multifaceted expression of resistance and powerlessness, the weighing of moral criteria to determine national worthiness, the systematic classiﬁcation of the population—all these

5962 FRENCH HISTORICAL STUDIES / 23:1 / sheet 164 of 216 techniques would be used on a more extensive and sinister scale later in the century. And, significantly, regimes turned to these practices to assert (or reassert) their authority and extend it over the entire nation. In the end, little word of these divisive conflicts filtered into public discourse in France. The purge trials would never gain a place in the nation’s memory, and attempts to claim compensation for the victims would meet with indifference. The French political class had no interest in reviving an issue that raised disturbing questions about the nature of French republicanism and understandings of citizenship. It was one thing to admit abuses that could be chalked up to the exigen- cies of wartime—and Parliament did so in 1927 when it voted modest indemnities for Alsatian and Lorrainer civilians wrongly interned during the war131—but it was quite another for the republican regime to acknowledge large-scale abuses of human rights, the indiscriminate use of purges, and the pronounced turn toward racialist and moralis- tic discourses of nationhood during peacetime. To do so would have been to recognize the limits of French republicanism, limits that were drawn in sharp relief when the time came to integrate culturally and linguistically different regions.

131 See Camille Maire’s introduction to François Laurent, Des Alsaciens-Lorrains otages en France: 1914–1918: Souvenirs d’un Lorrain interné en France et en Suisse pendant la guerre (Strasbourg, 1998), 26. Tseng 2000.1.5 16:49