France's failures and heroics under German occupation

Sunday, August 03, 2003

By Samuel Hazo

To occupy another country is fraught with predictable dangers not only to the occupied but to the occupier.

Invariably, the occupation degenerates into oppression, and this oppression brutalizes the oppressed while simultaneously corrupting the oppressor.

	"Marianne in Chains: Daily Life in the Heart of France During the German Occupation" By Robert Gildea Metropolitan ($32.50)

History is replete with extensive examples from the 20th century alone: Algeria under the French, India under the British, much of Europe under the Nazis, the Eastern Europeans under the Russians and the current uprisings and skirmishes in the Palestinian West Bank, Gaza and Iraq.

In 1926, Paul Valery, the distinguished French poet and essayist, noted:

"In modern times, not a single power or empire in Europe has been able to stand supreme, to dominate others far and near, or even sustain its conquests for longer than 50 years. The greatest men have failed to achieve this object, and even the most fortunate led their countries to ruin. Charles V, Louis XIV, Napoleon, Metternich, Bismarck: average span -- 40 years. There are no exceptions."

Add the conquests after 1926 of Mussolini, Hitler, Tojo and Stalin to this list, and Valery's math is still valid.

Certainly one of the most total occupations of the 20th century was the occupation of France by the Nazis. Following a blitzkrieg of mere weeks, the Nazis partitioned the country, giving a chunk to the government of Marshal Petain in Vichy and keeping control of the rest.

Much has been made of the French resistance to this occupation, and it was as notable as it was heroic, but there were also traitors, Nazi sympathizers and unscrupulous collaborators.

Films such as Max Ophuls' "The Sorrow and the Pity" and books such as Jean Vercors' "The Battle of Silence," Michael Pearson's "Tears of Glory" and the anthology of writings compiled by Germaine Bree and George Bernauer, "Defeat And Beyond," to name only a few, document this history.

Now comes Robert Gildea's chronicle, based on years of research and interviews, of the occupation of St. Nazaire, Nantes, Anger, Samur, Cholet, Chinon and Tours in the French heartland from 1940 to 1945.

Gildea's survey ranges from the heroism of such men as Jean Moulin, now enshrined in the Pantheon, to Vichy's Pierre Laval, kept seated while shot by a firing squad after his postwar trial. In between are portraits of how the Catholic Church, ascribing the fall of France to immorality, secularism and ethical waywardness and not to military error and incompetence, tried -- with notable resistance from brave curates and bishops -- to re-catechize the French while scapegoating Freemasons, communists and Jews.

The latter two groups were further penalized in civic life by being excluded from positions of influence, power or public service. Lip service was extended to Jews who had distinguished military service, received the Legion of Honor or made significant contributions in science, arts or literature.

There were also co-habitational problems created by billeting German soldiers and officers with French families. Gildea, like other historians, refers to "horizontal collaboration" between French women and occupiers. The German officers were regarded by one woman as among the "handsomest men she had ever seen."

Postwar punishment of these women included everything from shaving their heads bald to more permanent humiliations and vengeance.

Reprisals occurred on a regular basis, which is pro forma during all occupations. When a certain Lt. Colonel Lotz was assassinated in Nantes, the order (confirmed by Hitler himself) was that 100 hostages would be shot, 50 at once, and 50 within days if the assassins were not apprehended. (They were not.)

Sometimes, entire towns were chosen for reprisal, as was the case in Oradour-sur-Glane, where the entire population was locked in a church that was then set afire. To this day, the French have left the ravaged town as desolate as it was then to serve as both a reminder and tribute.

Transferring Frenchmen to work in German munitions plants was common, and concentrating communists and Jews in punitive camps was the order of the day. Jews were defined by bloodlines alone, whether or not they practiced their religion or even whether they had converted to other faiths.

After the liberation, many of the French were disappointed when their wishes for freedom and plenty did not materialize. There were at war's end still more than 2 million French people in German POW, labor and concentration camps awaiting repatriation, and there were thousands of others eager to return to areas from which they had been displaced. And, of course, there were scores to settle, privately and judicially.

The French refer to this period as "the dark years." The defeat was traumatic enough, but to live under the heel of an occupier was in many ways worse, confirming Churchill's dictum that the only thing more horrific than war is defeat.

It is to Gildea's credit that he does not draw simplistic conclusions, knowing that the pressures on an occupied population have to be considered in evaluating their behavior.

Families, for example, had to meet basic needs as their first priority, and the notables and officials in charge of civic life often had to walk the difficult line between resistance and cooperation to avoid reprisals.

Like all populations under occupation, the French emerged from "the dark years" with wounds, some healable while others fester to this day. Gildea documents how this period brought out the best as well as the worst.

Poet Samuel Hazo is director of the International Poetry Forum and Pennsylvania state poet.

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