Shannon Lee Fogg. The Politics of Everyday Life in : Foreigners, Undesirables, and Strangers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. xxii + 226 pp. $80.00, cloth, ISBN 978-0-521-89944-4.

Allan Mitchell. Nazi Paris: The History of an Occupation 1940-1944. New York: Berghahn Books, 2008. 230 S. $75.00, cloth, ISBN 978-1-84545-451-7.

Chris Pearson. Scarred Landscapes: War and Nature in Vichy France. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. xv + 253 pp. $69.95, cloth, ISBN 978-0-230-22012-6.

Reviewed by Andrew Knapp

Published on H-German (June, 2009)

Commissioned by Susan R. Boettcher

The Revolution aside, France's "Dark Years" of something new to contribute to an already dense German occupation between 1940 and 1944 count historiography. as the most intensely worked-over period of Looming large over the feld since 1972 has French history. Has it been completely covered been Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order now? These three books suggest not: each has (1972), 's founding work on the regime created after France's humiliating defeat H-Net Reviews at the hands of the Wehrmacht in June 1940, profle individuals like Maurice Couve de Murville headed by Marshal Philippe Pétain and (for most or, most notoriously, François Mitterrand, showed of its life) by , domiciled not in Paris how individuals deeply involved with Vichy could but in the spa town of Vichy, and committed to a emerge from the war with an impeccable record policy of collaboration with the German occupier. of service to free France and the Resistance. One part of Paxton's achievement was to dissect Thanks to Simon Kitson's The Hunt for Nazi Spies the diferent ideological currents that struggled (2008), we know that Vichy both collaborated with for infuence through Vichy's short history, includ‐ Nazis and, in the southern zone, it actively pur‐ ing authoritarian traditionalists, technocrats, and sued members of their espionage services. We full-blown fascists. Another was to demolish, not know, through the work of John Sweets, that ordi‐ one, but two myths that had grown up around nary people living under Vichy navigated a nar‐ Vichy since its ignominious collapse at France's row line between resistance and collaboration un‐ liberation in 1944. Vichy was not, as its Gaullist der exceptionally difcult material conditions.[1] enemies had claimed, a mere handful of criminals We know that, in addition to resistance, the ordi‐ acting on Germany's behalf against a nation over‐ nary French were capable of engaging in public whelmingly committed to resistance; nor did it, as protest against a fercely authoritarian régime apologists like Robert Aron tried to maintain in and its Nazi backers.[2] The nearest thing to a his Histoire de Vichy (1954), act as a "shield" for "consensus" on this deeply controversial picture is France against the occupier, or function as a probably summed up by Julian Jackson: "the his‐ preferable alternative to a Gauleiter. Paxton tory of the Occupation should be written not in demonstrated, on the one hand, that Vichy was black and white, but in shades of grey."[3] This rooted in the political traditions of France's anti- view is unobjectionable so long as one does not parliamentary Right and enjoyed, initially at least, lose sight of the two extremes--the waterboarding, signifcant popular support; and, on the other, not eye-gouging thuggishness of Vichy's , and merely that it was a poor shield, but that it was the extraordinary heroism of the Resistance fght‐ both committed to collaborating with the Ger‐ ers who knew exactly what risks they faced and mans and capable of running ahead of their de‐ carried on regardless. mands. This second point was particularly true in Where can these three new works be situated relation to the persecution of , where Vichy in this variegated landscape? First, Paxton's stern legislation--in particular the Statuts des juifs of injunction that Vichy "cannot really be seriously October 1940 and August 1941--was unprompted studied without attention to the German archives" by the occupier. Needless to say, his fndings were is heeded only by Allan Mitchell (by far the most of wider interest. Along with other reassessments experienced historian of the three).[4] Shannon L. of the same period--most notably Marcel Ophüls's Fogg and Chris Pearson show that is still possible flm Le Chagrin et la Pitié (1971)--Paxton prompt‐ to write about occupied France using only French ed a long and highly political debate on France's sources, but there is little doubt that German ones responsibility for events in the occupation, and in can beneft almost any area of research. Second, particular its contribution to . while Mitchell's work is situated squarely on Pax‐ Though Paxton's work has not been chal‐ ton's terrain and deals, if not quite in the realm of lenged frontally by serious historians in the near‐ "high politics" (the very term seems a misnomer ly forty years since its publication, it has been for the low and grubby deals between Vichy and somewhat nuanced; and the feld of research on its occupier), at least with policymaking at the na‐ occupied France has expanded drastically. To take tional level, Fogg falls within the domain of social a small handful of examples, the record of high- history from below set out by Sweets and others.

