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https://theses.gla.ac.uk/ Theses Digitisation: https://www.gla.ac.uk/myglasgow/research/enlighten/theses/digitisation/ This is a digitised version of the original print thesis. Copyright and moral rights for this work are retained by the author A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge This work cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the author The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the author When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given Enlighten: Theses https://theses.gla.ac.uk/ [email protected] The French experience of war and occupation, as remembered and commemorated during the Mitterrand years, 1981-1995. Ph.D thesis University of Glasgow, © Michael Martin, November 1999 m\®siTirGLASGOW imiv-Gop'/ 9- ABSTRACT My thesis assesses the state of the French collective memory of the Second World War, during the period from May 1981 until July 1995 (when the new president, Jacques Chirac, made his first public speech on the topic). It deals with the major themes thrown up by the intersection of subject matter and time scale, and also discusses the nature of collective memory and commemoration more generally. Particular attention is paid to the series of commemorations marking the fiftieth anniversaries of the crucial episodes of the war years. These fell between 1989 and 1995, roughly coinciding with François Mitterrand’s second septennat. The form and content of the commemorations themselves, the public reaction to them, and the peripheral discussions they stimulated, are all analysed, in many cases with input from those involved in organising or coordinating them. First of all the commemorations that took place during my period are seen from the perspective of a "national narrative" that organises and inteiprets the common past in such a way that it can foster a sense of national unity and belonging. This is the traditional mode of commemoration within the nation-state. However, undermining that approach were the harsh facts of war and occupation, which set Frenchman against Frenchman in a re-enactment of an intermittent "guerre franco- française". The "national narrative" was also threatened by a sense of guilt over the consequences of Vichy's policy of collaboration with the Nazis. Where once that guilt was suppressed or argued into abeyance, during our period it could no longer be avoided. That process went hand-in-hand with the resurgence of those memories that had always been seen as potentially detrimental to national unity. Foremost among these was a specifically Jewish memory which was rib longer willing to be coy about apportioning blame and responsibility. The state's representatives, and France's collective conscience, had to take account of a new balance of power in which communities within the nation had increased their power and influence. More pressure was being applied to the national commemorative framework from alternative ways of thinking about war and its remembrance. It was becoming more common to view the war in terms of human rights and the rights of minorities, rather than in terms of national sovereignty. Also, wai' remembrance was often seen as a tool in the service of European integration and international cooperation rather than national identity. Finally, the state had to accept that it did not have the means to determine the composition of French collective memory. Often it could only give or withhold an official seal of approval to initiatives and trends instigated by pressure groups and fomented by the press and the media. Ill For my parents and Godparents IV CONTENTS Acknowledgements p.vii Preface p.viii 1. Does the past matter? p.l War and Occupation: a fragmented memory p.l National memory and identity under pressure p.7 Why does the past matter? p.9 Collective memory p.l4 Commemoration under Mitterrand p.15 What is commemoration? p.l7 2. National Narratives p.23 Collective identity p.23 Resistance p.29 18 June 1940 p.32 The Allied landings in France p.44 The liberation o f Paris p.51 3. La guerre franco-française p.64 Resistance p.66 18 June 1940 p.76 The Allied landings in France p.77 The liberation of Paris p.90 Deportation p.95 The extreme right p.96 4. The search for "la vraie France " p.99 Was Vichy French? p.99 Le peuple français p .lll Collective responsibility p. 120 A new day of commemoration p.125 Chirac's declaration p.131 5. Les mémoires difficiles p.138 Revival of Jewish memory p.138 Deportation p.145 Commemorating Vichy's crimes p.151 More problematic memories p. 160 Dealing with defeat p.165 Imprisonment and forced labour p.170 6. The past applied to the present p. 176 Commemoration as education p.176 Memory as "devoir" p.183 Critics o f the "devoir" p.l88 Crimes against humanity p. 197 Human rights p.203 Le Front national p.211 A European and internationalist outlook p.217 The present applied to the past p.224 7. Who controls collective memory? p.228 The medium and the message p.228 Memory in vogue p.230 An over-zealous media? p.240 The state under pressure p.247 Who transmits memory? p.252 La paix civile p.261 8. Conclusion: The deregulation of remembrance p.268 Bibliography p.272 VI ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank all those who agreed to answer my questions during my research; Serge Barcellini, Jean-Noël Jeanneney, Michel Charasse, Rita Thalmann, Henry Bulawko, and the representatives of the different associations of deportees, POWs and ex-servicemen. I am also grateful for the cooperation of the staff at the Institut Charles de Gaulle and at the ESfA, and to Chantai Barry at Sciences-Po for wangling a "blue library card". I am indebted, especially, to Jean Kahn at the Institut François Mitterrand, for giving me access to his records and for explaining what it all meant. VII Vlll PREFACE By the 1990s it had become commonplace to point out that the French collective memory of war and occupation had changed since 1945. The general consensus was that Ophuls' 1971 film Le Chagrin et la Pitié marked a watershed, after which the taboos and myths that had taken hold since Liberation, or to be more accurate since de Gaulle's return to power in 1958, could and should be brought down to size. It was widely accepted, too, that during the 1980s and 1990s the iconoclastic impulse had become rather tyramiical, and that during this period "les années noires" were more present in the public imagination than they had ever been. While many commentators simply made this observation in passing before moving on to the thrust of their argument, others made a genuine effort to analyse the phenomenon, and to explain why it had occurred. Thus, among the huge number of works dealing historically with aspects of the war years, there appeared a number of books and articles analysing how those aspects were commemorated,^ and, at the third remove, a smaller number dealing with the whole issue of commemoration and collective memory of that period. Their approach might be described as meta-historical, in that they were not dealing with the events themselves but with the way in which those events had been recounted subsequently. Pre-eminent in this last group was Henry Rous so, whose books and articles continuously returned to these themes. Le syndrome In this category I would place the CNRS's collection of studies entitled 40 ans de commémorations de la deuxième guerre mondiale (Paris: éditions du CNRS, 1986), Gérard Namer'sLa commémoration en France de 1945 à nos jours, and the many studies of specific commemorations, such as Sarah Farmer's Oradour: Arrêt sur mémoire (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1994), Nicole Racine-Furlaud's article, 'Mémoire du 18 juin 1940', based on a paper delivered at the commemorative conference of 1990 (see bibliography); or Rémy Desquesnes' articles on the D-Day anniversaries in Contemporary French Civilisation, vol. 19, rC2 (1995) (referred to in chapter three of this thesis). And, casting its immense shadow on all of these works, is Pierre Nora's Les Lieux de Mémoire (Paris: Gallimard, 1984-1992), the definitive study of a nation's relationship with its own past. Vlll IX de Vichy^ published in 1987, was the first attempt to chart the evolution of France's national wartime narrative from the 1940s to the 1980s. In 1994 Rousso joined forces with Eric Conan to produce Vichy: un passé qui ne passe pas^ in which there was palpable exasperation at the inability of France to "get over" Vichy. The previous year, Henri Amouroux had published La page n'est pas encore tournée,^ which framed a similar message. Amouroux made his point even more bluntly in 1998, when he published Pour en finir avec Vichy (Paris: Robert Laffont), whose title needs no explanation. However, while many of these authors were astute in putting their finger on the Zeitgeist, there were a number of gaps. In particular, the relationship between, on the one hand, specific instances of commemoration, and, on the other, that elusive set of received ideas and half-remembered facts known as "collective memory", was seldom addressed fully. Detailed studies of commemorative events rarely took on board the question of how they related to collective memory, while philosophical musings on collective memory rarely stopped to consider the impact of specific commemorative ceremonies, speeches, and parades.