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7 EEveryday Life,1936-1945 WWar, Exile,Justice,and Millions of Europeans experienced war, occupation, and exile in the v a e turbulent years between the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936 r r and the end of World War II in 1946. Well-known landmark events , y E during this period include the bombing of Gernika; the mass exodus of d x a Basques, Catalans, and other Spanish Republicans from Spain following i y the triumph of General Francisco Franco’s forces; France’s sudden l e defeat in 1940, its subsequent occupation by Germany, and the rise of L , i J French resistance; the Allied invasion of France and the difficult process f u of liberation. Set within the broader historical context of these events, e , s the contributions to this volume focus on the experiences of ordinary t 1 i people who endured those difficult times. The people who are at the 9 c heart of this book include Basque priests who supported their homeland 3 e 6 , against the Francoist “crusade”; ordinary British, German, and Free - 1 French soldiers; Basque and Catalan refugees; the American newspaper- a 9 n reading public; foreign resisters to German occupation; Breton and 4 d French collaborationists and their accusers; German documentary 5 filmmakers; the dispossessed Jews of Paris; and French housewives who adjusted to a brave new postwar world. Throughout the book, the authors explore the themes of dispossession, disillusionment with the liberation, divisiveness in postwar society, and the permanence of exile even after the exile’s return. The people of Western Europe showed immense EDITED BY resiliency, courage, and creativity during times of war, exile, and foreign occupation, as well as during the postwar years. They also experienced incredible hardship and suffering in their journeys. In very different ways, the chapters make an important, however modest, contribution to our Sandra Ott understanding of everyday life in such traumatic times. ISBN 978-1-935709-10-7 EEDITEDDITED BBYY SSandraandra OOtttt Center for Basque Studies - University of Nevada, Reno CONFERENCE PAPERS SERIES Center for Basque Studies - University of Nevada, Reno WWarar EExilexile PPbkCover.inddbkCover.indd 1 226/8/116/8/11 000:18:420:18:42 Center for Basque Studies Conference Paper Series, No. 7 War, Exile, Justice, and Everyday Life, 1936–1946 Edited by Sandra Ott Center for Basque Studies University of Nevada, Reno Reno, Nevada This book was published with generous financial support from the Basque Goverment. Conference Papers Series, No. 7 Series Editors: Joseba Zulaika and Cameron J. Watson Center for Basque Studies University of Nevada, Reno Reno, Nevada 89557 http://basque.unr.edu Copyright © 2011 by the Center for Basque Studies All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. Cover and series design © 2011 by Jose Luis Agote. Map design: Daniel Martin. Cover illustration: Courtesy of the Basque Library, the University of Nevada, Reno Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data War, exile, justice, and everyday life, 1936-1946 / edited by Sandra Ott. p. cm. -- (Center for Basque Studies conference papers series; no. 7) Includes index. “This book is the product of an international conference, “War, Justice, Exile, and Everyday Life, 1936-1946 ... held at the University of Nevada, Reno, on April 15-16, 2010”--Acknowledgements. Summary: “Collection of essays primarily by historians of the Basque Country, France, Spain, and Germany on the themes of war, exile, justice, and everyday life, 1936-1946”--Provided by publisher. ISBN 978-1-935709-09-1 (hardcover) -- ISBN 978-1-935709-10-7 (pbk.) 1. Basques--Spain--History--20th century--Congresses. 2. Basques--France- -History--20th century--Congresses. 3. Exiles--Europe--History--20th cen- tury--Congresses. 4. Refugees--Europe--History--20th century--Congresses. 5. Spain--History--Civil War, 1936-1939--Refugees--Europe--Congresses. 6. World War, 1939-1945--Refugees--Europe--Congresses. I. Ott, Sandra. DP302.B53W37 2011 946.081’1--dc23 2011028088 Contents Acknowledgments............................................................. 7 Introduction . 9 Sandra Ott 1. The Impact of the Bombing of Gernika in the American Press.... 33 Xabier Irujo 2. From the Pulpit to the Dock: Basque Priests in Franco’s Military Courts, 1937 . 59 Peter Anderson 3. Exile, Identity, and Education: The Evacuation of Basque Children to the French Basque Country, 1937–1939................ 85 Virginia López de Maturana 4. Basque Narrative about the Spanish Civil War and Its Contribution to the Deconstruction of Collective Political Memory . 107 Mari Jose Olaziregi 5. Allez, Allez! The 1939 Exodus from Catalonia and Internment in French Concentration Camps......................... 