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Pearson, fnally, extends the boundaries of Vichy the rest of France and American ground forces studies by striking out into the new area of envi‐ broke through at Saint-Lô. ronmental history. Third, each of the titles is at Mitchell's more substantial chapters make least partly misleading. Prurient readers of abundantly clear the degree of pressure that bore Mitchell hoping for racy accounts of the Nazis' down on the French administration. If the Statuts good life in the French capital will be disappoint‐ des juifs were enacted on Vichy's initiative, they ed; the drinking and whoring are confned to a were contemporaneous with German anti-Jewish marginal place in an account largely devoted to decrees (on registration of Jews and "Aryanisa‐ how the Nazis in Paris made policy for France. tion" of the economy) whose makers were refer‐ Fogg's book, like that of Sweets among many oth‐ ring to a "fnal solution" to the Jewish question in ers, is less about Vichy France as a whole than France as early as January 1941. And it was at about one particular region (in this case the German prompting that was re‐ Limousin), from which we are invited to general‐ placed by Louis Darquier de Pellepoix at the Com‐ ize. Pearson, meanwhile, writes as much about missariat Général des Questions Juives (CGQJ). the Resistance as about Vichy, as well as about The "mobilization" of the French economy for convergences between the two; and his last two German needs, and the export of labor to Ger‐ chapters, on reconstruction and memory--a third many, began in the summer of 1940. By August of the book--refer to the postwar period. 1942, at the same time as Fritz Sauckel was re‐ At frst sight, Nazi Paris might be viewed as a quiring the transport of 250,000 French workers, direct challenge to Paxton. "The notion of Vichy Göring was demanding that France deliver to Ger‐ France," Mitchell begins, "is of course a complete many over 2,000,000 tons of grain, 350,000 tons of misnomer," because "for more than four years meat, 300,000 tons of potatoes, 150,000 tons of ruled France, and it did so from vegetables, 300,000 tons of fruit, and 6,000,000 Paris" (p. xi). The author uses French primary hectoliters of wine. Meanwhile the demands sources a little but German ones (from the French made on the French police steadily escalated, to Archives Nationales and the German military ar‐ include strike-breaking, helping round up Jews, chives in Freiburg im Breisgau) far more. His fo‐ patrolling the Franco-Spanish frontier, and arrest‐ cus falls not on Vichy policy--Pétain's "National ing those trying to escape compulsory labor ser‐ Revolution" barely fgures in this book--but on vice. Again, it was the Germans who inspired the what the Germans wanted from France: internal substitution of , founder of the security, loot in the form of both goods and labor Vichy Milice, for René Bousquet at the head of for German use, and Jews for the crematoria of Vichy's various police forces. Both Vallat (who re‐ Auschwitz-Birkenau. This grim reading is inter‐ ceived a ten-year prison sentence after liberation) spersed with material on the "glorious display of and Bousquet fgure high in the canon of Vichy creative endeavor" (p. 27) in culture that Mitchell villains; for the Nazis, however, they were ob‐ claims characterized occupied Paris. At late as structive. June 1944, the Propaganda Section announced a German pressure was not always consistent, program of ninety-one concerts; the Berlin Phil‐ for three reasons: turf wars between diferent harmonic (conducted on occasion by the young branches of the chaotic Nazi state, the varying Herbert von Karajan) was a frequent visitor. Art ideological zeal of individuals, and genuine policy auctions, exhibitions, and opera, as well as the Au‐ diferences (did French labor work better for Ger‐ teuil racecourse, were all still in full swing late in many in French factories, or after deportation to July, even as Allied bombing isolated Paris from Germany? Should "Aryanisation" proceed even at

3 H-Net Reviews a cost to French economic efectiveness? How far Paris is a dry, factual dissection of the various in‐ should the French police be trusted with stitutions of the German occupation, and the ar‐ weapons?). But the trend in France inevitably re‐ gument is developed layer by layer in the succeed‐ fected its twin in Germany towards greater radi‐ ing chapters. His riskiest suggestion, made on his calization, as the "correctness" of the two Stülp‐ last page, and with every degree of precaution, is nagel cousins who succeeded one another at the that wartime collaboration between France and head of the military administration (Otto resigned Germany laid the foundations for postwar cooper‐ in February 1942; Carl was executed in the after‐ ation. Whatever the value of this claim, Mitchell math of the July plot of 1944) was progressively has managed, in a text of barely more than 150 eclipsed by the activities of committed Nazis like pages, to write what will surely become one of a . handful of indispensable books in the canon of Mitchell's emphasis on German pressure scholarly literature on occupied France. might suggest either that Vichy had no choice, or If Mitchell cultivates a degree of discretion, that the "shield" thesis should be rehabilitated. Shannon L. Fogg, by contrast, states and restates Mitchell's central argument, however, is subtler her central thesis in abundance. In essence, it is than either of these. Vichy, he shows, usually com‐ that the application on the ground of Vichy's poli‐ plied fully with Nazi demands and sometimes an‐ cies towards minorities (and, indeed, of those of ticipated them in order to preserve the trappings the preceding late Third Republic governments) of French sovereignty. However, compliance by was mediated by the material interests of the ma‐ Vichy, or at least its agents, was less than total: for jority population. "Politics in general," she writes, example, on February 12, 1943, French police re‐ "lost importance as material concerns increasing‐ fused to assist with the transfer of French Jewish ly dominated day-to-day interactions. In most cas‐ detainees from the Drancy camp to the nearby es, political ideology was the background against railway station at Le Bourget. The conclusion that which the quotidian played out and not vice ver‐ Mitchell draws from such instances is less that sa" (p. 190). That ordinary people at a time of in‐ Vichy acted as a "shield"--they were too rare--than creasing shortages of every kind were guided sub‐ that a French refusal to act forced the occupiers stantially (though not exclusively) by the dictates either to renounce their goals or to engage scarce of their wallets and their stomachs is a fairly un‐ manpower to do the job themselves. And man‐ remarkable claim; the contrary, indeed, would be power was always the Nazis' Achilles' heel, espe‐ odder, and at times the reader may feel that Fogg cially after the occupation of the southern zone of tends to push at open doors. The strength of France in November 1942; the German police Fogg's work, therefore, lies less in her statement force, for example, barely exceeded three thou‐ of the main theme as in the delicacy and complex‐ sand in France during the occupation. Had the ity of the variations she makes on it. And here, French withdrawn cooperation, in other words, her careful and detailed archival research stands "it would have been impossible to approach even her in good stead. remotely the goals and quotas that were demand‐ Blockaded by the British, looted by the Ger‐ ed from Berlin" (p. 136). On this basis, Vichy mans, cut of beginning in November 1942 from stands as defnitively condemned by Mitchell as colonial suppliers, chronically short of farm labor, by Paxton, though for somewhat diferent rea‐ and with an increasingly crumbling transport sys‐ sons. tem, wartime France was doomed to shortages-- Mitchell does not, fnally, wear his thesis on though the mixed-farming Limousin region in the his sleeve. Much of the opening material in Nazi "free" southern zone, the center of Fogg's study,