133 Joan Ramon Resina 6. Returning to the Land: Vichy’s Groupement de Travailleurs Étrangers and Spanish Civil War Refugees............................ 149 Scott Soo 7. Combatant Exile during World War II: Free French and Spanish Republicans . 171 Guillaume Piketty 8. Historiography, Memory, and the Politics of Form in Mosco Boucault’s “Terrorists” in Retirement . 191 Brett Bowles 6 Contents 9. The Basque Country through the Nazi Looking Glass, 1933–1945 . 225 Santiago de Pablo 10. The Völkisch Appeal: Nazi Germany, the Basques, and the Bretons . 251 Ludger Mees 11. Rudolph Mosaner’s “Wanderjahre”: Irony and Impunity in Nazi Europe . 285 Andrew Stuart Bergerson and Maria Stehle 12. The Enemy as Insider: German POWs as Trial Witnesses in the Basses-Pyrénées, 1944–1946........................................ 309 Sandra Ott 13. British Soldiers and French Civilians, 1944–1945 . 335 Richard Vinen 14. Displaced Persons, Displaced Possessions: The Effects of Spoliation and Restitution on Daily Life in Paris . 359 Shannon L. Fogg 15. Gender and Domesticity in War and Peace: France in the 1940s and 1950s.......................................... 377 Sarah Fishman List of Contributors ........................................................... 393 Index . 397 Maps . 409 Acknowledgments This book is the product of an international conference, “War, Justice, Exile, and Everyday Life, 1936–1946,” organized by me with the invaluable assistance of Santiago de Pablo, who was the William A. Douglass Visiting Distinguished Scholar at the Center for Basque Studies in 2009–2010. The conference was held at the University of Nevada, Reno, on April 15–16, 2010. The Center is extremely grateful to the government of the Autono- mous Community of the Basque Country for having generously funded both the conference and the publication of this volume. I also wish to extend my personal thanks to all colleagues who participated in the con- ference and to those who contributed book chapters. They did a fantastic job in meeting our deadlines and responding to our editorial queries in a timely fashion. I also extend heartfelt thanks to my colleagues at the Center for Basque Studies (Kate Camino, Xabier Irujo, and Joseba Zulaika) for their kind assistance in making the conference a stimulating and enjoy- able event. Special thanks are due to Daniel Montero, managing editor of the CBS Press, who devoted so much of his time, energy, and skills to the production of this book. I am also grateful to Jose Luis Agote for having done the layout and design, to Kim Hiscox and Joannes Zulaika for their editorial assistance, to Lisa Corcostegui for designing the publicity materi- als and conference web page, and to all others who assisted in the process of publishing this volume. Introduction Sandra Ott This interdisciplinary collection of essays focuses on one of the most tur- bulent decades in contemporary world history—1936 to 1946—a period during which, in part of Western Europe alone, the Spanish Civil War, World War II, the German occupation of France, Nazism, and fascism dis- placed millions of civilians. Throughout these tumultuous times, people fled from invading armies and tyrannical regimes, were evacuated in the wake of aerial bombardments, and sought refuge from persecution and from both the threat and the reality of extermination. As several chapters in this volume show, thousands of Basques and Catalans fled the terror of war in the 1930s, created institutions and histories, only to face another wave of bloodshed in the 1940s. Across France, both foreigners and French citizens risked and gave their lives to defeat Nazism. Yet the vast majority of civilians, as well as many of the Germans in their midst, learned how to make the best of their wartime circumstances.1 As other chapters reveal, German soldiers sometimes created their own visions of history through postwar testimonies that constitute valuable works of memory, however fragmented and incomplete. In the many places and situations that pro- vide the settings for this book, the contributors tell a wonderful variety of human stories as they explore the experiences of ordinary citizens and combatants during twentieth-century war, occupation, and exile. Several themes run throughout the collection: displacement, dispossession, disil- lusionment, pre- and postwar political, social, and religious divisiveness at the grassroots level, and disconnection between propaganda and the real- ity of everyday life. 1. See Burrin, France under the Germans, whose work alerted readers to the difficulties entailed in using the categories “resistance” and “collaboration,” and Gildea, Marianne in Chains. 10 Sandra Ott This volume has its origins in the ninth annual international conference “War, Exile, Justice, and Everyday Life, 1936–1946,” held