4 H-Net Reviews fared better than the cities or monocultural areas 1939 there were some thirty-seven thousand Alsa‐ like vine-growing Languedoc. Rationing utterly tians in the Haute-Vienne alone. Cultural difer‐ failed to work; the black market was rife; and a ences, moreover, quickly set the newcomers ration ticket ofered no guarantee whatever of ob‐ apart. For many Alsatians, the natives of Limousin taining the goods stated on it. Fogg does not ac‐ were primitives; the Alsatians themselves, howev‐ count for this massive failure, but she analyzes its er, appeared to their "hosts" as dirty (because of efects well. Peasants stopped going to market their strange preference for indoor toilets), once they realized that their city-dwelling con‐ greedy, and complaining. Above all, however, sumers were sufciently desperate to come to their dialect sounded alarmingly like German, them--by bicycle or, when the tires wore through, prompting fears of a ffth column installed deep on foot--to conclude black-market deals in order in the French interior. Small wonder, then, that to survive. Eggs, transportable crops like potatoes the Alsatians were "not fully integrated" by May and fruit, and livestock were regularly stolen. 1940--or that perhaps two-thirds of them chose to Food parcels, sent by relatives or purchased from return to their homes, now annexed to the Reich, trustworthy rural contacts, complemented the after August 1940. meager diet of the more fortunate city dwellers: "Gypsies" were certainly fewer in the in a single month in 1942, twenty-seven thousand Limousin, though their number certainly in‐ eggs were sent from the station of Eymoutiers, creased with German expulsions from the occu‐ whose population was below three thousand. As pied zone. A complex series of regulations had otherwise respectable citizens were forced into il‐ been applied to Roma, fairground people, and oth‐ legal black-market activity or even theft, respect er travelers since before 1914; after September for Vichy's laws, and the legitimacy of the regime, 1939, fearing spies among these itinerant popula‐ were steadily corroded. tions, the Daladier government sought to assign Valuable in itself, Fogg's account of shortages them to set residences. Vichy sent many to a camp sets the scene for the treatment by Limousin na‐ at Saliers in the Camargue, though its treatment tives of three groups of outsiders who gravitated of them was in no way comparable to the Nazis'. to their region in the war years: refugees from Al‐ This policy was broadly approved by the natives sace, "gypsies," and Jews. Each presented a difer‐ of Limousin, who considered them to be dirty, ent challenge to the natives; and in only one case, drunken when they got the chance, and prone that of the "gypsies," was the reaction of Limousin both to thieve and to force their children to beg natives more or less in tune with government pol‐ (almost nothing that Fogg says contradicts these icy. claims, though she does invite us to make cultural Alsatian refugees, inhabitants of an obviously allowances for them). And even when sympathet‐ vulnerable region on the German frontier, began ic towards the children, many Limousin natives to arrive after the outbreak of war in September thought they would be "better of" in camps--espe‐ 1939 as a result of ofcial evacuation policy, and cially as Vichy always presented Saliers as a mod‐ Limousin natives were encouraged by the el camp (which it was not, as material in Pearson's Édouard Daladier government to welcome them Scarred Landscapes abundantly indicates). Here, as a patriotic duty. They did so, but only up to a a material view of the "gypsies" helped swing the point. Food and other material assistance were public towards supporting their internment. readily forthcoming, especially in the early weeks Perhaps the strongest part of Fogg's work is (shortages were not an issue yet), but housing was her treatment of Jews in the Limousin. About one far more reluctantly ofered--and by the end of in eight of the Alsatian refugees of 1939 (and, of

5 H-Net Reviews course, a higher proportion of those who stayed While both Mitchell and Fogg ofer new con‐ after August 1940) was Jewish. The Israelite Social tributions to relatively familiar debates, Pearson Aid agency, initially created to assist Jewish ofers the most innovative book of the three in refugees in Limoges, extended its services to all Scarred Landscapes. This novelty has drawbacks refugees after the debacle of 1940. Limoges be‐ as well as advantages. If Pearson has a single, came an attractive haven for Jews from occupied broad, subject--the environment (more specifcal‐ France, with the border between the two zones ly, the rural environment of the southeastern cor‐ just ffty miles away: a prewar Jewish population ner of France, stretching from Lyon to Menton, or of 161 had grown to 3,400 by early 1942. The (ad‐ from Arles to Chamonix) in time of war and post‐ mittedly very unreliable) results of a poll carried war--nonetheless it is harder to follow a single out for the CGQJ suggested a less welcoming pic‐ thread of argument. Indeed, each of his chapters ture: the Limousin stood out as about the most an‐ could be read as a single, more or less discrete, es‐ tisemitic region in France. And for material rea‐ say. sons, for example, Limousin residents readily That said, most of Scarred Landscapes turns used Vichy's antisemitic legislation to remove un‐ around three main themes: economic, military, wanted tenants. But the converse was also true: and ideological. The economic material centers on was much tempered where Jews the eforts of Vichy and the liberation govern‐ formed economic relationships with local inhabi‐ ments to turn "wasteland" and forest to produc‐ tants. In 1942, for example, ninety-six residents of tive uses. This activity involved not only the Germain-les-Belles signed a petition in favor of "back-to-the-landism" of the National Revolution, their veterinarian, a Romanian Jew who was but also attempts to reclaim marginal land-- barred from practicing under antisemitic legisla‐ marshes (the Limagne in the Auvergne, the Sain‐ tion. By 1941, moreover, the region had become tonge in Charente-Maritime, as well as the home to some twenty homes run by the Oeuvre Vendée), plus the Albens wetlands in Savoie and de secours aux enfants (OSE) and housed a total of the Crau plain near Arles. Most of these projects about 1,200 Jewish children. Financed in part were doomed to failure: land reclamation either from the United States, OSE homes brought out‐ fell afoul of labor shortages or proved unproduc‐ side money into often poor rural neighborhoods, tive, and France fnished the war with nearly and as such were welcomed; the more so as older three million fewer hectares under the plow than children supplied much-needed labor for sur‐ in 1938, a drop representing nearly 7 percent of rounding farms. It was ironic that these Jewish total national territory. Like Fogg, Pearson points homes, which trained young men in traditional out that some of the most dynamic elements in trades and sent them back to the land, could be the back-to-the-land movement were Jews: he seen to have taken to heart some of the basic cites the Jewish scouting movement before its dis‐ tenets of the National Revolution. And authorities' bandment in 1943. Of more lasting importance attempts to blame Jews for shortages and the were the attempts of both Vichy and the libera‐ black market cut little ice in the Limousin. From tion governments to produce and cut more wood August 1942, the OSE began to close its homes, from France's forests. As Pearson points out, the rightly seeing them as an inviting target for war was France's "age of wood" (p. 41). Fuel short‐ round-ups. We are not given details as to the fates ages in occupied France pressed wood into ser‐ of the children, though Fogg does claim that sup‐ vice as a substitute for coal (in houses) and, when portive families in the Limousin eventually saved transformed into charcoal-based gazogène fuel, hundreds from the camps. for petrol in motor vehicles. Armies, both German and Allied, displayed a vast appetite for wood for

6 H-Net Reviews fuel and defensive works that found expression in vent its possible use as an Allied airfeld were the destructive clear-cutting of tracts of wood‐ frustrated, apparently by a shortage of fuel for land. Demand for wood placed the forestry au‐ pumping stations. thorities in a difcult position, caught between Perhaps the most interesting sections of short-term, often forcefully expressed, demands, Scarred Landscapes refer to the ideological signif‐ the need to enlist the cooperation of private own‐ icance of landscape in the war and after. For ers of forestland, and the requirements of long- Vichy, its armed forces reduced to a powerless term woodland management. This dynamic con‐ rump, both woodland and mountains were mobi‐ tinued into the postwar period, though the libera‐ lized as testing grounds for masculinity, the for‐ tion settlement appears to have laid the founda‐ mer in the Chantiers de la Jeunesse, the latter in tions for authoritative public management that an air force ofshoot called Jeunesse et Montagne. achieved signifcant successes in balancing pro‐ Both organizations were meant to promote a duction and conservation over the next genera‐ healthy, clean-living, outdoor generation of young tion. men, far removed from the miasma and moral The landscapes of the southeast also played a distractions of the city. Neither was a resounding more direct role in the war, both as "actors" and success. Young men in the Chantiers were soon as victims. The very use of the term maquis, bored by woodcutting. Those in Jeunesse et Mon‐ which initially referred to the arid scrubland of tagne found the living conditions extremely Corsica, to defne the rural resistance indicates tough, and some died. However, as Pearson un‐ the close interpenetration between landscape and derlines, a remarkable convergence was dis‐ resistance activity. Forest work camps provided cernible between the ideological investment of admirable cover--physical and administrative--for forest and mountains by Vichy and that of the Re‐ Resistance groups; the mountains also, famously, sistance in the exultant prose descriptions of bare ofered refuges, though these could prove illusory, manly torsos on both sides. This similarity was as Pearson's account of the Vercors tragedy limited, however, by one distinction: for the Resis‐ shows. The war also left its traces on natural land‐ tance, forest and mountain also signifed freedom scapes, most obviously in the forests of Lorraine, from the stifing atmosphere of Pétain's regime. where ferce fghting had taken place at the end of As Pearson makes clear in his closing chapter, 1944, and of the Var, where a combination of Al‐ the ideological investment of landscape has con‐ lied bombardment and German use of fres to tinued with commemoration of the Resistance fush out Resistance groups wrecked some twenty since 1944; his cover photograph, indeed, shows thousand hectares of forest. In addition, some one of Jean Amblard's maquis tapestries exhibited 13,000,000 mines and unexploded bombs were at Saint-Denis Town Hall. More frequently, com‐ scattered across France by 1945: some 52,000 Ger‐ memoration involves memorials on the sites of man prisoners of war were drafted to dispose of Resistance activities. This approach presents a se‐ them, a decision of dubious legality under the ries of difculties. Sites may be inaccessible by Geneva convention, and 738 of them (as well as road. Monuments may prove intrusive, but a 471 Frenchmen) lost their lives as a result. The Ca‐ landscape allowed to "speak for itself" as a memo‐ margue, meanwhile, was used as an aerial train‐ rial may merely ofer a pleasant view to the visi‐ ing ground by both German and Allied air forces, tor with no particular reference to what is memo‐ and as a helpfully "empty" place for Allied aircraft rialized. Above all, perhaps, the traces of war, to dump unused bombs. One natural tragedy, f‐ whether in natural spaces or in preserved sites nally, was narrowly averted when German at‐ like Oradour-sur-Glane, are being progressively tempts to food the Camargue altogether to pre‐

7 H-Net Reviews obscured as "nature, the supposed preserver of memory, becomes the destroyer of memory" (p. 174). Mitchell, Fogg, and Pearson all make signif‐ cant contributions to the feld. It is a pity that their expensive academic books are not produced to the highest standards. Mitchell's is perhaps the most satisfactory in this respect, though I wonder if his sometimes terse language was not dictated by an overly tight word limit. The use of endnotes as opposed to footnotes is an irritant to any re‐ motely curious reader, but at least Berghahn makes clear in its headers to which chapters the endnotes refer. Cambridge allows Fogg footnotes, but its copyeditors should have been stricter with some of her sentences. Palgrave, fnally, does both Pearson and the reader a grave disservice by sup‐ plying ffty pages of endnotes without the slightest indication as to which chapters or pages they cov‐ er. This is a lazy and unprofessional procedure for a respected academic publisher. Notes [1]. John Sweets, Choices in Vichy France: The French under Nazi Occupation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994). [2]. Lynne Taylor, Between Resistance and Collaboration: Popular Protest in Modern France, 1940-1945 (New York: Palgrave McMillin, 2000). [3]. Julian Jackson, France: The Dark Years, 1940-1944 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 2. [4]. Sweets, Choices, 395.

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Citation: Andrew Knapp. Review of Fogg, Shannon Lee. The Politics of Everyday Life in Vichy France: Foreigners, Undesirables, and Strangers. ; Mitchell, Allan. Nazi Paris: The History of an Occupation 1940-1944. ; Pearson, Chris. Scarred Landscapes: War and Nature in Vichy France. H-German, H-Net Reviews. June, 2009.

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URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=24766

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

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